Author: Kalantarian Kevo

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Feb 1 2015

ErdoÄ?an spokesman slams Sarksyan for `unstatesmanlike’ remarks

Presidential Spokesman Ä°brahim Kalın. (Photo: Today’s Zaman, Mustafa Kirazlı)

January 31, 2015, Saturday/ 18:14:49/ TODAY’S ZAMAN / ISTANBUL

A spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄ?an condemned
Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan for recent comments accusing Ankara
of sending an `indecent invitation’ to an event commemorating the
Çanakkale (Gallipoli) battle of World War I on Apr. 24.

Sarksyan readily dismissed the Turkish invitation for the event,
saying instead that ErdoÄ?an should respond to his that was invitation
extended a few months ago to join Armenians in the commemoration of
the victims of the Armenian `genocide’ in Yerevan on April 24.

On Jan. 29, Sarksyan repeated his criticism of the Turkish initiative,
calling it a `cynical and short-sighted invitation.’

`They say that in politics all means will do, but in this particular
case Ankara has harmed its own self. Once I received that indecent
invitation, I hurried to publicly respond to it so as to prevent any
improper comments from the international mass media. I think my
response and the reaction of the Turkish society have proved that it
was an injudicious initiative,’ Sarksyan was quoted in the Armenian
media as saying during a meeting of a state committee for the
commemoration of the centennial of the alleged Armenian genocide.

In remarks published by state news agency Anadolu on its website,
presidential spokesman Ä°brahim Kalın denounced Sarksyan’s comments as
`undiplomatic’ and `unstatesmanlike.’

`We return the expressions he used back to him,’ he told the agency.

Kalın accused the Armenian administration of not responding to
Turkey’s good will gestures, including the invitation to join the
Çanakkale commemoration. `It is observed that it is not realistic to
expect the Sarksyan administration, which remains stuck in distorted
pages of history, to appreciate these sincere steps [for
reconciliation],” Kalın said.

`The Armenian administration’s shallow and hateful rhetoric seems to
be unable to comprehend the true meaning of the Çanakkala battle as
well,’ he said.

Turkey sent invitations to the leaders of 102 states to attend the
commemorative event that is scheduled to take place on April 23-24.
Armenia, on the other hand, is preparing for the commemoration of the
centennial of what it calls a genocide of Anatolian Armenians during
the final years of the Ottoman Empire.

On Jan. 29, Sarksyan said a number of countries have already accepted
Armenia’s invitation to attend the commemoration in Yerevan.

In an open letter to ErdoÄ?an on Jan. 16, Sargsyan declined the Turkish
invitation, saying it indicates Turkey’s “traditional policy of
denialism.”

“Year by year, improving its tools of history distortion, this time
Turkey marks the anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli on April 24
for the first time, while it began on March 18, 1915, and lasted till
late January 1916. Furthermore, the Allies’ land campaign — [the]
Gallipoli land battle — took place on April 25, 1915,’ said Sarksyan
in his letter. `What purpose does it serve if not a simpleminded goal
to distract the attention of the international community from the
events dedicated to the centennial of the Armenian Genocide? Whereas,
before organizing a commemorative event, Turkey has a much more
important obligation toward its own people and the entirety of
humanity — namely the recognition and condemnation of the Armenian
Genocide,’ he added.

Ankara denies claims that the events of 1915 amounted to genocide,
arguing that both Turks and Armenians were killed when Armenians
revolted against the Ottoman Empire during World War I in
collaboration with the Russian army, which was then invading Eastern
Anatolia. Every year on April 24, Armenians around the world
commemorate the Armenian victims who died at the end of World War I in
Ottoman Turkey. Armenians are preparing for the centennial
commemoration events this year in April.

LA Weekly, CA
Feb 1 2015

Eric Nazarian

By Siran Babayan

Eric Nazarian screens and discusses his 2011 short, Bolis. The film
follows Armenak Mouradian, an Armenian oud player who travels to
Istanbul (Bolis) for the first time to take part in a music festival
and goes in search of his grandfather’s oud shop with only a
photograph and street name. The Armenian-born, L.A.-raised director
won the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Nicholl Fellowship
in 2008, and has directed music videos for System of a Down frontman
Serj Tankian.

The Age (Melbourne, Australia)
January 31, 2015 Saturday

Lest we remember

BOOKS Reviews
REVIEW BY JENNIFER BALINT

Book: An Inconvenient Genocide: Who Now Remembers the Armenians? by
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON, VINTAGE

April 24, 1915, marks both the eve of the Anzac landing at Gallipoli,
Australia’s “coming of age”, and the night in which Armenian
political, intellectual and community leaders were rounded up in
Constantinople and throughout the Ottoman state, imprisoned, and
mostly executed. The 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landing comes
one day after the 100th anniversary of a mostly unrecognised genocide,
the estimated 1.2 million Armenians killed by the Ottoman state under
cover of the First World War.

In An Inconvenient Genocide, international human-rights barrister
Geoffrey Robertson makes the case for the atrocities perpetrated
against the Armenian population to be categorised, legally, as
genocide. He is insistent that it is a matter of law, not history nor
morality.

The significance of this book is that since the establishment of
modern-day Turkey, the genocide has been denied. The systematic denial
has left the Armenian community in a state of unrecognised mourning.
As Robertson outlines, Turkey spends millions of dollars promoting its
justification of the massacres as “strategically necessary in a civil
war”, and has made denial a condition of diplomatic relations. In
showing that this is a matter of law, not history, Robertson engages
directly with Turkey’s denialist stance that it be “left to
historians”.

The crime was always known. At the end of the war, Ottoman newspapers
wrote editorials denouncing the massacres, and parliamentarians
decried the actions of the Young Turks; one railed “we inherited a
country turned into a huge slaughterhouse”. The Allies had promised an
international tribunal, describing the crimes – with the term used for
the first time, as Robertson notes – as a “crime against humanity”. No
international tribunal eventuated. The Ottoman state set up its own
tribunal, which was shut down with the rise of the Kemalist party and
the establishment of the modern Turkish state.

Robertson’s book is an important contribution. Its strength lies in
its systematic presentation of the evidence, that he then applies to
the law of genocide – graphic eyewitness accounts by missionaries, aid
workers, army officers, business people, consuls and ambassadors, part
of which was collated by the British government in 1916, two
commissioned US reports in 1919, the evidence presented at the Ottoman
courts-martial, cables sent by key political leaders clearly outlining
genocidal intent, even of the laws passed at the time that gave
authority to the state to obtain the “abandoned” homes and property of
deportees.

He also includes diary entries found at the Australian National
Archives from Australian diggers who as prisoners of war were
witnesses to the slaughter of Armenians and the horrific deportations
they were subject to that resulted in death, rape and abduction.
Diaries from British servicemen are witness to the complicity of
Germany, a complicity that extended to assisting the key political
leaders to escape.

Robertson’s conclusion, in relation to the deportations authorised by
the Ottoman state, is that “those political leaders who gave the
orders intended that a substantial part of the Armenian population
would be exterminated in consequence. There is no other inference that
is ‘reasonable’.”

And if Turkey finds it so hard to recognise it as a genocide, he
maintains, then it should at least know that it is clearly a “crime
against humanity” for which it should apologise and make reparations.
“If these same events occurred today,” he argues, “there can be no
doubt that prosecutions before the International Criminal Court of
Talaat [Pasha] and other CUP [Committee of Union and Progress]
officials for genocide, for persecution and for other crimes against
humanity would succeed.”

The larger question in this book is what can be done when there is no
possibility of criminal legal accountability now that all the main
perpetrators are dead. Here, Robertson argues for the pursuit of legal
means as well as non-legal, including an apology and the gift of Mount
Ararat to Armenia. He cautions against genocide denial laws, although
his argument for “freedom of speech” neglects the harm that genocide
denial causes. And he illustrates what he terms “genocide
equivocators” through his own Freedom of Information requests that
reveal how the British government was advised not to recognise the
genocide.

When the term “genocide” was coined, it was with the memory of the
Ottoman massacres. The Holocaust led to its becoming law, but it was
the Armenian genocide that motivated its development, a story Robinson
tells in the book.

While he dismisses historians, arguing that it is lawyers who make
judgments on whether or not an act can be characterised as genocide,
using the law to make the case is necessary in the face of Turkey’s
continued denial. What Robertson clearly shows, as historians and
social scientists have said for decades, and victims and their
descendants have known, what the Ottoman state did, was, in fact and
in law, a genocide.

Jennifer Balint teaches in the school of social and political sciences
at the University of Melbourne.

Kirkus Reviews (Print)
February 1, 2015, Sunday

OPERATION NEMESIS
The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

NONFICTION

Actor, playwright and novelist Bogosian (Perforated Heart, 2009, etc.)
retells the horrors of the Turkish attempt to eradicate the Armenians:
the century’s first ethnic cleansing.The Ottoman Empire was primarily
Muslim but mostly tolerated Jews and the Christian Armenians. However,
they were treated as second-class citizens, required to pay extra
taxes, never eligible for public office and banned from intermarriage.

In an attempt to modernize, a group of “Young Turks” allied with the
Armenian Revolutionary Federation in 1908 to overthrow the empire.
Though it was a bloodless coup, it soon became apparent that the Young
Turks had no need for the Armenians. The country was ruled by the
Committee of Union and Progress, a government as ruthless and cruel as
the old sultan. The CUP was led by a triumvirate of Djemal Pasha,
Talaat Pasha and Enver Pasha; by 1913, any semblance of democracy was
lost. Then, in late April 1915, prominent Armenian leaders were
rounded up and disappeared. This was the beginning of the genocide
about which Hitler said, “[W]ho remembers the Armenians?” The
killings, massacres, torture and deportations of Armenians went on
through World War I. War-crime trials by the occupying British were
ineffectual. Bogosian explores the life of survivor Soghomon
Tehlirian, a young man who was fixated on revenge for the deaths of
his people. In 1919, the ARF approved a “special mission” called
Nemesis to find and execute the guilty parties, and Tehlirian was the
perfect man for their mission. He found Pasha in Berlin and killed
him, then stood trial, thereby bringing the world’s attention to the
fate of the Armenians. The author gives a clear, concise view of
Turkey’s history in the 20th century, and it’s not pretty. Difficult
reading, but an extremely well-written political statement about
Turkey-not just then, but as it is now.

Publication Date: 2015-04-21
Publisher: Little, Brown
Stage: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-316-29208-5
Price: $28.00
Author: Bogosian, Eric

Sarinay’s Silence… The Story of a Turkish Denialist

January 30, 2015
By Ara Sarafian

I have an interesting dilemma. A Turkish TV company based in Ankara
has approached me for an interview concerning “the events of 1915.”
The programme editor let me know that Yusuf Sarinay – the former head
of the Prime Ministry Ottoman State Archives – is his adviser. How
should I respond?

I believe Yusuf Sarinay is a denier of the Armenian Genocide.

A few years ago I examined an article he wrote, “What Happened on
April 24, 1915?” In that article he claimed that the Armenian
intellectuals who were arrested in Constantinople on 24 April 1915 had
posed a threat to the security of the Ottoman Empire and were
imprisoned accordingly. These prisoners were sent to Chankiri and
Ayash near modern-day Ankara.

Sarinay took Ayash prisoners as his focus and argued that, apart from
a handful of prisoners who were moved elsewhere, the remaining
prisoners stayed in Ayash for the duration of the war and were
released in 1918. Sarinay’s argument was entirely based on Ottoman
records in Turkey.

I examined Sarinay’s work, including the archival materials he claims
to have seen, and found his presentation lacking. There were
significant discrepancies in his work. The Armenian political
prisoners who were sent to Ayash in 1915, even according to the
Ottoman records, disappeared while in state custody. There are no
letters and petitions sent to the authorities, nor other references
attesting to their presence in Ayash, after the summer of 1915. Yet
Sarinay argues that these men remained in Ayash prison until the end
of WWI.

I published my critique of Sarinay’s work in the Turkish-Armenian
newspaper, Agos. The article was printed in Turkish to facilitate a
response from him. Sarinay never responded and proceeded to reprint
his article in a book.

I believe Sarinay chose not to respond because he was caught out and
there was a lot at stake – both personally and institutionally. After
all, he represented the Turkish establishment in the denial of the
Armenian Genocide, and the issues at hand were not trivial. By all
accounts, the Armenian prisoners who were sent to Ayash in 1915
disappeared while in state custody – and Yusuf Sarinay presents a
false picture when he argues otherwise.

Sarinay has remained silent in face of criticism while others – such
as the Turkish Foreign Ministry – have continued to circulate his work
in their own denial of the Armenian Genocide.

I can only wonder in what capacity Sarinay serves the Turkish TV
company making a documentary “on the events of 1915.”

Historian Ara Sarafian is the founding director of the Gomidas
Institute in London, which sponsors and carries out research and
publishes books. Among the institute’s publications are English
translations of Armenian texts related to the Armenian Genocide. He
edited a “Critical Edition” of the The Treatment of Armenians in the
Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916, commonly known as the Blue Book (originally
published in 1916 by British historians Lord James Bryce and Arnold
Toynbee), as well as a Turkish edition of the book.

ARMENIE
Plus de 40000 tonnes de fruits et légumes exportés d’Arménie

Quelques 40 245 tonnes de fruits et légumes ont été exportés d’Arménie
a annoncé le vice-ministre de l’Agriculture Robert Makaryan.

>, a déclaré
Robert Makaryan.

dimanche 1er février 2015,
Stéphane (c)armenews.com

REVUE DE PRESSE
Marseille : Journée de commémoration nationale à l’Ecole Pont de Vivaux

Il est revenu cette année à l’Ecole Pont de Vivaux, d’organiser la
cérémonie du 27 janvier intitulée par le Conseil de l’Europe : Journée
à la mémoire des génocides et à la prévention des crimes contre
l’Humanité. Sous la direction de Madame Sylvie Joubert, Principale du
collège, professeurs et élèves ont relevé le défi. À travers
différentes saynètes, ils ont choisi d’évoquer dans les termes les
plus appropriés et variés les génocides du XXème siècle. Dans son
intervention, Mme Michèle Teboul, Présidente du CRIF Marseille
Provence, s’est adressée aux jeunes pour leur demander de s’interroger
sur les événements, tout en gardant l’esprit critique. M. Patrick
Guichard, Directeur académique d’Aix-Marseille a remerciant les élèves
en leur adressant ce massage :

ARMENIE
>

L’audience de l’affaire > devant la Grande
Chambre de la Cour européenne des droits de l’Homme dans laquelle
l’Arménie était impliquée en tant que tierce partie, fait la >
de la plupart des quotidiens. Ceux-ci soulignent que l’Etat turc, qui
avait lui-même condamné naguère le requérant Dogu Perinçek à de
lourdes peines pour >, avait dépêché à Strasbourg une
délégation importante constituée d’hommes politiques, d’anciens
Ministres, de diplomates et de représentants d’ONG pour soutenir son
citoyen. Celui-ci a affirmé qu’il n’avait jamais dit > contre les Arméniens et qu’il admettait que des massacres des
Arméniens avaient lieu il y a cent ans, sans les considérer comme un
génocide. Le requérant a dit vouloir apparaître devant la Cour pour
défendre la liberté d’expression et >.
Selon Hayots Achkhar, le > du requérant a atteint son apogée
lorsqu’il a qualifié Talat pacha d’>. Les
quotidiens font l’éloge de l’équipe d’avocats qui défendait les
intérêts de l’Arménie devant la Cour, à savoir Guévorg Kostanian,
représentant du Gouvernement arménien au sein de la CEDH et procureur
général d’Arménie, ainsi que les avocats internationaux Goeffrey
Robertson et Amal Clooney. Ceux-ci se sont penchés sur des faits
indéniables du Génocide arménien, tout en indiquant > présentes dans le premier jugement de la Cour, celle-ci
ayant mis en doute le fait du Génocide arménien. L’avocat Robertson a
rappelé au requérant que

SERGEY SMBATYAN HEADED THE MOSCOW STATE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

13:04, 02 Feb 2015
Siranush Ghazanchyan

On January 29 Sergey Smbatyan, the Artistic Director and Principal
Conductor of the State Youth Orchestra of Armenia performed in
Moscow, leading the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra (Music Director
and Chief Conductor: Pavel Kogan), one of the most prestigious Russian
orchestras. The audience was presented the Vocalise by Rachmaninov, the
Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra on the theme of Paganini (soloist:
the winner of numerous international competitions Andrey Gunin)
and the Symphony No.4 by Tchaikovsky.

Speaking about the bright impressions of the yesterday’s concert,
Ekaterina Polozhenceva, the manager of the guest artists of the
Federal State Institution of Culture said: “It was interesting to
listen to the orchestra’s performance under the guidance of Sergey
Smbatyan. But this cooperation wasn’t the first one with the young
conductor: as always he has justified all our expectations!”

The MSSO was founded in 1943 by the Kremlin and is one of the five
oldest concert orchestras in Russia. The Moscow State Symphony
Orchestra became renowned around the globe under the leadership
of Pavel Kogan. In 1989 he was engaged as Music Director and Chief
Conductor and immediately enriched the orchestra repertoire by the
works of European and American musical literature. During last 25
years the MSSO regularly performed overseas including the USA, United
Kingdom, Japan, Spain, Austria, Italy, Germany, France, South Korea,
Australia, China and Switzerland.

The Moscow performance became Sergey Smbatyan’s second foreign
concert in 2015. Earlier, on January 14, Artistic Director and
Principal Conductor of the Youth Orchestra performed jointly with
the world-renowned Hollywood actor John Malkovich in Seoul leading
the Korean Chamber Orchestra.

CONFUSION : L’ARMENIE AFFIRME QUE L’AZERBAIDJAN A ABATTU SON PROPRE DRONE

ARMENIE

Les autorites du Haut-Karabagh ont nie les allegations de l’Azerbaïdjan
que ses forces auraient abattu un drone armenien le 29 Janvier.

Le ministère de la Defense du Haut-Karabagh a qualifie cette
affirmation de l’Azerbaïdjan de “fausse”.

Pendant ce temps, le porte-parole du ministère armenien de la Defense
Artsrun Hovhannisyan a suggere que les forces armees azerbaïdjanaises
aurait en fait abattu leur propre drone et ont tente de le presenter
comme un drone armenien.