WHY DOES A CLOSE U.S. ALLY DENY ITS GENOCIDE?
By Adrian Morgan
Family Security Matters, NJ
id=1384987
Oct 16 2007
(Part One of Three)
The Current Political Conflict
On Wednesday, October 10, the House of Congress’ House Foreign Affairs
Committee voted by 27 votes to 21 to pass a non-binding resolution to
classify actions which took place in Turkey in 1915 as "genocide". The
full text of the resolution includes the statements: "The House of
Representatives finds the following: (1) The Armenian Genocide was
conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923,
resulting in the deportation of nearly 2,000,000 Armenians, of whom
1,500,000 men, women, and children were killed, 500,000 survivors were
expelled from their homes, and which succeeded in the elimination of
the over 2,500-year presence of Armenians in their historic homeland.
(2) On May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers, England, France, and Russia,
jointly issued a statement explicitly charging for the first time
ever another government of committing `a crime against humanity’.
(3) This joint statement stated `the Allied Governments announce
publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally
responsible for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government,
as well as those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres’.
(4) The post-World War I Turkish Government indicted the top leaders
involved in the ‘organization and execution’ of the Armenian Genocide
and in the `massacre and destruction of the Armenians’. "
The day before the resolution was put to a vote, President George W.
Bush warned against the passing of the resolution, saying:
"This resolution is not the right response to these historic mass
killings." Turkey, whose current government is led by Islamists of the
AKP (Justice & Development Party), reacted angrily to the initial vote,
which is expected to be presented before the entire House of Congress.
Abdullah Gul, who recently became the first Islamist President since
modern Turkey was officially established in 1923, said the vote was
"unacceptable". He claimed that some US politicians had "sought to
sacrifice big problems for small domestic political games". Turkey
withdrew Nabi Sensoy, its ambassador from Washington, as soon as
the vote was passed. The president of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan,
supported the committee’s vote and said he hoped it would lead to
full US recognition of the genocide.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee’s decision on the vote had split
mostly along party lines, with democrats supporting it and Republicans
opposing it. On the floor of Congress, the bill had the sponsorship
of 226 representatives, mostly democrats. One of the co-sponsors of
the bill, Luis Fortuno of Puerto Rico, changed his committee vote
following direct lobbying by the US president. It will now be the
decision of Nancy Pelosi to introduce the resolution to the vote of
the Full House of Congress (where Fortuno will not be able to vote).
Democrat Tom Lantos, the only US politician to have survived the
Holocaust, is chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. He opened
discussions by saying: "We have to weigh the desire to express our
solidarity with the Armenian people… against the risk that it
could cause young men and women in the uniform of the United States
armed services to pay an even heavier price than they are currently
paying." Lantos, told AFP news agency that he would introduce a
resolution praising US-Turkish friendship this week.
The United States, along with the efficiency of its military operations
in Iraq, certainly stands to lose from deteriorating relations with
Turkey. The US military employs Incirlik Air Base near Adana in
southeastern Turkey to fly most of its supplies to its troops in Iraq.
A senior legislator in Turkey’s ruling AKP, Egemen Bagis, visited
Capitol Hill on Tuesday to warn that the bill would threaten military
cooperation. He told Reuters: "This resolution will put your troops
in harm’s way. We will not be able to extend the current cooperation
we are providing to you. If our allies are insulting us with crimes
we have not committed, we will start questioning the merits of that
endeavor."
President Abdullah Gul sent a letter to George W. Bush before the vote
was taken, to thank him for his personal attempts to urge members
to vote down the resolution. The US administration is now trying to
limit damage. On Friday, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke
to Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and also foreign
minister Ali Babacan. She said: "They were dismayed."
Two US officials went to Turkey on Saturday to bolster relations
between the two nations and prevent possible restrictions on US
military operations in Turkey. Eric Edelman, a former US ambassador
to Turkey, and Dan Fried arrived in Ankara, the capital, and met
Ertugrul Apakan, a Turkish minister in the foreign ministry.
The Armenian prime minister, Serge Sarkisian will be arriving in
Washington on Wednesday October 17, a move guaranteed to add to
US/Turkish tensions. His visit had been planned months previously.
While US and Turkish politicians were fretting about the outcome
of the resolution, another development was taking place. Turkey was
planning to mount its own independent military incursion into Kurdish
Northern Iraq, the least unstable region within Iraq. There are fears
that such an invasion could destabilize all Iraqi regions. Concerns
about this invasion force led crude oil to reach a record high of
$84 per barrel on Friday. Most Iraqi oil production is in the south,
but a key crude oil pipeline runs from Baku in Azerbaijan through
Georgia to the port of Ceyhan in southeastern Turkey, where it is
then placed on tankers. The political fallout from an invasion could
lead to problems with distribution at the Turkish end.
The US has tried to urge Turkey not to mount its independent incursion
into northern Iraq, but the mood in Turkey is not compromising. Already
prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed on Saturday that he
did not need permission to enter northern Iraq. The reason for the
proposed incursion is that members of the Kurdish separatist party, PKK
(Workers Party of Kurdistan), have recently mounted a series of attacks
in southeastern Turkey. Thirty people have been killed over the past
month. The PKK fighters have fled across the border into northern Iraq.
PKK terrorists warned on Friday that they would be returning to
Turkey from their enclaves in northern Iraq, to mount terror strikes
on police. This is unlikely to stop Turkey’s administration from
requesting its parliament this week for approval for its venture. On
Wednesday last week, prime minister Erdogan claimed that his party
wanted a year-long authorization for mounting possible attacks against
PKK bases in northern Iraq. He suggested such incursions would not
necessarily start immediately.
Kartet, a private company in Turkey, supplies electricity to Iraq. On
Thursday, the Turkish daily newspaper Hurriyet announced that a senior
official from the Energy Ministry said that Kartet would no longer
be supplying power to Iraq, due to Turkey’s own power needs.
He did not state whether this action was part of a sanctions package
against Iraq, connected with logistical support and refuge to PKK
terrorists being provided in northern Iraq.
Condoleezza Rice has said that she would want to stop the submission
of the resolution on Armenian genocide to the full House of Congress,
but admitted that it would be "tough". Such a resolution could hardly
come at a worse time for the current US administration, but there is
no "right time" to discuss the issue, when it involves a matter of
historical truth. The fault ultimately lies with Turkey, for being
so intransigent in its denial of documented fact. If Turkey can
blackmail and threaten the safety of US troops as a direct result
of the recent resolution, then the US should seriously question the
worth of maintaining deep trust in such an "ally".
Turkey’s Denial of the Armenian Genocide
The UN Convention on Genocide took place in December 1948. Article
Two of its declaration describes genocide as the implementation of
acts designed "to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic,
racial or religious group."
Turkey admits that large numbers of Armenians died in 1915, but says
that they died as a by-product of forced deportation and because some
Armenians took up arms against the ailing Ottoman Empire. It refuses
to acknowledge that there was a "genocide". Turkey claims that during
World War I, no more than 300,000 Armenians died, though overwhelming
evidence suggests that between 1915 and 1917, 1.5 million Armenians
died. If Turkey had been more mature about its history, as Germany
has been concerning the Nazi genocide of 6.5 million Jews, the issue
would have been laid to rest long ago.
As the situation now stands, Turkey has no diplomatic relations with
its small neighbor Armenia, as a result of its obstinate denial of
the truth. In 1993, the border with Armenia was closed by the Turks.
There were tentative moves towards a thawing of the diplomatic
frostiness in April 2005, but these came to nothing. The stumbling
blocks again concerned issues of the Armenian genocide.
In May 2005, Turkey’s justice minister Cemil Cicek blocked a conference
of Turkish academics who wanted to discuss critically the historical
facts of the deaths of Armenians. In September 2005, just 10 days
before Turkey was to begin talks about its possible accession to the
European Union, a second attempt to hold this conference was banned
by a court order. The legal move had been instigated by a group of
nationalist lawyers.
The denials of what took place particularly in 1915 are upheld by
the Islamists in Turkey, and also the secularists. The AKP party
is the first Islamist party to rule Turkey. Previous attempts to
form an Islamist government were suppressed with coups mounted by
the pro-secular military. The last elected Islamist government was
dissolved by the military in 1996.
Within Turkey, anyone who denies the official version of "history"
runs the risk of falling foul of Article 301 of the penal code. This
outlaws any "insult against Turkey or Turkishness". The maximum
penalty for breaching Article 301 is a three-year jail term. Article
301 had been rewritten in June 2005 in a package of amendments to the
existing penal code. The penal code had been altered to make Turkey
eligible to join talks on membership of the European Union. No one
in the EU appeared to notice that Article 301, in both its original
and revised state, contravened Article 19 of the 1948 International
Declaration of Human Rights – the right to freedom of speech.
Orhan Pamuk is Turkey’s most famous novelist, whose novel "Snow"
has been has been acclaimed as a modern "classic". In 2006, Pamuk
was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. In February 2005, Pamuk
had given an interview to a Swiss newspaper. In this interview,
he referred to the killings of Armenians, but he did not mention
the term "genocide". He said that in the 20th century "a million
Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in these lands [Turkey],"but
few spoke of this. His statement contradicted the "official version"
of the truth, and on December 16, 2005, Pamuk appeared in court,
charged with breaching Article 301.
Pamuk’s impending trial had drawn international criticism of Turkey,
but prime minister Erdogan claimed that foreign critics were putting
pressure on Turkey’s judiciary. He said: "I find that a little
controversial to the principle of respecting the rule of law… I
don’t think the way they act is very proper in this case."
On the first day of Pamuk’s trial at Sisli district criminal court in
Istanbul, Judge Metin Aydin adjourned the case to February. He was
unsure if the case was to be brought under the original penal code,
instituted by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, or under the revised penal code.
If the trial was made under the old conditions of the penal code,
the justice minister (then Cemil Cicek) would have to issue a ruling.
Pamuk’s appearance at the court was greeted by angry crowds. Most of
these were militant nationalists, sometimes called "Kemalists". As
he entered the courtroom, a woman hit him with a folder. As he was
driven away, his car was pelted with eggs.
On January 23, 2006, it was announced that Turkey had dropped its
case against Pamuk. The novelist was luckier than Turkish Armenian
Hrant Dink.
On August 28, 2005, a court in the southeastern city of Sanliurfa
initiated proceedings against Hrant Dink, on charges of breaching
Article 301. Mr Dink was the owner and editor of a bilingual magazine
called Agos. The Sanliurfa trial had concerned comments that Dink had
made at a 2002 conference, where he had referred to a verse that must
be memorized by all students. This verse starts with the words: "I am
a Turk, I am honest and hardworking." Dink had told the conference
that he was honest and hardworking, but he was not a Turk. He was
an Armenian. That trial was never completed, for reasons I will
explain below.
On October 7, 2005, Dink was sentenced by the Sisli Court of Second
Instance at Istanbul at the culmination of another trial where he
had been accused of breaching Article 301 by "insulting Turkish
identity". All Dink had done to "insult Turkish identity" was to
publish a series of articles extolling the virtues of "Armenian
identity" and to write of the way that the Armenian genocide still
impacted on modern Turkish life. Dink was given a suspended six
month jail term. He appealed against this conviction in 2006, but
the decision against him was upheld.
Dink’s trials and subsequent tribulations, as well as the international
brouhaha stirred up by US politicians mentioning a genuine historical
event, point to an affliction in the heart of Turkey’s national
identity. Quasi-fascistic Turkish nationalism is the infectious and
suppurating byproduct of the unhealed wounds of Turkish history. And
in the background, not acknowledged by predominantly Muslim Turkey,
and never mentioned in the Western media, is another dimension to
the case of the Armenian genocide. The Armenians are Christian.
The deportations of Armenians in 1915 is acknowledged by Turkey.
What is not acknowledged is that they were deported precisely
because they were Christian, and had their own cultural identity and
language. Ethnic cleansing is the handmaiden of genocide, and Turkey
in 1915 was openly practicing ethnic cleansing, a practice that had
started at the end of the 19th century. In the 21st century, only
scoundrels can make political capital from defending the indefensible.
Because of Turkey’s obstinate denials, other countries have made
official rulings attesting that the Armenian genocide took place. In
1982, Cyprus’ House of Representatives passed a resolution. The
European Parliament passed a resolution in 1987. This move did stop
Turkey attempting to join the European Union, a factor which should
hearten US Republicans and administrative officials who fear a House of
Congress vote. After all, there are 1.5 million US citizens of Armenian
descent, many of whom had ancestors directly affected by the Armenian
genocide. Their opinions should count far more than the hurt pride
of a temperamental NATO ally that is currently threatening to throw
its toys out of the baby carriage because it doesn’t like the truth.
Greece made a resolution in 1996 and even established an Armenian
Genocide Day. Switzerland’s National Council passed a resolution in
2003 and Canada’s House of Commons passed a resolution in 2004.
Slovakia’s National Assembly made a resolution in 2004. Argentina
passed a law in 2006, and Chile’s Senate passed a resolution in 2007.
In France, where 500,000 Armenians live, a resolution was passed in
2001, but on October 12, 2006 a bill was passed which made denial of
the Armenian genocide a crime, potentially punishable by a one-year
prison sentence and a $60,000 fine. The move was carried in the
French National Assembly by 106 votes to 19. Before the French vote
took place, Islamist prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called it
a "systematic lie machine" but claimed Turkey would not engage in
"tit-for-tat" reprisals.
The day before the French vote, a judicial committee had debated two
moves to introduce laws to parliament which would have described
France’s actions in its war with its former colony of Algeria
as "genocide". A third draft bill was discussed by the justice
commission, which would have made anyone who claimed that there was
an Armenian genocide would be jailed. Article 301 already allows for
such punishment. All three draft bills were rejected. However, Ankara
warned that French companies would be banned from major economic
projects in Turkey should the French bill become law, an obvious
"tit-for-tat" reprisal.
Hrant Dink opposed the punitive aspects of the French law. He said to
a newspaper: "This is idiocy. It only shows that those who restrict
freedom of expression in Turkey and those who try to restrict it in
France are of the same mentality." On TV, he said: "I am standing
trial in Turkey for saying it was genocide. If this bill is adopted,
I will go to France and, in spite of my conviction, I will say it was
not genocide. The two countries can then compete to see who throws
me in jail first."
Hrant Dink was born on September 15, 1954 in Malatya, the town in
central Turkey where three Christians were tortured and killed on
April 18 this year. He founded the magazine Agos on April 5, 1996.
The intention of this publication was to foster understandings between
the Turkish and Armenian communities in Turkey. Dink believed that
the Armenian community lived in too much isolation. The attention
drawn to him by his high-profile trials brought his life under threat.
Agos had its offices in central Istanbul. On January 19, 2007 Hrant
Dink was leaving his offices when a teenager wearing a white Muslim
skullcap approached him. The youth fired three shots into the 53-year
old editor’s head and neck. Dink slumped down dead on the spot. His
teenaged killer shouted out "I shot the infidel" before running off.
Hrant Dink was aware of death threats which had been made against him
for daring to speak of the Armenian genocide. One threat he received
by email seemed so serious he turned it over to the Sisli prosecutor’s
office, but his complaint was ignored. In his last article for Agos,
Dink wrote: "How real or unreal are these threats?
To be honest, it is of course impossible for me to know for sure.
What is truly threatening and unbearable for me is the psychological
torture I personally place myself in. "Now what are these people
thinking about me?" is the question that really bugs me. It is
unfortunate that I am now better known than I once was and I feel
much more the people throwing me that glance of "Oh, look, isn’t he
that Armenian guy?"
And I reflexively start torturing myself. One aspect of this torture
is curiosity, the other unease. One aspect is attention, the other
apprehension. I am just like a pigeon… Obsessed just as much what
goes on my left, right, front, back. My head is just as mobile… and
just as fast enough to turn right away.
After his death, his son Arat Dink took over the editing of Agos.
When Arat Dink decided to reproduce one of his father’s 2006 articles
which mentioned the Armenian genocide, he too was hauled before the
courts, charged under Article 301 for "insulting Turkish identity".
Only last week, while Turkey officially fulminated at the US mention
of its genocide, Arat Dink was sentenced. On Thursday October 11,
2007, he and a colleague from the magazine were both given suspended
jail terms of one year.
Tomorrow, in Part Two, I will outline the cultural and historical
background of the first massacres against the Armenians in Turkey.
These would lead inevitably to the genocide which took place in
the First World War. Genocides never happen in a vacuum as isolated
events. Often, as in the case of Russian pogroms against peasants,
there are campaigns of deliberate starvation. In the case of the
Armenian genocide, starvation was used as a weapon (see picture at
top of page).
Without incidents such as the German attacks on Jewish shops that
took place on "Crystalnacht", there would not have been a climate
that later allowed the Nazis to conduct mass exterminations of Jews.
Similarly, in the case of the Armenian genocide, the events of 1915
to 1917 were preceded by deliberate and politically-motivated attacks
and killings at least from 1894 onwards.
# #
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Adrian Morgan is a
British based writer and artist who has written for Western Resistance
since its inception. He also writes for Spero News. He has previously
contributed to various publications, including the Guardian and New
Scientist and is a former Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Society.
read full author bio here
If you are a reporter or producer who is interested in receiving
more information about this writer or this article, please email your
request to pr@familysecuritymatters.org.
Note — The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author
and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy
of The Family Security Foundation, Inc.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress