Every April, Turkish diplomats and members of the Congressional Turkey Caucus scramble to avert a resolution recognizing as genocide the World War I-era Ottoman massacres of Armenians. Turkish officials oppose any resolution holding Turkey responsible both because the Republic of Turkey was not formally declared until 1923 and because they hold that what happened was not deliberate but rather occurred in the fog of war. Other Turkish historians and politicians hold that the evidence upon which genocide historians rely is exaggerated if not fraudulent.

Lost in the debate about what transpired more than a century ago is what is happening now: Turkey has undertaken and continues to undertake campaigns of ethnic cleansing, and it systematically destroys cemeteries and cultural artifacts in areas where the Turkish army deploys in order to retroactively “Turkify” each region’s history.