Explaining the Armenian Genocide

http://harvardmagazine.com/print/47787?page=all

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The Lessons of Late Ottoman Genocides for Contemporary Iraq and Syria

http://armenianweekly.com/2014/10/23/travis/

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Lessons Not Learned? The Yazidis and the Armenians of Musa Dagh

The crisis faced by the little-known religious minority, the Yazidis of northern Iraq, captured the attention of western humanitarians. Their capitulation to their pursuers, the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), whose strict interpretation of Islam regards the Yazidis as polytheists, would mean physical destruction. To escape, thousands of these practitioners of an obscure faith, who have dwelt in the Ninveh region for centuries, encamped on the desolate summit of Mount Sinjar, desperate for rescue by a foreign power.

A remarkably similar story was told a little over eighty years ago by German-speaking Jewish novelist Franz Werfel, in his blockbuster novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. Virtually unknown today, the 900-page novel was widely read when it appeared. Just in time to serve as a prescient critique of Nazism, it was optioned by studio giant MGM in 1934 to produce an epic film starring a young Clark Gable, then on his way to winning an Academy Award for It Happened One Night.

Werfel's inspiration was a footnote to the Turkish anti-Armenian atrocities of World War I. In June 1915, receiving news of mass expulsions and murder, the inhabitants of six Armenian Christian villages on the Mediterranean coast collected their few possessions and weapons, and fled to the summit of Musa Dagh, highlands on the coast of the Mediterranean, to escape the approaching Turks. The leader of the revolt, Moses Der Kalousdian, a European-educated Armenian gentleman, rallied the spirits of the villagers, held off assaults on their stronghold until, on the verge of capitulation, they were rescued by a passing French warship.

Although the revolt of 4,200 Armenians at Musa Dagh received scattered attention in the press, it was a small event in a much larger conflict. It was Werfel's novel, though, that humanized the crisis, giving the western reader access to the perspective of the humanitarian refugee, in particular through his intimate portrayal of the protagonist, Gabriel Bagradian.

Modeled after Moses Der Kalousdian, Bagradian is a man of two worlds: cosmopolitan Europe on the one hand, the earthy villages of his native Armenian Turkey on the other. The well-to-do Bagradian had left his village to seek refinement in Paris, but after a while his expatriate life revealed an inner void, and he returns home on the eve of World War I with his French wife Juliette and young son Stephan, seeking shelter from the hostilities and his own existential doubt.

But the quiet life that Bagradian and his family seek evaporates in violence and insecurity. Under his leadership, the villagers retreat to Musa Dagh in the face of the approaching Turks. For forty days, they endure deadly attacks by the Turkish army, mishaps that cost them precious resources, and the collapse of morale against a hopeless siege. Bagradian himself suffers terribly as the threads to his European life are cruelly snipped one after the other. As the situation becomes more desperate, the villagers' only remaining hope is a swimmer dispatched into the Mediterranean, carrying letters begging for intervention by the Allied powers, hopeful of a passing allied ship.

Although not as familiar to western readers as his contemporary Stefan Zweig, Werfel's associate who has enjoyed a renaissance, he was once equally familiar to an international audience. Born into a remarkable cohort of German-Jewish writers in Prague, Werfel counted among his friends Franz Kafka and Max Brod; an enthusiastic supporter was the caustic Karl Kraus. After his service in World War I, Werfel lived the life of the interwar cosmopolitan, one lovingly dramatized in Wes Anderson's recent film Grand Budapest Hotel. A lothario, his romantic entanglements included an affair with the ubiquitous Alma Mahler.

But the war had changed him. Like Zweig (the inspiration for Anderson's film), Werfel was an ethical hedonist, railing against modernity's nihilistic trajectory; after the war, he added a deep humanism to his urbane commentary. Living in the heady literary air of Vienna and Berlin, Werfel's international breakthrough came with the 1933 publication of Musa Dagh.

Appearing early in the unfolding of the Nazi nightmare, Werfel's text was a chilling prophecy of things to come. The villains in the novel are not simply Turks, but a cohort of ideologically-driven racists who displace their more humane elders in pursuit of national purity. Werfel's Armenians would have resonated with the Jewish readership of his time especially, tinged with the same air of romanticism that many of Werfel's cohort felt towards the folkways of traditional Jewry. Indeed, the novel's descriptions of the brutality faced by a community pushed to its very limits are nearly indistinguishable from later Holocaust narratives, woven into images of Treblinka and the Warsaw Ghetto.

As the Yazidi saga shows, the relevance of Werfel's work endures. The Forty Days of Musa Dagh raises fundamental questions of moral duty for modern man. When the evil of persecution rears its head with such unfathomable horror, what do we do? How do we react? To Werfel, whoever holds their morality precious must demand immediate intervention and rescue. In The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, as with the Yazidi crisis today, it the most powerful weapon of genocidal forces is not a machine gun or a howitzer, it is time -- the time of hesitation before action in the face of evil, the very time that dooms many of Bagradian's friends and family to their deaths. Time is of the essence; we hesitate at our moral peril.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jess-olson/lessons-not-learned-the-y_b_5754300.html

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Armenian Genocide of 1915: An Overview

By JOHN KIFNER

On the eve of World War I, there were two million Armenians in the declining Ottoman Empire. By 1922, there were fewer than 400,000. The others — some 1.5 million — were killed in what historians consider a genocide.
As David Fromkin put it in his widely praised history of World War I and its aftermath, “A Peace to End All Peace”: “Rape and beating were commonplace. Those who were not killed at once were driven through mountains and deserts without food, drink or shelter. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians eventually succumbed or were killed .”
The man who invented the word “genocide”— Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer of Polish-Jewish origin — was moved to investigate the attempt to eliminate an entire people by accounts of the massacres of Armenians. He did not, however, coin the word until 1943, applying it to Nazi Germany and the Jews in a book published a year later, “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.”
But to Turks, what happened in 1915 was, at most, just one more messy piece of a very messy war that spelled the end of a once-powerful empire. They reject the conclusions of historians and the term genocide, saying there was no premeditation in the deaths, no systematic attempt to destroy a people. Indeed, in Turkey today it remains a crime — “insulting Turkishness” — to even raise the issue of what happened to the Armenians.
In the United States, a powerful Armenian community centered in Los Angeles has been pressing for years for Congress to condemn the Armenian genocide. Turkey, which cut military ties to France over a similar action, has reacted with angry threats. A bill to that effect nearly passed in the fall of 2007, gaining a majority of co-sponsors and passing a committee vote. But the Bush administration, noting that Turkey is a critical ally — more than 70 per cent of the military air supplies for Iraq go through the Incirlik airbase there — pressed for the bill to be withdrawn, and it was.

The roots of the genocide lie in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
The empire’s ruler was also the caliph, or leader of the Islamic community. Minority religious communities, like the Christian Armenians, were allowed to maintain their religious, social and legal structures, but were often subject to extra taxes or other measures.
Concentrated largely in eastern Anatolia, many of them merchants and industrialists, Armenians, historians say, appeared markedly better off in many ways than their Turkish neighbors, largely small peasants or ill-paid government functionaries and soldiers.
At the turn of the 20th Century, the once far-flung Ottoman empire was crumbling at the edges, beset by revolts among Christian subjects to the north — vast swaths of territory were lost in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 — and the subject of coffee house grumbling among Arab nationalist intellectuals in Damascus and elsewhere.
The Young Turk movement of ambitious, discontented junior army officers seized power in 1908, determined to modernize, strengthen and “Turkify” the empire. They were led by what became an all-powerful triumvirate sometimes referred to as the Three Pashas.
In March of 1914, the Young Turks entered World War I on the side of Germany. They attacked to the east, hoping to capture the city of Baku in what would be a disastrous campaign against Russian forces in the Caucuses. They were soundly defeated at the battle of Sarikemish.
Armenians in the area were blamed for siding with the Russians and the Young Turks began a campaign to portray the Armenians as a kind of fifth column, a threat to the state. Indeed, there were Armenian nationalists who acted as guerrillas and cooperated with the Russians. They briefly seized the city of Van in the spring of 1915.
Armenians mark the date April 24, 1915, when several hundred Armenian intellectuals were rounded up, arrested and later executed as the start of the Armenian genocide and it is generally said to have extended to 1917. However, there were also massacres of Armenians in 1894, 1895, 1896, 1909, and a reprise between 1920 and 1923.
The University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies has compiled figures by province and district that show there were 2,133,190 Armenians in the empire in 1914 and only about 387,800 by 1922.
Writing at the time of the early series of massacres, The New York Times suggested there was already a “policy of extermination directed against the Christians of Asia Minor.”
The Young Turks, who called themselves the Committee of Unity and Progress, launched a set of measures against the Armenians, including a law authorizing the military and government to deport anyone they “sensed” was a security threat.
A later law allowed the confiscation of abandoned Armenian property. Armenians were ordered to turn in any weapons that they owned to the authorities. Those in the army were disarmed and transferred into labor battalions where they were either killed or worked to death.
There were executions into mass graves, and death marches of men, women and children across the Syrian desert to concentration camps with many dying along the way of exhaustion, exposure and starvation.
Much of this was quite well documented at the time by Western diplomats, missionaries and others, creating widespread wartime outrage against the Turks in the West. Although its ally, Germany, was silent at the time, in later years documents have surfaced from ranking German diplomats and military officers expressing horror at what was going on.
Some historians, however, while acknowledging the widespread deaths, say what happened does not technically fit the definition of genocide largely because they do not feel there is evidence that it was well-planned in advance.
The New York Times covered the issue extensively — 145 articles in 1915 alone by one count — with headlines like “Appeal to Turkey to Stop Massacres.” The Times described the actions against the Armenians as “systematic,” “authorized, and “organized by the government.”
The American ambassador, Henry Morganthau Sr., was also outspoken. In his memoirs, the ambassador would write: “When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact.”
Following the surrender of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, the Three Pashas fled to Germany, where they were given protection. But the Armenian underground formed a group called Operation Nemesis to hunt them down. On March 15, 1921, one of the pashas was shot dead on a street in Berlin in broad daylight in front of witnesses. The gunman pled temporary insanity brought on by the mass killings and a jury took only a little over an hour to acquit him. It was the defense evidence at this trial that drew the interest of Mr. Lemkin, the coiner of “genocide.”

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Israel and the Armenian Genocide

Simone Zoppellaro | Yerevan

Next year the centennial of the Armenian genocide will be remembered. In the international debate on recognition, a special position is that of Israel

For a long time the issue of the Armenian Genocide has been considered taboo by the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. Over the years, attempts to obtain its public recognition have been vetoed by different governments, worried that the move would jeopardize relations with the main strategic ally of Israel in the region at that time, Turkey. And this regardless of the fact that, since the very first years following the events, several in the Jewish world and in the Zionist movement itself raised voices of sympathy and condolence for a tragedy that in many ways heralded the horrors of the Holocaust.

Mavi Marmara

Things started to move only in the aftermath of the Freedom Flotilla incident on May 31, 2010, when six ships of activists flying American, Swedish, Turkish and Greek flags attempted to break the Gaza Strip blockade imposed by Israel to bring humanitarian aid to the civilian population. On that occasion, the largest ship, the MV Mavi Marmara, was stormed by Israeli special forces, with an operation that cost life to nine Turkish activists and caused the suspension of diplomatic relations between the two countries. A crisis that, despite the American mediation, hasn’t been mended yet.

Less than a year after the events, in May 2011, the Knesset addressed the issue of the Armenian genocide for the first time in a public session, following the proposal of Zehava Gal-On, an MP from the leftist Meretz. For years, proposals like the one of Gal-On had been scuppered by successive governments, with the idea that the issue should be addressed “through an open debate based on data and facts, and not on political decisions or declarations,” according to the words used in 2009 by Likud Minister Gilad Erdan. Or, to put it in a nutshell: outside of the parliament. However, this time no veto came, and the issue was discussed openly.

The Azeri factor

Still, a new strategic factor of Israeli foreign policy derailed once more the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the Knesset: the increasingly close relationship – in political, economic and military terms – between Israel and Azerbaijan. A relationship, quoting the words of the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev made public by Wikileaks, which is like an iceberg: “nine-tenths of it is below the surface.”

The Azerbaijani government, opposed to Armenia cause of the unresolved issue of Nagorno-Karabakh, claimed by Baku as part of its national territory, adverses any international recognition of the Armenian genocide. For this purpose, it uses lobbying and diplomatic pressure against countries willing to do so. In the case of Israel, Azerbaijan found a great ally in the far-right nationalist party Yisrael Beiteinu.

The following are the words pronounced on May 18, 2011 by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and member of Yisrael Beiteinu, Danny Ayalon: “There is no chance that the Knesset would recognize the Armenian Genocide. It is impossible. We cannot afford ourselves to deface relations with our main strategic partner in the Muslim world – Azerbaijan – for some vexed historical questions concerning events that took place hundred years ago.” Thus, also in 2011 the question of genocide was archived.

The Erdoğan speech

However, a more significant change of course occurred in recent months, when the issue of the Israeli recognition of the Armenian genocide came back into the international limelight, raising new hopes in Yerevan and among the Armenian diaspora. A decisive contribution, according to what reported by the Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar in Al-Monitor, was given by the speech delivered by the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the eve of the 99th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, on April 23.

The speech, though far from recognizing a genocidal will in the massacres that took place in the Ottoman Empire starting from 1915, represented a significant – and in many ways unexpected – step forward in the issue. For the first time, in fact, a Turkish Prime Minister addressed his condolences to “our Armenian citizens and all Armenians around the world”.

This, apparently, would have produced a certain embarrassment in Tel Aviv, in a political establishment still torn between the desire not to jeopardize relations with the old and new allies mentioned above, and the need to take a stand on an issue that becomes more and more hardly avoidable. This, in particular, with the centenary celebration of the Armenian genocide just round the corner, in 2015.

Some steps taken recently by the influential American Jewish community were of great importance in the direction of a change. Thus, Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman, after years of denial, finally admitted last May that what happened at the expense of the Armenians during WWI can be defined as genocide. Or, just a few days before, the publication of a “tribute to memories of the victims of the Metz Yeghern” signed by the American Jewish Committee, which has provoked a strong protest from the Turkish Ambassador in Washington, Serdar Kılıç.

Reuven Rivlin

But, most of all, what arouse significant hopes was the election to Presidency of Republic of Reuven Rivlin, on June 10. Greeted with jubilation by the representatives of the ancient Armenian community of Israel and by the Armenian press in general, the fact raised great expectations as Rivlin has proven, over the years, to be one of the politicians in Israel more involved in the recognition of the Armenian genocide.

Important, in this regard, was the declaration issued last month by the same Rivlin. Words that seem to echo the famous statement that, according to Louis Lochner of the Associated Press, Adolph Hiltler would have pronounced in 1939 (“Who speaks today of the extermination of the Armenians?”): “Whoever thought of the Final Solution got the impression that, when the day comes, the world will be silent, like it was about the Armenians. It is hard for me to forgive other nations for ignoring our tragedy and we cannot ignore another nation’s tragedy. That is our moral obligation as people and Jews.”

Over the last few days, there was a visit to Yerevan by a delegation of the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry for a series of consultations having as objective to expand the cooperation between the two countries in the economic and political spheres. On the occasion, the delegation visited the Memorial of the Armenian Genocide.

Hard to say if, in the end, conciliatory positions like that of Rivlin will prevail, or instead those of the ones who think “offensive, and even blasphemous” (thus Yosef Shagal of Yisrael Beiteinu, in 2008) to compare the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust of the Jews. Certainly, what remains is the unease towards those willing to sacrifice the memory of thousands of victims on the altar of political interest.

Read more http://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/Regions-and-countries/Armenia/Israel-and-the-Armenian-Genocide-153540

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Turkey-Armenia ties unlikely to improve

Demonstrators set fire to a Turkish flag during a torch-bearing march marking the anniversary of the 1915 mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, in Yerevan, April 23, 2014.  (photo by REUTERS/Hayk Baghdasaryan/Photolure)

Can Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s "April 24 gesture" [when he offered condolences to the grandchildren of Ottoman Armenians killed in 1915] lead to the normalization of ruptured ties with Armenia? Erdogan’s statement was met favorably by many countries, above all by the United States, but received negative reactions in the Armenian world. In the Armenian diaspora, it was criticized for not using the word "genocide," while in Yerevan it was found insufficient.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2014/04/turkey-armenia-ties-not-improve-soon-azerbaijan.html?utm_source=Al-Monitor+Newsletter+%5bEnglish%5d&utm_campaign=5780c62dc5-January_9_20141_8_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_28264b27a0-5780c62dc5-93109257##ixzz30yWw1ayL

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EDITORIAL: Armenian genocide; Obama promise is overdue

Obama must risk Turkey's wrath and make good on 2008 promise.

BY THE FRESNO BEE EDITORIAL BOARD

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/04/25/3895735/the-armenian-genocide.html#storylink=cpy

It is past time for President Barack Obama to keep the promise he made during his 2008 campaign and recognize the slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire a century ago for what it was — genocide.

We were reminded of Obama's promise again by his omission of "genocide" in the statement the White House released Thursday on the commemoration of the systematic murder of Armenian men, women and children begun by the Ottoman Turks in 1915.

When Obama was courting Armenian support — as well as the support of all people who oppose the evil that can murder people based solely on ethnicity — for his presidential bid, he had no reservation about using the word "genocide."

"The facts are undeniable," Obama said in a statement in 2008. "As president, I will recognize the Armenian genocide."

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/04/25/3895735/the-armenian-genocide.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/04/25/3895735/the-armenian-genocide.html#storylink=cpy

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Η Γενοκτονία των Αρμενίων

« Η αλήθεια δεν έχει ειδικό χρόνο δικό της, η ώρα της αλήθειας είναι τώρα-πάντα»  Άλμπερτ Σβάιτσερ

Ένα άρθρο του γνωστού αρθρογράφου Ρόπερτ Φίσκ στην βρετανική Ιντεπεντεντ 6 Απριλίου 2014 που θα πρέπει να διαβάσει  ΟΛΟΣ ο κόσμος αλλά πρώτοι απ όλους οι ΕΛΛΗΝΕΣ της Κύπρου, Ελλάδας και αποδημίας,  έχει τίτλο «The 1915 Armenian genocide: Finding a fit testament to a timeless crime».

 Ειδικά εκείνοι τα μυαλά των οποίων έχουν δηλητηριαστεί από τα λεγόμενα και σκόπιμα «επαναπροσεγγιστικά» σεμινάρια, και συστηματικές προσπάθειες για επιβολή της τουρκο-βρετανικής Διζωνικής Δικοινοτικής Ομοσπονδίας, που ξεκίνησαν από το Κάμπτεν Τάουν του Λονδίνου αμέσως μετά την τουρκική βάρβαρη εισβολή και κατοχή της μισής μας πατρίδας (Κύπρου).  Μέσω της διαβόητης επιτροπής «Φίλοι της Κύπρου» που ίδρυσε τότε ο τελευταίος διχοτόμος αποικιακός κυβερνήτης της Κύπρου σερ Χιού Φούτ πλάι σε κάποιους ανεκδιήγητους φιλόαγγλους δικούς μας όπως τον περιβόητο εφοπλιστή Κώστα Καρρά, τον μ. ΄Ομηρο Χαπίπη (πρόεδρο της Κυπριακής Ομοσπονδίας Κυπρίων Βρετανίας μέχρι τον θάνατό του) και ορισμένους άλλους υποταγμένους που δεν μπορούσαν να «κακοφανίσουν» τους φίλους Βρετανούς.

Τον Φούτ διαδέχθηκε ο φλεγματικός και αυτός μ. λόρδος Μπέθελ (πράκτορες της ΜΙ6 σε σχέση με την Ρωσία και όχι μόνον) ο οποίος δεν ήθελε να δει μπροστά του Ελληνοκύπριο πρόσφυγα. Κατά την εμφάνιση του εκτρώματος Ανάν η διαχρονικά «γραμματέας» των τάχατες φίλων (που έχουν μείνει 3 και ο κούκος) περσονα νον γκράτα για την σημερινή ηγεσία της ομογένειας Βρετανίας, Μαίρη Σάουθκοτ, είχε ξεσπαθώσει υπέρ του σχεδίου με φιλοτουρκικές θέσεις και εμετικές δηλώσεις σε τουρκικά έντυπα...

Και όλοι αυτοί να ΞΕΧΝΟΥΝ ή να ΑΓΝΟΟΥΝ ΕΝΣΥΝΕΙΔΗΤΑ (και να προσπαθούν να προσηλυτίζουν δικούς μας στις φιλοτουρκικές αυτές θέσεις τους - στόχος της περιβόητης αυτής Μαίρης Σάουθκοτ είναι οι ...φοιτητές μας! ) τις σφαγές, γενοκτονίες, ξεριζωμούς, βιασμούς, συλήσεις, εγκλωβισμούς, τους αγνοούμενους μας, την ΠΡΟΣΦΥΓΙΑ τω ν 200,000 τόσων συμπατριωτών μας, στο πάγιο πρότυπο των Τούρκων (γενοκτονία Αρμενίων και Ελλήνων Πόντου και Μ. Ασίας) και μοναδικό στόχο να έχουν την εξασφάλιση των τουρκο-βρετανικών στόχων από το 1956...

Ο λόγος λοιπόν που θα πρέπει το άρθρο αυτό του Φίσκ να το διαβάσουν επι τω πλείστον ΔΙΚΟΙ ΜΑΣ, είναι για να συνέλθουν, αν τα καταφέρουν, και δουν την ωμή πραγματικότητα (εκτός του ότι την χάραξε βαθιά στον κατεχόμενο Πενταδάκτυλο ο μ. Ντενκτάς πριν φύγει, που βλέπουν κάθε μέρα αλλά δεν αγανακτούν) και θυμηθούν, πέραν του ποίοι φταίνε, τι ΕΚΑΝΑΝ σε δικούς μας ανθρώπους οι Τούρκοι βοηθούμενοι και από Τουρκοκύπριους το 1974. Γιατί ακόμα και εκεί η Ιστορία δεν λέχθηκε όπως πρέπει, αλλά, όπως συμφέρει σε κάποια κόμματα και τους συνοδοιπόρους τους - για να αποκαλυφθούν και ποίοι δικοί μας και πως συνέβαλαν και με την δική τους αλαζονική και όχι μόνον νοοτροπία και χειρισμό του Κυπριακού,  στην τραγωδία του 1974...

Επειδή και η οικογένεια του πατέρα μου ήσαν Έλληνες πρόσφυγες της Μικράς Ασίας το 1922 και άκουσα και έμαθα για πολλά τέτοια τουρκικά εγκλήματα από αυτόπτες μάρτυρες,  γιαγιές και θείες μου  που η μοίρα τους έταξε να ξαναγίνουν πρόσφυγες στην νέα τους πατρίδα την Κύπρο το 1963 και το 1974 ( η υπόλοιπη οικογένεια βρήκε καταφύγιο στην Ελλάδα), γι΄αυτό και ένα από τα 9 βιβλία μου,  το αφιέρωσα στην έρευνα (μέσω των βρετανικών επισήμων εγγράφων στο Κρατικό Αρχείο) στην Γενοκτονία των Ελλήνων Ποντίων και Μ. Ασίας. Γι΄αυτό άρθρα σαν του Ρόπερτ Φίσκ πρέπει να διαφυλάσσονται, να εκτιμούνται και να χρησιμοποιούνται ως εργαλεία βαθύτερης γνώσης για τις τραγωδίες για τις οποίες ευθύνονται οι κατακτητές Τούρκοι.

Τούρκοι ακαδημαϊκοί, γράφει ο Φίσκ, τώρα άρχισαν να αναγνωρίζουν την αλήθεια...

Τους Τούρκους πήρε βέβαια, έναν ολόκληρο αιώνα για να φτάσουν έστω και λίγοι, σ΄αυτό το σημείο. Ας ελπίζουμε ότι δεν θα χρειαστούν άλλα τόσα για την περίπτωση της Κύπρου και το άνοιγμα του λεγόμενου «Φακέλου της Κύπρου». ΄Ηδη πέρασαν τα 40 και ακόμα...

Δίχως να γνωρίζουμε το παρελθόν και ποίοι έφταιξαν, απελευθερωμένοι από προσωπολατρίες και ψευδαισθήσεις,  δεν μπορούμε να δούμε το μέλλον.

Φανούλα Αργυρού - ερευνήτρια/συγγραφέας  - Λονδίνο  6.4.2014

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New book provides shocking evidence of German co-responsibility in Armenian Genocide

The English edition of The Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the German Foreign Office Archives, 1915-1916, compiled and edited by Wolfgang Gust, has just been released by Berghahn Books, the Zoryan Institute informs.

It contains hundreds of telegrams, letters and reports from German consular officials in the Ottoman Empire to the Foreign Office in Berlin which describe in graphic and shocking detail the unfolding genocide of the Armenians. The documents provide unequivocal evidence of the genocidal intent of the Young Turks and the German government’s official acquiescence and complicity.

Upon the earlier release of the German and Turkish editions of the book, the media reacted emphatically:

• Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung [Germany]—“The documents collected here illustrate clearly the shared responsibility of the Kaiserreich, the most important ally of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War… They are therefore largely undisguised and so vivid that the reader often shudders when reading them.”
• Forum Wissenschaft [Germany]—“Wolfgang Gust documents, in this excellent political-historical edition from contemporary German sources and the Foreign Office of the Reich government, the murderous events themselves…as well as the political co-responsibility of the German state.
• Hurriyet Daily News [Turkey]—“If you read the book and look at the documents, if you are a person who is introduced to the subject through this book, then there is no way that you would not believe in the genocide and justify the Armenians.”

The exceptional importance of these documents is underscored by the fact that only German diplomats and military officials were able to send uncensored reports out of Turkey during World War I. Apart from the Americans, who remained neutral in the war until April 6, 1917, German diplomats and their informants from the missions or employees of the Baghdad Railway were the most important non-Armenian eyewitnesses of the Genocide. These documents, meant strictly for internal use and never intended for publication, are remarkable for their candid revelations. Even as allies of the Ottoman Empire, German officials still felt compelled for moral and political reasons to report and complain about the atrocities being committed against the Armenians by their Ottoman ally.

In describing how he came to undertake this massive project, Gust writes,

…….I was shocked to see the Germans again playing an important role in mass murder at the edge of Europe. This genocide was neither initiated nor committed by Germans, but was widely accepted by them. Imperial Germany was the closest ally of the Young Turks and had a formal military alliance with them. Was there a link between these two most important genocides in Europe? Did the Nazis copy the methods of the Young Turks, who had committed the Armenian Genocide? Were the two World Wars in reality one historical event, as some historians believe?

            Questions upon questions. Was Imperial Germany a driving force in the genocide of the Armenians, or possibly even the source of the idea, as some non-German historians have suspected…. Did Imperial Germany view the Armenian Genocide with indifference or with sympathy? Did some Germans or part of the leading class resist the deportations and mass killings? And finally, did Germany have the power to stop the Armenian Genocide, and if they were able to so, why did they not make use of this power?

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Turkey's Kurds Seek Forgiveness for 1915 Armenian Genocide

Syndicated News

By Amberin Zaman

AL Monitor

Posted 2013-12-13 01:52 GMT

"The Armenian population is melting."

This bleak assessment was pronounced by Sahak Mashalyan, an Armenian Orthodox priest, during a recent Sunday mass at the Asdvadzadzin church in Istanbul. Reeling off the statistics: 482 funerals, 236 baptisms and 191 weddings, the black-robed cleric solemnly intoned, "These figures point to a community ? that is dying."

Little over a century ago, the Armenian Patriarchate put Anatolia's Armenian population at more than two million. In 1915, tragedy struck. Estimated figures vary, but between 800,000 and a million Armenians are thought to have been slaughtered by Ottoman forces and their Kurdish allies in what many respected historians call the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey vehemently denies any genocidal intent. The official line is that most of the Armenians died from hunger and disease, as they were forcibly deported to the deserts of Syria amid the upheaval of the collapsing empire.

The ruling Islamic Justice and Development Party has done more than any of its pro-secular predecessors to improve the lot of Christian minorities and to encourage freer debate of the horrors that befell them. Yet it has also showered millions of dollars on international lobbying firms in a vain effort to peddle the official version of events. A steady trickle of nations continue to recognize the events of 1915 as genocide. Turkey's biggest worry is that on the centenary in 2015, the United States will risk wrecking relations and follow suit.

In Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeastern province of Diyarbakir, global diplomacy does not figure in the calculations of Abdullah Demirbas, the mayor of the city's ancient Sur district. A maze of narrow cobbled streets lined with decrepit stone houses, Sur used to be known as the "neighborhood of the infidels" because of the large number of Armenians, Syrian Orthodox Christians and Jews who once lived there. Since being twice elected to office on the ticket of Turkey's largest pro-Kurdish party, Peace and Democracy (BDP), Demirbas, a stocky former schoolteacher with an easy smile, has thrown himself wholeheartedly into making amends for the past.

"As Kurds, we also bear responsibility for the suffering of the Armenians," he told Al-Monitor over glasses of ruby-red tea. "We are sorry, and we need to prove it." As a first step, Demirbas launched free Armenian-language classes two years ago at the municipality offices. "They were an instant hit," Demirbas said. Many of those who enrolled were thought to be "hidden Armenians" or the descendants of those who converted to Islam to survive.

One such "hidden Armenian," a gnarled octogenarian called Ismail, confided to Al-Monitor that his father's real name was Leon.

"They wiped out his entire family, out in the fields," he said as he awaited an audience with Demirbas. The old man's voice cracked with emotion. "My father was rescued by a Turkish officer and became a Muslim. But though, praise God, I am a good Muslim too, praying five times a day, I know I am not accepted," he added. "In their minds, I am always the son of the unbeliever."

The Kurds' role in the killings has been well documented, increasingly now by the Kurds themselves.

Egged on by their Ottoman rulers, Kurdish tribal chieftains raped, murdered and pillaged their way through the southeast provinces where for centuries they had co-existed, if uneasily, with the Armenians and other non-Muslims. Henry Morgenthau, who served as US ambassador in Constantinople at the height of the bloodshed, described the Kurds' complicity in his chilling 1918 memoir Ambassador Morgenthau's Story thusly:

"The Kurds would sweep down from their mountain homes. Rushing up to the young girls, they would lift their veils and carry the pretty ones off to the hills. They would steal such children as pleased their fancy and mercilessly rob all the rest of the throng. ? While they were committing these depredations, the Kurds would freely massacre, and the screams of women and old men would add to the general horror."

Osman Koker, a Turkish historian who has chronicled Armenian life through a rich collection of postcards and photographs predating 1915, reckons more than half of Diyarbakir's population was non-Muslim before the violence began.

"Most of them were Armenians, now there are none," Koker told Al-Monitor in an interview. Hashim Hashimi, a former member of parliament and a Sunni Muslim spiritual leader with a robust following, told Al-Monitor, "Sadly, many imams were convincing people that if they killed an infidel they would find their place in heaven and be rewarded with beautiful girls." This meant that thousands of Syrian Orthodox and other Christians were not spared, either.

In 2009 Demirbas and Osman Baydemir, a fellow BDP politician and the mayor of Greater Diyarbakir, decided to help with the restoration of an Armenian Orthodox church that had lay in ruins for decades in Sur. Baydemir donated a third of the costs of restoring Surp Giragos to its former magnificence. In 2011 the church, said to be the largest Armenian church in the Middle East, opened its doors as a fully functioning house of worship.

Ergun Ayik, an Armenian entrepreneur and philanthropist who runs the Surp Giragos Foundation, told Al-Monitor that the BDP mayors "went out of their way to help us," even providing the church with free utilities and security guards. A new museum of Armenian culture that is due to open by the end of 2013 within the Surp Giragos complex under the sponsorship of the Greater Diyarbakir municipality should also help draw tourists, not to mention thousands of "hidden Armenians" thought to be scattered across the southeast.

Silva Ozyerli, an Armenian activist from Diyarbakir who left for Istanbul in the 1970s, has agreed to donate some family treasures, including a silk nightshirt, several finely embroidered tablecloths and a pair of engraved copper bowls to the museum. Ozyerli voiced her enthusiasm for the project in an interview with Al-Monitor.

"You know why it is dear to me?" she asked a tinge of defiance creeping into her voice. "It is because everything in that museum will show people that not too long ago, Diyarbakir was every bit as Armenian as it was Kurdish, if not more so."

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The Confiscation of Armenian Properties: An Interview with Ümit Kurt

By Varak Ketsemanian

The following interview with Ümit Kurt tackles how the physical annihilation of the Armenians paralleled the confiscation and appropriation of their properties in 1915. By citing the various laws and decrees that orchestrated the confiscation process, Kurt places our understanding of the genocide within a legal context.

 

Umit Kurt

Ümit Kurt is a native of Aintab, Turkey, and holds a bachelor of science degree in political science and public administration from Middle East Technical University, and a master’s degree from Sabancı University’s department of European studies. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the department of history at Clark University and an instructor at Sabancı University. He is the author of several books, including Kanunların Ruhu: Emval-i Metruke Kanunlarında Soykırımın İzlerini Aramak (The Spirit of Laws: Seeking the Traces of Armenian Genocide in the Laws of Abandoned Property, 2012) with Taner Akçam. His main area of interest is the confiscation of Armenian properties and the role of local elites/notables in Aintab during the genocide. Below is the full text of the interview Kurt granted The Armenian Weekly earlier this month.

Read more http://www.armenianweekly.com/2013/09/23/the-confiscation-of-armenian-properties-an-interview-with-umit-kurt/

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Turkey’s Kurds Seek Forgiveness For 1915 Armenian Tragedy

Orobik Eminian, 98, who was the only member of her family to escape the World War I killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks, joins others in commemorating the 95th anniversary of the killings and a call for it to be termed a genocide in New York City, April 25, 2010. (photo by REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi)

By: Amberin Zaman for Al-Monitor Turkey Pulse Posted on September 3.

“The Armenian population is melting.”

This bleak assessment was pronounced by Sahak Mashalyan, an Armenian Orthodox priest, during a recent Sunday mass at the Asdvadzadzin church in Istanbul. Reeling off the statistics: 482 funerals, 236 baptisms and 191 weddings, the black-robed cleric solemnly intoned, “These figures point to a community … that is dying.”

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/09/turkey-kurds-seek-armenian-forgiveness.html#ixzz2eBll5lLP

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The Armenian hero whom Turkey would prefer to forget

Sarkis Torossian, the Armenian-Turkish officer, was awarded medals by Mustafa Kemal

 “Torossian was personally awarded medals for his courage by Mustafa Kemal”

Confronted by the chilling 100th anniversary of the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1915, Turkey’s government is planning to swamp memories of the massacres with ceremonies commemorating the Turkish victory over the Allies at the battle of Gallipoli in the same year. Already, loyalist academics have done their best to ignore the presence of thousands of Arab troops among the Turkish armies at Gallipoli – and are even branding an Armenian Turkish artillery officer who was decorated for his bravery at Gallipoli as a liar who fabricated his own biography.

In fact, Captain Sarkis Torossian was personally awarded medals for his courage by Mustafa Kemal, one of the Turkish heroes of Gallipoli who later, as Ataturk, founded the modern Turkish state. But in view of the desire of some of Turkey’s most prominent historians to brand Torossian a fraud, the word “modern” should perhaps be used in inverted commas.

Now these academics are even claiming that the Armenian army captain invented his two medals from the future Ataturk. Yet one of the most the outspoken Turkish historians to have fully acknowledged the 1915 genocide, Taner Akcam, has tracked down Torossian’s family in America and inspected the two Ottoman medal records; one of them bears Ataturk’s original signature.

Turkey, as we all know, wants to join the EU. I also, by chance, happen to think it should. How can we Europeans claim that the Muslim world wishes to stay “apart” from our “values” when an entire Muslim country wants to share our European society? We are hypocrites indeed. Yet how can Turkey still hope to join when it still refuses to acknowledge the truth of the Armenian genocide – and symbolises this denial by a scandalous attack on a long-dead Ottoman officer?

Captain Torossian’s memoirs, From Dardanelles to Palestine, were first published in Boston in 1947. Ayhan Aktar, professor of social sciences at Istanbul Bilgi University, first came across a copy of the book 20 years ago and was amazed to learn that there were officers of Armenian descent fighting for the Ottomans.

The eight-month battle for Gallipoli – an Allied landing dreamt up by Churchill in the hope of capturing Constantinople and breaking the deadlock on the Western Front – was a disaster for the British and French, and the mass of Australian and New Zealand troops fighting with them. They abandoned the beach-heads in January of 1916.

In his book, Torossian recounts the fighting at Gallipoli and other battles in which he participated – until, towards the end of the Great War, he found his sister among the Armenian refugees on the death convoys to Syria and Palestine. He then turned himself over to the Allies, meeting (but not liking) T E Lawrence and re-entering Turkey with French forces. He eventually travelled to the US where he died.

The gutsy Professor Aktar, however – noticing his colleagues’ unwillingness to acknowledge that Arabs and Armenians fought in the Ottoman Army – decided to publish Torossian’s book in the Turkish language. Initial reviews were favourable until two historians from Sabanci University took exception. Dr Halil Berktay, for example, wrote 13 newspaper columns in Taraf calling the entire book a fiction and Torossian a liar.

Taner Akcam, the Turkish historian who discovered Torossian’s family, was stunned by the reaction to the Turkish edition of the book; one critic, he says, even claimed Torossian did not exist. The Turkish Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, spoke at Gallipoli two years ago and gave a perfectly frank account of how Turkey planned to define the Armenian genocide on its hundredth anniversary. “We are going to make the year of 1915 known the whole world over,” he said, “not as an anniversary of a genocide as some people claimed and slandered (sic), but we shall make it known as a glorious resistance of a nation – in other wour defence of Gallipoli.”

So Turkish nationalism is supposed to win out over history. Descendants of those who died with the Anzac troops at Gallipoli, however, might ask their Turkish hosts in 2015 why they do not honour those brave Arabs and Armenians – including Captain Torossian – who fought alongside the Ottoman Empire.

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Turkey's Muslim Armenians come out of hiding

By Nicolas Cheviron (AFP) – 13 hours ago 

TUNCELI, Turkey — They dropped their language and religion to survive after the 1915 genocide, but close to 100 years on Turkey's "hidden Armenians" want to take pride in their identity.
Some genocide survivors adopted Islam and blended in with the Kurds in eastern Turkey's Dersim mountains to avoid further persecution.
Several generations down the road, the town of Tunceli hosted a landmark ceremony Wednesday for Genocide Remembrance Day, something which has only ever happened in Istanbul and the large city of Diyarbakir.
The massacre and deportation of Ottoman Armenians during World War I, which Armenians claim left around 1.5 million dead, is described by many countries as genocide although Ankara continues to reject the term.
Speaking in front of the ruins of the Ergen church -- one of the few remnants of Christian Armenian heritage in the region -- Miran Pirginc Gultekin, president of the Dersim Armenian Association, explained it was still rare to declare oneself openly as Armenian in Turkey.
"We decided that we had to get back to our true nature, that this way of living was not satisfactory, that it was not fair to live with another's identity and another's faith," he said.
Despite converting to Alevism, a heterodox sect of Islam, and taking Turkish names, the ethnic Armenians who stayed on their ancestral land suffered from continued discrimination and the elders often struggle to summon their memories.
"My mother told me how her family was deported. She was a baby at the time and her mother considered drowning her in despair," said Tahire Aslanpencesi, a sprightly octogenarian from the village Danaburan.
"My mother used to say all the misery that came after would have been avoided had her mother drowned her," she recalled.
After converting to Islam, many of the so-called "crypto-Armenians" said they still faced unfair treatment: their land was often confiscated, the men were humiliated with "circumcision checks" in the army and some were tortured.
Hidir Boztas' grandfather converted to Islam, gave his son a Turkish name and the clan intermarried with a Kurdish community in the village of Alanyazi.
"We feel Armenian nonetheless and in any case the others always remind us of where we come from. No matter how many of their daughters we marry, and how many of ours we give them, they will continue to call us Armenians," he said.
The Armenian community shared the Kurds' suffering when the regime cracked down on Kurdish rebellions, from the 1938 revolt to the insurrection started by the PKK group in 1984.
For a long time, only those who had left the ancestral homestead dared to make their Armenian roots known.
"Armenians in Istanbul are in a big city, they have their neighbourhoods, their churches, nobody can do anything to them. But in these villages, there's rejection and insults," said Hidir Boztas, 86.
Human rights campaigners gathered Wednesday in downtown Istanbul carrying portraits of genocide victims.
There were fewer than 200 people there but the protestors stressed such an event would have been unthinkable only a decade ago.
One of Hidir's nephews, 42-year-old Mustafa, a businessman, is one of a growing number of Muslim Armenians who want to be proud of their identity.
Mustafa has decided to name his construction firm Bedros after Hidir's grandfather, who was deported during the genocide.
"It symbolised my past. My great-grandfather was called Bedros, and I wanted his name to live on. I am against radicalism, and I don't do this through racism or religious extremism, but I don't deny my origins -- everyone knows them."
He said he hoped the unprecedented ceremony in Tunceli Wednesday would encourage more members of the community to come out in the open.
"The aim is to allow people to assert their identity more freely and also to generate more interest for the little Christian heritage left in the region," said Miran Pirginc Gultekin.
His society was created three years ago and has around 80 members

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Turkey and Armenia at Loggerheads

Turkey and Armenia missed an historic opportunity to improve ties when Turkey refused to ratify the Protocols on the Establishment of Diplomatic and Bilateral Relations signed on October 10, 2009. Rather than rapprochement, Armenians are now fully mobilized to organize worldwide activities commemorating the one hundred year anniversary of the Armenian Genocide on April 24, 2015. Armenia would never sacrifice gaining greater global recognition of genocide for cross-border cooperation with Turks. However, trade can still play a helpful role reducing tensions and creating positive momentum in Turkish-Armenian relations.

More than a closed border, Turks and Armenians are divided by different perceptions of history. More than one million Armenians perished during the final years of the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1923. Turkey disputes these facts, referring to the events as "shared suffering." Turkey demands a joint historical commission to address the "Armenian question." The political impasse between Turkey and Armenia is compounded by Ankara's linking of relations with Armenia to resolution of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh where Armenians and Azerbaijanis fought a brutal war displacing 600,000 people in the early 1990s.

The governments of Turkey and Armenia may be at loggerheads, but Turks and Armenians are still engaging in economic diplomacy, working on cross-border activities beneath the radar. Commercial contact involves mostly "suitcase trade" involving consumer goods transported from Turkey through Georgia to Armenia.

But bigger business is possible. Armenia could sell surplus electricity to Turkey which needs energy to power its economic boom. Armenia could also tap into Turkey's state-of-the-art fiber optic cable to meet its growing demand for Internet. Railway service between Kars in Turkey and Gyumri in Armenia could resume when Turkey opens its border gate. In anticipation, Armenia could begin conforming the country's Soviet-era railway gauge to Turkish and European standards.

In addition, Qualifying Industrial Zone (QIZ) could be established to catalyze joint enterprises between Turks and Armenians. A QIZ is an industrial park and a free-trade zone, which is linked to a free-trade agreement with the United States. Goods qualify when partners contribute raw material, labor, or manufacturing. Kazan, an area in Armenia on the Turkish border, would be a suitable destination for joint ventures in textile and piece goods manufacturing.

The QIZ should proceed with steps to relax restrictions on the surface transport of commercial goods. Armenian trucks are allowed to use Turkey as a transit country, but can't off-load on Turkish soil. The same holds true for Turkish trucks transiting through Armenia. Trucks should be allowed to transfer goods destined for markets in the neighboring countries, with Turkey and Armenia identified as destinations in the export registry.

Normalized travel and trade would also stimulate the tourist industry. Many Armenians are coming from Russia to cultural sites in Eastern Turkey. Allowing Armenian tourist buses to cross the Turkish-Armenian border would be a windfall for local business. Charter flights between the eastern Turkish city of Van and Yerevan would enhance commercial contact and a Turkish Airlines office in Yerevan would boost travel. The Ani Bridge across the Akhurian River, which symbolized the connection between Armenian civilization and the Anatolian plain, should be restored.

A useful database is being prepared by the Turkish-Armenian Business Development Councilprofiling opportunities and connecting potential business partners. Linkages could also be established between local chambers of commerce and mayors with the goal of establishing sister-city relationships and fostering trade and investment.

Such civil society and private sector initiatives have intrinsic value. Moreover, they can also incentivize official diplomacy or serve as a safety net when diplomacy stalls. They are not, however, a substitute for official diplomacy.

There is currently no contact between Turkish and Armenian officials. While the Turkey-Armenia protocols called for a "dialogue on the historical dimension," Armenians balked when Turkey demanded a commission to determine whether the events of 1915 met the definition of genocide.

Instead of trying to reinvent history, Turkey's Prime Minister Erdoğan can make history through an executive order to open the border and normalize travel and trade as a step toward diplomatic relations. Bolder yet, he could submit the protocols on normalization and diplomatic relations to the Turkish parliament with his personal endorsement for ratification.

With an eye on his legacy, Erdoğan could also call for parliament to repeal Article 301 of the penal code, which makes it a crime to "denigrate Turkishness" and is used to repress free the freedom of expression. Repealing regressive legislation would make Turks more free, and also benefit Turkey's EU aspirations.

Turkey's moral authority is undermined by the government's denial of the Armenian Genocide. On Remembrance Day, April 24, Erdoğan should apologize for what happened to Armenians during the waning days of the Ottoman Empire. Reconciling with Armenia would help consolidate Turkey's role as a regional power, as well as a force for good in the world.

Mr. Phillips is Director of the Program on Peace-building and Rights at Columbia University's Institute for the Study of Human Rights

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-l-phillips/turkey-and-armenia-at-log_b_2957700.html?utm_hp_ref=email_share

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