Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic
Jan 26 2005

World: Post-Holocaust World Promised ‘Never Again’ — But Genocide Persists
By Daisy Sindelar

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called it a “crime that has
no name” — the Nazis’ deliberate and systematic extermination of as
many as 6 million European Jews. But a name was soon found —
genocide, literally the killing of a people or nation. The Genocide
Convention adopted by the United Nations in 1948 was meant as a
pledge to ensure the horrors of the Holocaust would never be
repeated. But since then, the world community has consistently failed
to prevent the occurrence of genocide in places like Cambodia,
Rwanda, Bosnia, and northern Iraq. Why has the promise of “never
again” proven so difficult to honor?

Prague, 26 January 2005 (RFE/RL) — The term “genocide” saw its first
legal application during the Nuremburg trials (1945-46) of Nazi war
criminals.

The top surviving officials of Adolph Hitler’s regime were indicted
on crimes including the extermination of racial, national, and
religious groups.

In a televised trial 15 years later in Israel, Adolph Eichmann — the
man responsible for the implementation of the Nazi plan to eliminate
Europe’s Jews — faced inarguable evidence that he, too, had
contributed to genocide on a massive scale.Mass murder of national,
ethnic, and tribal groups has continued with depressing frequency —
most recently in Sudan, where pro-government Arab janjawid militias
have been blamed for the deaths of tens of thousands of black
Sudanese in the western region of Darfur.

“The accused, together with others, during the period 1939 to 1945,
caused the killing of millions of Jews in his capacity as the person
responsible for the execution of the Nazi plan for the physical
extermination of the Jews known as the Final Solution of the Jewish
problem,” a news anchor reported at the time.

Eichmann was hanged on 31 May 1962.

The Nazi trials and the 1948 Genocide Convention reflected a
determination in the world community to prevent a recurrence of the
Jewish Holocaust. But it was not enough.

Mass murder of national, ethnic, and tribal groups has continued with
depressing frequency — most recently in Sudan, where pro-government
Arab janjawid militias have been blamed for the deaths of tens of
thousands of black Sudanese in the western region of Darfur.

The United States has said the killings in Darfur constitute
genocide, providing a basis for action under international law. But
there has virtually been no intervention to date.

Why has the international community failed to keep genocide from
happening?

Bernard Hamilton is the president of the Leo Kuper Foundation, a
nongovernmental organization working for the eradication of genocide.
Speaking from London, he said the international community has been
slow to follow on the promise of the Genocide Convention.

“I think because of the gravity of the crime [of genocide], there was
a certain fear about either being accused of that, or accusing people
of that act,” Hamilton said. “So the international community was
somewhat cautious in setting up implementation mechanisms for the
Genocide Convention. It moved very early, but it moved very
cautiously, in the sense that it didn’t set up an International
Criminal Court [ICC], it didn’t set up a monitoring mechanism to
alert the UN of the advent of genocide.”

Hamilton said the recent establishment of the ICC is a major stride
toward putting the convention to work. So, too, is the new UN office
of special adviser on the prevention of genocide. Argentinian rights
lawyer Juan Mendez was named to the post in 2004. His first major
project — a summation of the situation in Darfur — was presented to
Secretary-General Kofi Annan on 25 January.

But other hurdles remain.

Rene Lemarchand is a professor emeritus at the University of Florida
and an expert on comparative genocide. He said a consistent part of
the problem has been the Western notion that victims of mass murder
are most often “far-away people about whom we know nothing.”

“Another reason is our abysmal ignorance of the events leading to
genocide and our inability or unwillingess to take appropriate steps
to prevent the worst from happening,” Lemarchand said. “Just consider
some of the countries where the worst killings have happened since
the Holocaust — Bosnia, Cambodia, Rwanda, Burundi. I don’t think
there is one American out of a thousand who could have identified
these countries on a map of the world before these countries were the
site of mass murder, of genocide.”

But while a public might learn of such a tragedy only as it is
happening, politicians and other officials are often able to see a
brewing catastrophe before it escalates.

As early as 1915, U.S. diplomats were urging Washington to intervene
in the mass killing of an estimated 1 million Armenians by Turkey.
Ankara has long denied charges of genocide.

Western officials also warned about the potential for genocide in
Bosnia and Rwanda. But it was not enough to prevent the murder of
more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995, or the
Hutu killings of up to 750,000 minority Tutsi in the Rwandan genocide
the previous year.

Lemarchand said Western countries are often reluctant to dedicate
military and logistical power to situations that do not directly
threaten their national interests. They are also cautious about
leveling accusations they themselves could face.

The United States ratified the Genocide Convention only in 1986, and
after numerous amendments aimed at preventing the government from
ever facing genocide charges itself. It has also declined to join the
International Criminal Court.

Another problem is the term “genocide” itself. The convention’s
definition is used as a guideline for genocide cases in the UN’s war
crimes tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda. But Lemarchand said the
rules are vague and indistinct — making it easy for countries to
remain on the sidelines as bloody conflicts unfold.

For example, the convention defines genocide as an act to destroy a
national, ethnic, or religious group “in whole or in part” and says
genocidal crimes include “killing members of the group.” Such a
definition, Lemarchand said, leaves genocide open to interpretation.

“And this raises the question — how many people should be killed
before you call the killings a genocide? Is the killing of 20 people
a genocide? Should it be 200? Should it be 2,000? I think, quite
frankly, the problem with affixing the label of genocide to these
terribly violent situations anywhere in the world is that a lot of
time is lost on trying to agree on whether this is or this is not
genocide. And as more and more people are being killed, nothing is
being done,” Lemarchand said.

This week’s commemorations to mark the 60th anniversary of the
liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz are once again —
however briefly — focusing the world’s attention on the persistence
of genocide.

It remains to be seen whether the international community can summon
the political will and public support to prevent future killings,
like the 1970s slaughter of 1.7 million Cambodians under Pol Pot’s
Khmer Rouge, or Saddam Hussein’s killing of some 5,000 Kurds in
Halabjah in 1988.

Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic
Jan 26 2005

Armenia: Country’s Jews Alarmed Over Nascent Anti-Semitism

By Emil Danielyan

Armenia’s tiny Jewish community is growing concerned by what it says
is mounting anti-Semitism in the South Caucasus country. Virtually
nonexistent in the past, the issue has emerged over the past year
amid a rise in anti-Jewish propaganda and the desecration of a
Holocaust memorial in Yerevan. The government has so far done little
to address the Jewish community’s concerns.

Yerevan, 26 January 2005 (RFE/RL) — Rimma Varzhapetian says she
always felt proud of Armenia when she met fellow Jews from other
parts of the former Soviet Union.

`We always declare everywhere that there has never been anti-Semitism
in Armenia, that Armenia is a good place for Jews to live and, more
importantly, that Armenia is quite a stable country in political and
social respects,’ Varzhapetian says.

That is why the secular leader of Armenia’s Jewish community has had
trouble coming to terms with what she says is a recent rise in
anti-Semitic propaganda.

It began in 2004, when ALM, a private pro-government television
channel, began broadcasting a phone-in talk show hosted by the
station’s owner, Tigran Karapetian. For months, Karapetian used the
platform to air views that portrayed Jews as an unsavory race bent on
dominating Armenia and the wider world.

Varzhapetian says her office in Yerevan received threatening phone
calls after the first series of ALM broadcasts.

Karapetian’s rhetoric appeared to embolden Armen Avetisian, the
openly anti-Semitic leader of the Armenian Aryan Union, a small
ultranationalist party. Avetisian in a recent newspaper interview
alleged that there are as many as 50,000 “disguised” Jews in Armenia,
and promised he would work to have them expelled from the country. He
was arrested on 24 January on charges of inciting ethnic hatred.

A Holocaust memorial in a public park in the center of Yerevan also
came under attack in September, when vandals desecrated the memorial
on the final day of Jewish New Year celebrations.

Yet what shocked the Jewish community most was an interview with
Hranush Kharatian, a prominent ethnologist who heads the Armenian
government’s department on religious and minority affairs. Speaking
to the `Golos Armenii’ (Voice of Armenia) Russian-language newspaper
a month after the memorial’s desecration, Kharatian accused Jewish
leaders of preaching extreme intolerance toward all non-Jews.

In a recent interview with RFE/RL, Kharatian cited what she called
the “aggressive ideology” contained in the Talmud, the book of Jewish
religious laws. `I see in the Talmud numerous points which clearly
state that non-Jews, or infidels that are not Jews, are not human
beings and are animals,’ she said.

Varzhapetian and other community leaders, including Chief Rabbi Gersh
Meir Burshtein, met last month with Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan
Oskanian to ask for help in addressing the problem. A ministry
spokesperson, however, said last week the issue is not sufficiently
serious to warrant government attention.

Mikael Danielian heads the Armenian Helsinki Association, a human
rights group that closely monitors anti-Semitic activity in the
country. He criticized the government’s failure to address the issue.
`I am surprised at the serenity of our state officials,” he told
RFE/RL. “It could have very serious consequences for Armenia.”

Armenia’s Jewish community is estimated to number less than 1,000
people. It is largely formed of scientists and other professionals
who moved to Armenia in the 1960s and ’70s to escape persecution in
Russia and Ukraine. Most integrated quickly into society, marrying
ethnic Armenians and adopting Armenian surnames.

Until recently, anti-Semitic sentiment in Armenia was limited to
occasional allegations by nationalist scholars that Jews had aided
the 1915 genocide of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey. The theory — which
is not supported by historical evidence — was first aired during the
presentation of an anti-Semitic book at a 2003 meeting of the
Armenian Writers Union. No one in the audience condemned the text.

A global report on anti-Semitism issued this month by the U.S. State
Department dedicates just three paragraphs to Armenia. But that was
sufficient to unleash a fresh wave of anti-Jewish criticism. ALM’s
Karapetian, who was cited by name in the U.S. study, responded with a
two-hour televised monologue lambasting the United States and the
contents of the report.

Several days later, Karapetian received an unexpected phone call
during an ALM broadcast. An Armenian woman living in Israel
criticized his sweeping bias against Jews, but was quickly cut off by
the broadcaster.

“If someone has offended you personally, or if you have problems with
your business, it doesn’t mean you should hold an entire nation
responsible,” the woman said in Russian. `Stop asking hysterical
questions on air,” Karpetian replied. “Shut up and listen to me. You
say it’s inadmissible to say `Jewish tricks.’ But is it permissible
to spit at a priest?’

Karapetian was referring to two recent incidents in Jerusalem in
which Jewish religious students spat at Armenian priests in a show of
their contempt for their Christian faith. The Armenian Apostolic
Church has had a presence in Jersualem’s Old City for centuries.

The incidents have been cited repeatedly in Armenia as supporting
claims of anti-Semitism. But Varzhapetian said Armenia’s Jews are
still hoping not only the government but also civil society will take
steps to stem the rising hatred.

`We are still awaiting a statement [of protest] from prominent
Armenians. Armenians themselves must express indignation. First of
all, because there are very few of us [in Armenia]. Secondly,
protecting ourselves is not quite appropriate,’ Varzhapetian said.

Varzhapetian and other community leaders sent an open letter to
President Robert Kocharian urging an end to the government’s
“conspicuous failure to see those inciting anti-Semitism.” But the
only response to date has been a statement by a cabinet minister
saying ethnic and religious discrimination does not exist in Armenia.

Ecumenical News International
News Highlights
26 January 2005

Israeli chief rabbi’s visit to Patriarchate seen as bid to
improve relations

Jerusalem (ENI). Israel’s Ashkenazi chief rabbi has paid an
unprecedented official visit to the headquarters of the Armenian
Patriarch in Jerusalem in what is seen as a drive by Israeli
officials to improve Jewish-Christian relations in the Holy Land.
Rabbi Yona Metzger, one of two chief rabbis, made the visit as
part of a series of meetings with Christian leaders to mend
relations after a Jewish seminary student attacked an Armenian
archbishop last year. “The rabbi condemned attacks against
religious clerics and called for mutual respect between all
faiths to be upheld in Israel and across the world,” Metzger’s
office said. [400 words, ENI-05-0050]

ENI News Highlights contain summaries of ENI articles published
today.

ENI Online –

Ecumenical News International
PO Box 2100
CH – 1211 Geneva 2
Switzerland

Tel: (41-22) 791 6088/6111
Fax: (41-22) 788 7244
Email: [email protected]

Associated Press
Jan 26 2005

First checks distributed from Armenian genocide insurance settlement

By KAREN MATTHEWS
Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK AP) _ Five New York-area Armenian charities received checks
for $333,333 each on Wednesday as part of a settlement between an
insurance company and descendants of Armenians killed 90 years ago in
the Ottoman Empire.

The checks are part of a $20 million settlement between New York Life
Insurance Co. and descendants of a community that suffered what
Armenians characterize as the first genocide of the 20th century.

“It’s a happy day,” said New York Life spokesman William Werfelman.
“This is the day that’s the culmination of a lot of hard work by a
lot of the parties to bring an amicable solution and resolution to
this matter.”

Armenians contend that 1.5 million people were executed between 1915
and 1919 by Turkish authorities who accused them of helping the
invading Russian army during World War I.

Turkey rejects the genocide claim and says Armenians were killed in
civil unrest during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. France and
Russia are among countries that have declared the killings a
genocide, but the United States has not made such a declaration.

The settlement approved last year by U.S. District Court Judge
Christina A. Snyder in Los Angeles is believed to be the first ever
in connection with the events of the era.

Under the settlement, $3 million was earmarked for charities and at
least $11 million was set aside for the heirs of New York Life policy
holders, with $2 million used for administrative costs and anything
not spent on expenses going to additional charities.

The remainder of the $3 million will be handed out to four additional
Armenian charities in a ceremony in Los Angeles.

Brian Kabateck, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs in the
class-action lawsuit, said there were 2,300 policies issued to
Armenians in Turkey before 1915 that were never paid. People who
believe they may be descended from the policy holders have until
March 16 to file claims.

Under a formula taking inflation and interest into account, the
amount of the original policies will be multiplied by 15.5.

“We are here today urging people to make claims and urging people not
to forget the genocide,” said Kaboteck, who was joined by members of
Armenian religious and social organizations at a news conference at
the midtown offices of the Armenian General Benevolent Union, one of
the groups that received a check.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

International Journalist’s Network
Jan 26 2005

Diversity group focuses attention on Caucasus for 2005

A group that encourages conflict resolution and minority rights is
planning several events this spring for journalists in Armenia,
Azerbaijan and Georgia.

In February, the London-based Media Diversity Institute (MDI) will
monitor 15 leading newspapers in the three countries. The institute
will examine the media’s coverage of topics such as refugees, the
disabled, and religious, sexual and ethnic minorities. MDI will
release a cross-regional comparison of the results after the study is
completed.

MDI also is organizing several team reporting projects for
journalists in the region. The first is scheduled for February 8 to
18 for eight Armenian and Georgian newspaper reporters. They will
travel throughout the two countries for two weeks, investigating a
diversity-related topic. One international and one local editor will
coordinate the team.

Similar team projects are scheduled for March 14 to 25 for
Azerbaijani and Georgian journalists; April 14 to 24 for Armenia,
Georgian and Azerbaijani journalists; and May 10 to 20 for Armenian
and Georgian journalists.

Journalists and NGO representatives can participate in one of several
media-relations workshops planned for the first half of 2005. Each
workshop will teach journalists the value of NGOs and how best to use
information provided by these groups. NGO participants will learn how
to gauge news value, and how to prepare news releases and news
conferences.

Media relations workshops are scheduled for February 25 to 27 in
Nagorno-Karabakh; March 1 to 3 for Armenians in Yerevan; April 5 to 7
for Azerbaijanis in Baku; April 5 to 7 for Georgians in Tbilisi; and
April 9 to 11 for Azerbaijanis in Ganja.

Three media management workshops – one each in Armenia, Azerbaijan
and Georgia – are planned for March. This two-day program teaches
editors and managers of minority media outlets about research,
targeting content to consumers, marketing, distribution, revenue and
budgeting. MDI says the goal is to help minority media be more
financially viable while maintaining professional journalism
standards.

The workshops are scheduled for March 1 to 3 in Yerevan, Armenia;
March 3 to 4 in Baku, Azerbaijan; and March 7 to 8 in Tbilisi,
Georgia.

MDI also plans to release a new version of its `Reporting Diversity’
handbook this February in Armenian, Azeri and Georgian languages. The
manual includes sections on ethnicity, religion, gender, the
disabled, elderly people, refugees, sexual orientation and political
dissidents. Each section offers reporting tips and detailed analysis
of actual articles taken from newspapers from the Caucasus, Western
Europe and the United States.

For information on any of these upcoming events, visit
or contact
MDI at [email protected], telephone +44 20 73800 200, or fax
+44 20 73800 050.

Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic
Jan 26 2005

East: Children In Former Soviet Union Know Little About Holocaust
By Jeremy Bransten

A personal memorial at the Birkenau death camp

World leaders gather this week to commemorate the 60th anniversary of
the Red Army’s liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in
Poland. Although the Nazis operated many deaths camps throughout
Europe, Auschwitz was the largest and it has come to symbolize the
horror of the regime’s atrocities in its purest form. Six millions
Jews were murdered by the Nazis in World War II — more than one
million of them in Auschwitz alone. Millions of non-Jews perished
alongside them — there and in other death camps — as part of a
systematic liquidation campaign unequalled, in planning and scale, in
recorded history. This is known as the Holocaust. If another
Holocaust is to be avoided, historians warn, the lesson of what
happened at Auschwitz and other death camps must be taught to future
generations. But what do today’s schoolchildren know about the events
of 60 years ago?

Prague, 26 January 2005 (RFE/RL) — Ask children on the streets of
Minsk what they know about Auschwitz and the Holocaust and you are
liable to get some disturbing answers.

One 13-year-old girl has this to say: “I think Auschwitz is a type of
hoofed animal.”

Her friend does somewhat better — but her answer is far from
complete: “It was some sort of camp during the Great Patriotic War.
They burned Jews there.””I have no idea what the Holocaust is. I have
never heard anything about something like the Holocaust.”

A third girl answers: “We could tell you more if they taught us
something about it in school.”

Belarus may be a disturbing example, especially considering the
country’s history of Jewish settlement prior to World War II and the
country’s devastation during the conflict. But it is hardly unique.

In 1944, the word “genocide” was coined to describe the Nazis’
attempt to liquidate the Jews, Roma, and other groups in their
entirety. Four years later, the word was officially adopted in the
United Nations Convention Against Genocide.

Yet for decades, in the former Soviet Union, all war dead were only
identified as Soviet citizens. The Holocaust was mentioned only in
passing, if it all. Today, several former Soviet countries are trying
to remedy the situation, making the teaching of the Holocaust an
obligatory subject in school.

But progress so far depends more on the initiative of individual
teachers. Textbooks are lacking, and so is general interest among
students. Kazakh history teacher Amina Tortayeva describes the
situation at her school in Almaty: “We do not have a special course
on that. There are many courses on the war period and we give some
kind of information on that ourselves. But in our textbooks there is
nothing written about the Holocaust. So I cannot say we have full
knowledge on that issue.”

Her students do not perform much better than their counterparts in
Minsk.

RFE/RL correspondent: “Have you heard about the Holocaust?”

Student: “No, not at all. Holocaust? I have no idea what the
Holocaust is. I have never heard anything about something like the
Holocaust.”

Irina Belareva, a high-school teacher in Moscow, says it falls to the
teacher to decide whether the Holocaust is taught or not as a
specific subject in Russia. “If you take the school curriculum,
specific discussion of the Holocaust is not required,” she said. “I
talk about it, but to a large extent, it depends, of course, on the
teacher.”

Even in Armenia, whose people suffered their own genocide a quarter
of a century before the Jews, knowledge among young people of the
extent, methods, and reasons for the Nazi Holocaust is shallow at
best.

Our correspondent in Yerevan quizzed several young people about what
they know about those events. The most comprehensive — if factually
incorrect — answer came from a 19-year-old boy: “The Holocaust was
perpetrated by Hitler. One-and-a half million people died. Hitler
sought the extermination of the Jews because I think Jews in Germany
had very high positions. That’s why he exterminated them and
expropriated their property.”

For years after World War II, discussion of the Holocaust in schools
in Western Europe was also minimal. Events were too raw. Survivors
wanted to forget their trauma. And the issue of collaboration with
the Nazis by parts of the population in many countries cast a shadow
over a fuller discussion of the war.

It was not until relatively recently that schools in Western Europe
began to teach the Holocaust in a comprehensive way. Germany,
understandably, has one of the best programs. Students learn about
the Holocaust and other aspects of the war in history classes, civics
lessons, and postwar literature studies. Visits to former
concentration camps as well as talks with survivors are also
frequently used.

Chana Moshenska, who runs educational programs at the Centre for
German-Jewish Studies at Britain’s University of Sussex, says
discussions with survivors are one of the most effective ways to get
children interested in learning about the period. “One way that does
work — but having said that, it’s only going to work for a short
time — is survivor testimony,” she said. “I think survivor testimony
is the most powerful way that young people can relate to what
actually happened in the Holocaust. Now, obviously, that’s
time-limited because survivors are getting older. They haven’t got
the energy to speak and soon they won’t be able to speak in public.
But when they come and speak, what young people see is someone who
looks like grandma or grandpa. And that has an enormous impact. And
then, quite often, these are people who experienced the Holocaust
when they were teenagers. And they’re able to say, ‘When I was 15,
this is what I was doing,’ or ‘This is what happened to my little
brother, this is what happened to my mother.’ And that has an
enormous impact on young people.”

RFE/RL analyst Michael Shafir is an expert on the period and served
on the International Commission for the Study of the Holocaust in
Romania, chaired by Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel.

He notes that Eastern Europe bears the twin burden of the Nazi and
Communist eras, making open discussion about past crimes, ethics and
responsibility — especially with children — doubly difficult,
although he believes, doubly necessary.

“Unlike Western Europe, East-Central Europe must not overcome one
difficult past, but two difficult pasts,” he said. “That, of course,
of whatever happened during World War II and its communist past. Now,
in both these cases there is a tendency to transform not only
villains but mainly collaborators or even stand-by witnesses into
martyrs and heroes.”

Students — be they in Russia or Britain — can be easily interested
in investigating the past, if a personal connection is made.
Fifteen-year-old Tatyana tells our Moscow correspondent she knows
about the Holocaust and she related it to the experience of her
grandfather in the Soviet gulag. “It concerns me a lot because my
grandfather, under Stalin, was sent to the [Soviet gulag] camps,” she
said. “When I was 10 years old, I read his diary. He left a diary
about it all and it had a strong impact on me.”

Shafir says the sooner the East comes to grips with the truth of its
past, the better. “Genocide” was coined to describe the Nazi
Holocaust, but it is a word that has unfortunately had to be used
since, to describe more recent events in Cambodia and Rwanda. Shafir
says genocide is likely to be repeated until the lessons of the
Holocaust are learned by children today: “It is important to convey
to anyone that the Holocaust was not something that Germans did unto
Jews. It is important to convey that this is something that anyone
can do unto anyone else. That is the tragedy of the Holocaust.”

People’s willingness to forget crimes of the past was a lesson not
lost on Hitler himself. Sending his troops into Poland in 1939, he
ordered them to be merciless, saying: Who today remembers the
extermination of the Armenians?”

(RFE/RL’s Armenian, Belarus, Kazakh, and Russian services contributed
to this report.)

Armenian ex-minister critical of Council of Europe’s Karabakh resolution

Arminfo
26 Jan 05

YEREVAN

The resolution of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
[PACE] on Nagornyy Karabakh is distinguished by its special
subjectivity, and drawing up such documents is unbecoming of
authoritative international organizations such as PACE, the head of
the faction of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation – Dashnaktsutyun
[ARFD] and Armenian ex-foreign minister, Levon Lazarian, said in an
interview with our Arminfo correspondent while commenting on the PACE
resolution on Nagornyy Karabakh adopted yesterday.

He stressed that the PACE resolution contains provisions that were not
earlier included in other international documents. The subjectivity of
the document is proved by the fact that the opinion of Nagornyy
Karabakh representatives was not taken into account when this document
was drawn up and discussed, the MP said. Meanwhile, he pointed out,
when the Chechen and Abkhaz issues were discussed, the opinion of
representatives of these peoples was heard by PACE. “Although such
documents cannot have a real impact on the process of settling the
Karabakh conflict within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group, there
is a danger that they can form the wrong public opinion, which will
reflect on the activities of the OSCE Minsk Group in the end. The OSCE
Minsk Group is composed of members of international organizations,”
Levon Lazarian said.

Commenting on the current situation, I can say that thanks to
Azerbaijan’s efforts to transfer the Karabakh issue from the format of
the OSCE Minsk Group to the format of international organizations, a
new stage has started in the process of settling the Karabakh
conflict, he stressed.

Having realized that propaganda is of great importance in the Karabakh
issue, Azerbaijan changed its strategy, raising this issue with
international organizations. “We have to say that it will be
impossible to avoid discussing the Karabakh issue in international
organizations. In this connection, Armenia should place emphasis on
increasing the level of parliamentary diplomacy and speeding up
lobbying activities,” the MP stated.

US envoy says Azerbaijan, Armenia must resolve Karabakh themselves

MPA news agency
26 Jan 05

BAKU

“The OSCE Minsk Group did a lot last year,” US Ambassador to
Azerbaijan Reno Harnish has said.

The ambassador has told MPA that last year saw meetings of the
Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers. He also pointed to
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s statement at a Security Council
meeting in early January that certain changes for the better had been
observed in the process of negotiations. An OSCE factfinding mission
is expected to arrive in Baku soon to investigate claims that Armenia
is settling the occupied Azerbaijani territories.

All this, Harnish said, attests to the OSCE’s and the Minsk Group’s
interest in securing a fair and lasting peace. As far as the USA is
concerned, the diplomat said, its position remains unchanged. The USA
does not recognize the so-called Nagornyy Karabakh republic and
respects Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity. The diplomat said the US
policy serves peace and stability in the entire region.

The Karabakh conflict will be on the agenda of the February meeting
between US President George Bush and Russian President Vladimir
Putin. Harnish said Russia is playing an important role in regional
conflicts. In some cases this role is positive, while in others
negative. However, Harnish added that the solution to the problem
depends not only on Moscow and Washington. It is the leaders of
Azerbaijan and Armenia who must come to agreement first.

“Therefore, we are urging Russia to step up its positive role, and
Baku and Yerevan to display more constructive positions,” Harnish
said.

Asked by journalists about US-Iranian relations, the US diplomat said
Tehran had to meet three demands. First, the international community
is interested in Tehran giving up the development of weapons of mass
destruction. Second, Iran has to stop supporting international
terrorism; and third, Iran has to stop impeding the Middle East peace
process.

Iran fooling Azeri president over Caspian status – paper

Yeni Musavat, Baku
26 Jan 05

Excerpt from Elsad Pasasoy report by Azerbaijani newspaper Yeni
Musavat on 26 January headlined “Tehran has deceived the successor on
the Caspian issue” and subheaded “The mullahs present a car to Ilham
Aliyev”

[Azerbaijani President] Ilham Aliyev held his first meeting during the
day [25 January] with Iranian parliament speaker Qolam-ali Hasan
Habili [as published, presumably Qolam-ali Hadad Adel, chairman of the
Mejlis or parliament], as the two decided to expand bilateral
relations. Then, he met the chairman of Iran’s Islamic Council,
(Haftad Adel?) [as published]. In talks with the chairman of the
Expediency Council, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Nagornyy Karabakh was in
focus. It was also noted that Rafsanjani did not give any serious
reaction to Ilham Aliyev’s remarks that “Azerbaijan wants Iran to
influence Armenia economically”. Nagornyy Karabakh was also the focus
of a meeting with Iran’s supreme spiritual leader, Ali Khamene’i.

[Passage omitted: other meetings and visits]

Tehran’s statement on the first day of Aliyev’s visit to Iran that it
will not make concessions to any country on the status of the Caspian
has dealt a serious blow to the efficacy of the visit. Official
Tehran, which made an earlier promise to discuss the Caspian issue as
well, “forgot” about this issue after having Aliyev visit and actually
deceived the Azerbaijani authorities. The head of the Azerbaijani
authorities wanted to mitigate Iran’s tough position on the Caspian
issue by visiting Iran at the cost of spoiling relations with the
West, but failed to achieve that.

Commenting on the successor’s Iran visit, political analyst Rasim
Musabayov said that Iran was expected to issue that statement.

“Some believed that if Aliyev visited Iran, there would be serious
progress on the division of the sea. But it has become clear with
Tehran’s statement that no serious progress is expected. It also means
that Tehran intends to dictate its position in the talks.”

The political analyst also commented on how the successor’s visit will
be viewed in the West. He noted that the response will depend on what
the basis and obligations for discussion during the visit were.

“Azerbaijan’s traditional position is not to let its territory be used
to threaten other countries. Naturally, all relations should be
maintained within the framework of international law. If Iran’s
nuclear weapons plans are discovered and the world, including relevant
UN entities, makes any decisions, it will be difficult to avoid
them. I do not think Azerbaijan will take a different position if
Europe and Turkey are against unilateral military operations [against
Iran].”

Musabayov said he does not believe that all issues will be resolved
during the visit. “There are big countries and their positions will
affect those of both Iran and Azerbaijan. On the one side, the USA is
threatening, but on the other side, the “trio” of Germany, France and
Britain are trying to get Iran onto the right path on the nuclear
weapons issue. I do not rule out that the USA is playing the ‘bad cop’
so that better proposals from the ‘good cop’ represented by the ‘trio’
can be carefully examined.”

Talk by Dr. Tessa Hofmann (Berlin) – “Europe, Turkey, and the Armenian
Genocide”

Thursday 20 January 2005, 7:30 PM, Lecture Room 336, Senate House,
School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), 3rd Floor North
Block, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU, University College London (UCL)

Dr. Tessa Hofmann

EUROPE, TURKEY, AND THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
(London, January 20, 2005)

Europe and Turkey look back to a long relationship: Their common
history covers at least 150 years of European pressure for Turkish
reforms, of European half-heartedness and Turkish delays and
evasiveness. As early as 1904 the French author A. Schopell compiled a
documentation under the title “The reforms and the protection of
Christians in Turkey during 1673 until 1904”; it contained 645 decrees
of the Sultan, treaties, agreements, notes and circulars, whichhad
been signed for the protection of the Chris-tian minorities. But all
of them remained unrealised. And not only that. The very fact that
Europe had interfered into Turkey’s domestic affairs on behalf of
minority rights and on behalf of the protection of Christians made the
latter the more hated and suspicious for the ruling Turks as well as
for the dissident, oppositional ones.

1913 was the year, when the Turkish government, after 30 years of
delay, finally agreed to a European project of the realisation of
article 61 of the Berlin Treaty, signed by de-feated Turkey in
1878. This article contained the promise of reforms, including
regional administrative autonomy and securityfor the Ottoman
Armenians. But instead of im-provements, legal inferiority and
occasional local persecution were soon followed by nation-wide
deportation and extermination. Under the guise of WW1 more than the
half of estimated two and a half million Ottoman Armenians perished,
most men during mas-sacres, and most women, children and aged people
from starvation and exhaustion dur-ing death marches and the
subsequent liquidation of concentration camps.

After the Turkish capitulation, the Ottoman parliament, followed by
the government, started inquiries on the crimes of the nationalist war
regime; special military courts sen-tenced the politically main
responsible and the most notorious henchmen, although many of the
first in absentia. The opposition nationalist regime of Mustafa Kemal
in Ankara, however, not only stopped the legal prosecution of the
perpetrators in the Armenian genocide, but integrated many of the
escaped accused into the political apparatus of the new establishment.

After an initial period of plain justification of the annihilation of
– what was then called – enemies of the fatherland, the following
Turkish governments kept silence over the genocide of Armenians and
other Christian ethnic groups in the Otto-man Empire. Confronted with
the Armenian claim for the recognitionof historic facts, Turkey
reacted eventually with denial, although in an contradictory way:
There was no genocide at all, but if there were victims,they were on
both sides, as a result of allegedly mutual killing and civic war, due
to Armenian attempt of rebellion. “Until 1980, Turkish school
textbooks quite simply didn’t mention the Armenian massacres”,
explained Fabio Salomoni, author of a book on the Turkish education
system. “With the first acknowl-edgements of ‘genocide’ by Western
governments and the increasing number of attacks by ASALA (an Armenian
activist organisation), a paragraph was then added excluding all
Turkish responsibility for the death of Armenians, explaining the
context of a war…” This official Turkish version of denial or
minimisation is comparable to a wound, artifi-cially kept gaping.

While Armenia, governed by the Soviets, was compelled to keep her
mouth shut over the genocide, the Armenian Diaspora started to
confront international institutions and national governments of their
corresponding countries of residence with the claim for
recognition. The European Parliament reacted in 1987 with its
“Resolution on a Political solution of the Armenian Question”, despite
years of Turkish interventions to prevent such a decision. With Turkey
as a candidate for the admission into the EU, Armenian Diaspora NGOs
in Europe started to lobby in order to make the recognition of the
Ar-menian genocidea pre-condition for Turkey’s admission. They
achieved further resolu-tions bythe European parliament in 2000, 2002
and 2004, but failed in making the rec-ognition of the Armenian
genocide an integral part of the Copenhagen Criteria of 1998.

At no point of Turkey’s progress towards the EU did the European
Commission demand Turkey’s recognition of the Armenian genocide. This
attitude is, however, not at all ex-ceptional. In difference to the
European parliament, genocide awareness or a critical approach towards
history is not on the Commission’s agenda. Croatia, for example, will
become a member state despite the genocide, committed by Croatia
during 1941 until 1945. This genocide resulted in the death of nearly
one million Serbs, Jews and Roma. If the numeric relation between
population and the figure of victims is considered, the genocide by
the Croatian Ustasha regime is even the most intense during WW2, for
nearly every sixth inhabitant perished.

The possible reason for the abandonment of genocide awareness by the
European Commission and other EU institutions lays, to my
understanding, in the circumstance, that the European Union is a union
of national states, most of whom were, to a higher or lesser degree,
involved in crimes against humanity or even in genocide, in particular
in combination with their colonial or imperialist past. Belgium and
Congo, Germany and Namibia, France and Britain in the Near East and
South Asia – there are dark aspects in most of the European member
states’ history. And the representatives of these states are not too
keen to demand genocide awareness from candidate countries in order to
avoid any questioning of their own past.

This, of course, has nothing to do with the question, whether Turkey
is a part of Europe or whether it should or could become a part of
it. As we have seen, there is no really convincing definition of
Europe, neither geographical, nor historical, cultural or
religious. If we apply historical definitions, we have to admit that
Europe was and is an ever changing entity, including at Roman times
recent Syria, Lebanon and Israel, whereas Ireland was not part of the
Imperium Romanum, and Britain only in its South. Both coun-tries
remained during that age very much at the fringe of Europe. Similarly,
the entire North and most parts of central Europe stayed outside the
civilised European, that is Roman world. In other words, Syria and
Israel were more European – or Roman – than the west of recent insular
Europe. Culturally, Europe was split by different factors, as the
dichotomy of Byzantine and Rome, Protest or Catholic Europe. Religion?
Europe was never, as the favourite Turkish reproach has it, a mere
“Christian club”. This point of view ignores centuries of Muslim
presence in Spain, the Balkans or at the Eastern fringes of Europe.

What else then is Europe? My favourite definition until recently was
the suggestion, that Europe is a community of shared ethical values,
among themthe ability of a critical ap-proach towards history. But as
we have seen, when it comes to state crimes in the past, the attitude
of most EU members does not meet these high ethical standards. Modern,
ethically mature Europe, it seems, is rather a certain entity still to
come into being, and the question whether Turkey should or could be
part of it, is not to be answered with a simple yes or no, but with a
clear definition and setting of pre-conditions.

The public debate in Germany on Turkey’s candidacy or even its
membership was combined with many fears, some of them social, some of
them cultural and some politi-cal. The debate intensified before the
background of a set of so called social and eco-nomic reforms,
recently imposed on Germany’s population with the result, that many in
my country are now poorer and socially more insecure than they were
before. At the same time, we realised, that we failed in properly
integrating our migrant minority, most of its members being
ethnicTurks or people of different ethnic background from Turkey. For
decades, decision-makers in Germany had mentally refused to
acknowledge the fact that Germany had become a country of immigration,
and that the immigrants were not here justfor a season, but for
life. Our liberal middle-class liked the simplistic idea of
“multi-kulti”, of a colourful multi-ethnic diversity, but failed to
realise the imposition on working class areas, dominated by migrants
from pre-industrial, pre-modern societies. Most of our intellectual
opinion-leaders turned a blind eye to problems resulting from the
pre-industrial ethics of Turkish or Kurdish migrants, in particular,
if women were con-cerned. Compulsive marriages of young girls, rape
and violence of girls and women in Muslim families were perceived as
integral part of an alien culture, whose members were allegedly
entitled to other rights and laws then the majority population. Misled
by wrong liberalism, judges failed to punish perpetrators for the
murder of women, if the perpetrators claimed to have killed for the
family honour. With a past of racist motivated state crimes, Germans
were probably more than other nations prone for the trap of
mis-understood political correctness. And once we understood that we
lived with our Turkish neighbours in one country, but not in one
society, many began to fear that the admission of Turkey to the EU
would increase and multiply the problems, we already had with a
Turkish population of approximately two millions.

What most of us did not realise was the fears, many Turks feel in
expectation of Europe. The average expectation seems to be, that
Europe will change nearly everything. As a young couple of students
from Istanbul recently told a friend: “Europe will make regula-tions
on everything. Even the mullahs willno longer have the right to cry as
loud as they used to do. They will have to reduce their voice. And the
bells of Christians churches will get the right to ring louder.”

The original and main motive of official Turkey for its application
for membership is fi-nancial and economical. In summer 2002, Turkey’s
bankruptcy seemed to be a question of few months. With the massive
help of the EU, Turkey recovered. But the fear is wide-spread, that
the political prize for this economical salvation is too high. On the
evening of December 16, 2004, justone night before the European
leadership’s decision on Tur-key’s candidacy, a law expert of the
Turkish Bilkend university explained in a TV inter-view at length all
reasons against a membership in the EU. The EU, he explained not
without a point, is economically declining, since it integrated eight
new member states. The Turkish professor warned his audience: Although
Europe has financially less and less to offer, it will politically
demand more and more and interfere at every occasion possible into
domestic affairs of Turkey. In this context the expert mentioned, as
it is offi-cially called in Turkey, the Armenian and the Cyprus
question. The expert continued in saying, that a model of privileged
partnership is much more favourable to Turkey than a full membership
in theEU.

Interestingly, this coincides with the proposals of the conser-vatives
in Germany. Their idea is to keep Turkey out of Europe by compensating
it witha so called privileged partnership.

This leads us to the beneficiaries of Turkey’s admission. These are
mainly three groups in Turkey, and one interested side outside: In
Turkey, the probable beneficiaries are the democrats, the Kurds and
the ethnic or religious minorities. In difference to the Arme-nian
Diaspora in Europe, in particular in France, the Armenian community of
Turkey welcome Turkey’s membership in the EU, hoping of course for an
improvement of their situation as a despised and discriminated
minority of only 60,000 people. In all, there are less than 142,000
Non-Muslim citizens in Turkey left, among them 22,000 Jews. In
addition to them, there live further 200,000 Christians in Turkey,
most of them Russian and Georgian Orthodox. They came as migrant
workers, but the Georgian Orthodox Church claims that since 1985 the
resident Georgian minority of Turkey is re-conversing to their native
church, after they had been forcibly islamized some centuries
ago. Out-side Turkey, it is Armenia as Turkey’s vulnerable neighbour
who would benefit from a direct neighbourhood with the EU, both
economically and politically.

Whereas Turkish economical and financial expectations towards the EU
can be met with both models – an EU-membership or a privileged
partnership – the needs and hopes of these three groups are only
fulfilled, if Turkey gets the full attention and support of Europe in
its democratisation process. However, a full membership in the EU is
not on top of the political agenda of Turkey’s nationalists, be they
leftist, rightist or Kemalist mainstream nationalists. In particular
Kemalists fear the intervention of European institu-tions on behalf of
Christian minorities.

The EU institutions do control the annual progress of applicants for
membership. Since 1998, an annual report on Turkey’s progress had been
issued by the European com-mission, which is regularly discussed in
the European Parliament’s Commission for Foreign Affairs, Human rights
and other matters, before it passes first the parliamentary commission
and then, after further debates in the plenum, the European
parliament. The debates and voting of 2004 brought the decision on the
beginning of negotiations on Turkey’s membership, which will start on
October 3, this year. About ten-thousand Ar-menians, most of them
citizens of France, demonstrated in Brussels on December 17, 2004, in
protest against the EU’s readiness to start negotiations without
Turkey’s recog-nition of the Armenian genocide. Could a country, whose
opinion-leaders and decision-makers ignore until today the state
crimes, committed during the transition from the mul-tiethnic Ottoman
Empire to a mono-ethnic republic genuinely improveits human rights
situation without revising its history?

Armenian Diaspora organisations normally focus only on the recognition
issue.

They want Turkey to admit the crime, committed 90 years ago, and to
apologise. This is an entirely legitimate and logical demand, as far
as Armenian communities are concerned. But the political consequences
of Turkish denialconcern not only the descendants of genocide
survivors. First of all, the Turkish society itself has become victim
of the all too close link between the war regime of genocide
perpetrators and the founders of the Turkish republic. The integration
of first and second-rate perpetrators into the Kemalist establishment
has caused a continuity of crime, which Kemalist ideologists and
opinion-leaders try to justify, persist and cover up until this
day. The few Turkish human rights defenders and scholars of genocide,
who dared despite the threat of legal prosecution to study this
continuity, point out to the fact that the stubbornly denied genocide
created an increasing black hole in Turkish historiography, and
established state violence as an unquestioned and alleged patriotic
tool to deal with political opponents and dissenters.

It is frightening, to which degree official Turkey, despite its
approach towards Europe, continues the Kemalist policy of denying. It
is more frightening, if genocide denial, com-bined with the
discrimination of ethnic and religious minorities, is initiated and
fostered by one of the country’s most important and responsible
opinion-leading institutions, the Ministry for National Education. In
its circular letter No. 23, as well as in a decree of April 21, 2003
the Ministry’s Commission for Teaching and Education ordered the
im-plementation of a set of “counter actions” to the claim for
recognition of the Armenian genocide. Circular letter 2003/23 relates
to earlier decisions of June 6, 2002, which provided propaganda also
against the “alleged genocide claims” by Armenians, Pon-tian Greeks
and Syriac Orthodox Christians into instructionsof school classes 5
and 7 and in secondary schools during lessons on the history of the
Turkish Republic and Ke-malism, starting with the beginning of school
year 2002/2003.

Part and parcel of this campaign in 2003 was a competition of school
essay writing on the subject “Uprising and activities of Armenians
during World War I” and an award for the “nation-wide best” of these
essays. Furthermore, local and regional school authori-ties were
requested to organise instructions for teachers of history and social
studies, and also for inspectors of secondary schools. Schools of
religious minorities such as those of the Armenian and Greek minority
of the Republic of Turkey were compelled to participate.

Despite the fact, that six teachers had been prosecuted because they
dared to ask questions during instructions, Turkish citizens
articulated protest against the decrees of Education Minister
Dr. Hüseyin Celik which the Turkish Teachers’ Union criticised as
“racist and chauvinist”. On October 4, 2003 an initiative called Baris
icin Tarih (“History for Peace”) published a statement of protest
which had been signed by more than 400 prominent citizens of Turkey.

This NGO pointed out at the fact that in new editions of Turkish
textbooks Armenians, Pontian Greeks and Syrian Orthodox Christians had
been repeatedly called “spies”, “traitors”, “barbarians”, whereas
synagogues, churches and also schools of minorities had been branded
as “noxious communities”. In the same de-humanising language the
perpetrators of the genocide of Ottoman Armenians and Greeks had
denounced their future victims. It took the Turkish lawmaker nearly a
year to react to this incredible scandal. According to the European
Commission’s report on Turkey’s progress towards the EU, issued in
October 2004, Turkey’s Grand Assembly issued a law in March 2004,
which prohibits any future minority discrimination in Turkish
textbooks. According to the report, the law relates to ethnic,
religious, racial, sexual and social minorities. However, for the time
being we have no information whether this new regulation is already
realised and whether there are safeguards that editions of text-books,
which contain already discriminatory language and contents are no
longer used in lessons.

In particular worrying is the confusion caused by the reasoning of
article 306 (305) in the draft of Turkey’s amended Penal Code. In the
context of this penal law, the mentioning of the Armenian genocide or
criticism of Turkey’s military occupation of North Cyprus were cited
as examples for the application of article 306; this article became
article 305 in the final version of the Penal Code, issued in late
summer 2004 by the Grand Assembly of Turkey, but not yet signed by the
president. The background of this law and its reasoning are
telling. Such a law came into existence first in autumn 2000, when the
Turkish legis-lature started to consider a draft bill, crafted under
the pressure of the Turkish General Staff. This legislative initiative
coincided with the debate of a resolution on the Armenian genocide by
the United States House of Representatives. The Turkish General Staff
intended, under the term of article 359 of the then Turkish Penal
Code, to treat the very use of the word “genocide” (soykirim in
Turkish) in connection with the World War I fate of Ottoman Armenians
hence forth as a criminal offence. Although the bill did not receive
the ultimate approval, it survived in the reasoning of article 306
(305) of the re-cent amendments of the Turkish Penal Code, despite the
fact, that it contradicts the Human Rights Treaty Convention of the
Council of Europe. The reasoning of article 305 provoked the protest
of numerous NGOs inside and outside the European Union and caused a
warning by the EU. The fact, that the possibility of such a reasoning
existed despite Turkey’s candidacy for membership in the EU is in
itself indicative for the obsti-nacy with which the Turkish military
authorities, together with radical nationalists and the tacit
agreement of Turkey’s recent rulers are pursuing the goal of
suppressing any seri-ous debate on the topic of the Armenian genocide
or the ongoing military occupation of North Cyprus. Such obstinacy,
however, causes serious doubts about Turkey’s decision for willingness
to introduce reforms.

Although the EU issued a warning to Turkey on behalf of the reasoning
of article 305, in legal practice this and similar restrictive
articles of Turkish Penal Code are still applied. There is a
court-case pending on the internationally prominent Turkish publisher
Ragip Zarakolu of Istanbul, forhis intention to publish the Turkish
translation of a book by George Jerjian on Armenian and Turkish
reconciliation; Jerjian’s book was first pub-lished in London in April
2002 under the title “The Truth will set us Free”. Important, as the
message of this politically balanced and moderate book may be, three
pages the Armenian author’s preface had been named as a reason for the
legal prosecution of the Turkish publisher, who is pursued under
Article 159 of the Turkish Penal Code and the Law for Protecting
Atatürk’s Memory. The Prosecutor considers an insult to the Turkish
Republic and her founder Mustafa Kemal (“Atatürk”) to claim that there
were some peo-ple around M. Kemal, who had responsibility for the 1915
Armenian Genocide. For fear of being arrested, Mr Zarakolu did not
dare to leave his homeland and travel to Frankfurt in order to meet an
U.S. producer of documentaries on the Armenian Genocide for an
interview.

For the year of the 90th commemoration of the Armenian genocide, 2005,
the president of the Turkish Historical Society, Prof. Halacoglu,
announced a new offensive against, was he calls it, the alleged
Armenian genocide; he appealed to Prime Minister Erdogan to establish
a commission which should run this new offensive. Despite the contrary
of what is true, Halacoglu declares that Turkey has nothing to fear of
the Armenian geno-cide claim, for researches in foreign archives
allegedly proved that the claim is un-founded. He also declares since
2001, that Turkey should try to achieve a new hearing of the known
court case against Soghomon Tehleryan, the Armenian murderer of
Meh-met Talat Pasa, previously the minister of the interior of the
Ottoman Empire and one of the politically responsible for the Armenian
genocide. A Berlin jury ruled on the 3rd of June, 1921 that Tehleryan
was not guilty. The German authorities of the time immedi-ately
released Tehleryan and expelled him, thus getting rid of any revision
of the case, which was politically so inconvenient for Germany.

In face of the historic truth, one may consider such activities as
ridiculous or cynic. They add to the wide spread perception of Turkey
by Armenians, who see this country as never changing in its decision
to offend the remainder of the Armenian nation. But as all things
change, Turkey does, too. There is a slow progress even in regards to
Turkey’s largest taboo, the Armenian genocide, since the
1990ies. There are a few scholars of genocide and history in the
Turkish Diaspora community and even in Turkey itself, who acknowledge
the historic truth. There are some human rights defenders and
publishers with tremendous courage, who despite all threats contribute
to the support of genocide understanding in Turkey and the Turkish
community. There are translations and publica-tions in the Turkish
language, which add to the understanding of the historic truth as well
as to an increased knowledge about the Armenians and other nations,
which are Tur-key’s neighbours and which also represent minorisized
communities in Turkey itself. The proceedings of the Talat Pasa Court
Case,for example have been published from German into Turkish and are
available in Turkey as a book since 2003; in 2004, a sec-ond volume of
comments and articles on the Talat Pasa Court Case appeared,
includ-ing my own publications. In the light of a defamation campaign,
started by Turkish media against me in the end of the year 2000, this
is progress. Until a few years ago, scholars of genocide and human
rights defenders, who were involved into the recognition of the
Armenian genocide, were grossly insulted and defamed by Turkish media;
in my case, I was declared to be head of the German intelligence and a
representative of the “Super NATO”, in order to undermine my respect
among Turkish intellectuals, many of them with suspicion towards
intelligence services.

All this has not stopped over night or disappeared entirely. There are
still pro-Turkish websites, which serve the only purpose to offend and
insult those scholars confirming the fact of the Armenian
genocide. But at the same time there are encouraging devel-opments.
We can support these developments in the framework of European
institu-tions and the admission process. Naturally, a pre-condition
for success is, that the European institutions, in particularthe
European Commission, realise their tremendous historic responsibility
towards the peoples of Turkey and the neighbour states of Turkey, in
particular Armenia, Greece and Cyprus. I return to my remarks in the
beginning of my talk. The relationship between Europe and Turkey over
the last 150 years reads as story of deception and betrayal, as far as
Europe and the Christian minorities of Turkey were concerned, or like
a story of sporadic and half-hearted reform appeals and interventions
from the European side. In order to secure efficiency and consistency
in the reform process, independent human and minority rights NGOs
should not only observe, docu-ment and comment developments in Turkey,
but also pressure in the corresponding EU institutions. For this
purpose, an independent network of experts and representatives of the
minorities concerned has been established, called Monitoring Minority
Rights (MMR), which is affiliated with the Armenian Assembly of
Europe, the Swiss-Armenian Society and the Working Group Recognition,
an international non-profit NGO, which I have the honour to chair.

As a conclusion, I answer some questions, which you may like to
discuss more exten-sively in the following debate.

First question: Does Europe need Turkey? My answer as a European: Not
really. Europe is pre-occupied with the integration of new
member-states in East and Southeast Europe, and the integration of
Turkey is a finan-cial, social and political challenge.

Second question: Does Turkey need Europe? My answer: Undoubtedly
yes. If the admission and integration process work, as de-scribed
before, Turkey wins in all areas. Most of all, a full membership in
the EU is Tur-key’s biggest chance for sustainable democratisation. As
a European, I may decline from being enthusiastic about Turkey as a
new member state. As a human right de-fender, I have no right to
decline from a chanceto improve a very bad human rights situation of
my fellow-beings.

Third question: Is the admission of Turkey to the EU good or bad for
the recognition of the Armenian genocide? My answer: We all failed to
make the recognition a pre-condition of Turkey’s entry. At least we
failed to do this in time and in a convincing way. Now we should not
insist on further linking the admission issue with the recognition of
the Armenian genocide, which is a task on its own rights. Provided
that the democratisation process in Turkey is sup-ported and
encouraged by Europe, both on the informal and on the official level,
there are better chances for a recognition with Turkey on its way to
Europe than outside. Speaking as a citizen of Germany, I consider it a
special challenge for Germany to give an example to Turkey by
addressing to the bleak and unpleasant pages of our national
history. Having said this, I do not mean the Shoah in the first place,
which is studied and officially recognised in Germany since the
victorious allies ofWW2 compelled Germany to do so. I rather mean
Germany’s recognition and complete apology for the first geno-cide of
the 20th century, the genocide of ten-thousand of Herero and Nama
during the years 1904 until 1908. I also think about the German
involvement into the Genocide of the Armenians, in particular as an
knowing ally, who turned a blind eye for the sake of a military and
strategic partnership. As a scholar of genocide, I consider
comparative studies a necessity, for I know, as other scholars do,
that the first genocide of the20th century is linked with the genocide
in the Ottoman Empire during WW1 and with the Shoah during WW2.

And the final question: Does this all mean, that campaigns for the
acknowledgements of the Armenian genocide are in general pointless?

My answer: No, not at all. This important human right defence work is
to be continued, and the 90th year of commemoration offers ample
opportunities to draw attention to the necessity of genocide
acknowledgement. But as mentioned earlier, this is a task own its own
rights and should not be linked to intensely with limited European or
other Real-politik. Otherwise genocide acknowledgement turns into a
political tool of those who simply want to keep Turkey clear of the
European Union under every circumstance.