ARF WESTERN US STATEMENT ON PROPOSED ARMENIA-TURKEY PROTOCOLS
estern-us-statement-on-proposed-armenia-turkey-pro tocols/
Sep 2, 2009
The Armenian Revolutionary Federation of the Western United States
comes before the Armenian nation to express its profound concerns on
the so-called protocols for the normalization of bilateral relations
between Armenia and Turkey.
The ARF, as one of the oldest Armenian national organizations outside
the Armenian Church, has always advocated the establishment of not
only diplomatic but friendly diplomatic relations between the Armenian
and Turkish Republics. However, these relations cannot be based upon
a capitulation of Armenian national rights arising from the Genocide
committed against the Armenian nation that decimated its population,
destroyed its cultural heritage and usurped its ancestral homeland.
First, the so-called "Protocols" provide for a clear surrender
of Armenian national rights by recognizing the "inviolability of
Turkish territory," significant parts of which have a cloud over
their lawful title.
Included within this "territory" are large parts of modern Turkey that
had been lawfully awarded to and recognized to be part of the Armenian
Republic in 1920 and earlier. Much of that territory has been illegally
taken from the Armenian nation through force, coercion and through
the use of internationally condemned illegal and wrongful means.
Second, the clause referring to the parties agreeing to "refrain
from pursuing any policy incompatible with the spirit of good
neighborly relations," is objectionable for its vagueness and hidden
objectives. This clause will be interpreted by Turkey as meaning that
Armenia will abandon its support for the international recognition
of the Armenian Genocide and its lawful entitlement to territorial
and compensatory reparations from Turkey. Conversely, it is the ARF’s
view that this clause must explicitly require Turkey to immediately
and forever cease its shameful and reprehensible campaign of denying
the Armenian Genocide and at evading its obligations for reparations
to the Armenian people.
Third, the "Protocols" pointedly stipulate that Armenia must agree
to "implement a dialogue on the historical dimension… including
an impartial scientific examination of historical records and
archives to define existing problems…" This deceitful and most
dangerous clause is a flagrant attempt to turn the obvious 94 year
old political and legal controversy of the Armenian Genocide into
an historical controversy. The fact of the Genocide has never been
doubted by impartial historians and is reflected in the firsthand
testimonies of not only its witnesses and its victims, but even in
the testimony of its perpetrators dating back to post war Turkish
tribunals and to the recent autobiographical revelations of Talaat
Pasha’s own diary entries. Any agreement which entrusts political
entities to re-undertake a "scientific examination" of the Genocide
is a dangerous ploy, as well as an insult to the one and half million
Armenian victims and to their survivors and progeny who have been
dispossessed of their patrimony and their millennial old ancestral
homeland. This, the Armenian nation cannot and will not accept.
Was it not only a year ago that the U.S. State Department, in
a letter signed by Acting Assistant Secretary of State Matthew
A. Reynolds, affirmed its official policy to then Chairman of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Joseph Biden when it stated:
"Our goal is to help archivists protect the evidence of the past
so that future generations will have the documentation of the mass
killings and deportation of Armenian committed by Ottoman soldiers
and other Ottoman officials in 1915. Our goal is not to open a
debate on whether the Ottomans committed these horrendous acts;
it to to help preserve the documentation that supports the truth of
those events…the Administration recognizes that the mass killings,
ethnic cleansing, and forced deportations of over one and half million
Armenians were conducted by the Ottoman Empire. We indeed hold Ottoman
officials responsible for those crimes."
We look to the Armenian government to take heed of the official public
policy expressed by the United States government in July of 2008 and
not be trapped, coerced or otherwise blackmailed into negating its
own Genocide. History will not look favorably upon the authors of
such a monumental disaster.
Once again we look forward to the establishment of good relations with
Turkey, but those relations cannot be based on lies and upon coercion,
but must begin with acknowledgment of the mistakes of the past and
the proper measure of atonement to a create an honest atmosphere of
true good faith if we are ever to get on with our children’s futures.
The Armenian government cannot and is not allowed to compromise the
truth, to surrender our rights, and to endanger our national security.
September 1, 2009 Central Committee Of The Armenian Revolutionary
Federation Of Western United States