THE KURDISH AND ARMENIAN GENOCIDES – FROM CENSORSHIP AND DENIAL TO RECOGNITION
By Desmond Fernandes
PR-Inside.com (Pressemitteilung)
Kurdishaspect.com
-inside.com/the-kurdish-and-armenian-genocides-r46 0280.htm
Feb 27 2008
Austria
2008-02-27 19:56:43 – Turkey’s repression of the Kurds has been widely
documented – and is acknowledged as a major obstacle to Turkey’s
accession to the European Union. But what lies behind such repression?
Fernandes confronts the issue head on, forcing the reader to probe
a question that many in Turkey and elsewhere would rather avoid:
does the systematic repression of the Kurds amount to genocide? Open
discussion of this issue is critical if a long-term resolution of the
Kurdish issue is to be achieved – Nicholas Hildyard, Policy Analyst.
The book is an exceptionally important read for anyone with a broad
interest in human rights and social justice. It has a scholarly
account of the historical background to the present awful situation of
Turkish Armenians and Turkish Kurds. In particular, the book provides
a powerful comparative analysis of the policies of the US, Israel and
Turkey in terms of their rationale for labelling human atrocities as
genocide – Dr. Julia Kathleen Davidson, Research Fellow, Faculty of
Education, University of Glasgow and Membership Secretary of Scotland
Against Criminalising communities (SACC).
In this important book, Desmond Fernandes exposes the details of
the sordid and largely hidden role of Israel and the US Israel Lobby
in preventing Congress from recognizing the Turkish genocide of the
Armenians – Jeff Blankfort, Former Editor, Middle East Labor Bulletin.
Among its Cold War victories the United States certainly succeeded
in its ambition to make the world safe for nationalism. As identity
politics is reprocessed as a function of global capital, and
rehabilitated as its natural ally, Desmond Fernandes documents the
fractured consequences of the readymade social fantasy – Variant:
Cross Currents in Culture.
Desmond Fernandes writes for those who spoke the truth and were
murdered, those who spoke 200 days ago and are still imprisoned,
and for those who live in terror and in silence, or who meet in
nameless buildings, so that the words ‘GENOCIDE’, ethnic cleansing,
or the Turkish military word ‘TEMIZLEME’, may be heard as a siren
call for the muted victims of the Turkish state – Diamanda Galas,
Composer and Performer of Songs of Exile, Vena Cava, Schrei X, Plague
Mass and Defixiones, Will And Testament.
Fernandes’ painstaking investigation sheds much needed light on
the collusion between the Turkish State and the Israel lobby in
preventing recognition of one of the darkest episodes of the past
century, the genocide of Ottoman Turkey’s ethnic Armenians -Muhammad
Idrees Ahmad, Spinwatch.
[This is] a judiciously assembled vast, syntactic mosaic ‘illustrating’
the total state terror inflicted upon two ancient peoples … Desmond
Fernandes has laboriously integrated a vast amount of historical
events, scholarly data, secret documents, live witnesses, relevant
literature and even poetry … [He] has hit the target: mainly
encapsulating the enormity of censorship, denial and recognition of
that ultimate crime of man’s inhumanity to man – Genocide – Khatchatur
I. Pilikian [from the Epilogue].
Desmond Fernandes is a policy analyst and former Senior Lecturer
in Human Geography and Genocide Studies at De Montfort University,
England. He has published widely in a number of journals and is
co-author of Genozid an den Kurden in der Turkei? – Verfolgung, Krieg
und Zerstorung der ethnischen Identitat (2001, Medico International,
Frankfurt). Forthcoming titles by the author include The Kurdish
Genocide in Turkey and US, UK, German, Israeli and NATO ‘Inspired’
Psychological Warfare Operations against the ‘Kurdish Threat’ in Turkey
and Northern Iraq, due to shortly be released by Apec Press, Stockholm.