Author: Kajoyan Gevork

FRIDAY MARKS CENTENNIAL OF ARMENIAN MASS KILLINGS DURING WORLD WAR I

WFAE 90.7
April 22 2015

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Even as the Obama White House announced its observance of the
centennial, its press release spoke of atrocities and avoided the
use of the word genocide – that, despite President Obama having run
on the issue that what happened to the Armenians should be spoken of
as genocide. Well, the American writer Peter Balakian has studied our
country’s response to those events a hundred years ago. Back in 2003,
he wrote “The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide And America’s
Response.” He joins us from Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y.,
where he’s a professor of English. Welcome to the program.

PETER BALAKIAN: Thank you.

SIEGEL: First, a vocabulary lesson, please. The word genocide was
coined in 1944 to describe the Nazis’ extermination campaign against
the Jews. That’s about 30 years after the slaughter of the Armenians.

Is the case for using it to describe what happened to the Armenians
ironclad?

BALAKIAN: Yes, well, Raphael Lemkin, the Polish Jewish legal scholar
who developed the term genocide and who is the father of the U.N.

Genocide Convention of 1948 – his thinking about genocide begins with
the Armenian massacres of 1915, and he writes about that at length.

It’s Lemkin who first coined the term Armenian genocide around
mid-1940s. And you see him on CBS News in February of 1949 talking very
precisely about the Armenian genocide. So it’s Lemkin’s conceptual
notion, I think, that the Armenian genocide is the cornerstone of
the concept of genocide in the modern era.

SIEGEL: One complication here is there actually were mass murderers –
massacres against Armenians dating back to the 1890s in the Ottoman
Empire, and those are not called the Armenian genocide.

BALAKIAN: Well, you know, I think that one could conceptualize the
history of the mass killing of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as
something that evolves along what the sociologist Ervin Staub calls a
continuum of destruction. The Armenian massacres of the 1890s, which
were putative – they were punishments for Armenian progressive reform
movement. They weren’t designed to exterminate the entire population
or rid the Ottoman Empire of its Armenian population, but they begin
a very important process of devaluing and dehumanizing this ethnic
minority group.

SIEGEL: What’s different by 1950 – and you’ve reported on the documents
that show it – was the planning, the policy, the bureaucracy that
went into the mass murder of Armenians.

BALAKIAN: I think that the Ottoman government’s final solution for
the Armenian people of Turkey represented a shift in organized,
state-planned mass killing. The Ottoman government was able to
expedite its mass killing of a targeted minority population in a
concentrated period of time. So it’s important to realize that the
Ottoman government murdered more than a million Armenians between
1915 and 1916 alone – perhaps 1.2 million is the number you come to
by the end of the summer of 1916.

SIEGEL: You wrote about the American response to what was happening to
the Armenians starting in the 1890s. There’s really a seminal moment
for an American conscience about what’s going on in the world and the
abuses of human rights. You would say this really is the beginning
of our concern about other people in the world.

BALAKIAN: That’s right. I mean, I think what’s interesting here
is that there was a grassroots movement among ordinary Americans
who were giving money for rescue and relief during their church and
synagogue collection plates on Saturdays and Sundays. And there was
also a movement among elites, among intellectuals – and of course this
is an important context for understanding American relief projects
for the Armenians during the genocide period. For the first time,
Americans go overseas to do relief and rescue work. And this happened
under the auspices of Clara Barton, the director of the Red Cross,
who, for the first time, would take her teams 8,000 miles away to
the Armenian provinces of the Ottoman Empire to do rescue and relief
work. And that is really a milestone moment. And I think this is the
beginning of a kind of new internationalism in American culture.

SIEGEL: Professor Balakian, thanks for talking with us today.

BALAKIAN: Thanks for having me.

SIEGEL: Peter Balakian is the author of “The Burning Tigris:
The Armenian Genocide And America’s Response.” The book’s Turkish
translation will be published later this year. Transcript provided
by NPR, Copyright NPR.

DES MILLIERS DE FLAMMES POUR LA MEMOIRE DU GENOCIDE ARMENIEN PLACE DE LA REPUBLIQUE A PARIS. – PHOTOS

PARIS

Plusieurs centaines de personnes se sont rassemblees jeudi soir place
de la Republique a Paris pour une veillee de commemoration du genocide
armenien, 100 ans après.

Organisee a l’initiative de dix associations de jeunes Armeniens de
France, la soiree a eu lieu la veille de la commemoration officielle,
quand des millions de personnes a travers le monde, dont plusieurs
chefs d’Etat et de gouvernement, vont rendre hommage aux victimes de
ces massacres.

, avec des panneaux explicatifs
sur l’Armenie et les genocides dans le monde, la soiree a ete
animee par une conference-debat, prises de parole, des concerts,
avec notamment deux artistes de l’emission de TF1 >. Une ambiance presque festive, due a l’âge des organisateurs : >, explique
Karine Sarikas.

Selon Veronique Kouyoumdjian, 51 ans, une participante au
rassemblement, la celebration ne peut etre que >. >, surencherit Tania
Uckardes, une autre cinquantenaire. >.

Pour les plus jeunes, cet anniversaire revet autant d’importance que
pour les aînes. >, affirme Vasken Pekmezian,
32 ans.

Idem pour Nairi Pouillault, 14 ans, qui s’est enveloppee dans un
drapeau armenien. >, raconte-t-elle, souhaitant a present passer
>.

Vendredi, le maire de Paris, Anne Hidalgo, commemorera le centenaire
lors d’une ceremonie aux côtes du Premier Ministre, devant la statue
du Père Komitas, le long de la Seine, près du Grand Palais, puis par
l’extinction de la Tour Eiffel, dont le scintillement sera pour la
première fois interrompu toute la nuit.

vendredi 24 avril 2015, Stephane (c)armenews.com

GENOCIDE OBSCENELY SPECULATED FOR POLITICAL INTERESTS – SERBIAN PRESIDENT

14:12 * 24.04.15

The Serbian president condemned the international attempts to speculate
upon the Armenian Genocide issue, considering such policies foul
and unjustified.

Tomislav Nikolic, who is one of the fourt state leaders attending
the centenary commemorations in Yerevan, said in his speech at
the ceremony that his country too, experienced heavy ordeals during
World War I, suffering the greatest number of losses that made up 28%
of its population.

“In this era, when the term ‘genocide’ is being obscenely abused
for political interests, when legal acts are implemented based on
double standards, when all that turns into something absurd, with
the victims of even the pogroms and genocides being characterized
as perpetrators, how can we, the Serbian people who suffered so many
losses, fail to be present here and betray the millions of victims’
memory?” he said, highlighting the importance of being world citizens
and uniting efforts in the fight against genocides.

RUSSIAN ACTOR TO TURKS: HAVE COURAGE AND ASK FOR FORGIVENESS (VIDEO)

14:06 | April 24,2015 | Politics

People’s Artist of Russia, Alexander Goloborodko, cannot understand
why the Turkish government has not been able to accept the truth and
apologize to Armenians for the 1915 Genocide by Ottoman Empire.

“There is nothing terrible in it. They only need to say, “Forgive us
and let us leave everything in the past.” But they [Turks] are afraid
to do it. I cannot understand the reasons for Turkey’s resistance,”
says the actor.

“Recognition of the Armenian Genocide does not step from Turkey’s
interests,” says Alexander Semchev, Honored Artist of the Russian
Federation. “Very often, we do not want to admit our faults and
misdeeds. Perhaps, it is much easier in politics. You can make a
fool of yourself and say that you have not committed any crime. But
there are facts and evidence and you cannot but admit them. Well,
you have committed a heinous crime and now have courage to ask for
forgiveness,” he said.

People’s Artist of Russia, Alexander Korshunov, says the entire world
should recognize the Armenian Genocide to exclude the repetition of
the crime in the future.

For more details watch the video of the Union of Armenians of Russia.

TENS OF THOUSANDS MARCH IN BEIRUT TO COMMEMORATE GENOCIDE

April 24, 2015 – 19:17 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Tens of thousands marched north of Beirut Friday,
April 24, to commemorate the Armenian Genocide centennial, the Daily
Star reports.

Carrying Armenian flags and white signs with the picture of a violet
forget-me-not flower which was adopted as the symbol of the centennial,
the marchers trekked south from the Armenian Apostolic Patriarchate
in Antelias to the Burj Hammoud Stadium.

Speaking before the march, head of the Catholicosate of the Great
House of Cilicia Aram I said Armenians do not need condolences from
Turkey, but “recognition and justice.”

“We tell the world that we emerged victorious from the genocide
because our people lived,” he said.

Prominent members of the Armenian community spoke on the occasion,
highlighting the need for all countries of the world to recognize
the genocide and pressure Turkey to do the same.

Also, Prime Minister Tammam Salam called the head of the Armenian
Apostolic church in Lebanon Friday, expressing sympathy with the
world’s Armenians over the tragedy.

“Lebanese people highly appreciate the positive and significant role
the Armenian sects are playing at the national level, which aims
to boost national harmony and unity,” Salam said, according to a
statement released by his office.

The PM added that Lebanon “takes pride in all its components
and shares their causes and all the sufferings they have endured
throughout history.”

CNN: 8 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE MASS KILLINGS OF ARMENIANS 100 YEARS AGO

20:24, 24 Apr 2015
Siranush Ghazanchyan

As Armenians worldwide mark the 100th anniversary of the Armenian
Genocide, the CNN presents eight facts that should be known about
the mass killing of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

What preceded the mass killings of Armenians that began 100 years ago?

The Ottoman Turks, having recently entered World War I on the side of
Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, were worried that Armenians
living in the Ottoman Empire would offer wartime assistance to Russia.

Russia had long coveted control of Constantinople (now Istanbul),
which controlled access to the Black Sea — and therefore access to
Russia’s only year-round seaports.

How many Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire at the start of the
mass killings?

Many historians agree that the number was about 2 million. However,
victims of the mass killings also included some of the 1.8 million
Armenians living in the Caucasus under Russian rule, some of whom
were massacred by Ottoman forces in 1918 as they marched through East
Armenia and Azerbaijan.

How did the mass killings start?

By 1914, Ottoman authorities were already portraying Armenians as a
threat to the empire’s security. Then, on the night of April 23-24,
1915, the authorities in Constantinople, the empire’s capital, rounded
up about 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders. Many of
them ended up deported or assassinated.

April 24, known as Red Sunday, is commemorated as Genocide Remembrance
Day by Armenians around the world. Friday is the 100th anniversary
of that day.

How many Armenians were killed?

This is a major point of contention. Estimates range from 300,000 to 2
million deaths between 1914 and 1923, with not all of the victims in
the Ottoman Empire. But most estimates — including one of 800,000
between 1915 and 1918, made by Ottoman authorities themselves —
fall between 600,000 and 1.5 million.

Whether due to killings or forced deportation, the number of Armenians
living in Turkey fell from 2 million in 1914 to under 400,000 by 1922.

How did they die?

Almost any way one can imagine.

While the death toll is in dispute, photographs from the era document
some mass killings. Some show Ottoman soldiers posing with severed
heads, others with them standing amid skulls in the dirt.

The victims are reported to have died in mass burnings and by
drowning, torture, gas, poison, disease and starvation. Children were
reported to have been loaded into boats, taken out to sea and thrown
overboard. Rape, too, was frequently reported.

In addition, according to the website armenian-genocide.org, “The great
bulk of the Armenian population was forcibly removed from Armenia and
Anatolia to Syria, where the vast majority was sent into the desert
to die of thirst and hunger.”

Was genocide a crime at the time of the killings?

No. Genocide was not even a word at the time, much less a legally
defined crime.

The word “genocide” was invented in 1944 by a Polish lawyer named
Raphael Lemkin to describe the Nazis’ systematic attempt to eradicate
Jews from Europe. He formed the word by combining the Greek word for
race with the Latin word for killing.

Pope Francis recently referred to the killings of Armenians as a
“genocide,” a move that upset Turkey.

Genocide became a crime in 1948, when the United Nations approved the
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The definition included acts meant “to destroy, in whole or in part,
a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

Who calls the mass killings of Armenians a genocide?

Armenia, the Vatican, the European Parliament, France, Russia and
Canada. Germany is expected to join that group on Friday, the 100th
anniversary of the start of the killings.

Who does not call the mass killings a genocide?

Turkey, the United States, the European Commission, the United Kingdom
and the United Nations.

A U.N. subcommittee called the killings genocide in 1985, but current
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declines to use the word.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: 1.5 MLN ARMENIANS WERE KILLED, 600 THSD WERE DEPORTED, UNIQUE HISTORICAL MONUMENTS AND INVALUABLE BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS WERE DESTROYED IN 1915

by Tatevik Shahunyan

Friday, April 24, 13:51

Russia extends its cordial condolences to Armenian people, who suffered
one of the greatest tragedies of the world. 1.5 mln Armenians were
killed, 600 thsd were deported, unique historical and architectural
monuments and invaluable books and manuscripts were destroyed in
1915, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the Armenian Genocide
Centennial commemoration event at Tsitsernalaberd Memorial Complex
in Yerevan.

“The events of 1915 shocked the world. Russia took that grief as its
own. Millions of Armenians found shelter in Russia. It was the Russian
diplomacy that gained international condemnation of those events.

Russia, France and Great Britain issued a joint statement qualifying
those events as a crime against civilization and humanity,” said the
Russian President. He added that Armenian and Russian nations have
been connected with warm relations for centuries. He also recalled
WWII and the earthquake in Spitak, Armenia.

Putin pointed out that hundreds of Russian cities will hold over
2,000 events commemorating the Armenian Genocide Centennial and not
only the 3 million Armenians in Russia but also representatives of
other nationalities will take part in the events.

“Our stand remains unchanged – the mass killings cannot be justified
anyhow. We should do everything possible to prevent the tragic events
of the past from happening again. Unfortunately, neo-fascism and
Russophobia are gaining momentum in some corners of the world. Before
taking any measures, we should think of their aftermath. We should
be tolerant and respect each other. This is how we can change the
world for the better,” said Putin.

CANADA’S DEFENSE MINISTER AFFIRMS ARMENIAN GENOCIDE ON HILL LAWN, AS TURKISH CANADIANS WATCH

23:22, 24 Apr 2015
Siranush Ghazanchyan

Defence and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney told Armenian
Canadians gathered Friday on Parliament Hill that the memory of
their homeland’s genocide will never be forgotten in this country,
The Canadian Press reports.

Kenney dramatically affirmed that controversial position — which
Canada’s NATO ally Turkey vehemently opposes — to hundreds gathered
on the east section of the Hill lawn, separated by barricades from
hundreds of Turkish Canadian protesters gathered on the lawn’s
west side.

In doing so, Kenney was siding with the Armenians at the start of a
weekend when a pair of First World War 100th anniversary commemorations
were taking place in Armenia and Turkey.

“We are here today as proud Canadians because we believe in memory,”
Kenney said.

“This is why we gather on this centenary of the first genocide of the
20th century, to call prayerfully to mind the souls of all of those
whose lives were taken in a campaign of brutal violence.”

Also Friday, Immigration Minister Chris Alexander was in Armenia to
lay a wreath at a commemoration of the 1915 massacre, in which 1.5
million Armenians were killed at the hands of Ottoman Turks.

Ottawa calls the tragedy a genocide, to the anger of Turkey.

Kenney did not mention the Turks, nor did he visit the group of Turkish
Canadians gathered on the other side of the lawn as he spoke, many of
them brandishing signs that denounced the use of the term ‘genocide.’

As he spoke, junior foreign affairs minister Lynne Yelich was
leading Canada’s delegation in Turkey, including veterans of the
Royal Newfoundland Regiment, at ceremonies marking the centenary of
the start of the Gallipoli campaign.

Armenia and Turkey both invited Gov. Gen. David Johnston, but he
will instead attend a Gallipoli ceremony Saturday at the Canadian
War Museum in Ottawa.

Armenian ambassador Armen Yeganian expressed satisfaction that a
“high-level” Harper representative will be in Armenia.

Selcuk Unal, the Turkish ambassador to Canada, had no comment on
Canada’s decision to send a junior minister to Turkey.

But he did note that unlike Armenia, Turkey is fighting alongside
Canada against the militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant.

“We believe, being a NATO ally, being an important player in our
neighbourhood and actually taking part in the same coalition against
Daesh and ISIL, things could have been different,” Unal said.

Kenney also connected history to the current violence in Syria and
Iraq, saying: “As we speak, Daesh — the so-called Islamic State —
is attempting to affect a genocide against the Assyrians, Yazidis
and Christians of Iraq and Syria.”

Yeganian said that the Harper government’s recognition of the Armenian
genocide doesn’t necessarily translate into votes.

“I don’t think because of that the Armenian community is
pro-Conservative,” he said, estimating the split as “roughly half
and half” with the Liberals. The majority of the 100,000 Canadians
of Armenian descent live in Montreal and Toronto, he said.

This year, Turkey has chosen three days of celebrations from Thursday
to Saturday, overlapping Armenia’s April 24 date.

“I don’t deem it as Turkish diplomacy. I deem it as a cheap manoeuvre
to distract international attention from (the) Armenian genocide,”
said Yeganian.

But Unal said neither his country nor the Ottoman Empire deserve the
genocide label, nor the accusation it is trying to thwart Armenia’s
commemoration with its own major event.

“It is the Armenian government and the diaspora making this link, as
if we are trying to shadow one’s grief. In Gallipoli, half a million
people died, including people from Canada.”

THE JIHAD-GENOCIDE OF THE ARMENIANS

The National Review
April 24 2015

by Mark Krikorian

April 24, 2015 4:00 AM I saw the souls of them that were beheaded
for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had
not worshipped the beast – Revelation 20:4 The caliphate wages jihad
against Christians. Victims are beheaded, crucified, and burned alive.

Christian girls are sold into slavery. Centuries-old monuments are
destroyed by jihadis. These events are ripped from the headlines
— of 1915. Friday marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the
Armenian Genocide. On April 24, 1915, the Ottoman Caliphate launched a
“decapitation strike” against the Armenian people by arresting and
killing hundreds of their intellectual, political, religious, and
business leaders in Constantinople, so as to make organized resistance
impossible. That done, the extermination campaign began in earnest
in the following weeks. More than 1 million Armenians were murdered,
along with large numbers of Christian Assyrians and Greeks, with the
goal of engineering a Christenrein Anatolia. The remainder would
have been killed as well — and the very name “Armenia” relegated
to historical atlases, like Babylonia or Gaul — had not makeshift
Armenian forces defeated the Ottomans trying to finish the job in
the formerly Russian-occupied sliver of Armenia in 1918, after the
withdrawal of Russian forces following the Bolshevik coup d’etat
six months earlier. Among the survivors was my maternal grandmother;
most of her family was killed, but as a 15-year-old girl, she was sold
into slavery, managing to escape later. My other three grandparents
were already here, but their families were not heard from again. The
parallel with today’s depredations by ISIS’s so-called caliphate
and other jihadists is not coincidental. Andrew Bostom points to
what happened to the Armenians as an example of “jihad genocide,”
traditional jihad “adapted to the conditions of modern warfare.” Bat
Ye’or has written, “The genocide of the Armenians was a jihad,”
adding that it was “the natural outcome of a policy inherent in
the politico-religious structure of dhimmitude.” Perhaps the most
disturbing continuity between the two caliphates was seen last fall
in the town of Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria, considered the Auschwitz
of the Armenian Genocide. Then part of the Ottoman Empire, it was a
major destination for death marches and boxcars and served as a sort
of open-air concentration camp, where as many as 400,000 Armenians
were killed. Decades later, the Armenian Church built a major memorial
complex there, including the remains of many victims. ISIS took the
town in September 2014. Its first order of business was to dynamite
the church. The anniversary prompts a number of observations. Perhaps
the least interesting is whether what happened can fairly be labeled
“genocide.” As with other fights over the meaning of words, the denial
of the Armenian Genocide is a political tactic designed to muddy the
waters and deflect blame. The Turkish claim that lots of people died
on all sides during World War I is akin to — if you’ll pardon a Monty
Python reference — the Scottish laird in Holy Grail pleading with his
guests, “Let’s not bicker and argue about who killed who,” when there
was really no doubt about the matter. There’s no doubt what happened
here, either. Our ambassador to the Ottoman Caliph at the time, Henry
Morgenthau, wrote: “The government is using its present opportunity
while all other countries are at war, to obliterate the Armenian
race.” Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish lawyer, invented the term
“genocide” specifically to describe what happened to the Armenians.

And Hitler, in comments to his commanders before the invasion of
Poland that were transcribed by Admiral Canaris, head of military
intelligence, reassured them that they’d get away with it because
“who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”

The question of formal U.S. government recognition of the Armenian
Genocide is another, and more complicated, question. Like the
perennial promises to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel
Aviv to the country’s actual capital of Jerusalem, politicians
promise federal recognition of the genocide at election time, then
back away when faced with geopolitical objections. Congressional
resolutions are introduced all the time to recognize the genocide but
are never passed; the closest that one came to success was in 2007,
when it was reported out of committee but pulled at the last minute
by then-speaker Pelosi at the request of the Bush White House. Our
ambassador to Armenia during the George W. Bush administration was
fired because he uttered the words “Armenian Genocide.” President
Obama, despite supporting recognition as a senator, has never as
president used the word “genocide” with regard to the Armenians and
will not do so this week. Ted Cruz has been forthright, writing:
“The massacre of the Armenian, Assyrian, and other Christian people
should be called what it is: genocide,” but if he were to be elected
president, he might change his tune as well. This is because Turkey is
obsessed — “deranged” would not be too strong a word — with denying
that the Ottoman Caliphate undertook to eradicate the Armenians as a
people. This goes beyond the small lies we are sometimes party to for
the sake of diplomacy — that there’s only “One China,” for instance,
or that Jerusalem isn’t really the capital of Israel, or that there’s
no such country as “Macedonia.” When the 2007 resolution came up,
Turkey threatened to cut off supply routes to our soldiers in Iraq,
leading even those, such as Charles Krauthammer, who unequivocally
acknowledge the genocide, to argue against congressional action. When
Pope Francis recently reaffirmed his predecessors’ recognition
of the genocide, Turkey withdrew its ambassador, charged that
the use of the word “genocide” was racist and threatened to turn
Hagia Sophia, Christendom’s greatest church and now a museum, into
a mosque. As desperately as the Turks want to join the European
Union, they’ll forgo it if it would require them to acknowledge the
genocide. Unlike the polite diplomatic falsehoods mentioned above,
denial of the Armenian Genocide has become a kind of sickness for
Turkey, a disease that distorts its polity and taints its relations
with other countries. Responding to growing international condemnation,
Erdogan has actually tried to get past this, expressing condolences
to Armenia last year for the first time ever — but he insists that
it’s “out of the question for there to be a stain, a shadow called
‘genocide,’ on Turkey.” (This from the man who said a few years back,
in reference to Sudan’s jihad slaughter of Christians, “A Muslim can
never commit genocide. It’s not possible.”) In effect, Turkey’s idea
of reconciliation is to say to the Armenian nation, “You better put
some ice on that.” There’s no reason this should be so. The Armenian
Genocide was not, after all, carried out by the Turkish Republic,
but by the long-defunct Ottoman Caliphate, albeit under the direction
of Turkish nationalist elements. Turkey’s own military tribunals
condemned the chief perpetrators to death after World War I, and
two of those death sentences — against members of the triumvirate
that effectively ruled the empire during the war and orchestrated
the genocide — were carried out by Armenian survivors. For its own
sake, Turkey needs to acknowledge what happened and move on. But so
do Armenians. The focus on achieving recognition of the genocide has
become all-consuming for some, suggesting that one’s fulfillment
is dependent on, for instance, the Vermont legislature’s decision
to recognize the genocide. (Forty-three states have legislation or
proclamations recognizing the Armenian Genocide.) Turkey’s increasingly
preposterous denials fool no one and at this point do more harm to
Turkey than to the memory of those killed by the Ottomans. The Church
is helping Armenians move on. On Thursday, in anticipation of the 100th
anniversary observations, the murdered were canonized and formally
made saints. This means that there can no longer be memorial services
for them; rather, as saints, prayers will now be directed at them,
for intercession on our behalf. They will change — and Armenians
and others should change their views of them — from victims of
jihad to victors in Christ. Our country also needs to move on. We
need to stop asking “how high?” when Turkey tells us to jump. The
geopolitical reasons for deferring to Turkey have disappeared —
the Cold War is over, the Iraq War is over (and we’re not going to
be occupying any more countries in that part of the world any time
soon), Turkey is effectively an enemy of Israel, and the government
in Ankara is increasingly Islamist and anti-Western. (The Turks are
one of the most anti-American peoples on the globe, outstripping
even the Palestinians and Pakistanis in that regard.) A presidential
proclamation on April 24 should become a routine matter, so as to
depoliticize this question, at least in American politics.

Like President Reagan’s reference to “the genocide of the Armenians,”
the annual proclamation should be apolitical and make no reference to
policy, simply recognizing the pain of our fellow Americans who lost
family in the first genocide of the 20th century, carried out by the
defunct Ottoman Empire, and resolve that, as Reagan wrote, “Forever
must we remember just how precious is civilization, how important
is liberty, and how heroic is the human spirit.” Such recognition
should not affect our approach to Turkey. Many Armenians and others
won’t like that, but foreign affairs are a matter of realpolitik, and
you work with whomever you need to. If we can deal with a benighted
and twisted country such as Saudi Arabia, we can continue to have
a businesslike relationship with a Turkey that clings to absurd
and wicked fables about its past. But we will not be dictated to
by foreigners and made to utter their lies. — Mark Krikorian is
executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

LA CONTESTATION FEUTREE DU GENOCIDE ARMENIEN A L’ECOLE

education-genocide-histoire-Turquie-Armenie-anniversaire

Bobigny, 23 avr 2015 (AFP) – L’enseignement du genocide armenien,
dont le centenaire doit etre commemore vendredi, demeure un sujet de
crispation pour nombre d’elèves d’origine turque, selon des enseignants
d’histoire, mais la negation virulente de ce crime de masse a cede
la place a une contestation plus feutree.

Dans les collèges, les premiers incidents recenses remontent a 2001,
quand l’Assemblee nationale a adopte une loi reconnaissant le genocide
armenien.

A Clichy-Montfermeil (Seine-Saint-Denis), où reside une importante
communaute turque, “un elève etait venu voir son prof d’histoire-geo
pour avoir confirmation que le genocide n’avait pas eu lieu et que
cette reconnaissance etait due a la pression du lobby armenien”,
rapporte Sophie Ferhadjian, agregee d’histoire.

Ancien membre du Haut conseil a l’integration, cette
arrière-petite-fille de rescapes du premier genocide du XXe siècle
a recense des dizaines d’incidents similaires.

Parfois, comme a Vendôme, dans le Centre, ce sont des parents qui
protestent auprès d’un chef d’etablissement parce qu’une enseignante
a evoque une “page sombre de l’histoire de la Turquie”, sans meme
employer le terme genocide.

Ailleurs, comme a Lyon ou Nancy plus recemment, c’est “l’unilateralite
des victimes” qui est critiquee, sous l’angle : “les Armeniens ont
egalement massacre des Turcs, ils etaient des traîtres, allies des
Russes”, ajoute Mme Ferhadjian.

L’introduction du genocide armenien dans les programmes d’histoire
de collège a la rentree 2012 a egalement provoque des remous.

“Au debut, il y a eu des tensions dans certaines classes avec des
familles qui refusaient que leur enfant assiste au cours quand
l’enseignant abordait la thematique”, affirme Fabrice Romanet,
enseignant et formateur dans l’academie de Lyon.

“C’est moins le cas maintenant car les enseignants sont mieux formes”,
dit-il, et donc mieux armes pour “deconstruire des opinions imposees
le plus souvent dans le cadre familial”, avec le renfort des reseaux
sociaux.

D’autant que pour traiter cette thematique, les enseignants peuvent
desormais s’appuyer sur l’existence d’un nombre croissant d’ouvrages
ecrits par des historiens turcs et l’ouverture des archives de l’Empire
ottoman qui permet de presenter aux elèves des photos ou des documents
ayant valeur de preuve.

“Quand le programme de 3e a ete mis en application, le rectorat a
ete inonde de courriers demandant que ce chapitre ne soit pas aborde
et que les manuels soient expurges mais depuis, on n’a plus aucun
retour, les choses se sont apaisees”, confirme Catherine Vercueil,
inspectrice dans l’academie de Lyon.

– “le fait devient une opinion” –

Mais pour Sophie Ferhadjian, l’absence de “remontees” du terrain ne
signifie pas l’absence de problème.

Et de citer les cas des manuels turcs utilises dans les ELCO
(“Enseignements de Langue et de Culture d’Origine” a destination
d’elèves desireux d’apprendre la langue de leurs parents) ou de
certains manuels francais se contentant de parler de “massacres
inter-religieux”.

Plus grave a ses yeux : “il semble que les problèmes remontent de
moins en moins, et c’est vrai aussi de la Shoah, parce qu’on est passe
de la negation pure -+ca n’a pas existe+- a une remise en cause plus
subtile des faits”.

“Ce qui est remis en cause, c’est le statut meme du fait d’histoire”,
qui devient “une opinion dont on peut discuter”, poursuit
l’historienne, dressant un parallèle entre ce nouveau negationnisme
“soft” et le succès des theories complotistes après les attentats
contre Charlie Hebdo.

Pourtant, en Turquie meme, la reconnaissance du genocide progresse,
comme en temoigne une enquete recente de la Fondation pour
l’innovation politique, realisee auprès de jeunes de 16 a 29 ans
dans 31 pays. Ainsi, 33% des jeunes Turcs interroges en août 2014
qualifiaient de “genocide” le massacre des Armeniens, contre 82%
dans l’Union europeenne et 93% en France.

Mais en France, la diaspora turque est “crispee dans un nationalisme
primitif” et a tendance a considerer ce combat pour la reconnaissance
du genocide armenien comme du racisme anti-turc, estime Seta
Papazian, presidente du Collectif Van (Vigilance armenienne contre
le negationnisme).

Par Eve SZEFTEL

vendredi 24 avril 2015, Stephane (c)armenews.com