Turkey is not far from committing Kurdish genocide

11 February 2008
Kurdish Aspect, CO
Kurdishaspect.com - By Dr Hoshiar Molod (Saudi Arabia)

In response to a previous article, some readers have sent me prejudiced comments indicating disapproval of the article “In response to their brutality, Kurdistan should boycott Turkish products[1]”. One reader described me as being backward and not realistic in urging a boycott of Turkish products. Another reader compared my views to those of German Nazism and French nationalists.

I would like to ask those readers of their views regarding the Turkish aggressive attacks on the innocent people in Kurdistan. Every civilized person should support the boycott of Turkish products in view of the cruelty the Turkish government practices in the region. A boycott is more powerful and is more effective than demonstrations in the streets, because it affects Turkey’s economy. Turkey’s policy in the region and the rest of the world is quite insensitive and ignorant.

Turkey’s double standard is very obvious when the Turkish President sending friendly messages to Europe and presenting the democratic side of secular Turkey while restarting on fighting the PKK. Turkey has to apologize for the Armenian genocide instead of committing another massacre in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The comments by some readers intended to undermine my view on boycotting Turkish products are some examples of the double standard that Turkey has always presented. When something is not in Turkey’s favor, it’s acceptable for the Turkish public and Turkish business communities to take the boycott approach.

A boycott was carried out by the Turkish streets in response to the implementation of the human right laws by European countries. In 2000 the Turkish consumer association boycotted Belgian made products[2], asking Belgian to undermine its civil society and extradite someone to be executed in Turkey. In 2006 various Turkish supermarkets also boycotted French products[3], because the French parliament passed the Armenian genocide bill.

The question is why the Turkish society sometimes excuses the boycott approach and sometimes speaks negatively about it?

It is the double standard of Turkey’s international policy. When any other government’s view is not in favor of the Turkish politics in the region, the Turkish streets are encouraged to protest against that specific government by boycotting the products of that country.

The Armenian genocide is a crime against humanity and the world is no longer ignoring that illicit act by the Turkish government. It is ironic that despite their differences both Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama are in agreement on the issue of the Turkish government recognizing the Armenian genocide[4].

The fact of the matter is that Turkey has never recognized the genocide of the Armenians and is not very far from committing another massacre in Kurdistan. The only reason for the Turkish attacks is to undermine Kurdish existence.

Apart from the Kurdish public, no one else seems to care about the situation in Kurdistan. Therefore I would like to renew my plea to the international community to boycott Turkish made products not only because Kurdistan is being attacked by the Turkish war machine on a daily basis, but actually because of the appalling record that Turkey has in the crimes against humanity such as the killing of Kurds and the genocide of the Armenians.

Finally, you should realize that with any Turkish made product you buy, you are backing, encouraging and promoting the denial of the Armenian genocide[5], the Assyrian genocide[6], the Greek genocide[7], and contributing to the recent killing of innocent Kurdish civilians by the Turkish government.

End notes:

1- www.kurdishaspect.com, Tuesday, 15 January 2008, In respond to their brutality, Kurdistan should Boycott Turkish products.
2 - www.news.bbc.co.uk, Tuesday, 22 August, 2000, Turkish consumers boycott Belgian goods.
3- The Journal of Turkish weekly, Sunday, 15 October 2006, Turkish Supermarket Chains Boycott French Goods.
4- www.turkishdailynews.com.tr, Thursday, 17 January 2008, Hillary wins White House (In dreams of Turkish officials).
5 - International Herald Tribune, Thursday, 12 October 2006, French lawmakers approve bill on Armenian genocide.
6- www.aina.org, Sunday, 4 March 2007, EU Conference Calls on Turkey to Recognize Assyrian Genocide.
7- www.cnn.com, Saturday, 10 February 2001, Greek genocide decree angers Turks.
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.

Of Grasshoppers and Men - An Interview with Arundhati Roy

February 08, 2008
Znet
By Khatchig Mouradian and Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy was born in 1959 in Shillong, India. She studied architecture in New Delhi, where she now lives, and has worked as a film designer, actor, and screenplay writer in India. Roy is the author of the novel The God of Small Things, (Random House/HarperPerennial) for which she received the 1997 Booker Prize. The novel has been translated into dozens of languages worldwide. She has written several non-fiction books: The Cost of Living (Random House/Modern Library), Power Politics (South End Press), War Talk (South End Press), and An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire (South End Press) and Public Power in the Age of Empire (Seven Stories/Open Media).

Roy was featured in the BBC television documentary, “Dam/age,” which chronicles her work in support of the struggle against big dams in India and the contempt of court case that led to a prolonged legal case against her and eventually a one-day jail sentence in spring 2002. A collection of interviews with Arundhati Roy by David Barsamian was published as The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile (South End Press). Roy is the recipient of the 2002 Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Prize.

On Jan. 18, 2008, Roy delivered the Hrant Dink memorial lecture at Bosphorus University in Istanbul. In her lecture, titled “Listening to Grasshoppers: Genocide, Denial and Celebration,” Roy reflected on the legacy of Hrant Dink and dealt with the history of the “genocidal impulse,” the Armenian genocide of 1915 and the killing of Muslims in Gujarat, India in 2002.

Speaking about the slain editor of the Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, Roy said, “I never met Hrant Dink, a misfortune that will be mine for time to come. From what I know of him, of what he wrote, what he said and did, how he lived his life, I know that had I been here in Istanbul a year ago I would have been among the one hundred thousand people who walked with his coffin in dead silence through the wintry streets of this city, with banners saying, ‘We are all Armenians,’ ‘We are all Hrant Dink.’ Perhaps I’d have carried the one that said, ‘One and a half million plus one.’”

“I wonder what thoughts would have gone through my head as I walked beside his coffin,” she added. “Maybe I would have heard a reprise of the voice of Araxie Barsamian, mother of my friend David Barsamian, telling the story of what happened to her and her family. She was ten years old in 1915. She remembered the swarms of grasshoppers that arrived in her village, Dubne, which was north of the historic city Dikranagert, now Diyarbakir. The village elders were alarmed, she said, because they knew in their bones that the grasshoppers were a bad omen. They were right; the end came in a few months, when the wheat in the fields was ready for harvesting.”

In this interview, conducted by phone on Feb. 2, we talk about some of the issues she raised in her lecture and reflect on genocide and resistance.

Khatchig Mouradian—What was going through your head when you were writing the speech for the commemoration in Istanbul of Hrant Dink’s assassination?

Arundhati Roy—These days, we are going through a kind of psychotic convulsion in India. Genocide and its celebration are in the air. And it’s terrifying for me to watch people celebrating genocide every day. It was at a time when I was very struck by this celebration in India and the denial in Turkey that they asked me to go to Istanbul.

When I landed in Istanbul, I realized that there’s a very big difference between what Armenians, Turks and others could say outside Turkey—where everybody could be very direct about the Armenian genocide—and inside Turkey—where, Hrant Dink, for example, was trying to find a way of saying things in order to continue living. His idea was to speak out, but not to die.

In Istanbul, I spoke with people and I was very concerned not to give the impression that I flew in, made a speech, and flew out leaving everybody else in trouble. I was interested in helping to create an atmosphere where people could begin to talk about the Armenian genocide to each other. After all, that’s the project of the Armenians who are living in Turkey and trying to survive there.

At the same time, I was somebody who is involved quite deeply in issues in India and I didn’t want to be some global intellectual who flies in, makes some superficial statements and then flies out. I wanted to relate the issue to what I knew and what I fought for, and tried to push a little bit more and a little bit more. And this is not a simple thing to do.

K.M.—The story that weaves your lecture together is that of your friend, David Barsamian’s mother, Araxie Barsamian. In an interview, you say, “I think that a story is like the surface of water, and you can take whatever you want from it.” What did you take from the story of Araxie Barsamian?

A.R.—In fact, David happened to be in India just before I went to Turkey and we talked about the issue. It mattered to me that I knew him. I’m not saying that if I didn’t know him I wouldn’t have spoken, but it suddenly became something that was more personal. I was having the discussion with a friend that there are people who talk about politics that is informative and politics that is transformative. These are such silly separations because in Turkey, for example, everybody knows what happened. It’s just that there’s a silence around it and you’re not allowed to say what happened. And when you say it, it becomes transformative in itself. I made my point through the words of David’s mother instead of going and saying, “Look, that bullet that was meant to silence Hrant Dink actually made someone like myself take the trouble to go and read history. Whether I say it and I don’t say it, you and I know what happened, and if you want to maintain the silence, then people here will have to fight with that, as I will have to fight with the celebration around genocide in India.”

This is something that a novel writer does. How you say what you want to say is as important as what you want to say. By telling Araxie Barsamian’s story, the history comes alive. You could say that 1.5 million people were killed or you could say that the grasshoppers arrived in Araxie Barsamian’s village…

K.M.—You spoke about the difference between speaking about the Armenian genocide outside and inside Turkey. But in your speech, you are quite bold: You do not come off as trying to imply things rather than stating them outright. You are not trying to avoid using the term genocide…

A.R.—When I started speaking about the term “genocide,” defining it, then talking about the history of genocide and what’s happening in India today—how Indian fascists killed Muslims—I wanted to make it clear that that the genocidal impulse has cut across religions and that the same ugly, fascist rhetoric that the Turks used against the Armenians has been used by the Christians against the Indians, has been used by the Nazis against the Jews, and today, it is being used by Hindus against Muslims. Genocide is such a complex process. The genocidal impulse has never been related to just one culture or just one religion. I spoke about the Armenian genocide and its denial openly to the extent that I could without shutting down the audience.

I would like to note that in my readings, one problem I realized is that many scholars who have studied the Armenian genocide in detail—almost all of them—keep on insisting that it was the first genocide of the 20th century and, in asserting that, they deny the other genocides that took place—for example, the genocide against the Herrero people in 1904. So I was also trying to talk about the Armenian genocide without giving the impression that some victims are more worthy than others.

K.M.—How was your lecture received?

A.R.—The important thing was that it was received. It wasn’t blocked out. It wasn’t denied. People didn’t say, “Oh, here’s a person who has come here to tell us about our own past.” That’s because I wasn’t just talking about the past of Turkey. For me, that was the way of guaranteeing that my talk was received.

The biggest thing is that it was received. It was taken in and it was thought about. I saw many people in tears in the hall. And I hope that in some tiny, little way, it will change the way this subject is spoken of. I might be presuming too much…

K.M.—As you point out in your lecture, genocide and gross human rights violations have plagued us for centuries and they continue to do so. What has changed?

A.R.—I don’t think that there’s been that much change in the genocidal impulse. Technology and industrialization have only enabled human beings to kill each other in larger numbers. I talked about the slaughter of 2,000 Muslims in the state of Gujarat in India. It was all on TV.

About three months ago, the killers were caught on camera talking about how they decided how to target the Muslim community, how it was all planned, how the police was involved, how the chief ministers were involved, how they murdered, how they raped. It was actually broadcast on TV and it worked in the favor of that party. The people who voted for them said, “This is what they deserve.” So I actually feel that this notion of the liberal conscience, of human conscience, is a fake notion. Today in India we are on the verge of something terrible. Like I say in the article, the grasshoppers have landed, and there is a kind of shutting down and cutting off of the poor from their resources, herding them off their land and rivers. And people are just watching. Their eyes are open but they are looking the other way. And again and again we think of the fact that in Germany when Jews were being exterminated, people must have been taking their children to piano lessons, violin lessons, worrying about their children’s homework. That kind of absolute lack of conscience is still present today. No amount of appeal to conscience can make any change. The only way disaster can be averted is if the people who are on the receiving end of that can resist.

Khatchig Mouradian is a journalist, writer and translator, currently based in Boston. He is the editor of the Armenian Weekly. He can be contacted at: khatchigm@hotmail.com.

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.

TURKEY PLANS TO COMBAT ARMENIAN GENOCIDE ISSUE AT THE HAGUE

Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Eurasia Daily Monitor, DC
By John C. K. Daly

This exactly what Turkey needs. I welcome any steps taken in this regard. I hope Turkey will abide with whatever decision the ICJ comes up with. A similar attempt to convince another court see Swiss convict Turk of denying Armenian genocide and Turkish politician loses final appeal against Swiss racism conviction, high court says and IP Leader Perincek To Apply To ECJ Regarding Decision Of Swiss FSC .

The tragic events in eastern Anatolia in 1915 continue to roil not only Turkish-Armenian relations, but the international community and Turkish-American relations as well.

For more than 25 years, Yerevan and the Armenian diaspora have lobbied to have the events in the wartime Ottoman Empire labeled as the 20th century’s first case of genocide, a definition that successive Turkish governments have furiously lobbied against. Now the issue seems set to appear before The Hague’s International Court of Justice and Permanent Court of Arbitration.

At issue is the February 2001 genocide resolution adopted by France, which concisely states: “France publicly recognizes the Armenian genocide of 1915.” It was a largely symbolic act, since it did not allow for the prosecution of those who deny that the 1915 massacre was genocide. At the time Ankara was furious, but despite the dispute, trade between France and Turkey grew 22% in 2002 and by 2006 had increased 131% (Wall Street Journal, March 12, 2007).

The issue has never really gone away, however. Last week veteran Turkish diplomat Sukru Elekdag, from the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), brought up the issue following talks at the French parliament, where he was part of a Turkish Grand National Assembly delegation. Elekdag suggested that France should reconsider its legislation under the terms of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. “We can go to the Internal Court of Justice with France and ask whether the law adopted in France in 2001 is in compliance with the agreement in 1948 and whether the 1915 incidents constitute genocide.”

Speaking to Today's Zaman, Elekdag expanded on his observations, saying, “What would the authorized court rule if we assume that the UN Convention could be implemented retrospectively? … It is obvious that the court will rule that the French parliament is not authorized to make such a decision, and it will also have to announce that the UN Convention cannot be implemented retrospectively due to the principle of legality. This means that the 1915 incidents cannot be described as genocide. If the ICJ makes such a ruling, then Armenia's genocide allegation will entirely collapse” (Today's Zaman, February 5).

Elekdag, a former foreign ministry undersecretary and former ambassador to the United States, has a history of opposing international efforts to label the events of 1915 as genocide. Speaking at the “Turkish-Armenian Relations and 1915 Incidents” symposium at Ankara's Gazi University in 2005, he declared, “The Armenian diaspora's accusing Turkey of genocide is a legal crime” (Anatolian Times, November 25, 2005).

Having attempted to battle the decision in the media, the Turkish government is now set to take its case to The Hague. Ankara will argue that since France's genocide resolution was not based on any French court decision, then the French National Assembly’s decision should be based on a prior ruling by an international court. Elekdag told Hurriyet, “There is no international court ruling on the Armenian so-called genocide allegations. Is the French parliament a court? France is thus in the position of having disregarded the 1948 UN Convention” (Hurriyet, February 4).

Turkey will propose that Ankara and Yerevan each select three judges, who in turn will select a chairman. The panel will review Turkish archival material as well as the Dashnak (Armenian Revolutionary Federation) Party archives in Boston, Armenian Patriarchate archives, and those of foreign missions in the Ottoman Empire at the time to determine the validity of their documents. The survey will be followed by an extensive forensic survey of possible contributory factors such as demographics and disease, ending with testimony from relevant parties.

Even if Turkey succeeds in its Hague appeal the issue is hardly likely to go away for Ankara, as many EU politicians insist that Turkey must recognize the Armenian genocide before it can join the European Union.

The issue has also crossed the Atlantic. On January 30, 2007, U.S. Congressmen Adam Schiff (D-CA), George Radanovich (R-CA), and the co-chairs of the Congressional Armenian Caucus, Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and Joe Knollenberg (R-MI) introduced a resolution to recognize the Armenian genocide, which was only tabled in October after furious lobbying by the Bush administration (see EDM January 23, October 12, 17, 2007). Undeterred, Congressional critics in the House of Representatives recently introduced a new resolution condemning the January 19, 2007, murder of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink (Panarmenian.net, February 5). Furthermore, Democratic presidential candidates Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton have both stated that, if elected, they will recognize the Armenian genocide.

The imbroglio seems to be a classic case of political posturing versus historical reality, and the only certainty is that the issue seems unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.

Is A Long Overdue Controversy Finally Settled: Aram Andonian's Infamous Naim Bey's Real Identity Is Now Considered Revealed

Friday, January 18, 2008
BY PROF. GARABET K MOUMDJIAN

Armenian Genocide historian Dr. Hilmar Kaiser has set himself as an authority of the Armenian Genocide during the past decade. The bulk of his research is conducted in primary archival material. As of 2005, Kaiser is meticulously conducting research at the Directorate of Ottoman Archives in Istanbul (This interviewer also has been conducting research there since 2005), Turkey, which is now open to historians worldwide, after a 10 year hiatus. When he emailed me regarding his findings about the identity of the infamous Naim Bey, I was more than compelled to conduct this interview with him. Naim Bey was the source of the telegrams that presented proof of the intentional genocidal policies of the Young Turk government and especially that of Talaat Pasha, then Minister of Interior of the Ottoman Empire. Andonian, a journalist and himself a survivor of the Armenian Genocide, published his famous "Naim Bey's Memoirs"1 in 1920. Since the 1980's The Turkish side has devoted much time and effort to undermine the authenticity of Naim Bey's telegrams. Moreover, Turkish scholars have gone as far as to proclaim that Naim Bey himself is nothing more than a fictitious character and perhaps a figment of Andonian's imagination.

Garabet Moumdjian:Let' s start with the quintessential question: Who
was Naim Bey?
Hilmar Kaiser: According to Aram Andonian, Naim Bey was an Ottoman official who had been involved in the Armenian deportations from Aleppo to Der Zor. After the war, he supplied confidential information and a series of documents and renditions of documents to Aram Andonian. The information and the materials were later published by Andonian together with a part of his own memoirs in 1920.

G.M.: And who was Aram Andonian?
H.K.: Aram Andonian was a well-known journalist in Constantinople. On April 24, 1915, he was arrested together with other Armenian intellectuals, politicians, clergy, businessmen, and Armenians who had been taken due to a confusion of names. Luckily for Andonian, he belonged to the group that was detained at Tchankiri. This group had better chances of survival than those at Ayash, who were almost all killed. Andonian escaped from deportation and spent time in hiding in Aleppo. He was one of the first Armenians to secure evidence on the genocide. His papers are kept at the Nubarian library in Paris and are of supreme importance for research on the Armenian Genocide.

G.M.: Why is the identity of Naim Bey so important?
H.K.: Evidently it is critical to identify all officials that were involved in the Armenian Genocide, particularly those who were responsible for the execution of the deportations. This holds truer for Naim Bey as he was Aram Andonian's informant and the data provided by him stands today at the core of an important debate.

G.M.: What is this debate about?
H.K.: For decades, Naim's information and the documents he supplied were seen as the principle proof for the Armenian Genocide. In 1983, Turkish authors published a book doubting the veracity of the documents and Naim Bey's existence.2

G.M.: What were their arguments?
H.K.: The two authors brought forward a number of technical aspects. For instance, they claimed that Talaat's signature on the documents were fake. And, indeed, the signatures were not Talaat's. But this fact was misunderstood by many. After all, the materials carrying Talaat's "signature" were supposedly telegrams received by officials in Aleppo. They were not faxes or letters, so it was impossible to have Talaat's original signature on the papers. The authors also compared the style of central authority documents with the work of provincial scribes.

G.M.: Was all criticism answered?
H.K.: Not really. The two authors rightly pointed out that we do not have access to any of the originals. They were either lost or misplaced. This fact severely limits the value of the material for historians. I, for my own part, use Aram Andonian's own memoirs in my work but do not engage the documents. The Turkish authors also claimed that Naim Bey never existed as they had not found a personnel file for him.

G.M.: Did you find Naim Bey's file?
H.K.: No. The two Turkish authors seem to have thought that Naim must have been an official of the central authorities. But recent research in the Ottoman archives showed that many, if not most, of the Ottoman officials working around Aleppo and along the Euphrates had been locally hired, even as part-timers, and they were temporary employed for the deportation work. I did not find a personnel file. We have hardly any evidence from the Ottoman provincial authorities at all. In other words, we depend on incidents were local evidence made its way into the files of the central authorities. In the case of Naim we were lucky that such a case exists.

G.M.: Then, who was Naim Bey?
H.K.: Naim Bey was a relatively young man in 1916. He was 25 or 26 years old, born in Silifke. In 1916, he worked in Meskene as a deportation official responsible for the dispatch of Armenians to Der Zor. At the time a scandal erupted. Some Armenians had succeeded in bribing officials and managed to escape with the latter's help to Aleppo or avoid further deportation towards Der Zor. The authorities in Aleppo got wind of the affair and ordered an inquiry. Naim Bey managed to keep out of trouble but we know from Aram Andonian that he had taken bribes as well.

G.M.: What is the importance of this discovery?
H.K.: The new Ottoman documentation confirms the information Andonian gave to a surprising high degree. This adds considerably to Andonian's credibility even though we still have no originals of the materials supplied by Naim Bey. Moreover, the new evidence confirms that the deportation officials were locally hired. Equally important is to show that the Turkish writers' information is flawed and their research is not the last word on the topic. With the identification of Naim Bey an important stone missing from the mosaic has been uncovered and must be put back in place.

G.M.: Do you expect to find the original documents any time soon?
H.K.: The identification of Naim happened some 25 years after the publication of the Turkish book. This alone shows you how slow progress is. However, it happened 17 years after the start in the Ottoman archives and only three years after the archives became available again, following a 10 year interruption. You, Mr. Moumdjian, have been at the archives and have conducted research there. You know how time consuming the process is. We are able to get only 25documents per day after ordering them a day in advance. It's a tedious process that has to be done anyways.

G.M.: Are you hopeful to find the documents in the future?
H.K.: Today, the Andonian material is not as important for historians as it had been decades ago. The documentation obtained from the Ottoman and other archives has replaced Andonian's publication in current debates. Certainly, Andonian's material could be a 'smoking gun' if proven to be true. But that is not the focus of or a few documents. The crime was highly complex and we need to process large volumes of evidence from a variety of sources. This takes time and is a slow process given the lack of available funding. The identification of Naim Bey is an important step in the right direction but it won't be the last important new finding. It strongly underlines the importance of Ottoman documentation and work in Turkish archives.

G.M.: Lastly, since you identified Naim Bey, can we at least know his real name? Did Aram Andonian use a pseudonym in order to keep his real identity a secret?
H.K.: Garabet, I know why you ask that question? I will elucidate Naim Bey's identity issue through a special lecture with document presentation on my next visit to the Los Angeles area. But for now let me answer by this: It gets even better than you think. Andonian's Naim Bey's name is NAIM BEY.

Is It Still Genocide if Your Allies Did It?

HYE-TERT, Turkey
Kaynak: lawandpolitics.com
Yer: USA
Tarih: 27.12.2007

How did you get involved in researching the Armenian Genocide?

I began in 1988 at the Hamburg Social Research Institute, working on the history of torture and violence in Turkish political culture. At first, I was studying and researching later Ottoman history. However, if one looks at this time period, one comes inevitably upon the massacres of 1894-1896 and the deportation and killing of the Armenians in 1915.

In 1991, the Institute launched a project to investigate whether or not the [lessons of the] Nuremburg Trials could be universalized. At the time there were no serious discussions about this subject. We wanted to know whether one could establish a court that would punish officials for the crimes they committed in the name of their government or nation. Within that project, I suggested looking into the Istanbul trials of 1919 and 1922 -- these were the trials that attempted to establish responsibility for the Armenian Genocide. They were sort of precursors to Nuremburg. So these two components came together, and I that's how I really started working on the Genocide.

And you're from Turkey? Are you a Muslim?

I grew up in a very secular family. My father was an atheist, but I grew up, of course, within Islamic culture. I am sure I carry on much of this Islamic culture in the way I live, but in terms of my personal convictions, I am very secular.

Please understand that I am a very ordinary Turkish intellectual. I come from the '68 Generation -- here it was the Hippie Generation, but we too were against the Vietnam War, American foreign policy, and so on. As progressive people of that time in Turkey, we believed that we, Turks created our nation-state in a fight against the great imperialist powers. We assigned a very negative role to the Christian minorities in Turkey, to the Armenians. To us, they were collaborators. This is how we perceived ourselves and the world, and how we saw Turkey's past. Since we saw all Christians in Turkey as allied with the imperialist state, we had a very negative image of them. As progressives, we always thought it was better not to touch on the topic of the Armenian Genocide, because to do so would be to enter a very dark, suspicious terrain, which could not be understood easily. It was not easy for me to decide to work on the Genocide. At first I thought: I'm working on a very suspicious terrain, better not to go in, actually.

You were active in protests from an early age, correct?

In my early period, in the early 1970s, I was in high school when the student movement was very active. This was a huge anti-war movement. When I started studying at the University it was already 1971, and 1971 was the military coup d'état in Turkey. We were under the control of military. At the beginning, we students were trying to reform the universities. We wanted students to have a voice. Later, they became radicalized, describing themselves as a socialist and democratic revolutionary movement. In 1974 there was the first free election in Turkey. The students became active, and I was one of these student activists influenced by his older brothers in the '68 movement. We wanted reform at the universities.

Now, this is important to understand because of the ongoing Turkish campaign in the United States to discredit me as a terrorist. The story begins with my arrest in 1974 for leafleting. At that time, the students didn't have representation at the universities. Our major demand was to have the freedom to establish a student organization to allow the university to hear us.

In order to distribute a leaflet in Turkey you had to go to the central police station and get special permission. You had to have this permit in your possession while distributing literature. However, even if you had this permit -- as I did -- you could still get arrested and held in jail for two or three days; which is exactly what happened to me. That was my "terrorist act": distributing leaflets -- with permission, mind you -- which said I opposed the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. I was against war. So the police arrested me and I spent two days in prison.

Now today, in the United States, you can go online and read about Taner Akçam's terrorist activities in 1974. It's very simple in the United States to stigmatize someone as a terrorist. With that label attached to someone's name, you can portray Al Qaeda and Taner Akçam in the same picture.

If you go to Google and type in "Holocaust", you get to the Jewish Holocaust immediately, and it takes some time and quite a few pages before you get to the crackpots whose Web sites attempt to discredit it. But with "Armenian Genocide," you get "Armenian Genocide Lie" on the first page, nine entries down on the day I checked (May 10). The famed British journalist and Middle East expert Robert Fisk argues -- quite effectively -- that we would think it insane to give equal time to a Holocaust denial group, but that is often par for the course on the subject of the Armenian Genocide. In 2006, John Evans, the United States' ambassador to Armenia, was even recalled by the U. S. government for using the term 'genocide' in a speech, and he was replaced by Richard Hoagland, who is on record as stating that what happened in Turkey doesn't qualify as a genocide. Since we know that Turkey opposes mention of the Armenian Genocide, I have to wonder why they are able to exert this level of control?

Turkey uses its political importance in the Middle East to pressure the U.S. and other countries not to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. Especially the U.S. and Israel have vital interests in keeping good relations with Turkey, so both states have enormous problems to face. Why Turkey doesn't acknowledge the historical wrongdoing is one part of the story. The other part of the history is why the U.S. and Israel let themselves be pressured by Turkey. According to me actually this is a wrong attitude and doesn't help to solve the problem; just the opposite, it lingers the problem and makes it more complicated. I think a strategic partnership that hasn't been based on truth cannot stay healthy in the long term.

Actually, in 2006, John Evans, the United States ambassador to Armenia, was denied a Foreign Service award for "constructive dissent" because he had characterized the Armenian Genocide as such in public presentations throughout the U.S. The State Department forced him to recant, then recalled him from his post.

During confirmation hearings to replace Evans, ambassadorial nominee Richard Hoagland acknowledged the "mass killings and forced exile of as many as 1.5 million Armenians at the end of the Ottoman Empire." At one point highlighting the issue of the perpetrators' intent, Hoagland strenuously avoided characterizing this "human tragedy" as a genocide -- without stating, however, that what happened in Turkey did NOT qualify. The Senate declined his nomination.

Since Evans' departure, Armenia has been without a U.S. ambassador.

Those who argue that there are two sides to the story -- the same people who wouldn't dream of saying such a thing about the Holocaust -- are not doing so because of strong counter-evidence, but only because of political pressure from Turkey. According to the Ottoman documents, there can be no question that the Ottoman government consciously and deliberately destroyed a part of its own population. There is plenty of evidence there.

Acknowledging the Genocide is not a problem of scholarship; it has to do with Turkey's military and political strength in the Middle East. The United States needed Turkey in the Cold War, needed Turkey against the Soviet Union, and needs Turkey today -- not only in the Iraq war, but also in order to preserve the energy routes. Turkey's relationship with Israel is also very important. Turkey is the only country in the Middle East with which Israel has peaceful relations. For these reasons, the Armenian Genocide is highly politicized.

After you were involved in this Nuremberg project, where did you go from there?

In Hamburg, I wrote my doctoral dissertation about the Istanbul Military Tribunals in 1919-1922 and the attitude of the Turkish National Movement towards the Armenian Genocide. The German edition, which appeared in 1996, was around 200 pages long. The Turkish edition was 600 pages. A substantially revised American edition came out in 2006 as A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility.

And when did you start noticing harassment because of your pursuit of this subject?

Very early. 1996, I think.

By way of background, I couldn't go back to Turkey before 1993. With my early 1970s activity in the student movement, and some journal articles I wrote stating that the Kurds existed in Turkey, I was punished under Article 141 of the Turkish Penal Code. This was a law forbidding you to write about the Kurds. You also couldn't mention class struggle in Turkey. I wrote about a worker's strike in Istanbul and the right of workers to establish a trade union, topics which were also forbidden under Article 141. This law, by the way, had been adapted from the penal code of Mussolini's Fascist regime in 1936.

So in 1976 I was arrested and sentenced to prison for eight years, nine months and twenty days. I escaped from prison in 1977 and fled to Germany where I received political asylum and became a German citizen. In 1991, while Turkey was applying for membership in the European Union, Paragraph 141 was rescinded and my conviction was annulled. My issue regarding the escape from prison had already lapsed under the statute of limitations. Suddenly, I could go back to Turkey. I returned in 1993 with my family, intending to establish a documentation and research center on the late Ottoman and modern Turkish history. I worked with a private university in Istanbul in 1996 to establish this institute. But within a year, the Turkish Secret Service distributed a file against me amongst the scholars at the university, and they had to terminate contact with me because it was too risky. My family and I had to leave again for Germany.

There were and are no criminal charges pending against me in Turkey. Despite this, I have been constantly targeted by Turkish media, by the nationalists, and in certain political circles. In 2004, because of the strengthening nationalist movement in Turkey, the penal code was changed to prohibit any statement that challenges the official Turkish position. This is the infamous Article 301 that exists today. Now there are many scholars and writers who espouse the official Turkish position for fear of reprisal.

Recently there was a complaint against me because I supported a friend, Hrant Dink, an Armenian journalist in Istanbul and an editor of a weekly Armenian/Turkish newspaper, who was charged under this law. He was assassinated in January 2007.

Now, Article 301 doesn't include anything specifically about the Genocide. Since the charge of "insulting Turkishness" is purposefully vague, some public prosecutor had decided that Dink's use of the term "genocide" constituted an insult. He was sentenced at the end of 2005 for the crime of insulting Turkishness. In 2006 he was put on trial for using the 'g' word.

So I wrote an opinion piece saying, essentially, "Here I am, I am also using the word 'genocide', please put me on trial." There was a criminal investigation, but the prosecutor dismissed the complaint. Since 1993 I have been able to travel to Turkey without any problem.

Do you feel that if you went back, you would be prosecuted?

No. The basic problem is the rise of nationalism in Turkey. Ever since my friend's assassination, many intellectuals have been living under police protection. I too could get police protection, but my life would be in danger. In fact, Hrant Dink's assassination showed us that the part of the police were complicit in the murder. You don't know whether or not you can trust the police.

Do you want to go back?

I would love to go to Turkey. I don't plan to live there, but I do plan to go back.

What brought you to the University of Minnesota?

I came to the United States because my work in Hamburg was almost at an end. I couldn't work on the Armenian Genocide and find a teaching position. So I came here because I didn't want to change my topic. I started at the University of Michigan as a visiting scholar. Then I came to Minnesota to give a lecture -- in fact, I gave three -- and the University liked them enough to give me a contract. I have a visiting status, but I am very happy here.

So the research that you did for A Shameful Act you pulled from Ottoman documents?

Actually my original dissertation was not based on Ottoman archival materials, but rather on two different categories of evidence. There were documents from the 1919 and 1922 Istanbul trials, the indictments, verdicts and minutes from meetings. These had been published in the daily newspapers of the time as well as in the official gazette of the government. I mostly used these for my PhD. Later, some of this information came from published memoirs.

In following years, I was able to work in the Ottoman Archive in Istanbul and I received very valuable documents from this Archive. This is the government archive, like the National Archives here in the U.S. In A Shameful Act I relied on these documents. The papers from the Interior Ministry were crucial to my study. They were catalogued just recently, in the 1990s, some in early 2000. They have still been working on cataloguing the documents.

What would prompt a group that wants to hide this information to open it to the public?

International pressure. You couldn't get these archives in the 1980s, but now the U.S. and Europe were saying, essentially, "Look, you claim that nothing happened, and yet you deny access to your archives." In the 1990s, the Turkish authorities launched a campaign to say, "Here we are, we are opening our archives."

Now, I would like clarify one point: the archives were always open to the public, but the question was whether or not the material related to this period was catalogued and available to researchers. If it's not catalogued, it becomes nearly impossible to examine. Also, in the past if you asked for material regarding the Armenians, you would be interrogated. They eased the working conditions in the archives so that it became easier to get access. The working conditions are better, the cataloguing has improved, and now that there's a new governing party, it's easier to do research on this topic.

Does this political party welcome news about the Genocide?

This party is more open than previous parties.

So there are these two parties, and one is more open-minded. But then there's a rise of nationalism. Do they both share hope of joining the E.U.?

No. The people who are challenging the Turkish position on Genocide and the governing party are in favor of joining the E.U. and want more democracy, more respect for human rights. But the resurgent nationalists and the Turkish Social Democrat Party are all very clearly against the E.U. and don't want to hear anything regarding the Armenian Genocide. The position of governing party towards the Armenian Genocide is more complicated. At the dawn of their power they had a more moderate position, but over the years the pressure from nationalists has become so strong that they have, on the surface at least, changed their previous position. I can give one example: initially they were inclined to open the border with Armenia, to support an open discussion in Turkish society, etc.

Is this the group that is primarily behind the efforts to discredit you and others who look into the Armenian Genocide?

That group is not the governing party. The group who organizes the campaign against me in Turkey and here in the U.S. is a part of what we call the "Deep State," the military-bureaucratic complex. This non-elected government body is behind the campaign to discredit Genocide scholars. The nationalists and the Social Democrat Party are behind this effort. Here in the U.S. there are some groups organized and controlled mostly by Turkish diplomats. I can give three names: ATAA (Assembly of Turkish American Associations); Turkish Forum (an e-mail group, coordinated between different initiatives in different states in the U.S.) and a Web site, TallArmenianTale.com (one of the most popular Armenian Genocide denial sites).

Definitely there are Turkish diplomats who nourish these sites with information. I mean, who could have given TallArmenianTale.com the exact date of my arrest in 1974? Even I had forgotten that! It was for leafleting! And there is no record of this in any journal or newspaper. This is what that Web site claims is a terrorist act. There must be some police officer in Ankara from whom they got the information. All these groups that I mentioned (ATAA, Turkish Forum, TallArmenianTale.com, some diplomats and police officers from Turkey) are very well connected.

Let's talk about this recent problem you've been having. Recently you tried to go to Montreal for a speaking engagement and were detained. What happened?

The McGill University Faculty of Law and Concordia University had invited me to lecture on my book A Shameful Act. At the airport in Montreal I was detained for almost five hours, without any explanation. Meanwhile, my hosts contacted the Ministry of Public Safety and the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity. Because of this intervention, I was issued a special one-week visa.

On my insistence that I had the right to know exactly why I had been detained, I was shown a printout of my Wikipedia biography. For the last year, that page had been persistently vandalized by anonymous "contributors" seeking to label me as a terrorist. Since then I have received apologies from Wikipedia editors, and my biography is now protected from unauthorized changes.

At any rate, on my way back from Montreal, an American immigration officer advised me not to travel internationally until I could get this information removed from my customs dossier. I still don't know the extent of the problem! My lawyer wrote to the immigration office and we couldn't get any answer.

Before going to Montreal I had applied for a Green Card, and when you do that you get an automatic travel permit and working permit, just for submitting the application. My daughter has her permit. I haven't. It hasn't been issued. Today I am still on an H1 visa, which is a special visa for scholars.

But you still can't travel internationally?

I can travel internationally, but I might not be able to return. The U.S. officers could deny reentry. They could tell me to return to my home country and wait for this to clear up. My lawyer and I are still waiting for news about my Green Card. Now we're working on getting an extension of my visa and waiting to hear about the so-called problem.

[Note: since this interview, Dr. Akçam 's status has changed and he is able to travel internationally.]

That must be frustrating.

Of course! Someone writes in Wikipedia that I'm a terrorist, and suddenly I can't travel or have some trouble in my Green Card application process. We have letters from senators, both Norm Coleman and Amy Klobuchar, and we're hoping for acceleration on my case. Acceleration of a case that has been delayed already.

I've already canceled five international appearances, three conferences in Germany and Italy, a book tour in Britain and Holland. I canceled all of them. My book has been translated into Dutch, and I can't go there to talk about it.

As a campaign to silence you, this has been horribly effective.

Not only has it been very successful in keeping me from travel, it's been difficult to work. I have to focus on the legal problem, writing letters to institutions, meeting with senators and my lawyers. I'm occupied, stressed... this is exactly what they wanted. My publishing house in Istanbul is waiting for an article, and I haven't had time to finish it.

Once this is cleared up, what are your plans?

I'm working on some research projects. I just finished work with another leading scholar of the Armenian Genocide, Vahakn Dadrian. We are writing a two-volume book on the indictments and verdicts and minutes of the Istanbul trials. This is a very important first-hand account of the Genocide.

I'm also working on a book I call the Demographic Policy. My central argument in A Shameful Act was that the Armenian Genocide was not an isolated act against Armenians but a part of a demographic policy enacted during World War I. It had two main components. One was against the Muslim non-Turkish population, who were redistributed, relocated and resettled among the Turkish population with the aim of assimilation. The second was against the Christian population, the Greeks, Assyrians and Armenians. The goal was to get the Christians out of Anatolia, what we now know as Turkey-to forcibly move them to Greece or Iran. Or, in the case of the Armenians, to eliminate them altogether.

In 1914, Anatolia was about 25 to 30 percent Christian. After the war it was 3 to 4 percent. The aim was to reduce the Christian population to no more than 5 or 10 percent so that they would have little sway in Turkey. Based on Ottoman documents we can prove this policy existed. The genocidal intent can be shown. What I began in A Shameful Act I will conclude in this book, based only on Ottoman documents.

What would you like to see as the result of your scholarship? Do you feel that knowing about the Genocide actually helps make Turkey a stronger country?

This is an important point. The military-bureaucratic complex, the ruling elite, still believes that facing history is jeopardizing Turkey's security. They believe that there is an intertwining, a link, between facing history and national security. This is the meaning behind the basic argument behind the Turkish denial position. They argue that genocide -- which they call relocation and deportation -- was due to the security concern during the First World War. They argue that the Armenian population was a threat to Turkish security during the war.

Today, talking about the Genocide is considered a threat to national security. That is why they call us traitors. If they openly talk about the Genocide -- or what happened to the Greeks and the Kurds -- they think Turkey will be partitioned, even now. They consider the Genocide claims as a big plan against Turkey; they believe that the United States wants to partition Turkey. Within the rising tide of nationalism, they believe that the U.S. invaded Iraq in order to create a Kurdish state. If you establish this state it would take over a part of Turkey.

They believe that the U.S. wants to revive the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, which would partition Anatolia among Greeks, Kurds and Armenians.

Any part of talking about history is regarded as part of a master plan to partition Turkey. If Turkey acknowledges the Genocide, the Armenians will want a part of the provinces; if Turkey admits the wrongdoings against the Kurds, they will want a part; if Turkey acknowledges the Greek problem, the massacres, the Greeks will want a part. Facing history is a part of a master plan to break up Turkey: this is the basic argument. My argument is that we have to find a way to disentangle security concerns from facing history. These are two totally separate issues. As long as Turkey doesn't face history, that will be a security concern. Any security concept which disregards human rights, which disregards the other national groups, and considers the Kurds a threat is detrimental in itself. Turkey must change its security concept.

Playing devil's advocate, do you think there's any truth to the concept that the U.S. wants to break up Turkey?

No. The U.S. doesn't have this option. Breaking up Turkey would only bring catastrophe. There is no such interest. But if Turkey continues to deny the existence of the Kurds, continues to deny the right of its ethnic minorities, partition could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Islamic government is actually more open to acknowledging the problem, and is looking for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish situation. But the military is looking for a military solution, and they consider the Kurds as a treat to Turkey's existence.

So actually, you want a strong Turkish state as much as the nationalists do?

I want a democratic, free Turkey, one that is a part of the E.U., and one that is a part of the Western democratic family. There is no way to achieve this unless Turkey faces its history.

Hearing what you've said, and hearing the rhetoric of the Bush Administration and supporters of the Iraq war, it seems odd that the right wing in America has not embraced your scholarship. Bush nominated a man for Ambassador to Armenia who obfuscates the Armenian Genocide, but one would think that someone like yourself, who supports democracy in a Middle East country and who is writing of essentially Muslim atrocities against Christians would be welcomed by the Right. Why is this?

Well, the war in Iraq is another piece of paper altogether. It is a wrong war, a wrong decision. But regardless of whether it was right or wrong, if they are honest with their argument -- spreading democracy in the Middle East -- they have to support the movement in Turkey toward a free society. If they are supporting the military, who are challenging this position, then that is a contradiction. This is what is happening in the U.S. now. If the information in the press is correct, the American new-conservatives are working with Turkish Deep State against Turkey's democratization movement.

So you think that contradiction exists?

Regarding the American arguments outwardly and their practice in the region we can definitely speak of a contraction. But we should never forget that nation-states don't have moral stances; they only have interests. It is naïve to think that the U.S. interest in the Middle East is only to establish democracy. Or U.S. follows certain moral principles in the region. Just the opposite. The last best example is what happened in April 2007. On April 27 of this year there was an "electronic coup d'état" in Turkey. The Turkish military issued a press release online that threatened the ruling party with a coup. The E.U. condemned the military immediately and said they wouldn't allow that to happen. For the first two weeks Americans just watched, to see who would win. They were pragmatic. If the military won, they'd be in good position. But five hundred liberals (I was on of the co-signer) openly challenged the military; we said that the military has no right to intervene in the democratic process. The ruling party took a very powerful stance against the Military. Even Tony Blair, for example, spoke out, it was only the American state department [that] really waited for two weeks to condemn the military. This is one of the basic problems of the U.S. in the region. They have a very bad reputation regarding the democracy and so they again prove that the people in the Middle East have the right not to believe the arguments of the U.S. administration. They stay only on the paper.

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.

The Four Faces of the Turkish Genocide of Assyrians

11-13-2007
AINA
Human Rights Without Frontiers International

On April 1, the Assyrians will celebrate their traditional New Year and remember the 1915-1918 Ottoman Genocide in which half a million of their forebearers lost their lives. This should remind us that the "Armenian genocide" also affected other Christian minorities such as the Assyrians, the Chaldeans and Greek Orthodox.

The title of this press service " Four Faces of the 1915-1918 Genocide " is a reference to the shared atrocities suffered by four Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire--the Armenians, Assyrians, Chaldeans and Greek Orthodox--whose genocide at the hands of the rulers of war-time Turkey resulted in the annihilation of over two-thirds of their population.

The four stories which follow tell of mass shootings, torture, forced migration for the survivors and the suffering of a people displaced or destroyed simply for reasons of their faith.

Katherine Magarian saw her father and dozens of other family members brutally slain by the invading Turks in the Armenian massacres that began in 1915.

The Reverend John Eshoo and Kerime Cercis described the suffering of the Assyrians and Chaldeans at the hands of the Ottomans in details available only >from an eye-witness or a survivor. Maria Katsidou-Symeonidou told of the exodus >from her home village during Orthodox Easter of 1920.

As the last of the remaining survivors and now first and second-generation descendents of the victims of the 1915-1918 genocide remember and respect the memory of those lost, Human Rights Without Frontiers Int. welcomes the recognition of the "Armenian Genocide" by some countries and supports the collective campaign for further recognition to include the Assyrians, Chaldeans and Greek Orthodox. Human Rights Without Frontiers Int. also encourages Turkey to sign and ratify the Framework Convention on National Minorities of the Council of Europe.

The Armenian Face: Katherine Magarian's Testimony

I saw my father killed when I was nine years old. We lived in Palou, in the mountains. My father was a businessman. He would go into the countryside, selling pots and pans, butter and dairy products. The Turks, they rode in one day and got all the men together, bringing them to a church. Every man came back outside, their hands tied behind them. Then they slaughtered them all, like sheep, with long knives.

They all died, 25 people in my family died. You can't walk, they kill you. You walk, they kill you. They did not care who they killed. My husband, who was a boy in my village but I did not know him then, saw his mother's head cut off. The Turks, they would see a pregnant woman and cut the baby out of her and hold it up on their knife to show those around.

My mother and I, we started running. They got one of my sisters and then one of my other sisters, she was four, but she ran away. My mother was hit by the Turks, she was bleeding as we went. We walked and walked, and I was saying "Ma, wait, I want to look for my little sister,"' but my mother slapped me, saying "No! Too dangerous, we keep walking." It got darker and darker, but we walked. Still, I did not know where. The Turks had taken over our city.

Two, three days we walked, with little to eat. Finally, we found my sister who had run away. Then we walked to Harput and I see the Turks and I want to run, but they are friendly Turks, my mother told me. She said, "You go live with them now, you'll be safe," and I was. I worked there, waiting on them, cleaning, but I was alive and safe. But I did not see my mother for five years. She was taken to the mountains to live, and she saw hundreds of dead Armenians, hundreds of them, who had been killed by the Turks, the bodies were all over.

Years later, my mother said to the Turks, "I want to see my child," and they let her come back. She came to the house at night. She did not know me, but I knew it was her. Her voice was the same as I remembered it. I told her who I was, and she said, "You are my daughter!" and we kissed, hugged, and cried and cried.

My mother later heard of an orphanage in Beirut for Armenians, and we went there after the Turks kicked us out of our country. I spent four years there, and again, I didn't see my mother until a priest got us together. In 1924, she came to this country to meet family who left before the genocide. Three times now, I have lost my mother.

Sometimes, near the anniversary of the slaughter, my mind goes back there. You know, when I was 14, maybe 15, I have a dream, Jesus comes to me and says "Give me your hand," and I want to get up and go with him but I cannot get up. Then I am in the mountains, where all the dead were that my mother would later tell me about, and I see flowers, every kind of flowers, no bodies, and it is beautiful. Then I see the ocean and a boat, the boat that would take me to Cuba years later. I think this was God saying to me that I would be fine. I was lucky to live, I guess. God made me lucky (1).

The Assyrian Face: Reverend John Eshoo's Testimony

You have undoubtedly heard of the Assyrian massacre of Khoi, but I am certain you do not know the details. A large part of our people had migrated here and one fourth of our refugees were stationed in Sardavar (Khoi). These Assyrians were assembled into one caravan and all shot to death by guns and revolvers. Blood literally flowed in little streams and the entire open space within the caravan became a pool of crimson liquid.

The place was too small to hold all the living victims for the work of execution. They were brought in groups, and each new group was compelled to stand up over the heap of the still bleeding bodies and shot to death in the same manner. The fearful place became literally a human slaughterhouse, receiving its speechless victims for execution in groups of ten and twenty at a time. At the same time, the Assyrians, who were residing in the suburb of the city, were brought together and driven into the spacious courtyard of a house. The Assyrian refugees were kept under guard for eight days, without anything to eat except a handful of popcorn served daily to each individual. This consideration was by no means intended as a humanitarian act but merely to keep the victims alive for the infliction upon them of the most revolting tortures at a convenient time set for their execution.

Finally they were removed from their place of confinement and taken to a spot prepared for their brutal killing. These helpless Assyrians marched like lambs to their slaughter, opening their mouths only to say "Lord, into thy hands we commit our spirits." The procession of the victims was led by two green turbaned Sayids [the highest religious order in Islam], one with an open book in his hand, reading aloud the passages pertaining to the holy war whilst the other carried a large-bladed knife, the emblem of execution.

When the procession arrived at the appointed place, the executioners began by cutting first the fingers of their victims, join by joint, till the two hands were entirely amputated. Then they were stretched on the ground, after the manner of the animals that are slain in the Fast, but these with their faces turned upward and their heads resting upon the stones or blocks of wood. Then their throats were half in cut so as to prolong their torture of dying and whilst struggling in the agony of death, the victims were kicked and clubbed by heavy poles. Many of them, still labouring under the pain of death, were thrown into ditches and buried before their souls had expired.

The young and able-bodied men were separated from among the very young and the old. They were taken some distance from the city and used as targets by the shooters. They all fell, a few not mortally wounded. One of the leaders went close to the heaps of the fallen and shouted aloud, swearing by the names of Islam's prophets that those who had not received mortal wounds should rise and depart, as they would not be harmed any more. A few, thus deceived, stood up but only to tall this time dead by another volley from the guns of the murderers. Some of the younger and beautiful women, together with a few little girls, who pleaded to be killed, were forced into the harems of Islam against their will. Others were subjected to such fiendish insults that I cannot possibly even describe. Death, however, came to their rescue and saved them from the vile passions of the demons. The Assyrian victims of this massacre totalled 2,770 men, women and children (2).

The Chaldean Face: Kerime Cercis's Testimony

I was thirteen years old when the massacre began. My father worked for the customs authorities in Siirt. I lived together with my parents, Cercis and Hane, my three brothers, Kerim, Yusuf and Latif, and my grandfather. Our house in the quarter of Ayn Saliba was raided in the spring of 1915 by twenty bandits. Within this raid, my father and my grandfather were stabbed to death. My mother, my brothers and I were taken to a strange village. After the city went through a big massacre, where all my relatives had been killed and thrown into a big hole, the Kurds brought me to the other Chaldean girls in the village of Zevida where I spent one year. Every night the Kurds abused me.

A year later I went back to Siirt in the company of a Muslim woman. This woman brought me to Abdul-Ferid, the new owner of our former home. She believed Abdul-Ferid would feel sorry for me and, therefore, help me but this was quite the contrary. He threw me out of the house. One Chaldean, who was serving as a nanny for a Turk, helped me. I should carry water for the family and care for the garden. One day when I wanted to take water from the source a soldier came my way.

His name was Abdullah and was carrying water for the hospital of Siirt. He kidnapped and brought me to his mother, Fatum Hanum. She showed me the hole where all the killed Christians been thrown in and said: "The same will happen to you if you don't follow our rules!" It was a terrible sight, all the bones and the hair of people lying down there. When we returned to the house she told me: "Did you get what I told you, little heretic?" I was so frightened that I even could not answer.

Abdullah was abusing me sexually and in many other ways. For three years I had to undergo this terrible treatment, I served for the old witch and followed everything she ordered. Then the famine began to reign in the village and everyone was suffering from hunger except the slave driver Abdulriza. His depot was full of food which he had stolen from the Christian's houses. Abdullah could not look after his family any longer. Therefore, he told his mother to take his children and go begging for money but she had decided for the voyage to Istanbul. The voyage lasted three months and what Fatum and the children did to me in the meantime is too unbelievable to even describe. When we reached Istanbul she sold me to a Muslim woman, who knew one of my relatives. I begged her to bring me there and finally she did. Now I am living in my relative's house, which called Zeki Hirize and works as a shoemaker.

These are the names of my killed relatives: My parents Cercis and Hane, my brothers Latif, Yusuf, Kerim (killed by Abdul-Ferid who inhabits our former house), my grandparents on both sides, my uncles Pitiyon, Tevfik, Bulos and my aunts Hatun and Helena. All of our possessions, the house, furniture, gold, jewels, everything belongs now to Abdul-Ferid, who has taken everything (3).

The Hellenic Face: Maria Katsidou-Symeonidou's Testimony

I was born in Mourasoul village, Sevasteia/Sivas district, on 15 August 1914. I remember the deportations well. In 1918, I was about four years old, when one day I saw my father in the village square. I ran to him and asked him for the pie he brought me every day from the family-owned mill. He replied: "Oh, my child! The Turks are going to kill me and you will not see me again." He told me to tell my mother to prepare his clothes and some food for him. That was the last time we saw him. They killed him along with another ten men.

I remember another time when a Turk warned our village, saying that all the young men should leave. This because the next day, Topal Osman, would be coming. Indeed, those that left, were saved. They still killed fifteen men, including the teacher, the village president and the priest. Topal Osman had caught three hundred and fifty men from neighbouring villages. He had them bound, murdered and thrown into the river that ran through our village. I still remember the echo of the shots. They were hauling the bodies by ox-cart for nine days to bury them. Most of them were unrecognisable, as their heads had been cut off.

In 1920, around Easter, the Turkish Army came and told us to take with us everything we could. We loaded up the animals, but the saddle-bags tore open and most of us were left without food. On the deportation march, the Turkish guards would rape the women, one of whom became pregnant. In the Teloukta area, about half our group was lost in a snow storm. From there, they took us to a place without water, Sous-Yiazousou, where many died of thirst. Soon afterwards, as we passed a river, all of us threw ourselves at the water, people fell over each other in the rush and many drowned. We reached Phiratrima, which was a Kurdish area and they left us at a village near a bridge. It was here that the pregnant girl gave birth to twins. The Turks cut the new-borns in two and tossed them in the river. On the riverbank, they killed many more of the group.

The killings ended only with the agreement for the Exchange of Populations (1923). This is how we were saved. I came to Hellas in 1923. As I was an orphan, I arrived with the American Mission, at Volos (Thessaly). From there, we went to Aedipsos, to Larissa and finally to Aetorrahi village, Elassona district, where I settled (4).

(1) Katherine Magarian's story was originally published in the Boston Globe on 19 April 1998.
(2) Excerpted from The Flickering Light of Asia, Reverend Joel Werda, Chicago, 1990, P. 156-58.
(3) Kerime Cercis was interviewed in 1918 in Istanbul.
(4) Maria Katsidou-Symeonidou died in November 1997.

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.

First Nationwide Turkish Survey Reveals Millions of Turks Support Genocide Bill

Sassounian's column of Nov. 15, 2007
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier

The Assembly of Turkish American Associations recently featured on its website a reference to “the first nationwide public survey” conducted in Turkey on the Armenian Genocide and the congressional resolution on this issue. The poll was carried out earlier this year by “Terror Free Tomorrow” in collaboration with Istanbul-based “ARI Movement” and U.S.-based “ARI Foundation.”

The survey showed that 78% of Turks oppose the congressional resolution on the Armenian genocide, while 7.4% support it. Turkey’s leaders may be happy that the majority of Turkey’s citizens oppose the resolution, but they conveniently overlook the fact that the 7.4% who support it represent more than 5 million Turks who believe that the U.S. Congress should recognize the Armenian Genocide. Furthermore, another 8.5% or close to 6 million Turks have a neutral position on this issue.

When asked their reason for opposing the genocide resolution, only 36% said that it was because they did not believe that a genocide occurred. This means that almost two-thirds of Turkey’s population opposes the bill for completely different reasons: 42% said they mistrusted the impartiality of the U.S. Congress, while 18% preferred that historians make that judgment.

The most amazing finding of the survey was that fully 50% or 2.5 million of Turks supporting passage of the Armenian Genocide resolution justified it by saying that “Turkey should recognize the past wrong of its genocide against Armenians;” 13.7% said that “Turkish recognition of the Armenian genocide will help reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia,” and 26.1% said that “The U.S. Congressional resolution is not binding law and will not affect official American policy toward Turkey.”

When asked if the approval of the resolution would improve or worsen the respondents’ opinion of the United States, 73% of the Turks said such an act would worsen their opinion of the U.S. This is not surprising at all, since a recent Pew Research Center poll showed that 91% of the Turks already disliked the United States. What is shocking, however, is that 4.5% of those surveyed, which translates into more than 3 million Turks, said that the approval of the genocide resolution by the U.S. Congress would improve their opinion of the United States! Another 22% or 15 million Turks said that congressional approval would not affect their opinion of the U.S., did not know or did not answer.

When asked if Turkey should refuse to assist the U.S. war effort in Iraq if the Armenian resolution were to be adopted by the U.S. Congress, 83% of the respondents said they would oppose any cooperation with the U.S., while 8.5% or close to 6 million Turks said they would still support the U.S. in Iraq.

In response to another question, 78% said that they would favor taking action against the U.S. for adopting the genocide resolution (boycotting American products, demonstrating against the U.S., voting for candidates opposed to the war in Iraq). However, 11% or 7.5 million Turks said they would take no action against the U.S. for adopting the genocide resolution. Another 11% had no answer or opinion.

Another shocking answer was given by the Turkish respondents when asked why the U.S. Congress may approve the Armenian Genocide resolution: 42% said because of anti-Muslim feelings in the United States, 31% said due to domestic U.S. politics, and 12% or the equivalent of 8.5 million Turks said because “the Armenian Genocide is a proven historical fact!”

The results of the survey are not surprising. The overwhelming majority of the Turkish public, after being fed by their leaders a steady diet of lies on the Armenian Genocide for more than 90 years, naturally is bound to disbelieve that such barbaric acts were committed by their ancestors. However, the real news revealed by this survey is that, despite all the years of brainwashing, millions of Turks not only refuse to believe their government’s denialist propaganda, but have the courage, at a great risk to their own safety, in “face-to-face” interviews, to acknowledge publicly that the Armenian Genocide is a fact and that the U.S. Congress must approve the Armenian Genocide resolution.

The long years of Armenian efforts for the international acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide seem to be bearing fruit not only around the globe but also within Turkey itself, despite that country’s draconian laws which ban any reference to that crime. The news reports of these efforts, fueled by the Turkish government’s extensive denialist measures, have created a massive amount of information on the Armenian Genocide which is reaching large segments of the Turkish public for the first time. The above Turkish survey shows that outside pressure is gradually making Turks face the dark and ugly chapters of their past.

Ethnic cleansing

November 10, 2007
Daily Mirror, Sri Lanka
By Gamini Akmeemana

The Armenians were deported en masse and massacred by Turkey during World War I. The survivors and descendants, now living in the former Soviet republic of Armenia, remain barred from returning to their homeland by successive Turkish governments, who continue to officially deny the massacre.

Interestingly, the word genocide, now commonly identified with the killing of Jews by the Nazis during World War II, was first used by Winston Churchill while referring to the massacre of the Armenians.

Not only has Turkey denied that this, first mass scale ethnic cleansing of the 20th century, ever took place. The Soviets who established a republic in their territory for the survivors pursued a policy which led to the destruction of invaluable evidence of the genocide. Stalin banned the Tashnag Party, a key element in Armenian politics. Survivors destroyed evidence - photographs, diaries, letters etc. - because the Soviet secret police began to associate such material with Tashnag political actitivity.

The result is that written and pictorial evidence of the genocide, which killed an estimated 1.5 million Armenians, is scarce. Despite this, the Museum of the Armenian Genocide near Yerevan, the capital of the Armenian republic, has on display a collection of unique photographs which show graphic evidence of the mass deportation and the genocide.

The photographs, which had never been shown in public till recently, were taken by employees of the German Deutsche bank in 1915 - when Ottoman Turkey had entered World War I on Germany's side - to send to the bank's head office as proof of their claims that the Turks were massacring their Armenian population. A German engineer sent one photo of Armenian men being led to their execution by the Turkish police.

The bank officials were upset that the Turks were using the railway built with German money to deport the Armenians to distant concentration camps. The railway network was built for military purposes, not genocide. Interestingly, apart from the civilians who took the photographs and alerted their superiors, German soldiers sent to modernize the Turkish army too, witnessed these massacres.


Armin Wegner, a second lieutenant, took photographs of dead and dying Armenian women and children (the young women were almost all raped before being killed). But such conscientious acts were rare. Other German officers who witnessed the massacres remained silent, and some of them became Nazis who took part in massacres of Jews and other peoples during World War II.


In 1915, Turkey claimed that the Christian Armenians were supporting Britain, France and Russia - the Ottoman empire's opponents during the war. Officially, it was claimed that the Armenians were being merely deported to areas where they wouldn't be a security threat.


The decision was hardly a hasty one. An elaborate ethnic-cleansing plan had been drawn out earlier. The war provided the excuse the Ottoman government was looking for. Entire families and communities were forced out of their homes and sent on death marches. The men were shot or killed with axes, and the women and children driven out into the desert to die of thirst, starvation and disease. Mass graves are still being discovered today, some as far as Syria (then part of the Ottoman empire). There were so many people to be killed that the Turkish military often sought the assistance of Kurdish tribesmen in their grisly task.

The idea was to destroy the Christian Armenian minority as a people, pure and simple. This is starkly similar to the Nazis Final Solution for the Jews - that every Jew should end up in the gas chambers. In Sept. 1915, Turkish Interior Minister Talaat Pasha cabled to his subordinate in Alleppo, Syria, that: "You have already been informed that the government…has decided to destroy completely all the indicated persons (Armenians) living in Turkey…their existence must be terminated, however tragic the measures taken may be, and no regard must be paid to either age or sex, or to any scruples of conscience."

The above is an order the Nazis would have been proud of. Recent research has revealed that Turkish officers often produced "doubles" of their genocide orders. In other words, telegrams asking their subordinates to make sure that Armenians were properly fed and sheltered during the "resettlement" were sent alongside the death-sentence orders.

Luckily, some of the books published following the genocide have survived. Captain Sarkis Torossian, a much-decorated Armenian officer of the Turkish army, was sent to fight the British in Palestine but was horrified to find thousands of dying Armenian refugees in the Syrian desert. Incredibly, he found his own sister among them and rescued her, but his fiancée died in his arms.

"I raised Jemileh in my arms, the pain and terror in her eyes melted until they were bright as stars again, stars in an oriental night…and so she died, as a dream passing,' Torossian wrote in a book published in the United States in 1929.

After this terrible shock, he defected from the Turkish side, and fought with T. E. Lawrence's Arab militias against the Turks.

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.

It's a decades old question: Who now remembers the Armenians?

Packet & Times
By McGarvey, Pete

The question is attributed to Adolph Hitler in the mid 1930s. His henchmen were plotting the extermination of Europe's Jews and someone wondered aloud how world opinion would react to it. A mere 20 years earlier, one and half million Armenians were murdered by Ottoman Turkish soldiers in the 20th century's first genocide, and already the slaughter was fading from the public's mind.

"Who now remembers the Armenians?"

Not the Bush White House, it seems. When Congress proposed a resolution two weeks ago, recognizing the 1915 killing of the Armenians as genocide,Washington's top brass harrumphed, and struck back. "Ancient history!" they proclaimed, The death count was wildly exaggerated! There are two sides to the story and the Turkish side deserves equal time! More important, passage of the resolution would do irreparable harm to the US-Turkish alliance. If unduly angered, Turkey may cut off vital American supply routes to Iraq!"

In other words, historic truth and the pursuit of justice be damned. Commentators railed against "those stupid congressmen" and George W. Bush himself joined the critical chorus.

The facts of the genocide are meticulously recorded. Midway through the First World War, Ottoman Turkish leaders ordered its minority Armenian Christians into exile on charges they were waging a civil war against the government in Ankara. It was a lie.

Regular readers know my sentiments on this subject. I have spent 30 years studying, reporting and editorializing on this unprecedented catastrophe, waiting for a plausible Turkish explanation of why it happened. I'm still waiting.

The April 1915 "exile" order was code for "get rid of the Armenians by whatever means." It was the latest and the most extreme of organized attacks on this harried minority, the first nation in the world to convert to Christianity. (The year was 301 AD.)

The soldiers obliged. Towns and villages were put to the torch, Armenians by the thousand rounded up, many males murdered on sight, while women and children were forced, at bayonet point, to trek toward the Syrian wilderness with little food or water. The horrors multiplied daily - random shootings, hangings, rape, death by fire, even mass drownings. Soldiers competed in devising new and fiendish means of disposing of their prisoners.

If the Ottoman government thought that all this would be below the world's radar screen, in the middle of a world war, it miscalculated badly. Within weeks, first-hand accounts of the butchery made the front pages of leading American and British newspapers. Henry Morgenthau, the American ambassador to Turkey, was among the first to report what was happening. His fury was shared by historian Arnold Toynbee and Britain's Winston Churchill. Soon, thousands of ordinary citizens were roused to demand a stop to the slaughter and to hold Ottoman Turkey accountable. Relief efforts were launched to help survivors who managed to cross into Syria. "Save the starving Armenians" became a rallying call, heard across the western world.

I have a shelf full of books dealing with the killings, written by impartial witnesses, respected scholars and survivors. In April 1980, Eileen and I were in Yerevan, the ancient Armenian capital, to observe the 65th anniversary of the genocide. We joined a solemn procession of Armenians, both native born and from the North American and European diaspora, to a monument on a hillside outside the city, to lay flowers beside an eternal flame. On the eastern horizon, Mount Ararat was in clear view.

In the week we spent in Soviet Armenia, our appreciation of this unique nation increased tenfold. We visited Etchmiatsin, site of the Cathedral of Saint Gregory the Illuminator, the first building in the world to be topped by a cross. The museum nearby, joined to the palace of the church's pontiff, known as the Cathilicos, was a treasure house of relics and documents, recording the rise and fall of a proud and culturally accomplished race over three millennia. Here, too, were hundreds of bones of 1915 martyrs.

There's an ironic touch to events in Washington two weeks ago. In the same week the Armenian genocide proposal was roundly condemned, Congress awarded a gold medal to the Dalai Lama, who was lauded by U.S. President George W. Bush for his life-long crusade to win autonomy for Tibet.

There were the usual declarations of America being the beacon of hope and the agent for justice for oppressed people everywhere.

Unless, of course, you belonged to a nation shattered by the first documented genocide of the 20th century, when such a declaration would be politically inconvenient.

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.

Turkey's Islamists deny Armenian genocide

Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Energy Publisher
by Adrian Morgan

Turkey admits that large numbers of Armenians died in 1915, but says they died as from forced deportation and taking up arms against the ailing Ottoman Empire. It refuses to acknowledge that there was a genocide.

On Wednesday, October 10, the House of Congress' House Foreign Affairs Committee voted by 27 votes to 21 to pass a non-binding resolution to classify actions which took place in Turkey in 1915 as "genocide". The full text of the resolution includes the statements: "The House of Representatives finds the following:

(1) The Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923, resulting in the deportation of nearly 2,000,000 Armenians, of whom 1,500,000 men, women, and children were killed, 500,000 survivors were expelled from their homes, and which succeeded in the elimination of the over 2,500-year presence of Armenians in their historic homeland.

(2) On May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers, England, France, and Russia, jointly issued a statement explicitly charging for the first time ever another government of committing `a crime against humanity'.

(3) This joint statement stated `the Allied Governments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally responsible for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres'.

(4) The post-World War I Turkish Government indicted the top leaders involved in the 'organization and execution' of the Armenian Genocide and in the `massacre and destruction of the Armenians'. "

The day before the resolution was put to a vote, President George W. Bush warned against the passing of the resolution, saying: "This resolution is not the right response to these historic mass killings." Turkey, whose current government is led by Islamists of the AKP (Justice & Development Party), reacted angrily to the initial vote, which is expected to be presented before the entire House of Congress.

Abdullah Gül, who recently became the first Islamist President since modern Turkey was officially established in 1923, said the vote was "unacceptable". He claimed that some US politicians had "sought to sacrifice big problems for small domestic political games". Turkey withdrew Nabi Sensoy, its ambassador from Washington, as soon as the vote was passed. The president of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan, supported the committee's vote and said he hoped it would lead to full US recognition of the genocide.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee's decision on the vote had split mostly along party lines, with democrats supporting it and Republicans opposing it. On the floor of Congress, the bill had the sponsorship of 226 representatives, mostly democrats. One of the co-sponsors of the bill, Luis Fortuno of Puerto Rico, changed his committee vote following direct lobbying by the US president. It will now be the decision of Nancy Pelosi to introduce the resolution to the vote of the Full House of Congress (where Fortuno will not be able to vote).

Democrat Tom Lantos, the only US politician to have survived the Holocaust, is chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. He opened discussions by saying: "We have to weigh the desire to express our solidarity with the Armenian people... against the risk that it could cause young men and women in the uniform of the United States armed services to pay an even heavier price than they are currently paying." Lantos, told AFP news agency that he would introduce a resolution praising US-Turkish friendship this week.

The United States, along with the efficiency of its military operations in Iraq, certainly stands to lose from deteriorating relations with Turkey. The US military employs Incirlik Air Base near Adana in southeastern Turkey to fly most of its supplies to its troops in Iraq.

A senior legislator in Turkey's ruling AKP, Egemen Bagis, visited Capitol Hill on Tuesday to warn that the bill would threaten military cooperation. He told Reuters: "This resolution will put your troops in harm's way. We will not be able to extend the current cooperation we are providing to you. If our allies are insulting us with crimes we have not committed, we will start questioning the merits of that endeavor."

President Abdullah Gül sent a letter to George W. Bush before the vote was taken, to thank him for his personal attempts to urge members to vote down the resolution. The US administration is now trying to limit damage. On Friday, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke to Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and also foreign minister Ali Babacan. She said: "They were dismayed."

Two US officials went to Turkey on Saturday to bolster relations between the two nations and prevent possible restrictions on US military operations in Turkey. Eric Edelman, a former US ambassador to Turkey, and Dan Fried arrived in Ankara, the capital, and met Ertugrul Apakan, a Turkish minister in the foreign ministry.

The Armenian prime minister, Serge Sarkisian will be arriving in Washington on Wednesday October 17, a move guaranteed to add to US/Turkish tensions. His visit had been planned months previously.

While US and Turkish politicians were fretting about the outcome of the resolution, another development was taking place. Turkey was planning to mount its own independent military incursion into Kurdish Northern Iraq, the least unstable region within Iraq. There are fears that such an invasion could destabilize all Iraqi regions. Concerns about this invasion force led crude oil to reach a record high of $84 per barrel on Friday. Most Iraqi oil production is in the south, but a key crude oil pipeline runs from Baku in Azerbaijan through Georgia to the port of Ceyhan in southeastern Turkey, where it is then placed on tankers. The political fallout from an invasion could lead to problems with distribution at the Turkish end.

The US has tried to urge Turkey not to mount its independent incursion into northern Iraq, but the mood in Turkey is not compromising. Already prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed on Saturday that he did not need permission to enter northern Iraq. The reason for the proposed incursion is that members of the Kurdish separatist party, PKK (Workers Party of Kurdistan), have recently mounted a series of attacks in southeastern Turkey. Thirty people have been killed over the past month. The PKK fighters have fled across the border into northern Iraq.

PKK terrorists warned on Friday that they would be returning to Turkey from their enclaves in northern Iraq, to mount terror strikes on police. This is unlikely to stop Turkey's administration from requesting its parliament this week for approval for its venture. On Wednesday last week, prime minister Erdogan claimed that his party wanted a year-long authorization for mounting possible attacks against PKK bases in northern Iraq. He suggested such incursions would not necessarily start immediately.

Kartet, a private company in Turkey, supplies electricity to Iraq. On Thursday, the Turkish daily newspaper Hürriyet announced that a senior official from the Energy Ministry said that Kartet would no longer be supplying power to Iraq, due to Turkey's own power needs. He did not state whether this action was part of a sanctions package against Iraq, connected with logistical support and refuge to PKK terrorists being provided in northern Iraq.

Condoleezza Rice has said that she would want to stop the submission of the resolution on Armenian genocide to the full House of Congress, but admitted that it would be "tough". Such a resolution could hardly come at a worse time for the current US administration, but there is no "right time" to discuss the issue, when it involves a matter of historical truth. The fault ultimately lies with Turkey, for being so intransigent in its denial of documented fact. If Turkey can blackmail and threaten the safety of US troops as a direct result of the recent resolution, then the US should seriously question the worth of maintaining deep trust in such an "ally".

Turkey's Denial of Armenian Genocide

The UN Convention on Genocide took place in December 1948. Article Two of this declaration describes genocide as the implementation of acts designed "to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group."

Turkey admits that large numbers of Armenians died in 1915, but says that they died as a by-product of forced deportation and because some Armenians took up arms against the ailing Ottoman Empire. It refuses to acknowledge that there was a "genocide". Turkey claims that during World War 1, no more than 300,000 Armenians died, though overwhelming evidence suggests that between 1915 and 1917, 1.5 million Armenians died. If Turkey had been more mature about its history, as Germany has been concerning the Nazi genocide of 6.5 million Jews, the issue would have been laid to rest long ago.

As the situation now stands, Turkey has no diplomatic relations with its small neighbor Armenia, as a result of its obstinate denial of the truth. In 1993, the border with Armenia was closed by the Turks. There were tentative moves towards a thawing of the diplomatic frostiness in April 2005, but these came to nothing. The stumbling blocks again concerned issues of the Armenian genocide.

In May 2005, Turkey's justice minister Cemil Cicek blocked a conference of Turkish academics who wanted to critically discuss the historical facts of the deaths of Armenians. In September 2005, just 10 days before Turkey was to begin talks about its possible accession to the European Union, a second attempt to hold this conference was banned by a court order. The legal move had been instigated by a group of nationalist lawyers.

The denials of what took place particularly in 1915 are upheld by the Islamists in Turkey, and also the secularists. The AKP party is the first Islamist party to rule Turkey. Previous attempts to form an Islamist government were suppressed with coups mounted by the pro-secular military. The last elected Islamist government was dissolved by the military in 1996.

Within Turkey, anyone who denies the official version of "history" runs the risk of falling foul of Article 301 of the penal code. This outlaws any "insult against Turkey or Turkishness". The maximum penalty for breaching Article 301 is a three-year jail term. Article 301 had been rewritten in June 2005 in a package of amendments to the existing penal code. The penal code had been altered to make Turkey eligible to join talks on membership of the European Union. No-one in the EU appeared to notice that Article 301, in both its original and revised state, contravened Article 19 of the 1948 International Declaration of Human Rights - the right to freedom of speech.

Orhan Pamuk is Turkey's most famous novelist, whose novel "Snow" has been has been acclaimed as a modern "classic". In 2006, Pamuk was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. In February 2005, Pamuk had given an interview to a Swiss newspaper. In this interview, he referred to the killings of Armenians, but he did not mention the term "genocide". He said that in the 20th century "a million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in these lands [Turkey],"but few spoke of this. His statement contradicted the "official version" of the truth, and on December 16, 2006, Pamuk appeared in court, charged with breaching Article 301.

Pamuk's impending trial had drawn international criticism of Turkey, but prime minister Erdogan claimed that foreign critics were putting pressure on Turkey's judiciary. He said: "I find that a little controversial to the principle of respecting the rule of law... I don't think the way they act is very proper in this case."

On the first day of Pamuk's trial at Sisli district criminal court in Istanbul, Judge Metin Aydin adjourned the case to February. He was unsure if the case was to be brought under the original penal code, instituted by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, or under the revised penal code. If the trial was made under the old conditions of the penal code, the justice minister (then Cemil Cicek) would have to issue a ruling. Pamuk's appearance at the court was greeted by angry crowds. Most of these were militant nationalists, sometimes called "Kemalists". As he entered the courtroom, a woman hit him with a folder. As he was driven away, his car was pelted with eggs.

On January 23, 2006, it was announced that Turkey had dropped its case against Pamuk. The novelist was luckier than Turkish Armenian Hrant Dink.

On October 7, 2005, a court in the southeastern city of Sanliurfa initiated proceedings against Hrant Dink, on charges of breaching Article 301. Mr Dink was the owner and editor of a bilingual magazine called Agos. The Sanliurfa trial had concerned comments that Dink had made at a 2002 conference, where he had referred to a verse that must be memorized by all students. This verse starts with the words: "I am a Turk, I am honest and hardworking." Dink had told the conference that he was honest and hardworking, but he was not a Turk. He was an Armenian. That trial was never completed, for reasons I will explain below.

On October 7, 2005, Dink was sentenced by the Sisli Court of Second Instance at Istanbul at the culmination of another trial where he had been accused of breaching Article 301 by "insulting Turkish identity". All Dink had done to "insult Turkish identity" was to publish a series of articles extolling the virtues of "Armenian identity" and to write of the way that the Armenian genocide still impacted on modern Turkish life. Dink was given a suspended six month jail term. He appealed against this conviction in 2006, but the decision against him was upheld.

Dink's trials and subsequent tribulations, as well as the international brouhaha stirred up by US politicians mentioning a genuine historical event, point to an affliction in the heart of Turkey's national identity. Quasi-fascistic Turkish nationalism is the infectious and suppurating byproduct of the unhealed wounds of Turkish history. And in the background, not acknowledged by predominantly Muslim Turkey, and never mentioned in the Western media, is another dimension to the case of the Armenian genocide. The Armenians are Christian.

The deportations of Armenians in 1915 is acknowledged by Turkey. What is not acknowledged is that they were deported precisely because they were Christian, and had their own cultural identity and language. Ethnic cleansing is the handmaiden of genocide, and Turkey in 1915 was openly practicing ethnic cleansing, a practice that had started at the end of the 19th century. In the 21st century, only scoundrels can make political capital from defending the indefensible.

Because of Turkey's obstinate denials, other countries have made official rulings attesting that the Armenian genocide took place. In 1982, Cyprus' House of Representatives passed a resolution. The European Parliament passed a resolution in 1987. This move did stop Turkey attempting to join the European Union, a factor which should hearten US Republicans and administrative officials who fear a House of Congress vote. After all, there are 1.5 million US citizens of Armenian descent, many of whom had ancestors directly affected by the Armenian genocide. Their opinions should count far more than the hurt pride of a temperamental NATO ally that is currently threatening to throw its toys out of the baby carriage because it doesn't like the truth.

Greece made a resolution in 1996 and even established an Armenian Genocide Day. Switzerland's National Council passed a resolution in 2003 and Canada's House of Commons passed a resolution in 2004. Slovakia's National Assembly made a resolution in 2004. Argentina passed a law in 2006, and Chile's Senate passed a resolution in 2007.

In France, where 500,000 Armenians live, a resolution was passed in 2001, but on October 12, 2006, a bill was passed which made denial of the Armenian genocide a crime, potentially punishable by a one-year prison sentence and a $60,000 fine. The move was carried in the French National Assembly by 106 votes to 19. Before the French vote took place, Islamist prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called it a "systematic lie machine" but claimed Turkey would not engage in "tit-for"tat" reprisals.

The day before the French vote, a judicial committee had debated two moves to introduce laws to parliament which would have described France's actions in its war with its former colony of Algeria as "genocide". A third draft bill was discussed by the justice commission, which would have made anyone who claimed that there was an Armenian genocide would be jailed. Article 301 already allows for such punishment. All three draft bills were rejected. However, Ankara warned that French companies would be banned from major economic projects in Turkey should the French bill become law, an obvious "tit-for-tat" reprisal.

Hrant Dink opposed the punitive aspects of the French law. He said to a newspaper: "This is idiocy. It only shows that those who restrict freedom of expression in Turkey and those who try to restrict it in France are of the same mentality." On TV, he said: "I am standing trial in Turkey for saying it was genocide. If this bill is adopted, I will go to France and, in spite of my conviction, I will say it was not genocide. The two countries can then compete to see who throws me in jail first."

Hrant Dink was born on September 15, 1954 in Malatya, the town in central Turkey where three Christians had their throats slit on April 18 this year. He founded the magazine Agos on April 5, 1996. The intention of this publication was to foster understandings between the Turkish and Armenian communities in Turkey. Dink believed that the Armenian community lived in too much isolation. The attention drawn to him by his high-profile trials brought his life under threat.

Agos had its offices in central Istanbul. On January 19, 2007 Hrant Dink was leaving his offices when a teenager wearing a white Muslim skullcap approached him. The youth fired three shots into the 53-year old editor's head and neck. Dink slumped down dead on the spot. His teenaged killer shouted out "I shot the infidel" before running off.

Hrant Dink was aware of death threats which had been made against him for daring to speak of the Armenian genocide. One threat he received by email seemed so serious he turned it over to the Sisli prosecutor's office, but his complaint was ignored. In his last article for Agos, Dink wrote: "How real or unreal are these threats? To be honest, it is of course impossible for me to know for sure. What is truly threatening and unbearable for me is the psychological torture I personally place myself in. "Now what are these people thinking about me?" is the question that really bugs me. It is unfortunate that I am now better known than I once was and I feel much more the people throwing me that glance of "Oh, look, isn't he that Armenian guy?"

And I reflexively start torturing myself. One aspect of this torture is curiosity, the other unease. One aspect is attention, the other apprehension. I am just like a pigeon... Obsessed just as much what goes on my left, right, front, back. My head is just as mobile... and just as fast enough to turn right away."

After his death, his son Arat Dink took over the editing of Agos. When Arat Dink decided to reproduce one of his father's 2006 articles which mentioned the Armenian genocide, he too was hauled before the courts, charged under Article 301 for "insulting Turkish identity". Only last week, while Turkey officially fulminated at the US mention of its genocide, Arat Dink was sentenced. On Thursday October 11, 2007, he and a colleague from the magazine were both given suspended jail terms of one year.

Tomorrow, in Part Two, I will outline the cultural and historical background of the first massacres against the Armenians in Turkey. These would lead inevitably to the genocide which took place in the First World War. Genocides never happen in a vacuum as isolated events. Often, as in the case of Russian pogroms against peasants, there are campaigns of deliberate starvation. In the case of the Armenian genocide starvation was used as a weapon (see picture at top of page).

Without incidents such as the German attacks on Jewish shops that took place on "Crystalnacht", there would not have been a climate that later allowed the Nazis to conduct mass exterminations of Jews. Similarly, in the case of the Armenian genocide, the events of 1915 to 1917 were preceded by deliberate and politically-motivated attacks and killings at least from 1894 onwards.

Turkey And The Armenian Genocide - Uncomfortable Truths That Must Be Faced

Part Two (of Three)

The Atrocities Of August 1894

"A number of able-bodied young Armenians were captured, bound, covered with brushwood and burned alive. A number of Armenians, variously estimated, but less than a hundred, surrendered themselves and pled for mercy. Many of them were shot down on the spot and the remainder were dispatched with sword and bayonet."

"A lot of women, variously estimated from 60 to 160 in number, were shut up in a church, and the soldiers were 'let loose' among them. Many of them were outraged to death and the remainder dispatched with sword and bayonet. A lot of young women were collected as spoils of war, Two stories are told. 1. That they were carried off to the harems of their Moslem captors. 2. That they were offered Islam and the harems of their Moslem captors; refusing, they were slaughtered. Children were placed in a row, one behind another, and a bullet fired down the line, apparently to see how many could be despatched with one bullet. Infants and small children were piled one on the other and their heads struck off. Houses were surrounded by soldiers, set on fire, and the inmates forced back into the flames at the point of the bayonet as they tried to escape."

"In another village fifty choice women were set aside and urged to change their faith and become hanums in Turkish harems, but they indignantly refused to deny Christ, preferring the fate of their fathers and husbands. People were crowded into houses which were then set on fire. In one instance a little boy ran out of the flames, but was caught on a bayonet and thrown back"

The above are accounts of massacres of Armenian villagers. These took place in the district of Sassoun (Sassun) in southeastern Anatolia near lake Van, in August 1894. They had taken place following false rumors of an uprising which developed in the spring. The Sassoun massacres were duplicated in the neighboring districts of Bitlis and Mush.

In March 1895 an inquiry committee was held in London, with details reported in the Daily Telegraph newspaper. An Armenian priest and his son were ordered to sign a document, claiming that the massacre at Sassoun had been carried out only by Kurds, and clearing the Turkish authorities of all blame. When these refused, heated iron triangles were placed around their necks. The pair were too ill to testify before the commititee.

Kurds had been involved in the Sassoun massacre, but the strategy was concocted and put into effect by Turkish soldiers. In adjacent Mush district: "a witness hiding in the oak scrub saw soldiers gouge out the eyes of two priests, who in horrible agony implored their tormentors to kill them. But the soldiers compelled them to dance while screaming in pain, and presently bayoneted them."

An account of the Bitlis massacre from 1895 stated (page 63): "As soon as the Pasha of Bitlis sent word to Constantinople that the Armenians were in revolt, without waiting for proof, the Turkish troops were sent to the scene with orders to suppress the revolt - orders which they knew they must interpret as meaning the extermination of whole villages if they would please the Sultan. After wholesale butchery, Zeki Pasha reported that, 'not finding any rebellion, we cleared the country so that none should occur in the future.' This stroke of policy was afterward praised in the Court as an act of patriotism."

The massacres of 1894 would be repeated, becoming more ferocious and claiming the lives of more people, over the next two years.

The Ottomans

The regions within Turkey's current borders have seen various cultures and civilizations arise and become replaced by others. The "Turks" are only the latest of a long line of invaders who moved into the region. 9,000 years ago Neolithic farming peoples at Çatal Hüyük formed a complex community. Almost 3,000 years ago Assyrians entered the region, and the Hittites developed a civilization in Anatolia until around 900 BC. Later Medes (probable ancestors of the Kurds), Persians, Phrygians, Lydians, Armenians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines flourished in the region.

The Turkish-speaking people (Western Turks) arrived in Anatolia in large numbers in the 11th century AD and their consolidation of power would hasten the end of the Byzantine Empire based at Constantinople. The language of the Western Turks gradually replaced the indigenous Indo-European languages of the region. The nomadic Turkic peoples originated in the Altai mountain regions in Central Asia, but from the 5th century AD onwards they had engaged in mass migrations. Turkic peoples are found in China (Uighirs) and and Siberia (Yakut). The Western Turks founded the Ottoman dynasty at the Western end of (modern) Turkey. From 1299 until its demise in 1924 this dynasty was known as the Ottoman Empire.

In 301 AD, Armenia had been the first nation in the world to officially adopt Christianity. As a distinct culture with an Indo-European language, Armenia had thrived in the mountains of Asia Minor from the 6th century BC. In the 16th century, Armenia lost its independence and was swallowed up by the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman aims were expansionist and warlike, and hostile to independent Christian nations. Sultan Bayezid I, nicknamed Yilderim or "Lightning", who ruled from 1389 to 1402, famously promised to feed his horse from the altar of St Peters in Rome.

At its height in 1683, the Ottoman Empire controlled territories stretching to the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea in the East, the land surrounding the Red Sea (including Mecca and Medina and Yemen) in the south, and the north African coast as far as Algeria in the West. In the north, it controlled the Crimea and all the land westwards nearly as far as Vienna. An attempt to invade Vienna itself was defeated by John Sobieski, king of Poland, on September 12, 1683. With more conflicts Hungary was freed from Ottoman rule, confirmed in the treaty of Karlowitz in 1699.

In the latter half of the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire was a diminished force. European imperialism had broken its hold on territories in North Africa, and European regions had declared their independence. Under Sultan Mahmud II (ruled 1808 - 1839) reforms and attempts to socially and economically modernize the Empire had been made, but these did not stem the decline. Greece had successfully fought for independence which it achieved in 1829, with its territorial borders formalized in a treaty in 1832. Several Balkan regions had declared their independence in 1875, and on April 24, 1877, Alexander II of Russia declared war on Turkey.

Abdul-Hamid II and the Hamidian Massacres

In 1876, 34-year old Abdul-Hamid II became the Sultan. Soon after taking power, he issued the first Imperial constitution on December 23, 1876. This constitution had been originally drafted by the grand vizier, Midhat Pasha. It allowed equal judicial rights for all citizens, and initiated a two-house parliament. Abdul-Hamid preferred to rule as a despot and when the Russo-Turkish war started he dismissed Pasha in February 1877 and in 1878 he abolished the constitution.

The Russian conflict ended with Turkey acknowledging defeat. As a result, on March 3, 1878 the Empire officially lost the territories of Serbia, Montenegro and Romania in the Treaty of San Stefano. Bosnia-Herzegovina was granted autonomy nd Bulgaria was placed under Russian protection under this treaty. The Treaty of Berlin, signed on July 13, 1878 by the Turks, Russians and European powers, lessened the Turks' financial debt to the victors and saw Bosnia-Herzegovina given to the Austro-Hungarian Empire..

Immediately before Abdul-Hamid's reign, the Armenians had lived peaceably under Ottoman rule. As Christians, they had been second-class citizens and had to pay the "jizya" tax, but they were not regarded as subject to persecutions. In 1856 an edict called the Hatti Humayoun, issued by Sultan Abdul Medjid in 1856, had guaranteed Christians rights never seen before under the Ottomans. Armenians wanted to be granted more freedoms under the Treaty of Berlin, which saw Batum (modern Armenia and parts of Georgia) ceded to Russia. Article 61 of the treaty guaranteed Armenians protection from attacks by Kurds and Circassians (who lived in the south-east of Turkey). Article 62 of the treaty demanded that people of all religions could work and travel freely throughout Turkey.

With these conditions not fulfilled, a radical group known as the Huntchagists emerged among the various Armenian populations, who lived in scattered locations in Turkey, with its apparent headquarters in Athens. In 1893 a US missionary condemned this revolutionary movement. Cyrus Hamlin quoted an Armenian who said of their motives (p. 242): "These Huntchagist bands, organized all over the empire, will watch their opportunities to kill Turks and Kurds, set fire to their villages and then make their escape into the mountains. The enraged Moslems will then rise and fall upon the defenseless Armenians and slaughter them with such barbarities that Russia will enter in the name of humanity and Christian civilization and take possession." The Huntchagists aimed to attack US Protestant missionary centers in central Turkey.

The American missionaries had been allowed in central Turkey since 1844, and these were to prove reliable witnesses to the deteriorating situation in Turkey, and also the first massacres of Armenians. The Huntchagist movement disintegrated after 1896, but Hamlin's testimony was cited in a letter to the New York Times of August 23, 1895. This letter tried to discredit the genuine massacre which took place at Sassoun, even though Hamlin had specifically blamed the Ottoman government for carrying out the Sassoun atrocities.

In 1896, Reverend Edwin Munsell Bliss published a book called Turkey and the Armenian Atrocities. He acknowledged the destructive elements of the Huntchagists, (page 336) and later noted that some revolutionaries, whether Huntchagists or not, sought to draw attention to their aims of a separate state. On January 5, 1893, placards were erected in Marsovan and Yuzgat, and indiscriminate arrests followed. Disturbances ensued in Yuzgat, Gemerek, Cesarea, and elsewhere, and the Turkish authorities reacted punitively, rounding up and torturing suspects. The polarization of communities had begun in earnest.

Rumors of a Hutchagist presence led to the Sassoun massacre, the first of the major atrocities against Armenian villagers. An investigative report into these massacres claimed (page 14) that Armenian Christians were being subjected to forcible conversions to Islam. In January, 1896 the local Ottoman authorities in Kharpout and Diarbekir told "converted" villagers that they should not admit to being Muslim if questioned. Conversions were happening in the provinces in Siras, Kharpout, Diarbekir, Betlis and Van. Priests and pastors lived in hiding, lest they be attacked for interfering with the forcible conversion of villagers. In twenty eight villages in the district of Kharpout, there had been no Christian worship since November of 1895.

"Another indirect method of destroying the Christian communities in the provinces lay in the systematic debauching of Christian women as though to destroy their self-respect and undermine their religious ethic. At Tamzara in the district of Shaska Kara Hussar, in the province of Livas, all the men were killed in the massacres early in November, of a prosperous Armenian population of fifteen hundred only about three hundred starving, half naked women and children remained. Trustworthy information said that the most horrible feature of their situation was that passing Mohammedan soldiery or civilian travelers attacked them and outraged them in their homes without hesitation or restraint."

On October 1, 1895 200 Armenians had tried to make a protest in Constantinople, and had been ordered by police to disperse. Panic broke out, and fearing an uprising , mosques encouraged reprisals. The following night, at least 70 Armenians were killed in the capital. At Trebizond (Trabzon) on the Black Sea coast in the east, a local Pasha was attacked, and soldiers were sent on regular foot patrols around the city. On October 8, these soldiers began shooting Armenian men, and shops were looted. On October 30, 1895 at Erzerum, soldiers and Turkish civilians had started firing at Armenians. After attacks that lasted two days, many of the bodies were mutilated and stripped. One man's forearms had been cut off, his upper arms and chest skinned. A British consul wrote that 1,200 people had been killed, and 512 wounded. The bodies were buried en masse in trenches (pictured).

On November 11, 1895 the village of Husenik near the eastern city of Harput was attacked by soldiers, some of whom dressed as Kurds. 200 Armenian villagers were killed. These marched on the city where around 100 Armenians were killed. Shortly after, the city of Arabkir was attacked, with 2,000 Armenians killed. Attacks also took place on numerous small villages. In many of these villages the women were carried off. At the town of Diarbekir, 2,000 were killed, at Chunkush 680 Armenians were slaughtered.

British missionary Helen B. Harris wrote on April 24, 1896 from the American College in Aintab: "There were about 300 killed here, November 16, 1895, and numbers mutilated, hands and right arms cut off, and eyes gouged out, to render the poor people helpless. Dr. Fuller says when they first got among these, the day after, the massacre, it was awful hearing them crying for death to end their sufferings." On November 18, 1895, a massacre of thousands took place at Marash. On December 28, another massacre of Armenians took place at Urfa with at least 3,000 lives lost.

There were more massacres at that time, and in many cases Armenian men were forced to convert or die. In Birejik in January 1896, about 96 men converted to Islam, and an equal number were killed. When one elderly man refused to convert to Islam, live coals were placed on his body. As he lay in pain, a Bible was held over him, and his tormentors asked him to read the passages of salvation that he had trusted in.

In the summer of 1896 one event took place which would instigate a catastrophic crackdown on the Armenian population of Turkey. The main office of the Ottoman Bank in Constantinople was raided by a group of 26 Armenian revolutionaries on August 26. Nine of the group were killed in the initial raid, including their leader Babgien Siuni, and guards were shot. The remaining raiders, members of the Dashtun party, took 140 bank workers hostage.

The raiders intended to draw international attention to the plight of Armenians in Turkey, but before the situation came to a resolution, recriminations against Armenians began, with 7,000 people killed by angry Turkish citizenry in Constantinople. The Patriarch of Constantinople, Maghakia Ormanian, excommunicated the bank raiders, but this did not quell general Turkish anger at the Armenian communities.

The massacres at the end of the 19th century, which were carried out with the connivance and approval of Sultan Abdul-Hamid II are collectively known as the Hamidian massacres. In 1896, Abdul-Hamid had been chastened by international condemnations, and his orders to attack and forcibly convert Armenians stopped. The attacks lessened, but only for a while. Soon, another campaign of massacres would take place. This campaign was instigated not by Abdul-Hamid but by a new breed of Turkish political activists, who would go on to commit the genocide of 1915. These activists were known as the Young Turks.

This article was also published at familySecurityMatters.org.


Adrian Morgan is a British based writer and artist who has written for Western Resistance since its inception. He has previously contributed to various publications, including the Guardian and New Scientist and is a former Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Society.


Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.