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| ARF DASHNAKTSOUTIUN SITES PROTOCOLS FOR TIGHT U.S. VOTE |
|  YEREVAN (RFE/RL) - The opposition ARF Dashnaktsoutiun blamed on Friday Armenia's controversial agreements with Turkey for the difficulty with which pro-Armenian lawmakers pushed their latest Genocide resolution through a U.S. congressional committee.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee approved the non-binding measures by 23 votes to 22. The outcome of the vote, which lasted for over 90 minutes, hanged in the balance until the last minute. The panel passed similar resolutions, most recently in 2007, by much wider margins in the past.
Committee members opposed to the resolution argued, among other things, that the fence-mending Turkish-Armenian protocols call for the formation of a joint "sub-commission" that would study the 1915 mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. They also said calling the massacres a Genocide could scuttle Turkish parliamentary ratification of the protocols.
Armen Rustamian, the chairman of the ARF's supreme body in Armenia, said this is the reason why several U.S. congressmen declined to vote for the Genocide bill this time around.
"I think all those who followed the committee debate understood and saw very well just how these protocols can put the brakes on the process of international recognition of the Armenian Genocide," Rustamian told a news conference. "When we had been saying that for months, many thought that this is just a partisan view."
Giro Manoyan, the party's political director, agreed, saying that the protocols have given opponents of U.S. recognition of the Genocide a new argument.
The ARF has been highly critical of President Serzh Sargsyan's policy of rapprochement with Turkey that culminated in the signing of the protocols last October. Their leaders have repeatedly said that Ankara will exploit the would-be historical "sub-commission" to deter the United States and other nations from recognising the Genocide.
Sargsyan and his political allies insist, however that the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement will not slow the recognition process.
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- Following the US House Foreign Relations Committee's approval of a resolution branding the World War I-era incidents in Anatolia as "Genocide," Turkey's endorsement of protocols signed with Armenia seems to be in danger says Turkish newspaper Zaman.
- US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's last-ditch efforts to prevent a "yes" vote on a resolution in the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs seeking to recognise the World War I-era killings of Anatolian Armenians as Genocide failed, with the committee voting in favour of the resolution on Thursday.
- Turkish opposition parties have said that they first need to see steps by Armenia towards its withdrawal from Nagorno-Karabakh, liberated by Armenian forces since 1994, following a six-year war. Turkey had closed its border with Armenia in 1993 in solidarity with Azerbaijan.
- Turkey has reacted with fury to the resolution, recalling its Ambassador to Washington and urging Obama's administration to block it.
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| HITLER GOT THE ANSWER HE WOULD
HAVE WANTED FROM OBAMA THIS WEEK |
|  Robert Fisk - Saturday, 6 March 2010 - Once more we have to forget the Armenian Holocaust – the first of the 20th century – in order to appease the Turks. Bill Clinton did it.
George W Bush spinelessly caved in to the Turkish generals. And now our favourite Nobel prize winner – another brave President who promised to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide if he was elected and then declined to do so – went whinging and whining to the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington and pleaded with them not to tell the truth about the savage rape and murder of 1.5 million Armenian civilians by the Turks in 1915. Good for the committee that it did not give in. But it will do no good.
Sure, the Turkish Ambassador has been recalled from Washington in a huff. But equally certain is that there will be no vote on the Genocide by the full House of Representatives. And if there is, there'll never be a vote in the Senate. Obama will help see to that. The man who wanted change doesn't want change on the little matter of a Genocide that led directly to the Nazi murder of 6 million Jews.
The events in Washington prove a few things. The Armenian American community have a more powerful and wealthier lobby than ever before. More seriously – for the Turks – is that this year Turkey did not have the Israeli lobby behind it. In the past, Israel, which disgracefully claims that the Armenian Holocaust was not a Genocide, has supported its close ally Turkey. But this year, Israel and Turkey have fallen out and the Israelis are still miffed at Turkey's condemnation of the bloodbath in Gaza.
The Turks sent their generals to bully Bush last time round. This time, the Turkish Foreign Minister warned that "Turkish-US ties are going through a very important phase in which they need strategic co-operation at the highest level in their history". The message is simple. Acknowledge the Genocide, and the US will lose its airbases in Turkey and the Turkish roads its military convoys use into Iraq.
The fact, unfortunately, is that these roads are the very highways down which the Armenians were sent on their death marches in 1915. That's not mentioned, of course. Our faithful Turkish ally might even pack up its support for the US in Afghanistan, where they are helping fight "Obama's war". But Robert Gates is still in Washington to remind congressmen what he said last year; that America needed "those roads and so on". Well, let's just hope the American troops don't halt their convoys and dig in the fields around those roads in the coming years. The skeletons are still there in their tens of thousands.
One wonders what would happen if Germany suddenly decided that the Nazi Holocaust was not a Genocide. Would Chancellor Merkel get away with it? Would Obama lobby that Germany should be allowed to get away with such an obscenity? Perhaps it's worth remembering that in 1939, Hitler asked his generals – before setting off into Poland to murder the millions of Jews in eastern Europe – a simple question:
"Who now remembers the Armenians?" Well, Hitler got the answer he would have wanted from Obama this week.
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| "I have no comment on anything. I am stopping this talk. Goodbye". |
| Azerbaijan President's son aged 12, buys 44 million dollars worth of luxury Dubai property |
 Heydar Aliyev, the son of Ilham Aliyev, the oil-rich country’s President, allegedly spent almost 44 million dollars, on nine waterfront mansions in the southern Gulf emirate earlier this year, reports said.
The boy, who was 11 at the time, made the purchase in the Palm Jumeirah development over two weeks, the Washington Post reported on Friday.
Heydar’s name and his date of birth appeared on Dubai Land Department records, which were obtained by the paper.
The details listed on the property records were the same as those of the son of the former Soviet Republic’s president, whose annual salary is about 228,000 dollars
The purchases are about the equivalent to 10,000 years' worth of salary for the average citizen of the country.
Industry sources with knowledge of the transactions told the paper the purchases were made by a buyer representing Azerbaijan's ruling family, with the properties paid for “upfront”.
It remains unclear whether the boy was given the property as a gift or how he could have bought into the development, after officials in Baku, the country’s capital, refused to comment on the claims.
"I have no comment on anything. I am stopping this talk. Goodbye," Azer Gasimov, the President's spokesman, told the paper when contacted for comment. |
| GENOCIDE - By Ahmet Alkan - TARAF Turkish newspaper |
| "If you are not brave enough to face a truth that happened ninety-five years ago, you deserve to be humiliated" |
|  Everyone is in front of their TV, watching in excitement as if it's a national football game. What is going on? A commission of the US Congress is voting on the “Armenian Genocide” resolution. We lose the “game” 23-22 as a result of various lobbying activities.
And all hell breaks loose.
Comments, discussions, spewing fury at the US, questions of “will the Incirlik base be closed down?” directed at the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Amongst all this hoolabaloo, my favourite comment comes from a speaker who denounces this decision: “Turkey is no longer a country that can easily be humiliated.”
When a commission of the US Congress votes for “Genocide”, we are “humiliated”. Do you know what humiliation is? Humiliation is millions of people holding their breaths for the outcome of a few votes in somebody else's Parliament. That is humiliation.
Humiliation is to find the result of that commission's vote of vital importance, to feel defeated because of the vote of one man. Humiliation is the conviction that the whole of one's national identity depends on the decision of one commission; humiliation is to have to wait the outcome of a vote in some other country's Parliament, biting one's fingernails.
Turkey is not humiliated because that commission approved that resolution with a difference of one vote. Turkey is humiliated because it itself cannot shed light on its own history, has to delegate this matter into other hands, is frightened like hell from its own past, has to squirm like mad in order to cover up truths.
The real issue is this:
Why is the “Armenian Genocide” a matter of discussion in American, French and Swiss parliaments and not in the Parliament of the Turkish Republic? Why can we, ourselves, not discuss a matter that we deem so vital that we perceive the difference of one vote as a source of humiliation?
If you cannot discuss your own problems, you deserve to be humiliated. If you keep silent in a matter that you find so important, you deserve to be humiliated. If you try to shut others up, you are humiliated even more. The whole world interprets the killing of so many Armenians, -a number we cannot even estimate properly- as “Genocide”.
Genocide is a legal term. The massacre carried out by the Unionist largely conforms to the description of that legal term. For Turks and Armenians, the word “Genocide” has become an obsession. The Turks insist that “it never was Genocide” and the Armenians call anyone who says it was not Genocide “liars”.
Both sides spend millions of dollars to convince the world that their viewpoint is the valid viewpoint. It is almost as if their mutual efforts have created a “Genocide sector”. Why then, can we not speak about this incident in detail?
How many hundreds of thousands of Armenians did the Unionists kill? Why? We claim “Armenians attacked us, that's why we killed them”. Fine, but the “attacking” Armenian gangs were on the Eastern border, what crime did hundreds of thousands of Armenians living elsewhere in Anatolia commit, other than being Armenian?
Can someone be punished purely because of his ethnic origin?
What do you call punishing someone not because they “committed a crime” but because they “belong to the same ethnic group as someone who you say committed a crime”?
This is murder. And to tell the truth, hundreds of thousands of murders targeting the same ethnic group does fall into the category of “Genocide”. Unionists committed heinous murders; the cruelty they subjected Armenians to is beyond imagination. Why are we trying to cover up this horrible crime, why are we trying to defend the murderers, to disguise their crimes, why are we squirming to keep truth buried, even at the risk of being humiliated?
The history of every society is tainted with crime and blood. We cannot undo what has been done, but we can show the courage to face the truths, to discuss the reality. We can give up trying to silence the world out of concern for incriminating the founders of the Republic.
We can ask questions.
And the first question would be “how come we never read about an incident that involves the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in our history lessons?” Even this reality makes the situation “suspicious”. If you are not brave enough to face a truth that happened ninety-five years ago, you deserve to be humiliated. If you struggle to hide an incident that happened a century ago and base how seventy million people relate to the world at large on a “lie”, you deserve to be humiliated.
No one dares humiliate brave people who are not afraid of the truth. If you feel humiliated, you should take a hard look at yourself and what you hide.
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| Resolution 252 - Editorial by Jean Ipdjian |
|  This past Thursday, 4 March 2010, the US House Foreign Affairs Committee after a protracted voting session voted to pass a Resolution 252 regarding the Recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Something that the Armenian communities in the United States had been vainly trying to accomplish for many years.
This feat was accomplished despite the millions of dollars spent by the Turkish propaganda machine, despite the promise of lucrative directorships to retiring Congressmen in lobbying firms, despite the quantified and not threats of the Turkish government and high ranking officials and more significantly despite the last minute objections of Secretary of State Mrs. Hillary Clinton and the Obama Administration. This time, the chairman of the committee Rep. Howard Berman had the courage to withstand the pressures and not only allow the voting to take place, but to ensure that ample time was given for all the representatives who wanted to vote to be there. The whole process was like a thriller and the final result of 23 votes for and 22 against bears witness to that, but does not say the whole story.
As warned, the signing of the infamous Protocols came to hunt us down and as a result, the difference was limited to one single vote instead of 4 or 5. And this is because at least so many representatives had declared that although they did not doubt the Genocide, they did not want to cause problems or jeopardise the smooth progress of the normalisation process started by the Protocols. And as is the case with the Cypriot ‘No’ to the Anan plan in April 2004, it will come and haunt us in every step that we take towards the recognition of the Genocide by the full House, Senate, other nations and eventually Turkey. As long as such ill-conceived and unjust processes are allowed to exist, as long as we engage in such futile exercises, we will give Turkey and others the excuses to deny the Genocide on the part of Turkey and avoid recognition on the part of others.
This success is an admirable achievement. The resolution now has to pass through both Houses of Congress to be official. This may happen or may not. As in so many past occasions and as in so many other venues, a host of reasons and reasonings might intercede to prevent this resolution from reaching the Houses for a vote, Even if it does, voting might go terribly wrong. National security considerations, financial gain, re-election prospects and even plain, honest to god blackmail and bribes might be perfectly viable and acceptable hindrances that can be put forward to sink it. However, nothing can erase the fact that it did happen. Nothing can erase the happening from the pages of history, whatever happens from now on. And this is important, because it shows to both foreigners and compatriots that nothing is impossible for us, that even small and weak nations can succeed against all odds if they want something bad enough. And that, when righteous causes get the recognition they deserve, if people have the courage and perseverance to go the whole way.
But then, fighting against impossible odds is no stranger to us. We’ve shown that we are experts in that. Our history has forced and taught us to become experts. Our rising as a nation after the Genocide, the battle of Sardarabad, the 1918-1920 independence just three years after the start of the Genocide, the Armenian Diaspora ‘Spyourk’ with all its institutions, our very existence as a nation is evidence of that.
Just after the passing of the Resolution, on the popular ‘Facebook’ some contributors, friends, were asking what comes next. Others were lamenting that universal recognition would result into us losing the common cause, as they reasoned, that has held us together, suggesting we would be reduced into a religious minority only. Yes, there will be cases and perhaps even communities which will be reduced into religious minorities. Yes, some would lose direction and fall victim to the great grinding jaws of assimilation. But as a whole, as a nation, we would have resolved and hopefully healed an open wound which would eventually lead to come to terms with our mighty neighbour and her coming to terms with her history and us.
As a nation, it would allow us to finally put to rest the remains of our dead and look towards the future with less cynicism.
As a nation, the struggle to reach that stage, the stage where the Genocide will be recognised universally including by Turkey, would bind us together even more and amalgamate us into a more homogeneous entity.
As a nation, it would allow us to be in peace with ourselves and look towards the future without carrying any skeletons of our past.
There is a lot of work to be done. March 4th and the success of the passing of Resolution 252 by the House Foreign Affairs Committee are but significant steps in our continuing struggle towards the fulfilment of our national aims and inspirations. It is just a step in the right direction. And it can stay meaningful only if we continue our hard work, if it propels us to work harder, if it further amalgamates us into a fused fist crushing all obstacles on the road to total victory.
Jean Ipdjian - London - 2010
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| “ME TIN ELITA" PROGRAM DEDICATED TO ARMENIANS OF CYPRUS |
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Alexander-Michael Hadjilyra for Gibrahayer e-magazine - On Tuesday, 23 February 2010, Elita Michaelides, hostess of the Sigma TV Show “Me tin Elita” aired a programme dedicated to the Armenian community of Cyprus, with Armenian MP Vartkes Mahdessian, researcher-scholar Alexander-Michael Hadjilyra and X-Factor contestant and singer Hovig Demirjian as her guests.
To view the program click here or on the image above.
http://www.cyprus-tube.com/el/cyprus-tube-videos-start-page.html?task=videodirectlink&id=2346 |
| Links of the week: |
* - Latest issue of Artsakank Armenian language monthly newspaper: - click here
* - Armenian contribution to the Ottoman Empire - click here |
| 7or.am - Շվեյցարական ճոպանուղիով դեպի Ջերմուկի միջազգային կենտրոն |
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| News in Brief by Sevag Devletian |
- Ankara warned that Washington risked a showdown with a key Muslim ally if the resolution advanced to a full vote at the House of Representatives. Davutoglu said Turkey would consider counter-action, but did not elaborate, saying only that consultations with the recalled envoy "could take a long time." Turkish President Abdullah Gul has warned that "Turkey will not be responsible for the negative ramifications this vote may have in every field."
- Hillary Clinton has said the Obama administration will seek to block Armenian Genocide bill. A congressional panel on 4 March approved the resolution, paving the way for a possible vote by the House. But Clinton said the administration would "work very hard" to prevent this.
- Following the US House Foreign Relations Committee's approval of a resolution branding the World War I-era incidents in Anatolia as Genocide, Turkey's endorsement of protocols signed with Armenia seems to be in danger. Opposition parties in Turkey already stood against approving the protocols with Armenia, and after the vote in the United States the ruling party's (AK Party) deputies have started to side with the opposition on the matter.
- AXA, the French insurance firm, has paid compensation to descendants of Armenians massacred in the First World War based on life insurance policies taken at the time. Thousands of families applied for compensation through policies that their ancestors bought under the Ottoman Empire from companies that were taken over by AXA. Axa had agreed to pay nearly 1,000 Armenian, French and American families, and had started sending cheques of about USD 10,000 each.
- With the initiative of members of the Barcelona-based Union of Friendship with Armenia, Maria Rosa Fortuni, a member of the Parliament of Catalonia, and Jose Samartin, head of the Office of Legal Affairs of the party that makes up the majority in the Parliament of Catalonia, the Parliament of Catalonia (Spain) unanimously adopted a decision on recognition of the Armenian Genocide.
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