Ever since the Armenian Genocide of 1915, Armenians have fought relentlessly to inform the world about the systematic extermination of 1.5 million Armenians carried out by the Ottoman Empire.
As a result, over 30 countries, several international organizations and leading genocide scholars have acknowledged the veracity of the Armenian Genocide. After all these acknowledgments, the Armenian Genocide has become a recognized fact—a direct rebuke to Turkey’s denialist propaganda. Regrettably, a few major countries, such as the United Kingdom and Israel, have not yet recognized it—not due to ignorance, but out of political expediency and a desire to appease Turkey. Thus, the era of pursuing recognition must be considered over.
The problem is that, after decades of genocide recognition campaigns, Armenians and non-Armenians alike—including Turkish officials—have come to the wrong conclusion that recognition is the final objective. This is a fundamental misunderstanding. Our real demands are restitution and the return of Western Armenia. Once Turkey realizes that genocide denial will not prevent Armenians from pursuing these two other goals, Ankara may finally see the futility of its denialist campaign.
Nevertheless, the global genocide recognition campaign was not in vain. The world now knows the truth about the Armenian Genocide. After 110 years, the Turkish government is still confronted with embarrassing reminders of the heinous crimes committed by its predecessor regime.
However, simply acknowledging the Armenian Genocide and issuing an apology will not heal the wounds or undo its consequences. Armenians still await justice, the restoration of their historic rights, and the return of their confiscated lands and properties.
In 1915, the Ottoman Empire carried out a systematic campaign to uproot an entire nation from its ancestral homeland, depriving survivors of their homes, native lands, cultural heritage, places of worship and personal properties. A gross injustice was perpetrated against the Armenian people, entitling them—as in the case of the Jewish Holocaust—to legitimate compensation for their enormous losses.
Restitution can take many forms. As a crucial first step, the Republic of Turkey must return all 2,500 Armenian churches to Armenian control, placing them under the jurisdiction of the Istanbul-based Armenian Patriarchate. These confiscated churches, demolished or converted into mosques, stables and warehouses, must be restored to their rightful owners.
Today’s Republic of Turkey—as the successor state of the Ottoman Empire—should be held legally liable for the genocide and its continuing consequences. Turkey inherited the assets of the Ottoman Empire, and, therefore, also inherited its liabilities.
Regrettably, presidential proclamations and congressional commemorative resolutions on the Armenian Genocide have no force of law, and therefore, no legal consequence.
Armenians, having waited over a century, must no longer delay pursuing legal action through international and national courts, including: the International Court of Justice (World Court), where only states have such jurisdiction; the European Court of Human Rights; and U.S. federal courts, as well as courts in other countries.
The current Armenian government has no interest in filing lawsuits against Turkey on the Armenian Genocide at the World Court, so Armenian Americans must take legal action themselves. Instead of pushing for another symbolic resolution, they must lobby the House and Senate to extend the statute of limitations, enabling Armenians to file lawsuits based on their material losses caused by the Genocide.
Once Congress passes such a bill, it will go to the president to be signed into law. This legislation would follow the legal framework of existing Holocaust-related restitution laws, such as: the Holocaust Victims Redress Act, enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1998; the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016; and California Assembly Bill 2867, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2024: “Recovery of artwork and personal property lost due to persecution.”
Once lawsuits are filed in U.S. courts, they will attract global attention, forcing Turkey to confront its criminal past in a legal arena. The Turkish government’s continued genocide denial would then become meaningless.
U.S. courts could issue legally binding judgments requiring Turkey to pay compensation to Armenians for their losses. If Turkey refuses to comply, courts could then order the confiscation of all Turkish government-owned assets in the United States, such as buildings, bank accounts and planes belonging to Turkish Airlines.
To launch this historic legal battle, Armenians must take two immediate actions: lobby Congress to pass a law allowing these claims, and hire top legal experts who specialize in international law.
If Armenians win in court, the recognition debate becomes irrelevant. Any resistance or refusal by the Turkish government to comply with such a U.S. court judgment would create a major diplomatic and legal crisis between Ankara and Washington.
This is how Armenians can finally achieve justice—not through more recognition, but through courtroom victories.
Harut Sassounian
Globally, no one lifted a finger to assist / defend Artsakh; at least, not in any meaningful way. Yet you honestly believe suing in court 100+ years after the genocide is going to produce results? Even *if* somehow Armenia won the case, who is going to enforce any punishments? Who is going to send their soldiers to Turkey to snatch back land? Or force financial retributions? Or continue to stand guard even if they could take back land? Fantasy, sir. An utter fantasy.
Your argument is the equivalent of the “living on stolen lands” movement in the US. Per the logic in your article, you should immediately offer up your property and citizenship and move to Armenia, and give that land / your resources to Native Americans.
A typical Turkish response when feel threatened. Just like your genocide denier president and criminal Erdogan you are trying to kill the message by killing the messenger as they say. When French leaders defended the Armenians and enacted laws with punishment against genocide denial, he did exactly what you are trying to do here. He started attacking the French leaders by talking about French colonialism. Neither you nor he will succeed in spewing nonsense. There is no statute of limitation on genocide and if this case was too old, as you implied, to do anything about it then why do Turks get so bent out of shape when Genocide Commemoration month comes around every year and began to prepare for it with their bribes and blackmails? You talk the way you do because Turkey has been hiding behind NATO since 1952. First joining this alliance, as the only Muslim terrorist state in the world, to save itself from the Soviet takeover and now as the dictatorial Muslim black sheep of the NATO family collaborating with NATO arch-enemies while never leaving NATO to get state-of-the-art weapons to protect all that Turks have stolen from the natives through mass murder and genocide. Lastly, remember the 1988 Armenian Liberation Movement that shattered all Turkish myths by destroying and humiliating that artificial petrol state on the Caspian despite their massive petrodollars and help from Turkey and other terrorist paid-mercenaries. They cried for thirty years until they hired Turkish terrorist defense ministry to do their dirty work for them. On a level playing field you have ZERO chance against us!
the guy is right dawg dont just get racist as soon as you see a turk
I am not Turkish, nor of Turkish / middle east origin, not muslim nor Islamic, not dating, nor married to anyone matching these characteristics. I am American of scandanavian origin, who happens to be interested in this forgotten portion of the world. Want to try your arguments again? Maybe without the massive assumptions nor insults?
You are not Turkish you say. You might as well be based on what you wrote. You made excuses for the perpetrators and the deniers of the Armenian Genocide. What you said, in a nutshell, was to tell the Armenian victims of the genocide and their descendants to forget about what was done to them and move on because murdering people and taking their lands was not a new concept and it happened to others as well. After 80 years since the end of WWII in 1945 the state of Israel is still getting financial reparations from Germany for the crime committed against the Jews by fascist German government of the time. They are also getting around twenty billion dollars annually by way of US grants and various other charity donations and those mostly by American Evangelicals in particular. What makes the Armenian case different so that if they pursue justice against terrorist Turkey they are merely pursuing a fantasy according to you?
At the time when the state-sponsored terrorism and premeditated genocide of the native Armenians and seizure of their homeland took place at the hands of Central Asian Turkish criminals, what little was left of Armenia was nothing but an orphanage. Soon after that, the Soviets took over that remaining little piece of land and occupied it for the next seven decades and dictated its foreign policy. By the time Armenians managed to get back on their feet half a century had passed and terrorist Turkey, as the only Muslim terrorist state in the world, had become a NATO member state and the seized Armenian homeland, Western Armenia, had become a buffer zone between the NATO alliance and the Soviet Union. Terrorist cunning Turkey used its NATO membership to shield itself from punishment for the crime committed and during the entire Cold War period used various tactics post-Soviet collapse in 1991, including bribery and blackmail and threats to shut down the NATO bases there, to get away with this crime and avoid responsibility for any financial reparations and return of illegally seized territory by way of mass extermination. It does not matter when this genocide took place and who else did what to whom and got away with it. The fact is that there is no statute of limitation on crime of genocide like I said. The responsibility does not just go away because a century plus has passed since this crime was committed. Besides, the term “genocide” did not exist at the time the Armenian Genocide was committed and was invented soon after WWII in late 1940s and there were no mechanisms in place, i.e., Genocide Convention, to hold Turkey responsible for the crime. By misusing and abusing the Native American case you are, in essence, giving cover to perpetrators of genocide.
The reason why terrorist Turkey has used every opportunity and every trick in the books, after the world recognition of the crime of genocide, to get away with genocide with impunity is the reason why so many years have passed since this crime was committed but that in no way absolves terrorist Turkey of the crime of genocide. If this hypocritical world, the Western one in particular, needing Armenian lands under Turkish occupation, Western Armenia once again, to keep former USSR and now the Russian Federation at bay then that is on them and not on the Armenians. They are doing the same thing to Armenians today. The Caspian oil and gas pumped by our enemy into Europe by way of Turkey is much more important to the hypocritical and cunning West than the blood of the Armenians. Apparently nothing has changed since 1915!
I stopped reading after your third sentence. Thanks yet again for yet another baseless insult. You probably made some decent points after your (totally unnecessary) digs. But this is exactly what I mean. You continue your insults; you *never* apologize. I guess that works for you, but it doesn’t for me / the vast majority of actual human people. Yes, I can forgive and forget, especially as a German descendant leaving Germany just before / during WWII. Trying to teach your children to hate for endless generations seems quite the folly to me. Especially if you are not Armenian, in Armenia. Keep feeling exulted; I’d bet you’re feeling on top of the (Armenian) world!! Yet as usual, no one joins you.
I have nothing to apologize for. I gave you a reality check by explaining events and countering every baseless argument you made and you took offense for being countered and corrected. Unlike you, I read what you wrote twice to make sure I understand the message you are trying to get across and addressed the arguments you made piece by piece. What part of what I said did you not understand? The main message of your remark was on the number of years that has passed since the genocide attempting to present this tragic event as an old story and that nobody even cared to lift a finger to help Armenians in Artsakh during recent ethnic-cleansing events further proving the point that if you let one atrocity go unpunished other similar events are bound to reoccur and they did. I gave you a short history lesson on the first half of those 100+ years post genocide during which the Armenians were struggling to recover from near annihilation and for the second half of it living under the Soviet dictatorship that determined what Armenians can and can not do. I mentioned that for seven decades since the Soviet takeover of Armenia, from 1921 to 1991, there was very little if any, Armenians could do about this matter trying to make you understand why the Turks got away with this crime as long as they did followed by becoming a NATO member state in 1952, ironically to save themselves from Soviet takeover, and using their NATO membership and geopolitical importance in the region as a tool to bribe and blackmail those who could hold their feet to fire.
Dragging out responsibility and accountability for this crime has been a key part of Turkish foreign policy hoping that it will go away and it has not. They did the same with the massacre of tens of thousands of Alevis in Dersim that took place in 1937-1938. They kept denying it, blaming it on the victims, trying to sweep it under the rug until the current Turkish president Erdogan, a cunning genocide denier, wanting to become president used it as a political tool, exposing this crime by blaming it on his opposition republican party, in order to steal their votes and their affiliate’s to become president. Erdogan went as far as apologizing for this event calling it “one of the most tragic events of our near history” totally ignoring the genocide committed against the Armenians. You tried to argue your point by knowing very little about the character of our enemy and knowing even less about the history surrounding these events and I think you failed. By trying to use other unjust events in history, such as the Native Americans story, and lack of commitment and concern by other countries in position of power to hold the perpetrator of this crime responsible for their criminal actions, and that purely due to their self-interests, you tried to legitimize your points. Well, two wrongs don’t make a right. How come these countries can come together, commit troops for a decade in far corners of the world, spend hundreds of billions of dollars if not trillions, force regime change to “liberate” certain people from tyrannical and genocidal rulers but won’t lift a finger to help Armenians? Simply because it serves them no purpose. There is nothing in it for them. Their self-interests lie elsewhere. In many ways, they are the enablers of such tragic events!
I say this as a Turk, not with hostility, but with concern for the future of our region. The world today is increasingly unstable one spark away from a much larger conflict. In this context, pursuing Turkey through international courts that lack real enforcement power may not bring Armenia the outcomes it hopes for.
I understand how deeply 1915 is rooted in Armenian identity. But being stuck in that moment, without engaging in pragmatic diplomacy, has already come at a high cost such as the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh. Maintaining hostility toward both Turkey and Azerbaijan at the same time has isolated Armenia in a neighborhood where alliances matter more than ever.
Iran, while a historical partner, is currently under enormous pressure from Israel and the United States. Its ability to offer real support in a crisis is limited. So I ask: what kind of future can Armenia build if it remains surrounded by unresolved conflicts?
A better path might be to normalize relations with Turkey and pursue lasting peace with Azerbaijan. This wouldn’t erase the past, but it could ensure Armenia’s security and prosperity going forward. Ending tensions with your Turkic neighbors could create space for dialogue, trade, and regional cooperation things that benefit all of us.
This sounds more like a gag order than display of concern for the future of the region. It is the proverbial my way or the highway. You are asking the Armenians to bend to the will of Turkey in this matter and not to ruffle its feathers which will have an adverse effect in this politically volatile region and on the Armenians in particular as evidenced by Turkish terrorist defense ministry’s direct military involvement against Armenia, without any Armenian provocations towards Turkey whatsoever, in reoccupation of Armenian liberated territories on behalf of militarily incompetent artificial pseudo-Turkish Azerbaijan.
It is quite clear that without terrorist Turkey and assistance from its criminal collaborators, from Syrian ISIS terrorist paid-mercenaries recruited by Erdogan and paid by Azerbaijani petrodollars (imagine Sunni Muslim ISIS thirsty for Shia Muslim blood fighting for Shia Muslim Azerbaijan!) to terrorist Pakistan to the dictatorship of Belarus with very close ties to the “khan of Baku” to morally-bankrupt and hypocritical Israel for setting up military bases in occupied Armenian territories for future attacks on Iran to the clandestine involvement by various NATO member states and for various selfish reasons such as Turkey’s century-old failed plan to manufacture the mythical “land of Turan” to gain access to Central Asian untapped resources in absence of now-defunct USSR and securing multibillion dollar investments by the Western energy companies in Caspian oil and gas, that what took place in 2020 as a result of joint Turkish-Azerbaijani invasion would have been an impossibility given the Azerbaijani failed track records over the last thirty years since its 1994 devastating and humiliating defeat at the hands of victorious Armenian armed forces.
What happened in 2020 was planned over a period of a decade after the 2009 failed Turkish-Armenia reconciliation fiasco when Turkey once again showed it can never be trusted even after signing documents in this regard (unconditionally) in front of the entire world and in presence of the representatives of major powers when it bent to the will of Azerbaijan to scrap the process in return for cheap oil and gas and lucrative projects that would make Turkey act as the future energy hub in the region. Today, Turkish troops are in occupation of territories in Armenia’s backyard, in Syria, in Iraq, in Cyprus and other places and the last thing Turkey is qualified to do is to tell us when and what to say and not to say. If the region were to ignite for whatever reason, rest-assured Turkey first and foremost, along with its Azerbaijani criminal collaborator, would be holding the match to do so and not anyone else. I think your message is misdirected. Ironically, if Palestinian leaders had done what you are suggesting Armenians do instead of being egged on by your Turkish president Erdogan that they are fighting for the right cause, not to mention declaring Jerusalem as Turkish city, and to continue their fight and resist Israel and that contrary to what the world says they are freedom fighters by giving Palestinian leaders a hero’s welcome to the Turkish parliament none of what happened in Gaza would have happened. But when the current life-altering conflict between Israelis and Palestinians began all they got from sultan Erdogan was lip service. After all that Turkish pep talk to the Palestinian people and their leaders, the Turkish leaders stood on the sidelines and watched Gaza razed to the ground and thousands killed by Israeli forces without lifting a finger to put their money where their mouths were. Given the Turkish track records, I don’t think Turkey is in any position to give any advice to anyone. As they say, people who live in glass houses should not throw stones!
Your response was unnecessarily hostile, and frankly, it suggests a lack of understanding of Turkish history and politics particularly in regard to Palestine and Azerbaijan.
The vast majority of Turkey’s population is strongly pro-Palestinian and deeply angered by Israel’s ongoing campaign in Gaza and the West Bank. Yes, President Erdoğan does use the Palestinian issue as a rallying cry to galvanize his base, but this should not be misinterpreted as a national desire for military conflict with Israel. The broader Turkish population, the security establishment, and the political elite recognize the reality: Turkey remains entrenched within Western institutions, and as long as Israel enjoys a privileged relationship with the United States and the wider Western bloc, Turkey’s policy will remain one of pragmatic continuity.
There’s also a historical dimension that should not be overlooked. The Palestinian flag is derived from the Arab Revolt flag, a painful symbol for many Turks. During World War I, some of the precursors of the Palestinian national movement aligned themselves with forces rebelling against the Ottoman Empire. This doesn’t negate the popular sympathy in Turkey for Palestinian statehood, but it does add historical complexity that makes a war on their behalf implausible. Turkey supports a two-state solution with an independent Palestine alongside Israel, but pursuing war is not in Turkey’s national interest.
As for Azerbaijan, your thinking fails to grasp the fundamental truth. Turkey and Azerbaijan are described as “one nation, two states,” but they should not be separate in the first place. Unfortunately, the lack of long-term vision among Turkey and Azerbaijan’s ruling elites has prevented a deeper integration between the two nations. This is a failure of strategic imagination. Our relationship with Armenia must be viewed through this lens: as long as Armenia maintains hostility toward Azerbaijan, it maintains hostility toward Turkey.
That said, Armenia does not currently pose a threat to Turkey. And if Armenia refrains from aggression toward Azerbaijan, Turkey should encourage Baku to pursue peace and normalization. All three countries stand to benefit greatly from establishing full diplomatic relations. We must remember our shared past, but we must not become prisoners to it. The region needs peace, not forever rivalry.
Moreover, Armenia, as a functioning liberal democracy, in a region where democratic governance is almost non-existent, represents an opportunity. If stability is maintained, its eventual NATO membership could become a serious prospect. This would serve Turkey’s interests, too.
Turkey’s long-term geopolitical interest lies in a weakened Russia, and in an Iran that remains territorially intact but is no longer capable of exporting influence through the Shia Crescent. Turkey aspires to become the primary corridor connecting the European Union to Central Asia and China via the Turkic World. Armenia sits at a strategic crossroads and can be an essential link in that grand vision if peace can be secured.