Michael Bobelian opens his presentation of the Armenians’ decades long effort to find justice for the genocide with a description of a child survivor on January 23, 1973 planning for a meeting with a Turkish official and shooting him on arrival before he takes his own life. Following this dramatic story, Bobelian explains the efforts of Bob Dole in the late ‘80s to have Congress vote on recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Dole is pitted against the staunch opposition from Robert Byrd and other Republicans. It is only in the twenty first century presidency of Joseph Biden that there has been recognition. What Bobelian does with his opening vignette and detailed account of Dole’s campaign highlights the challenges to recognition of the genocide and the repeated ways that Turkish denial has played a role in American politics.
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