THE WASHINGTON POST: MAJOR LOBBYING COMPANY GERHARDT GROUP RECEIVES $ 70,000 A MONTH FROM TURKEY
PanARMENIAN.Net
04.03.2010 18:20 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Each year Americans remember the massacres killed
hundreds of thousands of Armenian men, women and children during and
immediately after World War I, and every year the U.S. Congress is
drawn into a fierce debate between Armenia and Turkey, whether to
characterise the events of early 20th century in the Ottoman Turkey
as Genocide, today’s issue of The Washington Post wrote.
"Introduced this week to the U.S. Congress a resolution on the
Armenian Genocide is calling on the president to publicly recognize
the massacres of 1915 as "genocide" and to use this term during the
annual address to the Armenian community of the USA on 24 April. The
resolution puts President Obama, Vice President Biden and U.S.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in an "uncomfortable " position,
since they, as senators, strongly advocated the recognition of the
Armenian Genocide", the article stated.
According to the newspaper, the resolution has caused Turkey’s
aggression and has intensified its lobbying activities. "The Turkish
government has been spending millions on lobbying in Washington
over the last decade, most of which focused on the issue of genocide
recognition. Major lobbying company Gerhardt Group receives $ 70,000
a month from Turkey ," The Washington Post stressed.
The Armenian Genocide(1915-23) was the deliberate and systematic
destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during
and just after World War I. It was characterized by massacres, and
deportations involving forced marches under conditions designed to
lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of deaths
reaching 1.5 million.
The date of the onset of the genocide is conventionally held to be
April 24, 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities arrested some 250
Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople.
Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes
and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of
food and water, to the desert of what is now Syria.
To date, twenty countries and 44 U.S. states have officially recognized
the events of the period as genocide, and most genocide scholars
and historians accept this view. The Armenian Genocide has been also
recognized by influential media including The New York Times, BBC,
The Washington Post and The Associated Press.
The majority of Armenian Diaspora communities were formed by the
Genocide survivors.