ABSTRACT
The record of an Armenian state dates back to the early 6th century BC, and the state itself has a long history of conquering, or being conquered and ruled by, Persians, Byzantines, Arabs, Mongols, and Ottoman Turks. Before Rwanda and Bosnia, and before the Holocaust, the first genocide of the twentieth century happened in Turkish Armenia. This was a terrible precedent that has come to haunt Armenians, Kurds, and Turks, as well as others throughout the twentieth century and beyond. None the less, in October 2007, the USA for the first time officially challenged the Turkish denial, disavowal, and refusal to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. On 10 October 2007, the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee was expected to approve a bill that called on the USA to recognize the Armenian genocide. The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide provides a legal definition of the term.
