Author: Kanayan Tamar

ARMENIA 1915 – THE FORGOTTEN GENOCIDE

Mumbrella, Australia
April 13 2015

At the same time as our Anzacs were fighting the Turks at Gallipoli,
the Ottoman Empire was systemically decimating its civilian Armenian
population.

24 April 2015 marks the centenary of the Armenian genocide, in which
as many as 1.5 million Armenians died at the hands of the Turkish
Ottoman Empire.

It is sometimes called the ‘forgotten genocide’, yet it was of great
significance to 20th century history, becoming the blueprint – and a
rationale – for Holocaust of the Second World War. On the eve of the
Polish invasion, Hitler remarked, ‘Who today remembers the annihilation
of the Armenians?’

Ashley Kalagian Blunt explores the genocide’s history, including its
connection to Anzac Day and the Gallipoli campaign.

Guest Speaker

Ashley Kalagian Blunt is a writer and teacher who delivers workshops
and courses on language and culture. She has completed extensive
research on Armenia, including interviews with over 150 Armenians on
three continents. Ashley’s travel memoir of her solo journey through
Armenia, The Pomegranate’s Daughter, was recently shortlisted in the
Varuna Publisher Introduction Program. She has lived and worked in
Canada, Mexico, South Korea and Peru.

FREE & Open to the Public For more information visit:

When

21st April 2015 12:30 pm To 21st April 2015 01:30 pm

Where

Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts 280 Pitt St, Sydney 2000 Sydney
CBD 2000

DAVUTOGLU: POPE FRANCIS WAS CAUGHT IN A TRAP OF PLOTTERS

Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
April 15 2015

15 April 2015 – 8:12pm

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that Pope Francis was
caught in a trap of conspirators plotting against the ruling Justice
and Development Party. The PM called the conspirators a front of evil
of which the Pope was part, together with the Republican People’s
Party and the Democratic People’s Party, RIA Novosti reports.

Davutoglu reminded that the Ottoman Empire had given asylum to Jewish
refugees fleeing from the Catholic inquisition in Spain.

Pope Francis said at a liturgy on Sunday that the Armenian genocide,
Nazism and Stalinism were the three biggest tragedies of the 20th
century.

ARMENIA-GERMANY PARLIAMENTARY COLLABORATION DISCUSSED AT NATIONAL ASSEMBLY

14:16, 16 April, 2015

YEREVAN, APRIL 16, ARMENPRESS. On April 16, the Chairman Standing
Committee on Foreign Relations of the National Assembly of the Republic
of Armenia Artak Zakaryan received Canan Atilgan, Head of the Konrad
Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) Regional Programme: Political Dialogue:
Southern Caucasus. Silvia Schtober, journalist, evaluator of Konrad
Adenauer Foundation also attended the meeting.

The Information and Public Relations Department of the National
Assembly of the Republic of Armenia informed “Armenpress” that Canan
Atilgan, Head of the Foundation presented the programmes of the
foundation and proposed the MPs’ participation and support in them.

Silvia Schtober, as a journalist, was interested in the regional
situation, Armenia-European Union relations, as well as Armenia’s
participation and role in the Eurasian Economic Union and the events
dedicated to the Armenian Genocide Centennial and their responses.

In the course of the meeting the sides also discussed issues concerning
the parliamentary cooperation between Germany and Armenia.

LA REACTION D’EDOUARD NALBANDIAN A LA PRISE DE POSITION DU PAPE

Genocide

L’Armenie a critique la reaction publique de la Turquie vis-a-vis des
propos du pape qui a reconnu officiellement le “premier genocide du
XXe siècle”.

Le ministre des Affaires etrangères, Edouard Nalbandian, a declare que
le pape Francois a prononce un “important message de solidarite et de
soutien au peuple armenien” a la basilique Saint-Pierre dimanche. Le
souverain pontife a egalement exprime son soutien aux efforts
internationaux visant a prevenir de nouveaux crimes contre l’humanite,
a releve Nalbandian dans des commentaires ecrits publies lundi.

Nalbandian a assiste a la messe avec d’autres membres d’une importante
delegation gouvernementale armenienne dirigee par le president Serge
Sarkissian. Les principaux membres du clerge de l’Eglise apostolique
armenienne, les dirigeants des organisations de la diaspora armenienne
ainsi de fidèles armeniens catholiques etaient egalement presents.

Sarkissian a remercie Francois Ier pour la liturgie au cours de leur
courte conversation qui a suivi la ceremonie de 2h30 retransmis en
direct par la television d’Etat.

Le gouvernement turc a, lui, condamne le pontife et a rappele son
ambassadeur au Vatican en signe de protestation.

“Ce sont les mots du chef spirituel de 1,2 milliard de catholiques
dans le monde”, a declare Nalbandian. “Si la Turquie est en desaccord
avec lui, qui rejoint le point de vue de nombreux pays et structures
internationales qui ont reconnu le genocide armenien, c’est le problème
de la Turquie et non de la communaute internationale.”

“Cela montre que la Turquie et la communaute internationale parlent
des langues differentes”, a charge Nalbandian. “C’est une preuve
supplementaire que la Turquie poursuit sa politique negationniste au
niveau de l’Etat, assumant ainsi la responsabilite du crime perpetre
par les autorites ottomanes.”

mercredi 15 avril 2015, Claire (c)armenews.com

EU URGES TURKEY, ARMENIA TO NORMALIZE RELATIONS

Journal of Turkish Daily
April 14 2015

14 April 2015

The European Union has urged Turkey and Armenia to normalize their
relations following a spat prompted by remarks made by Pope Francis
over the events of 1915.

EU foreign affairs spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic told reporters in
Brussels on Tuesday: “It is very important in our view for relations
to be normalized as soon as possible between Turkey and Armenia.”

“The (European) Commission encourages both sides to take extra measures
to open the way towards a complete reconciliation,” Kocijancic said.

Pope Francis said on Sunday that “the first genocide of the 20th
century” had struck Armenians – a move that prompted Turkey to
recall its ambassador in Vatican and also summon the Vatican’s envoy
in Ankara.

Turkey and Armenia disagree on what happened between 1915 and 1923,
with Armenia saying that 1.5 million were deliberately killed and
Turkey saying the deaths did not constitute genocide but were a result
of deportations and civil strife.

“In the context of Turkey’s status as a (EU) candidate country we are
following the issue of reconciliation and normalization of relations
with Turkey,” Kocijancic said.

The European Parliament is set to mark the centennial of said 1915
events in Brussels on Wednesday.

14 April 2015

AA

LOS ANGELES PRAYER SERVICE TO COMMEMORATE ARMENIAN KILLINGS

Oroville Mercury Register
April 14 2015

Posted: 04/14/15, 6:44 AM PDT |

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Roman Catholic Archbishop Jose Gomez will host
a multi-denominational prayer service in Los Angeles to commemorate
the 100th anniversary of the killings of an estimated 1.5 million
Armenians under the Ottoman Empire.

The Los Angeles archdiocese says Mayor Eric Garcetti will be the
keynote speaker at the service Tuesday evening at the Cathedral of
Our Lady of the Angels.

The service will include church leaders from around the state and
feature a procession of Armenian children carrying a lantern into
the cathedral.

The event comes days after Pope Francis described the killings a
century ago as “the first genocide of the 20th century.”

Turkey denies the killings were genocide and contends those who died
were victims of civil war and unrest. Turkey also insists the death
toll has been inflated.

NATIONS THAT RECOGNISE THE ARMENIAN ‘GENOCIDE’

Agence France Presse
April 12, 2015 Sunday 2:20 PM GMT

Vatican City, April 12 2015

Pope Francis on Sunday became the first pontiff to publicly utter
the word “genocide” to describe Turkey’s mass murder of Armenians
100 years ago, following the example of France, Russia and Canada.

Speaking at a mass in Saint Peter’s Basilica to mark the centenary of
the Ottoman killings of Armenians, the pope quoted a written document
signed by John Paul II in 2001, branding the killings as the “first
genocide of the 20th century”.

Immediately afterwards, Ankara summoned the Vatican envoy to Turkey
to request an explanation.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kin were killed between 1915
and 1917 as the Ottoman Empire was falling apart, and have long sought
to win international recognition of the massacres as genocide.

Some 20 countries have recognised it as genocide as well as the
European Parliament.

But 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.

– Recognition –

France was the first major country to recognise the genocide, while
denying it happened is illegal in Switzerland and Slovakia.

However, in December 2013 the European Court of Human Rights said
an arrest over denying the Armenian genocide constituted a breach of
freedom of expression. That decision is now under review.

In April 2014, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — then prime
minister — offered his condolences for the mass killings for the
first time.

In January this year, he said Turkey was ready to “pay the price”
if found guilty of the massacre.

According to Armenian sources, 200,000 people were killed in clashes
with Turks from 1894 to 1909.

In October 1914, the Ottoman Empire was drawn into World War I,
siding with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

On April 24, 1915, Turkey arrested thousands of Armenians suspected
of hostility to the government.

Two days later a special law was enacted authorising mass deportations.

The Armenian population of Turkey — now branded as “the enemy within”
— in the regions of Anatolia and Cilicia were forced into exile,
and they herded towards the Syrian desert.

Many Armenians were killed on the road and in detention camps.

The Ottoman Empire was dismantled in 1920, two years after the
establishment of a short-lived independent Armenian state in May 1918
that was eventually swallowed up by the Soviet Union and Turkey.

Uruguay recognised the Armenian genocide in 1965, as have the
parliaments of Russia in 1994, Greece in 1996, Italy in 2001,
Switzerland in 2003, Canada in 2004, the Netherlands in 2004, Sweden
in 2010 and Bolivia in 2014. Argentina’s senate recognised it in 2005.

In March this year, 44 US lawmakers introduced a resolution urging
President Barack Obama to recognise the mass killings as genocide.

Armenia is home to some 3.2 people. Eight million others live in the
diaspora, mainly in Russia, the Middle East, Canada, the United States
and France.

burs-ser/fg

GENOCIDE AND ETHNIC CLEANSING IN GREATER EUROPE, 1875-1945

US Official News
April 12, 2015 Sunday

The University of California has issued the following news release:

Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in Greater Europe, 1875-1945

Thursday, April 16, 2015 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm, Bunche Hall Meeting Room
– 6275

A lecture by Donald Bloxham, History, University of Edinburgh

See below for additional information.

Admission

Free and open to the public.

Contact

Center for Near Eastern Studies (310) 825-1181
[email protected] Website

Additional Information

This paper will address some of the most important patterns in
intergroup violence in the title’s spatiotemporal ‘Raum’. It will focus
in particular on the ethno-religious element of such violence, against
the backdrop of the modernisation of Europe and adjacent regions.

The narrative broadly follows the decline and fall of the old
multinational empires, the rise of new nation-states, and then the
rise of new empires in Soviet and especially Nazi form. Eschewing
a directly comparative approach between, for instance, the Armenian
genocide and the Holocaust, it tries to place those events and others
in a broader framework in which geopolitics, economics and the role of
‘great powers’ is to the fore.

Donald Bloxham is Richard Pares Professor of European history at
the University of Edinburgh. He is author of The Final Solution:
a Genocide (Oxford University Press, 2009); Genocide, The World
Wars, and the Unweaving of Europe (Vallentine, Mitchell, 2007), the
Raphael Lemkin-prizewinning The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism,
nationalism, and the destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (OUP, 2005)
and Genocide on Trial (OUP, 2001). He is co-editor of The Oxford
Handbook of Genocide Studies (OUP, 2010) and Political Violence in
Twentieth Century Europe (Cambridge UP, 2011). He is in the final
stages of completing a manuscript on the role of moral thought in
historianship.

ERDOGAN WARNS POPE OVER ARMENIAN GENOCIDE REMARKS

The Times of Israel
April 14 2015

Holy See comes under fire from Turkish officials for statements on
Ottomans’ mass killings in WWI

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday expressed anger over
the pope’s use of the word genocide to describe the mass killings
of Armenians in World War I, saying such talk was nonsense and the
pontiff should not repeat such a mistake again.

Ankara at the weekend summoned the Vatican nuncio and recalled the
Turkish envoy to the Holy See in a furious reaction to Pope Francis’
description of the killings of Armenians at the hands of Ottoman
forces.

“If politicians and religious leaders do the job of historians then
we will not get to the truth and only end with nonsense,” Erdogan said
in a speech in Ankara in his first reaction to the pope’s comments.

“Respected pope: I condemn this mistake and warn against making it
again,” he said to applause from an audience of businessmen.

Turkey has vehemently rejected the use of the term genocide to
describe the Ottoman era killings and is keeping to its line in the
100th anniversary of the tragedy.

Armenians say 1.5 million of their ancestors were killed in a targeted
campaign of extermination by Ottoman forces. The Turkish government
said hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Christians were killed on
both sides in a wartime tragedy.

The comments by the pope, who visited Turkey last November, have led
to unprecedented attacks on the pontiff by Turkish officials.

EU Minister Volkan Bozkir said Monday that the pope had made the
comment because of a strong Armenian lobby in his homeland of
Argentina.

“I think Pope Francis made this statement because he is an Argentine.

Unfortunately, in Argentina, the Armenian diaspora is dominant in
the press and business world,” Bozkir said, quoted by the official
Anatolia news agency.

Referring to the influx of war criminals to Latin America after World
War II, Bozkir declared that Argentina “welcomed Nazis, who were the
lead performers of the Jewish Holocaust.”

THE KARDASHIANS AND POPE FRANCIS BRING ARMENIAN ‘GENOCIDE’ BACK TO FOCUS AFTER A CENTURY

International Business Times AU
April 14 2015

By Honey George

IN PHOTO U.S. television personality Kim Kardashian (L) and her
sister Khloe Kardashian (C) attend a flower laying ceremony at the
Tsitsernakaberd Armenian Genocide Memorial Museum in Yerevan April 10,
2015. Kim Kardashian, visiting her ancestors’ homeland of Armenia,
placed flowers on Friday at a memorial to the 1915 mass killings of
Armenians by Ottoman soldiers. REUTERS/Vahan Stepanyan

The century old Armenian genocide is back into focus. Kim Kardashian
has brought this small landlocked country South of the Caucasus
into prominence. Kardashians with their media savvy have brought the
much-wanted focus to the upcoming Genocide Remembrance day on April 24,
2015. Pope Francis also referred to the Armenian Massacre as Genocide
resulting in strong protests from Turkey.

The Armenian Genocide has not been hogging the limelight in spite
of the UN recognition due to efforts by Turkey which disputes such
claims. Most of the Armenian genocide descendants have kept the issue
alive but have not been able to get international recognition as
the Rwandan massacre or the Holocaust. Hanush Hakobyan, the Minister
for the Armenian Diaspora feels that the Kardashians would help in
getting better press for the country. “Majority of the people do not
know where Armenia is. If Kim Kardashian writes or says anything it
would be amazing PR,” he said.

For the majority of the people in this conservative nation, the
Kardashians were a world away. However, today frenzied crowd followed
every move of Kim and Khloe as they were accompanied by Kim’s Husband,
rapper Kanye West and their daughter North. Local media have displayed
pictures of Kim and Khloe Kardashian paying their tributes at the
Genocide memorial on Friday.

Pope Francis referencing the 2001 declaration of Pope John Paul put
the Armenian Genocide on par with Holocaust and Stalinist massacres.

According to CNN, the pope said, “Our Human family has lived through
three unprecedented tragedies and the first genocide of the 20th
century struck the Armenian people.” Turkey has lodged a strong
protest and has summoned its ambassador for “consultations” after
the comments by the Pope.

The massacre of Armenian Christians during the end of First World War
is considered to be the first Genocide of the twentieth century. The
United Nations unanimously passed the convention on the Prevention
and Punishment of Crime of Genocide in 1948 with the massacres in
Armenia as the template. Turkey, on the other hand, dismisses the
allegations of massacres and continue to hold the position that both
Armenians and Turkish Muslims were killed in a communal flare-up.