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[Yervant1]

April 24, 2021, 12:15 PM EDT

By Shannon Pettypiece

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Saturday officially acknowledged the killing of more than a million Armenians by Ottoman Turks more than a century ago as genocide, a move that could complicate an already strained relationship between the U.S. and Turkey.

Biden’s predecessors have acknowledged the mass killing of Armenians but stopped short of using the term "genocide" due to Turkish objections. As a candidate, Biden said he would make the designation, and a bipartisan group of members of Congress urged Biden to take action ahead of Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, which is Saturday.

 

For Turks, the issue is an emotionally charged one wrapped up in feelings of national pride. Turkey’s foreign minister warned the Biden administration that the designation would harm relations with the U.S. and be met with a strong reaction. Turkey has been a key strategic partner for the U.S., but Biden was critical of Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan during the campaign.

 

Biden spoke to Erdogan for the first time as president on Friday. During the call he conveyed “his interest in a constructive bilateral relationship with expanded areas of cooperation and effective management of disagreements,” the White House said in a statement. The leaders agreed to meet at the NATO summit in June, the White House said.

Concerns about straining the U.S. relationship with Turkey have led past presidents, including former President Barack Obama, to back down on campaign promises to declare the killings to be genocide. Turkey, a NATO member, has been valuable in the United States’ military involvement in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.

 

In the early months of his presidency, Biden has said he is trying to walk a line between the need to take a stand against human rights violations while maintaining relationships with America’s strategic partners.

The killing of hundreds of thousands of Armenians took place starting in 1915 when they were deported to the Syrian desert. There are disputes about how many people were killed, but the International Association of Genocide Scholars puts the death toll at “more than a million.”

Turkish officials have denied the killings were genocide, saying they did not represent a systematic effort to wipe out the Armenian people. Scholars disagree, and more than 20 countries have formally recognized the killings as genocide.

Shannon Pettypiece

Shannon Pettypiece is the senior White House reporter for NBCNews.com.

 

[Yervant1]

Biden recognizes atrocities against Armenians as genocide

By AAMER MADHANI, MATTHEW LEE and ZEYNEP BILGINSOY27 minutes ago

 

 

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Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, center, attends a memorial service at the monument to the victims of mass killings by Ottoman Turks, to commemorate the 106th anniversary of the massacre, in Yerevan, Armenia, Saturday, April 24, 2021. Armenians marked the anniversary of the death of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks, an event widely viewed by scholars as genocide, though Turkey refutes the claim. (Tigran Mehrabyan/PAN Photo via AP)

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — President Joe Biden has formally recognized that the systematic killings and deportations of hundreds of thousands of Armenians by Ottoman Empire forces in the early 20th century were “genocide” — using a term for the atrocities that his White House predecessors have avoided for decades over concerns of alienating Turkey.

With the acknowledgement, Biden followed through on a campaign promise he made a year ago Saturday — the annual commemoration of Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day — to recognize that the events of 1915 to 1923 were a deliberate effort to wipe out Armenians.

While previous presidents have offered somber reflections of the dark moment in history via remembrance day proclamations, they have studiously avoided using the term genocide out of concern that it would complicate relations with Turkey — a NATO ally and important power in the Middle East.

But Biden campaigned on a promise to make human rights a central guidepost of his foreign policy. He argued when making the campaign pledge last year that failing to call the atrocities against the Armenian people a genocide would pave the way for future mass atrocities. An estimated 2 million Armenians were deported and 1.5 million were killed in the events known as Metz Yeghern.

“The American people honor all those Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today,” Biden said in a statement. “We affirm the history. We do this not to cast blame but to ensure that what happened is never repeated.”

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu immediately criticized Biden’s statement.

“”Words cannot change history or rewrite it,” he said in a tweet. “We will not be given lessons on our history from anyone. Political opportunism is the biggest betrayal of peace and justice. We completely reject this statement that is based on populism. #1915Events”

During a telephone call Friday, Biden informed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of his plan to issue the statement, said a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to publicly discuss the private conversation and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The U.S. and Turkish governments, in separate statements following Biden and Erdogan’s call, made no mention of the American plan to recognize the Armenian genocide. But the White House said Biden told Erdogan he wants to improve the two countries’ relationship and find “effective management of disagreements.” The two also agreed to hold a bilateral meeting at the NATO summit in Brussels in June.

In Armenia on Saturday, people streamed to the hilltop complex in Yerevan, the capital, that memorializes the victims. Many laid flowers around the eternal flame, creating a wall of blooms two meters (seven feet) high.

Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Avet Adonts, speaking at the memorial before Biden issued his statement, said a U.S. president using the term genocide would “serve as an example for the rest of the civilized world.”

Biden’s call with Erdogan was his first since taking office more than three months ago. The delay had become a worrying sign in Ankara; Erdogan had good rapport with former President Donald Trump and had been hoping for a reset despite past friction with Biden.

Erdogan reiterated his long-running claims that the U.S. is supporting Kurdish fighters in Syria who are affiliated with the Iraq-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the PKK. The PKK has led an insurgency against Turkey for more than three decades. In recent years, Turkey has launched military operations against PKK enclaves in Turkey and in northern Iraq and against U.S.-allied Syrian Kurdish fighters. The State Department has designated the PKK a terrorist organization but has argued with Turkey over the group’s ties to the Syrian Kurds.

According to the Turkish government statement after the call, Erdogan also raised concerns about the presence in the United States of cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is accused by Turkey of orchestrating a failed 2016 coup attempt. Gulen, who has lived in Pennsylvania since the late 1990s, denies involvement in the coup.

Biden, during the campaign, drew ire from Turkish officials after an interview with The New York Times in which he spoke about supporting Turkey’s opposition against “autocrat” Erdogan. In 2019, Biden accused Trump of betraying U.S. allies, following Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from northern Syria, which paved the way for a Turkish military offensive against the Syrian Kurdish group. In 2014, when he was vice president, Biden apologized to Erdogan after suggesting in a speech that Turkey helped facilitate the rise of the Islamic State group by allowing foreign fighters to cross Turkey’s border with Syria.

Lawmakers and Armenian American activists have been lobbying Biden to make the genocide announcement on or before remembrance day.

Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, praised Biden for following through on the pledge.

“For Armenian-Americans and everyone who believes in human rights and the truth, today marks an historic milestone: President Biden has defied Turkish threats and recognized the slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians for what it was — the first genocide of the 20th Century,” Schiff said in a statement.

Salpi Ghazarian, director of the University of Southern California’s Institute of Armenian Studies, said the recognition of genocide would resonate beyond Armenia and underscore Biden seriousness about respect for human rights as a central principle in his foreign policy.

“Within the United States and outside the United States, the American commitment to basic human values has been questioned now for decades,” she said. “It is very important for people in the world to continue to have the hope and the faith that America’s aspirational values are still relevant, and that we can in fact do several things at once. We can in fact carry on trade and other relations with countries while also calling out the fact that a government cannot get away with murdering its own citizens.”

___

Lee reported from Washington, Bilginsoy from Istanbul.

[Yervant1]

Statement by President Joe Biden on Armenian Remembrance Day

APRIL 24, 2021  • STATEMENTS AND RELEASES

Each year on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring. Beginning on April 24, 1915, with the arrest of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople by Ottoman authorities, one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination. We honor the victims of the Meds Yeghern so that the horrors of what happened are never lost to history. And we remember so that we remain ever-vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms.
 
Of those who survived, most were forced to find new homes and new lives around the world, including in the United States. With strength and resilience, the Armenian people survived and rebuilt their community. Over the decades Armenian immigrants have enriched the United States in countless ways, but they have never forgotten the tragic history that brought so many of their ancestors to our shores. We honor their story. We see that pain. We affirm the history. We do this not to cast blame but to ensure that what happened is never repeated.
 
Today, as we mourn what was lost, let us also turn our eyes to the future—toward the world that we wish to build for our children. A world unstained by the daily evils of bigotry and intolerance, where human rights are respected, and where all people are able to pursue their lives in dignity and security. Let us renew our shared resolve to prevent future atrocities from occurring anywhere in the world. And let us pursue healing and reconciliation for all the people of the world. 
 
The American people honor all those Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today.

[Yervant1]

POLITICS

Biden formally recognizes killing of more than 1 million Armenians as genocide

Thousands of people march in Hollywood on April 24, 2019, to commemorate the Armenian genocide.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

By CHRIS MEGERIANSTAFF WRITER 

APRIL 24, 2021 9:04 AM PT

WASHINGTON —  

President Biden on Saturday formally recognized as a genocide the killing of more than 1 million Armenians starting in 1915, a label long used by historians but resisted by U.S. presidents to avoid angering Turkey, an important ally.

The decision is a victory for Armenian diaspora communities, notably in Southern California, that have spent decades fighting for such recognition only to be repeatedly disappointed by previous presidents. It will buoy Armenia as well, with the announcement coming months after the nation lost territory to its neighbor Azerbaijan in a bloody conflict over a disputed border region.

“Each year on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring,” Biden said.

 

 

 

The statement is a fulfillment of Biden’s campaign promise, and it’s the result of intense pressure from Armenian Americans and their allies in Washington. It’s also a reflection of the increasingly strained relationship between the U.S. and Turkey, which have been at odds over weapons purchases and the conflict in Syria.

Biden spoke to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday, and the White House said he expressed “his interest in a constructive bilateral relationship with expanded areas of cooperation and effective management of disagreements.” It’s another shift from former President Trump, whose affection for authoritarian leaders included Erdogan.

Turkish officials fought back publicly even before Biden’s announcement. Yavuz Selim Kıran, the deputy minister of foreign affairs, criticized “those making political distortions against historical facts” and “so-called genocide slanders.”

The Armenian genocide occurred during the twilight of the Ottoman Empire, which allied itself with Germany during World War I. After their ill-fated invasion of Russia, Turkish leaders became suspicious of the empire’s Armenian Christian minority and began a years-long persecution.

 

Armenian leaders in Istanbul were detained, deported and killed on April 24, 1915 — widely considered to be the beginning of the genocide — and the campaign spread from there. Hundreds of thousands were killed, and others were forced from their homes on long marches into the Syrian desert, where many more died. Some estimate that 1.5 million were killed, a figure that Biden included in his statement on Saturday.

The modern-day nation of Turkey, which emerged from the Ottoman Empire, has always denied that a genocide took place. Armenia became part of the Soviet Union after World War I and didn’t achieve its independence until 1991.

“President Biden’s affirmation of the Armenian Genocide marks a critically important moment in the arc of history in defense of human rights,” said Bryan Ardouny, executive director of the Armenian Assembly of America. “By standing firmly against a century of denial, President Biden has charted a new course.”

 

CALIFORNIA

For Armenian Americans, Congress’ recognition of their genocide is just part of the battle

Dec. 12, 2019

 

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) praised Biden’s statement as a “historic milestone.”

“In so doing, he has cast aside decades of shameful silence and half-truths, and the broken promises of so many of his predecessors, and spoken truth to power,” he said.

Presidents Obama and George W. Bush had promised to recognize the genocide but balked, instead referring to the events as a “mass atrocity” or “mass killings.” President Reagan referred to the massacres as a genocide only in the context of a statement on the Holocaust.

“Like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians which followed it — and like too many other such persecutions of too many other peoples — the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten,” Reagan said in 1981.

Congress passed a resolution in 2019 to declare it was official U.S. policy to recognize the Armenian genocide even though Trump declined to make a similar statement. Erdogan lashed out, calling “such an accusation to be the biggest insult to our people.”

However, he did not recall the Turkish ambassador to Washington, a step he took with his envoys to the Vatican and Germany when Pope Francis and German lawmakers acknowledged the genocide in previous years.

Turkey has been a key ally for decades, and it’s been a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization since 1952. The U.S. based nuclear missiles there during the Cold War, and an estimated 50 nuclear bombs remain stored at the Incirlik Air Base. The facility played an important logistical role during the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, providing a way station for supplies and troops.

But more recently an increasingly autocratic Erdogan has faced criticism for tightening his grip after a coup attempt failed to depose him in 2016. He also purchased an estimated $2.5 billion in surface-to-air missiles from Russia, leading to U.S. sanctions.

The U.S. and Turkey also found themselves at odds over Syria’s years-long civil war. Although American troops allied themselves with Kurdish forces in the fight against Islamic State, Erdogan considers them a hostile threat to his own country and he sent the Turkish military to attack them in 2019.

[Yervant1]

Are you listening United Kingdom? Israel? Australia? History will judge you and it won't be kind!

[Yervant1]

NEWS US President Joe Biden recognizes Armenian genocide

Turkey, a key regional ally and a member of NATO, slammed the move as "political opportunism." It is the first time that the United States has used the term to refer to the 1915 killings by Ottoman forces.

    

 

April 24 is the day when Armenians worldwide remember the dead

The United States has recognized the 1915 massacre of as many as 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as genocide, President Joe Biden said in a statement on Saturday.

"We remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring," he said.

"And we remember so that we remain ever-vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms."

The announcement came on the day that Armenians worldwide mark Genocide Remembrance Day.

How did Turkey respond?

Minutes after Biden's declaration, Turkey responded by saying it "entirely" rejects the label.

"We have nothing to learn from anybody on our own past. Political opportunism is the greatest betrayal to peace and justice," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Twitter. "We entirely reject this statement based solely on populism."

Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin later told Biden to look at recent American history before criticizing others.

"We strongly condemn and reject the U.S. President's remarks which only repeat the accusations of those whose sole agenda is enmity towards our country," Kalin said. "We advise the US President to look at (his country's) own past and present."

Armenians have long referred to the mass killings during World War I as the Armenian genocide.

Armenians were present in large parts of Turkey before World War I

Turkey denies a genocide had taken place, and the United States has refrained from using the term until today. DW Washington Bureau Chief Ines Pohl noted that Biden's predecessors had been "wary of damaging ties with Turkey, a key regional ally."

Biden's declaration means the US president has fulfilled a campaign pledge to describe the killings as a deliberate attempt to wipe out the Armenian people.

But the move could spell problems for US ties with the Turkish government, which is a member of the NATO military alliance.

What is Armenia's stance?

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan thanked Biden in a post on Facebook for "the powerful step towards justice and invaluable support for the descendants of the Armenian genocide victims."

In Armenia on Saturday, people streamed to the hilltop complex in Yerevan, the capital, that memorializes the victims.

Speaking at the memorial before Biden issued his proclamation, Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Avet Adonts said a US president using the term genocide would "serve as an example for the rest of the civilized world."

jf/dj (AFP, AP)

[Yervant1]

In historic move, Biden says 1915 slaughter of Armenians constitute genocide

The largely symbolic move breaks away from decades of carefully calibrated language from the White House

Author of the article:

Reuters

Humeyra Pamuk, Tuvan Gumrukcu and Ece Toksabay

 

 

U.S. President Joe Biden on Saturday said the 1915 massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire constituted genocide, a historic declaration that infuriated Turkey and is set to further strain already frayed ties between the two NATO allies.

The largely symbolic move, breaking away from decades of carefully calibrated language from the White House, will likely to be celebrated by the Armenian diaspora in the United States, but comes at a time when Ankara and Washington have deep policy disagreements over a host of issues.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey “entirely rejects” the U.S. decision which he said was based “solely on populism.”

“We have nothing to learn from anybody on our own past. Political opportunism is the greatest betrayal to peace and justice,” Cavusoglu said on Twitter.

In his statement, Biden said the American people honor “all those Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today.”

“Over the decades Armenian immigrants have enriched the United States in countless ways, but they have never forgotten the tragic history … We honor their story. We see that pain. We affirm the history. We do this not to cast blame but to ensure that what happened is never repeated,” Biden said.

In comments that sought to soften the blow, a senior administration official told reporters that Washington encouraged Armenia and Turkey to pursue reconciliation and continues to view Ankara as a critical NATO ally.

For decades, measures recognizing the Armenian genocide stalled in the U.S. Congress and U.S. presidents have refrained from calling it that, stymied by concerns about relations with Turkey and intense lobbying by Ankara.

Turkey accepts that many Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were killed in clashes with Ottoman forces during World War One, but contests the figures and denies the killings were systematically orchestrated and constitute a genocide.

Turkey on Saturday slammed U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to recognize the 1915 massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as a genocide, saying the statement had no legal basis and would “open a deep” wound in bilateral ties.

“This statement of the US, which distorts the historical facts, will never be accepted in the conscience of the Turkish people, and will open a deep wound that undermines our mutual trust and friendship,” Turkey’s foreign ministry said, adding it rejected and denounced the statement “in the strongest terms.”

Ties between Ankara and Washington have been strained over issues ranging from Turkey’s purchase of Russian S-400 defense systems – over which it was the target of U.S. sanctions – to policy differences in Syria, human rights and legal matters.

Biden’s declaration follows a non-binding resolution by the U.S. Senate adopted unanimously in 2019 recognizing the killings as genocide.

[Yervant1]

PRESS RELEASE April 24, 2021

United States: Freedom House Applauds Recognition of Armenian Genocide

On Armenian Remembrance Day, President Biden issued a statement formally recognizing the genocide of Armenians that began on April 24, 1915. 

 

In response to the Biden administration’s formal recognition of the Armenian genocide, Freedom House issued the following statement:

“We applaud the Biden administration for its recognition of the Armenian genocide, and we hope that official recognition brings some relief to the millions of Armenians around the world whose ancestors were killed and displaced,” said Michael J. Abramowitz, president of Freedom House. “An honest and truthful appraisal of the past allows us to fight against atrocities in the future and is critical for the health of democracy.”

“As we have said before, democracy is upheld by embracing diversity and pluralism, not suppressing it. This is true in Turkey and the South Caucasus just as it is true in the United States. Countries and societies are stronger when they confront their histories of racism, dispossession, and violence, and do not deny them.”

Armenia is rated Partly Free in Freedom in the World 2021, Free in Freedom on the Net 2020, and is categorized as a Semi-Consolidated Authoritarian Regime in Nations in Transit 2020.

[Yervant1]

Zoryan Institute Commends President Biden for Acknowledging the Armenian Genocide

April 24, 2021

The Zoryan Institute commends President Joe Biden’s decision to formally acknowledge the Armenian Genocide today on its 106th annual day of commemoration.

Read official statement here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/04/24/statement-by-president-joe-biden-on-armenian-remembrance-day/

President Biden assumed office during a turbulent period in the history of the United States. With heightening political, religious, and racial tensions, he committed to taking bold steps towards the reunification of a divided country at a crucial time.

Drawing from genocide theory, bolstered by universal human rights and dignity for all, it is exceedingly important to resist the “us versus them” mentality that is rising in the United States and throughout the world. It is also necessary to hold state and non-state actors and/or groups accountable for crimes they have committed.

Biden’s recognition of the   massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War One as an act of Genocide, although largely a symbolic gesture, sends an important message both in the country and across borders. Regardless of how much time has passed or how adamant the genocide perpetrators as deniers may be, President Biden’s acknowledgement of the truth sets a precedent that future violence will not go unrecognized and that perpetrators will not get away with impunity.

As we celebrate this long overdue step for the United States, we are reminded that genocide denial and the impact of impunity for past crimes remains an ongoing pursuit. The Zoryan Institute works to develop a common body of knowledge that fosters dialogue and reconciliation, in order to break cycles of violence that are often imbued by denial and impunity.

We can only applaud President Biden for putting political expediency aside, for the sake of truth, harmony and peace amongst people in this ever shrinking, diverse world.
 

Megan Reid, Deputy Executive Director
The International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies
(A Division of the Zoryan Institute)

[MosJan]

[Yervant1]

World

Biden says U.S. recognizes century-old mass killings of Armenians as genocide

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Turkey 'entirely rejects' pronouncement, made through presidential proclamation

The Associated Press ·  Posted: Apr 24, 2021 1:35 PM ET | Last Updated: April 24

 

U.S. President Joe Biden, shown on March 31, said on Saturday that the mass killings of Armenians in the final years of the Ottoman Empire constituted genocide. (Evan Vucci/The Associated Press)

U.S. President Joe Biden has formally recognized that the systematic killings and deportations of hundreds of thousands of Armenians by Ottoman Empire forces in the early 20th century were "genocide" — using a term for the atrocities that his White House predecessors have avoided for decades over concerns of alienating Turkey.

With the acknowledgement, Biden followed through on a campaign promise he made a year ago Saturday — the annual commemoration of Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day — to recognize that the events of 1915 to 1923 were a deliberate effort to wipe out Armenians.

 

Biden used a presidential proclamation to make the pronouncement. While previous U.S. presidents have offered sombre reflections of the dark moment in history via remembrance day proclamations, they have studiously avoided using the term genocide out of concern that it would complicate relations with Turkey — a NATO ally and important power in the Middle East.

Canada is among dozens of countries that have already formally recognized the mass killings of Armenians as genocide.

In a statement on Saturday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that "we join Armenian communities in Canada and around the world to remember those who lost their lives and who suffered from the senseless acts wrought upon the Armenian people."

Turkey notified ahead of statement

Biden campaigned on a promise to make human rights a central guidepost of his foreign policy. He argued when making the campaign pledge last year that failing to call the atrocities against the Armenian people a genocide would pave the way for future mass atrocities. An estimated two million Armenians were deported and 1.5 million were killed in the events known as Metz Yeghern.

 

People take part in a march in Yerevan, Armenia, on Saturday to mark the 106th anniversary of massacres and deportations of Armenians that began in April 1915. (Grigor Yepremyan/PAN Photo/The Associated Press)

During a telephone call Friday, Biden informed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of his plan to issue the statement, said a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to publicly discuss the private conversation and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The White House said Biden told Erdogan he wants to improve the two countries' relationship and find "effective management of disagreements." The two also agreed to hold a bilateral meeting at the NATO summit in Brussels in June.

Turkey says decision 'based solely on populism'

Minutes after Biden's decision went public, Turkish Foreign Affairs Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey "entirely rejects" the U.S. proclamation.

"We have nothing to learn from anybody on our own past. Political opportunism is the greatest betrayal to peace and justice," Cavusoglu said on Twitter. "We entirely reject this statement based solely on populism."

In Armenia on Saturday, people streamed to the hilltop complex in Yerevan, the capital, that memorializes the victims. Many laid flowers around the eternal flame, creating a wall of blooms two metres high.

 

War veterans hold the Yezidi ethnic group flag as they attend a memorial service at the monument to the victims of mass killings by Ottoman Turks, to commemorate the 106th anniversary of the massacre, in Yerevan, Armenia, on Saturday. (Grigor Yepremyan/PAN Photo/The Associated Press)

Armenian deputy foreign minister Avet Adonts, speaking at the memorial before Biden issued his proclamation, said a U.S. president using the term genocide would "serve as an example for the rest of the civilized world."

Biden's call with Erdogan was his first since taking office more than three months ago. The delay had become a worrying sign in Ankara; Erdogan had a good rapport with former president Donald Trump and had been hoping for a reset despite past friction with Biden.

Erdogan reiterated his long-running claims that the U.S. is supporting Kurdish fighters in Syria who are affiliated with the Iraq-based Kurdistan Workers' Party, known as the PKK. The PKK has led an insurgency against Turkey for more than three decades.

In recent years, Turkey has launched military operations against PKK enclaves in Turkey and in northern Iraq, as well as against U.S.-allied Syrian Kurdish fighters. The U.S. State Department has designated the PKK a terrorist organization but has argued with Turkey over the group's ties to the Syrian Kurds.

According to the Turkish government statement after the phone call, Erdogan also raised concerns about the presence in the U.S. of cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is accused by Turkey of orchestrating a failed 2016 coup attempt. Gulen, who has lived in Pennsylvania since the late 1990s, denies involvement in the coup.

Erdogan called 'autocrat' during Biden campaign

Biden, during last year's election campaign, drew ire from Turkish officials after an interview with the New York Times in which he spoke about supporting Turkey's opposition against "autocrat" Erdogan. In 2019, Biden accused Trump of betraying U.S. allies, following Trump's decision to withdraw troops from northern Syria, which paved the way for a Turkish military offensive against the Syrian Kurdish group.

In 2014, when he was vice-president, Biden apologized to Erdogan after suggesting in a speech that Turkey helped facilitate the rise of the Islamic State group by allowing foreign fighters to cross Turkey's border with Syria.

 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, shown in February, was informed of Biden's decision to issue a statement on genocide during a phone call on Friday. (Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images)

Lawmakers and Armenian-American activists have been lobbying Biden to make the genocide announcement on or before remembrance day.

Salpi Ghazarian, director of the University of Southern California's Institute of Armenian Studies, said the recognition of genocide would resonate beyond Armenia and underscore Biden's seriousness about respect for human rights as a central principle in his foreign policy.

"Within the United States and outside the United States, the American commitment to basic human values has been questioned now for decades," she said.

"It is very important for people in the world to continue to have the hope and the faith that America's aspirational values are still relevant and that we can in fact do several things at once. We can in fact carry on trade and other relations with countries while also calling out the fact that a government cannot get away with murdering its own citizens."

With files from Reuters and CBC News

[Yervant1]

Deutsche Welle, Germany

April 24 2021

 

 

A look at the Armenian genocide

As many as 1.5 million Armenians were killed in what was the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Yet the Turkish government refuses to acknowledge the crime as genocide, even to this day.

 

In an effort to "solve the Armenian problem," Ottoman troops led hundreds of thousands of Armenians on forced marches into the Syrian desert during the years 1915-1916, thousands more were rounded up across the empire and summarily executed. Whereas many historians refer to these death marches and massacres as genocide, the Turkish government has never uttered the word, admitting only that there were mass expulsions and violent conflicts.

The result of a crumbling empire

By the end of the nineteenth century, the traditional lands of the Armenian people were split between the Ottoman, Persian and Russian Empires. Consisting of nearly 2 million people, the Armenians were the second largest minority group in the Ottoman Empire, just behind the Greeks.

The Ottoman Empire was beginning to crumble and nationalism was growing among individual ethnic groups as the world drifted toward The Great War and when Armenian farmers and merchants rebelled against increasingly high taxation to pay for Ottoman military efforts, their protests were brutally crushed by Ottoman troops.

Between 1890 and the outbreak of the World War I, Turks and Kurds committed numerous massacres against the Armenians. At the same time, Armenian terrorists also carried out a number of attacks on the Ottomans — even on the reigning sultan.

This memorial in Yerevan, Armenia, is a reminder of the crimes committed against Armenians during WWI

Mass execution of Armenians

The Ottoman Empire fought against Russia during the war and many Armenians joined partisan groups intent on helping invading Czarist Russian troops. Armenian volunteer battalions who fought alongside Russians hoped that the Czar would later support their independence effort. Ottoman leadership claimed Armenians were responsible for the Empire's military defeat at the hands of Russia and in early 1915, Armenian soldiers in the Ottoman army were disarmed and entire units were forced to labor as road builders and then later shot.

Forced exodus to rid Turkey of Armenians once and for all

On April 24, 1915, as anti-Armenian sentiment became increasingly violent, raids were carried out in Istanbul where authorities arrested and deported thousands of intellectuals belonging to the Armenian elite. The Ottoman interior minister at the time declared that the aim of the operation had been to rid the capital of Armenians.

In May, the Ottoman army began the mass deportation of all remaining Armenians from the eastern regions of the empire, claiming they might aid invading Russian troops. At the time, Germany's vice consul in the eastern city of Erzurum wrote to the German ambassador in Istanbul, saying: "After the war, as a leading personality literally said, 'we won't have any Armenians in Turkey.' And if that aim cannot be achieved through various massacres, they hope the hardships of long journeys to Mesopotamia and its strange climate will."

 

'Shameful act of the past'

In 1919, following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, Grand Vizier Damat Ferid Pasha officially declared that a "crime" had been perpetrated against the Armenians and the empire's foreign minister admitted that some 800,000 Armenians had been deported. When Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey, opened his new country's parliament in Ankara on April 24, 1920, he called the genocide of Armenians a "shameful act of the past" — subsequent Turkish governments, however, including the current administration, have refused to utter the word.

Late German apologies and a contentious resolution 

The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, which went into effect on January 12, 1951, defines genocide as "acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group." Most historians say that intent is clearly documented in historical source material. Many countries have officially recognized the crimes committed against Armenians as genocide, among them, the Federal Republic of Germany.

In a June 2005 statement, Germany's Bundestag parliament expressly apologized to the Armenian people for the fact that the then German Empire did not undertake steps to stop the killing. In 2016, Germany's parliament, the Bundestag, passed a non-binding resolution on the "Remembrance and commemoration of the genocide of Armenians and other Christian minorities in 1915 and 1916" — German Chancellor Angela Merkel, then Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, and then foreign minister and now Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, did not, however, participate in the vote.  

https://www.dw.com/e...cide/a-57299201

[Yervant1]

RT - Russia Today

April 24 2021

 

 

Forgotten Genocides: RT America looks at crimes politics has swept under the rug

15 Apr, 2021 10:30

 

•  
•  
•  
•  

 

Why are some genocides incessantly remembered while others are tossed to the trash heap of history? In ‘Forgotten Genocides: The Sin of Silence’, airing April 23, RT America asks these questions and more.

The Armenian Genocide left a million and a half dead Christians littered across the remains of the Ottoman Empire. But it took a century for the United States to formally call these events a genocide. So what changed?

“Geopolitics is king,” said RT producer and historian Nebojsa Malic. Turkey was once NATO’s bulwark against the Soviet Union, but by the time of recognition of the genocide in 2019, the country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had irked the United States by buying Russian weapons and invading northern Syria.

The Armenian community was jubilant about achieving recognition, but not everyone believes the situation on the ground will change. Armenian Archbishop Vicken Aykazian says what is happening today “is a continuous genocide, until they stop it.” 

Armenian Archbishop Vicken Aykazian ©  RT

While the Armenian Genocide has finally been recognized, another massacre has been aggressively forgotten. The murder of a half million Orthodox Serbs, Jews, and Roma during World War II by Croatian fascists (“Ustasha”) is little known in the West. But the fact of the genocide is without dispute.

So why recognize the Armenian Genocide but ignore another equally valid and historically factual massacre in the Balkans? The answer is in geopolitics, again. In the words of Serbian activist Dragana Tomasevic, governments show little “respect for the victims and their descendants.”

This lack of respect translated into a brutal US-led coalition war against the remnants of Yugoslavia following its breakup in the 1990s. The Serbs were labeled enemies; thus the Croatians, Bosnian Muslims, and Albanians became the victims. Of course the narrative of the Serbian Genocide in World War II put the Serbs in the place of victims, and this wouldn’t do for the propaganda war that accompanied the aerial bombardments of Serbia.

“It was right about the time the US recognized the Armenian Genocide that I learned about the death camp for Serbs at Jasenovac,” said author of the documentary and RT producer Dr. Joseph Ricci. “I kept asking myself, why are we recognizing one genocide and pretending like another one never happened… and could there be some ongoing today that we are actively ignoring?”

The problem of forgotten genocides and the sins of silence that accompany them is indeed happening at this very moment. According to Dr. Joseph Khalil, a Lebanese Christian and refugee, what is happening with Christians in the Middle East after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq has been a “genocide” for sure. Will the future see another forgotten genocide with the disappearance of Christians from the Middle East, their original homeland?

Watch ‘Forgotten Genocides’ on RT America, airing April 23, to learn more.

 

https://www.rt.com/u...XGIdEsRL1VqGMY8

[Yervant1]

Only cowards use excuses for the truth!

NewsHub, New Zealand

April 24 2021

 

 

Pressure mounts on NZ govt to formally recognise Armenian genocide

• 24/04/2021
• Tony Wright
•  

 

 

Saturday marks Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day and pressure is mounting on the New Zealand Government to formally acknowledge the mass killings which began in 1915.

No New Zealand Government has ever officially recognised the genocide, over fears Turkey, which committed the atrocities, will ban Kiwis from visiting the Gallipoli battlefields.

 

 

The Joe Biden administration has promised to formally ratify US recognition of the genocide -   renewing calls for Jacinda Ardern's Government to do the same.

Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta told Newshub Nation on Saturday there are "complex issues" to consider before New Zealand could do so. 

"It's easy for others to make comments about what others should be doing, not looking at themselves first as to what they have done. What I know is in order to get genuine reconciliation it's important to ensure that identifying the atrocities or the extent of the wrongs caused, that there is also a pathway around building a better future. They go hand-in-hand - it's not one or the other and it's not that binary," she said.

One of the only memorials to a foreign leader that stands in New Zealand is of former President of Turkey Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. It was built in 1990 to please Turkey, despite protests from local iwi Ngati Tara, as a Māori archaeological site was nearby.

It was also opposed by people within the Wellington Cypriot and Greek communities because of their view of Atatürk as a mass murderer.

 

Auckland University lecturer Maria Armoudian says Atatürk was the architect of the second wave of mass-killings against Armenian, Greek and other indigenous peoples following World War One, which eventually killed up to 1.5 million people.

"Certainly New Zealand doesn't have anything erected to Mussolini or Hitler of the Houti regime in Rwanda, or Malusovic and Karadich from the Yugolsalv wars," she told Newshub Nation. 

"We're talking about children, and women, and elderly people, being bludgeoned to death with everyday weapons, axes, hammers, knives, bricks, as well as traditional weapons. Thrown into the sea, pushed into buildings and burned alive, drowned, their arms and legs broken so that they couldn't save themselves. This was one of the most brutal chapters in human history."

This genocide was front page news in New Zealand newspapers a century ago and was even used as an excuse to keep the war going. London-based Kiwi historian James Robbins has written an award winning book "When We Dead Awaken", which examines the many Anzac links to the mass-killings.

"Just beyond the front lines at Gallipoli there was a genocide taking place, and Anzac soldiers witnessed this and wrote about it and took those stories home with them," he told Newshub Nation. 

Robbins says Atatürk's actions were well known in New Zealand after the war - but have since disappeared from our history.

"If you look at New Zealand newspapers from the early 1920s when Kemal was coming to power, New Zealand referred to him as a dictator, and there were no qualms whatsoever about describing him for what he was." 

Pressure mounts on NZ govt to formally recognise Armenian genocide | Newshub

Atatürk's monument also contains the famous "Anzac mothers" quote, which attributes these words to him:  "You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well." 

 

These words are used as part of many Anzac Day commemorations in New Zealand and Australia, and especially at Gallipoli, where the words are emblazoned on a memorial at Anzac Cove. The problem is, research has found these iconic words don't belong to Atatürk at all.

"Mustafa Kemal Atatürk did not say those words, he did not write them down, he did not think them at any point," said Robbins.

"So from a purely factual basis the memorials in New Zealand and Australia that bear that inscription, and bear underneath a depiction of his face, are factually incorrect. There's simply no way around that. The question is whether you want the sentiment that it describes, which is a very admirable sentiment, described by somebody who was in essence a mass murderer."

New Zealand and Australia are among many nations who've yet to officially recognise the Armenian Genocide but among the 30 countries which do acknowledge it, are Russia, France, Canada and Germany. A working group from the United Nations also acknowledged the Genocide in three years ago which was refuted by Turkey.

The United States senate voted in favour of recognising the genocide in 2019, but the Trump administration rejected moves to formally acknowledge it. President Joe Biden has indicated he will soon reverse this.

And if New Zealand was to officially recognise the Armenian Genocide - what might be Turkey's response?

 "Since the 1980s, the Republic of Turkey has engaged in bullying, blackmail and extortion in trying to prevent other nations in trying to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide," Robbins said.  

"It's no different for Australia and New Zealand. In 2015 the foreign minister of Turkey stated very explicitly that any Australian or New Zealand representative who acknowledged the Armenian Genocide, or who used that word genocide, would not be welcomed at Gallipoli."

 

The Prime Minister refused to speak to Newshub Nation about the Armenian Genocide this week, but Kiwi-Armenians like Yvette Kelly remain hopeful her Government will eventually recognise it.

"It's very easy for us to be compartmentalised to the Armenian community. But I'm a New Zealander too and I would be proud as a New Zealander if we did this. New Zealanders are people who stick up for human rights, we're one of the little guys, we stick up for other little guys and to recognise this is what part of makes us Kiwi."

So while we acknowledge the Holocaust of the Jews, the killing fields of the Cambodian Genocide and the Rwandan Genocide New Zealand is yet to acknowledge the very Genocide which is tied undeniably to our own history.

Watch Newshub Nation 9:30am Saturday/10am Sunday on TV3, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Newshub Nation is supported by NZ On Air.

 

 

 

https://www.newshub....n-genocide.html

 

[Yervant1]

Even though I very much welcome the recognition, but our pain still being used as a weapon!

Washington Post

April 24 2021



The U.S. formally recognized the Armenian genocide. Why now, a century later?

This move signals a shift in the U.S. relationship with Turkey.

By Ryan Gingeras
April 24, 2021 at 10:00 a.m. UTC

On April 24, the Biden administration will formally recognize the Armenian genocide that took place a century ago. This will be the first U.S. administration to make this designation, and it’s not without controversy.

America has long struggled with the implications associated with this deeply polarizing issue — and the domestic and international complexities involved. But the U.S. acknowledgment of a genocide that began in 1915 reflects, fundamentally, an important shift in the 2021 relationship between the U.S. and Turkey.

What happened to the Armenians?

Between 1915 and 1922, up to a million Armenians in Anatolia were killed by Ottoman authorities. Many died in forced labor battalions, or perished en route to remote camps. Reports of these mass killings of Armenians were among the factors that compelled the United States to enter World War I. American missionaries had played an active role in educating and nurturing Armenian communities in the Ottoman Empire. News of the suffering compelled large numbers of American aid workers to journey to the Levant to aid in their care after the war was over.

Yet there were limits, even then, to the extent Washington was willing to become involved in Armenian affairs. Congress, for example, refrained from declaring war on the Ottoman Empire for fear that it would endanger American citizens and stoke further anti-Armenian violence.

Washington gradually lost interest in seeking justice for displaced Armenians. As isolationism came to rule the day and the U.S. relationship with Turkey grew stronger, U.S. priorities shifted and the killings faded into memory. Later, with the onset of the Cold War, Turkey emerged as a consummate U.S. ally as both a member of NATO and a partner in the Middle East. Turkey, as many saw it, was more than a “bulwark” against potential Soviet aggression. In the words of broadcaster Walter Cronkite, “The Incredible Turk” also demonstrated the benefits of a secular, pro-Western democratic system to other predominantly Muslim countries.

Policymakers argued about genocide

The campaign in the United States to recognize the Armenian genocide began in the late 1960s. In the shadow of 50th anniversary of World War I, Armenians around the world mobilized for greater international recognition of their plight since 1915. Visceral memories of the Holocaust prompted widespread popular sympathy. In New York, for example, Mayor Abe Beame in 1975 declared a day of “memory and dedication to human rights” on April 24, the date long associated with the beginning of the Armenian genocide.

The Turkish government has refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing. Turkey’s defense remains grounded in how the Ottoman Empire explained the crackdown. Armenians, they argue, rose in rebellion during World War I and committed gross atrocities against Muslims in eastern Anatolia. In siding with Russia, Armenians made common cause with the empire’s enemies in the hopes of seizing Turkish land and forming an independent state. They claim that Ottoman authorities acted humanely in their efforts to transport Armenian civilians away from the front lines.

Above all, the Turkish government continues to reject any suggestion that imperial forces sought to exterminate the country’s Armenian population. “The Holocaust,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry website states, “bears no meaningful relation to the Ottoman Armenian experience.” Armenians, Turkey claims, are the ones most responsible for high crimes.

Contemporary scholarly research contradicts the official Turkish narrative. A plethora of historical sources, including official papers and accounts from Ottoman officials, speak of a deliberate and systematic campaign to remove and murder native Armenians throughout the empire. Multiple factors, including issues exclusive of war, drove this policy forward in the spring of 1915. Before the war, senior Ottoman leaders took steps to demographically re-engineer strategically significant provinces, killing and expelling native Christians in the hopes of placing Muslims upon their lands. Culling the Armenian population, it was reasoned, would shift Anatolia in favor of a more reliable Muslim majority.

Witnesses testify to a general campaign to expel Armenians from their homes without any concern for their well-being. Untold thousands, particularly men, were summarily executed while thousands of Armenians were raped or kidnapped; many starved to death. Many Ottoman officials understood what was being done was a crime. “If the settlement of the Armenians is left to its official process,” one warned, “humanity will not record it with appreciation.”

What has changed?

It wasn’t the debate over historiography that stopped past U.S. administrations from recognizing the Armenian genocide — it was U.S. foreign policy priorities. Since the 1980s, Congress and various U.S. presidents have resisted lobbying by Armenian Americans for an official statement of recognition, for fear of upsetting a long-standing alliance with Turkey. “People are beginning to wake up to the fact that this is going to cause us hard times with Turkey,” a congressional staffer told the New York Times in 1989. “Sure, there’s sympathy for the Armenian people, but it’s only prudent also to focus on the implications of this thing.” For this reason, congressional resolutions on the Armenian genocide have languished year after year.


What, then, has changed? Turkish commentators point to U.S. anger over the Erdogan government’s close ties with Russia, or the influence of Armenian American activists outraged over Turkey’s support for Azerbaijan’s recent war against Armenia. But it’s more likely that retribution isn’t the reason behind this shift in the U.S. government’s attitude. While ties between the United States and Turkey have waned, other countries, including allies and friends like Germany and Russia, have also recognized the Armenian genocide.


Turkey’s worsening human rights record, as well as its increasingly aggressive behavior in the Levant and eastern Mediterranean, has strained the patience of U.S. policymakers. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, for example, stated pointedly that Turkey is “not acting like an ally.” The Biden administration’s recognition of the genocide, in other words, is a sign that U.S. officials are, as Blinken noted, “very clear-eyed” in dealing with Turkey as a partner. This shift in acknowledging a massacre that took place over 100 years ago is as much a testament to changing political realities as it is a clear validation of historical truth.


Ryan Gingeras is a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., and the author of Eternal Dawn: Turkey in the Age of Atatürk (Oxford 2019). Find him on Twitter @nord41.

https://www.washingt...-century-later/

 

[Yervant1]

Same old tired responses from Turkey, they will not change it's in their DNA!

Reuters

April 24 2021

 

 

 

Reactions after Biden announcement on Armenian genocide

 

Reuters

•  
•  
•  
•  

Following are reactions to the statement by U.S. President Joe Biden on Saturday formally recognising the 1915 massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide. The historic declaration could further damage frayed ties with NATO ally Turkey. read more

 

TURKISH FOREIGN MINISTRY STATEMENT

"We reject and denounce in the strongest terms the statement of the President of the US regarding the events of 1915 ... It is clear that the said statement does not have a scholarly and legal basis, nor is it supported by any evidence.

 

"This statement ...will open a deep wound that undermines our mutual trust and friendship. We call on the US President to correct this grave mistake"

 

MEVLUT CAVUSOGLU, TURKISH FOREIGN MINISTER, ON TWITTER

"Words cannot change or rewrite history. We have nothing to learn from anybody on our own past. Political opportunism is the greatest betrayal to peace and justice. We entirely reject this statement based solely on populism."

 

 

ARMENIAN PRIME MINISTER NIKOL PASHINYAN, IN A LETTER TO BIDEN

"The people of Armenia and Armenians all over the world perceived with great enthusiasm and welcomed your message ... The acknowledgement of the Armenian Genocide is important not only as a tribute paid to the 1.5 million innocent victims, but also in terms of preventing the recurrence of similar crimes against mankind."

 

 

GARO PAYLAN, ARMENIAN MP IN TURKISH PARLIAMENT

"When Turkey confronts the Armenian genocide, it will no longer matter what other countries or parliaments have to say ... We need to bring the pain of the Armenian people, to the land where it belongs, to Turkey. We have to face the pain of the Armenian people and we must relieve this pain through justice. The Armenian people are waiting for justice."

 

TURKISH PRESIDENT TAYYIP ERDOGAN, IN A LETTER TO THE ARMENIAN PATRIARCH OF CONSTANTINOPLE, SAHAK II MASHALIAN, BEFORE THE RELEASE OF BIDEN'S STATEMENT

 

"The politicization of the discussions that should be held by historians and used as a tool of intervention against our country by third parties has benefited no one. I believe that it is a great injustice against the new generations to build our identity on the pains marked on our souls by the past."

 

FOREIGN MINISTRY OF AZERBAIJAN, WHICH FOUGHT ARMENIAN FORCES IN NAGORNO-KARABAKH LAST YEAR, IN A STATEMENT

"It is unfortunate that the statement by US President Joe Biden on Armenian Remembrance Day, distorted the historical facts about the events of 1915. Those who politicize the so-called "Armenian genocide" are silent on the massacre of more than 500,000 people by Armenian armed groups at that time."

 

 

TURKISH MAIN OPPOSITION CHP PARTY SPOKESMAN FAIK OZTRAK, IN A STATEMENT

"US President Joe Biden's description of the painful events of 1915 as "genocide" has gone down in history as a great mistake. Recent statements against Turkey and measures against our country...show the point to which Turkey has been brought by the short-sighted foreign policy carried out by the government."

 

 

WOLFANGO PICCOLI, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF CONSULTANCY TENEO INTELLIGENCE, ON TWITTER

"US President Joe Biden's recognition of the Armenian genocide marks a new low point in bilateral ties (with Turkey) and will trigger a furious verbal response from Ankara. Retaliatory measures, if any, are likely to be short-lived and generally non-material. In the best-case scenario US Turkey ties will remain distant, transactional and inherently prone to friction."

 

https://www.reuters....ide-2021-04-24/

 

[Yervant1]

Australia still wants it's Turkish delight and eat it too, the hell with few million Christians perished they want their Gallipoli visits! 

SBS News, Australia

April 24 2021



Hundreds call on Scott Morrison to recognise mass killings of Armenians more than a century ago as genocide

 

A participant in the rally in Melbourne to mark 106 years since the massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Source: Hashela Kumarawansa/SBS News

The rallies in Sydney and Melbourne come as US President Joe Biden is expected to announce the landmark decision to formally declare the killings a genocide.


BY CATALINA FLOREZ, HASHELA KUMARAWANSA
SHARE

Minister Scott Morrison to formally recognise the massacre of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire more than a century ago as a genocide.

The rallies, which took place on Saturday afternoon, come as US President Joe Biden is expected to announce a landmark decision to officially recognise the killings as a genocide - a label Turkey strongly denies.

Saturday marks the 106th anniversary of the Ottoman Empire's mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Armenians during and following World War I.

 

Hundreds attended the rally in The Domain in Sydney on Saturday.

Catalina Florez/SBS News

Haig Kayserian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee in Australia, told SBS News Armenians in Australia were protesting Mr Morrison's failure to recognise the killings as genocide.

"We're making our voices of discontent heard loud and clear, that no euphemisms or replacements will be accepted by our communities," he said.

At the Sydney rally, which began in The Domain, protesters chanted "speak up ScoMo" as they marched through the city.

Aris Hosikin, who attended the Melbourne rally, told SBS News the lack of recognition was a "wound that hasn't been healed" for survivors of the massacre.

"We haven't received an apology or recognition for what happened to our ancestors during the First World War," he said. "It would add closure to a chapter in our lives and allow us to move on and heal."

Another attendee, Tamar Ipradjian, said she participates in the rally every year because it is important to raise awareness about what happened in 1915.

"Unfortunately there is not as much education out there about that," she said. "My ancestors were involved in it and justice needs to prevail."

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, the daughter of Armenian migrants, is among high-profile figures calling for the killings to be officially recognised as genocide.

"I am forever hopeful Australia will join the many nations around the world who have recognised the Armenian genocide of 1915," she tweeted on Saturday.

In a statement marking the anniversary, Prime Minister Scott Morrison stopped short of using the word genocide, instead referencing the "enormous loss suffered by the Armenian people in the last years of the Ottoman Empire".

The statement was significantly different to a comment Mr Morrison made as a backbencher in 2011, in which he said it was "important we recognise the Armenian genocide for what it was".

Mr Kayserian said he was hopeful the Australian government would follow in the footsteps of the Biden administration, pointing to Mr Morrison's past comments.

"We know what Scott Morrison believes," he said. "Australia has spoken on this issue and we are just waiting for the government to do the same."

About 30 countries around the world have recognised the killings as genocide, including Russia, France, Canada and Germany.

The parliaments of New South Wales and South Australia also recognise the killings as genocide, but the federal government of Australia does not.

Turkey has always vigorously rejected the use of the term genocide, a view shared by the Turkish community in Australia.

"There has never been a competent international court decision labelling the events as genocide," Baris Atayman, executive secretary for the Australian Turkish Advocacy Alliance, told SBS News.

"Joe Biden's decision to call the events of 1915 as genocide we believe is a political one; based on nothing but his own personal convictions."

Mr Biden spoke with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the first time in his capacity as US President on Friday ahead of the expected announcement.

A day earlier, Mr Erdogan told advisors to "defend the trust against those who back the so-called 'Armenian genocide' lie".

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has been contacted for comment.

With AFP

https://www.sbs.com....ago-as-genocide

 

[Yervant1]

Same old bark, different day! 

Bloomberg

April 24 2021

 

 

 

Turkey Summons U.S. Envoy After Biden’s ‘Genocide’ Statement By 

Onur Ant

, 

Jennifer Jacobs

, and 

Gregory Korte

April 23, 2021, 9:31 PM GMT+3 Updated on April 25, 2021, 12:37 AM GMT+3

•  
  Ties already tense over Turkey’s purchase of Russian missiles
•  
  In response, Turkey says Biden has opened a ‘deep wound’

 

President Joe Biden commemorated the 106th anniversary of the mass killing of Armenians by twice calling it a “genocide” -- a word no U.S. leader since Ronald Reagan has used to describe the event for fear of alienating NATO ally Turkey.

 

 

Turkey, in response, summoned U.S. Ambassador David Satterfield to Ankara, and said it rejected Biden’s characterization of the events of 1915.

 

 

 

 

“The American people honor all those Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today,” Biden said in a written statement timed to Saturday’s commemoration of Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.

 

 

“One and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination,” Biden said. “We remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring.”

 

 

Biden’s statement “was null and void in terms of international law” and “caused a wound that was difficult to repair,” Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Saturday’s move by Biden fulfilled a 2020 campaign promise by the Democrat to Armenian-Americans, but risks pushing Turkey further into Russia’s orbit. Turkey has denied that its predecessors in the Ottoman Empire committed wholesale atrocities, calling the allegations “slander,” and suggesting that Biden’s declaration was more about domestic politics.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu responded on Twitter, saying his country has “nothing to learn from anybody about our own past.”

 

The ministry issued a statement saying the U.S. had opened “a deep wound that undermines our mutual trust and friendship.” It said Biden was under the sway of “radical Armenian circles and anti-Turkey groups.”

Biden on Friday held his first phone call as president with Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in which he gave advance notice of the statement and used the word “genocide,” according to officials familiar with the call.

Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesman for Erdogan, said Saturday that the U.S. had repeated the “slander” toward Turkey. “We recommend that the U.S. President look at his own history and present.

 

Neither side on Friday mentioned the contentious issue in their formal statements about the discussion, and instead focused on a planned meeting at the NATO summit in Brussels in June.

Still, the Turkish lira dropped 1% against the dollar on the news Friday, extending the Turkish currency’s week-long slide to 3.9%.

As Turkey braced for the Biden statement, officials there warned that the move would severely damage relations between the countries.

 

 

 

“The best way for President Biden to ruin what is left of Turkish-American relations is for him to acknowledge the false Armenian allegations that the Ottoman Turks performed an act of genocide early last century,” Ilnur Cevik, a senior adviser to Erdogan, said Friday on Twitter.

Shortly before the White House released Biden’s statement, Erdogan sent a commemoration message to Sahak Mashalian, who serves as the Armenian Patriarch of Istanbul.

“I respectfully commemorate the Ottoman Armenians, who lost their lives under the difficult circumstances of World War I, and offer my condolences to their grandchildren,” Erdogan said. “The politicization of debates, which historians ought to engage in, by third parties and their use as a tool of meddling has not served anyone’s interests.”

Reagan was the last U.S. president to call the atrocities committed against the Armenians a genocide, in 1981. He soon backtracked under pressure from Turkey, the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, which collapsed after the end of World War I.

People hold portraits of Armenian intellectuals who were detained and deported in 1915, during a rally in Istanbul on April 24, 2018, held to commemorate the anniversary of the 1915 mass killing of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

Photographer: Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images

Erdogan on Wednesday said that his administration “will continue to defend the truths in the face of the lie of ‘genocide of Armenians’ and those who are backing this slander with political calculations,” according to the state-run Anadolu Agency.

Turkey has been a key U.S. strategic partner, providing a bridge to the Islamic world and countering Russian ambitions. But increasing friction on a number of issues -- including Erdogan’s increasingly heavy hand against political opponents and the press -- has led Turkey’s leader to seek a closer relationship with Moscow.

QuickTake: Understanding the Feuds Plaguing U.S.-Turkey Alliance

The U.S. has imposed sanctions on Turkey and cut it out of Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 fighter program --unprecedented for a NATO ally -- after Turkey began purchasing S-400 anti-aircraft missiles from Russia.

Although Russia has recognized the Armenian genocide for decades, Moscow appeared eager to use Biden’s move to drive a wedge into NATO. The Russian state news agency TASS reported that the Biden administration “is making it clear that it actually does not view Erdogan as a partner and a politician worth betting on, and will build relations with him from the position of force.”

President Barack Obama, critical of the George W. Bush administration’s failure to use the word “genocide,” made a campaign promise to change course. Over eight years he offered increasingly strong condemnations -- calling the 1915 events “the first mass atrocity of the 20th century” in which 1.5 million Armenians “were deported, massacred, and marched to their deaths in the final days of the Ottoman Empire.” He didn’t use the word genocide, though, instead recognizing the anniversary as “Armenian Remembrance Day.”

 

 

 

The word “genocide” carries a particular stigma under international law, which defines it as the injuring or forcible removal of people with “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”

The nation’s leading Armenian-American group said Biden’s recognition was an important step toward human rights into the 21st century.

“President Biden’s affirmation of the Armenian Genocide marks a critically important moment in the arc of history in defense of human rights. By standing firmly against a century of denial, President Biden has charted a new course. Affirmation of the Armenian Genocide enhances America’s credibility and recommits the United States to the worldwide cause of genocide prevention,” said Armenian Assembly Executive Director Bryan Ardouny.

— With assistance by Selcan Hacaoglu

President Joe Biden commemorated the 106th anniversary of the mass killing of Armenians by twice calling it a “genocide” -- a word no U.S. leader since Ronald Reagan has used to describe the event for fear of alienating NATO ally Turkey.

 

 

Turkey, in response, summoned U.S. Ambassador David Satterfield to Ankara, and said it rejected Biden’s characterization of the events of 1915.

 

 

 

 

“The American people honor all those Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today,” Biden said in a written statement timed to Saturday’s commemoration of Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.

 

 

“One and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination,” Biden said. “We remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring.”

 

 

Biden’s statement “was null and void in terms of international law” and “caused a wound that was difficult to repair,” Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Saturday’s move by Biden fulfilled a 2020 campaign promise by the Democrat to Armenian-Americans, but risks pushing Turkey further into Russia’s orbit. Turkey has denied that its predecessors in the Ottoman Empire committed wholesale atrocities, calling the allegations “slander,” and suggesting that Biden’s declaration was more about domestic politics.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu responded on Twitter, saying his country has “nothing to learn from anybody about our own past.”

The ministry issued a statement saying the U.S. had opened “a deep wound that undermines our mutual trust and friendship.” It said Biden was under the sway of “radical Armenian circles and anti-Turkey groups.”

Biden on Friday held his first phone call as president with Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in which he gave advance notice of the statement and used the word “genocide,” according to officials familiar with the call.

Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesman for Erdogan, said Saturday that the U.S. had repeated the “slander” toward Turkey. “We recommend that the U.S. President look at his own history and present.

Neither side on Friday mentioned the contentious issue in their formal statements about the discussion, and instead focused on a planned meeting at the NATO summit in Brussels in June.

Still, the Turkish lira dropped 1% against the dollar on the news Friday, extending the Turkish currency’s week-long slide to 3.9%.

As Turkey braced for the Biden statement, officials there warned that the move would severely damage relations between the countries.

 

 

 

“The best way for President Biden to ruin what is left of Turkish-American relations is for him to acknowledge the false Armenian allegations that the Ottoman Turks performed an act of genocide early last century,” Ilnur Cevik, a senior adviser to Erdogan, said Friday on Twitter.

Shortly before the White House released Biden’s statement, Erdogan sent a commemoration message to Sahak Mashalian, who serves as the Armenian Patriarch of Istanbul.

“I respectfully commemorate the Ottoman Armenians, who lost their lives under the difficult circumstances of World War I, and offer my condolences to their grandchildren,” Erdogan said. “The politicization of debates, which historians ought to engage in, by third parties and their use as a tool of meddling has not served anyone’s interests.”

Reagan was the last U.S. president to call the atrocities committed against the Armenians a genocide, in 1981. He soon backtracked under pressure from Turkey, the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, which collapsed after the end of World War I.

People hold portraits of Armenian intellectuals who were detained and deported in 1915, during a rally in Istanbul on April 24, 2018, held to commemorate the anniversary of the 1915 mass killing of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

Photographer: Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images

Erdogan on Wednesday said that his administration “will continue to defend the truths in the face of the lie of ‘genocide of Armenians’ and those who are backing this slander with political calculations,” according to the state-run Anadolu Agency.

Turkey has been a key U.S. strategic partner, providing a bridge to the Islamic world and countering Russian ambitions. But increasing friction on a number of issues -- including Erdogan’s increasingly heavy hand against political opponents and the press -- has led Turkey’s leader to seek a closer relationship with Moscow.

QuickTake: Understanding the Feuds Plaguing U.S.-Turkey Alliance

The U.S. has imposed sanctions on Turkey and cut it out of Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 fighter program --unprecedented for a NATO ally -- after Turkey began purchasing S-400 anti-aircraft missiles from Russia.

Although Russia has recognized the Armenian genocide for decades, Moscow appeared eager to use Biden’s move to drive a wedge into NATO. The Russian state news agency TASS reported that the Biden administration “is making it clear that it actually does not view Erdogan as a partner and a politician worth betting on, and will build relations with him from the position of force.”

President Barack Obama, critical of the George W. Bush administration’s failure to use the word “genocide,” made a campaign promise to change course. Over eight years he offered increasingly strong condemnations -- calling the 1915 events “the first mass atrocity of the 20th century” in which 1.5 million Armenians “were deported, massacred, and marched to their deaths in the final days of the Ottoman Empire.” He didn’t use the word genocide, though, instead recognizing the anniversary as “Armenian Remembrance Day.”

 

 

 

The word “genocide” carries a particular stigma under international law, which defines it as the injuring or forcible removal of people with “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”

The nation’s leading Armenian-American group said Biden’s recognition was an important step toward human rights into the 21st century.

“President Biden’s affirmation of the Armenian Genocide marks a critically important moment in the arc of history in defense of human rights. By standing firmly against a century of denial, President Biden has charted a new course. Affirmation of the Armenian Genocide enhances America’s credibility and recommits the United States to the worldwide cause of genocide prevention,” said Armenian Assembly Executive Director Bryan Ardouny.

— With assistance by Selcan Hacaoglu

https://www.bloomber...acre-a-genocide

 

 

 

[Yervant1]

Jerusalem Post

April 24 2021

 

 

 

Lapid calls on Israel to join Biden in recognizing Armenian Genocide In recent years, there has also been a concern over recognition impacting relations with Azerbaijan, a major supplier of oil to Israel, which fought a war with Armenia last year.

By LAHAV HARKOV   

APRIL 24, 2021 22:30

 

Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid called on Israel to follow the US in recognizing the Armenian genocide, after President Joe Biden recognized the 1915 massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as such on Saturday.

 

“‎‏This is an important moral statement by President Biden,” Lapid tweeted. “I will continue to fight for Israeli recognition of the Armenian Genocide; it is our moral responsibility as the Jewish state.”

Meretz MK Tamar Zandberg said Biden’s recognition is “historic.”

 

“The time has come for Israel to also clean itself of political interests and act for the most basic justice and recognize the Armenian genocide. The Jewish state cannot lend a hand to attempts to erase history,” she stated.

 

Lapid and Zandberg have been involved in past efforts for the Knesset to recognize the Armenian genocide.

 

The Foreign Ministry said that “the State of Israel recognizes the terrible suffering and the tragedy of the Armenian people. Especially at this time, we and the nations of the world must be responsible to ensure that such events are not repeated.”

 

However, the government of Israel has not recognized the genocide or articulated a specific policy on the matter – but the Knesset has recognized it in various forms.

President Reuven Rivlin called to recognize the Armenian genocide when he was Knesset speaker but has avoided using the term as president.

 

Health Minister Yuli Edelstein also called for recognition when he was Knesset speaker. Rivlin and Israeli lawmakers have attended official Armenian memorials for victims of the genocide.

 

The government generally avoided recognizing the Armenian genocide out of concern over antagonizing Turkey. Those ties have been tense for the past decade, though Ankara has made overtures in recent months, including inviting Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz this week to a conference in June.

 

In recent years, there has also been a concern over recognition impacting relations with Azerbaijan, a major supplier of oil to Israel, which fought a war with Armenia last fall.

 

BIDEN’S DECLARATION on Saturday infuriated Turkey and is set to further strain frayed ties between the two NATO allies.

 

The largely symbolic move, breaking away from decades of carefully calibrated language from the White House, will likely be celebrated by the Armenian diaspora in the United States, but comes at a time when Ankara and Washington have deep policy disagreements over a host of issues.

 

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey “entirely rejects” the US decision, which he said was based “solely on populism.”

 

Biden’s message was met with “great enthusiasm” by the people of Armenia and Armenians worldwide, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan wrote in a letter to the US president.

 

In his statement, Biden said the American people honor “all those Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today.”

 

“Over the decades, Armenian immigrants have enriched the United States in countless ways, but they have never forgotten the tragic history,” Biden said. “We honor their story. We see that pain. We affirm the history. We do this not to cast blame but to ensure that what happened is never repeated.”

 

In comments that sought to soften the blow, a senior administration official told reporters that Washington encouraged Armenia and Turkey to pursue reconciliation and continues to view Ankara as a critical NATO ally.

 

For decades, measures recognizing the Armenian genocide stalled in the US Congress and US presidents have refrained from calling it that, stymied by concerns about relations with Turkey and intense lobbying by Ankara.

 

TURKEY ACCEPTS that many Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were killed in clashes with Ottoman forces during World War I, but contests the figures and denies that the killings were systematically orchestrated and constitute genocide.

 

A year ago, while still a presidential candidate, Biden commemorated the 1.5 million Armenian men, women and children who lost their lives in the final years of the Ottoman Empire and said he would back efforts to recognize those killings as genocide.

 

Ties between Ankara and Washington have been strained over issues ranging from Turkey’s purchase of Russian S-400 air defense systems – over which it was the target of US sanctions – to policy differences in Syria, human rights and a court case targeting Turkey’s majority state-owned Halkbank.

 

Biden’s declaration follows a non-binding resolution by the US Senate adopted unanimously in 2019 recognizing the killings as genocide.

 

Previous US presidents have abandoned campaign promises to recognize the Armenian genocide for fear of damaging US-Turkish relations, said Nicholas Danforth, non-resident fellow for The Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy.

 

“With relations already in shambles, there was nothing to stop Biden from following through,” said Danforth. “Ankara has no allies left in the US government to lobby against this and Washington isn’t worried whether it angers Turkey anymore.”

 

Erdogan had established a close bond with former US President Donald Trump, but since Biden took over, Washington has grown more vocal about Turkey’s human rights track record. It has also stood firm on its demand that Ankara get rid of the Russian defense systems.

 

Biden had also delayed having a telephone conversation with Erdogan until Friday – seen largely as a cold shoulder to the Turkish president – when he informed him of his decision to recognize the massacres as genocide.

 

Saturday’s announcement was slammed by the Turkish government and several opposition politicians. Turkey’s presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said Biden’s remarks “only repeat the accusations of those whose sole agenda is enmity towards our country.”

 

“We advise the US president to look at [his country’s] own past and present,” Kalin wrote on Twitter.

 

https://www.jpost.co...tatement-666230

 

[Yervant1]

Religion News Service

April 24 2021

 

 

Yes, there was an Armenian genocide The Armenian genocide is a Jewish issue. More than you think.

April 24, 2021

 

Several years ago, when travel was more common, I was on a plane, and I found myself talking to the passenger in the seat next to me. We exchanged professional credentials – I, a rabbi; he, a documentary film maker. We exchanged name, and when I noticed that his surname, like mine, ended with an N, I asked him its derivation.

He confirmed for me what I had already guessed – that he was of Armenian extraction.

There was an awkward silence.

“You know,” I said, “I’ve always felt a great kinship with the Armenians. I…”

“I know,” he said, holding up his hand. “I know.”

I thought of that man today, as President Biden did what none of his predecessors would do.

He (finally) called the mass killing of the Armenians a genocide.

Why do I, as a rabbi, write about the Armenians?

Because the Armenians are our mirror.

Years ago, in a journal the name of which I cannot remember, I read these words by the poet Joel Rosenberg:

I count the ways we are alike

I cite the kingdoms of our former glory — which, for both of us, perhaps, had been a bit too much to handle,

As it has been ever since.

I cite our landless outposts

of diaspora, strewn close along the rivers

and the shores of human habitation

that branch outward from the founts

of Paradise. I cite our neighboring

quarters in the walled Jerusalem,

our holy men in black, our past

in Scripture, and our overlapping

sacred sites. I cite our reverence for family ties, the polar worlds of grandfathers and grandmothers…

Our Middle Eastern food, our enterprise, our reedy and Levantine tunes.

Our immigration histories, the grainy profiles

our ironic manner, our eccentric uncles. Our clustering in cities

Our cherishing of books

Our vexed and aching homelands.

Oh, yes: our adjacent quarters in Jerusalem, where the walls bear the maps of the massacres. Where the walls bear howls of remembrance.

Let us re-tell the story.

The Armenians were a distinctive national and religious group within the Ottoman Empire — a Christian minority within a Muslim domain. As the twentieth century dawned, the Turks came to view the Armenians as a foreign element – in much the same way as Europeans perceived Jews to be a foreign element. Like the Jews of Europe, the Armenian Christians challenged the traditional hierarchy of Ottoman society. Like the Jews of Europe, they became educated, wealthy, and more urban. Like “the Jewish problem,” there was pervasive talk in Turkey of “the Armenian question.”

During World War One, the Turks embarked on a massive plan to exterminate the Armenian nation. By February 1915, Armenians serving in the Ottoman army were turned into labor battalions. They were either worked to death or killed.

By April, the remaining civilians were deported from eastern Anatolia and Cilicia toward the deserts near Aleppo. It was an early form of ethnic cleansing. Again and again, Turkish and Kurdish villagers attacked the lines of Armenian deportees. Armenians died through deportation, mass murder and starvation.

Children and young females were often spared – through forced conversions to Islam, adoptions, and slave labor. Torture was particularly cruel; in his memoirs, the U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Sr. wrote that the Turks had worked, day and night, to perfect new methods of inflicting agony. Morgenthau wrote that the Turks even delved into the records of the Spanish Inquisition and adopted its methods. There were so many Armenian bodies dumped into the Euphrates that the mighty river changed its course for a hundred yards.

Between 1915 and 1923 approximately one-half to three-quarters of the Armenian population was destroyed in the Ottoman empire.  

And in the United States? Parents cajoled their children to be frugal with their food “for there are starving children in Armenia.” In 1915 alone, the New York Times published 145 articles about the Armenian Genocide. Americans raised some $100 million in aid for the Armenians. Activists, politicians, religious leaders, diplomats, intellectuals and ordinary citizens called for intervention – an intervention that did not come. 

The Armenian massacre was the model of all modern genocides. Not only the act of genocide itself — but also, the passive amnesia about that genocide. “Who talks about the Armenians anymore?” laughed Hitler.

Years ago, when this subject first grabbed my soul, I started thinking about the comparisons between the Jews and the Armenians — not only our cultures, not only our suffering — but our responses to that suffering.

A story: One day in 1915, the Turks started deporting the eight hundred families of Kourd Belen, near Izmir. The pastor of the village was an eighty-five year-old priest, Khoren Hampartsoomian. As he led his people from their village, neighboring Turks came out to view the exiles. They taunted the priest: “Good luck, old man. Whom are you going to bury today?”

The old priest replied: “God. God is dead and we are rushing to his funeral.” 

An echo. In Night, the late Elie Wiesel writes about a child hanging from a gallows, twisting slowly in the wind, his small body too light to die immediately. The agony lingered long and painfully.  

“Where is God?” cries a prisoner.

“Where is God? Hanging on the gallows.”

After the Shoah, Jewish theologians cried out to the God Who they believed had betrayed them. “O God, how could You do this to us, the children of Your covenant?”

So, too, Armenians. Doris and Arda Melkonian are sisters who study in Fuller’s School of Theology.

Consider their lament:

Armenians are proud to have been the first nation to accept Christianity as a state religion in AD 301. Therefore, it is difficult for Armenians to comprehend why such horrors would befall us who have chosen Christ. We who have been faithful to God for over 1,600 years, resisting pressures over the centuries to convert to other faiths, from Zoroastrianism in the 5th century to Islam in more recent times. We who have fought countless wars to maintain our faith in God, demonstrating our loyalty to him, have felt a profound sense of abandonment. So we raise our voices to God and cry out, “Why?”

Our teachers cried out of the depths of their understanding of the covenant:  “We must have sinned. God has used the Nazis as a club against us.”

So, too, Armenian theologians. In the words of Shushan Khachatryan:

One of the widely-spread points is that the Genocide was God’s punishment because the Armenians lived as atheists and were a Christian nation at the same time. They were obliged to disseminate the light of Christianity among their neighbors, for example, among the Turks, but they failed to do so.

Jews will note, with solemnity, that Yom Ha Shoah and the day of remembrance for the Armenian genocide are within two weeks of each other. Others will remember that it was a Polish-Jewish activist, Raphael Lemkin, who worked himself to death to get the nations of the world to adopt laws against genocide.

Let us note that. Let us remember.

 

 

https://religionnews...xKqR5PhkjrTdA10