Author: Babajanian Karo

AMERICAN EXPERT: EVERYONE IN WASHINGTON IS FED UP WITH AZERBAIJANI LOBBYISTS, THERE ARE COMPLAINTS AGAINST THEM

17:47 05/03/2015 >> IN THE WORLD

Audrey Altstadt, a US Kennan Institute fellow, professor of History
from University of Massachusetts, in an interview to the Azerbaijani
information agency Turan commented on the situation in Azerbaijan and
its relations with the West. Turning to the fact of persecutions of
civil society activists and journalists, she noted that the situation
in Azerbaijan has evolved slowly through the past few years.

“I think the regime is afraid of something like the Ukrainian Maidan
phenomena or something like the Arab Spring — something like the
Azerbaijani version of that kind of unrest. And because they’re
afraid of that, they’ve taken whole lot of serious measures. They have
attracted especially the younger generation into government service
or the kinds of jobs where they are not necessarily doing political
work but where are also not threatening to the regime as their jobs
really keep them from moving into opposition. But if someone doesn’t
listen to those small signals at the beginning they run into the
risks of increasingly threatening harassment of different types:
threats against individual, against family members, to be taken
into questioning, charged for a crime discovering that there have
been drugs or weapons planted in their yard, or home or their car,
then come pre-trial detentions, jail for years,” the professor
noted adding that the number of those who disagree with the regime
grows, and people who decide to get involved in politics under these
circumstances are very brave and they take a huge risk.

It is also noted that the current regime is afraid of losing the
privileges of power. And when the journalists, like Khadija Ismayilova,
explore the corruption of the ruling circles, they are subjected
to threats.

Altstadt remembered that in 1991-1992 lots of people looked into
the future with optimism, thinking that it was very likely to be the
beginning of path toward democratization, toward an open civil society,
towards serious economical and other developments. But it did not
happen. The same thing happened with the first democratic republic in
1918-1920. There was republic, democracy ideals and huge opportunities.

“However, the wide range of suppression of journalists, of public
speech, public assemblies of critical voices go far beyond what you
could really explain with security interests. You really can see which
regimes talk about trying to protect national security as an excuse
to suppress their critics. I don’t see how beating prisoners in jail
helps Azerbaijan’s national security. I don’t see how increasing by 10
times the fine for public demonstrations contributes to Azerbaijan’s
national security; I don’t see how throwing drugs into the pockets
of young people contributes to Azerbaijan’s national security; I
don’t see how the framing of the children of political activists and
setting them up so that they can be arrested and convicted on fake
charges – how that contributes to Azerbaijan’s national security,”
the expert stressed.

During the interview the professor also touched on the topic of the
upcoming parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan noting that several
distinct steps are pointed out in the old copies of Council of Europe
statements. The Central Election Commission needs to be formed anew and
become independent, unlike what it is now dominated by the ruling Yeni
Azerbaijan Party. A second step would be giving opening the country
to more election monitors: not just those that are in fact recruited
by the government, but that actually belong to the international
organizations. That would mean that all the participants including
those at the polling stations have to understand that they will
also be supposed to play by the rules. Fair elections are impossible
without free pr-election atmosphere, when a candidate can easily get
registered, and opposition candidates get air time.

“We know most people get their news completely from television, which
is completely controlled by the state. Open spaces for candidates
and not allowing the kind of antics we saw in 2013 where you have
people sitting around the table and where the one actual opposition
candidate that talks, somebody else across him start yelling and throws
a plastic bottle across the way — that just really has to stop. It
doesn’t help Azerbaijan’s reputation anywhere in the world,” she added.

Regarding the Assistant Secretary of the Department of State Victoria
Nuland’s statement about launching a new US-Azerbaijan structure of
human rights and democracy, Altstadt noted that dialog is better than
no dialog. But having the long history of other dialogs, mainly between
Azerbaijan and the CoE, the numerous commissions, discussions and
reports, including plans of improvement, they did not give anything.

“Many of us worry seeing how they torture Gunel Hasanli only because
she is an oppositionist’s daughter. Such phenomena cannot shape a
positive image of Azerbaijan in the American’s perceptions. These
are the very facts that become the main source for the international
organizations’ criticism,” Altstadt highlighted.

Regarding the millions of dollars that the Azerbaijani government
spends in Washington to improve its country’s image, the expert said
that such efforts bring about an interesting effect.

“The most important thing for the lobbyists is to get money and report;
that is why they take up any tricks. Over the past half year more and
more people have told me that they are annoyed by that intrusive praise
or advertising. Recently I have been told about a case when a lobbying
company employee introduced himself as a scientist in order to get
into hearings about the issue of democracy violations in Azerbaijan. He
was unmasked at the event and those present saw that. When a lobbying
firm takes up such measures and meanwhile praises Azerbaijan, these
efforts will go useless. I have more than once heard complaints in
the Congress that they are already fed up of hearing all that. If such
propaganda brought some positive effects for Azerbaijan in the past,
now it works against Azerbaijan,” the expert highlighted noting that
she herself sees this reaction in Washington and hears it from people
who are obliged to listen to “all that lobbying talks.”

THE AKP AND TURKEY’S LONG TRADITION OF ISLAMO-FASCISM

March 5, 2015

By Toni Alaranta

Turkish Americans in Washington, DC rally on Sunday, June 16, 2013
to show support for their countrymen protesting government repression
in Istanbul. In the previous two days, hundreds of police raided Gezi
Park and Taksim Square.

Those who claim that democracy in Turkey has been handicapped because
of the repressive “Kemalist” regime overlook that the conservative
right has totally dominated Turkish politics. It is the traditions of
the Turkish right that need to be scrutinized in the search for the
matrix of current undemocratic practices. The Turkish Islamist poet
and political ideologue Necip Fazıl Kısakurek is a key figure in
this context. He propagated for a totalitarian Islamist-fascist regime
in Turkey, to be ruled by an Islamic version of a Fuhrer. And today
representatives of the AKP point out that understanding Kısakurek
is a precondition to understand the great “cause” (“dava”) that the
AKP represents.

BACKGROUND: To make the claim that Turkey’s governing Justice and
Development Party (AKP) would have anything to do with “Islamic
fascism” at first appears astonishing. This is, after all, a party
that was for many years defined – by itself and by sympathetic
observers in the West – as the Turkish equivalent to Western
conservative-democratic parties. The dominant scholarship on modern
Turkey has for several decades produced an image of an authoritarian
and even fascist Kemalist regime that was ended by the “democratic”
Muslims of the AKP. Two fundamental mistakes have thus been committed:
one concerns the nature of the regime that the AKP replaced and the
second is about the nature of the Islamists.

The narrative peddled by the AKP and its supporters is that the party
has ushered in democracy by putting an end to what is portrayed as a
regime run by elitist Kemalists, Westernizers who were alien to the
culture of their own country, and who for eighty years supposedly
suppressed the Anatolian conservative Muslims; and these latter are
taken to be the sole and legitimate expression of the popular will.

That there was such a wide expectation that the AKP would indeed
usher in pluralist, liberal values and democratization in Turkey
was to a considerable degree based on the Turkish liberals’ role in
legitimating the party as the “voice of the oppressed.” From their
chairs in prestigious universities, for nearly two decades, liberal
Turkish academics drummed in the message of how the awful “Kemalist
state” was repressing and harassing pious Muslims. In doing this,
they uncritically – and certainly very usefully – reproduced and
transmitted the most emotionally powerful narrative trope used by
the Turkish Islamist movement.

In reality, a “Kemalist state” has not existed in Turkey since the
end of the Republican

People’s Party’s (CHP) one-party regime in 1950. With the coming
to power of the conservative Democrat Party at that date, the
Turkish regime ceased to be based on the idea of radical and
utopian modernization; from then on, it has effectively been a
nationalist-conservative regime that has made considerable use
of religious symbols and themes. In this sense the “normalization”
process attached to the AKP was consummated already during the 1950s,
when, in the words of British scholar David McDowall, the Democrat
Party government “assisted the revival of traditional Islamic values
at the heart of the state.”

Secondly, the notion of conservative Anatolian Muslims as a “natural”
force that would compel the authoritarian Turkish state to democratize
represents an enormous misrepresentation of the Turkish socio-political
reality. The tradition of Turkish conservative and Islamist parties
is fundamentally undemocratic. If one scratches the surface of the
AKP’s ideological background, it becomes clear that the party’s
agenda is deeply undemocratic. The only major difference between the
current AKP and the previous Islamist parties is that the AKP has
learned to adjust its economic policies to the global free market
regime. Through economic liberalization, inaugurated by Turgut Ozal,
prime minister and later president, during the 1980s the Anatolian
conservative middle class was integrated to the global economy.

IMPLICATIONS: Those who claim that democracy in Turkey has been
handicapped because of the repressive “Kemalist” regime somehow manage
to overlook that the conservative right has totally dominated Turkish
politics; it is the traditions of the Turkish right that need to
be scrutinized in the search for the matrix of current undemocratic
practices.

The AKP is in fact a large ideological coalition that has absorbed both
the nationalist-conservative tradition – represented by conservatives
like Adnan Menderes, Suleyman Demirel and Turgut Ozal – and the
Islamist tradition that was led by Necmettin Erbakan from the early
1970s to the 1990s. In addition, the AKP until recently collaborated
with the movement of Fethullah Gulen, the leading “civil society”
component of the Turkish Islamist movement.

Ali Bulac, who is one of the leading intellectuals within the Gulenist
camp, has pointed out that the “political” (AKP and previously the
Islamist “National Outlook” parties) and the “cultural” (in particular
the Gulen movement) components of Turkey’s Islamist movement share a
common ideological background. This common background is the Ä°ttihad-i
Muhammedi Fırkası (Islamic Union Party) established in 1909, during
the Second Constitutional Era of the Ottoman Empire. According to
Bulac, it was within the ranks of this party that Turkish first modern
Islamic intellectuals emerged, and they have provided the intellectual
basis for both the “political” and the “cultural” manifestations of
the Islamic movement.

When one takes a thorough view on the dominant articulation of
the religious and conservative constituency from the 1950s to the
contemporary AKP, there is nothing that points towards genuine
pluralism. The Islamist-conservative poet and political ideologue
Necip Fazıl Kısakurek (1904-1983) is in many ways a key figure
in this context, and his writings are revealing. Kısakurek is the
esteemed partisan of both Turkish nationalist-conservative and Islamist
circles. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan especially admires Kısakurek,
often reciting his poems in public. Indeed, several representatives
of the AKP have stated that understanding Kısakurek is a precondition
to understand the great “cause” (“dava”) that the AKP represents.

However, the admiration expressed for Kısakurek is ill-boding:
he never hid that he hated parliamentary democracy.

Political scientist Taner Timur has recently noted that Kısakurek was
not only a poet but an ideologue who propagated for the introduction
of a totalitarian Islamist-fascist regime in Turkey, to be ruled by
an Islamic version of a Fuhrer, that is, a “supreme leader” (called
“BaÃ…~_yuce”).

Erdogan is yet to implement Kısakurek’s program in detail; but his
attempt to establish presidential rule and the way the majority’s
Sunni Islamic faith is increasingly presented as the only legitimate
expression of the national will is worryingly well in line with
Kısakurek’s blueprint for an Islamic-fascist regime.

During the 1950s, Kısakurek published his articles in the magazine
Buyuk Dogu (Great East), in which he called for the banning of CHP,
the Republican People’s Party. It is thus noteworthy that Erdogan,
who has made such an enormous issue about the “Kemalists” always
supporting party closures, himself admires a man who called for the
banning the political organization of his opponents.

Kısakurek’s writings offer keen insights into the way the Turkish
Islamists relate to a notion such as freedom. According to Kısakurek,
freedom is not a goal, but a tool, because a human being is not free
in that sense: a dog and a donkey are free, but a human being is
made by his Creator and thus above a mere nature and its meaningless
“freedom.” The Turkish Islamists have not in any way abandoned the
basic idea according to which a human being is not “free”: according to
the ideological worldview of Islamists, the kind of freedom espoused
by European Enlightenment – within which man measures all things by
solely depending on his rational mind – is a perversion.

Also those who are deemed “moderate” share this worldview.

When key AKP figures speak about their mission, to build a “New
Turkey” and to “close a hundred year old parenthesis” – as Prime
Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has recently said – they refer not only
to the Young Turk and Kemalist Westernization project, but to the
whole of the modernization project that started in the Ottoman
Empire in the latter part of the 18th century. There is a telling
statement in this respect in Kısakurek’s key work Ä°deolocya Orgusu,
(“Plait of Ideology,” published in 1977): “Ever since the Tanzimat
[the “Reorganization” reforms of the beginning of the 19th century],
the ongoing artificial reforms, and the artificial heroes produced
by these reforms, have been the main problem obstructing our cause.”

Also the highly emotional discourse which makes a radical distinction
between the elitist, westernized so called “white Turks” and the
supposedly “real” and “authentic” nation composed of so called
“black Turks,” which has been widely disseminated by AKP and its
partisans in pro-government think tanks and media, emanates directly
from Kısakurek.

CONCLUSIONS: The earlier assumptions about the AKP – that the party’s
political mission and ideology is to produce and disseminate a
“healthy synthesis” of Western political thinking and Islamic
religious-political traditions – were deeply flawed. From the
İttihad-i Muhammedi Fırkası to Necip Fazil Kısakurek and the
current AKP, the Turkish Islamist tradition selectively utilizes
Western political concepts, but ultimately its purpose is to reject
them in order to rebuild an allegedly more superior and legitimate,
“authentic” Islamic socio-political order.

The AKP is a deeply anti-western political movement. It does not aim
to “correct” or “normalize” past “excesses” but to annihilate the
republican and Ottoman secularizing-westernizing reforms altogether.

Unlike in previous decades, the Turkish Islamic movement has now made
its peace with the state – by totally conquering it. President Erdogan
did not suddenly change from a genuine democrat to an authoritarian
Islamist: the ideological and organizational matrix of the AKP is
deeply undemocratic.

Toni Alaranta, Ph.D., is a senior research fellow at the Finnish
Institute of International Affairs. He is the author of the forthcoming
book National and State Identity in Turkey: The Transformation of the
Republic’s Status in the International System (Rowman & Littlefield,
2015). His previous publications include Contemporary Kemalism:
>From Universal Secular-Humanism to Extreme Turkish Nationalism
(Routledge, 2014).

The Turkey Analyst

SOURCE: TURKISH INSTRUCTOR AMONG KILLED SERVICEMEN

15:27, 06.03.2015

YEREVAN. – A Turk was among the servicemen of Azerbaijani
special subdivision that was neutralized by the military units of
Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army, a source told Armenian News-NEWS.am.

According to a source, one of the killed was an instructor from Turkey.

As reported earlier, the adversary violated the ceasefire on the Line
of Contact between the Karabakh-Azerbaijani opposing forces more than
80 times, between late Thursday night and early Friday morning.

During this time, around 4,500 shots were fired in the direction of
Armenian military positions, and by way of mine throwers and other
weaponry.

In addition, the adversary made use of the ZIK -23-2 weapon in
the northerly (Shahumyan Region) direction. The Nagorno-Karabakh
Republic (NKR) Defense Army vanguard forces took appropriate action
to neutralize this weapon. As a result, at least three Azerbaijani
soldiers and the aforementioned weapon were rendered ineffective.

FUSILLADE DEVANT LA PLUS GRANDE PRISON D’EREVAN

Justice

Des hommes armes non identifies ont abattu trois hommes ayant des liens
presumes avec la pègre devant la plus grande prison d’Armenie hier.

Les trois cadavres, Drastamat Tadevosian, Levon Ghazarian et Mesrop
Nazarian, ont ete trouves a quelques mètres de l’entree principale
de la prison Nubarashen a Erevan. La police armenienne a declare
avoir trouve un fusil d’assaut et une arme de poing sur les lieux de
la fusillade.

Un resident d’un immeuble voisin a dit avoir entendu des coups de
feu et vu trois hommes masques fuyant la scène.

Les policiers n’ont signale aucun arrestations en lien avec les tueries
dans les heures suivantes. “Toutes les theories sont examinees”,
a declare Ashot Karapetian, chef du departement de police d’Erevan.

Un fonctionnaire de la commission d’enquete, un autre organisme
de repression armenienne, a annonce que les enqueteurs etudient
des cameras de surveillance placees sur les portes de la prison et
les murs.

jeudi 5 mars 2015, Claire (c)armenews.com

PROGRAMMATION SPECIALE “CENTENAIRE DU GENOCIDE ARMENIEN” EN AVRIL SUR ARTE

Le Zapping du PAF
5 mars 2015

Publié le 5 Mars 2015

AÃŒ~@ l’occasion du centenaire du geÃŒ~Anocide armeÃŒ~Anien le 24 avril,
ARTE consacrera une programmation speÌ~Aciale aÌ~@ cet anniversaire en
diffusant un documentaire ineÃŒ~Adit, ” La vengeance des armeÃŒ~Aniens –
Le proceÌ~@s Tehlirian ” et un film, ” Le mas des alouettes ”.

Lundi 27 avril a 22h20 – Le Mas des alouettes Un film de Paolo et
Vittorio Taviani avec Paz Vega, Moritz Bleibtreu, Angela Molina,
AndreÃŒ~A Dussollier, Tcheky Kary…

Mardi 28 avril a 22h20 – La vengeance des armeÃŒ~Aniens – Le proceÃŒ~@s
Tehlirian Documentaire de Bernard Georges / Ecrit par Laurence Chassin
/ Avec la voix de Simon Abkarian En 1921, Talaat Pacha, un haut
dignitaire turc en exil aÌ~@ Berlin, est abattu en pleine rue. Son
agresseur, Soghomon Tehlirian, est un jeune ArmeÌ~Anien. Quelques
mois plus tard, son proceÌ~@s connaiÌ~Bt un basculement inattendu :
plutoÃŒ~Bt que de condamner l’accuseÃŒ~A, les audiences eÃŒ~Atablissent la
culpabiliteÌ~A de Talaat Pacha dans le geÌ~Anocide armeÌ~Anien. Mais
ce que l’auditoire ignore, c’est que Soghomon Tehlirian n’est pas
l’eÃŒ~Atudiant qu’il preÃŒ~Atend eÃŒ~Btre…

AÃŒ~@ l’heure des commeÃŒ~Amorations du centenaire du geÃŒ~Anocide
armeÌ~Anien, le film deÌ~Avoile les meÌ~Acanismes du premier crime
contre l’humaniteÃŒ~A du XXe sieÃŒ~@cle, et pose la question de sa
reconnaissance internationale, qui fait encore deÌ~Abat un sieÌ~@cle
apreÌ~@s les faits.

WON’T YOU EVER VISIT WASHINGTON, MR. PRIME MINISTER?

Cihan News Agency (CNA), Turkey
March 3, 2015 Tuesday

Ä°STANBUL (CÄ°HAN)- Every Turkish prime minister dreams of visiting
Washington and being hosted by the US president at the White House.

Whoever claims otherwise is lying. This does not change depending
on his/her ideological origin or even if s/he lashes out at the
US in rallies. Turkish prime ministers attach special importance
to Washington visits both in terms of their personal careers and
as regards intergovernmental relations. However, it does not seem
likely that Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will fulfill this dream
any time soon…

Davutoglu will be visiting New York for economic talks this week.

Having flown to the US, why doesn’t/can’t he stop by Washington? This
is because the doors of the White House are closed to him. He is
not given an appointment. When he was prime minister, President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan could meet former President George W. Bush and President
Barack Obama. Obama would occasionally phone former President Abdullah
Gul, but opted to discuss bilateral relations with Erdogan. Today,
if he wishes to send a message to Turkey, Obama contacts the Turkish
president, not the Turkish prime minister.

Since he became prime minister, Davutoglu can’t talk to Obama even on
the phone. The only face-to-face consultation between the two occurred
during the G-20 meeting in Australia. US Vice President Joe Biden,
too, does not address him directly. He is contacted mostly by US
Secretary of State John Kerry. Kerry also phones Foreign Minister
Mevlut CavuÃ…~_oglu out of courtesy but he prefers to talk business
mainly with Davutoglu. In short, the US does not give Davutoglu the
significance it traditionally affords to Turkish prime ministers. He
is treated as a senior foreign minister, in a sense. I don’t remember
any other Turkish prime minister who was given this protocol.

White House’s doors closed

Davutoglu is certainly not the only one who cannot visit Washington.

President Erdogan will hardly step in the White House until Obama
leaves office — unless Erdogan produces a rabbit out of his hat.

Erdogan is perceived as an extremely antipathetic, autocratic,
anti-US and anti-Semitic leader in Washington. If he does not change
himself, Erdogan will most probably find it hard to pose for a photo
with the next US president. The US administration’s aloofness is
not specific to certain individuals but targets all Justice and
Development Party (AKP) officials. CavuÃ…~_oglu’s efforts to visit
Washington came to naught. Why should Kerry spare his precious time
for an ineffective figure like CavuÃ…~_oglu when he can sort things
out with Davutoglu? In addition to the AKP officials who can’t visit
the US capital, there are others who came to the city but had to
return empty handed. During his Washington visit, European Affairs
Minister Volkan Bozkır didn’t/couldn’t meet his US counterparts. We
had heard that Interior Minister Efkan Ala, too, was planning to visit
Washington, but apparently this plan was abandoned. Defense Minister
İsmet Yılmaz attended an anti-terrorism summit meeting organized
by the US in Washington but he returned without talking to any senior
US government officials. Don’t think that AKP officials were cold to
the US administration. They are burning to go to Washington and get
good treatment, but that is not likely. Their prestige has fallen
through the floor.

Partisan state apparatus

When any trouble emerged between the US administration and the Turkish
government in the past, the state institutions with their unique
identities and established traditions would ensure the continuation of
bilateral relations and minimize the risks. The Turkish Armed Forces
(TSK) and the Foreign Ministry would assume important roles in this
regard. The Turkish army is now a passive player. The Foreign Ministry,
too, does not represent the “state” as much as it did in the past.

Diplomats have either become partisan or they cannot be objective
or flexible out of fear of the government. For instance, Turkey’s
Ambassador to the US Serdar Kılıc does not have the chance to play
the good cop with American because he gives the impression of being
partisan. Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioglu, too,
is increasingly associated with the ruling party. Last week, he met
US officials in Washington without informing the Turkish press, but I
don’t think he managed to soften them. It is doubtful whether he can
develop good relations with Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken
as he did with former Deputy Secretary William Burns.

The relations with the US Congress are in tatters because the Turkish
government’s loss of prestige with Congress is very great. Moreover,
members of Congress can be very outspoken in their criticism of the
AKP. AKP deputy Ã…~^aban DiÃ…~_li, the chairman of the Turkish-American
Inter-parliamentary Friendship Group, and his friends came to
Washington and returned after a low-profile visit. The few and
low-profile appointments they could get should give them an idea
about the miserable condition of their prestige in Congress. There is
certainly the likelihood that the Armenian genocide bill, reintroduced
to the House of Representatives, may be enacted this time due to the
antipathy for Erdogan and the Turkish government. Despite this, I am
sure the AKP delegation allocates a significant portion of their time
to propaganda against the Gulen movement. As the representatives of
a political party which is seen as repressive, insincere and anti-US
speak out against the Gulen movement, the movement’s prestige in US
Congress increases. But the damage is done to Turkey’s undefended
interests.

As it gets cornered in diplomacy, the Turkish government tries to
market the retreat from the Suleyman Ã…~^ah tomb site as a victory, even
though it withdrew because of the security situation in Syria, which
can in turn be attributed to its strategic policy mistakes. Washington
finds the race between Erdogan and Davutoglu to advertise the
operation as a success interesting. It seems that the time of earning
international prestige and influence using close ties with the White
House has come to an end. This cannot be corrected by establishing
pro-government think tanks in the US capital or by funding certain
intellectuals. The problem is with the essence, not with perceptions…

ALÄ° H. ASLAN (Cihan/Today’s Zaman) CÄ°HAN

ARMENIANS, TURKS BOTH EQUALLY AFFECTED BY VIOLENT CONFLICT A CENTURY AGO: READER

Inside Toronto
March 4 2015

Bloor West Villager

To the editor:

Re: ‘High Park artist channels Armenian genocide onto canvas to raise
awareness,’ News, Jan. 29

I read this article with interest and believe your readers deserve
to be made aware of some facts and the context in which these events
occurred 100 years ago.

I believe it is historically verifiable that prior to the First World
War, in the late 19th century, nationalistic Armenians in Europe and in
Russia, provoked and armed by the Russians, were already planning an
insurgency against the Ottoman Turks, with the intent of carving out
a state of ‘Armenia’ in northeastern Anatolia. While Armenians were
killed in the course of the conflict in which my father served as an
Ottoman reserve officer in the Caucuses, so were thousands of Muslims.

If civilian Armenians were displaced from the area of conflict in
the eastern provinces, it was intended for their own protection. The
Ottoman census prior to 1915 indicates the population of Anatolia
consisted of 13,390,000 Muslims, 1,564,939 Greeks and 1,173,422
Armenians.

It is therefore implausible that two million Armenians were massacred,
as is often claimed. Somehow with each retelling of this tragic chapter
of history, the number of Armenian victims tends to increase steadily.

The term genocide has come to characterize these events, even though
historians continue to discuss records and claims regarding what
occurred in the midst of this bitter conflict and its aftermath.

In April 2006, following a vote in the House of Commons on a Bloc
Québécois motion, these events were recognized by the Canadian
government as genocide. The vote was by no means unanimous and many
MPs were notably absent.

No one denies that tens of thousands of Armenians were tragically
affected by First World War events in which their nationalistic
brethren, in collaboration with the Russians, were essentially the
instigators and aggressors.

But it’s important that Armenians publicly recognize that tens of
thousands of Turkish-Muslim soldiers, civilians, men, women and
children were also killed, brutalized, displaced and orphaned by the
same events.

GuneÃ…~_ N. Ege, MD

CARSON CITY COUNCIL NIXES CONTROVERSIAL SCULPTURE OF TURKEY PRESIDENT

KABC-TV
March 5 2015

By Leanne Suter

CARSON, Calif. (KABC) —
The Carson City Council unanimously voted to turn down a gift for
the city’s sculpture garden, drawing cheers from those opposed to
the controversial piece of art.

The vote came after hours of heated debate Wednesday over the tribute
honoring Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who was the first
president of Turkey.

“I want to celebrate my heritage. Ataturk is George Washington to
our country,” Vega Sankur said.

Opponents said Ataturk was a vicious dictator responsible for the
Armenian Genocide.

“I highly doubt that if a city was entertaining a German cultural
monument, the German government would recommend a monument of Adolf
Hitler,” Montebello Mayor Jack Hadjinian said.

“I’m here to vociferously oppose the donation, installation of the
statue to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,” Glendale Mayor Zareh Sinanyan said.

Tempers flared when the Turkish Consul General addressed the city
council. Opponents standing turned their back on her as she spoke.

“I am here today to declare the support of the Republic of Turkey for
the Ataturk Monument Project and to explain the importance of this
project for the Turks all around the world,” said Raife Gulru Gezer,
Consul General of Turkey in Los Angeles.

Carson is now looking for other sculptures to add to its garden.

Currently, the garden only has one piece of art.

ARTIST WILL ‘PARTY’ WITH TURKISH PRESIDENT ERDOGAN’S MONEY

BGN News, Turkey
March 5 2015

The artist who will be paid TL 10,000 in compensation from President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan is planning to spend the money on a March 21
Nevruz holiday celebration with his friends. Sculptor Mehmet Aksoy
filed suit and won against Erdogan when the president had called
his sculpture, created to promote reconciliation between Turkey and
Armenia, a “monstrosity.”

“I will invite my friends on March 21 for Nevruz — a spring festival
traditionally marked in the second half of March — celebrations and
will spend the money there. I will share it with them,” said sculptor
Mehmet Aksoy.

Aksoy said the ruling showed that politicians could not speak in such
a way without consequence, and that they should appreciate the arts
and artists.

“Artists and art must not be shoved around. We should protect our
freedoms and the whole realm of freedom. This ruling has proven that,”
he said, adding that he was happy justice had been served.

“There are judges who still have sense of justice, that is to say
there are judges of the Republic. Nobody can humiliate another just
from arrogance,” he added.

On Tuesday, a court found Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
guilty of insulting renowned sculptor Mehmet Aksoy over an incident
in 2011 when he called Aksoy’s statue symbolizing goodwill between
Turkey and Armenia a “monstrosity.” The president was sentenced to
pay TL 10,000 in damages to the sculptor.

The comments by then-Prime Minister Erdogan came during a visit to
the northeastern city of Kars. “They put a monstrosity there, next
to the tomb of [scholar] Hasan Harakani,” Erdogan had said during
his January 2011 visit, “It is impossible to think that such a thing
should exist next to a true work of art.”

Aksoy then sued Erdogan for “insulting” him. An Ä°stanbul court
ruled on March 3 for Erdogan to pay TL 10,000 in moral indemnities
to Aksoy, partially accepting the TL 100,000 case Aksoy had filed
against Erdogan.

While Aksoy’s attorney defended their case by saying that labeling the
sculpture a “monstrosity” was an insult to Aksoy, Erdogan’s attorney
claimed that it was not as an insult, but rather a critique.

March 5, 2015 | DHA | Ä°stanbul

THOMAS DE WAAL: NO MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH EXPECTED IN ARMENIA-TURKEY RELATIONS IN 2015

17:29 | March 4,2015 | Politics

2015 will not mark a major breakthrough in relations between
Armenia and Turkey, says Thomas de Waal, a senior associate at the
Washington-based Carnegie Endowment, specializing primarily in the
South Caucasus region.

The analyst says the sides will not ‘return to the Armenian-Turkish
Protocols’ as both sides have negative attitudes towards the document.

Details are available in the video of Voice of America’s Armenian
Service