Kim Kardashian West is no stranger to speaking up about the Armenian genocide. Last year, the middle Kardashian sister published a TIME op-ed, in which she asked President Obama to use the word “genocide” when speaking about the Ottoman Empire’s attempted extermination of Armenians. She also asked the Turkish government to formally recognize the slaughter.
On Sunday, the reality star took out a full-page ad in the New York Times to decry the Wall Street Journal for printing a full-page ad that denied the Armenian genocide earlier this year. “Money talks, and right now it’s talking sh*t,” Kardashian wrote in her ad, a version of which appeared on her app back in April when the Wall Street Journal pulled a similar maneuver:
“My family and I are no strangers to BS in the press. We’ve learned to brush it off. Lies make good headlines, good headlines make great covers, great covers sell magazines. But when I heard about this full-page ad that ran in the Wall Street Journal denying the Armenian genocide, I couldn’t just brush it off.
Kardashian states that Turkic Platform, which she says blames Armenians and downplays the number of casualties in the Armenian genocide, paid for the ad. Kardashian went on to call the Journal‘s decision “reckless” and “morally irresponsible” and urged them to think about the consequences of their actions. She wrote:
“Many historians believe that if Turkey had been held responsible for the Armenian genocide, and reprimanded for what they did, the Holocaust may not have happened. In 1939, a week before the Nazi invasion of Poland, Hitler said, ‘Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?’ We do. We must. We must talk about it until it is recognized by our government because when we deny our past, we endanger our future.”
In 1915, 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were massacred in a plot by the Turkish government to exterminate the entire population. Though historians and scholars have deemed it a genocide — “a premeditated and systematic campaign to exterminate an entire people” — Turkey still refuses to acknowledge the actions of their government over 100 years ago.
(Via CBS Los Angeles, TIME, Newsweek & History)
