Setbacks in the recognition of the Armenian Genocide
TURKISH THESIS REGARDING 1915 EVENTS ADOPTED BY OSCE - Thursday, July 03, 2008
Turkey's thesis against Armenian allegations about the events of 1915 has been adopted for the first time by the general assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
"The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly's annual session was held in Kazakhstan's capital Astana with the main theme of 'Transparency in the OSCE'. During the session, a motion submitted by the Turkish delegation was adopted. The motion underlines that past events like genocide should be recognized only after historians carried out a detailed research in all kinds of archives," Alaattin Buyukkaya, who leads the Turkish group at the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, told a statement on Wednesday.
In 2005, Turkey officially proposed to the Armenian government the establishment of a joint historical commission composed of historiansand other experts from both sides to study together the events of 1915 and to open the archives of Turkey and Armenia, as well as the archives of all relevant third-party countries and share their findings publicly.
Unfortunately, Armenia has not yet responded positively to this initiative and Turkey's proposal remains on the table.
Turkey and Armenia have no diplomatic links since Ankara intensified its protests against Armenian invasion and violence in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which Armenia invaded in a war with Azerbaijan in the early 1990s.
The border between Turkey and Armenia has been closed.
Armenia, with the backing of the Diaspora, claims up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered in orchestrated killings in 1915. Turkey rejects the claims, saying that 300,000 Armenians along with at least as many Turks died in civil strife that emerged when the Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia.
"The OSCE is the biggest international organization behind the United Nations. Adoption of the Turkish thesis by the OSCE is a significant achievement against the Armenian allegations. Also, the Turkish thesis regarding the events of 1915 was adopted for the first time on an international platform. The OSCE has 56 member states. Only Armenia voted against the motion. A majority of the other member states voted in favor of it," he said.
"The motion says that the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly encourages the formation of joint history commissions by historians and experts from the third countries in case of a research into political and military archives to scientifically and unbiasedly enlighten a disputed period in history in an effort to serve transparency and common understanding among the member states," Buyukkaya added.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE is the parliamentary dimension of the organization, whose 56 participating States span the geographical area from Vancouver to Vladivostok. The primary task of the 320 member Assembly is to facilitate inter-parliamentary dialogue, an important aspect of the overall effort to meet the challenges of democracy throughout the OSCE area. [even where there is no diplomatic relations?]
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Turkey's thesis against Armenian allegations about the events of 1915 has been adopted for the first time by the general assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
"The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly's annual session was held in Kazakhstan's capital Astana with the main theme of 'Transparency in the OSCE'. During the session, a motion submitted by the Turkish delegation was adopted. The motion underlines that past events like genocide should be recognized only after historians carried out a detailed research in all kinds of archives," Alaattin Buyukkaya, who leads the Turkish group at the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, told a statement on Wednesday.
In 2005, Turkey officially proposed to the Armenian government the establishment of a joint historical commission composed of historiansand other experts from both sides to study together the events of 1915 and to open the archives of Turkey and Armenia, as well as the archives of all relevant third-party countries and share their findings publicly.
Unfortunately, Armenia has not yet responded positively to this initiative and Turkey's proposal remains on the table.
Turkey and Armenia have no diplomatic links since Ankara intensified its protests against Armenian invasion and violence in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which Armenia invaded in a war with Azerbaijan in the early 1990s.
The border between Turkey and Armenia has been closed.
Armenia, with the backing of the Diaspora, claims up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered in orchestrated killings in 1915. Turkey rejects the claims, saying that 300,000 Armenians along with at least as many Turks died in civil strife that emerged when the Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia.
"The OSCE is the biggest international organization behind the United Nations. Adoption of the Turkish thesis by the OSCE is a significant achievement against the Armenian allegations. Also, the Turkish thesis regarding the events of 1915 was adopted for the first time on an international platform. The OSCE has 56 member states. Only Armenia voted against the motion. A majority of the other member states voted in favor of it," he said.
"The motion says that the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly encourages the formation of joint history commissions by historians and experts from the third countries in case of a research into political and military archives to scientifically and unbiasedly enlighten a disputed period in history in an effort to serve transparency and common understanding among the member states," Buyukkaya added.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE is the parliamentary dimension of the organization, whose 56 participating States span the geographical area from Vancouver to Vladivostok. The primary task of the 320 member Assembly is to facilitate inter-parliamentary dialogue, an important aspect of the overall effort to meet the challenges of democracy throughout the OSCE area. [even where there is no diplomatic relations?]
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AFTER MEETINGS IN TURKEY, FOXMAN SAYS FALLOUT OVER 'GENOCIDE'
FLAP IS 'BEHIND US'
Herb Keinon
THE JERUSALEM POST
Jul. 7, 2008
The controversy and fallout over the Anti-Defamation League's statement last year that Turkish actions toward Armenians during World War I was "tantamount to genocide" is "behind us," ADL National Director Abe Foxman said Monday in Jerusalem, where he arrived from Ankara and a series of meetings with Turkey's leadership.
Last August, Foxman - who was in a dispute in the Boston area over the ADL's position on the Turkey-Armenia issue - infuriated Turkish leaders by issuing the following statement: "We have never negated but have always described the painful events of 1915-1918 perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians as massacres and atrocities. On reflection, we have come to share the view of Henry Morgenthau, Sr. (the US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire at the time) that the consequences of those actions were indeed tantamount to genocide.
If the word 'genocide' had existed then, they would have called it genocide...
"Having said that, we continue to firmly believe that a congressional resolution on such matters is a counterproductive diversion and will not foster reconciliation between Turks and Armenians and may put at risk the Turkish Jewish community and the important multilateral relationship between Turkey, Israel and the United States."
The Turks viewed this as a reversal of the organized Jewish community's position on the issue, and warned that Turkish-Israeli ties could be harmed if the American Jewish organizations did not work - as they had done in the past - to ensure that the US Congress did not pass a resolution characterizing the massacre of Armenians during World War I as genocide.
The legislation was eventually removed from the table after US President George W. Bush, and numerous former secretaries of state and defense, wrote letters saying that passing the legislation would harm American interests.
"They were angry," Foxman said of the Turkish response to the ADL's statement last year. "But I think today there is an understanding of where we were, and that we were opposed to Congressional legislation, and that we stood very firm that that was not the way to resolve the issue, and that there is nothing cataclysmic about using the 'genocide' word."
Foxman, who met with President Abdullah Gul, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Foreign Minister Ali Babacan and other key government figures, said his message was that the Turks should be "proactive" and try to help today's Armenia as part of an effort to resolve the historic affair.
"In the conversations I had with all of them I said there is a need to be proactive, that they need to deal with live Armenians, and strengthen the relationship between Turkey and Armenia, and by strengthening the relations today - frontier issues, opening borders - it will place the historical issue in the background and be much easier to deal with," Foxman said.
By the same token, Foxman said that the Armenian community in the US should understand that pressure to use "certain words they want us to use is not going to help one Armenian."
Herb Keinon
THE JERUSALEM POST
Jul. 7, 2008
The controversy and fallout over the Anti-Defamation League's statement last year that Turkish actions toward Armenians during World War I was "tantamount to genocide" is "behind us," ADL National Director Abe Foxman said Monday in Jerusalem, where he arrived from Ankara and a series of meetings with Turkey's leadership.
Last August, Foxman - who was in a dispute in the Boston area over the ADL's position on the Turkey-Armenia issue - infuriated Turkish leaders by issuing the following statement: "We have never negated but have always described the painful events of 1915-1918 perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians as massacres and atrocities. On reflection, we have come to share the view of Henry Morgenthau, Sr. (the US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire at the time) that the consequences of those actions were indeed tantamount to genocide.
If the word 'genocide' had existed then, they would have called it genocide...
"Having said that, we continue to firmly believe that a congressional resolution on such matters is a counterproductive diversion and will not foster reconciliation between Turks and Armenians and may put at risk the Turkish Jewish community and the important multilateral relationship between Turkey, Israel and the United States."
The Turks viewed this as a reversal of the organized Jewish community's position on the issue, and warned that Turkish-Israeli ties could be harmed if the American Jewish organizations did not work - as they had done in the past - to ensure that the US Congress did not pass a resolution characterizing the massacre of Armenians during World War I as genocide.
The legislation was eventually removed from the table after US President George W. Bush, and numerous former secretaries of state and defense, wrote letters saying that passing the legislation would harm American interests.
"They were angry," Foxman said of the Turkish response to the ADL's statement last year. "But I think today there is an understanding of where we were, and that we were opposed to Congressional legislation, and that we stood very firm that that was not the way to resolve the issue, and that there is nothing cataclysmic about using the 'genocide' word."
Foxman, who met with President Abdullah Gul, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Foreign Minister Ali Babacan and other key government figures, said his message was that the Turks should be "proactive" and try to help today's Armenia as part of an effort to resolve the historic affair.
"In the conversations I had with all of them I said there is a need to be proactive, that they need to deal with live Armenians, and strengthen the relationship between Turkey and Armenia, and by strengthening the relations today - frontier issues, opening borders - it will place the historical issue in the background and be much easier to deal with," Foxman said.
By the same token, Foxman said that the Armenian community in the US should understand that pressure to use "certain words they want us to use is not going to help one Armenian."
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1915 killings of Armenians stokes Georgetown furor on academic freedom
July 6, 2008
By Susan Kinzie
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON - The issue that has roiled U.S.-Turkish relations in recent months ' how to characterize the mass killings of Armenians in 1915 ' has set off a dispute over politics and academic freedom at an institute housed at Georgetown University.
Several board members of the Institute of Turkish Studies have resigned this summer, protesting the ouster of a board chairman who wrote that scholars should research, rather than avoid, what he characterized as an Armenian genocide.
Within weeks of writing about the matter in late 2006, Binghamton University professor Donald Quataert resigned from the board of governors, saying the Turkish ambassador to the United States told him he had angered some political leaders in Ankara and that they had threatened to revoke the institute's funding.
After a prominent association of Middle Eastern scholars learned about it, they wrote a letter in May to the institute, the Turkish prime minister and other leaders asking that Quataert be reinstated and money for the institute be put in an irrevocable trust to avoid political influence.
The ambassador of the Republic of Turkey, H.E. Nabi Sensoy, denied that he had any role in Quataert's resignation. In a written statement, he said that claims that he urged Quataert to leave are unfounded and misleading.
The dispute shows the tensions between money and scholarship, and the impact language can have on historical understanding.
Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed when the Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War I. Armenians and Turks bitterly disagree over whether it was a campaign of genocide, or a civil war in which many Turks were also killed.
In the fall, when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) championed a bill that would characterize the events of 1915 to 1917 as genocide, the Bush administration fought it and several former defense secretaries warned that Turkish leaders would limit U.S. access to a military base needed for the war in Iraq.
The Turkish studies institute, founded in 1983, is independent from Georgetown University, but Executive Director David Cuthell teaches a course there in exchange for space on campus.
Julie Green Bataille, a university spokeswoman, wrote in an e-mail, "We will review this matter consistent with the importance of academic reedom and the fact that the institute is independently funded and governed."
The institute's funding, a $3 million grant, is entirely from Turkey.
A few years ago, Quataert said, members of the board checked on what they thought was an irrevocable blind trust "and to our surprise it turned out to be a gift that could be revoked by the Turkish government."
Quataert, a professor of history, said the institute has funded good scholarship without political influence. The selection of which studies to support is done by a committee of academics on the associate board, he said, and approved by the board, which includes business and political leaders. Never once, he said, did he think a grant application was judged on anything other than its academic merits.
He also noted that during his time there, no one applied for grants that would have been controversial in Turkey. Asked if any of the research characterized the events as genocide, Cuthell said, "My gut is no. It's that third rail."
Roger Smith, professor emeritus of government at the College of William and Mary, questioned whether the non-profit institute deserves its tax-exempt status if there is political influence ' and whether it is an undeclared lobbying arm for the Turkish government.
Cuthell said none of the institute's critics ever bothered to check the truth of Quataert's account with the institute: It does not lobby, Cuthell said, and "the allegations of academic freedom simply don't hold up."
The controversy began quietly in late 2006 with a review of historian Donald Bloxham's book, "The Great Game of Genocide." Quataert wrote that the slaughter of Armenians has been the elephant in the room of Ottoman studies. Despite his belief that the term "genocide" had
become a distraction, he said the events met the United Nations definition of the word.
He sent a letter of resignation to members of the institute in December 2006, and one board member resigned.
But in the fall, around the same time that Congress was debating the Armenian question, Quataert was asked to speak at a conference about what had happened at the institute. He told members of the Middle Eastern Studies Association that the ambassador told him he must issue
a retraction of his book review or step down ' or put funding for the institute in jeopardy.
His colleagues were shocked, said Laurie Brand, director of the school of international relations at the University of Southern California.
Ambassador Sensoy, who is honorary chairman of the institute's board, said in a statement this week, "Neither the Turkish Government nor I have ever placed any pressure upon the ITS, for such interference would have violated the principle of the academic freedom, which we uphold the most. The Turkish Government and I will be the first to defend ITS from any such pressure." [!!!!!]
Since the May 27 letter from the scholars association was sent, several associate and full members of the board have left. Marcie Patton, Resat Kasaba and Kemal Silay resigned; Fatma Muge Gocek said she would resign, and Birol Yesilada said his primary reason for stepping down at this time is his health, but that he is concerned about the conflicting accounts of what had happened. "It's a very difficult line that scholars walk," Patton said, "especially post-9/11, especially because of the Iraq war."
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