There are lots of laugh lines in the lengthy indictment of Mayor Adams, from his staffer telling a Turkish Airlines representative to give a “somewhat real” price for business class upgrades, to Adams writing that he left an envelope of cash in his staffer’s drawer to pay for expenses. There is no shortage of entertaining tidbits reminiscent of a good old-fashioned crime movie. But to me, an Armenian New Yorker, the indictment also paints a far more sobering and painful picture…a reminder that a foreign government still relentlessly denies my people’s history of suffering. As one section of the indictment alleges, shortly after Adams’ inauguration, a Turkish official — reportedly former Turkish Consul General Reyhan Özgür — and an Adams’ staffer agreed to block the mayor from marking Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, April 24. This came after Özgür allegedly directed thousands of dollars in fraudulent donations to Adams’ campaign. Adams apparently repaid Özgür and the Turkish government with his silence. In the messages cited in the indictment, the staffer allegedly “confirmed that Adams would not make a statement” and ultimately Adams delivered, saying nothing. Adams’ silence speaks volumes to Armenians, and the Armenian National Committee of New York has already demanded Adams resign. April 24 is incredibly symbolic to the millions who belong to the Armenian diaspora around the world, an estimated 500,000 of whom reside in the United States. The day commemorates the beginning of the massacres in 1915 in which 1.5 million Armenians were killed, directly at the hands of the Ottomans or through starvation and disease. This was a mass ethnic cleansing and deportation, forcing even more to flee the only homes they had ever known, as my paternal grandparents did, never to return. Raphael Lemkin, who first defined the word genocide and championed the need for legal protection of ethnic groups at the United Nations, said more than once that the events of 1915 inspired him to see the urgent need for such protection. While Armenians were the most heavily persecuted group, the Ottoman campaign also targeted other Christian minorities — an estimated total of 500,000 Greeks, Assyrians, and others were slaughtered during this time period as well, bringing the actual death toll closer to two million people. But Turkey has always denied this history. And the indictment shows the Turkish government is still committed to erasing the truth. For many Armenian-Americans, it felt like we could breathe a sigh of relief in 2019 when Congress finally officially acknowledged the Armenian Genocide, overcoming decades of strident opposition by the Turkish government, which spent millions lobbying Congress to defeat the measure. Pressure had also come from lobbying groups that sued American universities for publishing educational information about the genocide. Peter Balakian, an English professor at Colgate University, has recounted how, when he worked as an adviser to the U.S. Department of Education in developing a textbook on genocide, the department was successfully pressured, ultimately significantly editing a section on the massacres of 1915. But with the recognition of Congress came an initial respite. There was further validation when President Biden recognized the mass killings as genocide in 2021, the first American president to do so. With the horrific experience of our ancestors finally acknowledged, our community celebrated, hopeful this might bring an end to denial of the injustices of the past and reliving of our collective trauma. Turkey’s persistent denial takes its toll, compounding the trauma of the events of 1915. When a loss or suffering is called a lie, that pain is prolonged as one must constantly revisit that experience, forced to stay in the place of hurt instead of being able to move forward and heal. Many of us hoped that the recognition of the American government might allow us to begin to tend to the wound that had been left open for so long and move towards reconciliation. But the Adams indictment reveals the sad fact: Turkey’s campaign to rewrite history continues and will still fall on receptive ears in the U.S. — if the price is right. We see the mayor of the largest American city purportedly persuaded to be silent, bribed into betraying his constituents because of the financial power and influence of a foreign entity. We should all be alarmed by what the indictment describes as a successful silencing of one of the most powerful figures in American politics to serve another country’s interest in suppressing truth. Manipulation of history should never be for sale, especially not by our government officials. Loshkajian is a New York-based civil rights lawyer.