Aratta-Kingdom

Center for Research on Globalization, Canada July 30 2005 Al Qaeda, U.S. Oil Companies, and Central Asia Excerpt of a forthcoming book entitled The Road to 9/11 by Peter Dale Scott July 30, 2005 GlobalResearch.ca What is slowly emerging from Al Qaeda activities in Central Asia in the 1990s is the extent to which they involved both American oil companies and the U.S. government.[1] By now we know that the U.S.-protected movements of al Qaeda terrorists into regions like Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and Kosovo have served the interests of U.S. oil companies. In many cases they have also provided pretexts or opportunities for a U.S. military commitment and even troops to follow. U.S. Operatives, Oil Companies and Al Qaeda in Azerbaijan In one former Soviet Republic, Azerbaijan, Arab Afghan jihadis clearly assisted this effort of U.S. oil companies to penetrate the region. In 1991, Richard Secord, Heinie Aderholt, and Ed Dearborn, three veterans of U.S. operations in Laos, and later of Oliver North's operations with the Contras, turned up in Baku under the cover of an oil company, MEGA Oil.[14] This was at a time when the first Bush administration had expressed its support for an oil pipeline stretching from Azerbaijan across the Caucasus to Turkey.[15] MEGA never did find oil, but did contribute materially to the removal of Azerbaijan from the sphere of post-Soviet Russian influence. Secord, Aderholt, and Dearborn were all career U.S. Air Force officers, not CIA. However Secord explains in his memoir how Aderholt and himself were occasionally seconded to the CIA as CIA detailees. Secord describes his own service as a CIA detailee with Air America in first Vietnam and then Laos, in cooperation with the CIA Station Chief Theodore Shackley.[16] Secord later worked with Oliver North to supply arms and materiel to the Contras in Honduras, and also developed a small air force for them, using many former Air America pilots.[17] Because of this experience in air operations, CIA Director Casey and Oliver North had selected Secord to trouble-shoot the deliveries of weapons to Iran in the Iran-Contra operation.[18] (Aderholt and Dearborn also served in the Laotian CIA operation, and later in supporting the Contras.) As MEGA operatives in Azerbaijan, Secord, Aderholt, Dearborn, and their men engaged in military training, passed "brown bags filled with cash" to members of the government, and above all set up an airline on the model of Air America which soon was picking up hundreds of mujahedin mercenaries in Afghanistan.[19] (Secord and Aderholt claim to have left Azerbaijan before the mujahedin arrived.) Meanwhile, Hekmatyar, who at the time was still allied with bin Laden, was "observed recruiting Afghan mercenaries [i.e. Arab Afghans] to fight in Azerbaijan against Armenia and its Russian allies."[20] At this time, heroin flooded from Afghanistan through Baku into Chechnya, Russia, and even North America.[21] It is difficult to believe that MEGA's airline (so much like Air America) did not become involved.[22] The operation was not a small one. "Over the course of the next two years, [MEGA Oil] procured thousands of dollars worth of weapons and recruited at least two thousand Afghan mercenaries for Azerbaijan - the first mujahedin to fight on the territory of the former Communist Bloc."[23] In 1993 the mujahedin also contributed to the ouster of Azerbaijan's elected president, Abulfaz Elchibey, and his replacement by an ex-Communist Brezhnev-era leader, Heidar Aliyev. At stake was an $8 billion oil contract with a consortium of western oil companies headed by BP. Part of the contract would be a pipeline which would, for the first time, not pass through Russian-controlled territory when exporting oil from the Caspian basin to Turkey. Thus the contract was bitterly opposed by Russia, and required an Azeri leader willing to stand up to the former Soviet Union. The Arab Afghans helped supply that muscle. Their own eyes were set on fighting Russia in the disputed Armenian-Azeri region of Nagorno-Artsax, and in liberating neighboring Muslim areas of Russia: Chechnya and Dagestan.[24] To this end, as the 9/11 Report notes (58), the bin Laden organization established an NGO in Baku, which became a base for terrorism elsewhere.[25] It also became a transshipment point for Afghan heroin to the Chechen mafia, whose branches "extended not only to the London arms market, but also throughout continental Europe and North America."[26] The Arab Afghans' Azeri operations were financed in part with Afghan heroin. According to police sources in the Russian capital, 184 heroin processing labs were discovered in Moscow alone last year. ''Every one of them was run by Azeris, who use the proceeds to buy arms for Azerbaijan's war against Armenia in Nagorno- Artsax,'' [Russian economist Alexandre] Datskevitch said.[27] This foreign Islamist presence in Baku was also supported by bin Laden's financial network.[28] With bin Laden's guidance and Saudi support, Baku soon became a base for jihadi operations against Dagestan and Chechnya in Russia.[29]And an informed article argued in 1999 that Pakistan's ISI, facing its own disposal problem with the militant Arab-Afghan veterans, trained and armed them in Afghanistan to fight in Chechnya. ISI also encouraged the flow of Afghan drugs westward to support the Chechen militants, thus diminishing the flow into Pakistan itself.[30] As Michael Griffin has observed, the regional conflicts in Nagorno-Artsax and other disputed areas, Abkhazia, Turkish Kurdistan and Chechnya each represented a distinct, tactical move, crucial at the time, in discerning which power would ultimately become master of the pipelines which, some time in this century, will transport the oil and gas from the Caspian basin to an energy-avid world.[31] The wealthy Saudi families of al-Alamoudi (as Delta Oil) and bin Mahfouz (as Nimir Oil) participated in the western oil consortium as partners with the American firm Unocal. In October 2001, the U. S. Treasury Department named among charities allegedly providing funds to al Qaeda the Saudi charity Muwafaq (Blessed Relief), to which the al-Alamoudis and bin Mahfouz families were named as major contributors.[32] One cannot discern whether religion or oil was their primary charitable motive. It is unclear whether MEGA Oil was a front for the U.S. Government or for U.S. oil companies and their Saudi allies. U.S. oil companies have been accused of spending millions of dollars in Azerbaijan, not just to bribe the government but also to install it. According to a Turkish intelligence source who was an alleged eyewitness, major oil companies, including Exxon and Mobil, were "behind the coup d'itat" which in 1993 replaced the elected President, Abulfaz Elchibey, with his successor, Heydar Aliyev. The source claimed to have been at meetings in Baku with "senior members of BP, Exxon, Amoco, Mobil and the Turkish Petroleum Company. The topic was always oil rights and, on the insistence of the Azeris, supply and arms to Azerbaijan." Turkish secret service documents allege middlemen paid off key officials of the democratically elected government of the oil-rich nation just before its president was overthrown.[33] The true facts and backers of the Aliyev coup may never be fully disclosed. But unquestionably, before the coup, the efforts of Richard Secord, Heinie Aderholt, Ed Dearborn and Hekmatyar's mujahedin helped contest Russian influence and prepare for Baku's shift away to the west.[34] Three years later, in August 1996, Amoco's president met with Clinton and arranged for Aliyev to be invited to Washington.[35] In 1997 Clinton said that In a world of growing energy demand.our nation cannot afford to rely on a single region for our energy supplies. By working closely with Azerbaijan to tap the Caspian's resources, we not only help Azerbaijan to prosper, we also help diversify our energy supply and strengthen our energy's security.[36] ################################### ################################### ################################### CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR NOVEMBER 16, 1993 By DANIEL SNEIDER Afghan Fighters Joined Azeri-Armenian Captured documents taken from battlefields in southwestern Azerbaijan provide the first hard evidence that Afghan troops hired by the Azerbaijan government were actively involved in recent fighting with Armenian forces. Security authorities in this mountainous region, which is the stronghold of ethnic Armenian forces, showed the Chrisitan Science Monitor a collection of material including Islamic literature printed in Afghanistan, notebooks and charts on the organization of artillery units, unmailed personal letters addressed to Pakistan and Afghanistan, and an array of personal snapshots of the Afghan warriors taken in identifiable locations within Azerbaijan. Most of the documents were written in either Dari, the Afghan dialect of Persian, or Pashto, the language of the majority of Afghans. Reports that Azerbaijan had hired a force of more than 1,000 Afghan mujahideen fighters surfaced in two Western newspapers in November 1993, citing diplomatic sources in the Azeri capital of Baku. Azerbaijan government officials subsequently denied those reports. But the material provided to the Monitor is the first concrete evidence obtained by a Western news organization verifying those initial reports. The decision of the Azerbaijan government to involve Afghan mujahideen in its five-year undeclared war with the Armenians fighting for self-determination of Nagorno Karabagh marks a turning point in that conflict. After long periods of fighting in which the advantage fluctuated between the two sides, the Armenians consolidated control of Karabagh in 1992. In quick succession in March 1993, Karabagh troops seized the crucial Kelbadjar corridor between Karabagh and Armenia and then began capturing key towns to the south and east of Karabagh. In all, Karabagh controls one quarter of the territory in Azerbaijan. Armenian officials now warn that the introduction of Muslim Afghan fighters poses the danger of turning the conflict, between Christian Armenians and Muslim Turkic Azeris, into a religious war. It further intensifies the danger of broadening of the conflict to involve neighboring Iran and Turkey, provoking a reaction from Russia, which also borders this region. Azerbaijan and Armenia are both former Soviet republics. "The Azeris want to turn this war into a religious one, which we haven't accepted from the beginning and which we won't accept," said Robert Kocharian, the head of the State Committee on Defense of Nagorno Karabagh and the de facto ruler of this enclave [Ed. note: Robert Kocharian was elected president of Armenia in early 1998]. Karabagh now claims its status as an independent republic. "Involvement of new forces in this conflict will only make the situation more complex," echoed Armenian Republic President Levon Ter Petrosian, in an interview in his office in Yerevan [Ed. note: Levon Ter Petrosian served as president from 1991 until his resignation in early 1998]. "It creates the preconditions for internationalizing the conflict, which is neither desirable for us or for Azerbaijan, nor for the international community." The decision of the government of President Heydar Aliyev to involve the Afghans is widely believed to reflect their desperation after a string of military defeats at Armenian hands. In mid-August 1993, according to the Western newspaper reports, deputy Interior Minister Roshan Jivadov made a secret trip to Afghanistan. He met there with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Afghan premier and head of the Islamic fundamentalist Hezb-I-Islamic faction, and reportedly made a deal. Western sources in Yerevan believe the fighters came from the Hektmatyar group itself. Starting in September 1993, the Karabagh military began intercepting radio signals in Dari, according to Kamo Abrahamiam, the head of the National Security Department. Mr. Abrahamiam, a former Soviet paratrooper trained in the Dari language for service during the war in Afghanistan, said the intercepts indicated that Afghans were deployed in several separated locations. Despite some evidence of the presence of Afghans, they were surprised when an attack was launched on October 21, 1993 on Armenian lines in the Jevrail region in southwest Azerbaijan, breaking a long cease-fire. "We were attacked by a battalion of about 300 Afghan soldiers," Abrahamiam says. Within two days, on October 23, the Armenians mounted a counter offensive, rapidly driving the Afghans and their Azeri allies out of Azerbaijan territory, capturing the Jebrail, Fizuli, and Zangelan regions which border Iran. The Afghans, who Abrahamiam says were heavily armed with standard Soviet infantry weapons and fought with far greater discipline and ability than the Azeris, removed their dead from the battlefield. But in the town of Goradis, near the Iranian border, and in Zangelan, Armenians found documents in buildings that housed the Afghan troops. Among the material laid out on a table in Abrahamiam's office were several religious pamphlets in Pashto and Dari, one of them marked as publication of the Scientific Islamic Society of Afghanistan. An interpreter accompanying this reporter who was also trained in Arabic and other oriental languages was able to verify these translations. Others bore the Afghan coat of arms. One handwritten notebook contained a vocabulary list, with Azeri terms written down one side and Dari down the other. Another notebook contained an extensive manual on how to fire artillery weapons, with charts on how to compute trajectories. A neatly ruled chart listed various artillery weapons with their various capabilities such as range and weight. A faded document bore the letterhead, in English and Pashto, of the Ministry of Education of the Islamic State of Afghanistan. Handwritten in Russian on several pages presumably by Azeri authorities, there is a list for the mujahideen to register their personal weapons. About 100 typically Afghan (or Pakistani) names are present such as Ferhad Abdulrazak or Nizamuddin Inatullah, by no means of Azeri origin. But the most convincing proof is a set of photos, mementos of the Afghan fighters, clothed in the characteristic garb, of their stay in Azerbaijan. In many of them, Russian-made cars with Azeri license tags are visible in the background. One was the type typically taken by professionals at Soviet tourist sites, with the inscription of a major northwestern Azeri city on the bottom-"Ganzha, 1993," it read. A number of the photos appear to have been taken at the training camp of the former 104th Airborne Division of the Soviet Army near Ganzha. "I was trained there," says Abrahamiam. "I know this place very well. I crawled over every millimeter of it on my belly." In the photos he identifies an open-air cinema and a warehouse. But even without his identification, a parachute practice jump structure is visible in the background of one picture. with their various capabilities such as range and weight. L> nglish and Pashto, of the Ministry of Education of the Islamic State of Afghanistan. Handwritten in Russian on several pages presumably by Azeri authorities, there is a list for the mujahideen to register their personal weapons. About 100 typically Afghan (or Pakistani) names are present such as Ferhad Abdulrazak or Nizamuddin Inatullah, by no means of Azeri origin. But the most convincing proof is a set of photos, mementos of the Afghan fighters, clothed in the characteristic garb, of their stay in Azerbaijan. In many of them, Russian-made cars with Azeri license tags are visible in the background. One was the type typically taken by professionals at Soviet tourist sites, with the inscription of a major northwestern Azeri city on the bottom-"Ganzha, 1993," it read. A number of the photos appear to have been taken at the training camp of the former 104th Airborne Division of the Soviet Army near Ganzha. "I was trained there," says Abrahamiam. "I know this place very well. I crawled over every millimeter of it on my belly." In the photos he identifies an open-air cinema and a warehouse. But even without his identification, a parachute practice jump structure is visible in the background of one picture.

DESTRUCTION OF DOCUMENTS IMPORTANT PART OF TURKISH CULTURE TANER AKCHAM: "PURGE OF ARCHIVES IS QUITE IMPORTANT ADMINISTRATIVE CULTURE" IN TURKEY" The destruction of documents is "an important part of our culture," historian Taner Akcham, a representative of the progressive Turkish intelligentsia, writes in his large article concerning the purge of the Turkish archives. The article was published by the "Radical" newspaper in its Sunday appendix. In his article Akcham, at first, mentions the "Sabah" newspaper's publication from November 7 1918, where it is said that the government looked for the documents testifying about the massacre against the Armenians but couldn't find them. The newspaper's indicated article writes "Taleat ***** and his company, probably, before leaving authority, ordered to destruct all the documents witnessing about their giving directions on the massacre. Akcham emphasizes that it was right, as the indictment against "the Young Turks", which was heard in the Istanbul Court Martial of the State of Siege in May 1919, writes that the documents concerning the administrative center of the "Ittihat" party and so-called Teshkilat Mahsuse organization were "stolen". In this connection the Prosecutor said that Aziz Bei, the Chief of Security of the region, took away with himself a lot of documents before Taleat *****'s resignation and didn't return them. Then Taner Akcham cites numerous examples concerning the stealing and destruction of the documents and notices that during the "Ittihat's" power the following was written under all the instructions and documents concerning massacres: "Read and destruct after reading." Akcham mentions the self-defense of different officials in the courts, they reported that "they destructed the documents as they received such an order." In particular, Akcham sets as an example the 1919 action against Osman Nuri Effendi, the Deputy Director of the Chatalcha post office, who said: "I burned down all the documents in accordance with the received order. My chiefs ordered me to burn down the documents concerning the period of their power from such-and-such to such-and-such date and I did it.." The author of the article also sets other examples. According to the "Marmara" daily newspaper of Istanbul, at the end of the article the Turk historian notices: "As seen the destruction of documents is quite an important "administrative culture". For that reason some persons talk profusely with the quiet of those who know that the documents have already been destructed, that "nothing had happened with the Armenians, and all the documents are in their places." Perhaps, people of my generation will find some documents about their greats and promulgate them, arguing that beside those considering the destruction of documents as success, there are also such people that want to discover truth".

http://www.archives.gov/research_room/fede...ide/bureau_of... National Archives of the United States Records of the Bureau of Naval Personnel (RECORD GROUP 24) 1798-1991 (bulk 1798-1956) 24.10 MOTION PICTURES (GENERAL) 1917-27 World War I naval operations and activities, including anti- submarine patrols, minelaying, convoy and escort duty, submarine maneuvers, and training; ship launching and maintenance; torpedo production and firing; Liberty Loan promotions and patriotic celebrations; Armistice celebrations; captured German equipment; U.S. and foreign political and military leaders; foreign naval vessels; President Woodrow Wilson's second inauguration; the airship Los Angeles (ZRS-3) over New York; and lighter-than-air craft rescuing fishermen, 1917-18 (44 reels). Naval activities after World War I, including aerial mapping techniques, rescue of Armenian refugees from Turkey, evacuation of personnel from grounded and burning ships, escort duty, and training, 1918-27 (57 reels).

Turkey extends ban on alluding to genocide By Nicholas Birch in Istanbul Irish Times May 05, 2005 Turkey Turkey's new criminal code was supposed to be a crucial part of its efforts to bring itself in line with European norms. Instead, it stumbles from one controversy to another. Last autumn, voices were raised over plans to criminalise adultery. The centre of attention now is an article that looks as if it sets the courts loose on anyone describing the 1915 mass expulsion of Ottoman Armenians as a "genocide". Article 305's prescription of between three and 10-year prison sentences for individuals acting "against fundamental national interests" originally only affected Turkish citizens. Late on Tuesday, though, hours before a revised draft of the criminal code was due to be presented to Turkey's parliament, three MPs succeeded in extending its remit to include "foreigners in Turkey". "According to the legal changes we have made, those materially benefiting from claims that there was a genocide can be punished," Hasan Kara, one of the MPs tabling the motion, told reporters. Heavily criticised for its vagueness, the draft article was originally published last autumn with notes explaining its possible uses. These included "making propaganda for the withdrawal of Turkish troops from Cyprus", or arguing "contrary to historical truths, that the Armenians suffered a genocide after the first World War". The Armenian genocide issue usually drops off Turkey's agenda immediately after April 24th, the date that has come to mark the start of the 1915 massacres. That it is still there this year is largely due to the decision of a Swiss court last week to open an investigation into a Turkish historian accused of denying the Armenian genocide. The case caused outrage in Turkey, even among the very few who openly describe 1915 as a genocide. Tuesday's last-minute legal changes are widely thought to have been an act of retaliation. The historian in question, head of the government-funded Turkish Historical Foundation Yusuf Halacoglu, is a staunch defender of Turkey's official position on the events of 1915. Expelling Anatolian Armenians, he has argued, was a necessary response to their co-operation with enemies of the Ottoman Empire. And while most historians of the period estimate between 800,000 and one million people died, he insisted recently the total death toll could not have exceeded 100,000. Punishing those who oppose the official line is not new in Turkey. The novelist Orhan Pamuk, who told a Swiss newspaper in February that "one million Armenians were killed in Turkey", is currently facing three separate charges under a notorious section of the old criminal code. Article 312 makes "provoking the people to hatred and animosity through the media" a criminal offence. The article was removed from the new code. It remains to be seen whether Turkey's parliament will cave in now to internal and international pressure as it did over the adultery clause. If not, the perceptible broadening of freedom of speech in Turkey looks set to dwindle.

I know the europeans are. SWISSINFO Oct. 9, 2005 Dominique Boillat, a spokesman for the Federal Migration Office, said on Sunday that the decision by the justice ministry backed up an earlier decision by immigration officials. "Imams who work in Switzerland must defend our values or at least not be against them," said Boillat. Hani Ramadan, the director of the centre who had sought to hire the imam, has in the past publicly defended the stoning of adulterers and has also said that Aids was a form of divine retribution against sinners. Last year, the Swiss immigration authorities denied the Turkish imam and his Senegalese aide a residence and work permit. Ramadan, the institute's director, subsequently appealed against the decision. The authorities can deny citizens from outside the European Union the right to work and live in Switzerland. According to new Swiss immigration guidelines immigrants must show readiness to integrate and respect the Swiss legal system. Controversial According to Sunday's edition of the NZZ am Sonntag newspaper, about 500 mostly Turkish- and Arabic-speaking Muslims regularly visit the Islamic Centre in Geneva. After his suspension from work as a public-school French teacher, Hani Ramadan told Swiss media that Muslims living in Europe had a duty to speak about their beliefs even if they offended others. The courts have since ruled in Ramadan's favour, saying that his dismissal was unfair and demanding that Geneva's cantonal government recognise his status as a public servant and resume paying his salary. Hani Ramadan is the brother of Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan. The pair, both Swiss citizens, are grandsons of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's now banned fundamentalist party. Tariq Ramadan has been barred from entering the United States. He has been criticised for alleged links - which he denies - to Islamic militants. Last year the US authorities revoked his visa to teach at Notre Dame University. He has since joined a British government task force aimed at preventing Islamic extremism.

N.Y.U. Student Faces Charges in a $43 Million Check Scheme The Associated Press May 7, 2005 NEW HAVEN, May 6 (AP) - A New York University senior was arrested on Friday and charged with concocting a $43 million scheme to shuffle bogus multimillion-dollar checks between banks in Switzerland and Greenwich, Conn. Hakan Yalincak, 21, whose parents are major donors to N.Y.U., wept in court as Magistrate Judge Joan G. Margolis of the United States District Court ordered him held at Wyatt Detention Center in Rhode Island until a hearing on Thursday. "I have a graduation on Wednesday," Mr. Yalincak said. Mr. Yalincak, a mathematics major from Pound Ridge, N.Y., whose parents donated $21 million to the university last year, spent months opening bank accounts under fake corporate names, then deposited fake certified checks for millions of dollars, according to an indictment unsealed on Friday. At one point, he had $25 million in Greenwich and nearly $18 million in Switzerland, prosecutors said. By the time he transferred $2.5 million from Switzerland to an empty bank account in Greenwich and tried to withdraw $1.7 million, bank executives had discovered the counterfeit checks. When told that his account had been frozen, Mr. Yalincak tried to close out his account and collect the entire $2.5 million, prosecutors said. He is also being sued in civil court by investors who say he tricked them into investing $2.8 million in a nonexistent stock fund. According to court documents filed in that case, federal investigators think some of that money was donated to N.Y.U., where a professorship in Ottoman studies is named after Mr. Yalincak's parents, Dr. Omer Bulent Yalincak and Ayferafet Yalincak. A spokesman for the university did not return a phone call seeking comment. Mr. Yalincak was arrested by United States Postal Inspection Service agents at his family's Pound Ridge home. His mother wept throughout Friday's hearing. "Instead of going to her son's graduation in New York, she's going to be visiting her son at Wyatt," the detention center in Rhode Island, said a defense lawyer, Eugene Riccio.

"FORGOTTEN GENOCIDE OF ARMENIANS" TO BE PRESENTED IN WHOLE JAPAN YEREVAN, AUGUST 15, NOYAN TAPAN - ARMENIANS TODAY. Presentations of the work "Fogotten Genocide of Armenians or Research on Prevention and Panishment of Genocide" by Professor Hiroyoshi Segawa will be organized in different cities of Japan starting with autumn. The presentations will be accompanied by movable exhibitions. As Mushegh Sargsian, the Director on Import of the Armenian Agency for Development informed the Noyan Tapan correspondent, the book was first presented on June 7, at the Armenian pavilion of the EXPO 2005 "Natures Wisdom" world exhibition organized in the city of Aichi. M.Sargsian informed that for being involved in the movable exhibition, H.Segawa turned to the Armenian party with a request to give materials concerning Armenian culture, history and mythology presented at the Aichi exhibition to be closed in September. M.Sargsian mentioned that the idea of the Japanese scientist was approved by RA Prime Minister Andranik Margarian who promised to assist its implementation. To recap, Hiroyoshi Segawa was rewarded with the title of the RA NAS Honoured Doctor this May.

IMAM OF KARS DOES NOT ALLOW ARMENIAN TOURISTS TO LIGHT CANDLES IN CHURCH TURNED INTO MOSQUE KARS, AUGUST 15, NOYAN TAPAN - ARMENIANS TODAY. A number of Turkish newspapers ("Hurriet", "Milliet" and some others) reported on August 15 that the imam of the city of Kars did not allow a group of tourists from Armenia to light candles and hold a religious ceremony at the Church of Twelve Apostles turned into a mosque. The Armenian Apostolic Church was turned into a mosque in 1998 and called Qumpet Chamii. Imam Mehmed Altun prohibited the Armenian tourists from lighting candles or singing in the former church. According to the imam, such ceremonies are not allowed in a mosque, the newapaper "Marmara" wrote. Later the tourists intended to light candles in the garden of the former church, but this time some locals intervened, preventing them from doing so. The Armenian tourists had to interrupt their ceremony and leave.

Aurora Beacon News, IL Aug 17 2005 Hastert funding is under scrutiny ~U Investigation sought: Group which has ties to Democrats wants claims of impropriety examined By Ed Fanselow Staff WRITER WASHINGTON - A magazine story alleging a covert relationship between a group of Turkish nationals and House Speaker Dennis Hastert has prompted a group of leading Democrats to call for a federal investigation into the claims. The story, published in the September issue of Vanity Fair magazine, relies on an uncorroborated account from a former FBI translator, who says she overheard Turkish wiretap targets - who were the subject of counter-intelligence investigations - brag of funneling thousands of dollars into Hastert's campaign fund in exchange for political favors. The translator told the magazine that the donations were to be made in payments of less than $200, which do not have to be itemized under Federal Election Commission rules. The Yorkville Republican himself was never heard in the recordings, the translator told the magazine, and the story's author admitted that the Turks supposed claims may have been nothing more than "hollow boasts. " Still, the story caught the eye of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which on Tuesday filed a complaint with the FEC calling for "a thorough investigation into Hastert's finances." The group, founded by the former senior counsel to House Democrats, was responsible for drafting a complaint against House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, for which he was admonished last year. In a written statement, CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan suggests that the translator's claims warrant a closer look since Hastert recorded an inordinately high amount of small, unitemized donations between 1996 and 2002. According to the FEC, the Hastert For Congress Committee reported more than $480,000 in donations of less than $200 during that 7-year period. By comparison, DeLay reported receiving less than $100,000 during the same span. "The sheer number of small contributions should have raised a red flag," Sloan said. John McGovern, a Hastert spokesman, called the allegations "outlandish." "These are ridiculous and reckless claims from a Democratic front group that have no basis in reality," he said Tuesday. "It's just not true." According to the Vanity Fair report, the Turks were apparently looking for Hastert to help derail a 2000 House resolution designating the killings of thousands of Armenians in Turkey during the 1920s as genocide. The controversial issue has long been a source of hostility between the two countries as well as between Americans of Armenian and Turkish descent. The magazine alleges that Hastert originally supported the resolution, only to reverse his position and withdraw it from consideration on the House floor. Another Hastert spokesman told the magazine, though, that the speaker's about-face came only after a personal appeal from then-President Bill Clinton. "To insinuate anything else," the spokesman said, "just doesn't make sense."

Death Threats Stalks Turkish Author of April 24 Article in Nevada Acknowledging 1915 Genocide By Serge L. Samoniantz California Courier Editor LAS VEGAS - Selcuk Tezgul, a native of Turkey residing in Las Vegas, is now living under the shadow of death threats from fellow Turks after authoring an article in the April 24 issue of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, where he decried the Turkish government's silence over the 1915 genocide, and called for an official acknowledgment of their ancestor's biggest crime ever. Tezgul told The California Courier that he wished to make a favor to the Armenian people by writing the truthful article, and was not expecting this flood of negative reaction from some of his closest friends and associates. A storm of phone calls, some originating from Turkey itself, have threatened to burn down his house, and get rid of him. His own business partner, he said, swore at him on the phone and threatened to kill him with his own bare hands for writing such an article. They are reluctant to acknowledge reality, Tezgul surmised. The souls of 1.5 million Armenian victims are, after 81 years, still longing for acknowledgment and an apology from Turkey, his April 24 article begins. After describing an encounter with an Armenian elderly couple at his Las Vegas shop where I felt shame and pain because of my Turkish identity, Tezgul goes on to explain that he is not one of the 60 million Turks who was cheated for decades by his own government's chauvinistic, illogical, unfair and nonsensical official state ideology and history. On the contrary...I am one of the handful of Turks who is aware of that horrible genocide and acknowledges too, Tezgul readily admits. I've never trusted and believed in the official history and ideology of my country, he adds, and when I researched and studied the reliable and honest foreign historians, I came face to face with the blood-chilling truth. In addition, I've listened to the chilling details of the massacres from the mouths of the living Turkish witnesses, he continued. And today, I'm still hated by my own relatives and friends because of my acknowledgment of the genocide. Unfortunately, their brains are washed by the lies and suppression of the truth by the Turkish government and army. Tezgul writes that the agriculturist Armenians had settled in Asia Minor almost two millennia before the Turks invaded the region. The Armenians' home country is still occupied by the Turks today, he wrote. Observing that the agriculturist Armenians had built a rather advanced civilization, especially famous for accomplishments in architecture and art. They were an honest, lovely, noble, humanistic, and peaceful people, Tezgul write flatteringly. On the other side, the Turks were a pastoralist, nomadic, quarrelsome, totalitarian people, without artistic and architectural talents like the other nomadic tribes of Central Asia, the Turkish author harshly notes. He goes on to explain that the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of World War I, but not before it had blamed its Eastern Front defeats on the Armenians and began its genocide. It was planned entirely by Turkish statesmen and leaders and was carried out by Turkish soldiers -- sadly even by the Armenians' Turkish neighbors, Tezgul wrote. That horrible genocide has never been forgotten, must never be forgotten, and will never be forgotten, he asserts. Alas, still today the Turkish government and its leaders are deaf and dumb, and they remain silent about their country's bloody past. They are still denying history's clear and solid truths. Its 60 million people are still not completely aware of the genocide committed by their ancestors, because of the official state policy to suppress history. Of course, grandchildren should not be judged responsible for their grandparents' crimes, but the grandchildren should not endorse their ancestors' brutality either. History is waiting for that honest, dignified, fair and noble Turkish leader who will acknowledge his ancestors' biggest crime ever, who will apologize to the Armenian people, and who will do his best to indemnify them, materially and morally, in the eyes of the entire world. Besides the threatening phone calls which brand him a traitor, Tezgul said, his own close friends have now shunned him because of the lengthy article. This is disturbing me emotionally, he frankly acknowledged. A graduate of Istanbul's Bosphorus University, Tezgul came to the United States 15 months ago on a B-2 visa. Seeking freedom and new opportunities in these shores, he invested $50,000 - his life savings - in a gift shop in Las Vegas, which he operates jointly with a partner, Nevzet Baguis. That investment is in jeopardy now, because of the article he wrote, he said. Furthermore, his visa is due for renewal because of the nature of the business investment. But, now with his life in danger, he does not dare to go to the store, where his wife works. In addition, his legal status in the U.S. is at risk, unless his visa is renewed or upgraded. Extremely reluctant to talk to The Courier, Tezgul, in a very subdued voice, nonetheless asked that this story not be taken further, and wished that the matter would settle down quickly. I am sure the Turkish authorities in the United States have already faxed these details to Ankara, he said. I will probably need a new identity and new passport if I wish to return to Turkey, he said, understandably not too thrilled at the prospect. As of May 6, he had not yet notified the FBI about the nature of the phone calls and threats he had received, but the federal agency was aware of the reason for Tezgul's distress. Plans were not yet in place to begin an investigation, according to Las Vegas FBI office spokesperson Debbie Calhoun. She suggested that Tezgul contact the local authorities and tell them of his concerns. Tezgul told The Courier he had received sympathetic calls from Las Vegas Armenians congratulating him for his courage, but he was more interested in putting this matter behind him, and resume a normal life. Unfortunately, history shows us that honest, dignified, fair and noble Turks are not given much rest by their own. The novelty of speaking the truth -- even if it exposes one's own myths -- is still equated in too many cultures as comforting the enemy, rather than freeing future generations of Armenians and Turks of the burden of the past. On a personal level, Tezgul's attempt to make a favor to the Armenians has perhaps backfired. But, whether the Turks like it or not, in the long run, his is the shot heard round the world.

THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION CRITICS ACCUSE TURKISH GOVERNMENT OF MANIPULATING SCHOLARSHIP by Amy Magaro Rubin Several U.S. scholars and writers have organized a petition drive to denounce what they say are efforts by the Turkish government to "manipulate" American universities and encourage "fraudulent scholarship." In their petition and in interviews, members of the group say the Turkish government hires U.S. academics as consultants to advise Turkish officials on how to respond to articles and books that implicate Ottoman Turks in the mass killing of Armenians in the early part of this century, and to help them rebut allegations of genocide. The critics say Turkey, to promote its views, also tries to influence appointments to endowed professorships in Turkish studies that it is helping to establish at major universities in the United States. Turkish officials deny any impropriety. Federal law requires American institutions to report to the Department of Education foreign gifts and contracts valued at more than $250,000. The measure was passed in 1987, in an effort to monitor potential foreign influence on American higher education, after large foreign donations sparked controversies at several universities. A revised version of the disclosure law was passed in 1992. Many of the more than 80 scholars and writers who signed the petition had written about the Armenian genocide, and some had received letters from the Turkish Ambassador challenging their work. AMBASSADOR'S LETTER The petition has its roots in the experiences of one scholar in particular --Robert Jay Lifton, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the City University of New York's Graduate Center and John Jay College. Mr. Lifton said he expected some people to disagree with his 1986 book, "The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide," in which he treats the Armenian genocide as historical fact. Still, he says, he was surprised to receive a letter in 1990 from Turkey's Ambassador to the United States, Nuzhet Kandemir, denying the Armenian genocide. The Ambassador said the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians --the number itself is also a matter of dispute-- were really the result of "a tragic civil war initiated by Armenian nationalists." Mr. Lifton says he was shocked when he discovered that an American academic had drafted the Ambassador's letter. He was further shocked when he learned that the same scholar had been named to a chair at Princeton University that the Turkish government had helped to endow. "We feel strongly that there's been a violation of academic standards," he said. The scholar who drafted the Ambassador's letter to Mr. Lifton is Heath W. Lowry, who now holds the Ataturk Chair of Turkish Studies at Princeton, where he is chairman of the Near Eastern Studies Department. Mr. Lowry, through a Princeton spokeswoman, declined to be interviewed for this article. "WE SEEK ADVISE" At the time he drafted the letter to Mr. Lifton for the Turkish Ambassador, Mr. Lowry was executive director of the Institute of Turkish Studies in Washington. It was established by the Turkish government in 1983 "to facilitate greater knowledge of Turkey," said Aykut Sezgin, a counselor at the Turkish Embassy in Washington. "There is a need for a better understanding of Turkey." Turkish officials say they routinely hire American scholars as consultants. "We seek advise from academicians," said Rafet Akgunay, another official at the embassy. "They follow the publications and articles." Mr. Lowry no longer serves as a consultant to the embassy, he said. The critics say they are circulating their petition now because the Turkish government is in the process of helping to endow three more professorships. As they did at Princeton, Turkey is giving $750,000 each to Georgetown and Harvard Universities and the University of Chicago. The institutions must match that amount to receive the contribution. Officials at all three say efforts to raise matching funds have begun. The critics say they fear that Turkey will try to influence who is selected to fill those new chairs, as they allege it did at Princeton. "REWARD FOR PAST SERVICES" The professorships "are a reward for past services, " said Roger W. Smith, a professor of government at the College of William and Mary. With Mr. Lifton and Eric Markusen, a professor of sociology at Southwest State University in Minnesota, Mr. Smith wrote an article, "Professional Ethics and the Denial of Armenian Genocide," that appeared in the Spring 1995 issue of "Holocaust and Genocide Studies." It focused primarily on Mr. Lowry, who did not respond to the article. Turkish officials deny that they try to influence any of the selection processes. "We don't recommend anybody, " said Mr. Sezgin of the Turkish Embassy. "We don't interfere. It's up to them." Mr. Lowry was selected for the Princeton chair from about 20 candidates drawn from a national search, said Abraham Udovitch, a professor in the Near Eastern studies department who served on the search committee. "He is someone who is very able. He is a leading expert in Turkish studies and a master of Turkish. The issue for Princeton was, Is he a historian and scholar? And he is." Mr. Udovitch stressed the "integrity" of the search. "There were no restrictions. There was no influence. Anyone who says otherwise doesn't have the facts." The critics cite copies of a memo and a draft letter from Mr. Lowry to the Ambassador regarding how to respond to Mr. Lifton's book on genocide. Those two documents were inadvertently enclosed with the letter the Ambassador sent to Mr. Lifton. "FREE TO CONSULT" The critics believe that this material alone should be enough to raise concern among academics, particularly those at Princeton. "Heath Lowry is simply unqualified [for the chair] because of the people to whom he is beholden," said Marjorie H. Dobkins, a professor at Barnard College who signed the petition. Mr. Udovitch said Mr. Lowry's work in advising Turkish officials "wasn't part of his dossier." Part of academic freedom, however, "is that people have their own political views," he added. "They're free to consult with whomever they want." Mr. Lifton and other critics say that Mr. Lowry has used his own expertise as a historian and a scholar to advance Turkey's controversial stance on the Armenian genocide. "THIS HAS TO BE CONFRONTED" The petition does not call for Mr. Lowry's ouster from Princeton. Organizers of the campaign say its purpose is simply to "expose" how the Turkish government denies Armenian genocide by using American academics. "This has to be confronted," said Peter Balakian, a professor of English at Colgate University and the leader of the petition drive. Among those who have signed the petition are Robert N. Bellah, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley; Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a professor of Afro-American Studies at Harvard University; Deborah E. Lipstadt, a professor of modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University; and the writers Seamus Heaney, Norman Mailer, Susan Sontag, and William Styron.

By Mike Mejia Online Journal Contributing Writer Online Journal, FL Aug 31 2005 August 31, 2005-Thanks to a Vanity Fair article penned by British Journalist David Rose, as well as to some excellent follow-up interviews in the alternative press, the final 'dots' in the story of fired FBI contract linguist and 9/11 whistleblower Sibel Edmonds are close to being fully connected. A case that has been shrouded in unprecedented government secrecy for over three years is finally being forced into sharp focus, giving the mainstream press no more excuses to ignore a scandal that makes Tom DeLay's lobbying shenanigans look like an exercise in 'good government' by comparison. We now have a very good idea of the countries, organizations and individuals Edmonds heard in wiretaps connected with the money laundering, arms dealing and drug trafficking activities that the whistleblower says facilitated the crimes of September 11, 2001. Although the Turkish-American Edmonds had always been creative in drawing an abstract outline of the official corruption she had discovered as a translator of Central Asian languages at the FBI, where she was hired a few days after 9/11, she was hindered from 'naming names' by a series of Justice Department gag orders. However, the Vanity Fair article has opened a floodgate of new information, as author Rose was able to obtain leaks from congressional sources and FBI officials present during Ms. Edmonds classified testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The article reveals for the first time that one of the elected officials that bin Laden-connected Turkish nationals claimed to have on their payroll was none other than Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert, to whom bribes and illicit campaign contributions may have been funneled in order to get him to pull a House Resolution on Armenian Genocide from the House Floor in 2000. It also reveals that these same Turkish nationals claimed to have bribed several State Department and Defense Department officials to facilitate illicit conventional and nuclear arms trades, and had infiltrated U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories in order to sell U.S. technology to the "highest bidder" (al Qaeda, North Korea, Iran?) The one flaw in the Vanity Fair article is that it seems to boil Sibel Edmonds' testimony down to an Armenian Genocide resolution, when actually most of what Edmonds has testified about relates directly to 9-11 (It is not clear why a bunch of Turkish mafia types would have been so interested in a non-binding resolution on the slaughter of the Armenians by the Ottoman Turks at the beginning of the 20th Century: were they acting on behalf of the Turkish government, or were they afraid a freeze in U.S.-Turkish relations would cut off Turkey as a transshipment point for heroin and nuclear materials?) As a result, Ms. Edmonds has been made a pariah in Turkey, while Dennis Hastert is apparently no worse off than before: except for one article in USA Today, no major newspaper has reported on these explosive revelations surrounding the speaker of the House of Representatives. But although the Rose article missed the mark in certain respects, it provided a useful launching pad for the follow-up interviews the FBI whistleblower gave with Amy Goodman, Scott Horton and Chris Deliso, in which she fleshed out many additional details of the scandal. Pulling all this new data together, we now have a pretty good idea of what exactly Attorney General Ashcroft was trying to hide when he twice invoked the "State Secrets" privilege to suppress Edmonds' testimony in the U.S. court system. Foreign Relations: The Edmonds case has always been quashed by the State and Justice Departments under the guise of protecting "sensitive foreign relations." In the Deliso and Horton interviews, Edmonds hints this is because U.S. "quasi-allies" Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, and at least one Balkan country, are implicated in 9-11, mainly through partnership with al Qaeda in the global heroin trade. Government officials: Besides Dennis Hastert, Edmonds testimony pointed to bribes given to State Department and Pentagon officials. Edmonds harshest rhetoric is directed at the State Department, which she hints blocked the investigation into the "drugs for arms" network, partially because some of its own officials had been bribed. She also claims that at least some neocons are involved in this illicit activity. Organizations: At least three Turkish organizations were apparently named in Edmonds testimony, including the American Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations. However, Edmonds, has spoken of "several" such "semi-legitimate" organizations. Some of her recent statements may put AIPAC in that category, as well as other organizations connected to the above mentioned Central Asian countries (I would personally not be surprised to find the Project for a New American Century end up on the list someday). So how does one pull all these new clues together to develop a coherent narrative of what Edmonds testified to before various Committees and the 9-11 Commission? One thing that struck this author is the close parallel between the claims the 'Inconvenient Patriot' has been making and the testimony given by author Peter Dale Scott at the recent 9/11 symposium organized by Representative Cynthia McKinney. Specifically, Scott pointed out how the U.S. geopolitical strategy in Central Asia-primarily designed to gain control of the energy resources in the region-has led to a tolerance of and maybe even complicity in the heroin trade and to a much more complex relationship with al Qaeda than was revealed in the 9-11 Commission Report. Scott writes: "The truth is that for at least two decades the United States has engaged in energetic covert programs to secure U.S. control over the Persian Gulf, and also to open up Central Asia for development by U.S. oil companies . . . To this end, time after time, U.S. covert operations in the region have used so-called 'Arab Afghan' warriors as assets, the jihadis whom we loosely link with the name and leadership of al Qaeda. In country after country these 'Arab Afghans' have been involved in trafficking Afghan heroin." Combining the analysis of Mr. Scott with the testimony of Edmonds, it would appear that investigative reporter John Stanton had it exactly right when he wrote that the American people " . . . are easily sacrificed for a perceived greater good." From the U.S. support for the drug-running KLA in Kosovo, to its coddling of totalitarian regimes in Central Asia, it appears that once again the U.S. is complicit in the drug trade, even though that same trade also benefits our alleged enemy, Osama Bin Laden. And the heroin is not just going into Europe: Edmonds makes clear that the pipeline of Southwest Asian heroin to the United States that closed after the end of the Soviet-Afghan war has been reopened. The DEA's own website may give credence to her allegations: According to the its Domestic Monitor Program, Southwest Asian Heroin, which had previously been brought in small quantities by West African couriers, principally through JFK Airport in New York, suddenly began appearing in larger quantities in Washington D.C. in 2001. Was this heroin coming in with the full knowledge and even the support of the U.S. government? Were these narcotics, and not some obscure collection of Islamic charities, the primary financing mechanism for the 9-11 attacks? Anyone who has studied the history of U.S. intelligence agencies involvement with drug traffickers and terrorists should not be surprised about these revelations. However, this would be the first time as far as this author knows, that the drugs being allowed into the country by U.S. officials may be financing the very attacks that endanger our citizen's lives-a fact that would be almost comical if it were not so tragic. And the next attack, if it comes, could be with WMD-knowledge obtained not from tinhorn dictators or Iranian mullahs, but from our own military-industrial complex. While those of us looking to reopen the 9-11 inquiry have much to be encouraged about with the recent clues put out by Sibel Edmonds, we are once again disappointed with the tepid response of the corporate media, and frankly, the nonresponse of much of the Internet community (Where are Buzzflash, Josh Marshall, Daily KOS and Juan Cole on this issue?) Beyond Online Journal, Antiwar.com and Democracy Now, these stunning allegations have received scant coverage. Yet, if Ms. Edmonds is correct-and Republican Senator Charles Grassley calling her 'credible' is a strong indicator that she is-then at this very moment, our nuclear secrets are being sold to the very alleged terrorists our government claims to be chasing down in Afghanistan and Iraq. Is there any issue more important than the fact that the reckless hypocrisy of the U.S. government could result in a nuclear attack on American soil and the subsequent shredding of what little remains of the U.S. Constitution? If there is, I'm all ears. http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Repor.../083105mejia.... ############################################################### ############################################################### ############################################################### http://www.hillnews.com/news/072004/turkey.aspx Hastert slices Turkey bill By Jonathan E. Kaplan House GOP leaders are vowing to kill a controversial amendment that chastises a key U.S. ally following a successful Democratic maneuver to pass the bill late last week. Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Appropriations Foreign Operations Subcommittee, exasperated House leaders last Thursday when he accepted a Democratic amendment, which would bar Turkey from lobbying against a Republican-backed resolution that would call the Ottoman Empire's killings of 1.5 Armenians during World War I "genocide." patrick g. ryan Turkey would be barred from lobbying against a bill sponsored by Rep. George Radanovich (Calif.) under a foreigh-operations amendment. ------------------------------­------------------------------­-------------­------- Rep. Adam Schiff's (D-Calif.) amendment would deny Turkey the use of U.S. foreign aid money to lobby against the Armenian genocide resolution sponsored by GOP Rep. George Radanovich (Calif.). If enacted, Radanovich's resolution would be the first time Congress formally marked the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1923. But House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said he will not schedule Radanovich's bill for a vote this Congress even though the Judiciary Committee has passed it. Schiff, who represents one of the highest concentrations of Armenians in the United States, said he used the appropriations process because Hastert has not scheduled a vote. "Leadership understands the House will vote overwhelmingly to recognize Armenian genocide. ... They chose wisely to let it be voice voted," he told The Hill. Radanovich told The Hill: "I think [the amendment] was a good way to keep Armenian genocide in front of people," adding that his bill will never be passed because "of the force of the Turkish lobby." Turkey has tapped former House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston, a lobbying powerhouse, as its Washington representative. Livingston's associate referred calls to the Turkish Embassy,. "There is a Turkish-American presence here. [but] the Turkish lobby is not considered a very strong lobby," said Timur Soylemez, a Turkish Embassy official. "We are not putting [this issue] at heart of the Turkish American relationships. Some on the Hill are trying to poison that relationship. I would very much doubt either the Armenians or Turks would call it symbolic." Schiff had redrafted his original proposal, which could not have been considered under the House rules. But his redrafted account caught House leaders off guard. During the debate, Kolbe said that was the first time he had seen the amendment and complained that the language was not clear. Republican sources told The Hill that they did not think the House parliamentarian was going to make Schiff's amendment "in order" and were surprised when the parliamentarian decided it was. With a few minutes' notice, appropriators and their aides chose to accept the amendment. The alternative choice was to risk losing a roll call vote. In a harshly worded statement, Hastert, Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) acknowledged their displeasure with Kolbe and the amendment. "We are strongly opposed to the Schiff Amendment to the foreign-operations appropriations bill, and we will insist that conferees drop that provision in conference. We have also conveyed our opposition to Chairman Kolbe, and he has assured us that he will insist on it being dropped in the conference committee," Hastert said. Kolbe said, "I allowed this because I determined that the amendment had no practical effect. ... As the chair of pending conference committee on the Foreign Operations bill, I will insist this meaningless language be removed in conference." Armenian genocide has flummoxed Hastert and House Republicans over the past several years. Many lawmakers want the House to acknowledge the genocide even though Turkey, a longtime U.S. ally and NATO member, objects to any such legislation. In 2000, Hastert promised Schiff's predecessor, then GOP Rep. Jim Rogan, a vote on a resolution condemning the genocide. But the Clinton administration lobbied against a vote and Hastert yanked the bill minutes before its consideration. Also that year, George W. Bush said that as president, he would "ensure that our nation properly recognizes the tragic suffering of the Armenian people." The White House was less involved this time, said John Feehery, Hastert's spokesman, simply because House leaders knew the administration's position. Even if GOP leaders strip his amendment in a conference committee, Schiff said: "I think amendment succeeded in drawing out opposition into the open. The battle has been joined." Debate over spending bills has grown increasingly bitter as lawmakers push their own projects or gain political points. On the foreign aid bill, lawmakers used the process to object to Bush administration policies toward Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Ind.) introduced an amendment that would bar the government from using taxpayer money to have United Nations officials monitor the 2004 elections.

IN SEARCH FOR ISLAMISED ARMENIAN ORPHANS According to a BBC message published in Armenian Mirror Spectator weekly, a Turkish documentary filmmaker Berke Bas left for his birthplace of Ordu at the Black Sea to look for Armenian orphans to shoot a documentary about them. Speaking to her relatives there, she found out that her parents once adopted at least 5 Armenian children. No one has so far taken up the story of Armenian children spared by the Armenian Genocide and converted into Islam. Discussions of the Armenian Genocide issue incited by Turkey's furious efforts to join the European Union were apparently the cause for removing the taboo from these issues. "I'm sure it will be difficult. People are unwilling to respond to my initiative and ask why I dig the past", Bas confessed, noting that many Turkish families refuse that they once had Armenians in their families. "But we know that there were many such families to the extent that the Ottoman authorities issued a secret order to punish all those saving Armenian children by hiding them in their families", Prof. Selim Deringil of Bosphorus University of Istanbul assures. "Those Islamised Christians fear to speak about their past. If a Turk says that his parents were Armenians, he will be labeled "gyavur" (unfaithful) and classified as an outcast", editor of Akos newspaper Hrant Dink said during the talk with Bas. By Hakob Tsulikian ############################################################### ############################################################### ############################################################### SONS OF THE ARMENIAN NATION WHO "TURNED INTO" KURDS AND TURKS It was a taboo till recently to write of the Armenians who were forcibly turned into Turks and Kurds during the Ottoman reign. Most of them, living today in Western Europe, Western Armenia and Cilicia (modern-day Turkey), are going through a revival of national identification. After the Armenians of Hamshen, those from Sassoon, Mush and Taron, who were forcibly converted into Islam, are especially easy to talk with about their past and present. They try to return to the bosom of their nation by overcoming their "guise", the names and surnames, and to fight for their rights and to recover the historic legacy of their forefathers massacred by the Turks. One can meet those Armenians returning to their roots in Germany as well as in Armenia especially after the war in Iraq and the vents at the Turkish border. Some "Kurdish" Armenians fought in the ranks of the PKK (Kurdish Workers' Party) and got disappointed after Ojalan's capture and left for Germany where they could find a wide field for political and national activity. They settled in Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, Stuttgart, Mainz and elsewhere. "I was born in Karmir Khach (Kzl Akhach) village of Taron. We shunned the Armenian Genocide as we accepted Islam feigningly and were Kurdish-speaking. My father and brother enrolled in the PKK to fight against Turkish fascism, they were imprisoned and tortured numerous times. I've been studying and working here in Germany for a long time and am in touch with the Armenian community and the progressive forces. But in Western Armenia, especially in originally Armenian Vardo town, which was stricken by an earthquake in 60s and where my relatives live, human rights violations are rampant", Simon Kostanian (Sardet Kosdun), who regained his Armenian identity today, tells. Razmik Hakobian (Nureddin Yagub) from one of Cilicia villages was a PKK warrior but was arrested and jailed in one of Ankara's horrific prisons. He is a writer and a film director who is planning to shoot a film about the life of Diaspora Armenians. "My parents concealed our identity particularly because being an Armenian was an unforgettable affront in Adiamani where I am coming from. Despite this, many "Kurdish" and "Turkish" Armenians were called "gyavur". The film I am trying to shoot is about an Armenian outcast and also is an odyssey of a Western Armenians who survived the Genocide. I shall realize my plans if I find necessary support in Armenia and by the help of our confederates in Western Europe", Razmik tells. The number of Armenians, who only now discover their identity, above all in Sassoon and Mush, amounts to thousands. "There are around 1000 Armenians in Mush. The Turkish government has forgotten us for a while, as there are the Kurds to deal with. The sons of the Kurdish people say sorry for their fathers' deeds who were killing Armenians together with the Turks", Armen from Mush says. By Hamo Moskofian in Wiesbaden-Marseilles ############################################################## ############################################################## ############################################################### The Economist April 7th 2005 DIYARBAKIR -- ZEKAI YILMAZ, a Kurdish health worker, was 12 when he found out that his grandmother was Armenian. "She was speaking in a funny language with our Armenian neighbour," he recalled. "When they saw me they immediately switched to Kurdish." Pressed for an explanation, his grandmother revealed an enormous scar on her back. At 13 she had been stabbed and left for dead together with hundreds of fellow Armenians in a field outside Diyarbakir. Mr Yilmaz's grandfather found her, rescued her, converted her to Islam and married her. "But in her heart she remained an Armenian and I sort of feel Armenian too," said Mr Yilmaz. Similar accounts abound in Turkey's mainly Kurdish south-eastern provinces. The region was home to a thriving community of Armenian Christians until the first world war; traces of their culture are evident in the beautifully carved stone churches that lie in ruins or have been converted into mosques. But the first world war was when, according to the Armenians, 1.5 million of their people were systematically murdered in a genocide perpetrated by Ottoman Turks, a massacre that went on even when the war was over. Millions of Armenians worldwide are set to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the start of the violence on April 24th. The Turks deny there was genocide. Though they admit that several hundred thousand Armenians perished -- the figures vary from one official to the next -- they insist that it was from hunger and disease during the mass deportation to Syria (then also Ottoman) of Armenians who had collaborated with the invading Russian forces in eastern Turkey. Some Kurds dispute this version saying that their forefathers had joined in the slaughter after being promised Armenian lands -- and a place in heaven for killing infidels -- by the Young Turks who ruled Turkey at the time. "You [Kurds] are having us for breakfast, they [Turks] will have you for lunch," an Armenian proverb born in those days, was "eerily prescient" says a Kurdish journalist, referring to the violence between Turkish forces and separatist Kurds that later racked the south-east. Until recently such talk would have landed these Kurds in jail on charges of threatening the integrity of the Turkish state. But as Turkey seeks membership of the European Union, its repressive laws are being replaced by ones that allow freer speech. Calls are mounting within Europe, and much more encouragingly among some Turks themselves, for the country to face up to its past. As a result, unprecedented debate of the Armenian issue has erupted in intellectual and political circles and the mainstream Turkish press. Some of the reaction has been ugly. Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's best-known contemporary novelist, received death threats when he told a Swiss newspaper that "One million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in Turkey." One over-zealous official in a rural backwater went so far as to issue a circular calling for all of Mr Pamuk's books to be destroyed -- only to find there were none in his town. His actions were applauded by a vocal and potentially violent group of ultra-nationalists, who claim that the Europeans are using Armenians, Kurds and other minorities to dismember Turkey. Yet there are hopeful signs that the Turks are willing to listen to other opinions as well. Halil Berktay, a respected Ottoman historian long ostracised for his unconventional views, survived telling the pro-establishment daily Milliyet recently that the Armenians were victims of "ethnic cleansing". After decades of wavering, Fethiye Cetin, a Turkish lawyer, roused the courage to publish the story of her grandmother, another "secret Armenian" rescued by a Turk. Published in November, the book is already into its fifth edition. In Istanbul members of a newly formed ethnic Armenian women's platform have vowed to shatter negative stereotypes by publicising the works of their successful sisters. "We are fed up with Turkish movies that portray us as hairy, morally promiscuous and money-grubbing creatures," explained one. In a groundbreaking if modest gesture, Turkey's mildly Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, made a joint call last month with the main opposition leader, Deniz Baykal, for an impartial study by historians from both sides of the genocide debate. His reason, he said, was that he did not want "future generations to live under the shadow of continued hatred and resentment." He believes that the findings will show there was no genocide. The move has been shrugged off by Armenia as a ploy to quash attempts in various EU quarters to link Turkey's membership with recognition of the genocide, as well as deterring America's Congress from a possible resolution mentioning "genocide". Turkish officials retort that the prime minister's call marks the first time any Turkish leader has invited international debate of Turkey's past, albeit a purely academic one. If the government were insincere, they ask, why did the Turkish parliament ask a pair of ethnic Armenian intellectuals to brief it on April 5th? Hrant Dink, the publisher of Agos, a weekly read by Turkey's 60,000-member Armenian community, was one of the questioned intellectuals. He offered plenty of sensible advice. He says that Turkey, rather than getting bogged down in endless wrangles over statistics and terminology, needs to normalise its relations with neighbouring Armenia. As a first step, it should unconditionally open its borders with the tiny, landlocked former Soviet republic. These were sealed in 1993 after Armenia occupied large chunks of ethnically Turkic Azerbaijan in a bloody conflict over the Nagorno-Artsax enclave. Make friends with Armenia, first Not only would Turkey score valuable credit with the EU and the United States, but mutual trade would blunt the influence of the hawkish Armenian diaspora. A recent survey carried out jointly by a Turkish and Armenian think-tank showed 51% of Turkish respondents and 63% of Armenians in favour of opening the borders. Even so, mutual hostility prevails. Among the Armenians, 93% said it would be "bad" if their son married a Turkish girl, while 64% of Turks said the same of an Armenian bride. This does not worry the irrepressibly optimistic Mr Dink. "Let's first get to know one another," he declares. "Love will follow."

VATICAN REACTS TO ARMENIAN MONASTERY DESECRATION Printed from: http://www.financialmirror.com/more_news.php?id=1880 06/09/2005 A decision by the Turkish occupation regime to grant a "license" to operate a recreation centre in the Armenian Monastery of Surb Makar (Saint Makarios) in the Halefka area, north of the Turkish occupied village of Kythrea, has spurred a strong reaction by the Vatican. Cypriot Government Spokesman Kypros Chrysostomides said today that the government totally agreed with the Vatican's reaction, noting that it was after moves by the government that the desecration of the monastery had come to the attention of the Vatican. The Spokesman noted that "various protests were made and there has been a reaction on behalf of the Vatican, which says and stresses in its verbal note that the attention of the competent Turkish authorities has been drawn to the specific case, as well as other lamentable incidences." Chrysostomides added that this was "a severe response, which is not customary on behalf of the Vatican, and the language used is also stern against the occupation authorities." "We totally agree and it is after actions by the government that the desecration of the monastery has come to the attention of the Vatican," the Spokesman pointed out. www.financialmirror.com ############################################################ ############################################################# ############################################################# WHERE THE TURK GOES NO GREEN GRASS GROWS ---------------- VATICAN REACTS TO ARMENIAN MONASTERY DESECRATION Cyprus News Agency, Cyprus Sept 6 2005 Nicosia, Sep 6 (CNA) - A decision by the Turkish occupation regime to grant a "license" to operate a recreation centre in the Armenian Monastery of Surb Makar (Saint Makarios) in the Halefka area, north of the Turkish occupied village of Kythrea, has spurred a strong reaction by the Vatican. Cypriot Government Spokesman Kypros Chrysostomides said today that the government totally agreed with the Vatican's reaction, noting that it was after moves by the government that the desecration of the monastery had come to the attention of the Vatican. ##############################­##############################­# ##############################­##############################­# ##############################­##############################­# VATICAN REACTS TO ARMENIAN MONASTERY DESECRATION Financial Mirror, Cyprus Sept 6 2005 A decision by the Turkish occupation regime to grant a "license" to operate a recreation centre in the Armenian Monastery of Surb Makar (Saint Makarios) in the Halefka area, north of the Turkish occupied village of Kythrea, has spurred a strong reaction by the Vatican. Cypriot Government Spokesman Kypros Chrysostomides said today that the government totally agreed with the Vatican's reaction, noting that it was after moves by the government that the desecration of the monastery had come to the attention of the Vatican. The Spokesman noted that "various protests were made and there has been a reaction on behalf of the Vatican, which says and stresses in its verbal note that the attention of the competent Turkish authorities has been drawn to the specific case, as well as other lamentable incidences." Chrysostomides added that this was "a severe response, which is not customary on behalf of the Vatican, and the language used is also stern against the occupation authorities." "We totally agree and it is after actions by the government that the desecration of the monastery has come to the attention of the Vatican," the Spokesman pointed out.

ARMINFO, August 11, 2005 The President of the Swiss Senate foreign-affairs committee Peter Briner denies his ever saying that Turkey's massacre of Armenians would not be debated in the chamber. In a talk with ARMINFO correspondent he says that the mentioned statement is based on a false citation or a misunderstanding respectively. To remind, at the beginning of August a number of Turkish media as well as Swissinfo reported Briner as saying: "Turkey's massacre of Armenians in 1915 will never be an issue for the Swiss Senate. Other countries had no business pointing the finger at Turkey 90 years after the disputed events, and the Senate foreign-affairs committee agreed with the government that it was not parliament's job to decide whether the killings constituted genocide." Briner deeply regrets that his words have been distorted. This was just a matter of procedure: what he did say was that at the time when the Swiss House of Representatives forwarded an intervention recognizing the genocide this had not been a issue in the Senate and so would require a change of rules of procedure on the Plenary Session agenda. However the statement was by no means about the future possibility of lobbying of the issue in the Swiss Senate. Briner says that the policy of the Swiss government and his committee is that the mentioned terrible events should be investigated by the two countries involved, i.e. Turkey and Armenia with a committee of historians of both sides. Meanwhile, the editor of California Courier Harut Sassounian has sent a letter to Journal of Turkish Weekly, one of the media distorting Briner's statement. Sassounyan says that every piece of JTW's news was "nothing but a pack of lies." "I will be happy to give you one free lesson in journalism: there is no such thing as Armenian or Turkish journalism. There is only one kind of universal journalism, which is reporting the truth," says Sassounian in his letter. In response JTW has accused Sassounian of "extremist Armenian approach." The media says that its editors will use all the legal rights regarding the insults and will start a legal action in California against the "offender".

ARMENIAN CHURCH AKHTAMAR IN TURKEY RESTORED BY METHODS INADMISSIBLE FOR IT YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 10. ARMINFO. The Armenian Church "Surb Khach" (St. Cross) on Akhtamar peninsula (territory of present day Turkey) is restored with materials inadmissible for restoration. Members of a public organization engaged in study of Armenian architecture visited the peninsula on August 14 2005. They told ARMINFO that restoration is in process, and the territory is fenced. The unique monument of Middle Age architecture, the Cross dated 915-921 (architect Manuel) are covered with tar and mazut, frescos are replaced with stones made from "khachkars." To note Akhtamar peninsula was the residence of Armenian Kings of Artsruny Dynasty (the 10-11th centuries). The monument's belonging to he Armenian culture is not mentioned, just a placard says in Turkish and English and that church belongs to the Armenian period. Besides, architect Manuel was presented a archimandrite, specialists say. The church is restored without participation of the Armenian party or independent experts of UNESCO that initiated the restoration. The members of the organization say that local Kurds survived from massacres by Turks continue destroying the churches and houses of Armenians. Anti-Armenian propaganda is widely practiced at the Museum of the ancient Armenian town of Van, wherein a Turk-guide presents the piles of skulls as the Turk victims of the genocide by Armenians in the beginning of the 20th century. According to data of UNESCO dated 1974, of 913 Armenian historical monuments 464 were fully destroyed, 252 were ruined, and 197 need immediate restoration. ################################################################ ################################################################ ############################################################### http://www.virtualani.freeserve.co.uk/hist...estorations.htm [sEE PICTURES INSIDE] THE RAPE OF ANI The Turkish Restorations The Destruction of the City Walls In 1995 extensive excavations were started along the length of the outer walls of the city, on both sides of the Lion Gate. The centuries of debris that had accumulated at the base of the walls was cleared away - in some parts this was over 3½ metres deep. This was not an attempt to make an archaeological excavation. No archaeologists were present and there was no inspection made of the removed material: it was simply dumped into tipper trucks and taken away. Most of the excavating was done using heavy machinery including bulldozers and shovel excavators. This work was done as a prelude to a "restoration" of the walls, organised and paid for by the Turkish Ministry of Culture. Restoration in Turkey often simply means destruction followed by a crude rebuilding - many historic monuments have been irreparably ruined by such "restorations" and the walls of Ani were not to be an exception, as these photographs reveal. In 1998 work on the walls had stopped after (it is said) some condemnation of the end results. However, local building contractors and politicians (who are often the same people) were making a great deal of money from the "restorations". In 1999 the process of destruction was resumed on an even bigger scale and the workers now had an on-site stone cutting factory. The walls of this factory were built entirely from stone looted from the ruins! These "restorations" have nothing to do with preserving the buildings or encouraging tourism, and their appalling results have nothing to do with just bad planning or a lack of knowledge of what should be done. There was never any valid archaeological reason to start the work because the work went against every established practice of modern archaeological conservation. The truth is that the surviving monuments at Ani are being exploited rather like an open-cast mine for the extraction of money. As long as Ani can be used by Ankara politicians as a conduit to distribute State money into the pockets of their local political and business allies in Kars (Professor Karamagarali has reportedly called them a "Mafia") then the "restorations" will continue until everything in Ani is destroyed. Local opposition to the restorations is minimal, confined mostly to the few people in Kars who make a living from tourism. Within much of Turkish society there is a lack of understanding of the concept of an historic monument as understood elsewhere in the world. This must be partially connected to the unimportance given to historical truth in Turkey today. If no value is given to an accurate understanding of the past then objects related to that past have no value. Also, in Turkey, to criticise the powerful is a dangerous thing to do - it is too much to expect just for some old buildings that are not even Turkish. Outside pressure is also unlikely. From foreign historians and archaeologists the silence has been total. There is no change here - they have been silent for decades, fearful of even mentioning the word "Armenia" lest Turkish officials get to hear of it and deny them their precious research permits for Turkey. Foreign tourists to Ani mostly don't care, would not be in the position to know what has been lost (unless they had visited this website), and are too few in number to matter anyway. The restorations at Ani are politely ignored by most guidebooks (along with the similarly disastrous restorations of nearby places such as the Ishak***** palace and Sumela monastery). Armenian groups are uninterested in doing anything practical. Many of these groups actually continue to present the lame old reasoning that nothing should be done towards pressuring the Turks on the issue of preserving Armenian monuments because it would only hasten the destruction of the remaining monuments. What has this pathetic policy of inactivity led to during the last few decades - has it saved a single building or has it just provided them with an easy excuse for doing nothing? 1. Archaeological excavations in 1995 - Turkish Ministry of Culture style - click for a larger photo 2. Untrained labourers work unsupervised 3. The Lion Gate before the "restoration" started 4. The Lion Gate after the "restoration" 5. The new stone is very badly worked and is different in colour and texture to the original stone 6. Inside the factory where the new stone is cut: the walls are built from masonry looted from Ani 7. The destruction of the walls continues Historical texts say simply that the walls of Ani were built during 10th century, but the physical remains shows they were added to many times over the following centuries. Walls were thickened by additional masonry facings - in some places four different faces are revealed by subsequent damage (like the layers of an onion) and earlier crenellations are often "fossilised" within later masonry. The "restorations" have destroyed all of this historical evidence, including building inscriptions. Also destroyed forever is the "patina" of history that these walls once proudly wore - their outlines softened after centuries of weathering; the marks of thousands of arrowheads inflicted in long forgotten sieges; the glow of the orange stone in the setting sun - all this is now gone. Ten years ago sheep grazed at the base of these walls, on grass covered slopes amid a tumble of fallen masonry - now there is nothing but a sterile wilderness of cement dust and stone chippings. The Destruction of the Merchant's Palace In 1999, a "restoration" began on the Merchant's Palace, again organised and paid for by the Turkish Ministry of Culture. The work continued into the following year. It ended in the near total destruction of this monument. There is now far more new stone than original stone in the palace, to the extent that the locals have nicknamed it "the prison" because of its appearance. There is no archaeological or documentary evidence to show that the walls as rebuilt originally looked like this, and the new building work resulted in the destruction of large sections of original masonry. Also destroyed was most of the evidence, in the form of beam holes, of the palace's timber upper floors and outbuildings. In the year 2000 a "restoration" started on the mosque of Minuchihr and the destructive restoration of the city walls had reached the Kars Gate. In 2001 the "restoration" of the city walls was extended easward to the Chequerboard Gate. In 2002 the "restoration" moved on to the walls to the east and south of that gate. 8. A photograph of the palace from the 19th century 9. The palace during its destructive restoration 10. Nothing that can be seen here is older that 1999! 12. The palace gateway just before its "restoration" 11. Try to spot any original stonework inside! 13. The palace gateway after its "restoration" 14. The tiles before the restoration Take a careful look at what the "restoration" has done to the palace's entrance. Notice that all of the original decorative tiles have been removed. A few have been put back, but they are in different positions! The tile pattern has been altered: it has moved downwards by half a star. Half of the surviving block in the doorway arch has been hacked away, and a large section of the top of the rectangular frame has also vanished. 15. The tiles after the restoration 16. Question - what happens when you pile a lot of new stone onto old and fragile foundations? 17. Answer - the whole structure gets heavier, and heavier, and weaker, and weaker... 18. ...until everything collapses - which means you can get more money for rebuilding it all again!

Statement by 126 Holocaust Scholars, Holders of Academic Chairs, and Directors of Holocaust Research and Studies Centers 126 HOLOCAUST SCHOLARS AFFIRM THE INCONTESTABLE FACT OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE AND URGE WESTERN DEMOCRACIES TO OFFICIALLY RECOGNIZE IT At the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Scholar's Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches Convening at St. Joseph University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, March 3-7, 2000, one hundred twenty-six Holocaust Scholars, holders of Academic Chairs and Directors of Holocaust Research and Studies Centers, participants of the Conference, signed a statement affirming that the World War I Armenian Genocide is an incontestable historical fact and accordingly urge the governments of Western democracies to likewise recognize it as such. The petitioners, among whom is Nobel Laureate for Peace Elie Wiesel, who was the keynote speaker at the conference, also asked the Western Democracies to urge the Government and Parliament of Turkey to finally come to terms with a dark chapter of Ottoman-Turkish history and to recognize the Armenian Genocide. This would provide an invaluable impetus to the process of the democratization of Turkey. Below is a partial list of the signatories: Prof. Yehuda Bauer Distinguished Professor Hebrew University Director, The International Institute of Holocaust Research Yad Vashem, Jerusalem Prof. Israel Charny, Director Institute of the Holocaust and Genocide, Jerusalem Professor at the Hebrew University, Editor-in-Chief of The Encyclopedia of Genocide Prof. Ward Churchill Ethnic Studies The University of Colorado, Boulder Prof. Stephen Feinstein, Director Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies University of Minnesota Prof. Saul Friedman, Director Holocaust and Jewish Studies Youngston State University, Ohio Prof. Edward Gaffney Valparaiso University Law School Prof. Zev Garber Los Angeles Valley College Prof. Dorota Glowacka University of King's Collage Halifax, Nova Scotia Dr. Irving Greenberg, President Jewish Life Network Prof. Herbert Hirsch Virginia Commonwealth University Prof. Irving L. Horowitz Hannah Arendt Distinguished Professor Rutgers University, NJ Rabbi Dr. Steve Jacobs Temple Sinai Shalom Huntsville, Alabama Associate Editor of The Encyclopedia of Genocide Prof. Steven Katz Distinguish Professor Director, Center for Judaic Studies Boston University Prof. Richard Libowitz Temple University Dr. Marcia Littell Stockton College Exec. Director, Scholars' Conference On the Holocaust and the Churches Franklin Littell Emeritus Professor Temple University Prof. Hubert G. Locke Washington University Co-founder of the Annual Scholar's Conference On the Holocaust and the Churches Dr. Elizabeth Maxwell Executive Director of the International Scholarly Conference on the Holocaust, London, England Prof. Erik Markusen Southwest State University, MN Prof. Saul Mendlowitz Dag Hammerskjold Distinguished Professor of International Law Rutgers University Prof. Jack Needle, Director Center for Holocaust Studies Brookdale Community College Lincroft, NJ Dr. Philip Rosen, Director Holocaust Education Center of the Delaware Valley Prof. Alan S, Rosenbaum Dept. of Philosophy Cleveland State University William L. Shulman, President Association of Holocaust Organizations City University of New York Prof. Samuel Totten The University of Arkansas Assoc. Editor of The Encyclopedia of Genocide Prof. Elie Wiesel Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities Boston University Founding Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council Nobel Laureate for Peace I hereby declare that the originals of these one hundred and twenty-six signatories are on file in my office. All affiliations supplied are for identification purposes only. Dr. Stephen Feinstein, Director, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies University of Minnesota

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock) October 5, 2005 Wednesday History lesson Turkey and genocide THE NEXT time a reluctant student or clueless adult says that history doesn't matter, it's time to talk Turkey. As in Turkey the somewhat democratic country that's located mostly in what used to be called Asia Minor. Over there, a long-festering political sore has broken open. It seems that some of the country's professors are insisting that their countrymen face up to Turkey's dark past, aka the Armenian genocide. An estimated 1.5 million Armenians are believed to have been systematically massacred by the Turks between 1915 to 1923. It's a touchy subject in Turkey, where national pride in the old Ottoman Empire still runs strong. To accuse the old regime of practicing genocide is an accusation still so offensive that participants arriving at the conference on the subject were pelted by fresh eggs and rotten tomatoes. It seems the history of events now almost a century old still reverberates. Turkey is up for membership in the European Union, and the Union has objected to the difficulties organizers encountered in setting up such a conference on Turkish soil. The conference had to be canceled twice, once by Turkey's minister of "justice" and a second time by a Turkish court. The minister accused those organizing the conference of "stabbing the people in the back." The court demanded to know the academic qualifications of those who would speak at the conference. Free speech this isn't. The meeting did finally get off the ground, but the European Union still has questions about just how free its newest candidate for membership may be. The consequences of trying to censor an ugly past aren't just emotional. It turns out they're economic and political, too. The excuses for refusing to deal with the past are all too familiar by now. What's the point, the apologists ask. It's all ancient history. Those living today-at least most of them-aren't responsible. They didn't participate in those crimes. But the simplest excuse of all is the falsest: It never happened. The Turkish version of denial goes like this: Yes, some Armenians may have died back in the bad old days. But not as many as the critics claim, and lots of Turks also died in the unrest that came with the First World War and the collapse of Ottoman rule. Such denial is common in Japan, too. That society has yet to fully face its crimes against humanity during the Second World War and the runup to it. The Rape of Nanking is an especially horrific example. In what some Japanese textbooks now call an "incident," Japanese troops systematically slaughtered the Chinese residents of Nanking in a six-month orgy of violence in 1937-38. An estimated 150,000 to 300,000 died. The Japanese may downplay it, but the Chinese aren't about to forget. Neither should the rest of the world. Incident, indeed.Compare the way the Japanese have played down their past with Germany's response to the Holocaust. Bitter as it had to be, the German government accepted that nation's responsibility for the Holocaust. That doesn't change what happened, but it provides an opportunity for conciliation and even redemption. Facing the past is the first step toward freeing ourselves of its iron grip. It is truth, not denial, that sets us free. Turkey has a long way to go. But this conference in Istanbul shows that at least a few Turks are willing to look at the past. That way lies a better future. This article was published 10/5/2005

"Among the hundreds of Armenian participants of Stalingrad battle could be mentioned the names of V. mikoyan, K. Vardevanyan, H. Gevorgyan, A. Hakobyan, G. Avagyan, V. Nersisyan, Kh. Baghdasaryan, A. Alaverdyan, and Armenian nurse Sonya Melkumyan who felt during the street fightings." Turkey had a deal with Hitler that after the fall of Stalingrad, turkish army was going to invade Armenia. 23 turkish divisions were on the border with Armenia while "hundreds of thousand" Armenians were fighting in Stalingrad. Armenians lost more soldiers in Stalingrad than in any other battle.

First, I would like to welcome you to HyeForum, :)thank You Armenians should stick to their guns and make Time Magazine pay for their mistakes You think that was a mistake?

Six weeks ago, the Switzerland-Armenia Association (SAA) sent a letter of protest to TIME magazine expressing its "shock and disappointment" that TIME included in its European Edition (June 6, 2005 issue), as a paid ad, a Turkish DVD that denied the Armenian Genocide. As the denial of the Armenian Genocide is a criminal offense under Swiss laws, the SAA threatened TIME with legal action, unless the magazine took nine corrective steps ranging from publishing a formal apology to disseminating, at TIME's expense, a factual DVD on the Armenian Genocide, in the same seven languages as the Turkish DVD. James Kelly, the Managing Editor of TIME, responded last week to SAA's letter by stating: "We regret distributing the [Turkish] DVD as part of TIME's European edition and are very sorry for the offense it has caused. The 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. Unfortunately the DVD was not adequately reviewed by anyone at TIME because it was believed to be a benign promotion piece. I can assure you that we have changed our review process and will be much more vigilant in the future. We apologize to the Armenian community, and to our readers." This is a fine letter that makes several very important points: -- It expresses regret three times in the space of a few short lines; -- It challenges the credibility of the Turkish DVD by referring to it as a "so-called 'documentary'" that is "one-sided" and not meeting TIME's "standards for fairness and accuracy"; -- It acknowledges that TIME would not have distributed the Turkish DVD had it been "aware of its content"; -- It accepts TIME's negligence by admitting that the DVD "was not adequately reviewed by anyone at TIME"; -- It pledges to be "much more vigilant," should the Turks attempt a similar ploy in the future. Clearly, this letter is an improvement over TIME's initial wholly inadequate reaction to Armenian complaints. James Geary, the editor of TIME Europe, had callously responded that the magazine was "not endorsing any political organization or cause." Mr. Kelly's letter, on the other hand, reinforces the e-mail Norman Pearlstine, the Editor-in-Chief of TIME, sent to a reader admitting that the contents of the DVD were "different from what we had been led to believe." In other words, Mr. Pearlstine acknowledged that TIME was tricked by the Turks. Despite Mr. Kelly's more understanding letter that included profuse apologies, the most critical element is still missing from his response to the Switzerland-Armenia Association. He expresses regret for TIME's dissemination of the offensive DVD; acknowledges that the Turkish DVD was one-sided, unfair and inaccurate; admits that the magazine was negligent in not reviewing the DVD; and accepts that the DVD should not have been distributed by TIME. Acknowledging its error and apologizing for it does not, however, go far enough in redressing the harm done to the psyche of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide. The Turkish DVD also tarnished the memory of the Armenian martyrs by casting doubt on the truthfulness of their agonizing eyewitness accounts. Mr. Kelly and his superiors at TIME now have an obligation to undo the damage they have caused by their negligence. They need to take the nine steps suggested by the SAA. The least TIME could do is agree to disseminate free of charge, to the same 500,000 readers that received the Turkish DVD, a new DVD that accurately portrays the facts of the Armenian Genocide. Otherwise, TIME's admission of mistakes and expression of regrets remain simply empty words devoid of any meaning and sincerity. It is too easy for TIME executives to pocket the one million dollars for circulating the Turkish hit piece and then simply tell the Armenians, "we apologize." A true apology has to be accompanied by concrete steps that include making amends to the aggrieved party -- the Armenians. Until then, Armenians worldwide should continue their boycott of TIME magazine and resort to all possible legal measures accorded to them under European genocide denial laws to seek adequate redress. Kind words alone do not compensate for the damage caused by TIME's negligent, insensitive and offensive act. By Harut Sassounian; Publisher, The California Courier

EUROPEAN HUMAN RIGHTS COURT TO CONSIDER INFRINGEMENT OF PROPERTY RIGHTS OF ARMENIANS IN TURKEY YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 15. ARMINFO. The European Court of Human Rights is expected to announce a decision next week on the property rights of minority foundations. Specifically, the Court will adjudicate two cases filed by the Soorp Purgich Armenian Hospital Foundation and the Fener Greek Boys High School Foundation against Turkey. In both cases, property gifted to the Armenian and Greek foundations were seized as the Turkish courts upheld orders declaring that the bequest violated a decree disallowing non-Moslems from donating real estate. If the court rules in favor of the foundations, hundreds of buildings seized in the past may be returned. Earlier this year, Armenian Assembly Board Member and former Board of Directors Chairman Van Krikorian testified before the Helsinki Commission on freedom of religion in Turkey with respect to the Armenian Church and community. During his testimony Krikorian noted that "for centuries, Armenians paid and in many places still pay a high price for their Christianity," and that seizure and destruction of Armenian Church property was commonplace. Krikorian noted that in 1914, in Turkey, there were approximately 5,000 Armenian Churches, seminaries and schools registered by the Patriarchate and that today, 90 years after the Armenian Genocide, there are less than 50 Armenian Churches.

Copyright © 2005 Tax Analysts Tax Notes International Magazine September 5, 2005 WORLDWIDE TAX OVERVIEW by Cathy Phillips, editor of Tax Notes International The voluntary tax systems of the United States and many other countries aren't perfect, but they sure beat the heck out of the alternative. Consider, for example, life under a regime where tax rates aren't made public, assessments are arrived at in secret, and failure-to-comply penalties include banishment to forced labor camps. This week we present a fascinating article by DAVID JOULFAIAN on a wealth tax adopted by Turkey in 1942 that included all of the above unpleasantries. In the midst of World War II, Turkish citizens also were victims of a monstrous tax system that they were powerless to change. Joulfaian describes the discriminatory nature of the wealth tax, a lopsided levy shouldered by the minority Christian and Jewish populations in the predominately Muslim nation, and the misguided fiscal policies that allowed the tax to take root in the first place (p. 915). ... THE ULTIMATE DEATH TAX (page 915) Wealth taxes are common in many countries, and represent one of the oldest forms of taxation. Local governments in the United States, for instance, levy annual property taxes. Annual wealth taxes are levied in several European countries as well. The estate tax is the only wealth tax levied by the U.S. government and applies to wealth held at death. The wealthy are at times also taxed at progressive tax rates on their earnings in addition to being exposed to wealth taxes. Governments levy those taxes to diversify their sources of revenues, augment and protect the income tax base, and regulate the distribution of income and the concentration of wealth. Governments may resort to additional taxes in times of national emergency. A general guiding principle for any tax system is that it should be sufficiently transparent to enable a taxpayer to construct the size of wealth or income subject to tax, as well as the ensuing tax liability. For local property taxes, for instance, cities inform property owners of the assessed value of their real estate and the amount of tax they owe. For income and estate taxes, taxpayers report the amount of income received and the size of terminal wealth to the government. Once the taxable amount is established, a tax rate schedule is applied to determine the tax liability. Taxpayers are able to appeal assessments and are given adequate time to prepare their documents and make provisions for paying the amounts owed. A student of taxation may encounter many fascinating features of the various taxes levied throughout history, dating back to ancient Egypt and the Roman Empire. Yet no tax system rivals the peculiarities of a tax employed in the middle of the 20th century. On the morning of November 12, 1942, the citizens of Turkey woke up to the most draconian wealth tax ever envisaged. While the tax in theory applied to the entire predominantly Muslim nation, in practice much of its burden rested with the minority Christian and Jewish communities who primarily resided in Istanbul, formerly known as Constantinople. Neither the rate of taxation nor the taxable base and its derivation were made public. Tax assessments were arrived at in secret, and individuals were directed to settle their government assessed liabilities within two weeks, without any appeal provisions in place. The penalty for Christians and Jews who failed to do so within a month was deportation to forced labor camps in eastern Turkey in addition to having their property confiscated. The tax was initially also extended to Christian and Jewish schools, as well as to churches and synagogues, but not to Muslim institutions, because they were owned or funded by the government. As documented by Faik Okte, the Turkish Ministry of Finance official in charge of implementing the tax, assessments were determined arbitrarily because the authorities lacked information on the income and properties of the minority groups./1/ Table 1: Statutory Tax Rates Provision Applied to Applied to Rate on wartime profit Muslim Turks Non-Muslims 12.5 percent 50.0 percent Additional tax zero Up to 50 percent of personal wealth Source: Faik Okte, The Tragedy of the Turkish Capital Tax. Description of the Tax The Turkish National Assembly passed the tax on November 11, 1942 (Law 4305/12.11.1942), and its decision to levy the tax was published the next day in the government official newspaper, Resmi Gazete. The details of the structure and inner workings of the tax were kept secret by the government. The details, however, were revealed and made public some five years after its enactment in a book authored in 1947 by Okte. In that book Okte also traced the architects of the tax and named all the governmental agencies and personnel engaged in administering the tax. In an otherwise officially secular state, taxpayers were classified as Muslim and non-Muslim, denoted with the letters M and G, respectively./2/ The latter included Jews and Christians, including Armenians and Greeks. Assyrian Orthodox Christians also fell in that class. An additional class of taxpayers were the Donme, denoted by D. The Donme were Jews whose ancestors had converted to Islam in the 17th century./3/ Like the Jews and Christians, the Donme were taxed at rates higher than those that applied to Muslims. Foreigners were taxed at the same rate as Muslim Turks. During that period, Greeks were the largest minority group in Turkey, and represented the heirs to Byzantium with Constantinople as its capital. The Armenians originated from western Armenia or the eastern half of Turkey, and represented the descendants of the first Christian nation. The presence of the Jews also predates that of the Turks, whose ranks had been augmented by Ladino Jews from Spain during the Inquisition. The Assyrians are originally from southern Turkey and modern-day Syria and Iraq; their presence also predates the arrival of the Turks from central Asia. Combined, those non-Muslim groups made up less than 1 percent of Turkey's population of 18 million in 1942. The tax was initially envisaged as a tax on capital or wealth. It was to apply to businesses and real estate (immovable property). By the time it was enacted, it had expanded to include a tax on wages as well that effectively applied only to non-Muslims in Istanbul. Taxpayers were classified according to business type and property earnings. Within the Ministry of Finance, once the size of income, wealth, and type of enterprise were established internally, local assessment boards secretly determined the amount owed by the taxpayer. The Finance Ministry was responsible for setting the tax rates to be used in computing tax assessments. Minorities were generally to be taxed at 5 to 10 times the amount applied to Muslims with similar wealth. Specifically, Muslims were to be taxed at the rate of 12.5 percent of profits or earnings. In contrast, non-Muslims were to be statutorily taxed at the rate of 50 percent of earnings plus an additional tax of up to 50 percent of their wealth (Table 1)./4/ The reach of the tax also extended to hospitals and educational institutions. The tax did not extend to Muslim institutions, because they were owned or funded by the government. While internal "guidelines" set minimum and maximum limits, the local boards at the Finance Ministry were free to choose any amount in between. Indeed, they had complete discretion in setting assessments. Information on income and wealth were obtained from Turkish national banks, the Republican People's Party, and the Security Directorate, which is equivalent to the U.S. FBI. Despite the lack of information on the sources of wealth and income, taxpayer records were not requested or considered when setting assessments. Table 2: Initial Assessments in Istanbul (Constantinople) Group Number of Taxpayers Amount (TRL millions) Extraordinary Rich Muslims 460 17.3 Non-Muslims 2,563 190.0 Those With Earnings Statements Muslims 924 3.1 Non-Muslims 1,259 10.4 Profit Tax on Gross Earnings Muslims 2,589 4.0 Non-Muslims 24,151 72.8 Wage Earners Muslims -- -- Non-Muslims 10,991 6.9 Subtotal 42,937 304.5 Muslims 3,973 24.4 Non-Muslims 38,964 280.1 Source: Faik Okte, The Tragedy of the Turkish Capital Tax. The assessed tax was due in cash within 15 days from its published date of December 17, 1942. Payments could be postponed for another 15 days, but would face a charge of up to 2 percent interest. If the tax due was not fully settled within 30 days of assessment, the taxpayer's property was to be confiscated. Furthermore, the taxpayer was to be sent to a labor camp until his debt was discharged, under Regulation 21/19288 approved on January 12, 1943. The Taxpayers By August 1943 the tax assessments stood at some TRL 335 million in Istanbul alone, or about one-half the entire currency in circulation. Indeed, those assessments represented as much as the entire budget revenues of TRL 394.3 million for 1942 before enactment of the tax. Table 2 provides a summary of the number of taxpayers assessed and the amount of assessments in Istanbul. Some 42,937 taxpayers were assessed a total of TRL 305 million, as shown in Table 2./5/ Of those, only 3,973 were Muslims, who were assessed a total of TRL 24.4 million. In other words, minorities who made up less than 1 percent of the population were assessed 93 percent of the liability. Table 3 further provides assessments for churches, synagogues, and schools./6/ In a survey of foreign chambers of commerce at the time, C.L. Sulzberger, writing for The New York Times in 1943, documented the discriminatory nature of the tax./7/ As illustrated in Table 4, the effective rates of assessments that merchants faced varied considerably from a low of under 5 percent for Muslims to over 150 percent for Christian Greeks and Jews, to well over 200 percent for Christian Armenians. Similarly, in one large enterprise, only 1.2 percent of the Muslim employees were assessed compared with 96.1 percent for minority citizens. As illustrated by the head of the Finance Ministry and the person in charge of implementing the tax, Faik Okte, assessments were determined in arbitrary manners because the authorities lacked information on the income and properties of the minority groups./8/ The arbitrary nature of the tax is best illustrated in the treatment of the "extraordinary rich." According to Okte, Mr. Bezmenler, whose ancestors converted from Judaism to Islam in the 17th century and who was classified as a Donme, was assessed TRL 1 million. In contrast, Dr. Cudi Birtek, an extraordinarily wealthy Muslim, was assessed only TRL 25,000, a mere fraction of the amount applied to the Donme./9/ In yet another example, Osman Sakar, K.S. was originally assessed TRL 120,000. When Mr. Sakar proved that he was a "pure Turk" or a Muslim, his tax liability was adjusted downward to TRL 12,000 -- just 10 percent of the originally published amount./10/ Those mistakes were not uncommon because all citizens were forced to adopt Turkish-sounding surnames in 1935 and because Turks have come to resemble more the Caucasians they conquered and less their Asiatic ancestors from central Asia. Table 3: Tax Assessments of Minority Institutions Christian and Jewish Institutions/*/ Number Assessment (TRL) Schools 88 227,550 Churches and Synagogues 27 119,200 Hospitals 7 86,750 /*/ Zero assessment for Muslim institutions, which numbered in the thousands. Source: Faik Okte, The Tragedy of the Turkish Capital Tax. The discriminatory and confiscatory nature of this tax is also evident in the treatment of non-Muslim institutions. According to Sulzberger, a poorly equipped Armenian hospital in Istanbul, for instance, was assessed TRL 39,000 compared with an assessment of TRL 2,500 for a modern and thriving American hospital. Muslim institutions avoided taxation altogether./11/ Tax assessments were seriously flawed in particular because they failed to consider any documents from the taxpayer. The tax due from a Christian Armenian timber merchant, for instance, was three times his entire fortune. The tax administrator informed him that his deportation to the labor camp could not be prevented, even after all his wealth had been confiscated./12/ At times the tax burden widely diverged in its arbitrariness. A Jewish taxpayer had his tax assessment increased simply because he argued with an assessor. In another example, a Christian Armenian "was taxed excessively at the rate of TRL 400,000," reflecting "the false allegation that he was the leader of the Armenian Tashnag Society, an old member of the Union and Progress Party," better known in the West as the Young Turk regime that governed Ottoman Turkey from 1909 through the end of World War I./13/ At the other extreme, another Armenian was exempted from the labor camp because he had written "favorable articles promoting Turkish interests in the French press."/14/ The punitive nature of the tax was at times also extended to foreigners. While foreigners were supposed to be taxed at the same low rate as Muslims, many in fact were taxed at the higher rates that applied to minority citizens. According to Faik Okte, the principal administrator of the tax, that treatment was deliberate. He reports that tax administrators were instructed to deny the foreigners' "privilege" to Jews from the Axis states./15/ In addition, and under "the pretext of the poor registration system," the property of Greeks and Armenians who had acquired foreign citizenship was immediately auctioned off./16/ Of the first 45 deportees to labor camps, 21 were Jews, 13 were Greeks, and 11 were Armenian. After the first deportation, it was decided that the "elderly, women, the sick, foreign residents . . . would not be exempted from the forced labor obligations."/17/ However, there are no records of any women or foreigners ever sent to labor camps. Table 4: Effective Tax Rates by Religious and Ethnic Affiliations Merchants by Affiliation Tax Rates (percent) Muslim 4.94 Greek Orthodox 156.00 Jewish 179.00 Christian Armenian 232.00 Source: C.L. Sulzberger, "Turkish Tax Kills Foreign Business," The New York Times, Sept. 11, 1943. Concluding Comment Shortly after the government published its declaration to levy the wealth tax, a Turkish professor contacted the Finance Ministry to inquire about the details of the new tax. "Have you all gone mad?" was his response after confirming that the new law did not provide for appeals nor did it indicate rate of taxation./18/ Despite its insanity, the tax shook the economy to its foundations. Many Muslims were enriched by acquiring non-Muslim property at bargain prices. However, those fire sales, or outright "confiscation" by state-owned enterprises, often hindered economic growth and entrepreneurship. Consider the case of the Banzilar and Benjamen Company, a shipping company owned by two Jews that was forced to turn over all of its five ships to the state-owned Maritime Lines in lieu of taxes totaling TRL 1.6 million. Despite the rising value of ships and Turkey's vast needs, those ships, which were productively employed by their previous owners, remained idle at port./19/ In another example, the majority of textile factory owners at the time were either Jewish or Donme converts from Judaism. Yet, after World War II and repeal of the tax, non-Muslim textile start-ups came to a screeching halt./20/ The Turkish wealth tax was advanced as part of a strategy to control prices during the inflationary early years of World War II. The thinking was that the forced sale of property and inventory within a fortnight of the assessments would depress prices. Yet not only did that misguided strategy fail to depress prices, the discriminatory nature of the tax and the taxation of an entrepreneurial group to certain bankruptcy led to a serious loss of confidence in the state and rattled financial markets for years to come. FOOTNOTES /1/ Faik Okte, The Tragedy of the Turkish Capital Tax, translated from the Turkish Varlik Vergisi Faciasi by Geoffrey Cox, Croom Helm, 1987. /2/ G denotes Gayrimuslim, or "other than Muslim" in Turkish, borrowed from the Arabic ghayr Muslim. /3/ The Donme, which means "apostates" in Turkish, are the followers of the mystic Shabbetai Tzvi who converted to Islam on September 16, 1666. Tzvi was arrested in Constantinople on December 30, 1665, after he announced that he would seize the crown of the Ottoman sultan and reestablish the kingdom of Israel. /4/ Okte, supra note 1, at 43. The wage tax was set at TRL 500 for those with monthly wages under TRL 100, TRL 750 for those with wages of TRL 101 to TRL 500, and so on. /5/ Plus another TRL 30 million when taxpayers with omitted affiliation are considered. See Okte, supra note 1, at 48. /6/ Okte, supra note 1, at 60. /7/ C.L. Sulzberger, "Turkish Tax Kills Foreign Business," The New York Times, Sept. 11, 1943, p. 7, column 1. /8/ Okte, supra note 1, at 33. /9/ Id. at 47. /10/ Id. at 62. /11/ Sulzberger, supra note 7. /12/ Okte, supra note 1, at 69. /13/ Id. at 47. /14/ Id. at 74. /15/ Id. at 37. /16/ Id. at 57. /17/ Id. at 72. /18/ Id. at 29. /19/ Id. at 95. /20/ See Edward C. Clark, "The Emergence of Textile Manufacturing Entrepreneurs in Turkey: 1804-1968" (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1969).

Turkey muzzles speech The Globe and Mail, Canada Sept 26 2005 Editorial It is still a crime to speak freely about the past in Turkey. Earlier this month a Turkish prosecutor charged leading novelist Orhan Pamuk with denigrating the Turkish identity, for having said, in an interview with a Swiss newspaper, that the genocidal killing of Armenians in 1915 is a historical fact. Then on Thursday, a Turkish court tried to ban an academic conference on the events of 90 years ago. It also made an outrageous demand to review the credentials of each participant at the conference. The freedom to think loses meaning if a person can't speak his thoughts and share them with others. Mr. Pamuk is sometimes mentioned as a possible Nobel laureate. His most recent novel, Snow, was lauded by Margaret Atwood in a front-page New York Times Book Review last year. Speaking up, as he has done, may shape the thoughts of others. Those others may in turn have something to say. The freedom to inquire into a nation's past is closely linked to the freedom to think. The genocide is, as Mr. Pamuk says, a historical fact, well-established in diplomatic reports and news dispatches at the time (Canadians were so distressed they made an exception to their discriminatory immigration rules and took in 100 Armenian orphans in the 1920s) and affirmed since then by independent historians. Mr. Pamuk's willingness to challenge the official truth is one encouraging sign of change. Another is that the academics that the court wished to silence said they would go ahead anyway at a different venue. As Turkey presses on with its bid to join the European Union, it will find that the country is increasingly buffeted by currents of thought it cannot control.

INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF GENOCIDE SCHOLARS President: Robert Melson (USA) Vice-President: Israel Charny (Israel) Secretary-Treasurer: Steven Jacobs (USA) Respond to: Robert Melson, Professor of Political Science Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907 USA April 6, 2005 Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan TC Easbakanlik Bakanlikir Ankara, Turkey FAX: 90 312 417 0476 Dear Prime Minister Erdogan: We are writing you this open letter in response to your call for an "impartial study by historians" concerning the fate of the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. We represent the major body of scholars who study genocide in North America and Europe. We are concerned that in calling for an impartial study of the Armenian Genocide you may not be fully aware of the extent of the scholarly and intellectual record on the Armenian Genocide and how this event conforms to the definition of the United Nations Genocide Convention. We want to underscore that it is not just Armenians who are affirming the Armenian Genocide but it is hundreds of independent scholars, who have no affiliations with governments, and whose work spans many countries and nationalities and the course of decades. The scholarly evidence reveals the following: On April 24, 1915, under cover of World War I, the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire began a systematic genocide of its Armenian citizens - an unarmed Christian minority population. More than a million Armenians were exterminated through direct killing, starvation, torture, and forced death marches. Another million fled into permanent exile. Thus an ancient civilization was expunged from its homeland of 2,500 years. The Armenian Genocide was the most well-known human rights issue of its time and was reported regularly in newspapers across the United States and Europe. The Armenian Genocide is abundantly documented by thousands of official records of the United States and nations around the world including Turkey's wartime allies Germany, Austria and Hungary, by Ottoman court-martial records, by eyewitness accounts of missionaries and diplomats, by the testimony of survivors, and by decades of historical scholarship. The Armenian Genocide is corroborated by the international scholarly, legal, and human rights community: 1) Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin, when he coined the term genocide in 1944, cited the Turkish extermination of the Armenians and the Nazi extermination of the Jews as defining examples of what he meant by genocide. 2) The killings of the Armenians is genocide as defined by the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. 3) In 1997 the International Association of Genocide Scholars, an organization of the world's foremost experts on genocide, unanimously passed a formal resolution affirming the Armenian Genocide. 4) 126 leading scholars of the Holocaust including Elie Wiesel and Yehuda Bauer placed a statement in the New York Times in June 2000 declaring the "incontestable fact of the Armenian Genocide" and urging western democracies to acknowledge it. 5) The Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide (Jerusalem), the Institute for the Study of Genocide (NYC) have affirmed the historical fact of the Armenian Genocide. 6) Leading texts in the international law of genocide such as William A. Schabas's Genocide in International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2000) cite the Armenian Genocide as a precursor to the Holocaust and as a precedent for the law on crimes against humanity. We note that there may be differing interpretations of genocide - how and why the Armenian Genocide happened, but to deny its factual and moral reality as genocide is not to engage in scholarship but in propaganda and efforts to absolve the perpetrator, blame the victims, and erase the ethical meaning of this history. We would also note that scholars who advise your government and who are affiliated in other ways with your state-controlled institutions are not impartial. Such so-called "scholars" work to serve the agenda of historical and moral obfuscation when they advise you and the Turkish Parliament on how to deny the Armenian Genocide. We believe that it is clearly in the interest of the Turkish people and their future as a proud and equal participant in international, democratic discourse to acknowledge the responsibility of a previous government for the genocide of the Armenian people, just as the German government and people have done in the case of the Holocaust. Sincerely, [signed] Robert Melson Professor of Political Science President, International Association of Genocide Scholars [signed] Israel Charny Vice President, International Association of Genocide Scholars Editor in Chief, Encyclopedia of Genocide [signed] Peter Balakian Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities Colgate University