My answer to Matt's question: Turkey cannot deal with this because they have too often been enabled by the West in their denials. When an Armenian genocide resolution was about to pass congress in the 1990s, Clinton sent out the word to quash it. When I called up my wonderful Democratic congresswoman (who is sadly no longer mine because of redistricting) I received this response from her: "The resolution is all a part of a political ploy by a Republican congressman outside Los Angeles."

That's too bad I wrote, but it doesn't address the fact that the US does not recognize the fact that millions of Armenians were killed in a genocide.

Same thing happened in France in the late 1990s. Chirac went to bat to make sure it wasn't recognized. I'm sad to say that Israel's gov't as well, in their cozy relationship with Ankara, is keen to ignore this genocide, however ironic this may be.

It's just as shameful for California politicans to use this genocide to garner votes and for European politicans to now use it as an excuse to bar Turkey.

I realize this will be an incredibly painful admission for Turkey. The citizens simply do not believe it happened. So it's not a matter of simply coming to grips with the truth. This is about the nation's mass consciousness. I do not expect them to come to grips at all. It will stop Turkish accession in its tracks.