MSFT Encarta Encyclopedia 2002 features the WW-I Armenian Ge

[wh00t]

Big news for those of us who have followed Turkey's quest to censor Encarta through lies and threats.

 

PRESS RELEASE

Armenian Genocide Resource Center

5400 McBryde Ave Richmond, CA 94805

Contact: Richard Kloian

(510) 965-0152

 

October 1, 2001

 

MICROSOFT UPDATE TO ENCARTA ENCYCLOPEDIA DELUXE

2002 FEATURES THE WORLD WAR I ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

 

By Richard Kloian

 

Microsoft has released an online update to its Encarta Reference

Library 2002 and its Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2002, believed to

have the world's largest circulation of any encyclopedia, that

includes an extensive 3,000 word entry on the modern history of

Armenia, with a special focus on the Armenian Genocide.

 

It was nearly a year ago that Microsoft first found itself

ensnarled in controversy when The Chronicle of Higher Education

reported in its August 15, 2000 issue that the editors of Encarta,

after receiving complaints from the Turkish Ambassador, had asked

two scholars, Helen Fein and Ronald Suny, to revise their entries

on the Armenian Genocide to include the "other side of the story."

The Turkish Embassy also urged Encarta to remove the term

"genocide" from its entry on Armenia.

 

The issue escalated after Pacifica Radio aired the program "Did

the Turkish government try to write the Armenian genocide out

of history books?" on its nationwide broadcast of Democracy Now!.

On the 40 minute segment aired coast to coast August 23, 2000,

Amy Goodman interviewed by phone the nervous senior editor of

Encarta who tried to explain how they had reached their decision

to "seek the other side of the story." It became apparent that

Encarta editors had but scant understanding of the genocide or

the full depth of Turkish denial and quickly found themselves

ensconced in the center of a spiraling and embarrassing

controversy.

 

They are now to be commended that in the intervening months they

have done their homework and in the process they have indeed

learned something about the Armenian Genocide. The online update

to Encarta Deluxe 2002 reflects this new understanding. The

contributor to the new entry is the world's foremost expert on

the genocide, Professor Vahakn Dadrian, who is the Director of

Genocide Research at the Zoryan Institute and who has authored

a number of critically acclaimed books and monographs on the

topic.

 

This new update to Microsoft's renowned Encarta Reference Library

provides an extensive overview of modern Armenian history.

Subdivided into six sections, the subheadings include:

Introduction, Background, The Rise of Nationalism, The Young

Turk Revolution and Its Consequences; World War I and the

Armenian Genocide, and Consequences. The section on the Armenian

Genocide occupies the largest part of the entry. The Encarta

update outlines and describes succinctly the main conditions

and factors that combined to produce the Genocide. Unlike many

other encyclopedia articles on the subject, it methodically

describes the evolving stages of the Genocide, with particular

emphasis on the decisive role of the secretive Young Turk

Ittihadist party hierarchy, and the instrumental role of the

Special Organization, the Teshkilati Mahsusa.

 

In doing so it points out the deliberate aspects of the

extermination process by which, step by step, the victim

population was targeted and decimated starting first with the

able-bodied Armenian men who were conscripted and gradually

liquidated, and subsequently with the thousands of Armenian

church and community leaders who were likewise brutally murdered.

The three main methods used to conduct the organized mass murders

are specifically cited in the article: death by blunt instruments,

mass drownings in the Black Sea and the tributaries of the

Euphrates; and burning alive in stables, haylofts, and especially

dug large pits.

 

In this connection reference is made to the thousands of criminals

who were released from the various prisons of the Empire to form

the Teshkilati Mahsusa for massacre duty. The article directs

attention to the fact that following the completion of the principal

part of the Genocide, the perpetrator Young Turk regime proceeded to

carry out a second round of genocidal massacres in the summer of

1916. Several hundred thousand Armenian survivors of the earlier

deportations, mainly from Turkey's western, northwestern, and

southwestern provinces, had arrived in the deserts of Mesopotamia.

 

These wretched survivors, reduced by starvation to skin and bone,

were annihilated with brutalities unsurpassed even in Ottoman-

Turkish history. Referring to official Ottoman statistics, released

in the Spring of 1919, the article shows that 800,000 Armenians

were killed outright, and that through subsequent reliable data,

especially German sources, the total number of victims is

estimated to be 1.2 million.

 

The article ends with a commentary on the abortive Turkish

courts-martial which, while adequately documenting the mass murder,

failed in its task of pursuing retributive justice. Similar

abortiveness clouded the ideals of international justice when the

victorious Allies, all but ignoring their wartime pledges to the

Armenians, and their solemn threats to the Ottoman-Turks, proceeded

to consign the crime of genocide, perpetrated against the Armenians,

to oblivion. The ground was thus paved for the new Kemalist regime

to all but transform this obliviousness into a culture of

intransigent denialism.

 

At the present time the updated Encarta article is only available

online on the Microsoft Encarta Deluxe web site but will be included

in the 2003 CD-ROM and DVD versions. The update can be downloaded by

registered owners of current CD or DVD versions of Encarta Reference

Library 2002 and Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2002. Registered owners

of Encarta are advised to use the update feature of their current

versions which will automatically connect to Microsoft and download

the necessary addition. Otherwise, they may visit the Encarta web site

and view the article online at:

 

http://encarta.msn.com/find/search.asp?sea...ocide&x=17&y=15

 

####

[edward demian]

I will buy their product just for that.

[khodja]

The bullies of the Turkish government diplomatic corps didn't win this one, nor muzzling the Pope. The really throw their weight around. Best for the long-term well-being of their state is to fess up, bite the bullet, as the Germans did, and move on to national greatness. This festering sore will never heal unless they see the light.

I, for one, wish them a prosperous nation once they come to terms with the past. The acts of a few Armenian mercenaries does not give a government carte blanche to exterrminate a people en masse.

[wh00t]

Another great aspect of this is that not only did they add the Armenian Genocide entry, but it was written by Dadrian. Ecevit is going to have a fit.

[MosJan]

2 UP

[bellthecat]

Yes they did - the article is written by an Armenian - so it can be dismissed as just another bit of Armenian anti-Turkish propaganda.

[khodja]

There is no subjectivity to what the article states. The Genocide is included in Encarta.

 

Ditto the statements of the Pope.

 

The article only states what has transpired.

[ThornyRose]

But he is not just any Armenian - he was born and raised in Turkey. Those who follow and who hadn't know that much about him will, I think, now hear of a Turkish Armenian who works for a genocide institute - a blow on the ignoramus-nurtured picture of Turkish Armenians standing up for the Turkish government against the diasporans or something (a picture reinforced rather than shattered by those like Karapet Armen and the like), IMO - and who has actually written that article. Some will brand him a traitor, others will look into it (maybe?)...

[gamavor]

Bellthecat,

Are you trying to tell me that if the truth is spoken by an Armenian it is an anti-Turkish propaganda?
How about if it is spoken by a French, Russian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Greek, or other "affiliated" historian? It still would be regarded as Propaganda?

[wh00t]

bellthecat, though your point is well taken, the article is not only there for Turkey and its people. The people at Microsoft didn't include the Armenian Genocide in its article database to prove to the Turks that a Genocide occurred. The article is there for all to consume.

 

Turkey would have dismissed the article as propaganda no matter who it was written by. Who cares?

[gamavor]

Bellthecat,

 

I agree with your assessment of the situation on the field of Armenian studies, but the reason for that is well known.

First, Armenia as part of the USSR, had limited contacts with the outside world and those who seriously studied Armenian History and Culture were predominantly members of Soviet Academia. Its worth noting that despite the unbearable political and ideological pressure exerted on them in order to keep "respublics" nationalism quite some of them made great scientific contributions to Historiography, doing their best in presenting the Armenian cultural and historical heritage in a light that goes beyond ideological stereotypes. Some other "historians" just bend to their masters. Mere mentioning of the Aryan origins of the Armenians was treated as nazi propaganda. No doubt, there is lot to be done. The Academia in the West concerning Armenian studies was naturally limited to keeping the flame, due to lack of interest (and money) within broader academic circles to Armenia.

Lets not forget that vast majority of the historical artifacts is in Turkey, and I don’t want to comment on that because I already have one official warning.

 

In that respect your job is kind of pioneering and deserves our respects and believe me no matter how harsh sometimes some of us are against you, your work is appreciated.

[bellthecat]

I am saying that TURKEY will present it that way to their own population!

But tell me why almost all works on Armenian history/culture/etc, seem to be written by Armenians. Would you expect a book about the exploration of the Pacific ocean to be only written by a Polynesian, or a book about classical Greek architecture to be only written by a modern Greek, or a book about the Crimean war to be written only by a Russian!

Will I give a possible answer to my question?

It is perhaps because of the numerous departments of "Armenian studies" within American universities. Departments which, rather than existing for academic purposes are mostly nationalistic ghettos, little substitute Armenia's where American Armenians go to to become more "Armenian" and where no other nationality would be made welcome or wish to attend. I believe Dadrian was a student at such a department, wasn't he?