Month: April 2021

On denying the truth of the Armenian Genocide

Emil Lazarian
Noushin Framke was shocked to find a hero of the Palestinian human rights movement criticize the Biden Administration's acknowledgment of the Armenian genocide.
BY NOUSHIN FRAMKE  APRIL 28, 2021

“You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye!”

Matthew 7:5

It was December 2019 and I was driving home from a successful Christmas shopping run when I had to pull off the road and take a moment to collect myself. I had gotten an alert announcing that the US senate had, despite all odds and precedent, passed the Menendez Resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide. Even though the House had passed a resolution six weeks earlier recognizing the systematic mass murder and ethnic cleansing of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks as a genocide, almost nothing that passes in the House these days also passes in the Senate. I had not been holding my breath for the recognition to move forward in any way. Learning that the senate passed the resolution, by unanimous consent no less, took my breath away.

I found myself weeping on the Garden State Parkway as other cars sped by. I texted my spouse and daughters with the news and said that even though Donald Trump would never take it any further, it was an important milestone to celebrate. I was sad that my mother had not lived to see this day. Her mother, my grandmother, survived the genocide by walking into Iran as a 10-year-old refugee. My mother passed away in 2014, one year before the centennial commemoration of the Armenian Genocide, when we had hoped to return to Armenia to pay our respects at the memorial in Yerevan.

This year on on April 24th, Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, a US President at long last referred to the events as genocide in a statement released by the White House. With the complicated power dynamics between the US, Turkey, the Turkish lobby in the US, Israel and the Israel lobby who all worked against recognition of the Armenian Genocide, Biden’s statement was historic and radical; it is the culmination of decades of work and advocacy by the US Armenian community for the US to stand on the right side of history. I never thought this day would come. It is a good and necessary milestone, but it almost feels anticlimactic. As a descendant of the first holocaust of the 20th century — which is how Winston Churchill described the Armenian Genocide — it was a relief for me to hear President Biden say it, but it did not feel like a victory like the day the Senate finally did the right thing in 2019.

The hours since Biden’s statement have been a roller coaster, with many messages of congratulations dropping in my inbox. And yet they’ve been accompanied by insulting and offensive reactions from genocide-deniers getting air time on the news. Today, there was one such message in my email inbox that gave me a real shock. The email newsletter Global Justice in the 21st Century, featured an article from Richard Falk entitled “Addressing Alleged Genocide by China Against the Uyghur People,” which also addressed Biden’s declaration with startling disdain.

Falk, a professor emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and retired UN Rapporteur on Palestinian Human Rights, is a hero in the Palestine advocacy community. Because he is Jewish and speaks out against Israeli human rights abuses with great clarity, he is held in high regard by those working to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, including myself. But reading his dismissive words today dredged up that deep pain I am carrying for my mother and her mother before her to the point where I felt the need to respond.

Falk writes:

Biden has added another dimension to the misuse of ‘genocide,’ making another indirect controversial intrusion on past memories and present realities by fulfilling on behalf of the United States Government his campaign pledge to declare what befell the Armenian community in 1915 as ‘genocide’ on April 24, 2021 without bothering to clarify whether this was a legal, political, or moral assessment of events that occurred in the midst of World War I. The Nuremberg Judgment was very clear that for action to legally qualify as an international crime it must have been preceded by the enactment of the relevant legal norm. Otherwise, it is an instance of retroactive criminalization, and cannot validly be prosecuted, however abhorrent.

It is strange to see that Falk can be brave when calling out Israel’s present day crimes, but cannot acknowledge the truth over a century on when it comes to genocide committed by the Ottoman Turks. He even uses the crutch that the term “genocide” didn’t exist at the time of the Ottoman crimes:

As we know the word ‘genocide’ was a linguistic innovation of the 1940s, and it only became criminalized by the adoption of the Genocide Convention in 1948. For Biden to come along in 2021 and pronounce these events as genocide is again to trivialize this ultimate crime for the sake of domestic political gain and as a way of demeaning Turkey because of some foreign policy differences. If genuinely motivated for historical redress, a responsible approach might have been to call for an independent international inquiry to interpret the events, giving Turkey, as well as representatives of the Armenian community, an opportunity to present its narrative which is more an explanation than a justification.

Did he just say we need “an independent international inquiry to interpret the events”? After a century of study and interpretation of this history, Falk suggests we now do more study and interpretation. And give the Turks a seat at this table of interpretation. Is that what we did for the Germans after their heinous crimes? Why does this hero of Palestinian rights with his rigorous work on international law, not see the forest for the trees? How is he able to have such a huge blind spot?

It is true that the word “genocide” did not come about until the Nazi atrocities against the Jews of Europe, when Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin formed the word by combining geno-, from the Greek word for race or tribe, with –cide, from the Latin word for killing. According to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum:

Genocide is an internationally recognized crime where acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. These acts fall into five categories:

Killing members of the group

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum documents The Armenian Genocide, saying it refers to “the physical annihilation of Armenian Christian people living in the Ottoman Empire.” The Armenian National Institute lists dozens of global resolutions, laws and declarations affirming the Armenian Genocide.

THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE MEMORIAL IN YEREVAN, ARMENIA

By 1915, the Ottoman Empire was at the end of its seven-centuries-long reign and way past its glory years when religious and ethnic diversity in the empire was its strength. Having lost pieces of the empire in the 19th century (Greece, Egypt, Bosnia, Serbia, Romania, to name a few) with losing more territories leading into WWI, the fact remains that the Armenians lived in the “heart” of the empire and were not in a far-flung region the Ottomans could afford to lose. The Ottomans set out to ethnically cleanse their lands, based on religion, of the Christian Armenians. Ottoman political reasons and their intentions to wipe out the Armenian people have been well documented by international scholars as well as Turkish ones, and do in fact fit the description of genocide established later in the century. For Richard Falk, an expert on International Law, to deny this reality is shocking and shameful.

And speaking of shameful, the Turkish narrative says the “Armenian massacres” happened as a part of WWI, with “both sides” killing the other. Pointing to the “log in their own eye”, acclaimed Turkish historian Taner Akçam, disproves this narrative in his groundbreaking book, A Shameful Act, showing that the Ottoman Turks committed the crimes not as part of WWI but under the cover of WWI. Pan-Turkism, a movement to consolidate all Turkish-speaking peoples and establish a power stretching from Istanbul across Asia Minor to Central Asia and beyond, was part of the motivation for the Turks to ethnically cleanse their country of the Christian Armenians in their midst. Armenians are in fact the indigenous people on the land, having lived there from time immemorial; the Turks arrived from the East as part of the Mongol conquests that began in the 13th Century CE which relatively-speaking is not that long in SW Asia, or “the Middle East”. (see also the religion-based Greek/Turkish population exchanges, i.e., the intentional ethnic cleansing of Greeks after WWI).

Ethnically cleansing an entire region of a certain population by attempting to destroy them is genocide. And what about the “hidden Armenians”?

As NPR reported in 2015:

A century after Ottoman forces massacred an estimated 1 to 1.5 million Armenian Christians, some of the remaining Armenian Turks are taking tentative steps out into the open. They survived because their ancestors were taken in by Muslim families and raised as Muslims.

Their “ancestors” being Armenian children. Again, the fifth of five elements that define genocide is “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” There are “hidden Armenians” all over Turkey today.

We Armenians carry the silent pain of many generations within us, and it wells up and lifts to the surface on days like this, making it hard to ignore the injustice of the last 100 years of denial. It is powerful to have influential people such as President Biden acknowledge the basic truth at the root of our collective grief. It’s been a long journey, not just in advocacy for justice by the global Armenian diaspora, but also literally a long journey from the mountains of the Caucasus and Anatolia, to all the communities where Armenians have had to resettle around the world. The finish line has always been in sight but never reachable. Now that in the US we have official recognition, it is beyond disappointing to see such stubborn refusal from a champion of human rights such as Falk, who has called the intolerable situation in Gaza “a prelude to genocide” and has worked for years to hold Israel accountable for heinous human rights abuses. When it comes to the undeniable truth of genocides past, apparently, someone needs to point out there is a log in his eye.

Noushin Darya Framke is an award-winning writer and editor who has worked as an advocate for Palestinian rights since 2004. She is Armenian on her maternal side (Lazarian) and Iranian on her paternal side. She has been living in the US since 1978 and has been a US citizen for 35 years.



Vintner pays homage to Armenian roots, wines now available in Houston

Parkev Tvankchian
Houston Chronicle
Dale Robertson, Correspondent
Updated: 10:19 a.m.

Vahe Keushguerian’s Armenian wines are available at a half-dozen spots in Houston.

Dale Robertson / Contributor

Having worked in California and Italy, Vahe Keushguerian was already well versed in the world of wine when he traveled with a friend to Armenia to discover his roots. Keushguerian’s family had been part of the Armenian diaspora, living in Syria, where he was born, and later Lebanon, where he grew up. But the trip, taken in 1998, was if anything intended to serve as a respite from wine, not an even deeper immersion.

Keushguerian’s curiosity got the best of him. There he was, about to turn 40 and throwing himself into Armenia’s ancient wine culture, about which he had known almost nothing beforehand. A proverbial light bulb had gone off. Why be just another winemaker in Tuscany or Puglia when he could position himself on the cutting edge in this magical place of his ancestors that was both new and old at once, a place where winemaking is now believed to have begun six millennia ago?

Within three years of that initial foray, he had begun planting vines. By 2009, he’d moved to Yerevan, Armenia’s capital city of more than 1 million inhabitants watched over by snow-capped Mount Ararat, the mythical, nearly 17,000-foot peak just across the border in Turkey.

Today, Keushguerian and his 37-year-old daughter Aimee are front and center in Armenia’s burgeoning wine industry with its sky’s-the-limit potential because of its marvelous terroir. With Aimee minding the store back in Yerevan, he has become the traveling face of Storica, a wine company founded only last year for the express purpose of getting Armenian bottles into American cellars.

It’s working. When Keushguerian visited Houston recently, he found his wines already available in a half-dozen spots. Two sparklers, a white and two reds have turned heads for both their quality and reasonable prices. Montrose Cheese & Wine and Phoenicia offer retail options, and restaurants/wine bars featuring at least one of the wines include Savoir — sommelier Emily Tolbert hosted Keushguerian’s public tasting — 13 Celsius, Nancy’s Hustle, One Fifth, Squable and Tiny Champions.

Lauren Lee, who oversees the wine program at Montrose Cheese & Wine, offers the Keush Origins Brut for $24.99 and sells the Zulal Areni Classic, a red, by the glass ($7 for a 3-ounce pour, $12 for 7 ounces). She praised the Origins for its “lushness,” saying it fits nicely into “the Cremant de Bourgogne niche” but at a markedly lower price. 13 Celsius sells the higher-end Keush Blanc de Blancs Extra Brut both by the glass ($15) and the bottle ($58).

“Sometimes (the customer) looks at you a little quizzical when you say ‘Armenia,’” 13 Celsius’ sommelier Adele Corrigan said, “but it’s delicious and yeasty and reminds people of a nice champagne.”

Both Keush sparklers are made in the same méthode traditionnelle style but are blends of the indigenous voskehat and khatouni grapes. The fruit for the Blanc de Blancs, which spends 36 months on the lees versus 22 for the Origins, comes from 80- to 100-year-old vines growing nearly 6,000 feet above sea level near the village of Khachik in the Vayots Dzor, Armenia’s Napa Valley.

The Zulal, meaning “pure” in Armenian, is a voskehat while the Zulal reds are areni, which thrives in the Areni sub-region of the Vayots Dzor. These are Armenia’s premier go-to varietals, the country’s chardonnay and cabernet, if you will, but Keushguerian says 55 kinds of indigenous grapes spread across seven wine-growing regions have turned up through DNA tasting.

The Blanc de Blancs, the Zulal white and the Zulal reserve red all received scores as high as 9.2 and unanimous recommendations in last week’s blind tasting by the Houston Chronicle’s panel.

“We’ve got the high-elevation fruit that we harvest in October,” Keushguerian added. “So we get both the maturity of the fruit with beautiful ripe flavors and perfect natural acidity, with a low pH.”

Considerable credit for the Storica wine’s strong sales in these parts goes to Chris Poldoian, the former sommelier at Camerata, who has Armenian ancestry of his own and was brought on to rep the wines in Texas.

He remembers his Armenian-born grandmother telling him that the country “invented wine.” He also remembers laughing, assuming that she was just proud of her heritage.

Rightly so, too. In 2011, Armenian archaeologists announced the discovery of the world’s oldest-known wine-production facility. Located in a marvelous complex of caves in Areni, it consists of a shallow basin used to press grapes, a vat for storage and fermentation jars. They also found grape seeds, remains of pressed grapes and dozens of dried vines. The cave’s remains date to about 4000 B.C., or some 900 years before what were previously thought to be the oldest winemaking remnants that had turned up in Egyptian tombs.

By the mid-20th century, however, much of Armenia’s grape crop was going into cognac and brandy sold in the Soviet Union. And little wine made it out of the Soviet block because, frankly, most of it was plonk. Production centered on quantity, not quality, and the winery infrastructure left over from that period proved largely useless when a new generation of capitalist winemakers began applying its skills using modern Western technology.

Poldoian noted that Keushguerian would no more consider making his wines in those old clay pots called amphora than would any of the world’s top-flight winemakers, saying: “When Vahe is asked about amphora, he replies, ‘Would you ask (Burgundian chardonnay sage) Etienne Sauzet why he doesn’t make wine in amphora?’

“The perception before you taste a wine from this part of the world is that it’s going to be very rustic, made in some kind of ancient style. You do think of caves, of amphora. But Vahe’s wines are modern wines that look to the future — it’s all about the viticulture today — while also paying homage to the past.”

 

Regional Response to Biden’s Recognition of Armenian Genocide

Diana Dabaghian




04/29/2021 Turkey (International Christian Concern) –  On April 24, 2021, President Joe Biden became the second U.S. president to designate the 1915 atrocities against Armenians as genocide. Former presidents have avoided using the word genocide following pressure from Turkey and the potential strain between the two countries.

Biden’s statement began a ripple effect through Turkish, Armenian, and Azeri communities. In Turkey’s parliament, deputy of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and Turkish Armenian Garo Paylan commented on Genocide Remembrance Day saying in a tweet, “After 106 years, we walk on streets named after Talat Pasha, the architect of the Genocide. We educate our children at schools named after Talat Pasha.” In response to his comment, another member of parliament, Ümit Özdağ formerly of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), wrote back, “Impudent provocateur man. If you are not content, go to hell. Talat Pasha didn’t expel patriotic Armenians but those who stabbed us in the back like you. When the time comes, you’ll also have a Talat Pasha experience and you should have it.”

The Twitter conversation continued as Özdağ threatened the Armenian parliament member. In response, Turkey’s Human Rights Association (IHD) filed a criminal complaint against MP Ümit Özdağ. In the petition, IHD claimed the threats violated a crime under Articles 106 and 216 of the Turkish Penal Code and Article 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

Just prior to Biden’s declaration, Paylan proposed a new law to the Turkish parliament to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide. Turkey maintains that the Ottoman-era deaths of 1915 were without forethought and under wartime conditions. Instead of pursuing reconciliation via official recognition, the Turkish parliament passed a resolution on April 27 declaring that President Biden’s recognition of the genocide was null and void. Four of the five parliamentary parties approved the resolution, with only the HDP dissenting.

Turkish society also reacted to the recognition of the ethnic-religious genocide. The Diyarbakir Bar Association is facing government harassment and criticism over its statement supporting Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day saying, “We share the grief for the Great Calamity”. The Diyarbakir Public Prosecutor’s office is investigating the statement and charged its senior leadership with “degrading the Turkish Nation, the State of the Republic of Turkey, the institutions and bodies of the state.” The Diyarbakir Bar briefly responded that they refuse to restrict their freedom of _expression_ and defended their statement.

Any Armenian living in Turkey who voices support of the genocide recognition does so at great risk. As historically done in Turkey via the conversion of Hagia Sofia and pressures on other Christian religious institutions and leaders, Turkey sees Christians as a tool to leverage for political gain (particularly in the international arena) rather than as full members of society. The Armenian Foundations Union condemned the U.S. and other foreign actors not directly connected to the Armenian Genocide for commenting on it, saying that it only deepened the hurt done to them.

Turkish partner country Azerbaijan weighed in on President Biden’s comments as well, with President Aliyev saying that Biden’s remarks were “unacceptable” and a “historical mistake.” Azerbaijan has made it clear that it will stand by Turkey and all of its decisions. Turkish media linked Biden’s comments on the genocide as a “punishment” for Turkish support of Azerbaijan in the recent Nagorno-Karabakh (Armenian: Artsakh) war. They warned that the declaration would further anti-Americanism among the nationalist communities in Turkey.

A number of protests occurred by Turks in response to the declaration. Videos circulating of these protests showed Azeri flags were often present. Video purporting to show a protest staged at the US Embassy in Ankara included demonstrators dressed as Ottoman-era Turks brandishing swords. Meanwhile, some of Turkey’s opposition parties have criticized President Erdogan for allowing international relations to decrease to such a level that genocide recognition became possible. In other words, denial of the genocide and even its glorification continues across Turkish and Azeri society.

https://www.persecution.org/2021/04/29/regional-response-bidens-remarks-armenian-genocide/

What Biden’s genocide remark means to Turkey, and to Armenians

Bedik Zaminian
CBS News

BY PINAR SEVINCLIDIR

UPDATED ON: APRIL 29, 2021 / 3:52 AM / CBS NEWS

stanbul — Turkey and the U.S. have once again found each other at odds after President Joe Biden's characterization of the Ottoman atrocities committed against ethnic Armenians more than 100 years ago as genocide. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called Mr. Biden's statement "baseless, unfair and untrue." 

Erdogan said the American leader's "wrong step" would hinder bilateral relations, and he hinted strongly at hypocrisy, urging the U.S. to "look in the mirror."

Breaking with previous administrations, Mr. Biden described the deadly forced deportation of well over a million Armenians from the Ottoman Empire — modern-day Turkey — at the beginning of World War I as "a genocide."

"Each year on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring," Mr. Biden said in a statement on April 24, widely recognized as Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.   

His use of the word brought immediate, sharp condemnation from Turkish officials. The country's foreign ministry said the words would not change history, and it summoned the U.S. Ambassador in Ankara to deliver a formal complaint.

Even political rivals inside Turkey closed ranks over Mr. Biden's statement. Turkey's leading opposition Republican People's Party echoed the government's criticism and called the statement "a serious mistake."

Historians say that in the summer and autumn of 1915, Armenian civilians were forced from their homes and marched through the valleys and mountains of Eastern Anatolia (Turkey) towards the Syrian desert. Armenian leaders say 1.5 million civilians died of starvation and disease as about 90% of the ethnic group in Anatolia were driven from their homes.     

Turkey's government says Armenian armed gangs posed a national security threat as they were colluding with Western-allied Russia to enable the occupation of eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire.

Turkey admits that Armenians were deported, but it disputes the numbers, putting the death toll at a few hundred thousand and insisting there was no intention of eliminating a race of people. Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, modern-day Turkey's state policy has been to reject any description of the treatment of the Armenians at the time as genocide.  

People hold pictures of victims during a memorial to commemorate the 1915 Armenian mass killings, April 24, 2018, in Istanbul, Turkey.CHRIS MCGRATH/GETTY

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan became the first Turkish leader to offer condolences for the Armenian deaths when, in 2014, he acknowledged that the events of 1915 had "inhumane consequences," and expressed hope that those who had died were at peace.

Historian Umit Kurt is skeptical of the defense offered by Turkish officials of the deportations. He told CBS News that officials who deny the charge of genocide should explain why Armenian properties were seized and then sold off by the state. The homes were distributed among local Ottoman elites and Muslim refugees quickly after the Armenians were forced out, virtually erasing the ethnic group's longtime presence in the region. 

"The seizure of properties shows the Ottoman rulers never expected Armenians to return." Kurt told CBS News. 

The decision by the U.S. leader to use the highly-charged word was "political," Faruk Logoglu, a former Turkish Ambassador to the United States, told CBS News. "Biden's decision is likely to stir the hornet's nest, and it will have medium and long-term consequences for Turkey-U.S. ties."  

For sure, Mr. Biden's remark couldn't have come at a more delicate time for the two NATO allies.

The relationship has been strained for years over Turkey's purchase of Russian S-400 missile defense systems. The Russian missiles are considered a threat to NATO's own defense systems in the region, and it all comes at a time when Russia is locked in a standoff with the West over its actions in eastern Ukraine — the sharp edge of Russia's geographic sphere of influence.

The U.S. sanctioned Turkey specifically over the purchase of the Russian missile systems and kicked the country out of the project with NATO partners to develop the advanced F-35 fighter jet.

The rift between Turkey and the U.S. has also deepened in recent years over America's support for Kurdish rebels in Syria. The U.S. has relied for a decade on the Syrian Kurds as an affective ally in the fight against ISIS extremists, but Turkey considers Syria's Kurdish militias terrorists with links to the PKK, an armed separatist group fighting for greater autonomy in southern Turkey.

In a 2020 interview with The New York Times, Mr. Biden said he'd "spent a lot of time" with Erdogan, and he called him an "autocrat."

On Monday night, Turkey's government said Mr. Biden would meet his Turkish counterpart on the sidelines of a NATO summit in June. The genocide remark will be just the latest issue adding to the tension in the room.

Survivors and descendants — including a vocal Armenian diaspora in the United States — have campaigned for decades to get other governments across the world to recognize the killings as an act of genocide. About 30 countries have now characterized the events that way.

Recent history has also been marked by trauma for the roughly 60,000 ethnic Armenians who still live inside Turkey. The assassination of a prominent Armenian journalist, Hirant Dink, by a Turkish ultra-nationalist in 2007 showed that the small community could still be targeted.

A recent survey conducted by a foundation set up by Dink's family found that Armenians are still the most-maligned minority group by Turkish media outlets.   

"Most of the Armenians in Turkey have to hide their identities in public life," Rober Koptas, the former editor of Armenian newspaper Agos, told CBS News. "They often have two names — one Turkish, one Armenian. They have these dual identities. It is a bit schizophrenic to be an Armenian in Turkey and the reason for that is fear."

Koptas said that while genocide is only a word, it means a lot for Armenians. 

"The word genocide is politically important because of Turkey's denial," he said. "If the Turkish stance was different, maybe Armenians would not be hung up on the terminology so much."

The relevance of U.S. recognising the 1915 Armenian massacre as genocide | The Hindu In Focus Podcast

Emil Lazarian
The Hindu, India

Jayant Sriram

The COVID-19 crisis continues to dominate our news coverage, as it rightly should, and on this podcast and elsewhere in The Hindu we're working to get you the most relevant news and the best coverage. However, we switch focus on this podcast briefly today to look at international affairs. We’re going to be discussing something that happened in 1915 during the course of the First World War — the mass killing of about 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman empire. Over the last weekend, U.S. President Joe Biden formally recognised this act of mass killing as a genocide. In doing so, he was fulfilling a long-standing American promise that his predecessors had failed to act on. In 2019, both Houses of the U.S. Congress passed resolutions calling the slaughter as genocide but the then President Donald Trump stopped short of a formal recognition, mainly because of Turkish opposition. Turkey, America’s NATO ally and the successor of the Ottoman empire, has never acknowledged that a genocide took place, and it sees a mention of it as an insult or a moral stain.

Today, we’re going to speak about what happened to the Armenians in 1915, and why they were targeted for these killings. We’ll then talk about the timing of President Biden’s move to recognise the killings as a genocide and what it says about a changing geopolitical picture, especially when it comes to Turkey. I’m joined by The Hindu’s International Affairs Editor Stanly Johny.

Listen to the podcast at the link below

Turkey President Bangs Back On Biden’s Armenian Genocide Label, Threatens To Recognize Killings Of Native Americans As Genocide

Albert Nalbandian

Written by Kevin Mwanza

Apr 29, 2021

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not happy about U.S. President Joe Biden’s declaration that the 1915 massacre of Armenians during the Ottoman Empire was genocide. He has threatened to retaliate by labeling the killing of native Americans as genocide.

Biden became the first U.S. president to formally recognize the 1915-1916 massacre of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians as a genocide. Previous U.S. presidents declined to do so in order to preserve relations with Turkey, a NATO ally.

Biden’s historic declaration on the Armenian genocide has antagonized its NATO ally. Erdogan says it’s “the wrong step” that has opened “a deep wound” in relations between his country and the U.S.

“The U.S. president has made baseless, unjust and untrue remarks about the sad events that took place in our geography over a century ago. I hope the U.S. president will turn back from this wrong step as soon as possible,” Erdogan said after a cabinet meeting.

The Armenian genocide — a mass deportation that amounted to a death march — enabled the creation of the Turkish state. Before World War II, it was considered the greatest atrocity in history. As of 2021, 30 countries have recognized the event as genocide. Turkey denies that the deportation of Armenians was genocide.

“If you say genocide, then you need to look at yourselves in the mirror and make an evaluation,” Erdogan said. “The Native Americans, I don’t even need to mention them, what happened is clear. We can also talk about what happened to Blacks and in Vietnam.”

Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 74: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin returns for a new season of the GHOGH podcast to discuss Bitcoin, bubbles, and Biden. He talks about the risk factors for Bitcoin as an investment asset including origin risk, speculative market structure, regulatory, and environment. Are broader financial markets in a massive speculative bubble?

It is estimated that the Indigenous population of the Americas fell from as many as 112 million to less than 238,000 between Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the new world in 1492 and the late 19th century.

The decline of Indigenous Americans is attributed to disease and more than 1,500 wars, attacks and raids authorized by the U.S. government.

Erdogan said he expected to “open the door for a new period” in ties and discuss all disputes with Biden at the NATO summit in June, but warned that ties would deteriorate further unless the allies could compartmentalize issues.

“Now (the) U.S.-Turkey relations are on such a low point that there is no one left in the United States lobbying on Turkey’s behalf and no one in Washington is worried about angering Turkey anymore. There is a sense that there is nothing to lose,” said Nicholas Danforth, a Turkey specialist and visiting scholar at Elliot School of International affairs, in an Aljazeera report.

Armenian election campaign begins to take shape

George Mamian
EurasiaNet.org
Ani Mejlumyan Apr 29, 2021 

Armenia’s election campaign isn’t supposed to start until June. But politicians and parties have already been lining up to make their case to a skeptical electorate, still shocked from last year’s defeat in the war against Azerbaijan and distrustful of the country’s political class.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan resigned on April 25 but remained in the post as acting premier, a formal step required by the constitution to trigger elections. The election is scheduled for June 20, and while the law restricts political campaigns to a 12-day period before the vote, Pashinyan and his ruling My Step alliance have already been actively – if technically informally – running.

In recent weeks Pashinyan has been touring Armenia in what many see as de facto campaign events. The crowds he is attracting, though, are far smaller than those he could gather before the war, and a far cry from the rallies he would hold – sometimes topping 100,000 people – in the protest campaign that swept him to power in 2018’s “Velvet Revolution.”

The crowds these days also are more hostile. On April 21 he visited the southern region of Syunik, which since the war has been the most tense part of Armenia due to the new proximity of Azerbaijani troops. He was greeted by angry protesters blaming him for the loss in the war, chanting “Nikol – traitor!” and shouting obscenities. Several were detained.

In his public appearances now Pashinyan is escorted by dozens, at times hundreds of police officers. His events are no longer livestreamed, and critics accuse his team of selectively editing videos to show cheering crowds.

Others condemn him for making campaign-style promises as he travels around the country: to raise salaries, to invest in roads and regional economic projects.

“We do see early signs that the government is preparing to rely on the advantages of incumbency, in other words administrative resources that are in the hands of the current government,” Richard Giragosian, the head of the Yerevan think tank Regional Studies Center, told Eurasianet. He noted that the head of the Central Electoral Commission, Tigran Mukuchyan, has been in his role since 2011. “All he knows is how to deliver tainted elections,” Giragosian said.

The opposition, meanwhile, has been relatively disorganized, with all sides attacking the government for losing the war but offering little concrete as an alternative. Many parties remain undecided about how they will participate.

The two opposition parties currently in parliament, Bright Armenia and Prosperous Armenia, both have said they will take part without joining larger blocs.

The former ruling Republican Party of Armenia has yet to decide whether it will run. "Perhaps the RPA will participate in this political struggle to some extent. This struggle will not take place without us," deputy leader Armen Ashotyan told Sputnik Armenia on April 25.

The Armenian Revolutionary Federation – Dashnaktsutyun, which has been part of several ruling coalitions in the past, has said it intends to participate but hasn’t decided yet whether to run alone or as part of a bloc. The important thing, senior party member Bagrat Yesayan told a press conference, is that Pashinyan is defeated. “All political parties who are not indifferent to the fate of this country should sign an agreement that they won’t cooperate with My Step and declare that an independent investigation should be carried out into the causes and consequences of the war,” he said. “There will be two sides [in the election] – those who sign the agreement and those who don’t.”

Many in Yerevan believe that if Dashnaktsutyun joins a coalition it will be with Hayrenik, a new party created by Pashinyan’s first director of the National Security Service, Artur Vanetsyan, and former president Robert Kocharyan as candidate for prime minister.

In an April 5 interview with Russian journalist Vladimir Pozner, Kocharyan said he would likely run as the head of an alliance of two parties, which he did not name.

Soon after last year’s defeat in the war, a coalition of 17 parties (including the Republicans, Prosperous Armenia, and Dashnaktsutyun) banded together to organize street protests demanding that Pashinyan step down. They brought forward a former prime minister, Vazgen Manukyan, as their candidate to replace Pashinyan but Manukyan now says he won’t run.

The National Armenian Congress, headed by former president and Pashinyan mentor Levon Ter-Petrossian, also has yet to confirm its participation. But Ter-Petrossian has become sharply critical of Pashinyan, and recently said the decision to call early elections without leaving office was unconstitutional.

The nationalist, pro-Western and anti-Russian Sasna Tsrer party has said it is forming an alliance with smaller parties of a similar ideology, called National Democratic Pole.

“Dear people, you have to finally understand that the authorities are offering us fake elections, to drown in the Turkish sea or the Russian swamp,” one party member, Garegin Chugazyan, told an April 16 demonstration in Yerevan. “They want to cut down the tree of our statehood with a Turkish axe or a Russian saw, and only your participation in the resistance movement can put a stop to it.”

Voters surveyed by Eurasianet say they are uninspired by their options.

“I might not vote, I don’t see any proper candidate,” said Husik Zakaryan, a bookseller in Yerevan’s central Vernissage market. “If it’s going to be the politicians we know, it’s better to not participate. The war has changed so much and people have lost hope.”

Grigor, a painter at the Vernissage who declined to give his last name, said the challenge was to choose “between the bad and the worst.” Pashinyan is “the worst, he is a doormat,” he said. “A lot of people say it’s better for Nikol to stay than for the former authorities to come. Even my daughter says that, and she doesn’t even remember those times. But the former authorities didn’t kill 5,000 young men in the war. That’s the difference.”

Giragosian, the analyst, said the elections are necessary following the extended political crisis caused by defeat in the war. “The good news is that, given the lingering political crisis that has been exacerbated by war, COVID, and vendetta politics by the prime minister, the decision to call elections is an important legal, constitutional way to begin to resolve and manage this political crisis or polarization,” he said.

But he said the vote itself is not going to deliver much for Armenians.

“There is little choice in terms of policies but rather a contest of personalities,” he said. “We see a very low level of political discourse without any real debate about critical national issues. The government is still in a state of denial, failing to adjust to the new reality. The ordinary voter demands much more but unfortunately will be given much less.”

Ani Mejlumyan is a reporter based in Yerevan.

Biden’s recognition of Armenian genocide: ramifications for Turkey, Armenia & the US

Emil Lazarian
GZero

GZERO Staff

<img height="1" width="1" src=”"https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=359223808087944&ev=PageView& noscript=1"/>

In a special GZERO conversation, Ian Bremmer examines the impact of President Biden's recent statement recognizing Armenian genocide at the hands of Ottoman Empire, an atrocity that began 106 years ago during World War I. What are the ramifications for US/Turkey relations going forward and how will Biden's recognition affect Armenia? Ian Bremmer discusses with two prominent Armenian voices: Varuzhan Nersesyan, Armenia's ambassador to the United States and Nina Hachigian, Deputy Mayor for International Affairs in Los Angeles, the metropolitan area with the largest number of Armenians in the US.
Watch the video at the link below

Experts discuss Biden’s recognition of the Armenian genocide on the Ray Hanania Show

Greg Madatian
Arab News, Saudi Arabia


  • Expert guests on the Ray Hananina radio show welcomed the US president’s announcement and said it puts pressure on Turkey to accept its responsibilities
  • They said it will give other, smaller nations courage to ‘speak truth to power;’ but added that it must be backed up by policy, otherwise it is merely symbolic

Updated
RAY HANANIA

CHICAGO: Leaders and activists from the Armenian community in the US applauded the recent decision by President Joseph Biden to formally acknowledge the genocide of the Armenian people in 1915 by Ottoman Forces and said it adds to the pressure on Turkey to begin a process of reparations.

Biden made his announcement on April 24. On that date in 1915, he said, a genocide began during which an estimated 1.5 million people were “deported, massacred or marched to their deaths.”

Ani Tchaghlasian, a board member of the Armenian National Committee of America, said the killings were documented after the First World War by American and the German historians and government leaders. Biden’s decision puts Turkey on notice that it must accept its responsibility and face up to its obligation and make reparations to the descendants of the victims, she added.

“There are many countries that have already recognized the genocide: France, Germany — most of Western Europe, minus the United Kingdom,” Tchaghlasian said during a discussion on the Ray Hanania radio show on Wednesday.

“I think what this does is give other smaller players in the world courage to speak truth to power. All of this is only relevant once it becomes policy. The first step is to say the word and then to back up the word with policy.”

She said that the Turkish authorities, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, can no longer avoid the issue because genocide is a well-defined legal term and cases that involve it have the full power of the rule of law behind them.

“The (Turkish) state has an issue with it and that’s where the problem is. The state doesn’t want to embrace this, even though it is a part of their history, because it has legal consequences,” said Tchaghlasian, who is a descendant of genocide survivors.

She added that while she recognizes the fact that the Ottoman Empire carried out the genocide and not the Turkish Republic, “The issue is that successor states still have legal responsibility for their predecessors.

“Just because you change the name of your state, just because you elect a new body, like Germany did after the Second World War … that doesn’t mean the new government says, ‘Oh, I had nothing to do with this, so Germany bears no responsibility in the holocaust.’ That’s not how state responsibility works.”

During his speech at the White House this week, Biden said: “Beginning on April 24, 1915, with the arrest of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople by Ottoman authorities, one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination.

“We honor the victims of the Meds Yeghern so that the horrors of what happened are never lost to history. And we remember so that we remain ever-vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms.” Meds Yeghern, which translates as “great evil crime,” is the Armenian term for the genocide.

Journalist Lara Setrakian, the CEO and founder of News Deeply, said Biden’s announcement reflects his personal support of the Armenian community in its efforts to force Turkey to acknowledge the genocide. It opens the door for Armenians to gain additional international support for their attempts to get Turkish authorities to acknowledge the genocide and begin the process of reparations.

“It is an incredibly important statement from President Biden and the United States,” she said. “It’s not just a question of the moral authority or the weight of the American word. In this case, two countries had an up close, front seat (view) to what was happening during the Armenian genocide: the United States and Germany.”

The eyewitness accounts diplomats from the two nations, including Henry Morgenthau, the US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, are primary source materials, she added.

“They saw this happening before their eyes. They interacted with the Ottoman officials who basically said straight up, ‘This is our strategy, we are getting rid of the Armenians,’” Setrakian said.

Germany has officially recognized the Armenian genocide and apologized for its role in it, she added, but the political successor to the Ottomans, the Turkish government, refuses and is “pretending that it did not happen.”

Tchaghlasian also believes that more countries will follow Biden’s lead and put greater pressure on Turkey to acknowledge the massacre and begin the process of reparations.

“We are glad that finally the time came,” she said. “The statement is very powerful. President Biden has a long history of being on the right side of this issue. It was time; the time has come.

“I think what is significant for the Armenian community is what comes next. I think having the declaration is very important; putting that word on paper is very important.

“But now we have to turn that into policy for the United States. Because putting the word on paper is only a word on paper and it needs to convert. We are pretty confident that the Biden administration will do that and will pursue that. But without converting that statement into policy, it really doesn’t have much teeth.”

The Ray Hanania Show is broadcast live every Wednesday in Detroit on WNZK AM 690 and in Washington DC on WDMV AM 700 on the US Arab Radio Network. The show is sponsored by Arab News and streamed live to millions of followers at Facebook.com/ArabNews.

Watch the video at the link below

Rediscovered Photos of Gaza Reveal a Lesser-Known Side of Its History

Emil Lazarian
April 23 2021

Rediscovered Photos of Gaza Reveal a Lesser-Known 
Side of Its History
In the 1940s, photographer Kegham Djeghalian opened the first photo studio in Gaza City. His images show life in the city before it was transformed by war.
By Dana Al Sheikh
April 23, 2021, 5:30pm

This article originally appeared on VICE Arabia.

The Holy Land has been home to a small Armenian community for over 1,700 years. In the 4th century, Armenian Christians and monks settled in Jerusalem after undertaking pilgrimages to the city. Over time, they formed their own neighbourhood, known today as the Armenian Quarter. The Palestinian-Armenian community in Jerusalem grew in the aftermath of the Armenian Genocide, in which the Ottoman Empire killed an estimated 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1923.

In the 1940s, Jerusalem-based photographer Kegham Djeghalian, who had himself fled from Armenia during the genocide, relocated to Gaza, which was then simply a Palestinian city on the Mediterranean coast. Eighty years and numerous wars later, Gaza and its surroundings have become among the most uninhabitable places on earth. The majority of local residents are unemployed and have limited access to water, electricity, food and medication. Plus, of course, they can’t leave

But before a seven-year blockade brought Gaza to its knees, before Hamas took power, the city had a totally different cultural identity and feel, captured through the lens of Djeghalian’s camera. His 36-year-old grandson, Kegham Djeghalian Jr, an art director, visual artist and fashion stylist based in France, recently found three boxes containing some of his grandfather’s negatives and old photographs at his father’s home in Egypt.

Forty years after his death, Djeghalian’s work is now on show at the Access Art Space in Cairo, the city where part of the Djeghalian family fled during the 1967 Six-Day War. Djeghalian chose to stay behind in his beloved city. His pictures offer a rare snapshot of the comparatively carefree lives of Gaza’s residents from the 1940s to the 1970s. All the dates on the photographs were removed to represent a version of Gaza “suspended in time,” as Kegham junior puts it.

VICE met Kegham junior at the exhibition to talk about his family’s complex relationship with Gaza, migration and identity.

KEGHAM DJEGHALIAN SENIOR, THE GRANDFATHER.

VICE: What does this exhibition mean to you on a personal level?
Kegham Djeghalian: It’s very special, almost therapeutic. When I found these archives at my father’s place, I felt like an archeologist discovering an important historical artefact. It wasn’t immediately clear to me how important these images were, but I knew there was something about them.

I was eager to get to know my grandfather – I inherited my passion for photography from him. That’s why I went ahead with the “excavations”, and as you can see, his photographs are a great discovery. He documented a side of Gaza that’s totally different from that which we see today.

I found the boxes in 2018. Since then, I’ve faced many challenges, including my lack of experience in photographic conservation. Right now I’m trying to retrieve the rest of my grandfather’s archives which remain in Gaza so that I might combine them with what I found in Cairo. I really hope I can make that happen.

KEGHAM DJEGHALIAN JUNIOR. PHOTO BY RANIA SHEREEN.

What was your relationship with your grandfather like?
I never met him. He stayed living in Gaza and passed away in the early 1980s. Besides our shared passion for visual arts, I also really wish I had known him because of how people from Gaza react when I tell them I’m his grandson. He founded the first photography studio in the city and the mention of his name still arouses strong emotions in the memories of people who were living there at the time.

My father never mentioned the boxes before, he’d forgotten all about them. Finding them changed my life – I’ve become more aware of my family heritage and gained a deeper understanding of my own identity. Most of all, these photos are a way to give back to Gaza – the city deserves to have its story told differently.

KEGHAM STUDIO IN GAZA.

What have you learned about your grandfather through these images?
These photos raise more questions than they answer, for me. I look at them and wonder why an Armenian immigrant decided to settle in Gaza and not in Jerusalem. I wonder how a man who barely spoke Arabic earned such a high level of trust and love from people.

My grandfather enrolled his children in Arabic schools where they also learned about the Islamic religion and the Qur’an. He never had a problem with that, despite being a Christian. He even followed the Islamic Aqiqah tradition [of sacrificing an animal] when his son was born. My grandfather loved and belonged to Gaza and its people. He documented the details of their lives both inside and outside his studio.

THE DJEGHALIAN FAMILY EATING FATTAH, A TYPICAL DISH FROM GAZA. FATTAH OR FATTEH IS EATEN THROUGHOUT THE ARAB WORLD, BUT INGREDIENTS VARY REGIONALLY.

Do you think your father had actually forgotten about the boxes? Or was he avoiding them?
I think there’s a bit of trauma involved. My family usually avoids these kinds of memories. It’s not been easy for my father. [Despite living in Egypt for over 50 years,] he still has Palestinian travel documents. [Millions of Palestinians are stateless. They do not have passports but laissez-passer documents granting them limited rights.]

My grandfather was himself a genocide survivor. According to the family stories, he fled Armenia disguised as a girl, since the Ottomans killed the boys first. In his early youth, he moved to Gaza to open a studio after being trained in Jerusalem by another Armenian photographer. He documented the Nakba [or “catastrophe”, the exodus of more than 700,000 of Palestine’s population following the 1948 Palestine War], the Six-Day War, the refugee camps and all the tragedies the people of Gaza went through.

My family has bitter memories of the Six-Day War. My grandmother was in Cairo [when the war broke out] visiting my father and uncle who were studying there. They couldn’t return to Gaza see my grandfather for three years after that, and the visits became less frequent from then onward.

In the early 1980s, my father was harassed on his way back to Egypt after a trip to Gaza. An Israeli soldier treated him so badly he vowed he’d never go back to Gaza again – and so it was. This episode has seemingly sealed his emotional detachment from Gaza. Perhaps that’s why he forgot about the three boxes.

KEGHAM JUNIOR’S GRANDFATHER AND GRANDMOTHER AT THE BEACH IN GAZA.

What do people think of this exhibition?
Gaza has always aroused people’s curiosity, especially foreigners’, including many diplomats in Egypt. They are often shocked Gaza really used to look like this. Through social media, many people from Gaza have actually recognised themselves or family members in my grandfather's photographs. They got in touch with me and told me more about how the photographs were captured and who the people in the images were. It was almost like a reunion.

Which photograph is nearest and dearest to you?
This one [See photo below].

This is the shadow of my grandfather on the sand, and this is my aunt with one arm around my father’s shoulder. They’re peacefully strolling down the beach barefoot as the sea brushes against their feet.

More photos of Gaza at the link below