Armenian Genocide Commemorations List and related articles

Yervant1 · April 18, 2015

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RECOGNITION: AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

Huffington Post
April 16 2015

Marie Ohanesian Nardin , Author, 'Beneath the Lion's Wings'

Dear President Obama,

Last Sunday I, along with other Armenians from across the globe, sat
in St. Peter's Cathedral in the Vatican City and listened to Pope
Francis call the Armenian Massacre of 1915 the first Genocide of
the 20th century. Words quickly heard around the world, words that
have brought about discussion, words that pushed humanity closer
to understanding and acknowledging the truth. I attended the Holy
mass because I'm a second generation Armenian-American and, having
been raised with the truth about the Armenian genocide, I wanted to
witness this historical pronouncement.

In the 1890s, my grandparents were born in Ankara and Malatya, Turkey
and in Van, Armenia. In the early 1900s they lost family members,
their homes, their country, their right to worship their Christian
religion and their freedom to speak the Armenian language -- tongues
would be cut out by the Turks for doing so. What they never lost was
their dignity or the memory of those terrifying acts committed by
the Young Turks against their people.

Because young Armenian men were the first to be taken into the Turkish
Army, and few if any returned, in 1908 at the age of 16 my maternal
grandfather and his twin brother left Malatya, Turkey, to live in the
United States. My great grandfather, a school Principal in Malatya,
had previously visited the United States, and decided to send his
eldest sons ahead of the rest of the family to live with their uncle in
Philadelphia. The entire family, 10 in all, planned to move to America
the following year. Instead, one evening, while seated at the dining
room table in their home they were all massacred. This was 1909 and,
apparently, my great grandfather was one of those intellectuals that
the Young Turks wanted out of the way. Because of destiny, and an
astute decision on my great grandfather's part, my grandfather and
his brother survived. Only because of that decision am I here today.
Therefore, it's my duty as an Armenian and as an American to tell
you this story.

In the late 1910s and early 1920s, one-by-one, my other grandparents
immigrated to the United States, too. They set up small businesses
in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. They worked hard and never asked
for a handout. My maternal grandfather became a tailor, and often
pressed military uniforms for U.S. soldiers. He was a religious man,
and received a letter from President Truman thanking him for the
notes of inspiration, slips of paper, which he left in the soldiers'
uniform pockets. He loved America as much as he missed his family and
his mother country. He held on tight to his faith and to a democratic
way of life and thought. He died in 1966 never having heard a single
country recognize what he knew, that his personal losses were due
to genocide.

But my grandparents looked to the future and sent their children to
public schools. My father joined the Navy and fought in WWII, and then
became a Los Angeles County firefighter. My mother was a secretary
to Naval Officers in Philadelphia. After she married and until she
retired, she worked for the County of Los Angeles in health services.
Now, at the age of 90, she is the most democratic Democrat I have ever
known. She raised me and my siblings to honor our Armenian culture and
to love and believe in the United States of America. We understood
how fortunate we were to live in a country that gave us liberty and
opportunities. A life 1.5 million other Armenians never had.

Mr. President, though I live in Italy, in 2008 I tirelessly campaigned
for you with the grassroots group Americans in Italy for Obama and by
phone banking at your campaign office in Norristown, Pennsylvania. In
2012 I campaigned for you with the Venice, Italy Chapter of Democrats
Abroad. I did this because you were the best candidate I had ever had
the honor of voting for. I believed in you, as I do today. I have
supported you every step of the way, and I traveled to Washington,
D.C. for your second Inauguration. I was there, in the audience,
proudly celebrating your victory. However, during both campaigns,
many of my Armenian-American family members and friends weren't as
convinced to vote for you as I was. I worked with them, spoke with
them, debated with them. I posted on social networks; I organized the
Gondoliers in Venice for Obama YouTube video which immediately went
viral. Yet what convinced those Armenian friends and family members
to vote for and not against you was your promise to recognize the
"Armenian Question" as genocide.

April 24, 1915 marks the start of the mass killings of Armenians; a day
when several hundred Armenian intellectuals were arrested and later
executed. Earlier massacres of Armenians occurred, including that of
1909 when my family members were victims. Now, one hundred years later,
the words "Armenian Genocide" are being expressed by influential and
revered countries and leaders of the world. Since Pope Francis spoke
them last Sunday, they have occupied International headlines. I ask
you, Mr. President, isn't it time to make good on your promise?

I understand today's Turkish population is not to blame for their
forefathers' horrific actions and many Turkish scholars and civilians
would more openly address the truth if allowed to do so. I also
understand Turkey is a strategic ally to the United States and Europe.
However, how trustworthy is any relationship if it's threatened by
the recognition of an uncomfortable truth?

On behalf of my great grandparents and my grandparents, on behalf
of all Armenians whose families have stories like mine, on behalf of
populations who are now enduring similar atrocities around the globe
and those who, because of our silence, risk the same in the future, I
implore you to address this solemn 100th anniversary with the singular
word which honestly describes the events that followed April 24, 1915.
That word is genocide.

With respect and admiration,

Marie Ohanesian Nardin

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marie-ohanesian-nardin/armenian-genocide-recognition-an-open-letter-to-president-barack-obama_b_7073882.html

Yervant1 · April 18, 2015

How Novel about Armenian Genocide Became Bestseller in Warsaw Ghetto
By Edna S. Friedberg
Published April 17, 2015, issue of April 24, 2015.

Inspirational Epic Spurred Resistance of Doomed Jews

[Edna S. Friedberg is a historian at the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum]

By any measure, the Warsaw Ghetto was hell on earth. An urban prison
zone in the middle of German-occupied Warsaw, after November 1940 the
ghetto was enclosed by a ten-foot high wall that was topped with
barbed wire and tightly guarded. German authorities packed over
400,000 Jews of all ages into an area of just 1.3 square miles, with
an average of 7.2 persons living in each room. Conditions were
miserable: inadequate food, no sanitation, little heat. By mid-1942,
83,000 Jews had died of starvation or disease. Of those who managed to
survive, the German authorities deported almost three hundred thousand
of them to the Treblinka killing center to be gassed.

And yet in Warsaw and many other ghettos across occupied Poland, Jews
organized clandestine schools and libraries, smuggling in books and
other cultural materials in collective acts of spiritual resistance.
Arguably the most popular book in the Warsaw Ghetto was the novel The
Forty Days of Musa Dagh, by Austrian-Czech writer Franz Werfel.

The Nazis had burned Werfel's earlier writings in May 1933, labeling
them the poison fruits of a Jewish author who advocated pacifism, love
for all mankind, and hostility to extreme nationalism and Nazism.
First published in Austria just a few months after the Nazi book
burnings, Musa Dagh detailed the systematic expulsion and murder of at
least one million Armenian Christians by authorities in the Ottoman
Empire starting in 1915-16`a series of actions we now call the
Armenian genocide.

Based on actual events, Werfel shone a light on a group of Armenian
men fighting under desperate conditions. Quickly translated from its
original German into many languages, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh was
critically acclaimed and widely read in both the United States and
Europe, except in Nazi Germany where it was soon banned.

Werfel cast the Armenian characters' armed revolt against their
oppressors in a heroic vein. As the editor of The New York Times Book
Review described the novel in 1934, `[it is a] story which must rouse
the emotions of all human beings¦ . a story of men accepting the fate
of heroes¦ . It gives us the lasting sense of participation in a
stirring episode of history.'

Just a few years later, Werfel's tale of a besieged people taking
control of its destiny captured the imagination of those imprisoned in
German ghettos. Copies of the novel were passed from hand-to-hand
among members of Jewish youth groups marshalling the courage to
revolt. When leaders of the underground movement in the BiaÅ?ystok
Ghetto debated whether to take up arms, they invoked Werfel's book.

A young man wrote, `Only one thing remains for us: to organize
collective resistance in the ghetto, at any cost; to consider the
ghetto our `Musa Dagh', to write a proud chapter of Jewish BiaÅ?ystok
and our movement into history.' Many leaders of the resistance in the
Warsaw Ghetto also drew strength from the struggle at Musa Dagh.
Across Europe, Jews in mortal danger looked back one generation to the
annihilation of the Armenians and saw themselves.

We study history for inspiration and for warning. But first we must
remember`and the Armenian genocide has been almost totally forgotten
in this country. In 1915 alone, The New York Times published 145
stories about Ottoman attacks, including startling death tolls.

Millions of Americans supported food and clothing drives to help
Armenian refugees in what may have been the first public charitable
appeal of its scale. Yet how many Americans today have even heard of
the atrocities that rallied their great-grandparents to action?

This month marks one hundred years since the beginning of the massive
crime perpetrated against the Armenians. Raphael Lemkin, the man who
coined the word `genocide' in 1944 and who himself was deeply
influenced by Armenian suffering, wrote that `the function of memory
is not only to register past events, but to stimulate human
conscience.'

Haunted by the loss of his own family during the Holocaust, Lemkin
declared, `I have transformed my personal disaster into a moral
striking force.'

If we forget what happened in 1915, which forces truly prevail? Which
books will guide our actions?

http://forward.com/articles/218734/how-novel-about-armenian-genocide-became-bestselle/

Yervant1 · April 18, 2015

TURKEY'S WILLFUL AMNESIA

The New York Times
April 17 2015

By THE EDITORIAL BOARDAPRIL 17, 2015

Next Friday, April 24, Armenians the world over will commemorate the
100th anniversary of the start of the mass killings of Armenians in
Ottoman Turkey, now widely recognized as the first genocide of the
20th century. Widely, that is, outside Turkey, where the government
and the majority of Turks continue to furiously attack anyone who
speaks of genocide.

When Pope Francis used the term at a memorial service for the
Armenian victims on Sunday, Turkey recalled its ambassador from the
Vatican and a government minister insidiously noted that the pope
was Argentine, and "in Argentina, the Armenian diaspora controls the
media and business." And even before the European Parliament passed a
resolution on Wednesday urging Turkey to recognize the genocide and
seek a "genuine reconciliation" with the Armenians, President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan declared that whatever the Europeans say "will go in
one ear and out the other."

The hard Turkish line is especially unfortunate, because a year ago
Mr. Erdogan seemed to be moving toward a more conciliatory stance,
offering condolences to descendants of the Armenian victims and
suggesting that a panel of international historians be formed to
examine the historical evidence. No such panel was convened, and this
week Mr. Erdogan was back to painting Turkey as the aggrieved victim
of international slander: "It is out of the question for there to be
a stain or a shadow called genocide on Turkey."

For Armenians, millions of whom form a global diaspora outside the
Republic of Armenia, demanding recognition of the mass executions,
death marches and concentration camps inflicted on their ancestors in
the disintegrating Ottoman Empire, in which as many as 1.5 million
died, has been a decades-long, global mission. While Turkey has
admitted that many Armenians died, the official narrative is that this
was a nasty episode in a nasty war, and not a premeditated attempt
to destroy a people -- not, in other words, a genocide. To assert
otherwise is a crime in Turkey -- "insulting Turkish identity" --
and intolerable from foreigners.

The narrative, however, is simply not one Turkey can sustain against
the weight of scholarship that leaves no doubt of a regime-sponsored
campaign against Armenians during and after World War I. Mr. Erdogan
was on the right track last year when he called for an independent
panel, and it is difficult to understand why he has backed away now.

The longer Turks refuse to examine and acknowledge that history fully,
the greater the damage to Turkey's international standing.

The United States should not condone that posture of denial. During his
2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama declared that "as president,
I will recognize the Armenian genocide." But, like his predecessors,
he then became reluctant to upset an important NATO ally.

Maintaining good relations with Turkey is important, but at the least
the United States should join Europe and Pope Francis in making clear
to Mr. Erdogan that the greatest danger to Turkey lies not in anyone's
use of the word "genocide," but in refusing to acknowledge what took
place 100 years ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/17/opinion/turkeys-willful-amnesia.html?_r=0

Yervant1 · April 18, 2015

THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: GERMAN GOVERNMENT IN DISTRESS

EurActiv
April 17 2015

Published: 17/04/2015 - 08:37 | Updated: 17/04/2015 - 10:56

Joachim Gauck [Deutscher Bundestag / Achim Melde] Source: Tagesspiegel

Next week, German President Joachim Gauck could call the genocide in
Armenia by name. This would be disgraceful for the German government,
which instead wants to avoid the word "genocide". But criticism is
constantly growing louder - even among its own ranks.

Will President Gauck utter the words that the grand coalition, out of
consideration for its Nato partner Turkey, wants to avoid all together?

For weeks, the centre-right alliance and the Social Democratic Party
(SPD) have debated whether to clearly define the 1915 Armenian Genocide
committed by the Ottoman Empire as genocide.

Due to pressure from the Chancellory and the Foreign Office, a
corresponding request from both factions was defused when the term
'genocide' was taken out of the title.

But now the government must reckon with the head of state choosing
clear words on the evening before the 100th anniversary of this crime
against humanity.

Opposition speaks of moral cowardice

At the invitation of Christian churches in Germany, Gauck will
participate in an ecumenical service on 23 April in the Berlin
Cathedral, in remembrance of the "genocide perpetrated against
Armenians, Arameans and Greeks of Pontos".

Following the ceremony, the German President will make a brief speech.

In coalition circles, his acceptance, alone, has been interpreted
as a clear sign that Gauck will call the genocide by name, without
respect for diplomatic considerations.

In that case, the centre-right alliance and SPD will face the threat of
disgrace. On the following day, the 100th anniversary of the genocide,
the coalition plans to introduce and discuss the toned-down version of
its request in the Bundestag. Shortly after, the Green and Left parties
will accuse the coalition of moral cowardice and opportunism, in all
probability referring to the President's words in the same breath.

"Deeply humiliating"

Meanwhile, leaders of the coalition are faced with a more uncomfortable
situation: within its own ranks, the restraint considering Turkey
is also seen as embarrassing. This could also come to light in the
parliament on Friday (17 April).

Erika Steinbach, who hails from the centre-right Christian Democratic
Union (CDU), is chairman of the working group on human rights in the
centre-right Bundestag faction. It would be "deeply humiliating",
for the Bundestag not to call the genocide against Armenia by name,
she told the Tagesspiegel newspaper.

The "credibility of German human rights policy" is at stake here,
Steinbach warned. She has already had her name put on the list of
speakers for Friday's session. The CDU politician said, "In the
Bundestag, I will clearly say that it was a genocide."

The SPD's human rights policy spokesman, Frank Schwabe, is struggling
with the guidelines from the administration of Foreign Minister
Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

"The German government must be capable of clearly naming the Armenian
Genocide," Schwabe said. "Otherwise we are robbing ourselves of the
opportunity to define current and future genocides as such."

With this opinion, Steinbach and Schwabe are by no means alone
within their respective factions. When the request is discussed in
the parliamentary group sessions this coming Tuesday (21 April),
chairmen Volker Kauder (CDU) and Thomas Oppermann (SPD) will have to
reckon with substantial opposition.

"If we were to vote freely in the faction, independent of diplomatic
considerations, the genocide would be defined as such," Schwabe
said assuredly.

At the latest, pressure has been mounting in the centre-right alliance
since last weekend, when Pope Francis decried the genocide as the
first of the 20th century, and was consequently rebuked by the
Turkish government.

Central Council of Jews: Germany has a special responsibility

On Wednesday (15 April) the Central Council of Jews in Germany left
little room for doubt regarding its position.

"100 years ago, over a million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were
deported at the government's command. They were directly murdered
or starved and died of thirst in the desert," the organisation's
president, Josef Schuster, told Tagesspiegel.

"This terrible event should be called what it was: a genocide," he
argued. As a result, Schuster sees the German government as having
a special responsibility, because German officers were among the
accessories and accomplices.

"Later, Hitler virtually used the Armenian Genocide as a model for
the extermination of the Jews," Schuster said.

Armenian sources indicate that 1.5 million people fell victim to the
genocide. Among historians, it has long been undisputed that the 1915
atrocities of the Ottoman Empire should be recognised as genocide.

More than a dozen countries including France, Switzerland and the
Netherlands define the displacement, rape and massacres that took
place as genocide. The United Nations and the European Parliament
also share this view.

The 100th anniversary of the start of these crimes is a significant
opportunity to process the past, a resolution from Wednesday evening
indicated.

Meanwhile, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has for years
rejected the accusation that a genocide took place in Armenia. Even
now he emphasised, "There is no black spot of genocide on our country."

Source: Tagesspiegel

Yervant1 · April 18, 2015

DENIAL OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE IS BRUTALIZING THE WORLD

Huffington Post
April 17 2015

Posted: 04/17/2015 11:11 am EDT
Stefan Ihrig , Polonsky Fellow, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute

JERUSALEM -- I have this imaginary Armenian kid sister. Well,
actually, she is your kid sister, too -- in the same way we all have
this imaginary 8-year-old in Syria who has been afraid for her life
for the past few years. We are all humans after all.

My imaginary Armenian kid sister is 4 and a 1/2; talks too much;
is easily distracted; for reasons beyond me, does not like raisin
cookies; and, for reasons even further beyond me, died in early 1916.

Nobody put a pistol to her head and executed her. Her parents were
killed, and she simply had no food, no care and no proper shelter. She
just wasted away. I cannot get over her death and her suffering, even
though I want to, and I need to. I need to remember her and honor
her memory, her life and her death. And I also have that Syrian kid
to worry about -- or to purposely ignore.

The problem is, I don't really get to the point where I can mourn her
because my Armenian kid sister just keeps dying over and over again.

We -- us and our Armenian sister -- are all stuck in 1915-1916.

Turkish denialism (and its international helpers) will not let her or
us come to rest. (Just take a look at the Turkish Foreign Ministry's
website on the topic). Turkish denialism says, "She probably did not
die. Well, perhaps she did but it was really her own fault because
the Armenians were in open rebellion against the state."

It must have been an interesting kind of war in which 4-year-olds and
the elderly threatened the very existence of a once powerful empire to
the extent that it seemed okay to kill them, in "self-defense." And
here already we have the futility of engaging with denialist
discourse. This is not the contemporary military excuse of "collateral
damage." No, my Armenian sister, along with all the other sisters,
brothers, granddads and grandmothers, were all rounded up and deported
so that they could die. I keep seeing her in the famous pictures that
Armin T. Wegner, a German writer and former field medic in the Ottoman
Empire, left us -- today's iconic images of the Armenian Genocide. And
I keep hearing these unsettling voices that tell me it is perfectly
okay to kill my Armenian kid sister. . .

As a historian working on the coverage of and the debates on the
Armenian Genocide during World War I and in the 1920s, I am still
absolutely baffled that the debates, one hundred years later, have
progressed so little -- in fact, they have regularly taken steps
backward. Clear proof of this was provided this week by an unlikely
pair jumping forward together: Pope Francis and Kim Kardashian. That
the acknowledgment of the genocide by the pope and Kim Kardashian's
trip to Armenia were so newsworthy and were hailed as such a great
"PR disaster for Turkey" shows that something went terribly wrong
over the course of the last century.

Instead of merely celebrating it as a victory for acceptance, one
needs to ask why it took the Vatican so long, why it had given in
to denialism for so many decades and why it, too, in this respect,
had abandoned the world and the Armenians. And on the other hand,
one needs to point out that Kim Kardashian has promoted awareness
of the Armenian Genocide already before -- scoring moral points way
ahead of the Vatican. We -- the Kardashians, my Armenian sister, the
world and the denialists -- have been playing this perverse game of
acceptance and denial for a long time already; far too long.

"The Armenian Genocide is a piece of history that is not allowed to
be history. It continually seeps into the present and cannot find
its own historical finality."

Take, for example, Germany in the early 1920s, where there was, for
a moment, a broad acceptance of the allegation of the "murder of a
nation" carried out by the Ottoman leadership during World War I.

Parts of Germany's diplomatic documents on the Armenian Genocide were
published as early as 1919. In expanded form, they have been published
again and can today be easily bought in English translation or read
online. These documents alone, stemming from the Ottomans' prime ally
during World War I, make it impossible not to use the "g" word.

Back to the 1920s and Germany: these diplomatic documents were
discussed widely. Many experts wrote their own accounts for
newspapers, and after some resistance from former military men and
rightist commentators, awareness and acceptance of the charge --
"murder of a nation" -- solidified. But then, the former (German)
denialists launched another counterattack, and the whole debate
ended with essays justifying genocide (per se). Later came Hitler,
another world war and an even greater crime against humanity.

The Armenian Genocide is a piece of history that is not allowed to
be history. It continually seeps into the present and cannot find its
own historical finality. Turkish denialism perpetually prevents all of
them -- the events of World War I in the Ottoman Empire, the victims
and the perpetrators, their descendants, their successor states and
their diasporas -- from getting some peace. Not only the Armenians
and the Turks today, but also the first great genocide of the 20th
century -- an integral part of our world history -- is still being
held hostage by a perverse fight over establishing the most basic
facts that have long since been established over and over again.

Some scholars allege that genocide denialism is the last stage of
genocide. But in the Armenian case, it was part and parcel of the
unfolding process. Since 1915, the world has been exposed to a morbid
battle over "truth," which in fact is a battle over the right to
commit genocide as Turkish denialism dramatically overshoots its goal.

It is different from other genocide denialisms because it mainly
advances justifications for whatever had happened. For one hundred
years -- periodically in the press of all major nations around the
globe whenever somebody important uttered the "g" word, generations of
humans have been exposed to reasons why the first major genocide of the
20th century was not worth remembering, simply had to be committed and
why the victims were responsible for their own fate. The guilt of the
perpetrators of 1915-1916 is clear; the guilt of those perpetuating
genocide justification on humanity is beyond comprehension.

After the Armenian horrors of 1894-1896 under Abdul Hamid II (sultan
of the Ottoman Empire at the time), Martin Rade, a prominent German
Protestant pro-Armenian activist, reflected on the way the German
press had excused and justified the violence against the Armenians.

Others had even used the German equivalent of "genocide" in this
context, many years before Raphael Lemkin coined his term. Rade was
worried about the impact the continuous advancing of justifications
for mass murder in the public sphere would have on ordinary Germans,
who had been exposed to them for years in the German press. He wrote:

It is impossible to appreciate what kind of impression the way in
which society and the press are discussing the Armenian Horrors will
make on the generation of men growing up [today]. They are learning to
worship an idol of opportunism and realpolitik, which, if it becomes
dominant, will cleanse away all noble dispositions.*

Almost 120 years after Rade's warning, we have to pause for a moment
and think about what prolonged exposure to genocide denialism
and genocide justification have done to all the generations of
humans growing up in the meantime. It has been part of the constant
background noise of the bloody 20th century, whispering into our ears,
that genocide can be gotten away with, that it can even be okay to
commit it.

Every time somebody of importance in the world uses the "g" word,
Turkish denialism responds, and my Armenian kid sister has to die
again. For a century stuck in this genocidal circle of hell, it is time
for us all to use the "g" word and break the spell once and for all.

*Footnote: Martin Rade in the Christliche Welt (1896) as quoted
in Axel Meissner, "Martin Rades 'Christliche Welt' und Armenien"
(Berlin, 2010), p. 80.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stefan-ihrig/armenian-genocide-denial_b_7079384.html

Yervant1 · April 19, 2015

PETITION
British Recognition of the Armenian Genocide

In an ever increasingly dark world where crimes are becoming
worryingly more frequent, I find myself almost ashamed to be from one
of the world's powerhouses due to the matter at hand.

Just 100 years after the events of the Ottoman purge on ethnic
Armenian's in their empire, and the small landlocked state of modern
day Armenia is still trying to fight for recognition of the genocide.

As it stands, the Turkish government, to this day deny it ever
happened which would leave 1,500,000 Armenian's from this time frame
discredited for. Are we to believe they simply vanished off the face
of the earth ?

In addition, the governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
all recognise the genocide individually but England does not which
means that officially, the United Kingdom is happy to just push the
case aside and does not show even the slightest bit of compassion for
those now deceased.

The most disgusting part is, the reason the country as a whole does
not recognise this genocide is purely because it does not suit the
nation diplomatically. Turkey is deemed as a large ally on the
political spectrum, being part of NATO, this means they are now able
to pull all the strings and play off their alliances to make sure they
never have to admit their crimes. Is this because they simply want to
avoid paying any reparations ?

I find it alarming that in the United Kingdom, denying the holocaust
(obviously the largest scale genocide in history) ever happened
carries criminal charges, much like most other European countries. So
why is it that we are sitting back only to allow an entire country
deny the slaughter and genocide of a race ?

Consequently, as a purely despicable act by the government and
monarchy of the UK, David Cameron and The Queen have both refused to
attend the 100th anniversary proceedings in Armenia, however they were
both more than willing to attend the anniversary of the Battle of
Gallipolli "celebrations" (for want of a better word) which are by no
surprise being held in Turkey.

Adressée à Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the
Conservative Party David Cameron MP

https://www.change.org/p/david-cameron-mp-british-recognition-of-the-armenian-genocide
?just_created=true

samedi 18 avril 2015,
Stéphane ©armenews.com
http://www.armenews.com/article.php3?id_article=108205

Yervant1 · April 19, 2015

In Defense of Christians condemns Armenian Genocide

13:55, 18 Apr 2015
Siranush Ghazanchyan

PRWeb - In Defense of Christians (IDC) Executive Director Kirsten
Evans today 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.

"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.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/04/prweb12658326.htm
http://www.armradio.am/en/2015/04/18/44079/

Yervant1 · April 19, 2015

Musical Stars to Perform at Centennial Concert in DC

By Florence Avakian on April 17, 2015

The Genocide Centennial concert in Washington, D.C. on May 8 promises
to be an inspiring musical event, headlined by leading Armenian
artists who have performed on some of the most legendary international
stages.

Levon Chilingirian

The renowned participants include the Armenian National Philharmonic
Orchestra and the Hover Chamber Choir from Armenia; singers Isabel
Bayrakdarian and Hasmik Papian; violinists Levon Chilingirian, Ara
Gregorian, and Ida Kavafian; pianists Sahan Arzruni and Serouj
Kradjian; cellist Alexander Chaushian; clarinetist Narek Aroutyunian;
oudists Onnik Dinkjian and Ara Dinkjian,; and David Gevorkian on
duduk.

This extraordinary musical presentation is "an expression of rebirth
and renewal, and shows that Armenians after 1915 could stand up and
create an abundance of culture which is simply astounding," said
acclaimed classical pianist Sahan Arzruni in a telephone conversation.

Triumph of survival

The concert will concentrate on the "Triumph of Survival," Arzruni
explained. "It is special because it represents all sorts of musicians
from all corners of the world, not only Armenian, but also from Europe
and North America."

The concert will focus on Komitas, "the fountainhead of Armenian music
who has profiled the music of centuries to come," and will include
"our musical ambassador, Aram Khachaturian, who absorbed Komitas'
music and expressed it in his unique way, a universal way, making it
palatable to all nations in the world," added Arzruni. The program
will also feature Alan Hovhaness, "the mystic of Armenian music
aesthetically speaking." Arzruni, who is a specialist on the music of
Komitas, noted that Hovhaness was "a disciple of Komitas', and in an
iconic way, he fused Middle Eastern melodies with Western technique
that created a language which spoke clearly to many people, a sort of
new age music."

Also featured on the concert program will be the "Requiem" of Tigan
Mansurian, whom Arzruni called the "leading composer of Armenia." The
composition was written to commemorate the Armenian Genocide, Arzruni
related, and "combine the canonical Latin text with the spirit of
Armenian music, thus creating a work of great lyricism."

Sahan Arzruni

Arzruni was born in Istanbul, and until age 21 had never heard about
the genocide. "It was never spoken about in our family because later,
I learned, it was dangerous to do so." When he came to New York in
1964, and was staying at International House while studying at the
renowned Juilliard School of Music (from which he graduated with
bachelor's and master's degrees), he met a Turkish student who
"approached me and wanted to apologize for the genocide." On a return
trip to Istanbul, he questioned his mother and learned that his
maternal grandfather's family had been "obliterated." He said, "I
became very anti-Turkish, but many years later, have decided that
communication is the way to understanding."

Arzruni is not only a noted pianist, but also a composer,
ethnomusicologist, lecturer, writer, and producer. As a Steinway
artist, he has performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the U.S.
Library of Congress, the White House, and for many years with Victor
Borge. He has appeared on several TV and radio specials, and records
for New World Records, Composers Recordings, the Musical Heritage
Society, and Philips, among others. In 2008, he was awarded an
"Honorary Professorship" from Yerevan's Komitas State Conservatory.

A united community and outstanding musicians

For celebrated violinist Levon Chilingirian, the Washington Centennial
is significant for the unity of the Armenian-American community, and
for the array of outstanding Armenian musicians from around the globe
who will be performing at the concert.

Born in Nicosia, Cyprus, Chilingirian started playing the violin at
age 5, and 7 years later came to Britain to study at the Royal College
of Music. He won the first prize in both the BBC Beethoven and the
Munich Duo competitions in 1969 and 1971, respectively

Chilingirian comes from a talented musical family. His grandfather,
church choirmaster and composer Levon Chilingirian, had to abandon his
native Constantinople after the Smyrna Massacres in 1922, and take on
the post of "tbrabed" at St. James Monastery in Jerusalem. His
mother's family left Adana in 1909, and later for the duration of
World War I, before finally settling in Cyprus in 1922. "They would
have been exiled to Der Zor had it not been for the violin playing of
my great uncle Vahan Bedelian who saved their lives by playing, 'Alla
Turka' for the music-loving governor of Aleppo," Chilingirian
revealed.

In 1971, Levon Chilingirian founded the famed Chilingirian Quartet,
which has performed worldwide. He also serves as the music director of
Camerata Nordica, a Swedish chamber orchestra, and is the artistic
director of the Mendelssohn on Mull festival. In addition to playing
and recording, he is a professor at the Royal College of Music in
London.

For his service to music, Chilingirian was awarded the coveted "Order
of the British Empire" in 2000.

"Music has been central to our church and in everyday life,"
Chilingirian related. "From the wonderful 'sharagans' handed down to
us through the centuries, to the unassuming folk songs which Komitas
notated for posterity, we know that singing, dancing, and playing
instruments nourished the souls of all Armenian communities. The
therapeutic power of music is exemplified with the fact that one of
the first things that Vahan Bedelian created with the newly arrived
refugees in Cyprus was a choir."

He hopes that the attendees of the Centennial concert "return to their
communities strengthened by the unified nature of the commemoration.
This unique gathering will, I am sure, deepen the resolve of Diasporan
Armenians to nurture all aspects of music and the arts."

http://armenianweekly.com/2015/04/17/musical-stars-dc/

Yervant1 · April 19, 2015

Austria parliament to condemn Armenian Genocide?

16:22, 18.04.2015
Region:World News, Armenia
Theme: Politics

For the first time, the Parliament of Austria wants to call it like it
is when it comes to the Armenian Genocide issue.

During the parliament's plenary session next week, the Austrian
People's Party (ÖVP) and the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ)
will table a resolution that condemns the Armenian Genocide, reported
the Wiener Zeitung daily of Austria.

The text of this resolution has not yet been made public.

ÖVP Faction Head Reinhold Lopatka and SPÖ MP Andreas Schieder have
made a proposal to debate this document in the Parliament of Austria.

http://www.wienerzeitung.at/nachrichten/oesterreich/politik/746894_Regierung-will-Armenier-Genozid-im-Parlament-verurteilen.html

http://news.am/eng/news/262685.html

Yervant1 · April 19, 2015

Uruguay's ex-President publishes article devoted to the Armenian Genocide

16:08, 18 April, 2015

MONTEVIDEO, 18 APRIL, ARMENPRESS. Ex-President of Uruguay Julio María
Sanguinetti has reflected on not only the Armenian Genocide, but also
the Armenian community of Uruguay in an article entitled "100 Years of
Denial of the Armenian Genocide" and published in Lanacion. As
"Armenpress" reports, the ex-President has emphasized the fact that
the Turkish government made an attempt to annihilate the Armenians 100
years ago, but failed. This led to the formation of the Armenian
Diaspora. There are Armenian communities in Argentina and Uruguay as
well. They have preserved their national values and traditions and
feel like the citizens of Uruguay and bear responsibilities.

Sanguinetti writes that the Armenian Genocide was perpetrated prior to
the Holocaust and was no less brutal than the Jewish Holocaust. The
ex-President presents details of the Young Turks' plans and ideology
and emphasizes how they took advantage of the First World War to
relieve themselves of the Armenian element.

At the end, the ex-President of Uruguay writes that unfortunately,
Turkey hasn't recognized the Armenian Genocide to this day. "We saw
that if you don't condemn a crime, it is repeated, especially these
days when people kill others for the sake of God, show it on
television or bomb the editorial office of a newspaper edition."

http://armenpress.am/eng/news/802333/uruguay%E2%80%99s-ex-president-publishes-article-devoted-to-the-armenian-genocide.html

Yervant1 · April 19, 2015

Turkey's Willful Amnesia - The New York Times Editorial

April 17, 2015

Maintaining good relations with Turkey is important, but at the least
the United States should join Europe and Pope Francis in making clear
to Mr. Erdogan that the greatest danger to Turkey lies not in anyone's
use of the word "genocide," but in refusing to acknowledge what took
place 100 years ago.

Next Friday, April 24, Armenians the world over will commemorate the
100th anniversary of the start of the mass killings of Armenians in
Ottoman Turkey, now widely recognized as the first genocide of the
20th century. Widely, that is, outside Turkey, where the government
and the majority of Turks continue to furiously attack anyone who
speaks of genocide.

When Pope Francis used the term at a memorial service for the Armenian
victims on Sunday, Turkey recalled its ambassador from the Vatican and
a government minister insidiously noted that the pope was Argentine,
and "in Argentina, the Armenian diaspora controls the media and
business." And even before the European Parliament passed a resolution
on Wednesday urging Turkey to recognize the genocide and seek a
"genuine reconciliation" with the Armenians, President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan declared that whatever the Europeans say "will go in one ear
and out the other."

The hard Turkish line is especially unfortunate, because a year ago
Mr. Erdogan seemed to be moving toward a more conciliatory stance,
offering condolences to descendants of the Armenian victims and
suggesting that a panel of international historians be formed to
examine the historical evidence. No such panel was convened, and this
week Mr. Erdogan was back to painting Turkey as the aggrieved victim
of international slander: "It is out of the question for there to be a
stain or a shadow called genocide on Turkey."

For Armenians, millions of whom form a global diaspora outside the
Republic of Armenia, demanding recognition of the mass executions,
death marches and concentration camps inflicted on their ancestors in
the disintegrating Ottoman Empire, in which as many as 1.5 million
died, has been a decades-long, global mission. While Turkey has
admitted that many Armenians died, the official narrative is that this
was a nasty episode in a nasty war, and not a premeditated attempt to
destroy a people -- not, in other words, a genocide. To assert
otherwise is a crime in Turkey -- "insulting Turkish identity" -- and
intolerable from foreigners.

The narrative, however, is simply not one Turkey can sustain against
the weight of scholarship that leaves no doubt of a regime-sponsored
campaign against Armenians during and after World War I. Mr. Erdogan
was on the right track last year when he called for an independent
panel, and it is difficult to understand why he has backed away now.
The longer Turks refuse to examine and acknowledge that history fully,
the greater the damage to Turkey's international standing.

The United States should not condone that posture of denial. During
his 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama declared that "as
president, I will recognize the Armenian genocide." But, like his
predecessors, he then became reluctant to upset an important NATO
ally.

Maintaining good relations with Turkey is important, but at the least
the United States should join Europe and Pope Francis in making clear
to Mr. Erdogan that the greatest danger to Turkey lies not in anyone's
use of the word "genocide," but in refusing to acknowledge what took
place 100 years ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/17/opinion/turkeys-willful-amnesia.html?_r=0
http://www.horizonweekly.ca/news/details/65887

Yervant1 · April 19, 2015

Two Survivors Speak Out on the Anniversaries of the Armenian Genocide
and the Liberation of Auschwitz

Friday, April 17th, 2015 | Posted by Contributor

Left: Armenian civilians are marched through Harput (Kharpert), to a
prison in the nearby Mezireh in April 1915. Right: a scene from the
liberation of Auschwitz in 1945.

This article is being jointly run with the Jewish Journal -- a weekly
publication serving the Jewish-American community.

BY MALA LANGHOLZ AND YEVNIGE SALIBIAN

This year marks the passage of two major anniversaries that reveal
man's unbelievable capacity for cruelty and evil. It has been 100
years since the outbreak of the Armenian Genocide and 70 years since
the liberation of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. We experienced
these tragedies firsthand. One of us survived the Armenian Genocide.
One of us survived Auschwitz.

During this year of commemoration, we have come together as survivors
to make clear that the duty of remembrance extends far beyond
ceremonies. It calls for action. Each and every person has a
responsibility and a role to play. As the number of survivors shrinks
and shrinks, we continue to share our stories, year after year, with
the hope that others will take from them clear lessons for the future.

We know all too well what happens when the world turns a blind eye to
the persecuted.

I, Yevnige, was born in Aintab, Turkey in 1914 - the year that World
War I broke out. My first seven years of life were spent hiding in our
home in great fear that we would be captured, robbed, or shot, like
the many people we knew whose families were murdered before their
eyes. As a young child, I remember hearing loud cries coming from the
street. Armenian families - mothers, grandmothers, children - were
calling out for water and bread. The Turkish soldiers drove these
innocent people onward, whipping them as they went on a march to their
deaths in the desert.

I, Mala, was born in Lodz, Poland in 1931 - the second youngest of six
children. As a child, young Poles would throw snowballs at us because
we were Jews. Later they threw rocks. Then they trained their dogs to
attack us. I was bitten viciously. The Nazis gathered the Jews
together and put us into a ghetto. Not long after, my father was
murdered by an SS man on a motorcycle. We were soon rounded up and
sent to Auschwitz, where most of my family was killed in the gas
chambers. Of 60 people in my extended family, 58 were murdered.

Both of us know the incredible power of faith to give people moral
clarity and strength in the most difficult of times.

As a child in Turkey, I lived every moment worrying about what my
family would eat next.Most of my nutrition came in spiritual form, as
my devout Christian mother raised us to trust in God, continually read
the Bible, and pray to keep alive the faith that we were being
persecuted for. This love for God is what carried me through those
years and taught me to forgive those who committed these atrocities.

In 1921, our family finally had to leave Turkey. Two horse-driven
carriages came to transport us to Syria in the dead of night. In front
of me sat an old grandma. "My little girl," she begged, " I don't feel
comfortable here, shall we exchange our seats?" "Sure," I responded.

On the journey, our driver lost control of the horses. Our carriage
overturned and its iron rod pierced the neck of the grandma with whom
I had exchanged seats. She died instantly. I was thrown out of the
carriage and into a ravine below the road. I was saved miraculously by
a rope that got tied around my leg as I flew out of the carriage. They
pulled me up by the rope, tearing open my thigh to the bone in the
process. For two days, I lay unconscious. I often ask myself, "Who
tied me with that rope so that I would not fall into the ravine?" It
must have been through an angel that I was saved.

We've seen firsthand the power of individuals to bring light to the
world in the face of great darkness.

The horrors of Auschwitz will always live in my memory. I remember
classical music playing to camouflage the cries of those in the gas
chambers. Each evening, instead of saying good night to each other, we
would say goodbye, not knowing whether we would live through the
night. I'd often wake up to find a frozen or starved body next to
mine.

I survived only by the will of G-d and the humanity of those around
me. At the camp, the Nazis would line us up. The infamous Dr. Mengele
walked through the lines, scrutinizing who would be sent to the gas
chambers and who would be used for work. At that critical moment, the
older women in the camp would lift me - a child of just 11- years old
- up on their shoulders so that I'd look older. They saved my life.

One German supervisor at the munitions factory where we were working
was able to look at me and see a child - a human being. Risking his
own life, he would give me sandwiches and hide me when the SS men
would come through looking for women who did not appear fit for work.

During our lifetimes, we've seen many try to claim that the genocides
we saw with our own eyes never happened. We've seen world leaders turn
a blind eye as more than 40 other genocides have taken place since
1945 - from Cambodia to Rwanda, from Bosnia to Darfur. At this moment,
many millions are threatened with genocide and mass murder in places
like Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Mankind can do better.

Just like we saw righteousness in our darkest hours, we see glimmers
of hope today - in the children who hear our stories and promise to
never forget them, in the many passionate professionals who work to
preserve our history for the future, in the activists who fight to
breathe life into the words "Never Again" by protecting those
threatened in our time.

This month, thousands of people from the Jewish and Armenian
communities - and from many other backgrounds and faiths - will stage
a Walk to End Genocide in Los Angeles. Although we are no longer able
to participate in such a long walk in person, we will be walking in
spirit.

Long after this year of commemoration comes to an end, we hope that
the stories of the survivors from our two peoples will live on in the
deepest parts of the human soul. In all corners of the world, we must
inspire people not just to speak, but to act, heeding the lessons of
the past to protect the precious lives of all G-d's children.

Mala Langholz is a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz. Yevnige Salibian is a
survivor of the Armenian Genocide. Both are residents of Southern
California.

http://www.jewishjournal.com/opinion/article/survivors_speak_out_on_the_anniversaries_of_the_armenian_genocide_and_the_l

http://asbarez.com/134191/two-survivors-speak-out-on-the-anniversaries-of-the-armenian-genocide-and-the-liberation-of-auschwitz/

Yervant1 · April 19, 2015

The Herald (Glasgow), UK
April 15, 2015 Wednesday

It was the Turks' brutality in Armenia which led to the coining of the
word 'genocide'

by Caroline Woollard

THAT Pope Francis was to celebrate a mass to commemorate the centenary
of the Armenian Genocide ("Pope in row over genocide", The Herald,
April 13) was first announced by Cardinal Mario Poli, his successor as
Archbishop of Buenos Aires, during a visit to the Armenian Catholic
cathedral of Our Lady of Narek in the Argentine capital on August 17
last year.

At that time Cardinal Poli did not indicate on what date the mass was
to be celebrated but in an article published in the Scottish Catholic
Observer shortly thereafter the point was made (by me) that it was
unlikely to be held on April 24, the date in 1915 on which the
massacres began. I explained that Pope Francis was likely to seek to
try to avoid embarrassing or provoking the Turkish government and
people who, even to this day, a century later, fail to acknowledge the
massacres and forced deportations by death marches into the Syrian
desert.

In fact it was to describe these actions of the Turks against the
Armenians - and other Christian groups living under Muslim, Ottoman
rule: the Chaldeans, Assyrians and Greeks - and not the slaughter of
Europe's Jews by the Nazis, that the word "genocide" was coined in
1943 by Raphael Lemkin (1900-59) when writing his book Axis Rule in
Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals
for Redress.

Lemkin was a Jewish lawyer and polyglot (he spoke nine languages
fluently and could get by in a further five) who fled Poland for the
USA and so escaped the fate of 40 of his relatives, including his
mother and father.

As a child, his mother had told him stories about the history of the
Jewish struggles for survival in Eastern Europe, of their heroes and
their sufferings. And as a youth he had first-hand experience of the
persecution (his parents forced to pay bribes to stay in business),
cruelty and pogroms (in a nearby village dozens were killed during
one) that was the lot of an East European Jew.

However, it was not these Jewish experiences which fired Lemkin's
lifelong personal campaign against this crime of all crimes, the
attempted extermination of a whole people.

No, it was the news reaching Poland from the Ottoman Empire in its
death throes in the second half of the second decade of the last
century of the second Christian millennium. And for the intelligent,
sensitive and empathic boy that he became at his loving mother's knee,
the stories of the nascent Turkish government's systematic brutality
in Anatolia towards the Christian Armenians (and the Chaldeans,
Assyrians and Greeks) which lit a flame in his heart which in
adulthood gave rise to a passionate commitment to once and for all
seek to rid the world of this most egregious of all demonstrations of
man's inhumanity to man.

Hugh McLoughlin,
24 Russell Street,
Mossend, Bellshill.

Yervant1 · April 19, 2015

The Hamilton Spectator (Ontario, Canada)
April 15, 2015 Wednesday

What massacres could not kill: Armenians have known only peace in
Canada, but memories never die

by Jeff Mahoney The Hamilton Spectator

They sit around the kitchen table where they have invited me to join
them, completing each other's sentences, as families do.

They are remembering things, each in their own way, playfully shushing
each other in their excitement to clarify details, at times laughing,
at times sombre.

Three generations of a family branching out into the future from a
cataclysmic past, completing each other.

The six people here, in their web of relationships, cover the gamut -
cousins, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, parents, grandparents,
sons, daughters. Sirvart Bakmazian (née Seferian), her brother Paul
Seferian, son Abraham Bakmazian, daughter Rita Chemilian, and
granddaughters Arlene Bakmazian, 21, and Sarin Chemilian, 15.

This table has been, so to speak, a long time in the making - 100
years, from the ruins of the 1915 Armenian mass killings.

Sirvart grew up through the 1930s and '40s in the wake of that great
loss of so many family branches. There weren't so many around the
table.

"This is my father's family," Sirvart says, showing me a photo from
the 1910s. "In 1915, all the men were killed. There is my father."

She points to a little boy in the picture, then to a young woman.

"He survived," says Sirvart's older brother Paul, "because his mother survived."

Their mother's family fared even worse. Everyone - women, men and
children - were slaughtered. Only she, one year old at the time, was
somehow missed. An orphan, she was found and taken in by a Turkish
family who basically raised her as a slave.

The massacres, widely blamed on the Ottoman Turks, cost an estimated
1.5 million Armenian lives. But Turkey says the toll is inflated and
maintains those killed were victims of civil war, not genocide.

The slaughter, however, went on.

"After 1930, my father was looking for survivors ... and he found my
mother and rescued her (from that Turkish family)" and shortly after,
they married, says Sirvart, now speaking Armenian, with Arlene and
Sarin translating for their grandmother.

Many survivors fled to Iskenderun, a city in what was then Syrian
territory. But in the late 1930s, another war looming, boundaries
shifting, the Turks were awarded Iskenderun by the French.

Paul and Sirvart's family fled again, this time to Aleppo, Syria.

"We were stuffed into wagons and on trains," says Paul. "I was four
and Sirvart two. We travelled alone. Our parents joined us later."

After the Second World War, they immigrated to Beirut, in 1949.
Sirvart married Joe Bakmazian in 1956.

The massacres were long over by the time the civil strife began in
Beirut in the 1970s but they lay at the root of their wanderings, and
once again they found themselves dogged by history. By this time,
Sirvart and Joe had four children: Abraham, Peter, Rita, Marlen
(Iskedjian).

Rita was very young when the turmoil raged in Beirut.

"When the killing got to our street, we packed and fled to Cyprus,"
she says. "To this day I can hear the screams of our next-door
neighbour. Her house was hit and she lost her son. I was six years
old."

That's when the Bakmazians came to Hamilton. Paul preceded them here,
arriving in 1966 and setting up shop as a shoe repair man. Paul's
Shoes on John Street. You might remember it.

Things were good. Joe, Sirvart's late husband, set up his own shoe
repair shop, on James North.

Cousins Arlene (Peter's daughter) and Sarin (Rita's daughter) both
speak fluent Armenian, learned in Saturday heritage classes. Both have
visited Armenia. Though they've known only peace in Canada, the
massacres have affected them too. They see a sadness come into their
grandmother's eyes as she pores over photographs of people torn from
her; they fly from their chairs to hers with comforting hugs, like
birds to a great branch.

They are radiant with passion, fiercely committed to raising
awareness. Arlene, now studying business at McMaster, took a genocide
studies course at Bishop Tonnos in Grade 12 and made a powerful video
on the Armenian killings.

In it, she writes: "This is OUR story."

The story grows forth.

Armenian Killings Centennial Events

Sunday, April 19 - 11 a.m.: Requiem, St. Mary Armenian Apostolic
Church, 8 Mayhurst Ave., Hamilton; 2 p.m.: Official Ceremony, Armenian
Community Centre of Hamilton, 191 Barton St., Stoney Creek

Monday, April 20 - Armenian flag raised outside Hamilton City Hall

Tuesday, April 21 - Orphans of Genocide film by Bared Maronian,
Hamilton Central Library, 7 to 9 p.m.

Wednesday, April 22 - Commemoration, 5 p.m. during council meeting at
Hamilton City Hall

Yervant1 · April 19, 2015

PJ Media
April 17 2015

Turkey Increasingly Upset About Armenian Genocide Being Referred To As
'Genocide'

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's president, has accused the EU of
declaring "enmity" on his country as next week's centenary
commemorations of the massacres of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire
descend into bitter rows over what to call them.

Both the European Parliament and Pope Francis this week referred to
the killings as a genocide, a term recognised by much of the rest of
the world but fiercely disputed by Turkey.

The European decision prompted a furious response from Mr Erdogan.
"Such decisions are nothing but expressions of enmity against Turkey
by abusing Armenians," he said while on a visit to Kazakhstan. "Come
on, let's leave history to historians."

Earlier he had made an implicit threat to deport Armenian citizens,
many of whom work in Turkey.

Well, it's been 100 years so it kind of has been left to the
historians, and the historians tend to refer to it as a genocide.
Those who don't usually opt for "Armenian holocaust" instead.

Here is another classic example of a dictator used to tightly
controlling the messaging at home getting upset when he bumps into the
big, bad, connected rest of the world.

President Erdogan can take comfort in the fact that Russell Crowe
seems to be on his side.

Erdogan will be fine. After all, being a Holocaust denier really never
hurt Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's United Nations or Ivy League speech
opportunities.

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2015/04/17/turkey-increasingly-upset-about-armenian-genocide-being-referred-to-as-genocide/

Yervant1 · April 19, 2015

Armenian genocide: To continue to deny the truth of this mass human
cruelty is close to a criminal lie

Robert Fisk

Sunday 19 April 2015

I dug the bones and skulls of massacred Armenians out of the Syrian
desert with my own hands in 1992

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their forebears were killed in a
1915-16 genocide by Turkey's former Ottoman Empire; Turkey has the
figure at 500,000 (AFP/Getty)
AFP/Getty

At seven o'clock on Thursday evening, a group of very brave men and
women will gather in Taksim Square, in the centre of Istanbul, to
stage an unprecedented and moving commemoration. The men and women
will be both Turkish and Armenian, and they will be gathering together
to remember the 1.5 million Christian Armenian men, women and children
slaughtered by the Ottoman Turks in the 1915 genocide. That Armenian
Holocaust - the direct precursor of the Jewish Holocaust - began 100
years ago this Thursday, only half a mile from Taksim, when the
government of the time rounded up hundreds of Armenian intellectuals
and writers from their homes and prepared them for death and the
annihilation of their people.

The Pope has already annoyed the Turks by calling this wicked act -
the most terrible massacre of the First World War - a genocide, which
it was: the deliberate and planned attempt to liquidate a race of
people. The Turkish government - but, thank God, not all the Turkish
people - have maintained their petulant and childish denial of this
fact of history on the grounds that the Armenians were not killed
according to a plan (the old "chaos of war" nonsense), and that the
word "genocide" was anyway coined only after the Second World War and
thus cannot apply to them. On that basis, the First World War wasn't
the First World War because it wasn't called the First World War at
the time!

Two thoughts come to mind, then, on this centenary of the butchery,
mass rape and child killing of 1915. The first is that for a powerful
government of a strong - and courageous - European and Nato nation
such as Turkey to continue to deny the truth of this mass human
cruelty is close to a criminal lie. More than 100,000 Turks have
discovered that they have Armenian grandmothers or great-grandmothers
- the very women kidnapped, enslaved, raped or converted on the death
marches from Anatolia into the northern Syrian desert - and Turkish
historians themselves (alas, not enough of them) are now producing the
most detailed documentary evidence of the sinister Talat *****'s
extermination orders issued from what was then Constantinople.

Yet anyone who opposes the government's denial of genocide is still
vilified. For almost a quarter of a century, I have been receiving
mail from Turks about my own writing on the genocide. It started when
I dug the bones and skulls of massacred Armenians out of the Syrian
desert with my own hands in 1992. A few correspondents wanted to
express their support. Most letters were little short of pernicious.
And I rather fear that the continued denial by the Turkish government
could be as dangerous to Turkey as it is outrageous for the Armenian
descendants of the dead. I remember an elderly Armenian lady
describing to me how she saw Turkish militiamen piling living babies
on top of each other and setting fire to them. Her mother told her
that their cries were the sound of their souls going up to heaven.
Isn't this - and the enslavement of women - exactly what Isis is
perpetrating against its ethnic enemies just across the Turkish border
today? Denial is fraught with peril.

And let's ask ourselves what would happen if the present German
government was to claim that any demand to recognise the "events" of
1939-1945 - in which six million Jews were murdered - as a genocide
was "Jewish propaganda" and "mutilating history and law". Yet that was
pretty much what the Turkish government said when the EU last week
asked it to recognise the Armenian genocide. The EU, the foreign
ministry said in Ankara, had succumbed to "Armenian propaganda" about
the "events" of 1915, and was "mutilating history and law". If Germany
had adopted such unforgivable words about the Jewish Holocaust, you
would not have been able to see through the Berlin exhaust fumes as
the world's ambassadors headed for the airport.

Yet the very day after the brave little commemoration scheduled for
Taksim Square this week, the great and the good of the Western world
will be gathering with Turkish leaders a few miles to the west of
Istanbul to honour the dead of Gallipoli, Mustafa Kemal's
extraordinary - and brilliant - 1915 victory over the Allies in the
First World War. How many of them will remember that among the Turkish
heroes fighting for Turkey at Gallipoli was a certain Armenian Captain
Torossian - whose own sister would soon die in the genocide?

I plan to report on the commemoration next week in the company of
Turkish friends. But the second thought that comes to mind - and
Armenian friends must forgive me - is that I'm not terribly interested
in what the Armenians say and do on this 100th anniversary. I want to
know what they plan to do on the day after the day of the 100th
anniversary. The Armenian survivors - those who could remember - are
now all dead. In about 30 years, Jews around the world will suffer the
same deep sadness as their own last survivors disappear from the world
of living testimony. But the dead live on, especially when their
victimhood is denied - a curse that forces them to die again and
again.

Armenians must surely now compile a list of the brave Turks who saved
their lives during their people's persecution. There is at least one
provincial governor, and individual named Turkish soldiers and
policemen, who risked their own lives to save Armenians at this
gruesome moment in Turkish history. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's
triumphalist prime minister, has spoken of his sorrow for the
Armenians, while continuing to deny the genocide. Would he dare to
refuse to sign an Armenian genocide book of commemoration listing the
brave Turks who tried to save their nation's honour at its darkest
hour?

I've been banging on about this idea to Armenians for years. I said
the same to Armenians in Detroit last week. Honour the good Turks.
Alas, everyone claps. And does nothing.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/armenian-genocide-to-continue-to-deny-the-truth-of-this-mass-human-cruelty-is-close-to-a-criminal-lie-10188119.html

Yervant1 · April 19, 2015

The Toronto Star

Armenian Genocide: 100th anniversary of a ‘great catastrophe’ Up to 1.5 million Armenians died at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in 1915. One hundred years later, the wounds have not healed.

http://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/news/world/2015/04/19/armenian-genocide-100th-anniversary-of-a-great-catastrophe/illustrationjpg.jpg.size.xxlarge.promo.jpg

VIEW 7 PHOTOS

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NURI DUCASSI PHOTO ILLUSTRATION

Eugenie was born just in time for the 20th century's first mass ethnic extermination. Up to 1.5 million were killed, including her parents.

By: Olivia Ward Foreign Affairs Reporter, Published on Sun Apr 19 2015

In 1915, the Ottoman Empire’s Armenians were declared enemies of the state by the ruling junta of ultranationalists, who denounced them as supporters of their wartime foe, Russia.

Even in the dark depths of the First World War, what followed was unique in its calculating brutality.

Fiercely denied by the Turkish government, it would be denounced as the 20th century’s first genocide: an organized attempt to ethnically cleanse the Armenians from their homeland. By the time the massacres and deportations were done, as many as 1.5 million men, women and children had perished.

On April 24, Armenians throughout the world will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the event that destroyed their families, pillaged their patrimony and set them adrift with few, if any, mementos of their past.

A century later, the world is closer to understanding the facts of the “great catastrophe” that befell the Armenians, as histories of the massive killings have swelled.

Armenian Genocide

In Turkey, the history is hazier.

“What happened in 1915 is the collective secret of Turkish society, and the genocide has been relegated to the black hole of our collective memory,” says Turkish writer Taner Akcam in a foreword to Turkey and the Armenian Ghost.

“Confronting our history means questioning everything — our social institutions, mindset, beliefs, culture, even the language we speak. Our society will have to closely re-examine its own self-image.”

As recently as this week, Turkey sharply criticized the Vatican after the Pope denounced the massacres as genocide, calling on all heads of state to recognize it and oppose such crimes “without ceding to ambiguity or compromise.”

More than 20 countries, including Canada, have passed bills recognizing the killings as genocide. The U.S. does not officially recognize the term, although President Barack Obama had used it before his election.

For decades, Turkey has insisted that the killings were part of civil war and unrest rather than organized genocide, that the Armenians had revolted against the Ottoman Empire by siding with the invading Russians in the First World War, and that although Armenians experienced a “tragedy,” they were only one of many groups that suffered heavy losses during the war.

However, “back in 1915, there was nothing controversial about the catastrophe,” Thomas de Waal writes in Foreign Affairs. The Young Turkish government, headed by Mehmed Talat ***** and two others, had joined with Germany against its longtime foe, Russia. And two million Christian Armenians, who lived in what is now eastern Turkey, were targeted as internal enemies.

“Talat ordered the deportation of almost the entire people to the arid deserts of Syria. In the process, at least half of the men were killed by Turkish security forces or marauding Kurdish tribesmen,” said de Waal, author of the bookGreat Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide. “Women and children survived in greater numbers but endured appalling depredation, abductions and rape on the long marches.”

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PROJECT SAVE/THE NEW YORK TIMES

A picture released by the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute dated 1915 purportedly shows soldiers standing over skulls of victims from the Armenian village of Sheyxalan during the First World War.

Diplomats in the region were shocked by the carnage, including U.S. ambassador Henry Morgenthau, who accused Turkey of “a systematic plan to crush the Armenian race.”

Their reports cited torture, rape, pillage and massacres. Some Armenians were thrown into the Black Sea and drowned. One spoke of mass graves with bodies piled up “as far as the eye can see.”

But in a part of the world riven by ethnic fault lines, no historical landscape is smooth.

“Armenians were divided in the Ottoman Empire,” says Ronald Suny of the University of Michigan, author of “They Can Live in the Desert and Nowhere Else”: A History of the Armenian Genocide. “In cities of Western Turkey like Izmir and Constantinople they were relatively successful, and there were Muslim resentments toward them.”

But those in eastern Anatolia, their historical homeland, were “mostly peasants, craftsmen and workers,” who often felt themselves victims of well-armed nomadic Kurds. “Armenians only got permission (to carry arms) in 1908, but they didn’t have many weapons. It was a dangerous and insecure region.”

http://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/uploads/2015/4/16/2.jpg

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE MUSEUM INSTITUTE

A group digs up remains of Armenian victims in Der Zor in 1938. Lacking food and water, many Armenians died of starvation.

Consequently, their leaders demanded government reforms that would give them more rights and protection. “When that failed some joined revolutionary movements, but they were in small numbers. There were small bands that tried to defend the Armenians. Some tried to get Western powers interested in promoting and protecting their interests.”

But Suny says the great majority of Armenians were seeking improved rights and reforms within the Ottoman Empire — not to subvert the government. Nor were they “dreaming of a separate state.”

So why would the Ottoman leaders launch such sweeping attacks?

Some historians dwell on the war, territorial conflicts between Armenians and Kurds, political ambitions of the Young Turks, religious motivations and Armenian appeals to foreign countries for aid. But Suny dug for deeper philosophical and psychological causes.

“All of those background events, and the experience of Armenians, Turks and Kurds roughly from the 1870s to the genocide itself, constituted a moment I call ‘affective disposition,’ ” he said. “A mental and emotional universe formed in which the Young Turks imagined the Armenians as an existential threat so profound in their imagination that they had to be destroyed.”

From the time of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, he says, Armenians were seen as treacherous, agents of the West, and a minority that upset the natural balance of the mainly Muslim country.

The incipient Armenian revolutionary movement fuelled the flames, and grudgingly-accepted reforms urged by Europe backfired on the Armenians. Attitudes hardened as ordinary Turks were freer to go out on the streets, start boycott campaigns and make anti-Christian views public.

When the First World War broke out, some Armenians looked to the Russians as protectors against the Turks. The majority sided with the Ottomans, but efforts to prove their loyalty by joining the Turkish army and supporting the war effort failed and they were attacked and demonized as enemies within. Fear and resentment turned to hatred of Armenians.

“The organizers of the killings were the Young Turks, who ordered mass deportations and in some cases massacres,” says de Waal. “But a lot of the killing was done in a freelance, opportunistic way, often by Kurds.” Other Caucasus minorities joined in.

The Kurds, who have their own experience of repression, have apologized for their part in the killings, which they recognize as genocide. They have opened churches and spoken of reconciliation.

The Turkish government has maintained its hard line, although President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did take an unexpected step forward last year with a message of condolence to Armenians. But many were disappointed that the government scheduled a ceremony to commemorate the First World War battle of Gallipoli on the same day as their 100th anniversary.

On the ground, however, things are beginning to change, and resolution may eventually come by evolution. The path to the past may be through the future.

Descendents of Armenians who survived by converting to Islam and intermarrying with Turks and Kurds are “coming out of the shadows,” says de Waal. “They’re acknowledging they had Armenian grandparents. Now there are people who aren’t exactly Turks, and aren’t Armenians either. They are a bit of both.”

http://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/uploads/2015/4/16/3.jpg

Without food or water, Armenians died of starvation.

Yervant1 · April 19, 2015

The Toronto Star

How Canada recognized the Armenian Genocide In 2004, Ottawa declared the slaughter of Armenians as a genocide — but only after MP Sarkis Assadourian was repeatedly lobbied for the declaration.

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Sarkis Assadourian as a Meber of Parliament.

By: Olivia Ward Foreign Affairs Reporter, Published on Sun Apr 19 2015

Sarkis Assadourian took his seat in Parliament with a purpose: as Canada’s first MP of Armenian descent, he wanted Ottawa to recognize the 1915 slaughter of Armenians as a genocide.

Assadourian, a child of survivors and Liberal MP from 1993 to 2004, knew he would have a fight on his hands. Several motions had been tabled for genocide recognition. All failed for the same reasons as they have in other countries.

“First there was the NATO alliance with Turkey,” he says. “Then Canada didn’t want to be the odd man out in its relations with a NATO ally. And there were threats from Turkey that it would be bad for economic relations.”

There was also the 1982 assassination of a Turkish military attaché in Ottawa — a murder that an Armenian group claimed responsibility for, but a crime that was never solved.

But in April 2004, Bill M-380 passed by a margin of 153-68. It was introduced by Bloc Québécois MP Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral and seconded by Assadourian, the NDP’s Alexa McDonough and Tory Jason Kenney.

Yervant1 · April 20, 2015

http://www.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=595285

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/thousands-attend-toronto-rally-marking-100-years-since-armenian-genocide-1.2334657

http://www.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=595190

Yervant1 · April 20, 2015

Now it's a civil war, what will be tomorrow?

Armenian Genocide’s 100th anniversary unites Armenian-Canadians at rally
By StaffTorstar News Service

Torstar News ServiceA woman, left, standing by Premier Kathleen Wynne is overcome with emotion during Sunday's ceremony at Queen's Park marking the centennial of the Armenian Genocide.
Several thousand Armenian-Canadians gathered at Queen’s Park on Sunday for a sombre commemoration of the darkest chapter in that nation’s history, the 100th anniversary of 1915 genocide by Turkey.
Armen Yeganian, Armenian ambassador to Canada, noted that April 24 — when Turkish authorities arrested 300 Armenian intellectuals who were later murdered or exiled — is historically considered the beginning of Medz Yeghern, during which an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were killed.
“Medz Yeghern the first genocide of the 20th century, a fact acknowledged by the world. The genocide did not leave any Armenian unaffected. Believe me, you will not find an Armenian who did not lose a member of the family in the genocide,” Yeganian said.
Related:
How Canada recognized the Armenian Genocide in 2004
Armenian Genocide: 100th anniversary of a ‘great catastrophe’

Stories of heroism during the Armenian genocide become the 100 Lives project

“It set the practice of racial extermination as a tool of policy in the modern world,” he added, noting other 20th-century genocides followed, including the Holocaust and waves of atrocity in Rwanda, Darfur, Cambodia and elsewhere.
For Armenians around the world, the cataclysmic event has been made even more distressing by the refusal of the government of Turkey to acknowledge that a genocide took place, Yeganian said.
“The state denial of the Turkish republic is unacceptable and should not be tolerated by the international community,” he added.
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne also criticized the Turkish government’s intransigence on the issue.
“The Armenian genocide was a dark moment in human history and the passage of a century has not diminished the horror of those events. Nor has it diminished the importance of recognizing the atrocity in Armenia as genocide,” Wynne said.
Wynne noted that the term, genocide, was coined by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide in 1943 “to describe the organized mass killing of members of a specific nation or ethnic group and he was moved to do so by reading about the massacres in Armenia.”
Armenian-Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan said the Turkish government continues to engage in “virulent state denial” for the Armenian genocide in large part because Western governments have only recently began to demand accountability.
“We (Armenians) are taught to forgive. But in order to properly forgive, we need to feel a genuine remorse. We need a clear and unequivocal apology (from Turkey),” Egoyan said.
Torstar News Service
But Egoyan noted that the Armenia community, particularly in places like Canada, has managed to prevail despite the events of 1915.
“A hundred ago, our culture was nearly decimated. A hundred years later, we are strong, we are united, we are determined, determined that justice will prevail, determined that we will use our experience as Armenians to seek justice for those around us,” Egoyan added.
The event was also attended by members of the Jewish, Greek and Assyrian communities, whose ancestors also suffered under Turkish rule.
A small group of Turkish-Canadians, many waving Turkish flags, held a protest a short distance from the Queen’s Park event and as the thousands streamed down University Avenue to the Metropolitan United Church on Queen St. E., Toronto Police set up a cordon of officers to keep the two sides apart.
Dr. Mehmet Bor, president of the Federation of Canadian Turkish Associations, said he and others in his community held the protest to have their “side of the story” heard as well.
Bor said the collapse of the Ottoman Empire — the predecessor to the Turkish republic — during the First World War, caused widespread misery and death to many communities, including Armenians.
“It wasn’t a genocide, it was a civil war,” Bor said.
Bor also criticized politicians who spoke at the larger event for seeking “political gain.”
“Politicians shouldn’t get involved in historical issues and harm Canada’s interest with their NATO ally, Turkey,” Bor said.
But Hratch Aynedjian, 50, said it’s time for the people of Turkey to acknowledge their forebears nearly wiped out the Armenian people.
“The wound has not healed. It’s been 100 years and if the Turkish people were smart, they would understand that the wound will not heal unless they do what they have to do, which is to recognize (the genocide). If they did that, that would be a big first step,” he said.

Yervant1 · April 20, 2015

17:41 20/04/2015 » IN THE WORLD

Iranian Turkic-speaking Azaris condemn Turkish government for not recognizing Armenian Genocide

Iranian Turkic-speaking Azaris condemned the Turkish government for not recognizing the Armenian Genocide, an article, published on the Iranian website Vatankhahan.com, reads.
According to the article, a group of Iranian Turkic-speaking Azari students issued a statement, accusing the government of Turkey of denying and not recognizing the Armenian Genocide.
The Iranian students expressed their support toward their Armenian compatriots and highlighted that the blood of the Azaris from Khoy, Salmas and Tabriz is also historically on the Ottoman Turks’ hands, like the Armenians.’
“Erdogan’s government, which has taken up the ideology of Neo-Ottomanism, wishes to restore the Ottoman Empire. They have not learnt lessons from the history and today still financially and militarily support the terrorists who kill the civilians in Iraq and Syria,” the Iranian Turkic-speaking Azaris’ statement reads.
Earlier, a group of Iranian-Armenian young people had sent an open letter to Hassan Rouhani, the President of Iran, urging him to recognize the Armenian Genocide.
Comment on the topic:
Iranian-Armenian students send open letter to Hassan Rouhani urging to recognize Armenian Genocide

Source: Panorama.am

Yervant1 · April 20, 2015

17:05 20/04/2015 » POLITICS

Tessa Hofmann: In context of genocide, evasiveness transforms into encouragement of further crimes

What is taking place in Germany ahead of April 24 – the country, which, according to many experts, is to some extent responsible for the Armenian Genocide, the country, which perpetrated the Holocaust, but repented and continues compensating the damage to the Jews up to this day?
In an interview with the Golos Armenii newspaper, Tessa Hofmann, a renowned German scholar and human rights activist, the head of the Working Group “Affirmation” – Against Genocide, commented on these issues.
- The media claims that a difficult situation has emerged in Bundestag with the document on Armenian Genocide. How would you characterize this situation and what kind of document shall we expect to be adopted?
- On 24 April 2015, two motions for resolutions will be discussed by the Federal German Parliament (Bundestag) in the course of only 20 minutes: one is from the oppositional socialist party Die Linke (The Left) and contains the demand for official recognition of the genocide against the Armenians; the other derives from the ruling conservative-social democrat coalition and is said to have contained originally the term genocide, which, however, was cancelled after the intervention of the German Foreign Office and the leadership of both coalition parties. The text of the revised version of the coalition parties (without the term genocide) has not yet been published, but the headline contains the two key-words that the Federal Government has ever used since 2005 to avoid a legal evaluation of the crimes committed in 1915/6 against the Ottoman Armenians and other Christian ethnic groups, mainly Aramaic speaking Christians (Arameans/Assyrians/Chaldeans) and Orthodox Greeks.
The resolution of the oppositional party has no chance of acceptance.
The evasive terms used by the Bundestag in its non-legislative resolution of 2005 and subsequently by the German government are ‘expulsion’ and ‘massacres’. In particular ‘expulsion’ is a misleading term and a minimization if scored against the historic facts: During WW1, Ottoman Armenians were not just chased over the nearest borders. They did not get such chance to escape the government-planned extermination. Armenians were driven under armed guards southwards into the Mesopotamian areas of massive starvation and slaughtered in 1916 or burnt alive if they did not perish from starvation soon enough. Deportation, or forcible population transfer are legal terms and crimes against humanity according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998); expulsion is not such a term.
The political position behind these evasive terms is obvious: Official Germany supports the official Turkish position that there still exists a need for academic clarification– despite at least 30 years of intense international academic research with the participation of Turkish, Armenian and other scholars. The German government and legislators deliberately ignore not only the results of profound genocide and historic studies, but also the expertise of the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) which has been commissioned by the Turkish Armenian Reconciliation Commission (TARC) in 2001. In its report, ICTJ already in 2003 confirmed the applicability of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide on the ‘events’ of 1915. In the past, the German Bundestag was well aware of the existence of TARC and used it in 2001 as argument to decline a joint recognition petition of Armenian, Turkish and German NGOs.
On 24 April 2015, the Bundestag in all probability will repeat its resolution of 2005 in which it avoided the term genocide. Instead of expressing an own legal opinion, the Bundestag ten years ago promised to support Turks and Armenians in their dialogue. The fiction of this non-existing bi-lateral dialogue may be further repeated, whereas the reality of the already existing collaboration of Armenian and Turkish scholars is ignored once they come to the result of genocide in 1915.

- The German press informed, that in the events dedicated to the centenary of Armenian Genocide the German President Joachim Gauck will take part for the first time. How would you assess this step? This is somehow against the official position of German authorities, isn’t it?
- The Federal Government declined any own commemorative events or activities. But the Presidential Office confirmed that President Gauck will participate in non-public church service of 23 April which is organized by the Armenian Orthodox Diocese, the Protestant and Catholic Churches of Germany. So far, Gauck did not use the term genocide, but evasively speaks about the ‘pain of the Armenians’, which again resembles the official Turkish terminology. Since 2010, official Turkish statements by Davutoglu, since 2014 also by Erdogan, admit Armenian ‘pain’, while at the same time denying a state intended genocide.
There is no contradiction between the acknowledgement of ‘pain’ by the German president and the 2005 resolution of the Bundestag, or any official version of the AKP governments in Turkey.
The practical implications of such evasiveness and half-heartedness in German history and memory politics go far beyond words. In Germany, mayors decide whether memorials are erected in cities or towns. Despite the centenary, several municipal heads and/or administrations declined applications of citizens to erect – on the expenses of the applicants! – memorials in commemoration of the genocide against Ottoman Christians. In Cologne, the city’s administration refused to accept the offer of Mr. Erdal Şahin (a Turkey born Alevi from Dersim) to erect a memorial for the Armenian genocide. In the town of Leer, the recent mayor (a Social-Democrat) told Mr. Albert Tovmasyan, who initiated the erection of a khachkar that the cross-stone would not be allowed to bear a dedication with the word genocide, although Tovmasyan has earlier received the permission of a previous mayor for the erection of a genocide memorial in the public space of Leer. In Gütersloh (Land Lower Saxony) the city council declined the erection of a memorial commemorating the destruction of the Arameans/Assyrians/Chaldeans, although there is a large community of Arameans in Gütersloh and its vicinity, many of them descendants of genocide survivors.
To the Turkey born communities of Germany belong Armenians, Kurds and Turks. While German governmental statements still dwell on the necessity of Armenian-Turkish dialogue, German local, regional or federal decision-makers miss their ample chances of genocide awareness education among these communities, of encouraging those Turkey born residents of Germany who acknowledge the Ottoman crimes as genocide or want to know about them.
- The position of Germany regarding the issue of Armenian Genocide has always been of paramount importance, taking into consideration the important role played by Germany in the events in early XX century. The Bundestag has once adopted a resolution, yet refrained from employing the word ‘genocide’. Are there any chances this term may be included in documents of legislative level anytime in the near future?
- To be honest, I do not see such a perspective in the near future.
- Germany has acknowledged and atoned for the Holocaust. Yet, acknowledging the crime against the Jews, Germany refuses to recognize a similar crime against the Armenian people perpetrated by Turkey. What do you think is the reason for that? Only close partnership with Turkey?
- Germany has been involved into three genocides; for two of them – Namibia (1904-1908) and the destruction of the Jews of Europe during WW2 – Germany bears full and only responsibility. In the case of the genocide against the Armenians and other co-victims Germany decided to remain a passive bystander and benefitted from the unpaid slave labor of Armenian men, women and even children at the construction sites of the Baghdad Railway. Survivors of the Armenian genocide such as Archbishop Grigoris Palakyan (Balakian) in their memoirs accused certain Germans for stimulating the idea of deportation among their Young Turkish allies. Several of the high-ranking German officers who served in the Ottoman forces gave deportation orders despite their knowledge about the fatal consequences for the deportees. The German Imperial Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg refused to distance Germany from the Ottoman policies against the Armenians, arguing that the military alliance with the CUP regime was of highest priority, “even if Armenians perish”.
Whereas the misconduct of the Imperial German Government during WW1 explains by its military alliance with the Ottomans, relations between Turkey and Germany of today are much less relevant. Both are NATO members, but that alone does not explain the repeated refusal of German governments to juridically evaluate the Ottoman crimes of the WW1 period or to condemn these crimes as genocide. I believe that those of my countrymen who bear the responsibility for state politics, act by tradition and in difference to our neighbors in France, Switzerland or Sweden. Our tradition is shaped by pronounced national or even personal self-interests, the lack of humanitarian visions and values and the failure to act according to human rights principles. Consideration for votes from Turkey born constituencies is an additional factor why German MPs refrain from confrontations with Turkey and Turkish diasporas.

Let me add, that the evasiveness and half-heartedness of official Germany is not only shameful (for Germans) or painful (for Armenians), but first of all internationally dangerous. Drawing conclusions during these April days of commemoration, we must answer the following question: Can three million people be killed and the perpetrators get away with it? The current conduct of German MPs and state politicians is a tacit ‘yes’. In the case of the three million Ottoman Christians, who were murdered during 1912-1922, most perpetrators ended their lives without being ever called to justice. Therefore their crimes can and must be unambiguously condemned by politicians and statesmen of today. In the context of genocide, evasiveness transforms into the encouragement of further crimes.
- Recently President Erdogan has urged the Armenians “to show “archive documents” about the genocide. How would you respond to this, as a prominent genocide scholar?
- It is Erdogan’s very cheap attempt to buy time. Relevant primary, i.e. archival sources have been documented, published and analyzed over the last 40 years. Many of them are published in the World Wide Web and made searchable, such as contemporary German diplomatic correspondence, Ottoman archival documents and documents from neutral diplomats on the site ‘Armenocide.net’. Already years ago the German government handed over copies of the relevant German archival documents to the governments of Turkey and Armenia. If Turkey has lost her set of copies, I shall with pleasure buy a notebook for Mr. Erdogan. He can then in a convenient for him way research the sites of ‘Armenocide.net’ and others, where Turkish and English translations help him over the linguistic gap. But he can also give on-line orders for the numerous Turkish editions of such primary sources.

Source: Panorama.am

Yervant1 · April 20, 2015

14:47 20/04/2015 » SOCIETY

Iranian service of BBC TV channel to cover Armenian Genocide in separate program

Iranian service of BBC TV channel will cover the Armenian Genocide in a separate program, Hayeli.com, the website of the Iranian-Armenian community, reports.
According to the report, the Iranian service of BBC TV channel will cover the Armenian Genocide during the program Pargar on April 21.
Cartographer Rouben Galichian and expert on Azerbaijani history, Mashallah Razmi, will answer the audience’s questions during the program.
According to the website armeniangenocide100.org, the Armenian Genocide has so far been recognized by the following countries: Uruguay (1965), Cyprus (1975), Russia (1995), Canada (1996), Lebanon (1997), Belgium (1998), France (1998), France (1998), Greece (1999), Vatican (2000), Italy (2000), Switzerland (2003), Slovakia (2004), Argentina (2004), the Netherlands (2004), Venezuela (2005), Poland (2005), Chile (2007), Sweden (2010), Bolivia (2014).
Previous publication on the topic:
Iranian-Armenian students send open letter to Hassan Rouhani urging to recognize Armenian Genocide

Source: Panorama.am

Yervant1 · April 20, 2015

14:43 20/04/2015 » POLITICS

Over 60 delegations to participate in Armenian Genocide commemoration events in Yerevan

A total of over 60 delegations from various states as well as from international organizations will participate in the events commemorating the Armenian Genocide centenary in Yerevan on April 24, Vigen Sargsyan, Chief of Armenian President’s Staff, Coordinator of the Events Dedicated to the Armenian Genocide Centennial, told reporters on Monday.
He noted that the delegations will be led by heads of state and parliament, ministers and other officials.
Foreign delegations will pay tribute to Armenian Genocide victims at Tsitsernakaberd on April 24. The Memorial Complex will be open to public from 1:00pm.

Source: Panorama.am

Yervant1 · April 20, 2015

Turkey Rights Groups Demand Apology, Compensation, and Restitution for Genocide

By Contributor on April 19, 2015 in Headline, News //

Human rights organizations in Turkey'under the umbrella group `100th
Year ` Stop Denialism'' have issued the following statement:

An indelible, massive crime was committed in these lands, 100 years
ago'a crime that will remain irreversible, irremediable, and
unforgivable. During the genocide of 1915, Armenians and other
Christian peoples of Asia Minor, among them Assyrians and Rums, were
targeted by a systematic politics of extermination, and destroyed
along with their social organizations, economy, arts and crafts, and
historical, and cultural heritage.

Our initiative, `100th Year ` Stop Denialism' was established to
commemorate the genocide on April 24, in Istanbul and DiyarbakÄ±r. The
initiative brings together (in alphabetical order): Anatolian Cultures
and Research Association (Aka-Der), Human Rights Association `
Committee against Racism and Discrimination, Nor Zartonk, Platform for
Confronting History, Turabdin Assyrians Platform, and Zan Foundation
for Social, Political, and Economic Research. Our initiative is also
supported by the Gomidas Institute (London), the Armenian Council of
Europe, and Collectif Van (Paris), whose representatives will be
joining us.

Shame and responsibility are the basis of the `100th Year ` Stop
Denialism Initiative's' conceptualization of the commemoration. We
believe that any commemoration of the crime of genocide on these lands
will have to express the responsibility of genocide denial itself, and
the shame felt by the descendants of the peoples who have had the
opportunity for growth, development, and enrichment in the absence
of``due to the absence of``the peoples who fell victim to genocide.

While this understanding constitutes the ethical core of our acts of
commemoration on April 24, our concrete demands are for recognition,
apology, compensation, and restitution.

Our initiative's commemorations begin at 11 a.m. on April 24, in front
of the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts on Sultanahmet Square, where
we will hold a moment of silence in memory of the victims. This
building was known as the central prison in 1915; individuals from the
Istanbul Armenian community, including intellectual leaders, were
arrested in their homes, detained here, and then sent off to the
HaydarpaÅ?a train station.

After the moment of silence, we will begin our `Genocide March,'
walking in silence from Sultanahmet to Eminönü, and then crossing over
to HaydarpaÅ?a by sea. The detainees of April 24, 1915 were deported
from HaydarpaÅ?a to the depths of the country'in actual fact, to their
deaths. Here, our `Genocide March' will end with another
commemoration.

>From HaydarpaÅ?a, we will proceed to the Å?iÅ?li Armenian Cemetery to
commemorate Sevag Å?ahin BalÄ±kçÄ±, who fell victim to ethnic-hate murder
on April 24, 2011 while on mandatory military duty in Batman, and
express our support to the BalÄ±kçÄ± family in their pursuit of justice.

Before and after the events of the `100th Year ` Stop Denialism
Initiative,' the constituents of the initiative will participate in
two other events. Representatives of the Armenian Council of Europe,
who were invited to Istanbul by the Human Rights Association `
Committee Against Racism and Discrimination, will hold a commemoration
on BeyazÄ±t Square at 10 a.m. on the same day, April 24. Members of the
HRA Committee Against Racism and Discrimination, human rights
defenders, and activists against genocide denial will participate in
the commemoration of 20 Henchak Party leaders and members who were
executed by hanging on June 15, 1915``yet another mass execution, of
symbolic import, during the period of the Armenian Genocide.

A protest march organized by Nor Zartonk will start out at 6:30 p.m.,
from Galatasaray Lycée and head toward Taksim Square, followed by a
100th year commemoration event led by the Platform for Commemorating
the Armenian Genocide, at 7:15 p.m., at the Taksim end of Istiklal
Street.

Concurrently, in DiyarbakÄ±r, the Human Rights Association DiyarbakÄ±r
branch and the Gomidas Institute are jointly organizing a
commemoration of Armenian and Assyrian victims in the ruins of Surp
Sarkis Church, at noon on April 24, with support from the DiyarbakÄ±r
Bar Association and the Zan Foundation.

The struggle for genocide recognition and against denialism will end
neither on April 24, 2015, nor on Dec. 31, 2015. Until the state of
the Republic of Turkey and the majority following official ideology
recognize the crime and take steps toward compensation for the
irreversible and irremediable losses, we will persevere in our pursuit
of justice for the genocide victims of Asia Minor and for their
descendants, who are dispersed around the world or who continue to
live under the conditions of genocide perpetuated by denial.

100th Year ` Stop Denialism Initiative

http://armenianweekly.com/2015/04/19/turkey-rights-groups-demand/

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