Justin McCarthy (American historian)

Justin A. McCarthy is an American demographer, who is a professor of history at the University of Louisville, in Louisville, Kentucky. His areas of expertise include the histories of the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans, and he has authored several texts in those fields. [http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~dwilson/Armenia/mccarthy.html Justin McCarthy] . Home page of another academic with whom he served in the Peace Corps.] [ [http://php.louisville.edu/advancement/ocm/expertsource/expertdetails.php?fname=Justin&lname=McCarthy University of Louisville :: The Expert Source :: Expert Details ] ]

McCarthy has attracted controversy for his unorthodox view of the Ottoman Empire's persecution of Armenians, which most historians accept as genocide but which his historiography subsumes into the general chaos of World War I. For his various works and speeches that seek to dispute the genocidal nature of the Armenian Genocide, he has often faced scrutiny and harsh criticism. The controversial nature of his views and works, which many critics have described as genocide denial, have made them the subject of much scholarship in themselves.

Background

McCarthy served in the Peace Corps in Turkey, from 1967-1969. He also taught at the Middle East Technical University and Ankara University during this time.Mustafa Aydin, Çağrı Erhan (2004) " [http://books.google.com/books?id=atbzNvt7ZsgC&pg=PT5&lpg=PT5&dq=Turkish-American+Relations:+Past,+Present,+and+Future&source=web&ots=WzwaYvV0W2&sig=Bh9TtwU_zeii94koy3ookC4MlwY&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result#PPT13,M1 Turkish-American Relations: Past, Present, and Future] ", xii] He earned his Ph.D. at University of California, Los Angeles in 1978.Bloxham, Donald. "The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians". 2005, page 214.] He has also received an honorary doctorate from Boğaziçi University.Mustafa Aydin, Çağrı Erhan (2004) " [http://books.google.com/books?id=atbzNvt7ZsgC&pg=PT5&lpg=PT5&dq=Turkish-American+Relations:+Past,+Present,+and+Future&source=web&ots=WzwaYvV0W2&sig=Bh9TtwU_zeii94koy3ookC4MlwY&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result#PPT13,M1 Turkish-American Relations: Past, Present, and Future] ", xii]

Views

McCarthy is known for his active promotion, through books, articles, conferences, and interviews, of his view that the Armenian Genocide did not occur. [cite news | first=Scott | last=Jaschik | title=Genocide Deniers | url=http://hnn.us/articles/43861.html | date=October 22 2007] He was one of four scholars who participated in a controversial debate hosted by PBS about the genocide.cite news | title=A PBS Documentary Makes Its Case for the Armenian Genocide, With or Without a Debate | work=New York Times | url=http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/17/arts/television/17stan.html?ex=1302926400&en=42703f4960edef66&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss | date=2006-04-17 | accessdate= 2006-09-02]

McCarthy does not deny that hundreds of thousands of Armenians died, but claims that "millions of Muslims" [McCarthy, Justin "Let the Historians Decide", Ermeni Arastirmalari, volume 1, Ankara 2001.] in the region were also massacred in this period. [McCarthy, Justin "Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922" Darwin Press, Incorporated (March 1996), ISBN 0-87850-094-4] He has contended that all of those deaths during World War One were the product of intercommunal warfare between Muslims and Armenians, and did not involve an intent to commit genocide by the Ottoman Empire.

Criticism of his work

Donald Bloxham praises McCarthy's work for highlighting the oft-overlooked suffering of the Muslim populations of the Balkans during the demographic catastrophes of 1912-1923, but suggests that McCarthy's work in this field is part of a wider project of undermining scholarship affirming the Armenian Genocide, by reducing it to something analogous to a population exchange.Bloxham, Donald. "The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians". 2005, page 211.] Bloxham suggests that McCarthy's work "serves to muddy the waters for external observers, conflating war and one-sided murder with various discrete episodes of ethnic conflict... [A] series of easy get-out clauses for Western politicians and non-specialist historians keen not to offend Turkish opinion."

Another historian in the field, Guenter Lewy, distances himself from McCarthy's civil war view, agreeing with Turkish historian Selim Deringil, who once wrote that "no historian with a conscience can possibly accept the 'civil war' line, which is a travesty of history." [Lewy, Guenter. "The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide". 2005, page 122.]

The Armenian Assembly of America claims that McCarthy lent support to the Assembly of Turkish American Association, which led an effort to defeat recognition of an Armenian Genocide by the U.S. House of Representatives in 1985.Linenthal, Edward Tabor (2001) " [http://books.google.com/books?id=B4KE6dlFVNwC&dq=Preserving+Memory:+The+Struggle+to+Create+America%27s+Holocaust+Museum&pg=PP1&ots=hbQAvegJ--&sig=lCOaz6BTkSup6jcsu9ZEjk6Ktyw&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA312,M1 Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America's Holocaust Museum] ", pg. 312] Imber, Colin (1999)"Book Review", "British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies," Vol 26, No. 2.]

Works

*"Arab World, Turkey, and the Balkans, 1878-1914" (1982)
*"Muslims and Minorities: The Population of Ottoman Anatolia and the End of the Empire" (December 1983, ISBN 0-8147-5390-6 hardcover)
*Cite book
publisher = Columbia University Press
isbn = 0231071108
last = McCarthy
first = Justin
title = The Population of Palestine: Population History and Statistics of the Late Ottoman Period and the Mandate
date = 1990
*Cite book
publisher = Darwin Press, Incorporated
isbn = 0878500944
last = McCarthy
first = Justin
title = Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922
date = 1996
*"The Ottoman Turks : An Introductory History to 1923" (March 1997)
*Cite book
publisher = A Hodder Arnold Publication
isbn = 0340706570
last = McCarthy
first = Justin
title = The Ottoman Peoples and the End of Empire
date = 2001
*" [http://www.globaled.org/WhoAreTheTurksebook.pdf Who Are the Turks? A Manual for Teachers] " (January 2003)
*Cite book
publisher = University of Utah Press
isbn = 0874808707
last = McCarthy
first = Justin
title = The Armenian Rebellion at Van
date = 2006

Awards

* Şükrü Elekdağ Award of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations
* Chairman's Education Award of the Turkish American Friendship Council
* Order of Merit of Turkey (1998)

ee also

*Denial of Armenian Genocide

References

External links

* [http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~dwilson/Armenia/justin.html Armenian-Turkish Conflict] (2005), by Justin McCarthy