Author: Badalian Vardan

ERDOGAN VOWS NEVER TO RECOGNISE 1915 KILLINGS AS ‘GENOCIDE’

Gulf Times, Qatar
April 15 2015

Ankara

Turkey has warned the European Parliament that it would ignore any
resolution calling on Ankara to recognise the 1915 killings of
Armenians in World War I as genocide.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said any such statement would go “in
one ear and out from the other”.

The European Parliament is voted later in the day on a “motion for
resolution on the commemoration of the centennial of the Armenian
genocide”.

The vote took place against the backdrop of growing tensions over the
characterisation of the tragedy ahead of the 100th anniversary of the
Ottoman-era massacres this month.

“Whatever decision the European Union Parliament makes today would go
in one ear and out from the other because it is not possible for
Turkey to accept such a sin or crime,” Erdogan told reporters at an
Ankara airport before leaving for Kazakhstan.

The EU parliament had itself recognised the killings as genocide in 1987.

Furious with Pope Francis’s use of the word “genocide” at the weekend
to describe the killings, Turkey responded by summoning the Vatican’s
ambassador in Ankara and recalling the Turkish envoy to the Holy See
in a show of protest.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, whose country is a Nato member and
long-time European Union hopeful, warned the Pope not to use
“blackmail against Turkey”.

“We will not let our nation be insulted over history,” Davutoglu said
in an address to his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in
Ankara.

“The Pope has also joined those traps set against the AK Party and
Turkey,” he said, railing at the “unfair accusations” made ahead of
Turkey’s June 7 elections.

The United States on Tuesday called for a “full, frank”
acknowledgement of the mass killings while shying away from calling
the massacres “genocide”.

“I don’t know right now what sort of decision they will make … but I
barely understand why we, as the nation, as well as print and visual
media, stand in defence,” Erdogan said, referring to the European
parliament, before the vote. “I personally don’t bother about a
defence because we don’t carry a stain or a shadow like genocide.”

Armenia and Armenians in the diaspora say that some 1.5mn of their
forefathers were killed by Ottoman forces in a targeted campaign to
eradicate the Armenian people from Anatolia, in what is now eastern
Turkey.

Turkey takes a sharply different view, saying that hundreds of
thousands of both Turks and Armenians lost their lives as Ottoman
forces battled the Russian Empire for control of eastern Anatolia
during World War I.

Erdogan said yesterday that Turkey was home to some 100,000 Armenian
citizens, who were working in the country, some illegally.

“We could have deported them but we did not. We’re still hosting them
in our country. It is not possible to understand such a stance against
a country which displays” hospitality, he said.

Turkey is also still home to a small Turkish-Armenian community,
mostly based in Istanbul, who number around 60,000.

Armenians around the world will commemorate the 100th anniversary of
the tragedy on April 24, the same day as Turkey is planning major
commemorations of the World War I battle of Gallipoli.

100TH ANNIVERSARY OF ‘MEDS YEGHERN’

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
April 13 2015

by Sahin Alpay

On April 24, Armenians the world over will commemorate the 100th
anniversary of “Meds Yeghern” (the Great Catastrophe) that befell
their Ottoman forefathers during World War I.

On this occasion I want to share my views on the Turkish-Armenian
reconciliation which, despite some positive steps taken in that
direction in recent years, unfortunately remains a distant prospect.

The forceful deportation by their own government of Ottoman Armenians
from their historic homeland in Anatolia to – then-Ottoman — Syria
resulted in one of the greatest tragedies in recent history. At least
half of an estimated 1.2 million deported Armenians perished on the
way, due to massacres, famine and epidemics. The deportation of nearly
the entire Armenian community (except for those living in Istanbul and
Izmir) in retaliation for the rebellion of a nationalist-separatist
minority among them cannot be justified on any grounds. The Republic
of Turkey, which has tried to cover up the dark pages of its history,
should face up to its past, extend a formal apology to Armenians, pay
indemnities for their confiscated properties and offer citizenship
to their descendants. The expression of condolences by then-Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the families of the victims last year
was a step taken in the right direction, but surely does not suffice.

Armenian nationalists categorically insist that Turkey recognizes the
“genocide.” It is debated whether what befell Ottoman Armenians can
be rightly designated as genocide according to the broad and ambiguous
definition adopted by the United Nations genocide convention of 1948,
which is definitely not retroactive. It also needs to be considered
that the Armenian tragedy is only one of the tragedies faced by
Ottoman peoples in the process of the dissolution of the empire,
including millions of Muslims forced to flee their Balkan homes. What
was inflicted on Ottoman Armenians was surely a “crime against
humanity,” but is not easily comparable to the Holocaust. Armenian
nationalist-separatists had staged an armed rebellion against the
Ottoman state, taking sides with Russia. Many Turks and Muslims,
including public servants, tried to save Armenian lives. Large numbers
of Armenians fled to Russia or stayed on by converting to Islam. Turks
and Kurds, too, fell victim to mass killings by Armenian nationalists.

The above reasons are why the vast majority of Turkey’s citizens may
never be prepared to accept what befell Ottoman Armenians as genocide,
although growing numbers see the need to apologize for the great
tragedy, called “Meds Yeghern” by Armenians until 1965. Categorical
insistence on the recognition of an “Armenian genocide” is the main
obstacle to Turkish-Armenian reconciliation. Recognition resolutions
and laws to criminalize the denial of the Armenian genocide passed in
Western parliaments are perceived as an affront and blackmail by the
vast majority in Turkey. It is very unfortunate that the protocols
signed between Ankara and Yerevan in 2009 for the normalization
of relations through the establishment of diplomatic ties and the
opening of borders have remained on paper. This is surely partly due
to the continued occupation by Armenia of a large part of Azerbaijan,
making close to a million Azerbaijanis refugees in their homeland.

Those who are sincerely interested in Turkish-Armenian normalization
should focus their efforts on helping Turkey confront its history
and demanding the implementation of the protocols, rather than the
recognition of genocide. Thomas de Waal, the number one expert
journalist on Turkish-Armenian affairs, rightly emphasizes the
following in his excellent analysis of where we stand today:
“Armenians need to be able to finally bury their grandparents and
receive an acknowledgment from the Turkish state of the terrible fate
they suffered. These steps toward reconciliation will surely become
more possible as a more open Turkey begins to confront its past as
a whole. If that can be made to happen, everything else will follow.”

(“The G-Word: The Armenian Massacre and the Politics of Genocide,”
Foreign Affairs, January-February 2015.)

READING GERMANS REGARDING THE ARMENIAN ISSUE

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
April 15 2015

ALÄ° YURTTAGUL
April 15, 2015, Wednesday

The 100th anniversary of the Armenian “Meds Yeghern,” or genocide,
has finally arrived.

The Vatican’s characterization of the 1915 incidents as the “first
genocide” of the 20th century as well as the European Parliament’s
postponement of its Turkey report from April to May and the inclusion
of the Armenian issue on its April agenda are not coincidental. It is
no surprise that there are currently numerous conferences, exhibitions
and publications about the tragic history of Armenians in France,
Russia and the US, countries with sizable Armenian populations.

Interestingly enough, Germany is conducting in-depth discussions into
the matter even though it does not have a sizable Armenian population.

Berlin seeks to look into this sorrow in depth. I have a book that
focuses on the role of Germans in the Armenian genocide written by
Jurgen Gottschlich, a journalist living in Ä°stanbul and Berlin. It
is titled “Beihilfe zum Völkermord” (Complicity in Genocide). As you
know, in criminal law, not only is “intention” or “deliberation” to
kill someone a crime, but so is “assistance” or “complicity.” Before
moving to a discussion of whether Gottschlich sees Germans’ role in
the Armenian genocide as “assistance” or “complicity,” I would like to
touch on why a reading of Germans regarding this matter is imperative.

A cursory look at Germany’s recent past reveals that the country is
still suffering from the effects of two profound traumas. The world
sees Adolf Hitler as the German fascism that cast a shadow on the fate
of Jews. This reading is not necessarily wrong. While the number of
Russians or Germans who died is way above the 6 million Jews who died,
the Jewish suffering stands apart. The Nazis targeted Jews because
they are different and they systematically annihilated them.

The shadow of history’s greatest genocide, which Jews refer to as
“Shoah” or “Holocaust,” can still be felt in Germany. The Holocaust
Memorial, which spans a 4.7-acre space in downtown Berlin, was built
a few years ago. There is also a more recent “stolperstein” (stumbling
block) movement in which “stolpersteine” (the plural of stolperstein)
— small, cobblestone-size memorials for individual victims of Nazism
— are laid in the sidewalks.

Actually, “stolperstein” represents the second trauma. Germany
experienced the 1968 movement differently from France. In Germany,
revolutionary youth started to question their parents and their recent
past. They realized that when Jews were taken from their homes to
gas chambers, their parents weren’t ignorant of the process. They
further understood that some of their neighbors, uncles, writers,
journalists and politicians were loyal supporters of the Hitler regime,
were “murderers” or were “complicit” in the genocide. Being “children
of murderers” is a current trauma that many Germans feel deeply. In
this context, the “stolpersteine” represent a “refusal to forget,”
a “renunciation of the past” or a “determination to refrain from
complicity in crimes.”

Gottschlich’s book is a good example of this generation’s perspective
on their country and the world. As it examines the Armenian issue in
our recent past, the book is interesting. The book is an interesting
read not only for the Armenian issue, but also for its foray into
Germany’s role in it.

As you can guess from its title, the book puts Germans in the spotlight
instead of Turks, the Committee of Union and Progress (Ä°TC) or the
Ottomans. More precisely, it focuses on the role of Germans in the
Armenian genocide. The writer not only examines Anatolia and the
places where the incidents occurred, but also looks at the German
army’s archives that survived World War II. He also tried to study
a number of private archives as well as the archives of the General
Staff in Ankara.

The book contains the biographies of German officers who worked closely
with Enver PaÃ…~_a, Talat PaÃ…~_a and Cemal PaÃ…~_a, the leading figures
of the Ä°TC, as well as letters these German officers sent to their
relatives, which betray their perspective on the Armenian genocide
as no different from that of Enver PaÃ…~_a and Talat PaÃ…~_a. The book
also describes how certain Germans raised objections to the injustices
done to Armenians and tried to warn Berlin about them.

Gottschlich examines the biographies and documents like a meticulous
historian, but he also doesn’t renounce his identity as a journalist
as he takes into consideration the time and circumstances of the
incidents. “Beihilfe zum Völkermord” is an interesting report in
terms of the German Reich’s responsibility. When you read the book,
you can decide if Germans’ role in the genocide was “assistance”
or “complicity.” I hope the book is translated into Turkish soon so
that the grandchildren of the Ottomans have a chance to look at their
parents and grandparents from a different perspective.

HAYKAKAN ZHAMANAK: TURKEY IS NERVOUS AFTER EP ADOPTED RESOLUTION ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

11:07 16/04/2015 >> DAILY PRESS

Armenia welcomes the European Parliament Resolution on the Centenary of
the Armenian Genocide. As Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian
stated on Wednesday, “the Resolution contains an important message
to Turkey to use the commemoration of the Centenary of the Armenian
Genocide to come to terms with its past, to recognize the Armenian
Genocide and thus pave the way for a genuine reconciliation between
Turkish and Armenian peoples.”

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry also reacted to the European Parliament’s
Resolution. In a statement, it said that the European Parliament
aspired once again to rewrite history. The Turkish MFA urged the
Members of the European Parliament to “encounter their own past
and remember especially their roles and responsibilities in the most
abhorrent calamities of humanity such as World War I and World War II,”
Haykakan Zhamanak writes.

Source: Panorama.am

“POPE FRANCIS HAS TORN THE VEIL ON THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE”

The Pilot
April 15 2015

On: 4/15/2015,
By Salvatore Cernuzio

Rome (ZENIT) — One hundred years are not enough to forget, especially
if it is about a massacre such as the “Great Evil” that profoundly
affected the Armenian people at the beginning of the 20thcentury,
exterminating 1.5 million men, women, children and families.

Vatican expert, Franca Giansoldati knows it well. A journalist for
the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero, recently authored a new book
entitled “La Marcia Senza Ritorno: Il Genocidio Armeno (The March
without Return. The Armenian Genocide).

Giansoldati, who spent years of study and research for the new book,
even shed tears as she went deeper into the details of the cruel event
which still remains a gap in history. In an interview with ZENIT,
Giansoldati speaks on her work, which was also ‘blessed’ by the Pope,
and explains the reason for the troubled reactions of Turkey to the
Pontiff’s words last Sunday regarding what was, to all intents and
purposes, “the first genocide of the 20thcentury.”

* * *

ZENIT: The Pope said the word “genocide.” And this marks a turn in
the history of the papacy and of the Vatican, notwithstanding that St.

John Paul II already pronounced this word in the “Joint Declaration”
with Karekin II of 2001. In your opinion, how is Francis’ gesture
interpreted, as a hazard or a courageous move?

AJARIA EXPECTS FURTHER GROWTH OF TOURISTS FROM ARMENIA

April 16, 2015 10:57

Photo:

Yerevan/Mediamax/. Armenia is among the top 5 countries with largest
number of tourists visiting Ajaria last year, Mediamax was told in
the government of the autonomous republic.

In 2014, 21 041 tourists from Armenia visited Ajaria, which exceeds
the same index of 2013 by 36.7%.

“We expect considerable growth of Armenian guests this year as well”,
noted the Ajaria government representative. “We are already getting
ready for the high season”.

Last year, the largest number of tourists visited Ajaria from Turkey –
77734. Azerbaijan (47714), Russia (31312) and Ukraine (24220) are
among the top 5.

All in all, 261 075 overseas tourists visited Ajaria.

“Armenia is among the countries where Department of Tourism and
Resorts of Ajaria pursue active marketing and advertising campaigns”,
the government representative stated.

OP-ED: HOW ERDOGAN SPINS THE NEWS AND TURKEY OUT OF CONTROL SPECIAL

Digital Journal
April 13 2015

By Lonna Lisa Williams Apr 13, 2015

Islamist Ak Party President Erdogan is spinning the news and Turkey
out of control as he grants police more powers; limits freedom of
speech, protests, and the press; and arrests those who oppose him.

Turkey has been in the news a lot lately. Strange headlines like “Is
Erdogan Losing Touch with Reality?” “Teens Targeted as Turkey Cracks
Down on Free Speech” and “Students in Turkey Petition for Jedi Temple
after Call for Mosque on Campus” appear on the Internet lately.

Almost two years ago, the Gezi Park Freedom Protests challenged
Islamist Ak Party leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan, like the Evil
Emperor from Star Wars, struck back — hard. Instead of Mustafa Kemal
Ataturk’s secular democracy, a police state reigned in Turkey. Anyone
who spoke against Erdogan and his ideals, including a beauty queen,
a 13-year-old boy who posted something on Facebook, teenage university
students, journalists, academics, and novelists — were accused in
court and, in many cases, faced with prison.

While Erdogan puts finishing touches on his over $600 million new
Ak Sarayı (“White Palace”), now the largest palace in the world,
working-class Turkish citizens are struggling to pay their rising
electric and water bills. While his children and in-laws run for
high posts in the government, university students struggle to find
good-paying jobs. The Turkish lira hit an all-time low in December,
and several Turkish banks are facing big problems.

Religious freedom is also at an all-time low. At Easter time this past
week, a Muslim Koran reading was held inside the Hagia Sophia, one of
the oldest Christian churches in the world. Built in the 6th Century,
it stood as the world’s tallest building for 1,000 years. In 1453,
it was conquered by Sultan Mehmet II and immediately converted into a
mosque with the Christian altar removed, intricate mosaics plastered
over, a nook cut toward Mecca, and tall minarets added. Ataturk wisely
turned it into a museum in the 1930s, but its future veers toward
being forced into a mosque again. There are over 80,000 mosques in
Turkey and over 3,000 in Istanbul, with more being built at the cost
of millions of dollars. Many of them remain almost empty while Turks
try to pay rising rent costs. Not one Christian church was allowed to
be built in the Turkish capital of Ankara, except on the foreign soil
of embassies. The idea that Turkey is only Muslim is false; there are
many Armenian Christians (who took Turkish names to survive) keeping
a low profile in Turkey, even as the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian
Genocide approaches (which Erdogan denies). There are also many other
Turkish Christians with actual churches throughout Turkey, Jews,
Alevis, and, apparently, Buddhists and Jedi (as university students
recently demanded their temples be built on university grounds).

Erdogan has also been converting ancient Christian churches and
monasteries into mosques. In lifting up the Ottoman Empire and
portraying his image as a Sultan, Erdogan has denied the rich
Christian, Roman, Greek, and Mesopotamian histories and cultures
of Turkey.

Erdogan has closed Twitter and Facebook several times, only to reopen
them if “offensive” items were removed. Erdogan has allowed his
police force to attack unarmed protesters and even peaceful tourists
(including me). I spent 2.5 years working in Turkey and covering the
news first-hand. I even married into a Turkish/Armenian family and
learned the language. Turkey is a beautiful country, brimming over
with natural and historic treasures, and it should not go the way of
Syria or Iraq. New laws in Turkey threatening women’s rights. New laws
allow police to search and detain people without a search warrant or
even an official charge. They also prohibit protesters from covering
their faces with gas masks or wearing hardhats, thus making them
vulnerable to pepper spray and even the now-allowed gun bullets.

A 14-year-old boy was shot in the head with a metal tear gas canister
during the Gezi Park Protests nearly two years ago — while going
to the store to buy bread for his family. He was in a coma for nine
months and then died. When a judge would not release the name of the
policeman (and others) responsible for his death, two neighbors took
matters into their own hands. They stormed the courthouse and held the
judge at gunpoint for hours, demanding the name of the policeman who
killed the boy. When the judge refused, the neighbors shot him. Then
they were shot by Turkish police and labeled “terrorists.” This is
how Erodgan spins the news.

One Turkish man told me, “That boy’s neighbors sought justice, and
they were not given it, so they brought justice in the Turkish way. If
Erdogan’s Islamist Ak Party wins the upcoming June elections, Turkey
will face a civil war. The Ataturk people will not be patient forever.

They want secular democracy again. Turkey could become the next Syria.”

In fact, so great is Erdogan’s control over his citizens that he
determines the legal recipe of bread. There is a bill before the
Turkish Parliament to put smart chips with GPS trackers into the ID
cards of all Turkish citizens–and talk of inserting smart chips
inside Turkish citizen’s bodies so that the GPS trackers would be
even more effective. Who would have thought that what some Christians
consider the “Mark of the Beast,” mentioned in the Book of Revelation,
could first appear in Turkey?

Apparently, Europe and the U.S.A. are happy to sit and watch Turkey
fall into the darkness of dictatorship, like a Mevlana whirling dervish
gone out of control. Even the Kurds are accusing Erdogan of being
a dictator. Maybe they will help the Turks regain their government
and their human rights. Some Turks are actually trying, like the new
“Meydan” (“Defiance”) newspaper and the Republican People’s Party
(CHP), Ataturk’s secular democratic group. But time is short and much
needs to be done. If Turkey falls, how will things go with Europe
and America?

MOSCOU N’ADMET PAS L’IDEE D’UNE ESCALADE DU CONFLIT AU HK

ARMENIE

La presse du jour rend compte de la visite officielle du Ministre
des AE, Edward Nalbandian, a Moscou, et de son entretien avec son
homologue Sergueï Lavrov. Selon un communique du MAE armenien, les
deux Ministres ont evoque les preparatifs de la prochaine visite
du President Poutine en Armenie, a l’occasion de la commemoration
du centenaire du Genocide armenien. Un large eventail de questions
a figure a l’agenda de l’entretien des deux Ministres : conflit du
HK, questions regionales, cooperation militaro-technique, echanges
commerciaux, cooperation educative, culturelle, scientifique etc. Les
deux Ministres se sont felicites de la cooperation efficace des
deux pays dans de nombreux secteurs, dont l’agriculture, l’energie,
l’industrie minière, le secteur bancaire, les communications etc. M.

Lavrov a evoque les echanges commerciaux entre l’Armenie et la Russie
qui ont atteint en 2014 1,4 MD de dollars. Lors d’une conference de
presse conjointe, M. Lavrov a decrit l’Armenie comme un > de la Russie : .

Edward Nalbandian, quant a lui, a de nouveau blâme l’Azerbaïdjan pour
saper le processus de negociations et rejeter les elements cles des
principes de base proposes par les mediateurs.

Par ailleurs, a l’occasion de sa visite a Moscou, le Ministre armenien
des AE a rencontre des redacteurs en chef de nombreux medias russes,
ainsi que des experts politiques. Il a eu en outre une reunion avec
une quarantaine d’Ambassadeurs etrangers accredites en Armenie et
residents a Moscou.

Extrait de la revue de presse de l’Ambassade de France en Armenie en
date du 9 avril 2015

jeudi 16 avril 2015, Stephane (c)armenews.com

WHY THE GHOST OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE HAUNTS THE KURDS OF TURKEY

AINA Assyrian International News Agency
April 15 2015

By Anne Andlauer

Posted 2015-04-15 18:48 GMT

Inside Diyarbakir’s Surp Giragos Armenian Church.DIYARBAKIR — Leaning
against a basalt pillar, young Muhammad Enes calls out in his reedy
voice to anybody who approaches, advertising a closer look at the
historical site here in the eastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir. “Do
you want to visit?” the boy asks. “The Surp Giragos is the oldest
Armenian church in the entire Middle East. It sheltered 3,000
worshippers and a cannon destroyed its bell tower in 1915.”

Muhammad is too young to have played in the ruins of Surp Giragos,
restored and reopened to worshipers in 2011. He is also too young to
fully understand the massacres and deportations that these walls, this
town, this part of the Turkish region of Anatolia witnessed, almost a
century before he was born.

Still the children of Diyarbakir who hear the bells toll at recess
time already know more than what their school history books will ever
tell them about the Armenian genocide, which began 100 years ago this
week.

Too often, too soon, when it’s about Turkey and the Armenian genocide,
the Turkish state’s denial is understood as the denial of the society
as a whole. That would be forgetting that the memory of the Armenian
people is inscribed in the land where they lived for so long, and in
the minds of the peoples they long lived alongside, including another
population with a history of conflict with the Turkish state: the
Kurds.

“The people of this region know there was a genocide and they don’t
deny it,” says Aram Hacikyan, the Surp Giragos church’s guardian.

Aram talks about his grandfather, who was an orphan of 1915, taken in
by a Kurd who converted to Islam, but “never hid that he was Armenian.

In our family, unlike what happened in other families, this was never
a secret.”

In 1914, some 60,000 Armenians were living in Diyarbakir, notes Adnan
Celik, a researcher at the Parisian School for Advanced Studies in the
Social Sciences. “It’s a symbolic location of the genocide because
there used to be a mixed population here — of Armenians, Kurds,
Syriacs, Turkmens,” Celik says.

This is also the province, whose governor, Mehmed Reshid, dubbed the
“butcher of Diyarbakir” infamously sent a telegram in 1915
congratulating himself for having doomed as many as 160,000 Armenians
to deportation and death.

Adnan Celik, whose grandmother was also a bavfilleh (a Kurdish word
used to refer to Armenians who converted to Islam), recently published
a book about the memory of the genocide among the Kurdish people of
Diyarbakir. “The absence of Armenians, here, is an infinite loss.

People recount stories of an unbelievable violence with such details,
as if it had happened yesterday,” he says.

The young anthropologist stops a moment to talk about the role played
by the Kurdish political movement, which “from the start has been
questioning the official version of the story, talking about the
genocide and the part the Kurds played in this genocide.”

Heaven by sword

As enthusiastic and zealous as he might have been, Reshid probably
couldn’t have led 160,000 Armenians to death without the active help
of several of Diyarbakir’s important families and Kurdish tribe
leaders. These men were promised and often obtained a certain plot of
land or home after the Armenian owner was executed. Muslims who were
promised heaven for every seven Christians they put to the sword.

“Careful to avoid any anachronism here,” warns Adnan Celik. “In 1915,
nationalist claims from the Kurds of this region didn’t exist yet.

Those who took part in the genocide often did so as Muslims against
non-Muslim infidels.”

Abdullah Demirbas’s face looks chastened when he talks about these
“Kurds misled by the state to slaughter Armenians,” despite having
lived alongside them for centuries.

“My grandfather would tell me the story of a priest who, to convince
one Kurd not to kill him, supposedly told him, ‘We are the breakfast,
you’ll be the lunch.’ And that’s what happened,” he sighs.

Like many in Diyarbakir, Abdullah Demirbas, a local political leader,
sees a continuity between the genocide of the Armenians of the Ottoman
Empire and the killings, a decade later of Kurds at the outset of the
Turkish Republic until the end of the 20th century.

“It’s important that we, the grandchildren of those who helped in the
genocide, face this past, not only to settle our debt but also to
build a future together,” he insists.

For the former mayor of Sur, an ancient neighborhood in Diyarbakir
where many Armenians used to live, “a future together” is more than
just a slogan. In 2009, Abdullah Demirbas played a key role in the
restoration of the Armenian church, with the support of the Diyarbakir
city council and the Surp Giragos Foundation.

Demirbas, a brawny and imposing figure, admits he “almost cried” when
it was inaugurated. “I feel I’ve repaid part of my debt,” he says.

Aram Hacikyan says the site is more than a church: “It’s becoming a
gathering point for all Armenians,” he notes, citing visitors from
Europe, Armenia and the United States. “Some people in the diaspora
are less scared of coming to Turkey, where the genocide took place,
since they know that the church is back.”

Abdullah Demirbas, the former mayor, believes they have to go further
and encourage the Armenians of Diyarbakir to come back. He mentions a
school, and even offers to build a “genocide museum.”

“We can’t wait for the Turkish authorities to do something on their
own, so we must force them to do it,” he says.

Adnan Celik is more skeptical. “Many Kurdish recognize the genocide,
they apologize, and then what? Are they the only guilty?” he asks.

“The real question is what the state, which has been denying it for
100 years, is going to do about it.”

In the church’s yard, still wet after the last rain shower, Armen
Demirdjian nods. He found out about his Armenian origins at the age of
30. His grandparents were killed during the genocide. His father, aged
4 in 1915, never talked about it and Armen never asked. But now he
wants to know, and wants the world to know too. “We can’t keep
sweeping the dirt under the rug forever,” he says. “Sooner or later,
we will have to lift it up and shake it, and let all the dirt come out
for everyone to see.”

TURKEY TO DISREGARD EUROPEAN DEBATE ON ARMENIAN ‘GENOCIDE’

Deutsche Welle, Germany
April 15 2015

The European Parliament is due to vote on a resolution defining the
deaths of Armenians in World War I as “genocide.” But Turkish President
Erdogan has said the words would “go in one ear and out the other”
in Ankara.

The European Parliament is set to debate a resolution on Wednesday,
to mark the 100th anniversary of the killing of as many as 1.5 million
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. The authors of the motion called
the event “Armenian genocide” in the document.

“Whatever decision the European Parliament takes on Armenian genocide
claims, it would go in one ear and out the other,” Turkish President
Erdogan told a news conference on Wednesday, before departing on an
official visit to Kazakhstan.

Turkey is strongly opposed to qualifying the deaths as genocide,
saying that hundreds of thousands of both Turks and Christian Armenians
lost their lives in the struggle between the Ottoman forces and the
Russian Empire over eastern Anatolia during in World War I.

Erdogan added that it would not be possible for Turkey, which inherited
the Ottoman Empire, “to accept such sin or crime.”

Erdogan warns the pope

The debate about the tragedy has been raging for decades. The European
Parliament first formally defined the killings as genocide back in
1987, and twenty countries including France, Italy and Russia share
that view, alongside a significant number of historians.

Earlier this week, Pope Francis described the 1915 event as genocide,
prompting Istanbul to recall their envoy to the Holy See in protest.

The Turkish government also summoned the Vatican ambassador in
Istanbul, with President Erdogan accusing the Pope of spouting
“nonsense.”

“We will not allow historical incidents to be taken out of their
genuine context and be used as a tool to campaign against our country,”
Erdogan said in a speech to a business group. “I condemn the pope
and would like to warn him not to make similar mistakes again.”

The United States called for “full, frank” acknowledgement of the
mass killings on Tuesday, without calling them “genocide”.

The German parliament is also set to discuss the issue later this
month; the debate has added significance in Berlin, as the Ottoman
Empire was allied to Germany during the First World War.

‘Not possible to understand’

On Wednesday, Erdogan also pointed out that Turkey is a home to some
100,000 Armenian citizens. Some of them work in the country illegally,
the Turkish president said, and are never mistreated. There are also
around 60,000 Turkish Armenians, mostly based in Istanbul.

“Both citizens and non-citizen Armenians are enjoying the opportunities
of our country. We could have deported them, but we didn’t,” Erdogan
said. “We’re still hosting them in our country. It is not possible to
understand such a stance against a country which displays hospitality.”

Armenia and Armenians around the world claim their forefathers died
in an organized eradication campaign by Ottoman forces. They intend
to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the tragedy on April 24.