KVUE , TX
April 19 2015
Hundreds march down SoCo Saturday for Armenian Genocide
AUSTIN — Hundreds marched down South Congress Avenue Saturday to
remember the Armenian Genocide.
Organizers said their main goal is to raise awareness and prevent
further genocides from occurring.
100 years ago, the Ottoman Turkish Empire killed approximately 1.5
million Armenian Christians.
McClatchy Washington Bureau
April 19 2015
So much to settle to reopen the Turkish-Armenian border
By Roy Gutman
McClatchy Foreign StaffApril 19, 2015
2015-04-19T20:32:35Z
By Roy Gutman
GYUMRI, Armenia — The train to Turkey hasn’t left the station in
Armenian border town of Gyumri for 22 years, and many here fear it
never will. But if Turkey should unexpectedly reopen the gates, a lot
of Armenians will be on board, eager to see the country their
ancestors fled 100 years ago amid massacres and mass deportations.
“The soil there, I want to go back and farm it,” Stepan Bagouryan, 30,
a machinist from Gyumri, said as he boarded a ramshackle passenger
train to Yerevan, the Armenian capital. His great grandfather fled the
city of Mus, in eastern Turkey. “Why shouldn’t we go back? It is our
homeland.”
Turkey closed the link in 1993 to show solidarity with its regional
ally, Azerbaijan, after Armenian troops occupied the tiny enclave of
Nagorno Karabach. It’s been closed ever since.
Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton intervened in 2009 to resolve
the matter, and Armenia and Turkey agreed to establish diplomatic
relations and reopen the border. But the agreement fell victim to the
region’s many conflicts and has yet to be implemented.
Azerbaijan, which shares religious and linguistic ties with Turkey and
is a major outside investor in its Turkish economy, cried betrayal.
Armenia still had troops inside territory Azerbaijan claimed. It also
had captured a buffer zone surrounding the enclave, whose population
of 130,000 is overwhelmingly Armenian.
So Turkey asked Armenia make a show of goodwill and abandon at least
one of the buffer zone’s seven districts. Armenia refused.
The 2009 accords also called for an international commission to look
at the historical record and assemble facts that would enable
discussion of the two countries’ very different interpretations of the
deportations and massacres of 1915 that killed perhaps a million
Armenians and which Armenia labels genocide. But after leaders of the
Armenian diaspora accused President Serzh Sargsyan of betraying
Armenian interests by agreeing to discuss the history, that initiative
died as well.
After four years, neither side had submitted the twin protocols to
their respective parliaments for approval, and on Feb. 16, Sargsyan
formally withdrew them, blaming a lack of will by Turkey.
Although both sides have made gestures in the past – Sargsyan, for
example sent his foreign minister to Erdogan’s inauguration as
president last year – neither side is willing to contemplate taking a
bold unilateral step to end the impasse.
“We think the blockade is illegal, and we do think it needs to be
eliminated as soon as possible, and the earlier the better,” said
Vigan Sargsyan, chief of staff to President Sargsyan (he’s not related
to the president. He said Armenia has no preconditions.
“We don’t think that to open a border you need to reconcile. We think
that reconciliation or friendship are future steps.”
“We want regular relations with Armenia on the basis of bilateral
interests, but on the basis of realpolitik, it’s not so easy,” a
Turkish official told McClatchy in Ankara. “If they will retreat from
one or two (districts), it will give us the possibility of de-blocking
everything,” said the official, who spoke only on the condition of
anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
The U.S. says the ball is in Turkey’s court. “Responsibility for
moving forward lies with the Turkish government,” the new U.S.
ambassador, Richard Mills, said at his confirmation hearings in
September. He called for final approval of the two accords “without
pre-conditions or linkage to other issues.”
But agreement, on anything, seems a distant hope.
For one, Armenia is incensed that Turkey chose April 24, the day of
Armenia’s long planned commemoration of the centennial of the Armenian
exodus from Turkey, to invite the world’s powers to Turkey mark
another 1915 event, the failed allied landing at Gallipoli. The
Ottoman Empire repulsed the April 25 landing by Russia, France and
Britain, and the battle went on for eight months. The Turks think of
it as a defining moment in their fight to remain independent after the
collapse of the Ottomans.
In January, Erdogan invited his Armenian counterpart to attend the
Gallipoli commemoration. Sargsyan rejected it, and in an open letter
to Erdogan, chastised him for not even responding to the invitation
that Armenia had sent to the Yerevan ceremonies months earlier.
He charged that Turkey was continuing “its traditional policy of
denialism” surrounding the Armenian genocide and accused Erdogan of
setting the date for the Gallipoli events “to distract the attention
of the international community” from Armenia’s commemoration.
If the aim was to upstage Armenia, Erdogan appears to have succeeded.
At least 21 heads of state have agreed to attend the Gallipoli events,
according to Turkey’s foreign ministry; only two, the presidents of
France and Russia, are expected at Yerevan.
But Armenia hasn’t finished. At the end of January, Sargsyan, together
with other leading politicians and members of the Armenian diaspora,
issued a “Pan-Armenian” declaration that referred to the 1920 Treaty
of Sevres and an arbitration by then President Woodrow Wilson, which
awarded an enormous part of Turkey to a new Armenian state. The
declaration called for preparing a file of legal claims to restore
“individual, communal and pan-Armenian rights and legitimate
interests.”
Turkish officials said the declaration could be read as a claim on
Turkish lands. Many Armenians agree.
“It would be strange if we did not lay out our grievances” on the
centennial of the slaughter, said chief of staff Sargsyan, when asked
about the declaration.
And in the view of Suren Manukyan, the deputy director of the Armenian
Genocide Museum in Yerevan, that region – about one seventh of the
landmass of today’s Turkey – should be restored to Armenians.
“It was the decision of President Wilson, who was chosen for
arbitration after the Sevres Treaty,” he said. “The implementation of
the decision of Wilson will be good compensation for all the killings,
all the tragedy.” Then, he added, “the real host of the land will come
back.”
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, believe it or not, efforts are under way
to restore the dialogue – after the twin commemorations of April 24
and after the Turkish elections on June 7.
According to U.S.-born Richard Giragosian, a former Capitol Hill aide
who directs the Regional Studies think-tank in Yerevan, Turkish
foreign ministry officials plan to come to Yerevan in mid-June during
a meeting of the NATO parliamentary assembly.
In landlocked Armenia, which has normal ties but rudimentary transport
links with Georgia and Iran, an opening to Turkey would be a welcomed
jolt to a moribund economy.
Today a resident of Yerevan who wants to visit Istanbul, where at
least 40,000 and possibly 100,000 Armenians are working illegally, has
few options for travel. There are twice weekly charter flights that
depart both countries in the middle of the night, a 36-hour bus trip
or one can make the six-hour drive to Tblisi, capital of neighboring
Georgia, over a swerving, potholed secondary road, then catch a flight
on to Istanbul.
Giragosian believes that may not be the situation for long. Based on
contacts he’s had with both the Turkish and Armenian governments, he
predicts the border will be open by 2017.
Dutch MEP: Current Turkish government bears great responsibility for
wounds of history
15:39, 19.04.2015
Region:World News, Armenia, Turkey
Theme: Politics
The Turkish government bears a great responsibility for wounds of
history, the Dutch MEP from European People’s party Esther de Lange
told Armenian News – NEWS.am, referring to the European Parliament
resolution on Armenian Genocide and Turkey’s continuing denial policy.
“We believe that in a democracy it is necessary to deal with one’s
past and come to terms with it. It was not the current Turkish state
but the Ottoman Empire that was responsible for what happened to the
Armenians 100 years ago, but the Turkish government should realize
that it bears a great responsibility to help heal the wounds of
history,” Esther de Lange said.
On April 15, the European Parliament adopted a resolution by a
majority vote, urging Turkey to recognize the Armenian Genocide in
order to contribute to the “reconciliation of the Armenian and Turkish
people.” The document calls on Turkey to restore its diplomatic ties
with Armenia, open the border and strive for economic integration.
Buenos Aires Herald, Argentina
April 19 2015
A most reluctant crusader
By James Neilson
For the Herald
Pope cannot ignore Christian suffering in Muslim countries
Pope Francis would rather spend his days deploring the spiritual
emptiness of consumerism, hedonism and other contemporary ills than
feel called upon to defend Christendom against people who are
determined to annihilate what is left of it. He took the name of
Francis because he wanted to bring the papacy closer to common folk by
making it kinder and more willing to understand their troubles but,
much as he may dislike the idea, circumstances are obliging him to
change his priorities. As head of the biggest and most influential
Christian denomination, he cannot make out that what is happening in
the Middle East, Pakistan, Nigeria and other parts of the world does
not concern him. Once again, Islam is on the march and, to his evident
unease, Francis, a man who would much prefer to talk about the
blessings of peace than don the armour of a crusader, must do whatever
he can to stop it.
Almost nine years have passed since Pope Benedict XVI infuriated many
Muslims and post-Christian progressives by quoting the 14th century
Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologos on Islam. When confronted by a
believer, Manuel asked him to “Show me just what Muhammad brought that
was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as
his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” To prove
both the Byzantine monarch and the Pope channelling him were wrong
because Islam is a uniquely peaceful creed, Muslims around the world
rioted, trashed dozens of churches, beheaded at least one priest and,
in Somalia, murdered an Italian nun.
Aware that his German predecessor had committed a terrible gaffe by
suggesting in his Regensburg lecture that Islam was less than perfect,
after replacing him Jorge Bergoglio tried a gentler approach, but
events in the Middle East soon forced him to change track. There, the
remaining Christians are the target of a ferocious onslaught much like
the ones that were confronted by the Byzantine Empire before it was
finally snuffed out by the rampaging Turks. Throughout that unhappy
region, Christians are being butchered by jihadists while Western
leaders such as Barack Obama, David Cameron and the rest of them wring
their hands, express their dismay and say mass murder is terrible but,
fortunately, has “nothing to do with Islam.” To ram home that
particular point, Obama said Christians were not entitled to get on
their high horse and complain because the Spanish Inquisition and the
Ku Klux Klan had been just as bad as the holy warriors of the Islamic
State.
But the climate is changing. To the surprise of many, Pope Francis has
begun to speak out. After criticizing the “complicit silence” of
Western politicians whose indifference toward the plight of Christians
in faraway countries about which they know very little struck him as
contemptible, he dared call the systematic and carefully planned
slaughter of Armenians, alongside Greeks, Assyrians and others, by the
Turks a century ago an act of “genocide”, the first in the twentieth
century, that was fully comparable to the later ones carried out by
the Nazis and the Soviet Communists.
As might have been expected, his words greatly angered the Islamists
who are currently ruling Turkey and busily persecuting secularists.
Unlike the Germans, who have come to terms with their own equally
appalling collective past, most Turks – not all by any means – have
refused to do so. As far as they are concerned, one and a half million
Armenians and a large number of Greeks were victims of what these days
is called collateral damage, not of a genocidal pogrom by “Young Turk”
nationalists and religious fanatics determined to exterminate
non-Muslim minorities.
Until fairly recently, most Western politicians and progressive
intellectuals did their best to see in Turkey’s Islamist president
Recep Tayyip Erdogan a Middle-Eastern version of a European Christian
Democrat, a man who, rather than turn his back on his country’s
dominant religious faith, was doing his best to soften it so it could
fit into the modern democratic world just as Catholicism,
Protestantism, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Shintoism and
Confucianism have managed to do. Sceptics who said Erdogan and his
sidekicks were only interested in their own Islamist agenda got short
thrift, but the Turkish regime’s virulent reaction to Pope Francis’s
words has bolstered their case. The following day, the European
Parliament weighed in by calling for a commemoration of “the centenary
of the Armenian genocide”. By so doing, it made it clear that Turkey’s
chances, which were never very great, of joining the European Union
are quickly getting smaller.
According to a large number of opinion polls, most Europeans believe
Islam is incompatible with their way of doing things. That is a major
reason why, in country after country, political parties habitually
denounced as “extreme right-wing” keep sprouting up. The widespread
feeling that governments, along with cultural elites, are bending over
backwards to appease the increasingly aggressive Muslim communities in
Europe, plus the unlovely regimes that rule much of the Muslim world,
has provoked a backlash that could have dire consequences for a large
number of people.
The lessons of history are grim. Time and time again, relations
between large Muslim communities and others have become so strained
that population transfers, like the ones that caused so much suffering
in Greece and Turkey almost a century ago and then in Pakistan and
India after the departure of the British, seemed the least bad option.
Will we see more such disasters in the years to come? Perhaps not, but
to many the prospect no longer seems unimaginable.
ALALAM, Iran
April 16, 2015 Thursday
Mass Killing Between 1915-1917 is Genocide
A picture released by the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute dated
1915 shows soldiers standing over skulls of victims from the Armenian
village of Sheyxalan in the Mush valley, on the Caucasus front during
the First World War(Getty)
The European Parliament has ruled that 1915 mass killings of some 1.5
million Armenians by the Istanbul-ruled Ottoman Empire amount to
genocide.
The decision was made one week before the 100th anniversary of the
killings, which falls on 24 April.
The lawmakers stated that the “tragic events that took place in
1915-1917 against the Armenians in the territory of the Ottoman Empire
represent a genocide”, Reuters reported.
Armenia’s Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian said the resolution is a
move towards defending human rights.
“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 recognise the Armenian genocide and thus pave
the way for a genuine reconciliation between Turkish and Armenian
peoples,” he said in a statement.
However, Turkey did not agree with the resolution and accused the
Parliament of attempting to “rewrite history”.
Turkey’s foreign ministry said lawmakers who backed the decision were
partners of “those who have nothing to do with European values and are
feeding on hatred, revenge and the culture of conflict”.
One day before the ruling, Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan warned
that his country would ignore any view by the Parliament regarding the
mass killing. “Whatever decision they may take, it would go in one
ear and out the other,” Erdogan was quoted by Reuters as saying.
The resolution comes as tensions rose between Turkey and the Vatican,
after Pope Francis referred to the killings as “the first genocide of
the 20th Century” during a Mass at St Peter’s Basilica.
The pontiff spoke about three tragedies in the last century. “The
first, which is widely considered the first genocide of the 20th
century, struck your own Armenian people,” he said, and added that the
other two mass killings were perpetrated by “Nazism and Stalinism.
More recently there have been other mass killings, like those in
Cambodia, Rwanda, Burundi and Bosnia. It seems that humanity is
incapable of putting a halt to the shedding of innocent blood”,IB
Times reports.
Turkey denies that the mass killings amount to genocide and argues
that the figures have been inflated.
Following Francis’ remarks, the Middle Eastern country recalled its
envoy to the Vatican and warned the pontiff not to “repeat the same
mistake”.
A top Turkish Islamic cleric has also warned the Vatican that it has
more to lose by digging up the past.
“If societies start to interrogate each other over past sorrows, the
Vatican will suffer more than anyone else,” Mehmet Gormez, Turkey’s
head of religious affairs, said.
Irish Independent
April 19 2015
Genocide in Armenia and death in the Mediterranean
Le Pen refuses to quit politics, Pope Francis highlights the awful
plight of migrants, and France provokes the See
Pope Francis sparked a diplomatic row last Sunday by calling the
massacre of up to 1.5m Armenians 100 years ago “the first genocide of
the 20th Century,” prompting Turkey to accuse him of inciting hatred.
Muslim Turkey accepts that many Christian Armenians died in clashes
with Ottoman soldiers beginning in 1915, when Armenia was part of the
empire ruled from Istanbul, but denies hundreds of thousands were
killed and that this amounted to genocide.
At an Armenian-rite Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica to mark the 100th
anniversary of the mass killings, Francis became the first head of the
Roman Catholic Church to publicly pronounce the word “genocide” to
describe them.
Spain’s anti-austerity Podemos would win an election by a razor-thin
margin if it were held now, a poll showed, but the new leftist party
has lost some support in recent months and is running virtually
neck-and-neck with the two mainstream parties.
Podemos (“We Can”) surprised by taking five seats in elections for the
European Parliament last May, just months after its formation,
demonstrating how austerity-weary Spaniards were turning away from
establishment parties. Podemos led the poll, carried out for El Pais
newspaper, for the fourth month in a row, garnering 22.1pc support.
However, the opposition Socialists regained lost ground to come second
with 21.9pc of the vote.
Far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders attempted , last Monday, to
boost the German anti-Islam movement PEGIDA with a speech that mocked
Chancellor Angela Merkel for saying Muslims “belong to Germany”, but
the demonstration failed to draw huge crowds.
Wilders offered to take Merkel back to the Netherlands with him,
provoking chants of “Merkel must go!” from the audience of mostly
middle-aged and elderly white men. Some waved flags and held banners
saying “Stop the Islamisation of Europe!”.
Hungary’s Jobbik party denied it was racist or anti-Semitic, after
softening its far-right rhetoric and seizing a parliamentary seat from
the ruling party in a weekend by-election amid a surge in support.
Jobbik has gained support as voters drift away from mainstream parties
like Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz, which is battling a public
view that some of its leaders have used their posts to enrich
themselves.
Jewish groups say they are sceptical that Jobbik has changed. World
Jewish Congress chairman Ronald S Lauder said last Sunday that the
party’s rise was hurting Hungary’s image.
Jobbik chairman Gabor Vona, 37, said at a news conference in Hungary’s
parliament, that his party’s shift to the centre was genuine and vowed
to trim what he called its “wild off-shoots”.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of France’s far-right National Front, said
he would not seek its ticket to stand in regional polls, taking some
of the sting out of a damaging public row with his daughter Marine,
the party’s current leader.
But the 86-year-old former paratrooper told Le Figaro in an interview
that he was disappointed by his daughter and would not quit politics,
showing that the family feud that could emerge as a threat to the FN’s
bid for power is not necessarily over.
Marine Le Pen, who in 2011 took over as FN party leader from her
father, has been trying to persuade him to retire both from the
December regional polls and from politics altogether.
Jean-Marie Le Pen last week reiterated his view that Nazi gas chambers
were a mere “detail” of war and defended Philippe Petain, the leader
of the war-time government that cooperated with Nazi Germany.
Last November Pope Francis, in an address to the European Parliament,
said “we cannot allow the Mediterranean to become a vast graveyard,”
referring to the thousands of migrants who drown every year seeking to
reach southern Europe from north Africa and the Middle East.
Last week, hundreds of people desperate to be rescued from a packed
migrant boat in the Mediterranean pushed to one side when they saw a
ship approach, capsizing the craft and pitching everyone into the sea,
where hundreds died.
Survivors’ accounts suggested at least 500 people were on the boat
when it sank on Monday evening, some 120 km (75 miles) off the Italian
island of Lampedusa. With 145 people rescued, that leaves at least 350
unaccounted for – probably drowned.
Joel Millman, spokesman for the International Organization for
Migration (IOM), said: “According to testimonies, at least one-third
were women and children.
“At the time of the shipwreck, they were staying in the hull of the
boat to be better protected from the cold.
“When the men on the deck became restless and started moving about
because a rescue boat was beginning to approach them, the boat
capsized and water flooded the hull. Women and children died
immediately.”
France is standing by its nominee to be ambassador to the Holy See, an
official said on Friday, despite the Vatican’s failure to confirm his
posting for more than three months, a delay that French and Italian
media said was due to his sexuality.
Francois Hollande’s government nominated the president’s head of
protocol, Laurent Stefanini, for the post on January 5, but has still
not heard back from the Vatican.
French Catholic daily La Croix cited an unnamed source as saying the
Vatican considered it “provocation” that France’s Socialist
government, which in 2013 passed a law permitting gay marriages, had
proposed a homosexual for the post.
There was no official Elysee comment and the Vatican also declined to
comment on the nomination of Stefanini, who has previously occupied
the number-two post at the French embassy to the Holy See. The affair
risks becoming an embarrassment to Pope Francis, who has maintained
Church teaching on homosexuality but has struck a more sympathetic
personal tone towards gay people.
He has given no sign of easing rules against gay unions or changing
the Church’s teaching that homosexual acts are sinful, even if
homosexuality itself is not.
But he has shown a more conciliatory attitude than many others in the
Church, remarking that he could not judge gay people of good will who
were seeking God, and meeting members of a Catholic gay rights group
in the Vatican as recently as February.
Saudis will face crushing response: Iranian commander
Sun Apr 19, 2015 9:45PM
Commander of the Iranian Army’s Ground Forces Brigadier General Ahmad
Reza Pourdastan
The commander of Iranian Army’s Ground Forces has warned Saudi Arabia
of facing a crushing response from inside Yemen if the ongoing
aggression against the Arab country continues.
“The Saudi Arabian army has no war experience and is very fragile and
if it is confronted with a war of attrition, it should await crushing
blows and it will suffer heavy defeat,” Brigadier General Ahmad Reza
Pourdastan said Sunday in an interview with Arabic-language news
channel al-Alam.
The Iranian commander further recommended the Saudi government to stop
what he called “fratricide,” adding that Saudis’ past experiences in
Yemen have proven that they will have no easy job winning the war on
the impoverished country.
Commander of the Iranian Army’s Ground Forces Brigadier General Ahmad
Reza Pourdastan (L) speaks in al-Alam’s “From Tehran” show on April
19, 2015.
Saudi Arabia’s air campaign against Yemen started on March 26 –
without a UN mandate – in a bid to restore power to the country’s
fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, and to undermine
the popular Ansarullah Houthi revolutionaries.
Pourdastan highlighted the boosted morale of the Yemeni people in the
face of the ongoing aggression against their country, saying Saudi
airstrikes against Yemen have created more “unity and solidarity”
among the Yemeni people.
“Such solidarity paves the ground for huge blows to Saudi Arabia and
through such solidarity they managed to defeat most of forces loyal to
Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and took control of Yemen,” he said, adding
that if Saudi cities are targeted by the Yemenis, Riyadh will have
serious difficulty dealing with it.
A picture taken on April 17, 2015 shows people walking past buildings
that were damaged the day before in an air strike by Saudi Arabia at a
market in the port city of Aden. (AFP)
Pourdastan rejected some claims that Iran is part of the crisis in
Yemen or accusations that Tehran is sending weapons to the Yemenis,
saying, those making such claims themselves know the unreal nature of
such accusations as they are monitoring the roads and the seas
constantly.
He said Iran’s sole concern for Yemen is to send humanitarian aid to
the people in order to “reduce part of their suffering.”
According to reports, over 2,500 people, including women and children,
have so far lost their lives in the attacks.
Iran not willing to confront Saudis
He also touched upon an ongoing mission by an Iranian fleet near
Yemen’s southern coasts, saying that the fleet’s presence in the area
was planned before the Saudi aggression on Yemen started. He said the
fleet is on a mission to protect Iranian ships against the potential
terrorist threats in the Gulf of Aden and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.
The high-profile Iranian commander further said that Iran is not
interested in getting involved in a confrontation with Riyadh,
describing Saudi Arabia as a friend of Iran and an ally.
“Saudi Arabia’s military attaché is currently in our country and we
invited him to attend a (ceremony) on the Army Day. We want to have
ties with Saudi Arabia,” he said.
Commander of the Iranian Army’s Ground Forces Brigadier General Ahmad
Reza Pourdastan (R) attends a speech by Leader of the Islamic
Revolution Ayatollah Khamenei (unseen) on April 19, 2015 on the
occasion of Iran’s Army Day.
Elsewhere in his comments, Pourdastan highlighted the role of the
United States in supporting terrorist groups like the ISIL, saying
that the war waged by ISIL, the al-Nusra Front, and Boko Haram in
Iraq, Syria, and Nigeria are all proxy battles waged in favor of the
US and Israel.
Since the very beginning of ISIL’s advances in western and northern
Iraq, Iranian army defined a 40-kilometer red zone into the Iraqi
territory to warn the terrorists of any potential move towards the
Iranian borders, he said.
Meanwhile, the Iranian commander also referred to a recent decision by
Russian President Vladimir Putin to lift a long-existing ban on
delivering the advanced S-300 air defense system to Tehran, saying
that the development should be viewed as a “step forward” in promoting
the defense capabilities of Islamic Republic.
Pourdastan also said that five major military drills are planned for
the Iranian army in the current Iranian calendar year which started on
March 21.
MS/NT/AS
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE BANNER RETURNS TO WEST HARTFORD GREEN
Hartford Courant, CT
April 17 2015
By Suzanne Carlson
WEST HARTFORD — A banner commemorating the Armenian genocide was
removed from the town green Wednesday, but was replaced by the end
of the day Thursday.
Public works Director John Phillips said the banner did not comply with
town regulations, which require such signs to notify the public of a
specific event. The banner was modified to include notification of a
100th anniversary commemoration ceremony at the Capitol in Hartford on
April 25, sponsored by the Armenian Genocide Commemoration Committee
of Connecticut.
The banner, which had only included a general message commemorating
the mass killings of Armenians that began in 1915 under Ottoman rule,
“slipped through the cracks” and was installed Monday before the
error was corrected, Phillips said.
Lauren Varjabedian, commemoration committee chairperson, said the
group is pleased the banner was to be returned to the town green.
Because the initial banner was approved by the town and the group
was not notified of the error, Varjabedian said the banner is being
modified and reinstalled at no cost to the committee.
“The town of West Hartford has been great to work with in rectifying
the situation,” Varjabedian said.
Groups can apply to have a banner displayed on the north end of
Goodman Green at the intersection of South Main Street and Farmington
Avenue. Banners may also be placed at the south side of the bridge
on Park Road over Trout Brook, as well as the town auditorium on the
day of an event.
Phillips said town officials and representatives from the genocide
remembrance committee met Thursday to discuss the issue, and
Varjabedian said the banner will remain on the town green until Monday.
The Armenian Genocide Commemoration Committee of Connecticut has been
active for about 15 years. Although the group works with four Armenian
churches in the state to hold regular programs throughout the year,
the centennial remembrance is an especially important event for the
Armenian diaspora, Varjabedian said.
“We just make sure that we get the word out … and just really make
sure that not only the Armenian community is aware but the community
at large,” Varjabedian said.
The remembrance ceremony at the Capitol is scheduled for 11 a.m. to
1 p.m. on April 25, with keynote speaker Chris Bohjalian.
THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE AND HAGIA SOPHIA
Kathimerini- Greece
April 16 2015
By Nikos Konstandaras
Pope Francis’s declaration that the slaughter of Armenians by Ottoman
forces 100 years ago was “the first genocide of the 20th century”
will hasten the conversion of the Hagia Sophia museum into a mosque,
the top Muslim official in Ankara responded. The Turkish government
has long wanted to turn the symbol of Orthodox Christianity into a
mosque, and last Friday – Good Friday for the Orthodox – verses from
the Koran were recited at the opening of an exhibition at Hagia Sophia,
84 years after it was converted from a mosque into a museum by the
founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The statement by
mufti Mefail Hizli, reported by the Hurriyet Daily News on Thursday,
suggests that Turkey’s rage at its inability to stop a growing tide
of recognition of the Armenian genocide is encouraging autocratic
tendencies and bigotry. It is not only the country’s few remaining
Christians who will suffer but Turkish society as a whole.
It is difficult to comprehend how a papal statement on the Armenian
issue should weigh on Hagia Sophia, seeing as the roads of Catholic
and Orthodox Christians separated nearly 1,000 years ago (in 1054).
Today’s Turkish government shows the arrogance of a conqueror
who believes that all he sees is hostage to his will. The Ottoman
conquerors did convert the Hagia Sophia church into a mosque, but they
also commissioned their best architects to build grand new mosques –
the Fatih, Suleyman and Sultan Ahmet mosques – honoring Hagia Sophia
by trying to outdo it. In his conviction that Turkey had to be built
on secular foundations, Ataturk turned Hagia Sophia into a museum,
acknowledging the building’s ecumenical significance.
Under the dominance of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was prime minister
from 2003 until his election as president last year, Turkey is at the
crossroads between East and West, between autocracy and democracy,
between tolerance and bigotry. In next June’s parliamentary elections,
the AKP party which Erdogan founded and still controls, could triumph
with about 50 percent of the vote, according to recent polls. After
the election, Ergodan aims to strengthen the office of the presidency
and will do all that is necessary to achieve this. Converting Hagia
Sophia into a mosque will please the AKP’s religious voters and also
make clear that the secular regime founded by Ataturk is dead.
Recently, Erdogan has shown increasingly autocratic tendencies. Now,
the government’s inability to prevent international recognition of
the Armenian genocide is driving him to greater displays of anger,
arrogance, greed and envy. He will learn that he can neither ignore
history nor subject an ecumenical symbol to his will.
TURKISH PM’S ARMENIAN ADVISER STEPS DOWN AFTER GENOCIDE REMARK
i24 News, Israel
April 17 2015
Turkey accused of belittling the centenary of the Armenian genocide
by advancing its Gallipoli commemorations
The first ever member of Turkey’s Armenian community to hold the
post of senior adviser to the Turkish prime minister has retired,
an official said on Thursday, after he described the mass killings
of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as a “genocide.”
The official, who asked not to be named, denied any link between
the departure of Etyen Mahcupyan and the looming 100th anniversary
on April 24 of the start of the 1915 killings of Armenians, which
Yerevan regards as genocide.
Mahcupyan, 65, “has retired on the grounds of age,” the official said,
noting this was the age limit for all Turkish civil servants.
Mahcupyan, who was appointed last year as senior adviser to Ahmet
Davutoglu, infuriated some within the ruling Justice and Development
Party (AKP) this week when he qualified the mass killings of Armenians
as a “genocide.”
“If accepting that what happened in Bosnia and Africa were genocides,
it is impossible not to call what happened to Armenians in 1915
genocide too,” Mahcupyan said in an interview published this week.
Turkey, which has always rejected the term genocide, has taken a
defiant line amid growing tensions over the characterization of the
tragedy ahead of the 100th anniversary.
The European Parliament on Wednesday urged Turkey to use the centenary
of Ottoman-era massacres to “recognize the Armenian genocide” and
help promote reconciliation between the two peoples.
The use of the word “genocide” by Pope Francis on Sunday infuriated
Ankara and prompted Davutoglu to accuse the pontiff of “blackmail”
against Turkey.
In an interview with AFP in December, Mahcupyan said 2015 would be a
“tough year” because of the anniversary.
He said the priority for the future should be establishing relations
with Armenia as well as the millions-strong diaspora, many of whom
harbor a deep hatred of Turkey.
Gallipoli commemorations
Meanwhile Turkey has been accused of belittling the upcoming centenary
of the Armenian genocide by advancing its Gallipoli commemorations
to the same day.
The ceremonies, to be marked on April 24, coincide exactly with the
100th anniversary of the mass killings of Armenians at the hands of
the Ottoman Empire.
“This is a very indecent political manoeuvre,” Ohannes Kılıcdagı, a
researcher and writer for Agos, an Armenian weekly, told the Guardian.
“It’s cheap politics to try to dissolve the pressure on Turkey in
the year of the centennial by organizing this event.
“Everybody knows that the two memorials around Gallipoli have been
held on 18 March and 25 April every year.”
Nazar Buyum, an Armenian columnist and writer, said: “It’s not just
Gallipoli…Someone also had the audacity to suggest the organization
of a Gallipoli memorial concert in an Armenian church in Istanbul for
24 April. The government does everything to overshadow the centennial
of the genocide this year.”
Erdogan has invited his Armenian counterpart, Serzh Sarkisian, to
attend commemoration ceremonies in Turkey.
The Gallipoli campaign was one of the most famous battles of World
War I when Ottoman troops resisted an invading Allied Forceseeking
control of the Gallipoli peninsula on the Dardanelles strait.
The war was also where the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal
Ataturk, made his name as a heroic military leader.
“We fought as a kind together. That’s why we have invited Sarkisian,”
a government official was quoted as saying by local media, referring
to the presence of Armenian minorities alongside Turks and other
peoples in the Ottoman army.
Britain, Australia and New Zealand reportedly want a flamboyant
ceremony to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the landings at
Gallipoli.
Local media said the prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand,
as well as Britain’s Prince Charles, with his sons, are expected to
attend the ceremonies.
An invitation has also been sent to German President Joachim Gauck.
Some 10,500 people from Australia and New Zealand who were selected
after a ballot are due to take part in a dawn service a day later on
April 25, an Australian embassy official told AFP.
War of words as Armenians fight for genocide recognition a century on
Mass killings? Mutual bloodletting? Genocide? The hundreds of thousands
of dead have been silent for a century, but generations on, Armenians
are still battling to get the World War I slaying of their ancestors
recognized as a genocide.As Armenians around the world gear up to
mark 100 years since the start of the slaughter on April 24, the
struggle to get the world — and above all Turkey — to use the term
“genocide” remains deeply divisive.
To Armenians the word represents definitive proof of their ancestors’
horrific suffering at the hands of the Ottoman empire during World
War I, but for Ankara the violence was perpetrated by all sides and
describing the events as “genocide” is a red line it cannot cross.
Trapped somewhere in the middle is an international community, notably
the United States, under pressure from Armenia’s large diaspora but
worried about upsetting a rising Turkey.
“For Armenians the word ‘genocide’ encapsulates what happened to their
forefathers in 1915 and also elevates the Armenian experience to the
level of that of the Holocaust,” said Thomas De Waal, an expert on the
region at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
“Precisely for the same reason, official Turkey has always rejected
the term, on the grounds that it equates the behaviour of their
grandparents with the Nazis and also out of paranoia that the
application of the word could lead to legal claims against Turkey.”
Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kin were systematically
killed between 1915 and 1917 by Ottoman authorities as their empire —
the precursor to modern Turkey — crumbled.
Turkey rejects the claims, arguing that 300,000 to 500,000 Armenians
and as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians rose up against
their Ottoman rulers and sided with invading Russian troops.
– Rise of a movement –
For some 30 years after the killings no one thought of calling the
massacres of Armenians a genocide — because the term itself did
not exist.
Up until then, Armenians referred to the tragedy simply as the “Great
Catastrophe” — or Medz Yeghern in Armenian.
Coined only in 1944 by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, the word
“genocide” became codified in law in the 1948 United Nations Genocide
Convention, which defined it as “acts committed with intent to destroy,
in whole or part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”
The start of the clamor for recognition came later in 1965 as Armenians
around the world marked the 50th anniversary of the killings.
In Armenia itself — then a republic of the Soviet Union —
discussing any official acceptance of the genocide was a taboo but
an unprecedented protest that saw some 100,000 take to the streets
forced the Kremlin to start reevaluating its position.
“It was like a genie was let out of the bottle,” Rolan Manucharyan,
a physics professor who took part in the 1965 demonstration in downtown
Yerevan, told AFP.
The 1980s then saw an surge in the international movement for
recognition, mainly fuelled by the Armenian community in the US,
with outbursts of violence as radical groups killed Turkish officials.
So far, Armenia says 22 countries — prominently France, with its
large Armenian community — have recognized the genocide.
Last Sunday Pope Francis became the latest international figure to
wade into the controversy as he used the term “genocide” to describe
the killings, sparking a furious reaction from Turkey.
For American presidents the issue has always been a thorny one.
Ronald Reagan used the term in the early 1980s but since then the
commanders-in-chief in Washington have shied away.
Barack Obama — who pledged before he won the presidency to recognize
the genocide — has sidestepped the contentious term by using the
Armenian term Medz Yeghern.
– Return of land? –
The fallout from the massacres still shapes the region with official
ties between Turkey and Armenia frozen.
Part of the fear in Ankara over the push for genocide recognition is
that it could see Armenians lay claim to land in eastern Turkey.
“The term ‘genocide’ is not just an academic concept but also a
legal one. It means that a crime was committed and suggests that
there should be punishment and compensation,” said Ruben Safrastyan,
the director of Yerevan’s Institute of Oriental Studies.
At present Armenia has no official territorial claims against Turkey
but in 2013 prosecutor general Aghvan Hovsepyan sparked fury in Ankara
by saying Armenians should have their “lost territories” returned.
But despite the dreams of some Armenians to reclaim their land,
analysts said few outside the community seriously think there will
be any move to retake the land.
“It would be very difficult for any Armenian political leader to say
that Armenia has no territorial claims to Turkey,” Svante Cornell
from the Washington-based Central Asia-Caucasus Institute told AFP.
“But Western politicians don’t take seriously” the possibility of a
land dispute.
As the 100th anniversary of the killings approaches, the struggle
for official recognition is as intense as ever.
And the burden of what happened — and getting recognition for it —
still weighs heavily over Armenia and Armenians around the world.
“The pain forces us to constantly look back into the past,” said
Armenian author Ruben Hovsepyan, whose mother fled the killings as
a child.
“It does not allow us to fully build our future as we use up so
much national energy and potential on forcing Turkey to recognize
the genocide.”
(AFP)