Author: Baghdasarian Karlen

“I’M SURPRISED WE STILL ARE SITTING HERE DISCUSSING WHETHER THE GENOCIDE TOOK PLACE OR NOT”. THE PROSECUTOR OF THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT

April 23 2015

“This was a Genocide, which was committed against Armenians, Assyrians
and Greeks by the Turks. These mentioned genocides have played a
significant role in the formation of our organization”, – said the
International Association of Genocide`s president Daniel Feuerstein
at global forum “Against the Crime of Genocide”, who has been in our
country for the first time and considers a great honor to be here to
participate in the events dedicated to 100th anniversary of Armenian
Genocide .He said. – “The international community is willing to fight
against genocide denial”. Daniel Feuerstein drew attention to the
fact that the genocide ultimate goal is not the individuals but the
destruction of the group. -“The perpetrators considered Armenians
as not an element of earth’s history forming part and were trying to
achieve homogeneity of the modern state by pan-Turkism “. Feuerstein
underlined that today more attention is paid to the idea of global
genocide than to an understanding of others’ suffering. On the opening
of the forum Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who was the first prosecutor of the
International Criminal Court (2003-2012), noted that the existence of
such a court has already shown that we are moving forward. -“There
was no such court in 1915 and in 1945 began the new international
court, based on the Nuremberg events”. He stressed that the most
important challenge today is the creation of a clear position that
the past life will come into concrete action. -“Armenia is having the
need to take the advantage. When the world is unified it is easy to
prevent Genocide, although the one who has committed Genocide knows
how to influence other countries (business, economy, etc.)”. Luis
Moreno-Ocampo said this adding that they should constantly work with
Armenia in order to understand how to achieve the recognition of
the Armenian Genocide. – “I’m surprised we still are sitting here
discussing whether the Genocide took place or not”.

Siranoush HAYRAPETYAN

Read more at:

From: Baghdasarian

MAJOR PART OF TURKEY’S TERRITORY BELONGS TO ARMENIANS: RUSSIAN BENEFACTOR

15:47, 23 April, 2015

YEREVAN, 23 APRIL, ARMENPRESS: The major part of the Turkey’s territory
belongs to the Armenians. “The solution of any historical controversial
issue is based on historical sources. We suggest a chronicle, developed
in the 16th century by the order of Ivan IV, commonly known as Ivan the
Terrible, the Grand Prince of Moscow and the Tsar of All the Russia,
which presents the world history – from ancient times to 1550s”, –
stated the famous Russian political and social activist, businessman
and benefactor German Sterligov at the press conference held at the
press hall of Armenpress News Agency.

Sterligov added that due to the efforts by the Armenian side, an
International Non-Governmental Committee “Restoration of historical
justice” will be established, in which many experts and political
scientists will work. The work of the abovementioned Committee might
have a great contribution to the recognition of the Armenian Genocide
and the return of the Armenian lands from Turkey.

Sterligov stated that on April 24 he will by all means participate
in the mourning procession.

From: Baghdasarian

GENOCIDE SCHOLAR: WE ARE READY TO FIGHT FOR RECOGNITION OF GENOCIDE AGAINST ARMENIANS

12:37 22/04/2015 >> SOCIETY

Today I want to reaffirm that the genocide scholars’ community is
ready to fight against the denial and for the recognition of the
genocide perpetrated against the Armenians, Daniel Feierstein,
President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars,
said at the International Social and Political Global Forum against
the Crime of Genocide.

He stressed that one hundred years ago the Turks perpetrated a genocide
against the Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians.

After presenting theories about genocide, Mr Feierstein said that the
aim of the genocide was to annihilate not the members of the group,
but the entire group.

“Some claim that even the annihilation of a part of an ethnic group
constitutes genocide,” he said.

Daniel Feierstein expressed his gratitude to Armenia for organizing
the forum.

From: Baghdasarian

GERMANY DEFIES TURKEY, CALLS ARMENIAN MASSACRE ‘GENOCIDE’ (+VIDEO)

Christian Science Monitor-
April 21 2015

Germany abruptly shifted its policy Monday from a steadfast refusal
to use the term “genocide” to describe the massacre of up to 1.5
million Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces 100 years ago.

By Erik Kirschbaum, Reuters April 20, 2015

Berlin — The German government backed away on Monday from a steadfast
refusal to use the term “genocide” to describe the massacre of up to
1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces 100 years ago after
rebellious members of parliament forced its hand.

In a major reversal in Turkey’s top trading partner in the European
Union and home to millions of Turks, Germany joins other nations and
institutions including France, the European parliament and Pope Francis
in using the term condemned by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said the
government would support a resolution in parliament on Friday declaring
it an example of genocide.

Recommended: How much do you know about Germany? Take our quiz!

Germany had long resisted using the term “genocide” even though
France and other nations have. But the coalition government came under
pressure from parliamentary deputies in their own ranks planning to
use the word in a resolution.

Test your knowledge How much do you know about Germany? Take our quiz!

Photos of the Day Photos of the Day 04/20

“The government backs the draft resolution…in which the fate of the
Armenians during World War One serves as an example of the history of
mass murders, ethnic cleansings, expulsions and, yes, the genocides
during the 20th century,” Seibert said.

Turkey denies that the killings, at a time when Turkish troops were
fighting Russian forces, constituted genocide. It says there was no
organized campaign to wipe out Armenians and no evidence of any such
orders from the Ottoman authorities.

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier had rejected using the word
genocide in an ARD TV interview on Sunday, denying any suggestion it
was being avoided to avoid upsetting Turkey.

“Responsibility can’t be reduced to a single term,” he said.

Members of parliament in the conservative Christian Democrats and
their Social Democrat (SPD) allies forced the change.

Analysts said that the reluctance until now from Germany, a country
that works hard to come to terms with the Holocaust it was responsible
for, was due to fears of upsetting Turkey and the 3.5 million Germans
of Turkish origin or Turkish nationals living in Germany.

The German government also did not want to use the word due to
concerns the Herero massacres committed in 1904 and 1905 by German
troops in what is now Namibia could also be called genocide —
leading to reparation demands.

“It’s a striking contradiction by the German government that Germany
is denying the genocide of Armenians,” said Ayata Bilgin, a political
scientist at Berlin’s Free University.

“Research has shown that external pressure on countries can have a
considerable influence and Germany could play a very important role
in this discussion on Turkey.” (Writing by Erik Kirschbaum; editing
by Ralph Boulton)

From: Baghdasarian

CONFERENCE REUSSIE DE CLAUDE MUTAFIAN

Toulouse

L’Amicale des Armeniens de Toulouse Midi-Pyrenees avait invite
Claude Mutafian pour une conference sur le genocide des Armeniens
a la demande de la ville de Toulouse, dans le cadre des conferences
mensuelles proposees par la Ville aux Seniors.

Plus de 160 personnes avaient repondu favorablement a l’invitation
dont certains membres de la communaute armenienne, cette conference
ayant ete placee dans le cadre des manifestations organisees par
l’Amicale des Armeniens de Toulouse Midi-Pyrenees pour le centenaire
du genocide des Armeniens.

Claude Mutafian, après avoir decrit le declin de l’empire Ottoman,
a la fin du 19e siècle, et son impact sur ses minorites, a detaille
le processus qui a conduit a l’entreprise d’extermination mise en
oeuvre par le Comite Union et Progrès visant a detruire totalement les
armeniens au motif de leur appartenance ethnique et religieuse. Grâce
a de nombreuses illustrations, a l’aide de cartes, de textes, de
cartes postales ou de photos emanant de temoignages indiscutables
et objectifs, revelant des faits incontestables, le processus
d’extermination qui sera appele en 1943 par Raphaël Lemkin, genocide,
a ete demontre de facon magistrale.

Deux procès, qui ont eu au moins pour merite de rassembler des
temoignages et des preuves de la realite des faits, ont eu lieu l’un
a Constantinople, en 1919, en cours martiale turque qui condamna a
mort, par contumace, les principaux artisans du genocide, Talaat
Pacha, Enver Pacha et Jemal Pacha ainsi que bien d’autres, sans
toutefois les poursuivre ni demander leur extradition ; l’autre en
1921, celui Soghomon Tehlirian, jeune armenien Dashnak ayant abattu
Talaat a Berlin, dans le cadre de l’operation Nemesis. Le procès a
ete l’occasion pour la communaute internationale de se pencher sur
l’impunite des responsables du genocide, et il est finalement acquitte.

Puis, c’est l’entreprise de negation de ce genocide qui a ete decrit,
intervenant dès 1919, a travers une propagande qui n’a cesse, depuis,
de se developper et de s’amplifier sans que personne ni aucun Etat
occidental n’y trouve a redire, pire, certains Etat se compromettant
dans des manipulations grossières pour une usurpation manifeste de
la verite. Avec, en filigrane, la volonte absolue de ne pas voir
ouvrir la boite de pandore qui mettrait sur le tapis, outre le fait
de revoir une historiographie totalement manipulee auprès de sa propre
population depuis deja un siècle, a l’inverse de la verite des faits,
l’obligation de traiter le dossier epineux des reparations, qu’elles
soient morales ou territoriales.

En cette annee du centenaire, l’espoir subsiste tout de meme avec la
levee du tabou auprès, d’une frange au moins, de la population, suite a
l’assassinat de Hrant Dink (journaliste armenien de nationalite turque,
qui prônait activement pour la paix entre les armeniens et les turques)
qui commence a regarder ces faits avec un nouveau regard et a vouloir
reconsiderer la question du genocide des Armeniens comme une realite
a commencer par Hassan Jemal, le petit-fils de Jemal Pacha.

La conference s’est terminee avec une brève presentation de l’histoire
de l’Armenie qui remonte a plus de 3000 ans, avec un focus sur
la periode du moyen-âge central armenien, autour de l’ouvrage du
conferencier, paru aux editions des Belles Lettres, L’Armenie du
levant.

S’ensuivirent les questions nombreuses et pertinentes du public,
curieux de mieux comprendre les motivations d’une negation qui perdure
depuis un siècle deja et de s’interroger sur les perspectives d’une
reconnaissance dans un proche avenir… avant de terminer avec une
seance de dedicace des ouvrages qui etaient proposes a la vente,
sur place, par l’Amicale des Armeniens de Toulouse Midi-Pyrenees.

mercredi 22 avril 2015, Claire (c)armenews.com

From: Baghdasarian

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: WHAT HAPPENED IN 1915 IS NOT TRAGEDY, BUT INTERNATIONAL CRIME

13:36 22/04/2015 >> SOCIETY

What happened in 1915 is said to be a tragedy. It is not a tragedy,
but an international crime which we call genocide, Geoffrey
Robertson, founder and head of Doughty Street Chambers, stated at
the International Social and Political Global Forum against the Crime
of Genocide.

In his words, the world powers were aware about what was happening,
and they promised to bring the perpetrators to criminal liability,
but they did nothing.

He noted that this year Turkey has scheduled the Gallipoli
commemorations for April 24 to divert attention from the Armenian
Genocide, and some states are going to participate in the commemorative
events in Turkey. He stressed that Turkey’s denialism has had a
negative impact.

Geoffrey Robertson said that “this week the world is commemorating
the massacre of the Armenians, and it is called genocide, which is
mass killings on racial and religious grounds.”

He stressed that there is no doubt that the annihilation of half of
the nation is genocide.

From: Baghdasarian

LAST ARMENIAN VILLAGE IN TURKEY KEEPS SILENT ABOUT 1915 SLAUGHTER

13:35, 22 Apr 2015
Siranush Ghazanchyan

Deborah Amos
NPR

A hundred years ago this week, the Ottoman Empire began the killings
and forced marches of Armenians in what most historians call the
first genocide of the 20th century.

Turkey staunchly denies that label, saying the deaths — estimated
by historians at around 1.5 million — were part of widespread ethnic
fighting in a civil war.

Regardless of the label used, the result was destruction of virtually
every Armenian community in the Ottoman Empire, which collapsed
after the war as what was left of the country transitioned into the
modern-day Republic of Turkey.

Today, Vakifli, in central southern Turkey near the border with Syria,
is the only Armenian village that remains. Residents there are still
hesitant to raise the past.

The village — perched on a mountainside, with fragrant fruit trees,
clear air, and stunning views of the Mediterranean Sea that are a
draw for tourists — survived the massacres and forced marches with
courage and luck a century ago.

But now, the village is facing another battle for survival. Most young
people have fled the village for better opportunities in cities. The
population has dwindled to 135 mostly elderly residents.

Silence is the survival strategy. Even as others mark the anniversary
of their tragic history, the Armenians of Vakifli remain wary of
public ceremonies here, fearing a Turkish backlash.

Cem Capar, chairman of the Foundation of the Vakifli Surp Asdvadzadzin
Church, sums it up this way: “People come and ask, ‘what are your
ideas about the Armenian genocide?’ And I say, ‘I don’t want to think
about that.’ ”

On a walk from the church along the cobbled streets of the village,
he stops to emphasize his point about the upcoming commemorations.

Politicians are exploiting Armenians’ history, Capar insists: “They
are hurting us, and that’s why I don’t want to talk about it.”

Richard Hovannisian says the residents of Vakifli are inherently
cautious when speaking to outsiders. Hovannisian was born into an
Armenian family that escaped the massacres; he’s now a scholar of
Armenian history at UCLA.

“It’s very touchy being an Armenian in Turkey,” he says. The elderly
residents of Vakifli have concluded that “any commemoration would
not be good for them.”

But Vakifli’s history is dramatic. Residents fought against the
Ottoman onslaught in a story that later was recounted in a novel,
The Forty Days Of Musa Dagh, which was followed by a movie.

Vakifli residents, along with those in surrounding villages, headed
up Moses Mountain, or Musa Dagh, and held out until a passing French
warship spotted the banner they had hoisted: “Christians in distress:
Rescue.”

The French warship evacuated more than 5,000 Armenians. They only
returned after the war when the area came under Syrian control. When
the province became part of the Turkish Republic in 1939, many
Armenians fled again. Only the villagers of Vakifli stayed on and
eventually became Turkish citizens.

“Turkey is my country; yes, I’m an Armenian who lives in Turkey,”
says Capar.

In the runup to the centennial, Turkey’s official position only has
hardened. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has become more
combative, challenging the pope and European governments that have
called the events of 1915 a genocide.

The controversy tests Capar’s identity as an Armenian and as a Turk.

To an outsider, he appears to defend Turkey’s position.

“Any attack that happens to Turkey, I take it as an attack on myself,”
he tells a group of journalists who have come for a visit to Vakifli.

Hovannisian, who has often visited Vakifli, says the residents “don’t
want to be regarded as disloyal.”

Identity is a complicated matter. Everyone in Vakifli is proud to be
descendants of Armenians who resisted the brutal Ottoman campaign.

Mayor Berc Kartun asks if I’ve seen the movie about Vakifli’s history
— but also points out that Vakifli’s survival now depends on the
generosity of the Turkish government.

“We cannot deny that our government is helping us a lot,” he says.

The restoration of the Armenian church, repairs to the roads, and
an organic farming plan are all government programs. There is enough
economic opportunity to keep his son, Haroot, 28, from going elsewhere.

But his generation feels the acute shadow of history

“We are a small village — we are a minority here,” Haroot says. “That
is why I feel the same pressure, the same as my father.”

Residents say the Turkish government now protects Christians, offering
refuge to neighboring Syrian Christians fleeing Islamist radicals,
including some who have been sheltered in Vakifli. Still, the
100-year-old history, Vakifli’s legacy, will not be commemorated here.

“It is an old-age rest home,” says Hovannisian. There is not even a
school in the village, he says — the kids have to be bused outside
for education.

It’s part of the Turkish policy to disperse Armenians in the province,
he adds. So, in the long shadow of history, the Armenians in the
last remaining village in Turkey have to wonder how long they can
keep their heritage alive.

From: Baghdasarian

GENOCIDE DISPUTE NOT ONLY REASON TRAINS DON’T RUN FROM ARMENIA TO TURKEY

Fresno Bee
April 20 2015

By Roy Gutman

GYUMRI, Armenia — The train to Turkey hasn’t left the station in
the Armenian border town of Gyumri for 22 years, and many here fear
it never will. But if Turkey should unexpectedly reopen the gates,
a lot of Armenians will be on board, eager to see the country their
ancestors fled 100 years ago amid massacres and mass deportations.

“The soil there, I want to go back and farm it,” Stepan Bagouryan, 30,
a machinist from Gyumri, said as he boarded a ramshackle passenger
train to Yerevan, the Armenian capital. His great grandfather fled
the city of Mus, in eastern Turkey. “Why shouldn’t we go back? It is
our homeland.”

Turkey closed the link in 1993 to show solidarity with its regional
ally, Azerbaijan, after Armenian troops occupied the tiny enclave of
Nagorno Karabach. It’s been closed ever since.

Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton intervened in 2009 to resolve
the matter, and Armenia and Turkey agreed to establish diplomatic
relations and reopen the border. But the agreement fell victim to
the region’s many conflicts and has yet to be implemented.

Azerbaijan, which shares religious and linguistic ties with Turkey
and is a major outside investor in its Turkish economy, cried betrayal.

Armenia still had troops inside territory Azerbaijan claimed. It also
had captured a buffer zone surrounding the enclave, whose population
of 130,000 is overwhelmingly Armenian.

So Turkey asked Armenia make a show of goodwill and abandon at least
one of the buffer zone’s seven districts. Armenia refused.

The 2009 accords also called for an international commission to
look at the historical record and assemble facts that would enable
discussion of the two countries’ very different interpretations of
the deportations and massacres of 1915 that killed perhaps a million
Armenians and which most label genocide. But after leaders of the
Armenian diaspora accused President Serzh Sargsyan of betraying
Armenian interests by agreeing to discuss the history, that initiative
died as well.

After four years, neither side had submitted the twin protocols to
their respective parliaments for approval, and on Feb. 16, Sargsyan
formally withdrew them, blaming a lack of will by Turkey.

Although both sides have made gestures in the past – Sargsyan,
for example sent his foreign minister to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s
inauguration as president last year – neither side is willing to
contemplate taking a bold unilateral step to end the impasse.

“We think the blockade is illegal, and we do think it needs to
be eliminated as soon as possible, and the earlier the better,”
said Vigan Sargsyan, chief of staff to President Sargsyan (he’s not
related to the president. He said Armenia has no preconditions.

“We don’t think that to open a border you need to reconcile. We think
that reconciliation or friendship are future steps.”

“We want regular relations with Armenia on the basis of bilateral
interests, but on the basis of realpolitik, it’s not so easy,” a
Turkish official told McClatchy in Ankara. “If they will retreat from
one or two (districts), it will give us the possibility of de-blocking
everything,” said the official, who spoke only on the condition of
anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

The U.S. says the ball is in Turkey’s court. “Responsibility for
moving forward lies with the Turkish government,” the new U.S.

ambassador, Richard Mills, said at his confirmation hearings in
September. He called for final approval of the two accords “without
pre-conditions or linkage to other issues.”

But agreement, on anything, seems a distant hope.

For one, Armenia is incensed that Turkey chose April 24, the day
of Armenia’s long planned commemoration of the centennial of the
Armenian exodus from Turkey, to invite the world’s powers to Turkey
mark another 1915 event, the failed allied landing at Gallipoli. The
Ottoman Empire repulsed the April 25 landing by Russia, France and
Britain, and the battle went on for eight months. The Turks think of
it as a defining moment in their fight to remain independent after
the collapse of the Ottomans.

In January, Erdogan invited his Armenian counterpart to attend the
Gallipoli commemoration. Sargsyan rejected it, and in an open letter
to Erdogan, chastised him for not even responding to the invitation
that Armenia had sent to the Yerevan ceremonies months earlier.

He charged that Turkey was continuing “its traditional policy of
denialism” surrounding the Armenian genocide and accused Erdogan of
setting the date for the Gallipoli events “to distract the attention
of the international community” from Armenia’s commemoration.

If the aim was to upstage Armenia, Erdogan appears to have succeeded.

At least 21 heads of state have agreed to attend the Gallipoli events,
according to Turkey’s foreign ministry; only two, the presidents of
France and Russia, are expected at Yerevan.

But Armenia hasn’t finished. At the end of January, Sargsyan,
together with other leading politicians and members of the Armenian
diaspora, issued a “Pan-Armenian” declaration that referred to the
1920 Treaty of Sevres and an arbitration by then President Woodrow
Wilson, which awarded an enormous part of Turkey to a new Armenian
state. The declaration called for preparing a file of legal claims to
restore “individual, communal and pan-Armenian rights and legitimate
interests.”

Turkish officials said the declaration could be read as a claim on
Turkish lands. Many Armenians agree.

“It would be strange if we did not lay out our grievances” on the
centennial of the slaughter, said chief of staff Sargsyan, when asked
about the declaration.

And in the view of Suren Manukyan, the deputy director of the Armenian
Genocide Museum in Yerevan, that region – about one seventh of the
landmass of today’s Turkey – should be restored to Armenians.

“It was the decision of President Wilson, who was chosen for
arbitration after the Sevres Treaty,” he said. “The implementation of
the decision of Wilson will be good compensation for all the killings,
all the tragedy.” Then, he added, “the real host of the land will
come back.”

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, believe it or not, efforts are under
way to restore the dialogue – after the twin commemorations of April
24 and after the Turkish elections on June 7.

According to U.S.-born Richard Giragosian, a former Capitol Hill
aide who directs the Regional Studies think-tank in Yerevan, Turkish
foreign ministry officials plan to come to Yerevan in mid-June during
a meeting of the NATO parliamentary assembly.

In landlocked Armenia, which has normal ties but rudimentary transport
links with Georgia and Iran, an opening to Turkey would be a welcomed
jolt to a moribund economy.

Today a resident of Yerevan who wants to visit Istanbul, where at
least 40,000 and possibly 100,000 Armenians are working illegally,
has few options for travel. There are twice weekly charter flights
that depart both countries in the middle of the night, a 36-hour
bus trip or one can make the six-hour drive to Tblisi, capital of
neighboring Georgia, over a swerving, potholed secondary road, then
catch a flight on to Istanbul.

Giragosian believes that may not be the situation for long. Based
on contacts he’s had with both the Turkish and Armenian governments,
he predicts the border will be open by 2017.

From: Baghdasarian

TURKEY MUST END ITS 100 YEARS OF GENOCIDE DENIAL

Peter Balakian
Reconciliation with Armenia can only begin when Turkey roots out
institutional denial and owns up to this gruesome chapter of its past
A placard shows the images of the Ottomans believed to be responsible
for the Armenian genocide. Photograph: Mark Kerrison/Demotix/Corbis

Tuesday 21 April 2015 15.53 BSTLast modified on Wednesday 22 April
201500.09 BST

Exactly 100 years ago, on 24 April 1915, the Turkish government
arrested 250 Armenian intellectuals and cultural leaders in
Constantinople, so beginning the Armenian genocide.

>From late spring of 1915, massacres were carried out throughout
Turkey. The government organised the genocide by creating death squads,
passing laws to sanction deportation and confiscation, using the then
cutting-edge railway and telegraph technology, and wrapping the whole
thing up in the nationalist ideology of pan-Turkism.

The US consul in Aleppo, Jesse B Jackson, called it “a gigantic
plundering scheme, as well as the final blow to extinguish the
[Armenian] race”. By 1918, between a half and two-thirds of the 2
million Armenians living in their historic homeland in the Ottoman
empire had been annihilated. Raphael Lemkin, the legal scholar who
created the concept of genocide as an international crime, and was
in the 1940s the first to use the term “Armenian genocide”, put the
death toll at 1.2 million.

The roots of this slaughter began in the late 19th century, when
Armenian reformers began petitioning for equal rights for Christians
and Jews in the Ottoman empire, in which non-Muslim minorities were
legally relegated to infidel status. Largely peaceful activism for
change resulted in horrendous massacres of more than 100,000 unarmed
Armenian civilians under Sultan Abdul Hamid II in the 1890s. As Turkey
lost more of its territory in eastern Europe during the Balkan wars
of 1912-13, it became increasingly anxious.

‘Even at the time of the mass killings, Turkey’s interior minister,
Talaat Pasha, adamantly denied them’

When the first world war broke out, the Ottoman government (the
Unionist party) claimed that Armenians were a danger to national
security and would side with the Russians (some did defect to join
the Russian army). It put into motion a final solution.

In every city, town and village across Turkey, from Constantinople
to Ankara to the Armenian vilayets in the east, where they had lived
for 2,500 years, Armenians were rounded up, arrested, and either shot
outright or put on deportation marches. Most often, the able-bodied
men were arrested in groups, taken out of the town or city and shot
en masse. The women and children and the infirm and elderly were
told that they could gather some possessions and would be deported
to “the interior”. The Turks often told the Armenians, as the Nazis
would later tell the Jews, that they could return after the war.

Along the Black Sea region in the north, and from Adana and other
Armenian cities in the south, the massacre network extended to
the northern Syrian desert: east of Aleppo, in the region of Deir
el-Zor, more Armenians died (400,000 or more) than anywhere else. The
historian Richard L Rubenstein has described these events as the
“first full-fledged attempt by a modern state to practise disciplined,
methodically organised genocide”. Even at the time of the mass
killings, Turkey’s interior minister, Talaat Pasha, adamantly denied
to the press and foreign governments that massacres were taking place.

FacebookTwitterPinterest Soldiers standing over skulls of victims
from the Armenian village of Sheyxalan, during the first world
war. Photograph: STR/AFP/Getty Images

After the war, the denial of the extermination became, as the Turkish
historian Taner Akcam has put it, one of the foundation myths of the
modern Turkish republic. What happened to the Armenians was deemed
to be their fault, and the subject became taboo.

In Turkey’s state-mandated educational system, in which critical
inquiry is forbidden, the representation of the Armenian past is either
absent or reduced to a couple of sentences, in which the Armenians
are vilified. Turkey’s authoritarian curriculum dovetails with its
repression of intellectual freedom, giving it one of the worst human
rights records; in the past two years, according to the Committee to
Protect Journalists, Turkey has had more imprisoned journalists than
China and Iran.

The continuing denial is also linked to the fear of reparations. What
legal recourse will there be for the lost Armenian property and wealth,
or the 2,500 Armenian churches and monasteries and nearly 2,000 schools
destroyed? Turkey has elevated national pride over historical truth
and any ethical concerns. In 1997 the International Association of
Genocide Scholars unanimously passed a resolution stating that what
happened to the Armenians conforms to the UN’s definition of genocide.

Analysis The Armenian genocide – the Guardian briefing

Turkey has never accepted the term genocide, even though historians
have demolished its denial of responsibility for up to 1.5 million
deaths

Read more

There are a few academics whom Turkey has cultivated to support
its falsification of history. About these, the Holocaust scholar
Deborah Lipstadt has said: “Denial of genocide, whether that of the
Turks against the Armenians, or the Nazis against the Jews, is not
an act of historical reinterpretation … the deniers sow confusion
by appearing to be engaged in a genuine scholarly effort. The deniers
aim at convincing innocent third parties that there is ‘another side
of the story’ when there is [none]; denial of genocide strives to
reshape history in order to demonise the victims and rehabilitate
the perpetrators.”

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But Turkish denial comes in many forms. This year, one of its tactics
aimed at undermining the memory of the genocide includes holding a
centennial event for the Battle of Gallipoli on 24 April – the day
Armenians worldwide remember the genocide – rather than 25 April,
the usual Gallipoli commemoration date. The offence is compounded by
the attendance of Prince Charles and Prince Harry at this politically
concocted gathering.

That is why it was so important that last week Pope Francis affirmed
that the slaughter of the Armenians was the “first genocide of the
20th century”. He showed that he would not be bullied by the Turkish
state. Nor would he be cajoled by Turkey’s specious rhetoric suggesting
that if he used the word “genocide” he would create a crisis between
Muslims and Christians. The pope took the moral issue even further when
he addressed the corruption of Turkish denial: “Concealing or denying
evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it.”

On the centenary of the genocide, Turkey would do its national honour
well if it listened to him. There can be no reconciliation until
there is truth.

From: Baghdasarian

ISRAEL EXPERT: ARMENIA SHOULD HEAD GLOBAL UNION OF NATIONS THAT SUFFERED GENOCIDE

by Nana Martirosyan

Wednesday, April 22, 15:35

Dr. Israel W. Charny, an Israeli psychologist and genocide scholar,
Executive Director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide
in Jerusalem, suggests creating a global union of Genocide-affected
nations headed by Armenia. The Israel scholar made such statement at
the Public and Political Global Forum Against the Crime of Genocide
in Yerevan today, on April 22.

The expert believes the campaign to inform the world about genocides
and holiness of human life must be headed by the Armenian people. The
world’s pop and rock stars, prominent representatives of the fashion
industry, politician, and public figures must unite around the idea.

“It will be useful for both Armenians and all the other nations,”
Israel W. Charny said.

From: Baghdasarian