Aratta-Kingdom

PRESS RELEASE Gomidas Institute (UK) Garod House 42 Blythe Rd. London W14 0HA Contact Person: Roland Mnatsakanyan Email: info@gomidas.org.uk 14 November 2005 British Foreign and Commonwealth Office rejects Turkish Parliament's letter against 1916 British Blue Book In a further development in the on-going Blue Book saga, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has responded in kind to the Turkish Parliament's criticism of the 1916 British Parliamentary Blue Book The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915-16. The Turkish letter of 28 April 2005 claimed that the Blue Book was British propaganda fabrication and that it vilified Ottoman Turks and continues to harm Turkish interests today. However, in a letter dated 8 July 2005, the British Ambassador to Turkey, Sir Peter Westmacott, informed the Speaker of the Turkish Parliament that the Turkish Parliament's letter and enclosures criticising the Blue Book had been placed "in the Library of the House of Commons where they are available to all Members of Parliament" and where "it would act as a comment on the Blue Book itself and one to which historians have access." There has been no formal response from British MPs and Peers because they were not told of the existence of the Turkish letter, even though it was addressed to all members of the Houses of Parliament and solicited a response. In his opening remarks, Ambassador Westmacott explained that the 1916 Blue Book, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915-16, was a Parliament-owned document and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office could not make a statement on it. "However," Sir Westmacott added, "the Foreign and Commonwealth Office understands that whilst the publication of the Blue Book may have been regarded as desirable at the time in the context of the war effort, none of the individual reports has been refuted; and few have suggested moral or intellectual dishonesty on the part of the authors, Lord Bryce and Arnold J. Toynbee." Sir Westmacott's words are significant because they represents a careful rejection of the Turkish position. 1/ Despite Sir Westmacott's statement that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office cannot say anything about the Blue Book because it is "a Parliament-owned document," he actually made such a statement on behalf of the British Foreign Secretary. His words were not an oversight but a warning to Turkish Parliamentarians that the FCO could engage the Blue Book issue if need be. 2/ Sir Westmacott clearly chose to disagree with the two cardinal points of the Turkish letter when he pointed out that (a) truth and propaganda are not necessarily mutually exclusive and do not appear to be so in the blue book; ( Bryce and Toynbee remain in good standing, and their roles in formulating the Blue Book have not been seriously challenged. This was a further suggestion that the British were able to dispel the Turkish criticism if need be. 3/ Finally, when making these statements, Sir Westmacott did not credit the offending Turkish letter and its assertions about the Blue Book with any weight at all. In fact his blanket rebuttal of Turkish criticisms is a measure of the British government sentiment regarding the Turkish position. According to Ara Sarafian, who edited the "uncensored edition" of the 1916 Blue Book, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's response was a skilful effort to defuse the Armenian issue before it became a self-inflicted debacle for Turkish Parliamentarians. By burying the Turkish letter in the House of Commons library, the FCO has prevented British Parliamentarians from defending their own document in a forthright manner. It also answered allegations against Great Britain by Turkish Parliamentarians, and threatened to examine the 1916 Blue Book in a forthright manner, should the Turkish side insist on their allegations. To date, there has been no response to the British ambassador's letter

1. Aram Sargsyan 2. Armen Ayvazyan- 1 vote 3. Artashes Gegamyan 4. Artur Bagdasaryan 5. David Shanazaryan 6. Gagik Harutunyan- 1 vote 7. Raffi Hovhanissian- 1 vote 8. Serge Sargsyan 9. Stepan Demirjyan 10. Vardan Oskanian- 1 vote The election at hyeforum is FREE & TRANSPARENT I'll count the votes at the end of each month. G :) d luck to all the candidates.

n:) n:) - it's not an official list.

Until the time comes, for now I give my vote to Armen Ayvazyan and Raffi Hovhanissian.

Who you think should/will be the next president of Armenia? Here is the list of the candidates: 1. Aram Sargsyan 2. Armen Ayvazyan 3. Artashes Gegamyan 4. Artur Bagdasaryan 5. David Shanazaryan 6. Gagik Harutunyan 7. Raffi Hovhanissian 8. Serge Sargsyan 9. Stepan Demirjyan

Freedom of Expression Under Threat in Turkey By Amberin Zaman Istanbul 21 October 2005 Zaman report - Download 527k Listen to Zaman report After decades of knocking on Europe's door, Turkey officially launched membership negotiations with the European Union on October 3. But a string of recent cases launched against prominent Turkish authors and journalists, mainly over their views on the mass slaughter of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, has refocused attention on Turkey's human rights record. And EU officials and rights groups warn that continuing prosecution of Turkish citizens for the non-violent expression of their views remains a big obstacle to Turkey's membership. The phones ring incessantly in Hrant Dink's office these days. Mr. Dink, an ethnic Armenian, is the publisher of the weekly newspaper Agos that serves Turkey's small Armenian community. He says the calls are from citizens expressing sympathy over his plight. Mr. Dink was handed a suspended six-month sentence earlier this month on charges of insulting the Turkish people in a newspaper article that was published in Agos. Mr. Dink can barely control his tears as he rails against what he terms "the injustice" of that sentence. He insists that his article pressed the Armenian people to purge any feelings of animosity toward the Turks. So why Turkish judges deemed his words offensive to the Turkish people, he says, remains a complete mystery. EU Commissioner for Enlargement Olli Rehn, accompanied by Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, left, talks to journalists in Istanbul, Turkey Mr. Dink is among several prominent Turkish intellectuals who are being prosecuted for their views. The internationally acclaimed Turkish author Orhan Pamuk is facing up to four years in prison for also insulting the Turkish state. Mr. Pamuk, whose work has been translated into 35 languages, was indicted for telling a Swiss magazine that "30,000 Kurds and one million Armenians were killed in these lands and no one, but I, dares to say so." Mr. Pamuk is due to appear in court on December 16 in a trial that is likely to come under intense international scrutiny. The EU's enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn has warned that should Mr. Pamuk be convicted, negotiations with the European Union could be interrupted. The fate of some 1.5 million Ottoman Armenian citizens who once inhabited the country remains a highly sensitive topic in modern Turkey. The Armenians say most of their kin died in a genocide campaign waged by a group of army officers known as the Young Turks, who led Turkey during the First World War. Turkey says several hundred thousand Armenians did perish, but as a result of hunger, exposure and disease, as they were forcibly marched into the Syrian desert after collaborating with invading Russian forces. A growing number of Turkish academics and intellectuals are daring to challenge the official line and never more openly than during a ground breaking conference that took place last month in Istanbul. During the two-day event, some of the participants described the mass killings of Armenians as genocide. Like many here, Mr. Dink says that the forum proves that Turkey is finally beginning to face up to its past and is a further sign that EU inspired reforms are finally beginning to make an impact. But for some, he notes, such progress comes at a heavy price. Mr. Dink says he believes that what he calls the "deep state," a coalition of militantly nationalist individuals within the army, the judiciary and other state organs who oppose Turkey's EU membership, are responsible for the legal challenges he and his colleagues face. Through such cases he says this "deep state" hopes to derail the EU process and hang onto its influence and privileges. But he also lays part of the blame on the government led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Mr. Dink lauds the government for pushing through a broad swath or reforms that helped pave the way for the Oct. 3 accession talks. But the same government, he adds is also responsible for introducing articles in the newly adopted penal code under which he and fellow writers are being prosecuted.

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY MUST PREVENT RECURRENCE OF GENOCIDES: YURI BALUYEVSKY ARKA News Agency Oct 20 2005 YEREVAN, October 20. /ARKA/. The international community must do all in its power to prevent the recurrence of events like the Armenian Genocide of 1915, Chief of the General Headquarters, RF Armed Forces, RF First Deputy Minister of Defense Yuri Baluyevsky stated during his visit to the Memorial to the Genocide Victims in Tsitsernakaberd. "Culprit are difficult to find among the contemporary Turkish people, but the crime must be denounced," he said. "The Armenia people, who experienced horrible events of the Genocide, lost a third of its population, deserves respect on the part of us all," Baluyevky said. During his visit to Armenia, Yuri Baluyevky is to visit the Institute of Ancient Manuscripts "Matenadaran."

"The war rhetoric is meant for internal consumption. All that budget increase, and etc... " Well said. Budget increase means Aliyev pocketing more money... this way he will also keep the opposition quiet.

50years??? bring it down to 15+5(after Kazakstan starts to use the pipeline). Beside, the people of azerbaijan are hungry. They go to Turkey and Russia to make their living. The oil money goes to support only the Aliyev family and their friends. Food Aid For 130,000 Azerbaijanis Faces Shut Down Thursday, 20 October 2005, 5:57 pm Press Release: United Nations UN Food Aid For 130,000 Azerbaijanis Faces Shut Down Due To Funding Shortfall New York, Oct 18 2005 Without immediate help from international donors, food assistance to 130,000 Azerbaijanis displaced by the Nagorno-Artsax conflict with Armenia could come to a complete halt in just three weeks time, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned today. “For this to happen just before the onset of the harsh winter and during the holy month of Ramadan would be a severe blow to the displaced population, who are predominantly Muslim. In fact, it would be disastrous,” WFP’s Regional Director for the Middle East, Central Asia and Eastern Europe, Amir Abdulla, said of the $4 million – or 16 per cent – funding shortfall. “Unless we can get enough resources right now, we will have no choice but to stop food assistance schemes at the beginning on November,” he added. Mr. Abdulla expressed hope that the international community would step in with funding for what he described as “desperately needed relief food aid” and added that further assistance from the Azerbaijan Government would be most welcome. Since 1994, WFP has been pivotal in helping hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis displaced by the armed conflict over Nagorno-Artsax. More than 600,000 Azerbaijanis fled the region to other parts of Azerbaijan and are now spread across western, central and eastern parts of the country with extremely limited opportunities for employment. “Seventy per cent of WFP’s beneficiaries are women and children and they are extremely food insecure,” WFP Country Director Rahman Chowdhury said. “Any discontinuation of food assistance will seriously affect their health and nutritional well being.” If the situation fails to improve, WFP’s school feeding programme, which covers 5,300 primary schoolchildren, will also come to a halt. Children regularly attending school receive a basket of take-home commodities. “School enrolment and attendance has registered a marked improvement since the launch of the programme. The nutrition of these children has improved considerably in recent months. But all that could be lost if we do not continue this programme,” Mr. Chowdhury said. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ NOVOSTI UN food program calls for international help to feed Azerbaijanis 18:29 | 18/ 10/ 2005 GENEVA, October 18 (RIA Novosti,Yekaterina Andrianova) - The UN World Food Program (WFP) may end food assistance to Azerbaijan due to financial shortages, a regional WFP director said Tuesday, calling on the international community to provide $4 million to continue aid through the coming winter. Amir Abdullah said the WFP had no other choice but to stop providing food assistance to 130,000 Azerbaijanis displaced by the military conflict with Armenia over the disputed region of Nagorno-Artsax in the early 1990s. The WFP's food assistance program to Azerbaijan began in late 1993 and was supposed to continue until mid 2006. According to UN figures, 70% of the Azerbaijanis receiving WFP aid are women and children. Abdullah said lack of funds would also force the WFP to abandon its school feeding project that serves 5,300 pupils in Azerbaijan's primary schools.

AZG CULTURAL GENOCIDE: 'THEY DESTROYED THE CHURCH TO BUILD A MOSQUE' Under this title Milliyet daily of Turkey informed on October 19 that in Argun village of Kulp province of Diarbekir an Armenian church was pulled down to build a mosque in its place. Construction of the mosque was suspended after a few citizens' complaint. According to Milliyet the historic Armenian church of Argun was partially destroyed in the time of republic to build houses with its stones thus making it useless for religious services. But the Council of Protection of Cultural Heritage and Ecology included the semi-ruined church and the Armenian graveyard into the list of historic monuments needing protection. But builder Kerem Emre, resident of the village, pulled the church down together with part of the graveyard by approbation of his fellow villagers and used the stones of the church to lay foundation of the mosque. The construction of the mosque began on May 10 but it was stopped after the complaint of several citizens that made the mayor of Kulp and the Diarbekir museum administration intervened. Head of the village administration, Sadek Turan, told Milliyet on occasion of the illegal construction: "I tried to stop the construction. I provided them with another area for the mosque and told that there are already two mosques functioning in the village. Then builder Emre gathered his fellow villagers and came to me. They accused me of being against the mosque and therefore concluded that I must be an Armenian. I could not stand the pressure any more and gave in." The village of Kulp was formerly Armenian village Khulp that administratively belonged to province of Mush before 1915. By Hakob Chakrian

AZG ARMENIANS A TARGET OF GEORGIAN FLATTERY WITH TURKEY The friendship of fraternal Georgia with Armenia and the Armenian people was at times more dangerous than the hatred of ill-disposed Azerbaijan. The reason is perhaps hidden in inclination of scot-free Georgians to turn impudent once a chance is granted. To prove this point we may turn to the October 12 leaflets distributed by the "brigade of Akhaltskha liberation." The leaflets threatened to banish Armenians from their native lands, condemned them in poisoning Georgian air, called them "unfaithful dogs" reminding meanwhile with delight of the genocide of 1915. It's noteworthy that Turkish president Ozal Turgut, who lashed at Armenians in 1993 also reminding of the genocide threatening them, died in April of the same year. His death is a mystery till now. In other words, it is not peculiar to Georgian rabble to remind Armenians of the genocide. But what is peculiar to them is the tactics of threatening their centuries old neighbor through Turkey. Perhaps the Turkish symbols of crescent and star on the leaflets and the time of distribution on the day of opening of Georgian section of Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline October 12 that brought Turkish President Ahmed Nejet Sezer to Tbilisi were intentionally chosen. Apparently the Georgians wanted the master to stand by them to give courage in their venture. The fact that Turkey still has not given up its policy of genocide multiplied their bravery. The Georgian rabble called Armenians "unfaithful dogs" and "hired jackals" to find favor in the master's eyes. Only a nation devoid of self-esteem can flatter with a foreign state. But it cannon make flattery a political mission as it will be of no avail. To understand this truism one needs self-esteem. But the Georgian rabble's only dignity is its stupidity otherwise it would not fall upon Armenians nor would remind of the genocide after shameful defeat at the hands of only 70.000 Abkhazians. Why? Because in 1918 heartened by German promises the Georgians took advantage of Armenia's desperate position with thousands of hungry refugees, under permanent plots of Azerbaijan and invaded Lori-Pambak. The Armenian forces led by Dro purged the territory of the republic completely defeating invaders. Moreover, general Tsulukidze, the then commander of the Georgian front, was first to escape from the battlefield creating an alarming situation in Georgia. Well aware that the Armenians, still bleeding after the 1915, managed to teach a lesson to Turks at Sardarapat, the Georgian rabble appealed to the English-French army, otherwise the fate of Tbilisi would be decided. Therefore, instead of reminding the Armenian people of the 1915, they should recall the crushing defeat of Georgian forces in Armenia in December of 1918 and consider who and in what circumstances stopped the entry of the Armenian forces to half-deserted Tbilisi. But it is not only the Georgian rabble that matters but also the permissiveness that rages in Javakhk and Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's statement that "we are bringing control now which means that there may be clashes at a certain stage." This obviously provocative statement can be conditioned by criticism in the Western, particularly American, press of Saakashvili. The Georgian President seems to fail to remove the West's dissatisfaction, and he, following Ilham Aliyev, tries to pin hopes on Turkey well aware that Turkey yearns to see Armenian-Georgian relations aggravated. Otherwise, Davit Rstakian, head of Virk NGO of Akhalkalak, would not see Georgian special services behind the leaflet case. By Hakob Chakrian

UK PREPARES REPLY FOR TURKEY'S BLUE BOOK LETTER ARMINFO News Agency October 18, 2005 YEREVAN, OCTOBER 18. ARMINFO. The British House of Lords is preparing a reply for the letter about the "Blue Book" sent by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Republican People's Party (CHP) to the British Parliament, reports Zaman (Turkey). The British answer claims that the "Blue Book", which deals with the Armenian genocide, is reliable. British Parliament Human Rights Group Co-Chair Lord Avebury said that the Turkish Parliament was not informed sufficiently about the issue. Therefore, he offered that British and Turkish deputies should hold a joint meeting with academicians. The answer defends that "Blue Book" nourishes from sufficient sources. "One point, which is not taken into consideration in the letter, is the fact that documents supporting the book can be easily accessed. On the contrary to what the letter claims, Arnold Toynbee did not say that the "Blue Book" is inaccurate," it was told. The Blue Book was written by the British historian Arnold Toynbee and was published with the approval of the House of Commons in 1916. Turkey wants the UK to accept that the book is not telling the truth and apologize to Ankara.

BUCKLEY: WELLESLEY WOMAN IMPRISONED IN ARMENIAN GENOCIDE By James J. Buckley / Local Columnist MetroWest Daily News, MA Oct 19 2005 Modern-day Turkey's efforts to join the European Union (EU) is being opposed by humanitarians throughout the world. They repeatedly cite the genocide perpetrated by the Turks between 1915 and 1923 as sufficient reason to deny Turkey membership. The Turks claim nothing out of the ordinary happened to Armenians during those years. However, the events surrounding the capture of a young Wellesley woman clearly shows that something quite out of the ordinary was indeed occurring in that part of the world in 1920. Some historians have suggested that if the world had reacted negatively toward Turkey's actions in Armenia in 1915, Hitler would not have concluded he could get away with the genocide of Jews during World War II. And in fact Hitler did cite the lack of any worldwide efforts against Turkey in the years 1915-1923 as proof that he could get away with exterminating Jews without any significant backlash. All this implies that nations such as the U.S. did nothing for the Armenians during those years. But such an implication is not completely valid. The U.S. took a number of steps to help -- one of those steps involved Miss Marion Peabody of Arlington Road, Wellesley Hills. The Near East Relief (NER) was organized with congressional approval and with the ardent support of President Woodrow Wilson. Its job was to coordinate all relief efforts and fundraising activities throughout the U.S. in order to save "the starving Armenians." In time, millions were raised and filtered through the U.S. Embassy in Constantinople that in turn handed the funds over to missionaries who delivered the money and goods to Armenians. Needless to say, the Turks were not happy with this arrangement, even though it was abundantly clear that the U.S. was making every effort to help the Armenians without antagonizing the Turkish government. But the Turks wanted no aid to reach the Armenians who were unwilling subjects of the Ottoman Empire. Some Turks set out to make life as miserable as possible for the missionaries and NER workers who were charged with distributing the funds and goods. As a result, in 1920, 20 workers associated with the NER and working in the Black Sea port of Samsoun were detained by a group calling themselves Turkish Nationalists. The press at that time had virtually none of the abundance of resources available to it today. But even so, the news media of that time was somehow able to uncover this incident and highlight it in their news reports. This forced the NER to confirm that the workers were being detained, but it stressed that they were in no danger. But subsequently it was learned that two weeks before the Samsoun incident, five other workers, including Colonel Coombs and Marion Peabody, had been captured by the Turks. If the leaders of NER had kept the earlier incident secret because they did not want to alarm the families of the detainees and the American people in general, they must have been dismayed when their secrecy had the opposite affect. If detaining the 20 Americans had been an isolated incident, the American people might have not become alarmed. But when they discovered that another group of Americans had been detained two weeks before, Americans saw a pattern of behavior by the Turks that was interpreted as a definite threat against their countrymen. Suddenly Colonel Coombs and, to a lesser extent Marion Peabody, became celebrities whose ominous situation became the topic of discussion throughout the nation. In order to quell the fears of the American people, the NER decided that Charles Vickery, secretary of the NER, should personally travel to Samsoun and other locations where NER personnel were in order to determine firsthand what was happening to Colonel Coombs, Marion Peabody and the other detainees. Fortunately for the workers, even though the leaders of the Turkish government stubbornly refused to admit any genocidal action against the Armenians, they nevertheless began to realize that detaining Americans was causing the American press to spotlight their activities in Armenia. Since their policy was to keep their persecution of Armenians as quiet as possible, they reluctantly decided to release the Americans. As a result, Vickery was able to announce upon his return to the U.S. that the NER workers were being released and that they had not been harmed. When Marion Peabody's brother Harry learned that Marion was no longer in custody and was on her way back to the U.S., he and his wife journeyed to New York City to await her arrival and bring her back to the safety of her home in Wellesley Hills.

TIME PRINTS FULL-PAGE LETTER TO RECTIFY TURKISH DVD FLAP TIME magazine came a step closer this week to properly address a major dispute with Armenians worldwide over its distribution of a Turkish DVD denying the Armenian Genocide. In its June 6, 2005 issue, the European edition of TIME ran a four-page ad placed by the Ankara Chamber of Commerce promoting tourism in Turkey. As part of that paid ad, the magazine included a DVD insert that had a 70-minute segment that denied and distorted the facts of the Armenian Genocide. This highly offensive material, hidden behind a couple of benign segments on tourism in the DVD, was disseminated to half a million TIME subscribers in a dozen European countries. Initially, the editors of TIME did not seem to realize the grave error they had committed by becoming accomplices to Turkish denialists. They dismissed Armenian complaints about this hateful and hurtful Turkish DVD by simply stating that TIME did "not endorse the views of any organization or government." However, when the Switzerland-Armenia Association wrote a letter threatening to sue TIME for violating a Swiss law against the denial of crimes against humanity and genocide, the magazine’s managing editor, James Kelly, wrote back stating that no one at TIME had "adequately reviewed" the offensive segment of the Turkish DVD. He apologized profusely and repeatedly to the Armenian community and to all its readers. Mr. Kelly said that the DVD presented a distorted view of history that did not meet the magazine’s "standards for fairness and accuracy." He added: "We would not have distributed [the DVD] had we been aware of the content." The Swiss-Armenian group, however, was not satisfied with this response. They wrote back pointing out that the magazine had not addressed the issue of redressing the damage caused by the malicious Turkish DVD to the descendants of the victims of the Armenian Genocide. Meanwhile, five French organizations hired an attorney in order to pursue their legal rights under French laws that call for the protection of "human dignity." Mémoire 2000, the Coordinating Council of Armenian Organizations of France (CCOAF), the Armenian National Committee of France (CDCA), J’Accuse, and the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Among Peoples (MRAP) wrote a lengthy joint letter of complaint that was published on a whole page in the October 17 issue of TIME’s European edition. The French organizations requested that TIME distribute free of charge an objective DVD on the Armenian Genocide and donate the income from the Turkish ad to non-profit organizations that advocate the truth about the Armenian Genocide. In an "Editor’s note" published along with the letter, TIME restated the apology that it had expressed earlier to the Switzerland-Armenia Association. The note added that TIME was publishing this letter "pursuant to French law (‘droit de réponse’)" [right of reply]. The ANC of France (CDCA) stated in a press release that by printing the letter and expressing its apology, TIME had partially acknowledged its error. This right of reply "is the initial result of a common and long-term initiative by the associations fighting against racism, anti-Semitism and for the defense of the memory of the Armenian people" said Harout Mardirossian, Chairman of CDCA. "If TIME magazine thinks that this right of reply settles all accounts, it is sadly mistaken. TIME magazine’s response does not redress the terrible suffering of those who saw this sordid tool of denialist propaganda. Taking into account the most heinous content of this DVD, our demands for redress go far beyond this simple right of reply and we intend to attain them," said Mardirossian. The Chairman of CDCA reiterated the demand of the five organizations for the magazine to disseminate free of charge to its European subscribers an objective DVD on the Armenian Genocide, and to have TIME donate the revenues from the Turkish ad to non-profit organizations that advocate the truth about the Armenian and all other genocides. By acknowledging its error, apologizing for it and publishing a full-page letter, TIME magazine has begun to take responsibility for the pain and suffering it has caused to Armenians worldwide. TIME’s executives and the representatives of French and Swiss organizations now have to sit down together and consider the proper ways to undo the damage caused by the Turkish DVD. As has been suggested previously, one such way would be for TIME to disseminate to its readers an accurate DVD on the Armenian Genocide. Another possible step would be for the magazine to donate the revenues from the Turkish DVD to non-profit organizations. It would be wrong for TIME to profit from tainted funds belonging to revisionists and denialists of genocide! By Harut Sassounian; Publisher, The California Courier

sorry Maral jan, I didn't mean to but it's ok...he's a big boy-he might have a gentle heart, but he also got a character of a lion.

Accepting the Past Will Set Us Free Talin Suciyan reflects on the groundbreaking Armenian conference and the liberating effect that the open discussion of this history will have for Turkey and for the Armenian diaspora. BIA News Center 10/10/2005 By Talin Suciyan (talin@bianet.org) BIA (Istanbul) - Are we able to admit the fact that after the departure of Armenians this country became barren; ideologically, artistically, politically and by every means socially? Can this society admit that we need to be able to express this issue, and that the Armenian Diaspora needs to hear it? The recent "Ottoman Armenians During The Last Period Of The Empire: Scientific Responsibility And Democracy" conference was realized as a result of great efforts, and was an event of extraordinary properties, meanings and references. Under our current conditions we are in, the importance of this event can be approached from many different angles, and people have been writing about if from every perspective. I would like to take this chance to reflect on these two days, in which many different disciplines complemented each other, while shedding light on some old questions and presenting new ones. With the vast amount of information and comments presented on this one particular period in history, this conference shook its audience and lifted a huge dead weight that was bearing on the shoulders of this issue. The questions at the beginning of this article are asked in response to Elif Safak's paper and they are very important ones related to this moment. Can we leave aside the never-ending polemics and claims--" it is genocide or not"-and "they massacred us, the numbers of victims are such and such," and look at our present situation, where Safak directs her attention? Safak, in her paper, presents an extraordinary mix of her authorial and academic identities. Her presentation on the life and works of feminist Armenian writer Zabel Yesayan was prepared with the scrutiny of an academic and the elegance of a writer of literature. She concluded it with a quotation from a novel. Safak relays to us the answer of a question which is asked of the hero of the novel: What would an Armenian survivor of the events of 1915 like to hear from the Turks ? He replied " I would like to hear that after we left, their country became barren". Safak, directing this sentence to us, continued: "Yes, after you left, our country became barren ideologically, artistically, politically and every means socially, we have the need to say this, as the Diaspora has the greater need to hear it ". In the end she presented an approach that passed beyond the Armenian Diaspora's, which dictates 'You have to recognize the genocide first; then we start talking' or the official Turkish thesis, which claims 'Genocide didn't happen, in fact they massacred us'. Safak continued; saying that today the people of Turkey, having lost their Armenian neighbors (except roughly 60 thousand people living) should acknowledge that as a result of this loss, we became lonely and barren. Today we should start mourning for this loss: "The mourning of their absence, and that which made us barren". Feelings Like Melisa Bilal said, can we integrate feelings into our social and intellectual systems without the confines of nationalism? Can we recall the feeling of times that we lived together? As she said, can people who are living in this country really understand that Armenians in Turkey were made homeless and that they are lost? Not all were necessarily made homeless by means of deportation, but as Bilal defines it, "they were uprooted from their language, religion, history at the very place they had been living, [and entered a] state of homelessness by means of estrangement. " And indeed like Hrant Dink said, having been uprooted and scattered around the world, as Bilal says, when they are constantly searching for a surname with an 'ian-yan' suffix at the back credits of every film, in reality they are searching for a piece of themselves. Today, are the people of Turkey capable of understanding all of feelings? Weight Can we rethink the phrases that entered in to our language, particularly those which carry the traces of negative historical weights? As in the example Fethiye Cetin provided, why is it that while lifting a heavy load, we say "It is heavy as an infidel's corpse." Are we able to ask ourselves the question, "Why is the corpse of an infidel is that heavy?" Paranoia and Trauma As Erol Koroglu said in his presentation 'Examples of forgetting and remembering in Turkish literature: The breaking points of silence', Armenian-ness is an identity that is constantly kept at the threshold, at at the same time we have the incapability of not being able to describe it as different as well as familiar. This gives way to an idea that makes Armenians traitors and enemies. Can we think over this idea and accept it as a social paranoia? Hrant Dink is right to say that the antidote to this paranoia is the democratization of Turkey. This process not only would cure the paranoia in Turks, it would also help heal the trauma that the Armenians live with. Amnesia Elif Safak directs our attention to writer Zabel Yesayan. When she escaped the events of 1915 and settled in Baku, she started to write her memoirs. This demonstrates her importance in preventing a social amnesia. In contrast, Etyen Mahcupyan emphasized how the State, by its constant repetition to Turkish people that they are a people whose memory is very short and that Turkey is a country that should always look to the future and not to the past, constantly creates space for communal amnesia . In response to the victim's attitude of 'not letting it to be forgotten and talking about it' the perpetrators covers themselves to an extent that they reache a point where even talking about events becomes frightful. At this point, can the victim, with the comfort to speak, help the perpetrator? Empathy As Aysegul Altinay says, Fethiye Cetin's book "My Grandmother", Takuhi Tovmasyan's book "Be Your Meals Cheerful" and Osman Koker's "Armenians In Turkey 100 Years Ago" books, follow a therapeutic approach which can lead people to create an environment where empathy can grow, opening the way to cry and laugh together. Following this approach, can we multiply these examples so that we can exercise more empathy in this direction? Defence and getting tired of being right Halil Berktay describes the mood of Turkish foreign policy: defence by means of digging a trench so deep that it became a synonym for being stuck at the bottom of the trench, and therefore foreign policy became enslaved by the trench. Temel Iskit, a former diplomat with a career of 40 years, agreed with Berktay's characterization. Iskit states that Turkish foreign policy was mortgaged by the Armenian Question, because the " power policy" that Turkey was following required an absolute obligation to be right. He added, "During 41 years of service I got tired of always being 'right'." "We won't do it" Cemil Kocak presented an interesting story on Ruseni Bey and his place in the Special Organization (Teskilat-i Mahsusa). Ruseni Bey coined a definition of nationalism that stated "Societies grow/get nurtured by eating one another." Against this outrageously nationalistic statement, is it too difficult to say 'No, we won't do it'? As Halil Berktay points out, isn't it about time that spanner needs to be thrown in the clockwork of these spine-chilling historical repetitions-- a repetition that starts with "Every Armenian is a Tashnak Guerilla" and continues as "Every Kurd is a PKK member"? Purification Berktay also told of an unfinished novel written by Omer Seyfettin between 1912-13, named "Primo Turkish Child II". Can we wake the hero of this novel from his dream? In the dream, he sees a crescent moon and a star in the sky, meanwhile he feels a wetness on his feet. This wetness is the blood of Turkish enemies-and as he walks in their blood, he notices the reflection of the moon and the star on the surface . Departing from this point, Berktay continued to say that the red colour of Turkish flag does not symbolize the blood of Turkish martyrs (as we are always told), but actually comes from the blood of our enemies. We can purify ourselves of this history of hatred and violence. We can get out of pools of blood and set out to a new journey, in which the moon and the stars won't spare their light to illuminate our road, and with the knowledge that at the end of a clear starry night, the coming day will be sunny and hopeful. Liberty "This meeting will liberate us," said former Health Minister Cevdet Aykan, who compiled the memoirs of old people he knew. As Cem Ozdemir stated, the realization of this conference will relax Europe as well as Turkey . Turkey's initiation of this talk on the "Armenian issue"--which Europe saw as a burden to Turkey's process of democratisation--will lighten this load for Europe as well as Turkey. It is time to acknowledge these loads, to recognize them, and to be liberated from them. We will feel relaxed by means of liberation from them. We passed the threshold and we are on that road now. We will continue to move forward slowly but surely. Mourning As I was talking with historian Christoph Neumann, he draw my attention to the point that during the conference there had rarely been talk of mourning--only once or twice. He said, "Why is there no talk of mourning?" ...meaning not the mourning of events 90 years ago, but the mourning of our state in the present, the mourning of our loneliness. Maybe by acknowledging our present loneliness slowly, we can go back from the present to the past and try to see more clearly how we were made so lonely in the first place? Despite all the insistences of amnesia, contrary to our state of defensiveness due to unresolved traumas, we would be able to find the path to empathy. By acknowledging the lost and deported ones, we could start to sympathize with their sensitivities. And by getting rid of our paranoia and trauma from historical burdens in our language and consciousness, could we not turn back even just for a moment to our true feelings, and mourn? To Pass the threshold, pass beyond the 'genocide' Has any threshold been passed? Surely the answer is yes. This conference has been the embodiment of that very crucial move. The conference has led us pass the threshold of Turkey's democratization progress, the threshold of scientific freedom in universities, the threshold of freedom of expression, the disappearing threshold of being unable to speak, the threshold of endless arguments about 'who massacred who' and 'is it or is it not a genocide'--and even past the thresholds of hardened, polarized and immobile identities. Today we reached a different point, because during these past two days whoever witnessed this historical event tried to understand amnesia, empathy, trauma, paranoia and what actually happened. While they examined and scrutinized all these issues with the help of many different disciplines, we mourned for our present day a little, we became purified a little, and we became little more liberated. We listened, we thought and we learned--and then we learned more, thought more, and listened more. Now, it is time for this experience to leave the confines of the building where the conference was held and spread, so even more people can rethink what they had already known and learn to listen more. Because this conference has liberated us, it provides hope that there will be many others. It is this very hope that will make our roads intersect.

"The Armenian Genocide: 1915-1923" DVD/CD-ROM - Among The First TenBest Projects In E-Education PRESS RELEASE UN Department of Public Information, Yerevan Office 2 Petros Adamyan str., First Floor Yerevan 375010, Armenia Contact: Armine Halajyan, UN DPI Information Assistant Tel.: (374 1) 560 212 Fax/Tel.: (374 1) 561 406 http://www.undpi.am "ARAM KHACHATURIAN: THE LIFE AND WORKS" HAS BEEN RECOGNIZED AS THE WORLD'S BEST E-CULTURE DVD/CD-ROM IN 2005 "THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: 1915-1923" DVD/CD-ROM - AMONG THE FIRST TEN BEST PROJECTS IN E-EDUCATION "Aram Khachaturian: The Life and Works" DVD/CD-ROM of the Armenian company "ITE" (Information Technologies Education), has been selected by the World Summit Award 2005 (www.wsis-award.org) Grand Jury as the world's best cultural CD/DVD multimedia product of 2005. Another project of the same company, the interactive CD-ROM "Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923" was recognized by the World Summit Award 2005 Grand Jury as one of top 10 products in e-learning category and was specially mentioned. Those products were selected in a five-stage process from over 20,000 candidates from 168 countries. The selection of the best products in the world included national evaluations, a 35 member Grand Jury review of over 750 nominations and a 6-day methodical judging process. The overall process meets near-scientific requirements of independent, inter-subjective judgment and of establishing the best available expert views. The success of ITE "Bazmaweb" studio proves its further significance when we consider the fact that other major projects that were chosen as the world's best five e-culture products, were the websites "Eternal Heritage of Egypt" created by IBM, "Virtual Roman Paris" created by Ministry of Culture of France, "Lakota Winter Counts" of USA Smithsonian Institution, and the Russian website about the history of the Second World War (see www.wsis-award.org/index.php?folder=297). Shortly before, in June 2005, both Armenian products won All Armenian 2005 National e-content contest "Mashtots 1600"(www.mashtots1600.am). As projects with best content, both of them will be officially announced and presented at the World Summit Award 2005 Exhibition in the framework of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) 2005 in Tunisia, from November 16 to 18. Garegin Chugaszian, president of ITE company will accept the award on November 16 at a special Gala ceremony to be attended by more than 500 VIPs from all over the world, including heads of States, leading representatives of international organizations, the private sector and civil society. The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), initiated by the United Nations and directly organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is a twofold process. The first phase has been held in Geneva from 10-12 December 2003, while the second will take place in Tunisia from 16-18 November this year. The Armenian delegation to participate in WSIS this year will be headed by the Prime Minister of Armenia Andranik Margaryan. Armenia will also have the opportunity to present its best e-content products to consumers in an individual pavilion. The second Phase of WSIS together with the awards giving ceremony of the e-contents world contest will take place in Tunisia from 16-18 November of this year. Heads of States (Presidents and Prime Ministers) and other 500 high ranking guests will participate. The World Summit Award is organized under the patronage of Austrian chancellor Wolfgang Schussel, Argentine President Nestor Carlos Kirchner and other presidents intending to observe existing worldwide electronic contents be it Internet, DVDs, or CDs. The awards have 8 nominations: e-learning; e-culture; e-science; e-government; e-health; e-business; e-environment; and e-inclusion. It is worth mentioning that, amongst 168 countries only 14 had the chance of gaining the World Summit Award twice and Armenia is one of these few counties. At the first Phase of WSIS in Geneva (2003) Armenia was awarded with the WSA 2003 in e-science for the website "A Space Weather Aerie" created by Ashot Chilingarian's Cosmic Ray Division Center (CRD) from the Institute of Physics in Yerevan. "ITE" (Information Technologies Education), and its "Bazmaweb" studio are founded in 1998, and represent software company specializing in the design and development of multimedia products (CD/DVD-ROMS), as well as knowledge management applications based on portal technologies("Armino Web Solutions"). For getting further information, both in Armenian and English, about the WSIS Armenia's participation you can visit the Summit's website: http://www.undpi.am/wsis which has been prepared by the "Information Technologies Foundation" (ITF) with the assistance of UN Resident Coordinator and UN Department of Public Information in Yerevan.

PRESS RELEASE Armenian National Committee Eastern United States P.O. Box 1066 New York, NY 10040 Contact: Doug Geogerian Tel: 917 428 1918 Fax: 718 651 3637 E-mail: ancaer@anca.org Web: http://www.anca.org/ Time Apologizes and Prints Letter Condemnding DVD Denying Armenian Genocide Time Magazine European Edition printed a full-page letter in its October 17, 2005 edition, decrying the magazine~Rs inclusion of a DVD that included a documentary, which denied the Armenian Genocide. The letter was written by Bernard Jouanneau, the President of Memory 2000, which is described as ~Srepresentatives of . . .French organizations whose aim is to fight against racism, anti-Semitism and for the memory of the Armenian Genocide.~T Mr. Jouanneau is a leading lawyer and activist defending against anti-defamation concerning the denial of the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide. Directly following Mr. Jouanneau~Rs letter, Time~Rs editors expressed regret for the offense caused by distributing the DVD. ~SThe so-called documentary portion of the DVD presents a one-sided view of history that does not meet our standards for fairness and accuracy, and we would not have distributed it had we been aware of its content,~T said the editors. Claiming that the DVD was not adequately reviewed, the editors announced a change in their review process to avoid such future incidents. They conclude by apologizing to the Armenian community. In his letter, Mr. Jouanneau asserts the magazine~Rs responsibility regardless of whether or not the Turkish Chamber of Commerce misled them. He says redress for distributing the DVD to 500,000 house holds across twelve European countries should include 1) disclosure of officials standards used by Time when considering the inclusion of an ad and whether a similar DVD denying the Holocaust would have been acceptable, 2) free distribution of a ~SDVD prepared by the European Armenian Federation for Justice and Democracy (EAFJD) regarding the history and modern-day consequences of the Armenian Genocide,~T and 3) a donation from the revenue earned from the Turkish advertisement to a nonprofit organization dedicated to informing the public about the truth of the Armenian genocide and other genocides. The letter describes in detail many of the ~Slies, racial defamation, personal defamation and historical mistakes in this DVD, which contains all the techniques of disinformation and propaganda.~T Jouanneau points out footage of Justin McCarthy, a known revisionist of the Armenian Genocide, who says that the survival of some Armenians proves that a genocide did not take place. The letter strongly objected to the characterization of all Armenians as terrorists and accusations that Armenians collaborated with the Nazis to exterminate the Jews. Mr. Jouanneau criticizes Time~Rs editors for contributing to Turkey~Rs campaign to deny the Armenian Genocide. In doing so, Jouanneau condemns Time for aiding Turkey~Rs precedent of having committed a genocide with impunity. ~STIME magazine has helped embolden future perpetrators of genocide with the knowledge that their crimes can be committed without consequence,~T said Jouanneau.

MosJan, he is also shy -and he even turns red...(yes, Stepan is shy...)...:)something you don't get to see on TV

AZG Alghuli-Another Blemish on Azeris' Conscience In September of the current year "Alghuli" Association applied to the authorities of Nagorno Artsax to officially mark the 100th anniversary of 1905-1906 events. The government elaborated a corresponding project in response. Following the government's decision, last week a rally was held and a temporary monument was erected in Alghuli village to be replaced soon by another one to immortalize the memory of the perished Alghuli residents. A scientific workshop with the participation of eminent scholars and descendents of Kashatagh residents on October 15 was held as a continuation of arrangements. All reports made at the workshop dealt with the historic past of Kashatagh from Middle Ages to early 1900s, the events of 1905-1920 -- the period when the region was finally deprived of Armenian population. Another group of reports dealt with the policy of eliminating of Armenians in Kashatagh. The participants tried to find answers to a number of questions concerning the history of Kashatagh-Aghahechk region. They alluded to diverse Armenian, Georgian and Russian sources indicating that Kashatagh used to be an Armenian land whose ethnic population - the Armenians - had to immigrate to survive. The reports claimed that the former authorities destroyed monuments and changed Armenian names of settlements to appropriate the region. The word "Lachin" was said to be the Azeri contraction of Aghahechk-Lahechk name. The scholars were unanimous in one thing: there can be no return of territories liberated in 1992 as it will mean weakening Armenia's and Artsakh's defense. By Kim Gabrielian

JUSTICE NEEDED FOR ARMENIAN GENOCIDE Mona Karaguozian The SunDial - Daily Sundial, CA (California State Univ. at Northridge) Oct 18 2005 Daily Sundial October 17, 2005 According to Merriam Webster's dictionary, the term genocide is defined as the "deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political or cultural group." In April 1915, during World War I, the Ottoman Empire began systematically annihilating Armenians, by first ridding the intellectuals, men, elderly, women and then children in the Eastern Anatolia and Western Armenia region, in what should be known as the first genocide of the 20th century. The Turkish government has continuously refused to accept responsibility for the atrocities that have taken place, and it also refuses to acknowledge the existence of this "alleged" genocide. The Turkish government makes claims now that the Armenians who were killed during that period died as wartime casualties and that many Turks were killed as well. This is false because only the Armenians that were living in that region in Turkey were being "relocated" for safety. Why weren't the other residents of that region being relocated? It was a deliberate destruction of a specific group of people. Who alleges the massacres of 1.5 million people? How could the destruction of a substantially large number of people be alleged? The evidence is in the death toll. There are also photographs, hundreds of chronicles from American newspapers and documentation depicting the massacres as they were taking place not to mention countless horror stories passed down generations. The issue of the Armenian genocide is less than ten years shy of being a century- long struggle for recognition. Ninety years might seem like ages ago, but I, as an American born Armenian, still feel the effects of the massacres. My grandfather was a survivor of the genocide. I hold knowledge of eyewitness accounts and experiences of the genocide that were passed down through him. It pains me to be a third generation Armenian after the genocide and to see that the struggle for recognition continues to this day. There are numerous advocacy groups, such as the Armenian National Committee of America and the Armenian Assembly that are seeking justice on behalf of the Armenian people. These activists dedicate their time and effort to spread awareness of the genocide and to gain recognition for its occurrence. In a letter sent to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Oct. 5, ANCA Chairman Ken Hachikian voiced the profound moral outrage of Armenians over the Bush administration's ongoing complicity in Turkey's campaign of genocide denial. Turkey has also been trying to gain admission into the European Union, yet they continue running into complications. European Union foreign ministers have attempted to agree on terms for Turkish membership, but many countries, like Austria, have refused to agree on full membership. They are only willing to offer Turkey a "privileged partnership" with the EU until such claims as the Armenian genocide have been resolved. If the EU is unable to agree on terms with the Turkish government, there must be a reason. For being just an "alleged" claim, the Armenian genocide is a substantial cause for concern among many European countries. This is not the first attempt by Armenian-Americans to gain a political voice regarding this issue. Many bills have been presented to Congress, each of which would have been instrumental toward the fight for justice, but none have been passed yet. Instead, all these bills have been shot down. Armenian activists have also organized many public events, such as marches, protests, vigils and pickets at the Turkish embassy in Los Angeles as well as all over the world. Throughout the years, these activities have gained some local media exposure. None, however, have had a national effect on legislation. Many of the local media outlets are familiar with the commemoration of April 24 due to the heavily concentrated Armenian community Los Angeles, but the voice is barely heard. As the years pass the story gets old and people begin to forget. This is the goal of the denial. This situation may change with another attempt to pass legislation. On Sept. 15, after nearly three hours of debate, the House International Relations Committee, voted overwhelmingly in favor of two measures calling for proper U.S. recognition of the Armenian Genocide (H.Res.316 and H.Con.Res.195) and urging Turkey to end its decades-long denial of this crime against humanity. The Senate should finish the work started by the House and call for recognition of the Armenian genocide. Only with the support of the United Sates will the movement to have the Turkish government recognize the past crimes of the Ottoman Empire succeed. Justice needs to be served and not withheld because of politics. Mona Karaguozian can be reached at ane@sundial.csun.edu.

Hey Phantom, You sound a kind who like to slander people and exercise censhorship. In fact, you sound the kind who blame Hrant Dink for supposedly insulting the turkish identity-turkishness...the kind who blame Orhan Pamuk for spreading hate...and force scholars to cancel a conference. Yair Auron himself is a jew and a respected scholar. With or without your approval, the fact must and will be recorded...you like it or not, the truth must and will be told. In case you forgot, in this section of the site we talk about genocide-genocides...which in fact, is a crime against humanity. We we don't learn from the past-another Hitler will say it again "Who remebers the Armenians, after all."

Zionism & The Armenian Genocide By Yair Auron …We hope that this research will raise questions and contribute to the public debate on these issues. There are at least two precedents for the reactions in the Yishuv to The horrible atrocities committed against the Armenians during the First World War. The first is in reference to actions taken by Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism and ‘prophet’ of the modern Jewish State. The well-known Jewish thinker, Hannah Arendt, published an article in July 1942, entitled “Herzl and Lazare” …It seems that the differences between Herzl and Lazare of which Arendt speaks- while revealing overt enthusiasm for the latter-where strongest and most interesting in relation to the Armenians. Herzl was involved in a number of ways in Armenian affairs because of his contracts with the Turkish Sultan. The immediate cause of dissension between Lazare and Herzl on the Armenian question was the appearance of a public expression of admiration for the Turkish Sultan issued by the Fifth Zionist Congress, held in Basle in the final days of December 1901. Herzl reported to the Congress on his meeting with the Sultan several months earlier: “In May of this year I had the honor to be received in a rather lengthy audience by His Majesty, the Sultan Abd al-Hamid II. The kindliness and cordiality of the reception were such as to justify the highest hopes. The attitude and language of His Majesty gave me the feeling that the Jewish people has a friend and protector in the ruling Khalif. The Sultan has authorized me to make this statement. Let the Jews of the world hear it, let them understand what prospects this fact open for them, and may they finally be ready for action which will mean self-help for them and a contribution to the new blossoming of the Turkish Empire.” At Herzl’s initiative, the Fifth Zionist Congress sent public greetings of admiration to the Sultan in order to create sympathy for Turkey. The telegram contains an ‘expression of dedication and gratitude which all of the Jews feel regarding the benevolence which His Highness the Sultan has always shown them.’ Earlier, as mentioned, Herzl had praised the Sultan in his opening address to the Congress. Bernard Lazare was incensed at these matters. Lazare was a member of Zionist Executive Committee but resigned after only a few months. In a letter to Herzl on March 24, 1898, he writes that the leadership of the Zionist movement ‘tries to direct the Jewish masses as if they were an ignorant child…that is a concept radically apposed to all of my political and social opinions, and I cannot, therefore, assume responsibility for it.” Lazare published “The Zionist Congress and the Sultan,’ an article critical of Herzl, in the Armenian journal, Pro Armenia, which appeared in Paris from 1901 to 1908. “The Zionist Congress which gathered in Basle paid honor to the Sultan Abd al-Hamid II. The delegates, or those who present themselves as such, of the most ancient of all oppressed people whose history has been written in blood, have sent their blessing to the worst of murderers. Not a single protest was heard at this conference [the Congress]. Not a man could be found who would say to the leaders, blinded like a herd, ‘You have not the right to shame your people.’ Not a man will take responsibility for this mistake, for this miserable error, which the members of the Congress in Basle have taken upon themselves and their emissaries.” Herzl writes in his diary on January 23, 1902, “In the Paris propaganda sheet Pro-Armenia Bernard Lazare has published a mean, malicious article against me, on the occasion of the exchange of Congress telegram with the Sultan. …What interest can he possibly have, apart from the nice gesture in defending the Armenians? “ Criticism of the Congress’ decision was heard in other quarters as well. The editorial board of Pro-Armenia, which published Lazare’s article…’[the paper] also published the protest of Armenian students…It is not clear Herzl’s words what saddened him ans what angered him. He adds one cynical sentence with practical implications: “However, this [the protest of the students] will probably do me good with the Sultan.” There is no doubt that Herzl knew of the Armenian problem, which occupied public opinion and European diplomacy in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Did Herzl wish(and if so, to what extent) to make us of the Armenian problem which burdened the Turkish Sultan, in order to promote his Zionist goals? It appears that Herzl did indeed try to make use of it, as a proponent of the Sultan rather than the Armenians, whether as an intermediary or helping the Sultan in his battle over public opinion. In May 1896, Herzl’s attention was focused on crating ties with the Sultan at the earliest possible opportunity. Herzl had two political advisors at that time…One of them Hechler,…The other, Philip Michael, a knight of the House of Nevlinsky… Nevlinsky, a diplomatic agent and journalist with widespread connection in the ruling circles of Constantinople, was allegedly sent by the Sultan on a secret mission to the Armenian committees in Brussels, Paris, and London, to persuade them to submit to the Sultan…Nevlinsky proposed that Herzl enlist the aid of the Jews in negotiation with the Armenians. “In return, he will tell the Sultan that the Jewish influence had rendered him this service.” Herzl’s reaction to the proposal: “The idea immediately struck me as excellent, but I told him that we shall not give our aid away free, i.e., give it only in return for positive counter-services to the Jewish cause.” The connection between efforts to mediate with the Armenians and the Zionist cause was clear. Herzl writes to Max Nordau about the planned mediation efforts regarding the Armenians, and asks for his quick response. Nordau, a noted doctor and Jewish writer in Paris, was on of Herzl’s earliest and closest colleagues and the spokesman of the Zionist movement at its congresses. Nordau was a close friend and a loyal colleague of Herzl and Herzl revealed to him the details of his plan: “If we help him in this he will be very grateful” Herzl assumed that the English could benefit from his efforts and he, in return, would benefit from the English. “I have quick, good access to Salisbury[Lord Robert Salisbury, British Prime Minster at the time]. He can effortlessly achieve a respectable diplomatic success if he supports the principle of compromise, or, one might say, if he pushes the Armenians to it. It is possible that the relations between England and Turkey may thus be improved. Salisbury will play le beau role in the eyes of Europe, while Sultan will nevertheless not be see as on who has given in to pressure. We must also try to influence the newspapers, especially the English and French. We must prepare public opinion for the surrender of the Armenians, and afterwards, for the magnanimity of the Sultan.” Herzl says that the Armenian committees in Paris, London, and Brussels must be convinced to go along. He asks Nordau to consult with his advisors in Paris regarding the best way to accomplish this “In particular, the committees must be advised that we, the Jews, are interested in this. In any event, it must not become known that we wish to use them in order to establish an independent State of the Jews, lest they also try to use this opportunity to do the same thing, thus adding to our difficulties. At most they should be allowed to know that we wish to have the prohibition against entry into Palestine cancelled. If(at worst) it is necessary to give them a reason for our intervention. “ In the course of the following months, Herzl reported to Nevlinsky several times o this activity on the Armenian matter. He spent twelve days in Constantinople at the end of June 1896, meeting with high ranking officials, including the Grand Vizier, but did not meet with the Sultan. The question of the Armenians came up in this discussion, and Herzl was asked to show his ‘good will,’ and demonstrate his authority, by agreeing to soften the critical attitude of the European press toward Abd al-Hamid II because of his treatment of the Armenians. He was also asked to persuade the Armenian leaders in exile to accept the Sultan’s authority, in return for unspecified concessions. In his journal entry for June 22, 1896, Herzl describes his conversation with Nevlinsky who had told him about the latter’s discussion with the Sultan the day before, regarding the Sultan’s refusal to receive Herzl. “…On the other hand, he is willing to receive me for an audience as a friend-after I do him a favor. And this is the service he demand of me: that I prevent upon the newspapers of Europe(in London, Paris, Barlin and Vienna), to present the Armenian question in a fashion friendly to Turkey, …” And Nevlinsky nurtured Herzl’s hopes. According to Herzl’s diary, written the day after the visit, Nevlinsky told him, “if you succeed in pacifying the Armenians, to arrange a loan of two million pounds for the lighthouses and if we obtain a letter from Bismarck [wich supports the transfer of Palestine to the Jews]-we will bring the matter to a conclusion within eight days.” From Herzl’s point of view it was felicitous that Turkey was in trouble. The worse Turkey’s situation become, the better it would be for the Zionist cause. Turkey would need assistance, and would therefore agree to Herzl’s requests, in return for the help it so desperately needed. Herzl, who has not made quick strides, consoles himself in his diary with the hope that it may be best to wait until the situation deteriorates. As a result of the disturbances and increasing severity of the attacks against the Armenians, which has continued with ups and downs for the better part of two years, since 1894, there was real concern for the future of the Sultan. “From London comes the news that the Powers are giving some thought to deposing Abd al-Hamid II. If this comes about, the Zionist idea will be dead for a long time to come. A new Sultan will find money and won’t need this combination.” Herzl feared that replacement of the Sultan would skewer his plans. The status of a new Sultan in world opinion would be different from that of the present “Red Sultan,” who was identified with the murder of Armenians. Herzl attempted to rouse public action to support the Sultan despite the worsening of the atrocities against the Armenians. He turned to Jacob de Haas, the editor of the weekly Jewish World from 1892-1900, one of Herzl’s first supporters in England, and later one of the organizers of the Zionist Organization in the United States: “This will be a disaster for us if the Sultan is deposed now. Could you therefore write something in the World?” And, indeed, it appears that de Hans made an effort so that the British press would not give wide coverage of the Armenian massacre. Other great powers, for their own reasons, and because of the rivalry between them preferred a weak ruler in Turkey who could be manipulated. Herzl was in favor of preserving the wholeness of the Ottoman Empire, in which framework he hoped the Zionist movement could achieve its goals. The Sultan’s weakness was an advantage for Herzl: “The financial situation of Turkey is so dire that it can be improved only by the wealth of Jews.” THE NEWPAPER HED HAZMAN AND THE ARMENIANS, 1908-1909 The position expressed in Yaakov Rabionvitch’s article are not exceptional among the articles and items which appear in the newspapers, Had Hazman (Echo of the Time), during the years 1908-1909. Subsequent to Rabionovitch’s article, we examine issues of Hed Hazman during the stormy years in Constantinople, at the time of the Young Turks’(600 of them + Ataturk were Jews from Saloniki) revolution, and afterwards during the failed conterrevoltion. During the riots in Constantinople, even before events were clear, Hed Hazman took a firm stand in support of the Young Turks. The Sultan, Abd al-Hamid, is depicted in the article as “a treacherous fox known for his brutality, whose hands are stained with the blood of the Armenians.” The paper is hopeful that the Sultan will be deposed: “The victory of the Young Turks is not only a victory for humanity, justice and integrity, it is a victory of Zionism as well.” The article concludes, “Only with the victory of freedom will the Zionist victory come…” Did the Jews of Constantinople Take Part in the Slaughter of the Armenians in 1895 and 1896? Both the Jews and the Armenians were religious-ethnic minorities in the Ottoman Empire. This fact sometimes caused a certain tension between them…Between the Jews and the Armenians tensions were also liable to develop over questions of economic competition. The Armenians and the Jews in the cities filled certain economic roles in commerce, artisanship, administration, and the free professions. Tension was also possible on religious grounds between Jews and Christians, including Armenians. Rabbi Chaim Nachum, the Chief Rabbi of Turkish Jewry for many years and a supporter of the Sultan, reported in 1908 to the president of the “Kol Yisrael Chaverim” Association about ‘an important visit’ in his words, which he made to the former Armenian Patriarch, who had lived in exile for twelve years and had recently returned to Constantinople “He had occupied this position at the time of the massacre of the Armenians, when marginal elements among the Jews in Haskoy[a Jewish Quarter in Constantinople where many Armenians also lived] played a shameful part in helping the Kurds to search out the hiding places of victims…”

The Independent, UK. 31 August 2002 by Robert Fisk In the years that followed the Second World War, Lord Beaverbrook's old Sunday Express would regale its readers with the secret history of the 1939-45 conflict: "What Hitler would have done if England was under Nazi occupation"; "How Ike almost cancelled D-Day"; "Churchill's plans for using gas on Nazi invaders." Often though not always the stories were true. After war come the facts. It's not so long ago, after all, that we discovered that Nato's mighty 1999 blitz on Serbia's army netted a total of just 10 tanks. But it took Eric Lowe of Hayling Island in Hampshire to remind me of the inversion of history, the way in which historically proven facts, clearly established, come to be questioned decades later or even deleted from the record for reasons of political or moral weakness. Eric runs a magazine called Palestine Scrapbook, a journal for the old British soldiers who fought in Palestine against both Arabs and Jews until the ignominious collapse of the British mandate in 1948. In Mr Lowe's magazine, there are personal memories of the bombing of British headquarters at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem a "terrorist" bombing, of course, except that it was carried out by a man who was later to become Prime Minister of Israel, Menachem Begin. Dennis Shelton of the King's Royal Rifle Corps writes a letter, recalling an Arab attack on a British Army lorry in Gaza. "We opened up on them, the ones who could still run away. We found two [british] army bods under the wagon, both badly wounded. I went in the ambulance with them to Rafah hospital. I was holding the side of one's head to keep his brains in. I often wondered if indeed they recovered." Mr Lowe has asked for information about the soldier whom Dennis Shelton tried to save. But he's probably wasting his time, because the British Army's first post-World War Two war the 1945-48 conflict in Palestine has been "disappeared", sidelined as something that no one wants to remember. According to Mr Lowe, many of the British campaign medals for Palestine were never issued. Dennis Peck, of the Sherwood Foresters, only realised he'd been awarded one in 1998. Until two years ago, the campaign was never mentioned at the Armistice parade in London. There's not even a definitive figure for the British troops who died around 400 were killed or died of wounds. And it took over 50 years for British veterans to get a memorial for the dead: in the end, the veterans had to pay for it from their own pockets. But in the late Forties, all Britain was seized by the war in Palestine. When Jewish gunmen hanged two British sergeants, booby-trapping their bodies into the bargain, Britons were outraged. The British, it must be added, had just hanged Jewish militants in Palestine. But now nothing. Our dead soldiers in Palestine, far from being remembered at the going down of the sun, are largely not remembered at all. So who are we frightened of here? The Arabs? The Israelis? And isn't this just a small example of the suppression of historical truth which continues over the 20th century's first holocaust? I raise this question because of a recent and deeply offensive article by Stephen Kinzer of The New York Times. Back in 1915, his paper then an honourable journal of record broke one of the great and most terrible stories of the First World War: the planned slaughter of 1.5 million Christian Armenians by the Turkish Ottoman government. The paper's headlines, based in many cases on US diplomats in Turkey, alerted the world to this genocide. By 16 September, a New York Times correspondent had spoken of "a campaign of extermination, involving the murdering of 800,000 to 1,000,000 persons". It was all true. Save for the Turkish government, a few American academics holding professorships funded by Turkey and the shameful denials of the Israeli government, there is today not a soul who doubts the nature or the extent of this genocide. Even in the 1920s, Winston Churchill himself called it a "holocaust". But not Mr Kinzer. Over the course of the past few years, he's done everything he can to destroy the integrity of his paper's brilliant, horrifying, exclusive reports of 1915. Constantly recalling Turkey's fraudulent claim that the Armenians died in the civil unrest in Asia Minor at the time, he has referred to the genocide as "ethnic cleansing" and treated the figure of 1.5 million dead as a claim something he would surely never do in reference to the 6 million Jews later murdered by the Nazis. Recently, Mr Kinzer has written about the new Armenian Genocide museum in Washington, commenting artfully that there's "a growing recognition by advocacy groups that museums can be powerful tools to advance political causes". In other words, unlike the Jewish Holocaust museum and the Jewish Holocaust itself, which would never be used by Israel to silence criticism of its cruel behaviour in the occupied territories there might be something a bit dodgy about the Armenian version. Then comes the killer. "Washington already has one major institution, the United States Holocaust Museum, that documents an effort to destroy an entire people," Mr Kinzer wrote. "The story it presents is beyond dispute. But the events of 1915 are still a matter of intense debate." Are they hell, Mr Kinzer. But why should we be surprised at this classic piece of historical revisionism? Israel's own ambassador to present-day Armenia, Rivka Cohen, has been peddling more or less the same rubbish, refusing to draw any parallels with the Jewish Holocaust and describing the Armenian Holocaust as a mere "tragedy". She is, in fact, following the official Israeli Foreign Office line that "this [Armenian Holocaust] should not be described as genocide".Israel's top Holocaust scholar, Israel Charney, has most courageously campaigned against those who lie about the Armenian genocide I advise readers to buy his stunning Encyclopaedia of Genocide and he has been joined by many other Jewish scholars. But with Turkey's alliance with Israel, its membership of Nato, its possible EU entry, and its massive arms purchases from the United States, the growing power of its well-paid lobby groups has smothered even their efforts. Which raises one last question. Armenian academics have been investigating the identity of those young German officers who were training the Ottoman army in 1915 and who in some cases actually witnessed the Armenian Holocaust whose victims were, in some cases, transported to their deaths in railway cattle-cars. Several of those German soldiers' names, it now transpires, crop up again just over a quarter of a century later as senior Wehrmacht officers in Russia, helping Hitler to carry out the Jewish Holocaust. Even the dimmest of us might think there was a frightening connection here. But not, I guess, Mr Kinzer. Nor the modern-day New York Times, which is so keen to trash its own historic exclusives for fear of what Turkey or Israel might say. Personally, I'd call it all a form of Holocaust denial. And I know what Eric Lowe would call it: cowardice under fire.

The Independent (London) August 5, 2000, Saturday by Robert Fisk In the spring of 1993, with my car keys, I slowly unearthed a set of skulls from the clay wall of a hill in northern Syria. I had been looking for the evidence of a mass murder - the world's first genocide - for the previous two days but it took a 101-year-old Armenian woman to locate the river bed where her family were murdered in the First World War. The more I dug into the hillside next to the Habur river, the more skulls slid from the earth, bright white at first then, gradually, collapsing into paste as the cold, wet air reached the calcium for the first time since their mass murder. The teeth were unblemished - these were mostly young people - and the bones I later found stretched behind them were strong. Backbones, femurs, joints, a few of them laced with the remains of some kind of cord. There were dozens of skeletons here. The more I dug away with my car keys, the more eye sockets peered at me out of the clay. It was a place of horror. In 1915, the world reacted with equal horror as news emerged from the dying Ottoman Empire of the deliberate destruction of at least a million and a half Christian Armenians. Their fate - the ethnic cleansing of this ancient race from the lands of Turkey, the razing of their towns and churches, the mass slaughter of their menfolk, the massacre of their women and children - was denounced in Paris, London and Washington as a war crime. Tens of thousands of Armenian women - often after mass rape by their Turkish guards - were left to die of starvation with their children along the banks of the Habur river near Deir ez-Zour, in what is today northern Syria. The few men who survived were tied together and thrown into the river. Turkish gendarmes would fire a bullet into one of them and his body would drag the rest to their deaths. Their skulls - a few of them - were among the bones I unearthed on that terrible afternoon seven years ago. The deliberate nature of this slaughter was admitted by the then Turkish leader, Enver *****, in a conversation with Henry Morgenthau, the US ambassador in Constantinople, a Jewish-American diplomat whose vivid reports to Washington in 1915 form an indictment of the greatest war crime the modern world had ever known. Enver denounced the Armenians for siding with Russia in its war with the Turks. But even the Germans, Ottoman Turkey's ally in the First World War, condemned the atrocities; for it was the Armenian civilian population which was cut down by the Turks. The historian Arnold Toynbee, who worked for the Foreign Office during the war, was to record the "atmosphere of horror" which lay over the abandoned Armenian lands in the aftermath of the savagery. Men had been lined up on bridges to have their throats cut and be thrown into rivers; in orchards and fields, women and children had been knifed. Armenians had been shot by the thousand, sometimes beaten to death with clubs. Earlier Turkish pogroms against the Armenians of Asia Minor had been denounced by Lord Gladstone. In the aftermath of the 1914-18 war, Winston Churchill was the most eloquent in reminding the world of the Armenian Holocaust. "In 1915 the Turkish Government began and ruthlessly carried out the infamous general massacre and deportation of Armenians in Asia Minor," Churchill wrote in his magisterial volume four of The Great War. "... the clearance of the race from Asia Minor was about as complete as such an act, on a scale so great, could well be ... There is no reasonable doubt that this crime was planned and executed for political reasons." Churchill referred to the Turks as "war criminals" and wrote of their "massacring uncounted thousands of helpless Armenians - men, women and children together; whole districts blotted out in one administrative holocaust - these were beyond human redress." So Churchill himself, writing 80 years ago, used the word "holocaust" about the Armenian massacres. I am not surprised. A few miles north of the site where I had dug up those skulls, I found a complex of underground caves beneath the Syrian desert. Thousands of Armenians had been driven into this subterranean world in 1915 and Turkish gendarmes lit bonfires at the mouths of the caves. The smoke was blown into the caves and the men were asphyxiated. The caves were the world's first gas chambers. No wonder, then, that Hitler is recorded as asking his generals - as he planned his own numerically far more terrible holocaust - "Who does now remember the Armenians?" Could such a crime be denied? Could such an act of mass wickedness be covered up? Or could it, as Hitler suggested, be forgotten? Could the world's first holocaust - a painful irony, this - be half-acknowledged but downgraded in the list of human bestiality as the dreadful 20th century produced further acts of mass barbarity? Alas, all this has come to pass. When I wrote about the Armenian massacres in The Independent in 1993, the Turks denounced my article - as they have countless books and investigations before and since - as a lie. Turkish readers wrote to the editor to demand my dismissal from the paper. If Armenian civilians had been killed, they wrote, this was a result of the anarchy that existed in Ottoman Turkey in the First World War, civil chaos in which countless Turks had died and in which Armenian paramilitaries had deliberately taken the side of Tsarist Russia. The evidence of European commissions into the massacres, the eye-witness accounts of Western journalists at the later slaughter of Armenians at Smyrna - the present-day holiday resort of Izmir where British sunbathers today have no idea of the bloodbath that took place around their beaches - the denunciations of Morgenthau and Churchill, are all dismissed as propaganda. When a Holocaust conference was to be held in Israel, the Turkish government objected to the inclusion of material on the Armenian slaughter. Incredibly, Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel withdrew from the conference after the Israeli foreign ministry said that it might damage Israeli-Turkish relations. The conference went ahead, but only in miniature form. In the United States, Turkey's powerful lobby groups attack journalists or academics who suggest the Armenian genocide was fact. Turkish ambassadors regularly write letters - which have appeared in all British newspapers, even in the Israeli press - denying the truth of the Armenian Holocaust. No one - save the Armenians - objects to this denial. Scarcely a whimper comes from those who would, rightly, condemn any denial of the Jewish Holocaust. For Turkey - no longer the "sick man of Europe" - is courted by the Western powers which so angrily condemned its cruelty in the last century. It is a valued member of the Nato alliance - our ally in bombing Serbia last year - the closest regional ally of Israel and a major buyer of US and French weaponry. Just as we remained largely silent at the persecution of the Kurds, so we prefer to ignore the world's first holocaust. While Britain's massive contribution to the proposed Euphrates dam project in south-eastern Turkey was in the balance, Tony Blair was not going to mention the Armenian atrocities. Indeed, when this year he announced that Britain was to honour an annual Holocaust Day, he made no mention of the Armenians. Holocaust Day, it seems, was to be a Jewish-only affair. And it was to take a capital "H" when it applied to the Jews. I've always agreed with this. Mass ethnic slaughter on such a scale - Hitler's murder of six million Jews - deserves a capital "H". But I also believe that the genocide of other races merits a capital "H". Millions of Jews - despite Wiesel's gutlessness and the shameful reaction of the Israeli government - have shown common cause with the Armenians in their suffering, acknowledging the 1915 massacres as the precursor of the "Shoah" or Jewish Holocaust. Norman Finkelstein in his angry new book on the "Holocaust industry" makes a similar point, adding that the Jewish experience - both his parents were extermination camp survivors - should not be allowed to diminish the genocide committed against other ethnic groups in modern history. Indeed, the very word "genocide" was invented for the Armenians in 1944 - by a Polish-born Jew, Raphael Lemkin. Nor can I myself forget the Armenian Holocaust. The very last survivors of that genocide are still - just - alive, and several of them live in Beirut where I am based as Middle East correspondent of The Independent. I have read extensively about and, occasionally, researched the Jewish Holocaust - my own book about the Lebanese war, Pity the Nation, begins in Auschwitz, where I found frozen lakes filled with the powdered bones of the dead from the ashpits of Birkenau. But the Armenian Holocaust has been "my" story because it is part of the Middle East's history as well as the world's. Only this year, I interviewed Hartun, a 101-year-old blind Armenian in an old people's home in East Beirut who remembered how, in the Syrian desert in 1915, his mother pleaded with Turks not to rape her 18-year-old daughter - Hartun's sister. "As she begged them not to take my sister, they beat her to death," Hartun recalled. "I remember her dying, shouting 'Hartun, Hartun, Hartun' over and over. When she was dead, they took my sister away on a horse. I never saw her again." Hartun - after years of bitterness and longing for revenge - was overcome with what he called "my Christian belief" and decided to abandon the notion of vengeance. "When the Turkish earthquake killed so many people last year," he told me, "I prayed for the poor Turkish people." It was a deeply moving example of compassion from a man whose suffering those Turks will not admit and whose Holocaust we prefer to ignore. Stirred partly by Hartun's story, I wrote an article for The Independent in January of this year on the "sublimation" of the Armenian genocide, its wilful denial by US academics who hold American university professorships funded by the Turkish government, and the absence of any reference to the Armenians in the British Government's announcement of Holocaust Day. And, yes, I referred to the Armenian Holocaust - as I did to the Jewish Holocaust - with a capital "H". Chatting to an Armenian acquaintance, I mentioned that I had given the Armenian genocide the same capital "H" which I believe should be attached to all acts of genocide. Little could I have guessed how quickly the dead would rise from their graves. When the article appeared in The Independent - a paper which has never failed to dig into human wickedness visited upon every race and creed - my references to the Jewish Holocaust remained with a capital "H". But the Armenian Holocaust had been downgraded to a lower case "h". "Tell me, Robert," my Armenian friend asked me in suppressed fury, "how do we Armenians qualify for a capital 'H'? Didn't the Turks kill enough of us? Or is it because we're not Jewish?" There are no conspiracies on The Independent's subs desk; just a tough, no -nonsense rule that our articles follow a grammatical "house style" and conform to what is called "common usage". And the Jewish Holocaust, through common usage, takes a capital "H". Other holocausts don't. No one is quite sure why - the same practice is followed in newspapers and books all over the world, although it has been the subject of debate in the United States, not least by Finkelstein. Harvard turned down a professorial "Chair of Holocaust and Cognate Studies" because academics objected to the genocide of other groups (including the Armenians) being lumped together as "cognate". But none of this answered the questions of my Armenian friend. To have told him his people didn't qualify for a capital "H" would have been shameful and insulting. A debate then opened within The Independent. I wrote in a memo that the word "holocaust" could be cheapened by over-use and exaggeration - take the agency report last year which referred to the "holocaust" of wildlife after an oil -spill on the French coast. But I said that I still had no answer worthy of the question posed by my Armenian friend. One of the paper's top wordsmiths was asked to comment - a grammatical expert who regularly teases out the horrors of definition in an imperfect and savage world. He cited Chambers Dictionary, which stated that the Jewish Holocaust was "usually" capitalised. And, said our expert on the paper, "It is in the nature of a proper noun to apply to only one thing." Thus there may be many crusades but only one Crusade (the Middle Ages one). There may be many cities but the City is London. Similarly the Renaissance. "There can be only one Holocaust," he wrote. "Is the Holocaust really unique? Yes. It was perpetrated by modern Europeans. Its purported justification was a perversion of Darwin, one of the great thinkers of modern Europe. Above all, in the gas chambers and crematoria it manufactured death by modern industrial methods. The Holocaust says to modern Western man that his technological mastery will not save him from sin, but rather magnify the results of his sins. There have been acts of genocide throughout history and some of them have killed more people than the Nazis did, but we call the Nazi holocaust 'the Holocaust' because it is our holocaust." Must we, our grammarian asked, "commit grammatical faux pas and overturn an accepted usage for which there is ample justification? Finally, where does it end? Are, for instance, the crimes of Stalin against minority nationalities in the Soviet Union not just as bad as the Armenian slaughters? What of the Khmer Rouge? Rwanda? The Roman destruction of Carthage? Are these also to be 'Holocausts'? If not, why not?" Powerful arguments, but ones with which I disagreed. The Jewish Holocaust, I wrote back, should be capitalised not because its victims were European Jews, or those of any other race, but because its victims were human beings. Human values, the right to life, the struggle against evil, are universal - "not confined to Europeans or one ethnic or religious group, or involving those who distorted Darwin's theories of biological evolution". It was, after all, The Independent's editorial policy that the world must fight against all atrocities - a belief which underlay our demand for humanitarian action in East Timor and Kosovo. This did not mean that I regarded Timor and Kosovo as holocausts, but that we should never accept the idea that one group of victims had special status over others. I spend hours telling Arabs that they must accept and acknowledge the facts of the Jewish Holocaust, but if we are now to regard this as a specifically European crime, as "our" crime, I have few arguments left. The Arabs can say it is none of their business. As for the question, "Where does it end?" Yes, what about Armenia? And Rwanda? If Armenians are disqualified from a capital "H" because they only lost one and a half million, what is Rwanda's sin of exclusion? Religion? Race? Colour? When Armenians in Israel speak of their people's suffering, they use the Hebrew word Shoah - which means Holocaust. The Independent's editor suggested that we should debate these questions in an article in the paper - this is the article - but the issues, of course, remain unresolved. "Common usage" is a bane to all us journalists but it is not sacred. It doesn't have to stand still. My father fought in what he called the Great War - common usage which was later amended, after 1945, to the First World War. Similarly, I believe, the Holocaust. In the aftermath of my January remarks on the Armenian genocide, The Independent published a denial of that same genocide by a Turkish Cypriot academic, in which we printed the word Holocaust with a capital "H". The world did not end. The Turks did not complain. Nor did any members of the Jewish community. Indeed, only last year, a prominent academic at the Hebrew University's Armenian studies programme in Israel talked of the Armenians and Jews having "suffered holocaust". In the meantime, Holocaust - or holocaust - denial continues. President Chirac has declined to endorse the French parliament's acknowledgement of the Armenian genocide and forthcoming Holocaust conferences have not invited Armenians to participate. Mr Blair doesn't mention the destruction of the Armenians. They don't count, literally. Common usage - and our concern for Turkish sensitivities - has seen to that, even though genocide is anything but normal. Germany dutifully acknowledges its historical guilt for the wickedness of the Jewish Holocaust. Not so the Turks. Armenians accept that a few Turks - courageous, outstanding men - risked their lives in 1915 to shelter their Armenian friends and neighbours, just as "righteous gentiles" did for the Jews of Europe. But Turkey cannot honour these brave men. Since the Armenian Holocaust supposedly did not exist, nor did they. A holocaust rather than a Holocaust helps to diminish the suffering of the Armenians. What's in a name? What's in a capital letter? How many other skulls lie beneath the sands of northern Syria? Did the Turks not kill enough Armenians?