Saturday 24 January 2015

Armenian News...A tall order for Father and Daughter...

Walking for Armenia – 1000 Kilometres Walk 

Father and Daughter will walk 1000 Kilometres to trace the route their forefathers took 100 years ago during the Great Genocide of the Armenians in 1915.

www.walkingforarmenia.com


National Geographic
January 23, 2015
What We Talk About When We Talk About Genocide
by Paul Salopek
Ani, Turkey  


“It was a—how do you call it in English?—a genocide? Yes? It was a genocide,” says Murat Yazar. “My grandmother told my mother about it.”

My walking guide and I are wandering through Ani.

What is Ani? It is the ruin of a vanished world in modern Turkey: the remote and beautiful site of a forgotten civilization—the 1,100-year-old capital of a once powerful empire. Relics of this Silk Road city lie scattered across the sky-hammered mesas of far northeastern Anatolia. Broken cathedrals. Rotting ramparts that defend nothing from nothing. Empty boulevards that go nowhere. We roam this colossal diorama of stillness, of eerie silence, Murat and I, as if painted into a Dali dreamscape . We are talking about the disappearance of Armenians from the region.
Broken arch: a relic of ancient Ani on the closed Turkey-Armenia border. Photograph by Paul Salopek

Broken arch: a relic of ancient Ani on the closed Turkey-Armenia border. Photograph by Paul Salopek

In 1914, about two million Armenians lived in what is today Turkey. They were a Christian minority under Muslim rule. Their history reached back thousands of years . By 1922, just 400,000 remained .

What happened to more than 1.5 million people? Most were killed, historians say. They were targeted for extermination. They were marched into waterless deserts at bayonet point. They were slaughtered.

“My grandmother said they locked all the Armenians near the Euphrates River into some houses,” Murat tells me. “Then they took them out at night and pushed them into the river. They drowned them.”

It was eight months into World War I. Europe had begun to cannibalize itself. The multicultural Ottoman Empire was dying in terrible spasms. The Ottoman Turkish majority—whipped up by nationalist leaders and enraged by the mass deportations and massacres carried out by former Christian subjects against fellow Muslims in the crumbling fringes of the state—wreaked revenge on their ancient neighbors: minority Assyrians and Greeks, but mostly Armenians. They accused the Armenians of being infidels. Of disloyalty. Of siding with the empire’s encroaching foes (the Russians and colonial Europeans). The knife hand in this enormous crime? Local Kurds. Kurds shot and hacked Armenians to death en masse. Kurdish gangs tore into refugee columns of starving Armenian women and children. Kurdish villagers seized Armenian property—abandoned farms, flocks, and homes.

We have been walking through the dim echoes of this calamity, Murat and I, all the way across Anatolia. We seek shade in derelict houses of Armenians—homes overgrown with trees, with weeds. We pass sturdy churches converted to mosques. We skirt walnut orchards planted long ago by the victims. Murat broods about this. He is a Kurd. I see him grappling with history, with a legacy he cannot imagine, with the haunted landscape.

“Once, I apologized to an Armenian man in Istanbul,” he tells me. “I told him I was sorry for what my ancestors did.”

And how did the man react?

“What could he say?” Murat says, shrugging. “He said, ‘Thank you.’”

We stand in a cold wind. A big sign at the entrance to the archaeological ruins of Ani describe its long story. The text states that the ancient and sprawling metropolis flowered under Bagratian kings. The Bagratians were Armenian. Nowhere is the word “Armenian” written.

* * *

It has been dangerous for many years in Turkey to describe what occurred in 1915 as a genocide . Turkish judges have deemed this term provocative, incendiary, insulting, a taboo. Turkish writers and journalists who deploy those three syllables can face charges of slander against the Turkish state. One has been assassinated by ultra-nationalists.

There is an official version of events. It goes like this: The Armenians suffered, this is undeniably true. Yet they were just one of many ethnic groups who felt the heavy blows of the imploding Ottoman Empire. Their destruction was neither extreme nor systematic. It was a war. And violence coursed both ways: Armenians perished, but so did Turks, at the hands of rebellious Armenian mobs. Yet this narrow reading of history has begun to show some cracks. In April, Turkey’s then prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, became the first Turkish leader to express formal condolences to the descendants of Turkey’s Armenians, who today live scattered across the globe. He spoke, carefully, of the two peoples’ “shared pain.”

Walking through the Kurdish hinterlands of Anatolia, one senses that ordinary citizens are far ahead of him.

“We fought the Armenians, and many died,” says Saleh Emre, the white-haired mayor of Kas Kale village. “I think this was wrong. They belonged here.” Emre pauses. He sweeps a gnarled hand over the houses of his tiny community. “This land used to be owned by an Armenian trader. My father’s uncles bought it cheap.” He allows this detail to sink in. Then he ticks off the names of nearby Turkish towns that once were dominated by Armenians: Van, Patnos, Agri. No Armenians live there now. He stops short of using the word genocide.

The old man peers east across rolling sunlit plains, across brass-colored pastures, across grassy paradise blighted by memory, toward the nearby country where some survivors fled. “I would like visit to Armenia,” Emre says. “Armenians were our neighbors.”

* * *

The scene: a church courtyard in Diyarbakir, the cultural capital of Turkey’s Kurds.

Sourp Giragos is the largest Armenian church in the Middle East. It is newly renovated, mostly with donations from the remnant Armenian community in Istanbul. It is a monument to hope, to reconciliation, one of a few such gestures taking root in the Kurdish zones of Anatolia in a hundred years. (In a distant town called Bitlis, the Kurdish mayor has named a street after William Saroyan, the Armenian-American writer.) People bustle about under a massive bell tower. They are sweeping fallen leaves. Serving coffee at outdoor tables. Chatting. Some light candles. A few are Muslim. Most are Armenian Orthodox Christians. Aram Khatchigian, a caretaker, has been both.
Custodian of memory: Aram Khatchigian in the rebuilt Sourp Giragos Armenian church, old city of Diyarbakir, Turkey. Photograph by Murat Yazar.

Custodian of memory: Aram Khatchigian in the rebuilt Sourp Giragos Armenian church in Diyarbakir, the Kurdish cultural capital in Turkey. Photograph by Murat Yazar.

“Until I was 15, I believed I was a Muslim, a Kurd,” Khatchigian says. “After that, I started to feel a change in my heart.”

He explains how he excavated his hidden past. How he learned that his grandfather, a boy of 12, and his grandfather’s younger sister, a girl of 9, were actually Armenian—the only ones in their immediate family to survive the killing fields around Diyarbakir, where a “pungent smell of decaying corpses” filled the air. The boy and girl hid under a bush until a Muslim Kurdish farmer took them in, saving their lives, caring for them as his own children, giving them his name. They converted to Islam. “All Armenians still living did this,” Khatchigian says. “They would be killed otherwise.” Then a man stalks up to our table. He has been listening.

“Do you recognize the genocide?” he demands. He looks into my eyes.

I am conducting an interview, I tell him.

“I don’t care,” he says. “Do you or don’t you recognize the genocide?”

For some Armenians, this consuming question has become everything—the lynchpin of a national struggle, almost of a modern identity: Turkey and the world must finally acknowledge that a true genocide, legally defined, unfolded in Anatolia. Vast amounts of energy and money are poured into this lobbying campaign by millions of Armenians in the diaspora. ( At least 21 countries now officially accept the Armenian genocide as fact. The United States and Israel, valuing diplomatic ties with Turkey, aren’t among them.)

Armenian-American author Tomani Meline describes the suffocating effect of this bitter political debate on her life:

“To some Armenians, recognition means reparations from Turkey: to the true zealots, land; to the slightly more pragmatic, money. To most, it simply means the official usage of the word genocide. To me, it came to mean that I could no longer stand to attend any Armenian gathering, because it seemed that whether it was a poetry reading, a concert, or even a sporting match, it was always, ultimately, about the genocide.”

At the church in Diyarbakir the stranger sits down at our table.

He repeats his question again. And again. Khatchigian stares down at his shoes, embarrassed. I lay down my pen. We wait.
"I don't care. Tell the world I am Armenian." But she changed her mind, and did not want her face to be photographed. Diyarbakir, Turkey. Photo by Murat Yazar.

“I don’t care. Tell the world I’m Armenian.” But she changed her mind, and here in Dyarbakir she did not want her face to be photographed. Photograph by Murat Yazar.

* * *

A giant red Turkish flag flutters above the archaeological site at Ani.

The city’s ancient ruins toe the ledge of a canyon. On the other side, within easy walking distance, lies the small Republic of Armenia. Nobody ever crosses. The border between the two nations has been shut for years by mutual suspicion and hostility. Ani is a dead end.

We strike out, Murat and I, heading due north.

We tug our brave cargo mule across sodden winter fields around Kars, a Turkish city that in the 1890s was 85 percent Armenian. Murat asks its startled residents if any Armenians yet remain. A Turkish citizen, and a minority Kurd wrestling with his own questions of cultural endurance, Murat always asks. I watch him plod head, interrogating the past for answers. A lanky man, wistful, questing. With a camera slung over his parka. Black Anatolian mud cakes under his boots. I can only shake my head in wonder.

Killers or victims, there are no chosen people. There are simply people. And the dead. And what you do with your pain tells the world who you are.


tert.am 
Kurdish leader: We recognize Armenian Genocide without question
19.01.2015


Selahattin Demirtas, who is co-chair of Turkey's pro-Kurdish "Peoples'
Democratic Party" (HDP) and an ex-presidential candidate, has
reiterated that they recognize the Armenian Genocide.

Demirtas responded to numerous questions, including the query on the
recognition the Armenian Genocide, on the air of CNN Turk.

"We recognize the Armenian Genocide without question. The Kurds and
others certainly have played a role in the Armenian Genocide, but the
political will [to commit this genocide] was that of the Young Turks'
party, led by Enver and Talaat Pashas.

"If Turkey claims to own the Ottoman heritage, let it own it [, the
Armenian Genocide], too. If not, let it come to grips with this
tragedy," Selahattin Demirtas specifically noted.
http://www.Armenian-genocide.org/map-full.htm


Armenian Assembly of America News
Turkey Calls for `New Beginning' with Armenia While Engaging in
Decades-Old Campaign of Genocide Denial
by Taniel Koushakjian
January 20, 2015


While Americans commemorated the life and legacy of renowned civil rights
activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on January 19, 2015, Armenians around
the world commemorated the life and legacy of Hrant Dink, an Armenian
Turkish journalist, and the founder and editor of AGOS Newspaper, who was
gunned down in the streets of Istanbul, Turkey on the same day on 2007.
Ironically, these two men have a lot in common: both sought to serve as a
bridge between two estranged communities (White Americans and African
Americans; Turks and Armenians); both rejected violence and extremism and
worked in an atmosphere of peace and common understanding; both were
assassinated for their ethnicity and their message of peace through
historical justice.

Some Armenian circles even call Hrant Dink the Martin Luther King of the
Armenians. Yet, to mark the 8th anniversary of Hrant Dink's murder, Turkish
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu attempted to capitalize on Dink's message of
tolerance and understanding by calling for a `new beginning' in
Armenian-Turkish relations. `The way to leave the great tragedy that had
frozen history in 1915 is to break taboos,' according to Davutoglu.

However, it is beyond hypocritical to accept Davutoglu's call for a new
beginning while, under his leadership, the modern Turkish republic
continues to engage in the decades-old campaign of Armenian Genocide denial
across the globe.

Nothing could illustrate this fact more than the timing of the Gallipoli
centenary currently being planned by Ankara. As the acclaimed writer Robert
Fisk of The Independent recently wrote in an article entitled `The
Gallipoli centenary is a shameful attempt to hide the Armenian Holocaust,'
`This is not just diplomatic mischief.' Fisk reveals that, `The Turks are well
aware that the Allied landings at Gallipoli began on 25th April - the day
after Armenians mark the start of their genocide, which was ordered by the
Turkish government of the time - and that Australia and New Zealand mark
Anzac Day on the 25th. Only two years ago, then-president Abdullah Gul of
Turkey marked the 98th anniversary of the Great War battle on 18th March
2013 - the day on which the British naval bombardment of the Dardanelles
Peninsular began on the instructions of British First Lord of the Admiralty
Winston Churchill. At the time, no-one in Turkey suggested that Gallipoli
- Canakkale in Turkish - should be remembered on 24th April.'

It is difficult for anyone aware of the issues to believe Davutoglu's
statement that `Turkey, for its part, has moved beyond this point and left
stereotypical rhetoric and generalizations in the past.' If Turkey truly
wants a new beginning with Armenians, it would immediately end its
decades-old campaign of Armenian Genocide denial. But that policy
continues, nearly 100 years after committing the greatest crime against
humanity during World War I. To invoke the message of Hrant Dink in this
vein, Turkey, once again, exposes that it's true intentions are to continue
the Ottoman Turkish Empire's policy to distort the facts, distract
attention away from, and deny the Armenian Genocide.


Neue Zuercher Zeitung , Switzerland
Jan 13 2015
Threats Against Switzerland: Geneva confirms threats in row over
Armenian genocide memorial 


Bern - In connection with the project to erect a memorial to the
Armenian genocide, the Geneva cantonal government finds itself under
massive pressure from both the Turkish and the Armenian side. In reply
to a question put in the cantonal parliament, the government said that
even threats had been voiced against the canton and Switzerland.

Now, the cantonal government gives in to pressure from Turkey, which
finds the projected site right next to the UN building especially
offensive. The cantonal government has now publicly "recommended" that
the city of Geneva should drop the location and find a politically
less exposed site for the Armenian genocide memorial.

It has been public knowledge that Turkey and the Armenian community
had fought hard over the projected memorial. What was not known until
now was that there had been "barely veiled threats," as was disclosed
only now. The canton and Switzerland as a whole were threatened to
suffer "diplomatic, economic, or political reprisals," the Council of
State wrote in its reply with unusual frankness. Mention is made of a
whole "series of entirely unusual interventions" made "partially on
the highest diplomatic level."

The Council of State did not say which side had threatened to do what.
Yet the suggested relocation of the memorial indicates that the
Turkish threats were more effective than the Armenian ones. The
Council of State is specific on one issue only: it fears for Geneva's
image as a non-partisan location for international organizations and
their headquarters. There was reason to fear that other players, too,
would grab the opportunity to weaken Geneva as an international city.
This is also Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter's worry. The Council
of State confirms that the Federal Government urged the Canton of
Geneva in December 2014 not to give the memorial building permission.

The canton does not go that far - probably also because refusing
building permission would hardly be legally watertight for foreign
policy reasons. The hope is now that the municipal administration will
give in voluntarily - another site was currently "under
investigation," the Council of State announced.


armradio.am
CHARLIE HEBDO CARTTONS CALL OUT ARMENIAN GENOCIDE 
DENIAL
15 Jan 2015 


Charlie Hebdo cartoonists Stephane Charbonnier (Charb), Bernard
Verlhac (Tignous) and Renald Luzier (Luz) used their sharp wit to
call out Armenian Genocide denial, as recently as last week. Editor
Charb and Tignous were tragically killed during Wednesday's deadly
terrorist attack. The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA)
presents three of the cartoons cartoons that reference Turkey's crimes.

________________________________

Ottoman Turkish Soldier: Are we not committing a genocide, my General?

Turkish General : Today, yes. But in a century, it'll be a Dieudonne
joke.

Luz cartoon, published in January, 2015, referencing recent statements
by French Comedian Dieudonne, who was quoted as saying that the
Armenian Genocide is as real as Santa Claus...

________________________________

Turkish Army Kills 35 Kurdish Villagers.

Kurdish Villager: That was a screw up. They must have taken us for
Armenians.

Charb cartoon published in 2014, when reports surfaced that Turkey
had attacked Kurdish villagers instead of assisting the international
campaign to help save Kobane.

________________________________

Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Turkish police: 'You can shoot. Just imagine
that they are Armenians!"

Cartoon penned by Tignous during the Gezi Park protests in Turkey.

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