Operation Nemesis Quotes

“We all know, either implicitly or explicitly, that all we really have is our place in the memories of others. We exist to the degree that we know and remember one another. Even the most isolated among us. We share a collective understanding that we are all part of a greater whole. Perhaps”
― Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

“What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it. —Gabriel García Márquez”
― Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

“Genocide is a word. Like the words “love” or “God,” it seems to be comprehensible. But in fact it cannot be grasped, it cannot be taken in. It is the unspeakable made verbal.”
― Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

“He who kills even one unbeliever of those who rule over us, whether he does it secretly or openly, shall be rewarded by God.”
― Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

“formal declaration of jihad in Constantinople, followed by well-organized demonstrations on the streets.”32 Proclamations and pamphlets were distributed.”
― Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

“When the West overpowered native populations, these actions, no matter how violent, were rationalized as manifestations of the natural order of things. “Manifest destiny” and “social Darwinism” laid the foundation for violent improvement of the world. Europeans saw themselves as superior and naturally born to rule. They believed that their domination of faraway lands brought “civilization” to the natives. In return, the rulers of the empires benefited. “The purpose of colonies was to supply the mother country with raw materials and to provide a market for her manufactured goods,”
― Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

“British prime minister William Gladstone summed up the West’s opinion of “the Turk”: Let me endeavor very briefly to sketch, in the rudest outline, what the Turkish race was and what it is. It is not a question of Mahometanism simply, but of Mahometanism compounded with the peculiar character of a race. They are not the mild Mahometans of India, nor the chivalrous Saladins of Syria, nor the cultured Moors of Spain. They were, upon the whole, from the black day when they first entered Europe, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went, a broad line of blood marked the track behind them; and, as far as their dominion reached, civilisation disappeared from view.”
― Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

“Turkey. The institutions of the republic, particularly its university system and judiciary, as well as its social life, can no longer exist in concert with manufactured history. The truth is easily accessible, and Turkish scholars and writers, young people using social media, anyone watching television,”
― Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

“rising tide floats all boats. And that includes the full history of the Armenians who lived within and outside the Ottoman Empire.”
― Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

“Kemal’s former opponents in the CUP, all dead by 1930, were resuscitated as heroes in the Turkish national consciousness.”
― Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

“vision, of the Ittihadists and, by extension, Kemal Ataturk, did not include the non-Muslim population of what was once the Ottoman Empire.”
― Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

“The struggle within Turkey that continues to this day is the legacy of Kemal Ataturk’s radical reformation,”
― Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

“impact of this makeover has been to significantly impede historical research, and it is one of Ataturk’s most devastating accomplishments.”
― Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

“the Turkish language has changed so radically since the time of Kemal’s “Nutuk” that a Turk living today would not be able to understand his actual words. The speech literally has to be translated for contemporary Turkish speakers. Most important, any record, history, or document created prior to 1929 is totally unreadable by all Turks”
― Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

“Turkish.” Vocabulary was deleted, new words added. Place-names all over the country were Turkified (for example, “Smyrna” became “Izmir”), which only added confusion and another obfuscating layer to the buildup of historical sediment.”
― Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

“Legislation was passed that seemed to welcome any surviving Armenians back to their homes, and at least on paper, Christians and Jews were to be treated like any other citizens in Turkey. But this was a very cold and toxic embrace. The Turkish government was no longer engaged in an organized system of deportation, but with Kemal’s endorsement, the ethnic cleansing of Anatolia would continue.”
― Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

“Adolf von Gordon’s last words at the trial are ironic: “I should be far from passing a final judgment on Talat the man. What can be said objectively I said at the start. But I do wish to state one more thing: like many of his comrades, he certainly worked for the extermination of the Armenian people in order to create a purely pan-Turkish state; he certainly here used means that seem intolerable to us Europeans.”
― Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

“denial itself was institutionalized as a government function. Since 1923, the Turkish government has spent tens of millions of dollars in a concerted disinformation campaign to delude the world at large and, perhaps more important, its own people.”
― Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

“many devout Muslims, particularly in the east, understood that attacking helpless people, nonbelievers or not, was contrary to the tenets of Islam. Still, a vast number of Muslims saw the pronouncement of jihad as an endorsement for killing and looting.”
― Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

“Morgenthau quotes”
― Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

“Genocide, after all, is an exercise in community-building. —Philip Gourevitch”
― Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

“the Young Turks with a complex nationalist ideology replete with ideas such as “in reality there cannot be a common home and fatherland for different peoples.… The new civilization will be created by the Turkish race.”27”
― Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

“Like many Young Turk leaders, Talat was not ethnically Turkish; rather he was of Pomak descent, that is, native Bulgarian Muslim.”
― Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

“United”
― Eric Bogosian, Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide