Top officials don't have to have knowledge of it or support it, condone it, or instigate it for it to be genocide.

Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group

it could be done by a large portion of the populace, the military, or splinter factions

If the question is whether or not genocide occurred, of course it did. If the question is whether or not the Turkish government should be held responsible for the deaths, then I agree with you. Only proof via documentation or eye witness reports could validate that.

Let's not forget that given that definition, The American government is responsible for the genocide of the Native Americans (but we all know that).




>>Today a turk writer "Orhan Pamuk" won Nobel literary prize and France approved a law about if anyone say "there wasn't an armenian genocide in Turkey" it needs prison sentence.
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>>A headline from a turk website "Prize to who says we killed, prison to who says we don't" .
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>>footnote: Orhan Pamuk had said "there was an armenian genocide in Turkey"
>
>I see there are several quests:
>
>1 The number of Armenians, and Turks, that died in that period.
>2 The causes of their death.
>3 Whether or not the deaths were the purpose of officials and to what part.
>4 Whether or not it were the highest officials.
>
>As I understand, the official Turkish POV is that the highest officials were not involved. It was not some kind of Hitler-leader who ordered the killings. And therefore the official POV is that it should not be called genocide.
>
>I can imagine. Suppose I killed someone only by accident and was consistently and publicly called a murderer, I'd protest heavilly.
>
>On the other hand, suppose I indeed killed someone on purpose, I'd still try to let it look like an accident and protest when being called a murderer.
>
>Proof would be given in court. I think that it's best for us all if the Turkish goverment cooperates, by opening archives for independent research, perhaps a nice job for a UN-committee.
>
>And the French? Well, they are doing crazy in this case. A similar inappropriate reaction had some Dutch political parties who removed some Turkish candidates from the list because they did not want to use the word genocide.