LONDON, MART 12, NOYAN TAPAN. NOT for the first time, Armenians sense a moment of vindication in their struggle for the acknowledgment of the tragedy that befell their forebears during the first world war. Turkey is angry. And America's administration is straining to limit the damage. The latest Turkish-American rift over the Armenian question—after a congressional committee voted on March 4th to recognise the killings of 1915 as genocide—looks wider than some previous ones. It coincides with a general scratchiness between America and its ally. Turkey is reluctant to slap sanctions on Iran. Anti-Americanism is running high among Turks. Some suspect that Barack Obama retains his view (expressed as a senator in 2008) that “the Armenian genocide is not an allegation…but rather a widely documented fact.” Still, the chances are that after a deep sulk, Turkey will send its ambassador back to Washington, and the administration will persuade legislators to avoid a vote in the full House, for fear of wrecking an important relationship—and worsening the fading prospects for reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia. A tired diplomatic ritual will play out once again. Can any actor in this sorry drama do anything to improve the script? One day a Turkish leader will be statesman enough to see that national dignity is better served by acknowledging the sins committed on Anatolian soil than by suppressing debate and punishing truth-tellers. Such a leader could decouple relations with Armenia from Ottoman history. (In any case, their argument today is more about the aftermath of the war over Nagorno-Karabakh in the 1990s than over 1915.) Some people in Turkey realise this. As one Turkish columnist has noted, for Turkey to be so touchy about the minutiae of a congressional vote betrays weakness, not strength. And nothing would silence Turkey’s detractors more than a genuine, no-holds-barred effort to probe the events of 1915. The result of the Armenian deportations is indisputably and horrifically clear: hundreds of thousands, probably more than a million, died. But there is room for scholarly inquiry into the working of the murky state machinery that led to that outcome—to determine whether the tragedy was principally the result of murderous design or culpable neglect. By inviting all scholars to peruse its archives (something it has done only patchily), Turkey could disarm its critics.

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