Armenian News - Erdogan on the Armenian Genocide.
From his earlier days as prime minister, Erdogan does not seem to have
changed his tune since becoming president. This despite all the recent
books (see review at the end) and independent research papers that
mean the politically appointed 'historical commission' has no real
purpose.
http://youtu.be/IqcjaPsJHXI
ERDOGAN: ARMENIAN DIASPORA HINDERS PEACE EFFORTS
AND DIALOGUE
Daily Sabah, Turkey
Feb 11 2015
NURBANU KIZIL
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan highlighted that Turkey
is ready for a constructive and objective approach to resolve the
tensions between Armenia and Turkey due to the 1915 incidents despite
the objection of the Armenian diaspora
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that every time Turkey tries to
approach Armenia to resolve the issues between the two countries, they
have been left without a response as the Armenian diaspora continues
to block Turkey's efforts to establish peace through dialogue.
As part of his official visit to Colombia, Erdogan spoke on Tuesday
at a symposium co-organized by Bogota Externado University and Ankara
University and urged Armenia to examine the 1915 events in a more
objective manner through the lens of science and not politics. He also
said that Turkey is sincere in its readiness to investigate the issue
in order to reach accurate conclusions. He highlighted that the 1915
events have not been properly examined or discussed.
"On the 100th anniversary of the 1915 events, as Turkey we repeat our
sincere call to Armenia," Erdogan said, urging Armenians to take a
more proactive and objective approach and let scholars and academics
investigate the matter rather than politicians.
Erdogan said that Armenian leaders rejected Turkey's invitation to
attend the ceremony organized in Canakkale to commemorate the 100th
anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli in a discourteous manner
and that their offensive statements closed the doors of dialogue
once again.
"We wanted them to be in Canakkale on April 24 and breathe the spirit
in the air, try to comprehend what hundreds of thousands of Turkish
martyrs experienced," Erdogan said, and reiterated that Turkey will
not give up its efforts to reach peace and dialogue with respect to
the 1915 events.
He underscored that Turkey has always been against conflicts and crises
in the region and has made rational and justified objections to such
attempts. "We want peace, justice, friendship and brotherhood in our
region," he said, adding that Turkey is not requesting anything else.
In January, Erdogan sent invitation letters to over 100 world leaders
to take part in the ceremonies commemorating the 100oth anniversary
of the Battle of Gallipoli on April 24.
Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan reportedly rejected Erdogan's
invitation as being a "short-sighted" attempt to cover the 100th year
commemoration of the 1915 events.
In a the speech, Erdogan said that understanding World War I was
crucial to comprehending the current state of events in the world as
it drew the borders of the current nation-states, which had serious
implications for today.
"Many of our global problems today are rooted in World War I," he
said, explaining that the issue in Palestine and conflicts in Iraq,
Yemen, Egypt, North Africa, the Caucasus and the Balkans can all be
traced back to the war.
"The borders were not only drawn for territories, but were also imposed
on the people," Erdogan said, arguing that abstract borders had been
forcefully imposed on people's mentalities, cultures and religions
and that siblings had been made enemies.
The 1915 events occurred during World War I when a segment of
Armenians living under the Ottoman Empire supported the Russian
invasion and revolted against the state and were relocated to eastern
Anatolia. While Turkey refrains from using the term "genocide" to refer
to the incident, as many Turks also lost their lives due to attacks
carried out by Armenian gangs in Anatolia, the Armenian state and
diaspora are campaigning for the incident to be recognized as genocide.
Erdogan issued a letter expressing condolences for the 1915 events
on April 23, 2014, which was unprecedented in Turkey's history. In
the letter, he urged for the establishment of a joint historical
commission to investigate the events and called Armenia to open their
archives as Turkey has done.
[...and what about the UK presence?]
RFE/RL Report
Yerevan Hopes For U.S. Presence At Genocide Commemoration
Nane Sahakian
13.02.2015
President Serzh Sarkisian has expressed hope that senior
U.S. officials will visit Armenia on April 24 to attend official
commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, the
new U.S. ambassador in Yerevan said on Friday.
The envoy, Richard Mills, held his first news conference at the
U.S. Embassy after handing his credentials to Sarkisian. He met with
Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian on Thursday.
Mills said both Sarkisian and Nalbandian stressed the importance of
high-level U.S. presence at the official ceremonies in Yerevan that
will mark the genocide centenary. "I will convey that to Washington,"
he said.
Sarkisian's office confirmed that the upcoming centenary
commemorations were on the agenda of the meeting with Mills. But it
gave no details.
Official Yerevan has reportedly sent invitations to dozens of world
leaders. It is clear whether any high-ranking U.S. officials are among
them.
U.S. President Barack Obama has declined to describe the 1915 mass
killings of Armenians in Ottoman Empire as genocide in his annual
statements issued on April 24. He has used instead the Armenian phrase
"Meds Yeghern," or Great Calamity, to honor the 1.5 million victims of
"one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century."
Both Obama and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry pledged to
explicitly recognize the genocide when they ran for president in 2008
and 2004 respectively.
According to his office, Sarkisian reaffirmed his commitment to
deepening Armenia's ties with the United States. They already "occupy
an important place" on the Armenian foreign policy agenda, he said,
praising the U.S. role in international efforts to resolve the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and promote broader regional security.
A statement released by the office said the two men also discussed
ongoing efforts to agree a new U.S.-Armenian deal meant to facilitate
bilateral trade and investments. Mills told reporters that the issue
will be a major focus of his tour of duty in Armenia. But he stressed
that the onus is on the Armenian authorities to attract more
U.S. investments by improving the domestic business climate.
ABOUT TO LAND AT THE EUROVISION SONG CONTEST
Quartz
Feb 12 2015
Written by Annalisa Merelli@missanabeem
Do not be fooled by the song and dance; the Eurovision Song Contest
really is about international politics.
This year's edition of Europe's top kitsch-fest, which will be held
in Vienna May 19-23, had already promised plenty of intrigue, with
Ukraine withdrawing from the contest, Russia organizing a competing
event (while still going for a Eurovision win), and the decidedly
non-European nation of Australia planning to make its contest debut.
Now comes word that Armenia will present a song evoking the aftermath
of the Armenian genocide.
This year's Eurovision contest roughly coincides with the 100th
anniversary of the Ottoman empire's decimation of its Armenian
minority. More than 1 million people who were living in what's now
Turkey were killed. Others scattered, seeding the modern Armenian
diaspora.
The genocide, which began in April 1915, is still denied by the
Turkish government; a trial underway in the European Court of Human
Rights Court will test whether outlawing its denial is a violation
of free speech.
Armenia will take part in Eurovision with a song evocatively titled
Don't deny, by Genealogy. The group will be comprised of artists from
the Armenian diaspora--one each from Africa, America, Asia, Australia,
and Europe--who will be joined on stage by an Armenian performer.
Armenian news agency Armenpress reports that the meaning behind the
choice to have performers from five different parts of the world is
to symbolize unity and peace.
The number goes along with the five petals of the Forget Me Not
flower, and another participant will join the group and bring the
"petals" together.
According to the Eurovision official website:
The idea is to unite a new generation of Armenians on stage whose
families once spread all over the world in the year 1915.
The performers reportedly will include French-Armenian Essaï,
who recently released Je n'oublie pas (I don't forget), a song he
dedicates, in the video, to "the 1.5 million Armenians, victims of
the 1915 genocide."
This is not the first time Eurovision has been tied to Armenian
politics. In 2012, Armenia withdrew from the contest after the
organizers selected Baku, Azerbaijan, as the host city of the event.
Armenia and Azerbaijan had gone to war over the disputed South Caucasus
territory of Nagorno-Karabakh in the 1990s, without ever getting to
a resolution.
horizonweekly.ca
THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE AND ETHNIC CLEANSING IN THE
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
February 10, 2015
The Young Turks' Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and
Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire.
Taner Akcam
Co-Winner of the 2013 Albert Hourani Book Award, Middle East Studies
One of ForeignAffairs.com's Best Books on the Middle East
Introducing new evidence from more than 600 secret Ottoman documents,
this book demonstrates in unprecedented detail that the Armenian
Genocide and the expulsion of Greeks from the late Ottoman Empire
resulted from an official effort to rid the empire of its Christian
subjects. Presenting these previously inaccessible documents along
with expert context and analysis, Taner Akcam's most authoritative work
to date goes deep inside the bureaucratic machinery of Ottoman Turkey
to show how a dying empire embraced genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Although the deportation and killing of Armenians was internationally
condemned in 1915 as a "crime against humanity and civilization,"
the Ottoman government initiated a policy of denial that is still
maintained by the Turkish Republic. The case for Turkey's "official
history" rests on documents from the Ottoman imperial archives, to
which access has been heavily restricted until recently. It is this
very source that Akcam now uses to overturn the official narrative.
The documents presented here attest to a late-Ottoman policy
of Turkification, the goal of which was no less than the radical
demographic transformation of Anatolia. To that end, about one-third
of Anatolia's 15 million people were displaced, deported, expelled,
or massacred, destroying the ethno-religious diversity of an ancient
cultural crossroads of East and West, and paving the way for the
Turkish Republic.
By uncovering the central roles played by demographic engineering and
assimilation in the Armenian Genocide, this book will fundamentally
change how this crime is understood and show that physical destruction
is not the only aspect of the genocidal process.
Taner Akcam, the first scholar of Turkish origin to publicly
acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, holds the Kaloosdian and Mugar
Chair in Armenian Genocide Studies at Clark University. His many
books include A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question
of Turkish Responsibility (Metropolitan Books).
Review:
"Akcam has long courted controversy in Turkey, where he was jailed as
a student activist in the 1970s before claiming asylum in Germany,
but his intellectual courage is beyond question. Moreover, while
Turkey's official account of what happened in 1915 is unchanged,
Turkish public and intellectual opinion is now much more open to
debate. This dispassionate, scholarly study is a valuable contribution
to help that debate move on."--Delphine Strauss, Financial Times
"[T]he fact that a Turkish historian with access to the
Ottoman archives has written this book is of immeasurable
significance."--Foreign Affairs
"Akcam has long been the most vocal Turkish scholars regarding the
Ottoman participation in genocidal acts against Armenians. Here, using
Ottoman archival sources, the author makes his case that the Young Turk
government had planned prior to WWI to remove the empire's Christian
and no-Turkish Muslim population. . . . The author's discussion of
the removal and execution of the Armenians is extremely detailed and
well documented, and his usage of Ottoman sources, although questioned
by Turkish nationalist scholars, is a very important addition to the
study of this issue."--Choice
"[A] major breakthrough in the our understanding of the social
engineering that led to the near destruction of the Armenians of
Anatolia, and of the dual-track mechanism for organizing it that
the Young Turks employed. . . . [A] must for serious scholars of the
Armenian Genocide."--John M. Evans, former U.S. Ambassador to Armenia
(2004-2006), American Diplomacy
"Taner Akcam's study represents a giant step forward. He produced a
most important book, all the more so because the ideology of Islamism
has endured, and most recently some of its outstanding proponents
have seized power in the Middle East."--Dr. Wolfgang G. Schwanitz,
Scholars for Peace in the Middle East
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