Armenian Genocide Commemorations List and related articles

[Yervant1]

12:34 16/04/2015 » IN THE WORLD

Peter Balakian: On Armenian genocide, go ahead and offend Turkey

By Peter Balakian
Los Angeles Times
A friend once sent me a Christmas card with a handwritten greeting: "May your genocide be recognized this holiday season." It still makes me laugh out loud, because it captures something about the absurd and profound impasse between Turkey and the Armenian people.
One hundred years ago this month, the Ottoman Empire began carrying out a systematic plan to exterminate its minority Armenian population. Between 1 million and 1.5 million people were killed or died of starvation. Yet the Turkish government won't admit this historical fact. It spends a fortune annually to stop scholarly and cultural events about the genocide, even going so far as to pay former Sen. Richard Gephardt's Gephardt Group more than $1 million each year to lobby against congressional resolutions on the genocide. Turkey has threatened several times, most recently in 2007, to close Turkish missile bases to U.S. airplanes if Congress passes a simple non-binding statement acknowledging the events of 1915 as genocide. And its tactics work; the resolution, which had the votes to pass, was killed at the State Department's behest.
The United States isn't the only target of this censorship effort. At their government's prompting, Turkish diasporan organizations in 2009 mounted a campaign to stop the Toronto school board from including the Armenian genocide in a human rights curriculum. In 2010, Ankara succeeded in pressuring the Rwandan government to scrap a presentation on the Armenian genocide at a panel on genocide at the United Nations. In 2012, the Turkish government was successful in demanding that the British government order the Tate Gallery to remove the word "genocide" from the wall text of an Arshile Gorky exhibit.
Substitute "Jews" for "Armenians" and "German government" for "Turkish government" and you can imagine the ensuing moral outrage. The Armenian community has been waiting a century for the international community to stand up to Turkey. It shouldn't have to wait any longer.
The word "recognition" hovers over the history of the Armenian genocide like a hawk. It's a defining word that embodies an ethical basis for accountability after a human rights crime. The issue of recognition is not an abstraction, or a rhetorical game. The "R-word" is about responsibility, social justice and repair in the aftermath of one of the most extensive human rights crimes of the modern era: the crime that was instrumental in Raphael Lemkin's coining the very word and concept of genocide.
When Lemkin was asked in February 1949, just after the U.N. Genocide Convention was ratified, why he became interested in genocide, he answered, "Because it happened so many times. It happened to the Armenians. And after — the Armenians got a very rough deal at the Versailles conference because the criminals who were found guilty weren't punished." Lemkin was not only noting the importance of the event but also pointing out that it's ethically harmful to commit such a crime with impunity.
Denial of genocide is the final stage of genocide because it strives to kill the memory of the event; denial seeks to demonize the victims and rehabilitate the perpetrators; denial creates what the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton has called "a morally counterfeit universe for the survivors and their legacy."
In December, after North Korea organized a hacking operation against Sony Pictures to stop the release of "The Interview," President Obama spoke out against the use of threats by foreign powers to inhibit free speech in the United States.
"We cannot have a society where some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States," he said, "because if somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they'll do when they see a documentary that they don't like, or news reports that they don't like — or even worse, imagine if producers or distributors or others start engaging in self-censorship because they don't want to offend the sensibilities of somebody whose sensibilities probably need to be offended."
Obama has gone further than any other president in confronting Turkish leaders by asking them to deal with the events of 1915 honestly, as he did in 2009 when he visited Turkey. But he should heed his own wisdom and stop self-censoring.
The president understands clearly that what happened to the Armenians is genocide. In 2008, before his election, he stated, "My firmly held conviction [is] that the Armenian genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion or a point of view, but rather a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence." The president should follow the example of Pope Francis who, in acknowledging the historical significance of the Armenian genocide on Sunday, refused to be intimidated by Turkish government bullying and cajoling.
The Turkish government, for its part, should stop interfering with cultural events and intellectual freedom in democratic societies. And it should listen to many of its own ethically committed citizens who work hard for truth in Turkey. The Turkish scholar and journalist Cengiz Aktar spoke for many of his citizens when he wrote, "The Armenian genocide is the Great Catastrophe of Anatolia, and the mother of all taboos in this land. Its curse will continue to haunt us as long as we fail to talk about, recognize, understand and reckon with it."
Removing the curse won't require magic. All that's necessary is moral leadership.

Source: Panorama.am

[Yervant1]

12:25 16/04/2015 » IN THE WORLD

USA Today: Obama, make good on Armenia

By Gregory J. Wallance
USA Today
On April 24, 1915, in the midst of World War I, the Ottoman Empire began systematically massacring its Christian Armenian subjects. At Sunday's Mass in Rome, Pope Francis described the massacres as "the first genocide of the 20th century." Turkey, which emerged from the rubble of the defeated Ottoman Empire and has long fiercely denied that a genocide took place, angrily recalled its ambassador to the Vatican. "The pope's statement, which is out of touch with both historical facts and legal truths, is simply unacceptable," tweeted Turkey's foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu.
Will President Obama follow Pope Francis' lead?
Contrary to the foreign minister's tweet, there is a solid factual and legal foundation for calling the massacres a genocide, defined as killing or other acts intended to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
At the outbreak of the war, there were approximately 2 million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. Tens of thousands of Armenians were serving in the army of the empire, then at war with Britain and Czarist Russia. Seizing on the acts of a few Armenian sympathizers with Russia, the Ottoman government began systematically eliminating the Armenian leadership in Constantinople (now Istanbul) and sent Armenian men, women and children, many orphaned by the slaughter, on death marches into the Syrian desert, where they were left to die. One of the Ottoman leaders, Talaat *****, wrote that by "continuing the deportation of the orphans to their destinations (in the desert), we are ensuring their eternal rest." Ultimately, about 1.5 million Armenians died in the massacres which, together with Armenians who fled the Ottoman Empire, decimated the Armenian community.
In fact, as a senator, Barack Obama strongly supported the passage of the 2007 Armenian Genocide Resolution, which called the massacres a genocide. As a presidential candidate, he condemned the Bush administration for dismissing John Evans, the U.S. ambassador to Armenia, after Evans said the word "genocide" in public. "As president," vowed Obama, "I will recognize the Armenian genocide."
Not even close. On his first major foreign tour, President Obama visited Turkey and, while speaking in the Turkish Grand National Assembly about how "each country must work through its past," including the "terrible events of 1915," the word genocide did not then, and has not since, been publicly used by the president or members of his administration to describe the massacres. (As a senator, Hillary Clinton supported the Armenian genocide resolutions, but as Obama's first secretary of State, she opposed them.)
The Obama administration has been hardly alone in its timidity. For example, aside from a brief reference in a 1981 Holocaust proclamation, the Reagan administration avoided calling the Armenian massacres a genocide. The historic reason is rooted in the perceived strategic importance of Turkey, first in the Cold War and now in the war on terror. Turkey, a member of NATO, has threatened to curtail operations at the U.S. Air Force base at Incirlik in Turkey whenever momentum built for a congressional resolution on the Armenian genocide.
For Turkey, its national identity is at stake. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has gone so far as to acknowledge the "shared pain" and "inhumane consequences" of World War I, referring to the deaths of both Ottoman Muslims and the Armenians, but he categorically disputes that the Armenians died in a genocide by the Ottomans.
Erdogan, who seems to exist in a state of near clinical paranoia, has warned against "new Lawrences of Arabia," read, the Western countries who he claims are working to destroy the Middle East. He can hardly afford to admit that modern Turkey was built on the greatest crime a government can commit.
There are important U.S. interests at stake in relations with Turkey, but there is also something unseemly in a president breaking a firm campaign pledge rooted in moral considerations. Confronting a terrible past is essential to avoiding a repetition in the future. Or as the pope said Sunday, "Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it."
President Obama, who has prided himself on breaking foreign policy orthodoxy, as witness his opening to Cuba and nuclear negotiations with Iran, should do likewise with the Armenian genocide and finally make good on his own campaign pledge.
Gregory J. Wallance, a lawyer and writer in New York City, is a board member of Advancing Human Rights.

Source: Panorama.am

[Yervant1]

TURKEY TRYING TO BLACKMAIL INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS FOR THEIR STANCE ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

YEREVAN, April 17. /ARKA/. Turkey is trying to blackmail international
organizations and many countries and put pressure upon them, Armenian
Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandyan, said in a statement posted on
the foreign ministry's website as response to Ankara's reaction to
the European Parliament's resolution on Armenian Genocide.

<> he said.

<which respect 1.5 million innocent victims of the Genocide and which
condemn denial and try to prevent new crimes against humanity, the
Turkish leaders find themselves lonely at the sinking ship of denial.>>

The minister said in his statement that the resolution was adopted
by a parliament that represents 28 countries, but Ankara didn't
recall ambassadors from these 28 countries. <ambassadors would face unemployment problem,>> he added.

In his opinion, Turkish authorities are like a chess player in
zugzwang, whose every next step only worsens his position. Nalbandyan
also said citing the resolution: <without truth.>> ---0----

http://arka.am/en/news/politics/turkey_trying_to_blackmail_international_organizations_for_their_stance_on_armenian_genocide_/#sthash.59jhtove.dpuf

[Yervant1]

SWEDISH MEP: I'M HAPPY ABOUT THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RESOLUTION FROM THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

04:28, 17.04.2015
Region:World News, Armenia, Turkey
Theme: Politics

The Armenian Genocide is an issue that the Swedish Left Party
(Vansterpartiet) has fought for both in Sweden and internationally,
Swedish MEP and member of Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and
Home Affairs Malin Bjork told Armenian News - NEWS.am.

The MEP said that she was very happy about the resolution from the
European Parliament regarding the Armenian genocide. "Indeed, it was a
resolution from the Swedish Left Party in 2010 that led to the Swedish
Parliament recognizing the horrific events in 1915 as a genocide,"
the MEP said. At the same time, Ms Bjork reminded that the Left Party
spokesperson and Swedish MP Hans Linde said in a press release: "I
am extremely proud and happy to have been involved in this decision,
which represents a major step forward in the reconciliation process
and means of redress for the victims of genocide and their survivors."

The European Parliament adopted a resolution on Armenian Genocide
Wednesday in Brussels, in which it calls on Turkey to recognize the
atrocities of 1915 as a genocide, confront its past and make efforts
for the actual reconciliation between Armenian and Turkish nations.

http://news.am/eng/news/262425.html

[Yervant1]

AGOS: HISTORY HAS ALREADY DECIDED: GENOCIDE

13:30, 17.04.2015
Region:Armenia, Turkey
Theme: Politics

The chief editor of Agos Armenian bilingual weekly of Istanbul,
Yetvart Danzikyan, has harshly criticized Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan for his words against Armenians, and in connection
with the European Parliament resolution on Armenian Genocide.

Danzikyan, recalling Erdogan's statement that, "The decision by the
European Parliament enters from one of our ear and comes out from the
other," stressed that this shows that Turkey continues its denialist
and racist policies.

"Another time Erdogan had said, 'Let the historians decide [whether
it was genocide].' Yes, history has already decided: Genocide.

"Next, Erdogan said Armenians have fled Armenia and have come and
are living in Turkey [today]. Armenians [from Armenia] have not fled,
they work here [in Turkey]; Erdogan offends with this. In addition,
most residents of Armenia are the descendants of those who went to
Armenia from these lands.

"Erdogan used the word 'deportation' in connection with expelling
the Armenians [from Turkey]. In English, this has the meaning of
'displacement," Agos' chief editor specifically said.

http://news.am/eng/news/262480.html

[Yervant1]

FRENCH-ARMENIAN ACTOR SAYS THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE IS LIKE A WOUND THAT NEVER HEALS

17:28, 17 April, 2015

PARIS, 17 APRIL, ARMENPRESS. During the television program called
"Stories of French-Armenians", French-Armenian actor Simon Abgarian
talked about the Armenian Genocide, reflected on his past, the history
of his ancestors and called on Turkey to recognize the crime that it
committed in the early 20th century and turn a new page in its history.

As "Armenpress" reports, Abgarian emphasized that the Armenian
Genocide is like a wound that never heals and doesn't allow one to
forget what has happened. "The wound is still open. It's impossible
to forget the pain, and it has to remind the future generations,
including the Turks about what happened 100 years ago. It has to
remind them so that such events never happen again," Abgarian said.

Talking about Turkey, the actor placed emphasis on the future
and stressed the fact that Turkey's modern society and generation
acknowledge what their ancestors did.

"The events taking place today show that we have to learn the lessons
from the past because only be condemning will we be able to prevent
future crimes against humanity," the French-Armenian actor mentioned.

http://armenpress.am/eng/news/802245/french-armenian-actor-says-the-armenian-genocide-is-like-a-wound-that-never-heals.html

[Yervant1]

TURKISH POLITICAL PARTIES RELEASE JOINT STATEMENT AGAINST EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT'S RESOLUTION ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

15:37 â~@¢ 17.04.15

Turkey's ruling party, along with two opposition parties, have
released a joint statement "harshly condemning the partial approach"
of the European Parliament (EP) which backed a motion to call the
mass killings of Anatolian Armenians during World War I a "genocide,"
the Hurriyet Daily News reports.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), the main opposition
Republican People's Party (CHP) and the opposition Nationalist Movement
Party (MHP) signed the declaration on late April 16; only the Peoples'
Democratic Party (HDP) abstained from signing the declaration.

The statement condemned the EP's "partial" approach as it "opposes
the idea of peace, toleration and building of a common future."

"Despite our objections, the European Parliament prefers to deepen the
problem and gap between our two societies ... and prevent impartial
and scientific research of the issue," said the joint statement.

Since 1985, some 13 joint statements have been released in the Turkish
parliament's general assembly about various countries' statements,
including ones by France and the United States, about Armenian claims.

"The government should found a truth and reconciliation commission
in order to face the past," HDP Co-Chair Selahattin DemirtaÅ~_ told
reporters on April 16, displaying a different approach than other
political leaders.

"The pope says something; they give a childish reaction. The European
Parliament makes a decision; they give a childish reaction to this,
too. It's like a kindergarten, not as if they are governing a state.

They are like children attending a kindergarten," he said.

"You should explain to society how the Armenian reality should be
faced. This is an issue which is not discussed in Turkey. This is
an issue which is not officially clarified," he said. "This problem
cannot be resolved by saying 'We don't recognize the pope.'"

The HDP has long recognized the 1915 events as a genocide.

http://www.tert.am/en/news/2015/04/17/turkparties/1649424

[Yervant1]

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE ISSUE: ISRAEL'S POLICY BECOMING MORE FAVORABLE TO ARMENIA

16:44 * 17.04.15

Recognition of the Armenian Genocide was formerly a taboo in Israel,
whereas that state is gradually shifting its foreign policy focus
which is more favorable to Armenia, and the Pope's liturgy proved
shock therapy for the morally degrading world regardless of religious
affiliation, Head of the Jewish community in Armenia Rima Varzhapetyan
told Tert.am.

"As regards European Jews, I can only say that not only the
Christendom was impressed by the Pope's remarks, but they also proved
shock therapy for the whole morally degrading world regardless of
religious affiliation. And all of them, both Christians and Judaists,
sobered up. And nothing human is alien to the people of Israel,"
Ms Varzhapetyan said.

According to her, recognition of the Armenian Genocide is "almost
a moral matter" for Israel, and that state will certainly recognize
and condemn the heinous crime.

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) is sending its members to numerous
communities in the United States to participate in commemoration of
1.5. million victims of the Armenian Genocide.

Armenia will host Israeli Culture Days on May 13-18, and numerous
well-known political figures, and "two very important persons" are
expected to arrive in Armenia.

Without naming them, Ms Varzhapetyan said that the powerful Turkish and
Azerbaijani lobby, as well as sponsors, in Israel may exert pressure
to prevent their arrival in Armenia.

Armenian political analysts are cautiously optimistic about some
progress in the attitude of Israel and European Jews to international
recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

"The ice is breaking," said Hmayak Hovhannisyan, the chairman of the
Union of Armenian Political Analysts.

He said Israel has so far avoided acknowledging the Armenian Genocide
on a state level, being surrounded by Muslim that that haven't
recognized the tragedy either.

According to Styopa Safaryan, Chairman of the Armenian Institute
of International and Security Affairs, there are reasons to expect
positive moves by Israel in light of past years' deterioration in
the country's relations with Turkey.

"So there's nothing surprising about the fact that we had many visits
last year," he told our correspondent.

http://www.tert.am/en/news/2015/04/17/rimavarjapetian/1649383

[Yervant1]

REPUBLIKA SRPSKA TO ADOPT DECLARATION ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

14:30 17/04/2015 >> IN THE WORLD

The President of the Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik said in Srebrenica
that he will attend the "marking of the 100th anniversary of the
Armenian Genocide," at the invitation of the President of Armenia,
Bosnia Today reported.

Dodik told reporters in Srebrenica that he submitted the Declaration
on the recognition of the Armenian genocide from 1915 to 1917 to the
National Assembly of the Republika Srpska, and proposed its adoption
at the very next session.

He said that "the same was done by the Council of Europe and about
20 countries around the world, and even some 40 countries of the US."

Dodik visited the Memorial Center in Potocari, where he laid a wreath
and paid tribute to the victims of massacre in July 1995, but declined
to name this crime as genocide. International Court of Justice ruled
that genocide was committed in Srebrenica.

Republika Srpska is one of the two Bosnian entities.

http://www.bosniatoday.ba/republika-srpska-to-adopt-declaration-on-armenian-genocide

http://www.panorama.am/en/politics/2015/04/17/milorad-dodik/

[Yervant1]

A CENTURY AFTER ARMENIAN GENOCIDE, TURKEY'S DENIAL ONLY DEEPENS - THE NEW YORK TIMES

13:17 * 17.04.15

By Tim Argano

The crumbling stone monastery, built into the hillside, stands as a
forlorn monument to an awful past. So, too, does the decaying church
on the other side of this mountain village. Farther out, a crevice
is sliced into the earth, so deep that peering into it, one sees only
blackness. Haunting for its history, it was there that a century ago,
an untold number of Armenians were tossed to their deaths.

"They threw them in that hole, all the men," said Vahit Sahin, 78,
sitting at a cafe in the center of the village, reciting the stories
that have passed through generations.

Mr. Sahin turned in his chair and pointed toward the monastery. "That
side was Armenian." He turned back. "This side was Muslim. At first,
they were really friendly with each other."

A hundred years ago, amid the upheaval of World War I, this village
and countless others across eastern Anatolia became killing fields
as the desperate leadership of the Ottoman Empire, having lost the
Balkans and facing the prospect of losing its Arab territories as well,
saw a threat closer to home.

Worried that the Christian Armenian population was planning to align
with Russia, a primary enemy of the Ottoman Turks, officials embarked
on what historians have called the first genocide of the 20th century:
Nearly 1.5 million Armenians were killed, some in massacres like the
one here, others in forced marches to the Syrian desert that left
them starved to death.

The genocide was the greatest atrocity of the Great War. It also
remains that conflict's most bitterly contested legacy, having been
met by the Turkish authorities with 100 years of silence and denial.

For surviving Armenians and their descendants, the genocide became a
central marker of their identity, the psychic wounds passed through
generations.

"Armenians have passed one whole century, screaming to the world that
this happened," said Gaffur Turkay, whose grandfather, as a young boy,
survived the genocide and was taken in by a Muslim family. Mr. Turkay,
in recent years, after discovering his heritage, began identifying as
an Armenian and converted to Christianity. "We want to be part of this
country with our original identities, just as we were a century ago,"
he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/17/world/europe/turkeys-century-of-denial-about-an-armenian-genocide.html?_r=0

http://www.tert.am/en/news/2015/04/17/turkey-armenia-genocide/1649226

[Yervant1]

EU PARLIAMENT RECOGNIZES ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

Arutz Sheva, Israel
April 16 2015

Following Pope Francis's lead, EU lawmakers vote overwhelmingly to
recognize genocide in move likely to trigger Turkish anger.

By Ari Soffer

The European Union parliament has voted overwhelmingly in favor of
recognizing the mass-murder of Armenians by Ottomoan Turkey in 1915
as a genocide.

The decision to recognize the genocide - which saw more than 1.5
million Christian Armenians perish at the hands of Muslim Turkish
forces - is sure to enrage Turkey's Islamist leadership, coming just
days after the Pope similarly recognized it, comparing the Armenian
Genocide to other atrocities including the Holocaust.

EU parliamentarians backed the motion, which stated that the "tragic
events that took place in 1915-1917 against the Armenians in the
territory of the Ottoman Empire represent a genocide," according
to Reuters.

Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian hailed the resolution, and
said it sent an important message to Turkey - despite Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowing to ignore the vote even before it was held.

"The Resolution contains an important message to Turkey to use the
commemoration of the centenary of the Armenian Genocide to come to
terms with its past, to recognize the Armenian Genocide and thus pave
the way for a genuine reconciliation between Turkish and Armenian
peoples," Nalbandian said in a statement.

Turkey denies the massacres amounted to a genocide, although it admits
some killings of Armenians by Turkish forces did happen.

While Armenia and several western states do recognize the genocide,
most countries have yet to do so, mainly due to political pressure
from Turkey.

The EU Parliament also praised Pope Francis for his comments on Sunday.

Speaking at an Armenian event at the Vatican, Francis told worshippers:
"In the past century, our human family has lived through three massive
and unprecedented tragedies.

"The first, which is widely considered 'the first genocide of the
20th century', struck your own Armenian people," he said, going on
to name the other two tragedies as the Holocaust and Stalinism.

The Pope also condemned those who attempted to deny such crimes had
taken place.

The European Union parliament has voted overwhelmingly in favor of
recognizing the mass-murder of Armenians by Ottomoan Turkey in 1915
as a genocide.

The decision to recognize the genocide - which saw more than 1.5
million Christian Armenians perish at the hands of Muslim Turkish
forces - is sure to enrage Turkey's Islamist leadership, coming just
days after the Pope similarly recognized it, comparing the Armenian
Genocide to other atrocities including the Holocaust.

EU parliamentarians backed the motion, which stated that the "tragic
events that took place in 1915-1917 against the Armenians in the
territory of the Ottoman Empire represent a genocide," according
to Reuters.

Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian hailed the resolution, and
said it sent an important message to Turkey - despite Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowing to ignore the vote even before it was held.

"The Resolution contains an important message to Turkey to use the
commemoration of the centenary of the Armenian Genocide to come to
terms with its past, to recognize the Armenian Genocide and thus pave
the way for a genuine reconciliation between Turkish and Armenian
peoples," Nalbandian said in a statement.

Turkey denies the massacres amounted to a genocide, although it admits
some killings of Armenians by Turkish forces did happen.

While Armenia and several western states do recognize the genocide,
most countries have yet to do so, mainly due to political pressure
from Turkey.

The EU Parliament also praised Pope Francis for his comments on Sunday.

Speaking at an Armenian event at the Vatican, Francis told worshippers:
"In the past century, our human family has lived through three massive
and unprecedented tragedies.

"The first, which is widely considered 'the first genocide of the
20th century', struck your own Armenian people," he said, going on
to name the other two tragedies as the Holocaust and Stalinism.

The Pope also condemned those who attempted to deny such crimes had
taken place."

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/194143#.VTBAe5scSP8

[Yervant1]

THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

Canada Free Press
April 16 2015

By Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh

"Around the world, Christians are facing violence, persecution,
brutality in a way we have not seen in generations." - Rey Flores,
"The Wanderer"

The hypocritical "war on women" movement is deafly silent, no real
effort to save the captives, and good men are doing nothing when
faced daily with photographs of Christian hostages on their knees,
clad in orange jumpsuits, about to be beheaded, when women and girls
are kidnapped, raped, genitally mutilated by ISIS, and driven into
a life of slavery as forced converts to Islam.

One year later, the Clarion Project says, " #BringBackOurGirls" are
still sex slaves to Boko Haram, sold into slavery for 2,000 rials each,
about $12.

The Christian genocide continues unabated. ISIS is demanding $100,000
per hostage, for the 250-300 Assyrians who were captured in the
Hasaka province.

The Pope spoke about the Armenian genocide during Mass in the Armenian
Catholic rite at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Church leaders and the
Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan were in attendance. He spoke about
humanity witnessing "three massive and unprecedented tragedies" in
the 20th century. "The first, which is widely considered, 'the first
genocide of the 20th century,' struck your own Armenian people," he
said. The Nazi Holocaust and Stalin's mass killings were followed by
other genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Burundi, and Bosnia.

As Christians, it is our duty and responsibility to keep alive the
memories of those killed, the Pope said. "Concealing or denying evil
is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it,"
Pope Francis continued.

BBC News reported on April 12, 2015 that Turkey was angry with Pope
Francis' description of the mass killings of Armenians under Ottoman
rule in WWI as "genocide." Turkey plays down the genocide as smaller
numbers of deaths resulting from the WWI clashes in which ethnic
Turks have also suffered. Most Western scholars regard the 1.5 million
Armenians civilians, who were deliberately deported between 1915-1916
to desert regions where they succumbed to starvation and thirst, as
genocide. "Thousands also died in massacres." Countries like Belgium,
Canada, Argentina, France, Italy, Russia, and Uruguay recognize the
mass killings of Armenians as genocide.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered condolences in
2014 for the first time to the grandchildren of all the Armenians who
were massacred in 1915. This year marks a century since the atrocities
were committed, and, until all countries recognize that the genocide
had occurred, it is an incomplete mourning exacerbated by the denial
stories to this day.

Why were Armenians massacred by the Turks? To understand the reason,
you must understand who the Armenians were, how, and why they
lived under the Ottoman Empire, and their status as non-Muslims,
"non-believers," and second-class citizens.

Armenians are ancient people who lived in Anatolia some 2500 years
ago. They had their own distinctive alphabet and culture. There are 6
to 7 million Armenians today, half living in the Republic of Armenia,
while the rest are scattered in the U.S., Russia, France, Lebanon,
and Syria.

In the year 301 A.D., the King of Armenia was the first ruler to
adopt Christianity as the official state religion, even before the
Roman Emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity. Captured by
the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century, Armenia was absorbed into the
Islamic Ottoman Empire, along with a large swath of European lands. As
subject of the Sultan, Armenians had less freedom, had to pay higher
taxes, were discriminated against, and were not allowed to serve in
the military.

Unhappy with the second-class citizen status, by the end of the 1800s,
Armenians demanded equality. In the 1890s the Bloody Sultan who was
presiding over a weak government, used massacres as a way to maintain
law and order. In 1894-1896 200,000 Armenians were killed during the
Hamidian massacres under the rule of Abdul Hamid II, a foreshadowing
of what was to come in 1915.

When the Young Turks forced the Sultan out in 1908, Armenians were
allowed to serve in the military. In 1912-1913 the Christian regions
of Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria gained their independence from the
Ottoman Empire.

According to Vahaken Dadrian, Director of the Genocidal Research at
Zoryan Institute, as quoted on a film aired on PBS, "For the first
time in recent history, the glorious Ottoman army suffered a major
military defeat at the hands of their former subject-nations, Greeks,
Bulgarians, and Serbs," losing in two weeks 75 percent of their former
European territories.

The despair borne by such a loss in the Balkans gave rise to a deep
hatred against Christians, inflamed by Ottoman refugees' stories,
refugees thrown out of Christian lands, turning angry Turks against
their indigenous Christian population, the Armenians - "Revenge,
revenge, revenge, there is no other word."

Ambassador Henry Morgenthau published in 1918 his personal account of
the Armenian genocide. Chapter 24, The Murder of a Nation, describes
in grizzly detail how Armenian men, who were formerly soldiers
and cavalrymen in the Turkish army, were stripped of their arms and
transformed into road workers and "pack animals." Carrying heavy loads
onto their backs, these men were whipped and bayonetted by the Turks
into the Caucasus Mountains, sometimes waist-deep through snow.

"They had to spend practically all their time in the open, sleeping
on the bare ground. ... They were given only scraps of food; if
they fell sick they were left where they had dropped," while the
Turks robbed them of their possessions and their clothes. "Squads of
50-100 men were taken in groups of four, marched to a secluded spot a
short distance from the village," they were stripped naked and shot,
having been forced to dig their own graves.

Morgenthau describes the fate of an entire Armenian regiment sent
to Diarbekir. Agents notified Kurdish tribesmen to attack and kill
these weak and starved soldiers "that they might gain that merit in
Allah's eyes that comes from killing a Christian."

Ambassador Morgenthau explained how "throughout the Turkish Empire a
systematic attempt was made to kill all able-bodied men, not only for
the purpose of removing all males who might propagate a new generation
of Armenians, but for the purpose of rendering the weaker part of
the population an easy prey."

When thousands failed to turn in weapons, the Turks ransacked churches,
desecrated altars, marched the naked men and women through the streets,
letting them be whipped by angry Turkish mobs. Those imprisoned who
did not manage to flee into the woods and caves were subjected to the
"bastinado" torture, the beating of the soles of the feet until they
burst and had to be amputated.

Crucifixion, pulling of fingernails, of hairs, of eyebrows, tearing of
flesh with red-hot pincers, and then pouring hot oil into the wounds
were some of the barbaric methods of torture drawn from the records
of the Spanish Inquisition.

Torture was just the beginning of the Armenian atrocities. What was
to come was the actual destruction of "an entire Armenian race" by
deporting it to the south and southeastern part of the Ottoman Empire,
the Syrian desert and the Mesopotamian valley. Morgenthau said,
"The Central Government now announced its intention of gathering
the two million or more Armenians living in the several sections of
the empire and transporting them to this desolate and inhospitable
region." They knew they would die on the way of thirst, starvation,
or be murdered by "Mohammedan desert tribes."

The deportations took place through the spring and summer of 1915. The
entire Armenian population of villages were ordered to appear in
the main square, sometimes with little time to prepare, their homes
and possessions confiscated for "safekeeping" and then divided among
Turks. Once the deported Armenians had traveled several hours, they
were attacked and killed in secluded valleys by Turkish peasants with
clubs, hammers, axes, scythes, spades, and saws.

The "caravans of despair" originated in thousands of cities and
villages in the Ottoman Empire. Ambassador Morgenthau described
how village after village and town after town were emptied of their
Armenian populations and, in six months, "about 1.2 million people
started on this journey to the Syrian desert." He believed it absurd
that the Turkish government claimed to deport Armenians to "new homes,"
the real intent was extermination. He concludes, "The details in
questions were furnished to me directly by the American Consul in
Aleppo, and are now on file in the State Department at Washington."

(Ambassador Morgenthau's Story: A Personal Account of the Armenian
Genocide, Henry Morgenthau, Cosimo Classics, New York, 2010)

Henry Morgenthau Sr. (1856-1946) "details how Turkey fell under the
influence of Germany and how this led to the Armenian Genocide. In a
trial run of the extermination of the Jews, the Germans orchestrated
the murder and exile of the Armenians from Turkey, with 'Turkey
for the Turks' as a rallying cry. The similarities to the Holocaust
are chilling."

Also chilling is the recent discovery made by Stefan Petke of the
Technical University of Berlin who uncovered rare WWII footage
that documents the existence of Muslim units (The Free Arab Legion)
in the Nazi army who were used as 'working soldiers' because they
"were a complete failure in the battlefields of Tunisia in 1943."

The Marxist/Nazi/Ottoman/Islamist ISIS pogrom against Christianity
continues to this day.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/71223#.VTAsOAq2RYo.facebook

[Yervant1]

MEP: WHEN WILL ERDOGAN HEAR TURKS' WORDS ON GENOCIDE?

23:54, 16.04.2015
Region:World News, Armenia, Turkey
Theme: Politics

Sajjad Karim MEP, who co-chairs the European Parliament (EP) Delegation
to the EP/Armenia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee, today welcomed
the adoption by the EP Plenary of a Joint Resolution on the 100th
Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

MEPs paid tribute to the memory of the 1.5 million innocent Armenian
victims who perished in 1915-1917. While these tragic events took
place in the times of the Ottoman Empire, the European Parliament
has reiterated its formal position, adopted as early as 1987, that
genocide did in fact take place, as defined by the Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948.

This resolution follows both the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly and
the EP/Armenia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee adopting similar
texts in mid-March. The joint EP/Armenia PCC statement, in particular,
had strongly hoped that the legacy of the past could be overcome by the
normalization of Turkey - Armenia relations, without any preconditions.

The EP Plenary, in turn, encourages both countries to focus on
an agenda that puts cooperation between both their people first,
believing this will contribute to historical reconciliation.

Speaking during today's plenary session in the European Parliament,
Dr Karim said:

"It's quite clear that whilst President Erdogan may take the view
that he is going to ignore what this house has to say, how long is he
going to ignore all of those Turkish people that are saying exactly
what we have said in our resolution.

I say to the Turks and I say to the Armenians - our intent is
constructive. We want to help you both to move forward towards
normalization of relations, but to do that we must first stand by
our own core principles."

Armenia News - NEWS.am

[Yervant1]

GENOCIDE SCHOLARS CALL ON TURKEY TO END DENIAL OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

ANCA Welcomes Open Letter by Leaders of the
International Association of Genocide Scholars

WASHINGTON, DC - The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) has
welcomed an open letter by leaders of the International Association
of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) calling on Turkey to end its campaign of
denial of the Armenian Genocide and urging the Turkish government to
accept responsibility for this crime against humanity.

The open letter, dated April 6th and first reported by Bloomberg News
on April 14th, was signed by Robert Robert Melson, the President of
the IAGS; Israel Charny, Vice-President of the Association, and; New
York Times Best-Selling author Peter Balakian, who holds the Donald M.

and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities at Colgate
University. These scholars wrote in response to Turkish Prime Minister
Erdogan's call for an "impartial investigation" of the fate of the
Armenians in Turkey in 1915.

"We very much appreciate the strong leadership, academic integrity,
and moral clarity of professors Melson, Charney, and Balakian
in challenging Prime Minister Erdogan's cynical attempt to force
an artificial debate on an issue that is thoroughly documented and
universally accepted - except by the few remaining academic mercenaries
in the service of Turkey's state-controlled institutions," said Aram
Hamparian, Executive Director of the ANCA.

Speaking on behalf of the "the major body of scholars who study
genocide in North America and Europe," the authors of the letter noted
that 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 letter went on to stress 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," the letter
continued. "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."

Commenting on the letter, Hamparian added: "Clearly, the international
pressure is growing on Turkey, and Ankara is finding itself
increasingly isolated in its campaign of genocide denial.

Unfortunately, rather than following the post World War II German
model of accepting responsibility - as suggested in this letter - the
Turkish government has responded, internally, by outlawing discussion
of the Armenian Genocide - through Section 306 of their new penal code,
and, abroad, in the form of aggressive, but increasingly transparent,
efforts to deny the truth, engage in diversionary tactics, and escape
justice for its crime."

The full text of the letter is provided below.

#####

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

http://www.anca.org/press_releases/press_releases.php?prid=747

http://www.genocidescholars.org/sites/default/files/document%09%5Bcurrent-page%3A1%5D/documents/US%20Congress_%20Armenian%20Resolution.pdf

[Yervant1]

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/04/16/opinion/16chappatte/16chappatte-master675.jpg

 

NYT POSTS CARTOON ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

18:03, 16 Apr 2015
Siranush Ghazanchyan

The New York Times has posted a cartoon on Armenian Genocide by Patrick
Chappatte with the following caption: "A century on, the debate over
the killings continues."

Patrick Chappatte is an editorial cartoonist for The International
New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/opinion/patrick-chappatte-armenians-ottoman-turkey.html?smid=fb-nytopinion&smtyp=cur

http://www.armradio.am/en/2015/04/16/nyt-posts-cartoon-on-armenian-genocide/

[Yervant1]

GERMAN JOURNALIST: "THERE ARE ALL THE DOCUMENTS IN THE TURKISH ARCHIVES PROVING THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE": ERMENIHABER.AM

13:44 | April 16,2015 | Politics

"There is a huge number of documents in the Turkish archives,
which prove the Armenian Genocide," notes German "Die Tageszeitung"
newspaper's correspondent in Istanbul Jurgen Gottschlich. He is
carrying out a research on that topic. He has even published a book
on the role of Germany in connection with the Armenian Genocide.

Gottschlich has had a chance to work at Istanbul's Ottoman and Ankara's
military archives

Asked by Ermenihaber.am "Is it possible to find documents proving
the Armenian Genocide in the Turkish archives or have such documents
been removed from the archives?", German journalist said, "Both in the
Turkish and the German archives there are huge amounts of documents,
which prove the Armenian Genocide. Erdogan invites the Armenians to
study the archives, as he doesn't know what there are in the archives.

Turkish archives "haven't been cleared", as Armenians think."

More- on the source website

http://en.a1plus.am/1209728.html

[Yervant1]

15:02 18/04/2015 » SOCIETY

In Defense of Christians condemns Armenian Genocide

In Defense of Christians (IDC) Executive Director Kirsten Evans issued the following statement: “On Wednesday April 15th, the European Parliament joined its voice with other international bodies and adopted a resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide, “paying tribute, on the eve of the centenary, to the memory of the one-and-a-half million innocent Armenian victims who perished in the Ottoman Empire.”
In Defense of Christians (IDC) extols the EU for this timely and needed recognition of a tragic episode in human history, according to PRWeb.
“IDC agrees that ‘genocide’, defined by the United Nations as acts committed with intent to destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, accurately describes the systematic eradication of minority Christian populations in the Ottoman Empire beginning on April 24, 1915. The campaign of religious cleansing targeted men, women, and children, murdering more than a million Armenians, as well as Assyrians, Greeks, and many vulnerable members of other ancient Christian communities.
“On the centennial of the Armenian Genocide, societies championing truth and endeavoring to build a more humane world are calling upon the Turkish government to acknowledge the crime against humanity. In the face of the current ethnic cleansing of Christian communities in Iraq and Syria by the Islamic State, and the targeting of Christians by extremist groups in other parts of the world, Turkey’s acknowledgement of this dark chapter of history is imperative. Official obfuscations from Ankara, while unable to hide historical facts, only serve to reopen generational wounds in the memories of millions around the globe.
“Recognition, as highlighted by both the EU and Pope Francis, is not only necessary for reconciliation and healing, but to protect the world from repeating similar horrors. ‘Only in this way will new generations open themselves to a better future and will the sacrifice of so many become seeds of justice and peace.’
“In Defense of Christians (IDC) stands in solidarity with the descendants of the Armenian Genocide, as well as with the many Middle Eastern Christian communities that continue to suffer persecution today. As we approach its centenary, IDC calls upon Turkey to acknowledge the historical reality of the Ottoman genocide of the Armenian people.”
IDC exists to empower the Middle Eastern Christian Diaspora and energize the American people to stand in solidarity with the Christian communities in the region. Last September, at IDC’s Inaugural Summit, “Protecting and Preserving Christianity — Where It All Began,” Members of Congress, members of the Diaspora, and religious leaders from around the world gathered in Washington, D.C. to champion the cause of Middle Eastern Christians through awareness, advocacy, and unity.

Source: Panorama.am

[Yervant1]

11:34 18/04/2015 » DAILY PRESS

Hraparak: New shock awaits Erdogan: Ecuador is going to recognize Armenian Genocide

Ecuador is going to recognize the Armenian Genocide in the coming days, Hraparak reports, citing its sources.
“This will be a new shock for Erdogan, who is “paralyzed” from the Pope, and whose delegates in the United States are trying to prevent new troubles connected with the U.S. President’s speech on April 24. It is clear that Obama will not say the word “genocide” this time as well. But the American side will sublimate this with a Mass dedicated to the Armenian Genocide victims that will be served in early May, and Cavusoglu, who is in the United States now, will not be able to derail it,” a diplomatic source told Hraparak.

The source also said that Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan will travel to the United States on May 6 to participate in the Mass. Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II, Archbishop Navasard Kchoyan and Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia Aram I will also be among the attendees.

Source: Panorama.am

[Yervant1]

IF US WISHES ... TURKISH HISTORIAN ON GENOCIDE RECOGNITION

18:28 * 17.04.15

The countries which are powerful enough to end the political disputes
over the Armenian Genocide have to first of all explain why they
do not use the proper wording to address tragedy, says Taner Akcam,
a Turkish historian and publicist.

In an article published in Taraf, Akcam particularly points out to
three countries, the United States, Great Britain and Israel (as
a country having a great influence on the US), comparing Turkey's
denialism with the South African regime.

"Such denialist and racist regimes will be possible to change if and
only if we juxtapose two phenomena: external pressure and internal
civilian opposition.

"If you are afraid of the denialist regime and look for a place to
hide from its threats, then such regimes are never likely to face
the need to change. They will feel the urge in case they are isolated
and deprived of the opportunity to move on the international arena.

"But the United States and the West became the accomplice of the
denialist regime, assisting in its efforts to maintain its existence.

With that, became part and parcel of the problem instead of offering
a solution.

"After the assassination of [Turkish-Armenian journalist] Hrant Dink,
Turkey saw the emergence of an opposition calling for a confrontation
with history.

"To demonstrate its attitude to Turkey, the West must, of course,
consider itd role in the region and make certain strategic
calculations, but it has to pay attention to that civil opposition too.

"Confronting the history is serious affair. To do that, it is necessary
to offer apologies, abandoning the logic of a common trader and leaving
aside the denial policies pursued for years," reads the article.

http://www.tert.am/en/news/2015/04/17/usa/1649409

[Yervant1]

IMPUNITY ENJOYED BY TURKEY GAVE RISE TO HITLER, MUSSOLINI - EDUARD SHARMAZANOV

17:21 * 17.04.15

The Chairperson of the IPA CIS Council, the Speaker of the RF FA
Federal Council Valentina Matvienko presided over the session.

In his speech at the session, Mr Sharmazanov said, particular:

"Ahead of the 70th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic
War we mark the Armenian Genocide Centennial. At first glance the
relation of these two events is invisible and seems to be indirect,
but I should note that in 1915 one and a half million Armenians fell
victim of that very Nazism and fascism. It was the impunity enjoyed
by Turkey that bore Mussolini's fascism and Hitler's Nazism. Its
vivid example was Hitler's announcement before the German military
commanders: 'Who after all speaks today of the annihilation of the
Armenians?' This once again proves that the policy of Germany was
the continuation of the policy of the Young Turks' Nazism.

The Great Patriotic War, in fact, was one more experience for our
people, experience of victory, when the Armenians, together with other
peoples, fighting against fascism and Nazism, withstood the evil,
the victim of which they became in the Ottoman Empire."

http://www.tert.am/en/news/2015/04/17/sharmazanov2/1649401

[Yervant1]

ARMENIA'S GENOCIDE: DEATH AND DENIAL

April 17, 2015 4:10 pm

David Gardner

Personal testimony and scholarly research leave no doubt that the
Ottoman-orchestrated massacre of Armenians that began 100 years ago
this month was genocide ©AFP

Released by the Armenian Genocide Museum in Yerevan, this 1915 picture
shows soldiers surveying the skulls of victims in an Armenian village

'They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else': A History of the
Armenian Genocide, by Ronald Grigor Suny, Princeton University Press,
RRP£24.95 / RRP$35, 520 pages

Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide, by
Thomas de Waal, Oxford University Press, RRP£20 / RRP$29.95, 312 pages

Goodbye, Antoura: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide, by Karnig
Panian,Stanford University Press, RRP$25, 216 pages

Pope Francis caused a diplomatic uproar in Turkey this week when he
called the massacre of the Ottoman Armenians of Anatolia a century ago
genocide. Even if the term had not been invented when most of the mass
killings took place in 1915-16, and was to be legally defined only in
the 1948 UN convention on genocide, he was stating a fact. Thoroughly
an array of documented accounts over the past two decades, by Turks,
Armenians and western historians, have placed the nature of those
atrocities beyond the questioning of the modern Turkish republican
narrative.

Essentially, that denialist story holds that massacres did, indeed,
take place, but in the context of total war -- the first world war --
that also killed many hundreds of thousands of Muslims when the Ottoman
Empire, allied with Germany and assailed by the main Entente powers of
Britain, France and Russia, was fighting for its life. It lost that
fight, and the republic of Mustafa Kemal, or Ataturk, was built from
its residual Turkic core, in an Anatolia almost entirely emptied of
Armenians, as well as Assyrian Christians and Ottoman Greeks.

Up to 1.5m Ottoman Armenians perished. They were then largely erased
from official history and Kemalist Turkey's school textbooks, an
enforced amnesia strengthened by a wall of silence from reputed
Ottomanist scholars. The infamous remark attributed to Adolf Hitler
on the eve of the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 -- "Who, after all,
still talks nowadays about the extermination of the Armenians?" --
should remind us of the colossal cost of amnesia about genocide.

Only in recent years, especially following the rise to power of
Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his neo-Islamist Justice and Development
party (AKP), has there been a fuller debate inside Turkey about what
happened. Yet the way Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkish foreign minister,
attacked the Pope's "unfounded allegations" shows how far Turkey is
from a full reckoning with what befell the Armenians 100 years ago.

Last April, on the eve of the anniversary of the government
deportations in 1915 that began the systemic massacres, then prime
minister and now president Erdogan, in a hedged but nonetheless
unprecedented statement, offered his condolences for the mass murder,
speaking of the "shared pain" of "millions of people of all religions
and ethnicities [who] lost their lives in the first world war". Yet
the messaging is mixed. This year Turkey has chosen to mark the
centenary of the allied landings in Gallipoli -- a battle Mustafa
Kemal was instrumental in winning -- on the same date, April 24,
as the remembrance of the Armenian genocide.

One can now find books in Turkey analysing these terrible events as
a genocide but no official recognition that this was what it was.

Erdogan's offer to open Ottoman archives to a panel of international
scholars to determine the truth of what happened is superfluous in
light of scholarship there for all to see.

The three newly published, and very different, books discussed here --
and many previous works besides -- can leave no one with a scintilla
of doubt that what was done to the Ottoman Armenians (and the Assyrian
Christians of eastern Anatolia) was genocide. They were annihilated,
and the merciless drive against the Armenians was centrally directed
by the Ottoman government under the Committee of Union and Progress
(CUP) or Young Turks. One man in particular, Talat *****, minister
of the interior, later grand vizier, and one of the CUP triumvirate
along with Enver ***** and Cemal ***** that ruled the empire at the
time, oversaw the process in chilling detail, demanding by telegraph
almost daily tallies from his provincial enforcers.

So rapidly did most of them obey that, by August 1915, Talat felt
able to tell Henry Morgenthau, the US ambassador who forged a close
relationship with both Talat and Enver and is a key witness in all
serious histories of the killings, that "it is no use for you to
argue .â~@~I.â~@~I.â~@~Iwe have already disposed of three-quarters
of the Armenians; there are none at all left in Bitlis, Van, and
Erzeroum. The hatred between the Turks and the Armenians is now so
intense that we have got to finish with them. If we don't, they will
plan their revenge."

These lines, in the history by Ronald Grigor Suny, an Armenian-American
professor at the University of Michigan and great-grandson of
genocide victims, have been often quoted. But what distinguishes
Suny's scholarship is a scrupulous attention to context and the
genuine imperial anxiety of the Young Turks. They Can Live in the
Desert but Nowhere Else (a title taken from another Talat diktat)
is a fair-minded account. Unsparing in depicting the viciousness
of the killing, forced conversions and kidnapping of children and
young women, it is rigorous in its choice of language and nuance,
generous in its empathy but implacable in its conclusions.

The Armenians lived in what Suny calls "relatively benign symbiosis"
with their imperial masters for more than four centuries after the
Ottomans conquered Constantinople in 1453. Clearly subordinate, they
enjoyed a measure of cultural and religious autonomy in six eastern
provinces of Anatolia where they were most numerous, while Armenian
businessmen and professionals thrived in Istanbul and west coast
cities. Armenian nationalism was confined mostly to the diaspora,
in Venice, Vienna or Madras.

The Young Turks, with the conspiratorial CUP at their core and a
strong base in the army, were originally Europeanist modernisers
who at times allied with like-minded Armenians. Centred on Salonika
in what is now Greece, they took power cumulatively from 1908 in an
attempt to save the crumbling Ottoman Empire. In the Balkan wars of
1912-13 they lost the European heartland of their empire. They threw
in their lot with Germany, a gamble to safeguard their territory from
the predatory European empires, especially an expansionist Russia.

They suffered the humiliation in 1914 of the future Entente imposing
reforms that would have established European stewards of Armenian
rights in eastern Anatolia. In the CUP mind, Suny shows, this confirmed
a treacherous nexus between the imperial powers and Ottoman Christian
minorities. When war came, Enver *****'s Third Army was routed by
the Russians at SarikamiÅ~_ in the Caucasus in 1915, and soon after
the Gallipoli landings threatened an Istanbul in panic.

This grim outlook, plus the need to find space for Muslim refugees
pushed into Anatolia as the empire lost its European territory,
is part of the rationale for its Armenian policy, but, as both Suny
and Thomas de Waal show -- the latter in his measured and meticulous
Great Catastrophe -- it is hardly the only part. After serial Ottoman
failures, Young Turk ideology, inchoate but influenced by European
nationalism, evolved away from multicultural Ottomanism into national
imperialism, which upgraded the value of ethnic homogeneity and
Muslim solidarity.

Talat's and Enver's arguments that the Armenians allied with the
Russians to stab the empire in its eastern back does not bear
real examination -- despite the hopes of some Armenians, and the
reckless incitement of the European powers. Most Armenians, wary
of Russification as well as Turkification, remained loyal, to the
point they could not imagine what they faced, despite pogroms against
them in 1894-96 and 1909. The fifth-column paranoia or "provocation
thesis", as Suny calls it, was largely fabricated. As Suny shows,
the most celebrated acts of Armenian resistance, notably at Van,
which was portrayed as a generalised insurrection, occurred after
massacres had begun.

"The Young Turk leaders did face threats to their security, but out
of the options they had at their disposal, they came to choose mass
murder," argues De Waal. A scholar of Russia and the Caucasus, he
focuses on the relations between Turks and Armenians in the century
after the Medz Yeghern or Great Catastrophe, the traditional term
Armenians used for 1915. He wonders whether denialists have an interest
in confining the controversy over the atrocities to the semantics
of the word "genocide", and whether a convention on "crimes against
humanity" -- words used in an Entente démarche in that fateful spring
of 1915 -- might not bring more mass murderers to justice.

Talat ***** oversaw the process in chilling detail, demanding almost
daily tallies from his enforcers Tweet this quote

The late Karnig Panian's memoir begins in what he calls "our little
corner of the universe", where his grandfather owned bountiful cherry
orchards -- a Garden of Eden in which he recalls an uncle warning of
the spectre of Cain and Abel, well before the deportations began. As
a five-year-old boy, Panian endured a forced march from his native
east-central Anatolia to the Syrian Desert that wiped out his family.

He was then placed in an orphanage at Antoura in Lebanon, which
systemically brutalised its Armenian charges to turn those who survived
into Turks.

Panian's recollection of the heat and hunger, the thirst and the
constant menace of predatory bands licensed by the government to
massacre those Armenians who didn't die on the road, is unbearably
vivid. But nor does it omit the compassion and kindness of some
ordinary Turks, Kurds and Arabs, typically in the form of food
and water.

At Antoura, the boys were given Turkic Muslim names -- and a number. A
few older boys became whip-wielding trusties, grotesquely bearing the
names of the CUP triumvirs who had exterminated their people. "We were
all humiliated, reminded that being Armenian was a punishable crime,"
Panian writes. Despite it all, most of them clung desperately on to
their identities.

The most uplifting section of this harrowing but luminous story of
witness is when more audacious boys organise to steal fruit from
neighbouring farms. Panian's group flees the orphanage to live in
caves in the Lebanese hills. "It was a beautiful place to call home,
even if we were living like animals," he writes. "We were like birds,
satisfying ourselves with the bounty of nature and asking for nothing
more." The hero of the tale is Yusuf, a resourceful lad who turned the
raiding parties into a self-sufficient little army. "We had created our
own little family of boys, without mothers or fathers. The wilderness
was our school, and Yusuf our guide."

This searing account of a little boy wrenched from family and innocence
manages to retrieve irrepressible flashes of great humanity amid the
horror and chaos. It is a literary gem.

David Gardner is international affairs editor at the FT

This article will be open to comments on Monday at 10am London time

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/56d61e36-e28d-11e4-aa1d-00144feab7de.html

[Yervant1]

RUSSIAN NTV TO SHOW ARMENIAN GENOCIDE DOCUMENTARY

19:35, 17 April, 2015

YEREVAN, APRIL 19, ARMENPRESS: The Russian TV Channel NTV will show a
documentary film, devoted to the centenary of the Armenian Genocide,
on April 24. Armenpress reports that the TV Channel stated in its
website that the authors of the documentary will present with maximum
precision the events, which took place a hundred years ago, using
archive documents, interviews with historians, the evidences of the
witnesses, etc.

The creative group of the film left for Turkey to find the
abovementioned materials, where they visited the only Armenian village,
preserved up now. Moreover, in Turkey the group managed to meet also
with the eyewitnesses of the Armenian Genocide.

[Yervant1]

HISTORIAN: THE NETHERLANDS RECOGNIZED THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE IN WORDS AND NOT IN DEEDS

22:02, 17.04.2015
Region:World News, Armenia, Turkey
Theme: Politics

The Netherlands recognized the Armenian Genocide in words and not in
deeds, the writer and historian Anthonie Holslag stated in the article
"Government, finally recognize the Armenian Genocide," published in
the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant.

The Netherlands acknowledged Turkey's crimes against Armenians,
Assyrians, Aramaeans, but this had no impact on the Kingdom's policy.

Relations with Turkey, including commercial ones, prevent the
government from speaking about the Armenian question, and the events
which took place in 1915-19 in the Ottoman Empire, Holslag underscored.

"It's sad to see this in a country with the Hague Tribunal, which
tries Genocide war criminals. It's sad to see this in a country
with a government, whose FM Bert Koenders, speaking on the first
channel of the Dutch television on March 31, admitted that "the human
rights are the cornerstone of the western society." The Pope himself
called on Turkey to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. Nevertheless,
on April 24, the Free University, founded on Christian traditions,
hosts a person, who denies the Armenian Genocide and who can also
appear in debates. Debates on the day of recognition...This is nothing
but a provocation and once again provocation with a capital letter,"
the historian writes in the article.

Among the works by Anthonie Holslag is the book "On the stones of
Ararat," dedicated to the Armenian Genocide history.

http://news.am/eng/news/262589.html

[Yervant1]

It's a "historical fact" says white house! If so, why don't you call a Genocide?

WHITE HOUSE SAYS 1915 ARMENIAN DEATHS A 'HISTORICAL FACT'

Today's Zaman, Turkey
April 16 2015

White House press secretary Josh Earnest answers questions during a
daily briefing at the White House in Washington on Dec. 17. (Photo: AP)

April 16, 2015, Thursday/ 23:44:24/ MAHIR ZEYNALOV / WASHINGTON

The White House has described the the World War I killings of up to
1.5 million Armenians as a "historical fact," urging Turkey to face
painful elements of its past to build a more tolerant future.

"President [barack Obama] and other senior administration officials
have repeatedly acknowledged as historical fact that 1.5 millions
Armenians were massacred or marched to their deaths in the final days
of the Ottoman Empire," Josh Earnest said during a press briefing
on Thursday.

He said Washington earlier stated that they mourn those deaths and
"full, frank and just acknowledgements of the facts is in the interest
of everybody, including Turkey, Armenia and the US."

As Armenians across the world are preparing to mark the centennial
of the Armenian killings in 1915, the issue has stirred controversy
in Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rejected remarks
by Pope Francis on the 1915 events and other ministers described the
European Parliament's resolution on the issue as "null and void."

Turkey says it had never had an intention to massacre Armenians and
that the deaths with "inflated numbers" are part of a tragic war that
had taken a toll on all sides, including Turks. Ankara says it is up
to historians to decide on the issue and rejects politicization of
the debate. Armenia rejected an offer by Turkey to establish a joint
commission, arguing that such a move would dilute the tragedy.

Armenians believe that up to 1.5 million of their brethren were either
killed or sent to death a century ago and claims that the killings
amounted to genocide. On Sunday, Pope Francis angered Turkey by
suggesting -- not for the first time -- that the Armenians killings
were the "first genocide of the 20th century." Turkey scoled Vatican
ambassador in Ankara and recalled its ambassador from Vatican for
"consultations" -- a nickname for a diplomatic protest.

One of the principles that has guided the US administration's work in
this area and the atrocity-prevention more broadly, Earnest added,
has been that nations grow strong by acknowledging and reckoning
with painful elements of their pasts and doing so is essential to
"building a foundation in a more just and more tolerant future."

Every year on April 24, Obama issues a statement to mark the
anniversary of the 1915 events. Although he made an electoral promise
that he would recognize the killings as the genocide, he only used
the Armenian word for the events -- the great tragedy -- so far.

The question remains if he is going to use the term this year as
Armenians have renewed their push on Western governments recognize
the 1915 killings as genocide. A resolution on the recognition of the
so-called Armenian genocide remains on the agenda of a US House of
Representatives committee and nearly 50 US lawmakers have extended
their support for the resolution.

President Obama has so far refrained to use a language in his
statements that would outrage Turkey. "This has been our policy,
position and our approach for a number of years now," Earnest said when
asked he the president is going to use the word "genocide" this year.

He said it has been customary for the president to issue a statement
on this "terrible historical event" on April 24, but he said he would
not anticipate "any updates on our policy until then."

http://www.todayszaman.com/anasayfa_white-house-says-1915-armenian-deaths-a-historical-fact_378204.html

 

 

[Yervant1]

MICHAEL JANSEN: FIRM DENIAL

The Gulf Today, UAE
April 16 2015

Turkey promptly recalled its ambassador from the Vatican after
Pope Francis called the mass killings of Armenians 100 years ago a
"genocide."

The pope said, "In the past century, our human family has lived
through three massive and unprecedented tragedies," the slaughter
of the Armenians being the first in the 20th century. He also said
Catholic and Orthodox Syrians, Assyrians, Chaldeans and Greeks were
also slain in this round of bloodletting.

The two other major genocides he mentioned were perpetrated by Nazism
and Stalinism although he also spoke of genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda,
Burundi and Bosnia. The term "genocide" was not applied to such mass
killings until 1944.

While Pope Francis used the same form of words employed by Pope John
Paul II and the Armenian patriarch in 2001, Ankara registered its
objection in an unprecedented manner as this was the first time ever
Turkey has summoned home its envoy "for consultations."

Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusolglu deemed the use of the word,
"genocide," to be "unacceptable" and "out of touch with both historical
facts and [with no] legal basis."

Among the states that recognise the Armenian massacres as genocide are
Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Greece France, Italy, Lebanon,
Russia and Uruguay. The US Congress has repeatedly tried and failed
to adopt a resolution on this issue while Barack Obama used the word
"genocide" while campaigning in 2008 but not since as president.

It is significant that the post-World War I Turkish courts-martial of
1919-20 referred to the Ottoman treatment of the Armenians as <crimes>> and sentenced to death those involved. They were, however,
amnestied in 1921 and the first government of the modern Turkish
state headed by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk initiated the policy of denial.

In 2014, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan presented
condolences to the grandchildren of Armenians who died but said
Armenia should not make the issue a source of political conflict. Now
president, Erdogan is unlikely to overturn this policy of denial. He
has adopted the mantle of the Ottomans and is fired with the ambition
of transforming Turkey into a regional power, a neo-Ottoman empire,
and would not do anything to besmirch the Ottoman record.

Armenia argues that as many as 1.5 million people died in 1915-16,
Turkey contends the number is much smaller. Thousands died in
massacres while others perished when they were driven into desert
areas or pursued in places of refuge.

Armenian organisations and reliable scholars say the planned
persecution of Armenians began on April 24th, 1915, with the arrest
of their leaders in Istanbul. Turkey claims Armenians, ethnic Turks,
and others died in inter-communal violence connected with World War I
and its aftermath. This is a misinterpretation of what happened during.

The 19th century was a period of rising ethnic and cultural
nationalisms that caused the break-up of the Ottoman Empire and the
emergence of Greek, Serb, and Bulgarian states and ethnic cleansing
of Turkish Muslims. The Committee of Union and Progress, which ruled
during the final 10 years of the Empire -- allied with Germany in
the war -- found that Armenian nationalists had formed militias that
intended to cooperate with Russia, the ally of Britain and France.

While the latter had already shared out the Arab lands ruled by the
Ottomans, Russia had territorial ambitions in Anatolia, regarded as
the ethnic Turkish heartland.

Writing on al-Monitor's website, Mustafa Akyol correctly stated that
"the ethnic cleansing of Ottoman Armenians took place not because of
the Ottoman system" which had been multi-ethnic and tolerant. "Rather
it occurred because of the fall of the Ottoman system. Christian
Armenians were driven out [and slain] not because of religion, but
[of] a modern ideology: nationalism."

Nationalism does not, however, provide an excuse for the murder and
expulsion of the Armenians --- or of other Christian minorities who
suffered the same fate.

Post-war battles that were also a consequence of the fall of the
Ottoman empire came between 1919 and 1922 when the majority of Ottoman
citizens of Greek origin were killed or expelled by the Turks after
Greece invaded Turkey with the aim of annexing territory in Asia
Minor in payment for standing with the British, French, and Russians
against Germany in the war.

That the anti-Armenian campaign was planned and anticipated is revealed
by a story told to me by my elderly Cypriot Armenian dentist a number
of years ago.

His father was a dentist practicing in the port of Adana. Late one
night well before the deportations of Armenians began, soldiers
pounded on the door of his house and demanded that he should follow
them as the *****, the governor, had a terrible toothache.

The dentist dressed, collected his tools, and hurried to treat
the *****. The intervention was successful and the men became firm
friends. The dentist joined the *****'s circle of card players.

Eventually, the *****, Ahmet Djamal, warned the dentist that it was
dangerous to remain in Adana and to take his family and go to Jerusalem
where they would be safe. Notorious for his role in the massacres,
Djamal ***** became governor of Greater Syria, which consisted of
modern Syria, Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan.

A colourful figure who told a riveting story, my dentist said his
father was given the rank of colonel in the Turkish army and invited
to join the Turkish officers club so he could play cards with Djamal
and his colleagues, presumably when he was in Jerusalem.

As governor of the entire region, Djamal ruthlessly suppressed the
multiple nationalisms that threatened Ottoman domination. He was
assassinated in July 1922 by Stephan Dzaghigian, Artashes Gevorgyan,
and Petros Ter Poghosyan, activists belonging Operation Nemesis,
a movement seeking retribution for the Armenian tragedy.

Armenians now dwelling in Jerusalem have told The Gulf Today that
the community there exists because forbearers had been warned and
to a certain extent aided by Turkish officers and officials who
were informed what was about to happen in the Ottoman domains and
acted upon this knowledge. One hundred years of Turkish denial has
actually sustained the Armenian campaign to compel Turkey to accept
responsibility and agree that genocide had been committed.

____________________________________________ The author, a
well-respected observer of Middle East affairs, has three books on
the Arab-Israeli conflict

http://gulftoday.ae/portal/4b8d741f-4e97-4e29-8ecf-426a332deb55.aspx