Author: Zargarian Hambik

TURKISH GOVT ASKS PARLIAMENT TO LET TROOPS ENTER IRAQ
By Gareth Jones and Hidir Goktas

Reuters
Oct 15 2007

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey’s cabinet asked parliament on Monday for
permission to launch attacks on Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq
that Washington fears could destabilize one of the most peaceful
areas of the country.

Government spokesman Cemil Cicek said Turkey still hoped military
action against the Kurds, who use the mountainous region as base for
attacks inside Turkey, would not be needed.

"But the most painful reality of our country, our region, is the
reality of terror," he told a news conference.

Cicek said the motion, which parliament is expected to approve on
Wednesday, would be valid for one year and would allow multiple
cross-border operations.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s centre-right government is under
heavy public pressure to act after a series of attacks on Turkish
troops by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which seeks an
independent homeland in eastern Turkey.

The prospect of NATO’s second largest army crossing into mainly
Kurdish northern Iraq helped propel global oil prices to an all-time
high of $85 a barrel on Monday while the lira currency fell more than
2 percent against the dollar.

The United States has urged restraint on Turkey, a key NATO ally
strategically located between Europe and the Middle East. But
Washington’s influence in Ankara is being severely undermined by
U.S. Congressional moves to brand as genocide the mass killings of
Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915.

Ankara has recalled its envoy to Washington and warned of serious
damage to ties if next month the House of Representatives backs a
resolution pressed by an Armenian lobby with great influence among
the Democrat majority.

Turkey rejects the genocide claims, now fatefully entangled with the
northern Iraq issue.

U.S. APPEAL

"We are continuing to ask the Turks to exercise restraint," State
Department spokesman Tom Casey said. "We realize how difficult the
problem is and we all want to work together to resolve the problem
posed by PKK/terrorism and their operations against Turkey from
northern Iraq," Casey said.

"That requires, though, cooperative and coordinated efforts between
people on both sides of the border with us supporting that effort. A
unilateral step would be unlikely to make the situation any better,"
he told reporters.

The European Union, which Turkey aims to join, has also urged caution.

"It is a dangerous situation… It can indeed be deadly, but it is
not the first time," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told
reporters in Luxembourg.

Large-scale incursions by Turkey into northern Iraq in 1995 and 1997,
involving an estimated 35,000 and 50,000 troops respectively, failed
to dislodge the rebels.

Cicek said Turkey’s sole target, if its troops entered northern Iraq,
would be the PKK militants, about 3,000 of whom are believed to be
hiding there.

He repeated criticism of Iraq’s failure, despite Turkish pressure,
to take action against the PKK on its territory. Iraqi Vice President
Tareq al-Hashemi will hold talks in Ankara with Turkish officials on
Tuesday, he said.

In the text of the motion, seen by Reuters, the government states
continued commitment to Iraq’s territorial integrity and defends its
right under international law to send troops across the border as an
act of self-defence.

Turkey’s powerful and respected military has long called for permission
to hunt down PKK rebels in Iraq.

Hayots Ashkharh, Armenia
Oct 11 2007

Armenian paper accuses Turkey of blackmailing USA over "genocide"

The Armenian newspaper Hayots Ashkharh has said Turkey will stop at
nothing to try and silence any official international recognition of
mass killings of Armenians in the early 20th century. Commenting on a
US Congress resolution recognizing "the genocide of Armenians", the
newspaper accused Turkish leaders of trying to blackmail and threaten
the USA over the issue. The following is the text an article by
Vardan Grigoryan entitled "Tactics of threats and blackmail" and
published in the Armenian newspaper Hayots Ashkharh on 11 October:

As Turkish sultans in the past threatened to beat those who dared to
pronounce the word "Armenia", the same way their successors are
trying to silence any conversation about the genocide of Armenians –
regardless where it comes from.

The only difference is that now they have changed the targets of
their threats; consequently they are, albeit very unsuccessfully,
trying to blackmail countries that have recognized the Armenian
genocide, Turkey now threatens to do the same thing to one of the
global super powers – the United States.

In the recent few days all influential figures of the Turkish state –
its president, prime minister, parliament speaker, foreign minister,
defence minister, chief of the General Staff – have sent their
American colleagues letters of threats, promising that their country
will apply all possible punishment to the US in case the House of
Representatives adopts Resolution 106.

However, Turkey is not trying to prove anything or to convince the
whole world; instead it is attempting to impose silence while trying
to initiate an imitation of a discussion between Turkish and Armenian
historians, with the former ones, if they say something that
contradicts the official opinion of their authorities, to be
immediately placed in jail – on charges of insulting the Turkish
people. Thus, the civilized world is obliged to shut up in the face
of Turkey’s sanctions. According to the Turkish side, the universal
norm of freedom of speech approved by certain decisions of the UN and
other international organizations should have a reservation stating
that it should not cover the definitions of the criminal and the
victim in the events of 1894-1923 that took place in Osman Turkey.

It is not by chance that Turkey considers stopping the process of
recognition of the Armenian genocide as a priority issue in ensuring
its national security. Thus, with regard to this absolute priority,
it does not matter whether it is small Lebanon, the Cyprus parliament
or the US Congress that recognizes Armenian genocide. As Turkey tries
to blackmail even such a powerful country as the USA, it seeks to
prove its formation as a country through Armenian genocide, and
therefore, a refutation of this fact is a matter of life and death
for it, which is worth confrontation even with the USA.

We believe that the condemnation of the slaughter against all
humanity is not only a legal issue, but also an issue of
responsibility for the superpower of the world, which has acquired
the greatest responsibility for humanity’s destiny – the United
States of America.

[translated]

New York Post, NY
Oct 14 2007

PLAYING POLITICS WITH GENOCIDE
HOW THE DEMOCRATS ARE USING THE ARMENIANS TO GET THEIR WAY IN IRAQ

By RALPH PETERS

October 14, 2007 — In the midst of the First World War, the Young
Turks who had taken over the Ottoman Empire committed genocide
against their Armenian subjects. At least a million Armenians were
murdered – with nauseating cruelty – or died of abuse, heat, hunger
and thirst.

The only reason any survived was that the Turks lacked the
administrative skills and technologies to kill everyone. Not every
captive fit into the burning churches. On the death marches across
Anatolia into the Syrian desert, guards ran out of bullets. And even
sadists grew weary of bayoneting children and clubbing old men to
death.

Women were raped by the tens of thousands. Many were raped
repeatedly. Then they were killed. Or enslaved. Or left to die of
exposure by the roadside.

Ancient communities were annihilated. A magnificent culture – the
remnants of the world’s first Christian kingdom – drowned in blood.

Only Turks question this history. The eyewitness accounts are
extensive – not only from Armenian survivors, but from American and
German consuls and missionaries. The documentation is readily
available (texts crowd one of my bookshelves).

Hitler cited the Armenian Genocide as an inspiration for the
Holocaust – the lesson he drew was that the Turks got away with it.
The world never intervened. Apologists for the Allies blamed the war.
The truth is that the eyewitnesses went ignored: Armenian lives had
less value then than do those of Darfur refugees today.

Last Wednesday, the Democrat-controlled House Foreign Affairs
Committee passed a resolution formally declaring the Armenian tragedy
what it was: genocide. Speaker Nancy Pelosi intends to bring the
resolution to a vote on the floor, after which it would go to the
Senate.

We need to stop it. It’s a travesty and a betrayal. Of
Armenian-Americans. And of our troops.

Make no mistake: I’m on the Armenian side in the court of history.
When the same resolution came up in years past, I supported it. The
Armenian survivors – their descendents, at this point – deserve
justice.

And I have no sympathy with the Turks. The Turks are jerks. After the
United States supported them unswervingly for more than a
half-century, they stiffed us the single time we needed help – when
we asked to move an Army division through Turkey on the eve of
Operation Iraqi Freedom.

And the Ankara government has led an internal campaign of
anti-Americanism far more lurid and vicious than the old Soviet
bloc’s anti-Western propaganda. It’s not just Turkey’s Islamists, but
its secular nationalists, too. The anti-American hatred spewing from
the Turkish media is uglier than Barbra Streisand at four in the
morning.

The Turks tormented their Kurdish minority for decades – and express
outrage when Kurds respond. Now they’re threatening to invade
northern Iraq, while whining that honor-killings, pervasive
corruption and anti-Western venom shouldn’t deny them membership in
the EU.

Despite all that, we’ve got to kill this resolution. It’s not the
wording – but the timing.

Legislation similar to this has come up repeatedly in Congress, yet
it’s always been defeated – in 2000, because of pressure from the
Clinton administration. But if the resolution passes the House and
Senate now, the Turks plan to evict us from Incirlik airbase in
southeastern Turkey, to halt our military over-flight privileges and
to shut down the supply routes into northern Iraq.

That’s what the Democrats are aiming at. This resolution isn’t about
justice for the Armenians. Not this time. It’s a stunningly devious
attempt to impede our war effort in Iraq and force premature troop
withdrawals.

The Dems calculate that, without those flights and convoys, we won’t
be able to keep our troops adequately supplied. Key intelligence and
strike missions would disappear.

The Pentagon might be able to improvise other options. But the loss
of the base and those routes would definitely hurt our troops.
Severely. And we’d be more reliant than ever on a single, vulnerable
lifeline running from Kuwait.

It’s a brilliant ploy – the Dems get to stab our troops in the back,
but lay the blame off on the Turks. They pretend they’re responding
to their Armenian-American constituents – while actually moving to
placate MoveOn.org.

For the Democrats in Congress, it looks like a cost-free strategy.
For our troops? When did the Dems give a damn about our troops? This
resolution isn’t a stand in favor of historical justice. It’s an
end-run that ducks behind the bench. It’s one of the most cynical
betrayals in our legislative history – of our troops, of
Armenian-Americans, of the Kurds under threat from the Turkish
military and of the people of Iraq.

We can’t let Pelosi & Co. get away with this one. We need to call the
Dems on it and make it clear that we, the people, know what they’re
trying to do.

Every human being with a drop of Armenian blood deserves justice.
This isn’t it.

`Ralph Peters’ latest book is `Wars of Blood and Faith."

view photoes of "Scenes of horror from the Armenian genocide" at
n/opedcolumnists/playing_politics_with_genocide.ht m?page=0

abc7news.com, CA
Oct 13 2007

Armenians Applaud U.S. Vote On Genocide

YEREVAN, Armenia, Oct. 12, 2007 – A U.S. House panel got a standing
ovation in Armenia today.

Armenian lawmakers applauded the panel’s approval of a resolution
labeling the World War I-era killings of Armenians by Turks genocide.
The vote by the House Foreign Affairs Committee follows decades of
lobbying by Armenian-American interest groups.

Historians estimate up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by
Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I. Turkey says the toll
has been inflated.

The Bush administration worries that the resolution will harm
relations with Turkey — a key supply route for U.S. operations in
Iraq.

Noyan Tapan News Agency, Armenia
Oct 12 2007

ACCORDING TO CHAIRMAN OF RAMKAVAR AZATAKAN PARTY OF ARMENIA, ARMENIA
SHOULD FILE A CASE TO INTERNATIONAL COURT OF HAGUE AGAINST AZERI
GOVERNMENT OF 1988-1994

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 12, NOYAN TAPAN. While Armenia is occupied with
pre-election processes, Azerbaijan makes great efforts in order to
present Armenia as an aggressor and terrorist country in
international instances. This statement was made by Haroutiun
Arakelian, the Chairman of the Ramkavar Azatakan Party of Armenia, at
the press conference held on October 12. In his words, the mass acts
of violence committed by the population of Azerbaijan against
Armenians many years ago are presented to the world "turned upside
down."

Opposing the right of self-determination of nations to that of
territorial completeness, the Armenian side, according to the
Chairman of the Ramkavar Azatakan Party of Armenia, has, however,
conformed to the international norms during these years, whereas
Azerbaijan suggests treating the issues of Armenians the way those of
terrorists are treated.

H. Arakelian stated that the Ramkavar Azatakan Party of Armenia
proposes to stop the participation of Armenia in the settlement
process of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict organized by the OSCE Minsk
Group as the Azeri authorities are a state institution having
committed a crime towards the Armenian people. The Chairman of the
Ramkavar Azatakan Party of Armenia also stated that "Armenia should
sue a case to the International Court of Hague against the Azeri
government of the 1988-1994, charging it with the implementation of
ethnic cleansings, massacres and slaughter, lootings and pillages."

Author:
Editor: Eghian Robert

Reporters without borders (press release), France
Oct 12 2007

Arat Dink convicted of `insult to turkish identity’ after publishing
article about his father Hrant Dink

Reporters Without Borders today voiced `outrage’ at a one-year prison
sentence against the son of murdered journalist Hrant Dink, Arat
Dink, editor-in-chief of the weekly Agos, and his editor Serkis
Seropyan, using the same law under which his father had been
prosecuted.

A court in the Sisli district of Istanbul found Arat Dink and Serkis
Seropyan guilty of `insulting Turkish identity’ for publishing an
interview in Agos which Hrant Dink gave to Reuters in 2006 in which
he termed as genocide the massacres of Armenians from 1915-17,
remarks for which Hrant Dink was prosecuted at the time.

The one-year jail sentence was suspended against both men because
neither had any previous convictions

`It is a complete aberration for this decision to come now, after
Turkish President Abdullah Gull said on 3 October that he was in
favour of an amendment to Article 301 which makes it a crime to refer
to the Armenian genocide’, the worldwide press freedom organisation
said.

`Ironically, the same court yesterday handed down a two-year
suspended prison sentence against a youth who threatened the
editorial staff of Agos, after Hrant Dinks’s murder,’ the
organisation said.

Ridvan Dogan, 19, admitted sending threats to Agos but claimed that
he had forwarded the threats without reading the contents of the
email. The court suspended his sentence because he had expressed
regret and because he had committed no previous offences.

Several Agos journalists had to be given police protection because of
the threats received just a few days after the 19 January 2007 murder
of Hrant Dink outside the newspaper’s offices by 17-year-old Ogun
Samast.

rticle=23958

The Kansas City Star (Missouri)
October 12, 2007 Friday

EDITORIAL: Turkey’s belligerent attitude threatens relations with
West

Oct. 12–Someone needs to tell the irresponsible Turkish government
to calm down and halt its attacks on northern Iraq.

That someone is President Bush. This week, however, Bush showed only
weakness and timidity in the face of Ankara’s aggressive bluster.

The United States should expect better from an ostensible ally.

Turkey’s over-the-top campaign against Kurdish separatism has already
destroyed hundreds of villages and killed thousands within its own
borders.

Now Turkey is shelling and bombing Kurdish areas in northern Iraq,
and threatening to launch ground attacks in force. That would bring
chaos to what has been the most stable and thriving part of Iraq.

In addition, the Turks are throwing another temper tantrum over how
Americans choose to describe the Ottoman Empire’s many atrocities
against the Armenians a century ago.

Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed in the late 1800s, and
perhaps a million lost their lives in the midst of World War I.

But the Turks want to quibble with the term "genocide" — so much so
that they commanded Bush to drop everything else this week and rush
to defend the good name of the Ottoman Empire on Capitol Hill.

That empire was one of America’s enemies in World War I,
incidentally, so it seems particularly unreasonable to expect our
president to help whitewash its ghastly record.

"Genocide" was the blunt term that President Ronald Reagan used. But
Bush, kowtowing to Ankara, urges U.S. lawmakers not to approve a
measure that uses the word.

Turkey wants closer ties to the West and has long yearned for
membership in the European Union.

So U.S.-Turkish relations should not be a one-way street. If the
Turks want our continued friendship, they need to act more like
friends — and stop their attacks into a country where we have more
than enough problems already.

TREND News Agency, Azerbaijan
Oct 12 2007

AZERI FOREIGN MINISTRY CRITICIZES US RESOLUTION ON ARMENIAN "GENOCIDE"
10/12/07

11 October: The adoption by the [US] House Committee on Foreign
Affairs of a resolution recognizing the "Armenian genocide" with 27
votes "for" and 21 votes "against" is an incorrect decision,
Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman Xazar Ibrahim said on Thursday
[11 October].

The Committee on Foreign Affairs of [the House of Representatives of]
the US Congress on Wednesday adopted by a majority of votes a
resolution recognizing the "Armenian genocide".

Ibrahim said that the congressmen acted not only in the interests of
the state but also in their own personal political interests.
"Certainly, the adoption of this decision is a result of the
influence of and pressure from the Armenian lobby. Therefore, these
kinds of decisions will not have a positive impact on US national
interests," he said.

TURKS BURNING BARBIE AND SPIDERMAN DOLLS

PanARMENIAN.Net
11.10.2007 19:09 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Cinemas screening American films are closed in
Istanbul. To protest adoption of the Armenian Genocide Resolution
by the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee dozens of Macdonald’s
employees did not appear at work.

Besides, Turkey threatens to restrict the U.S. use of Incirlik base
and seems to neglect Washington’s warning against intrusion into
Northern Iraq.

An address of the Turkish authorities to the nation
was read in Istanbul streets. Speaking to CNN-Turk, PM
Erdogan said "the U.S. Congressmen are not entitled to rewrite
history." "Parliamentarians are called to normalize relations and care
about future but not past. Turkey has been a U.S. ally in the region
for 50 years. I do not see a reason for undermining these relations,"
he said.

Students and trade companies’ employees are holding pickets at
the U.S. Consulate building in Ankara shouting out anti-American
slogans. Turkey is launching a campaign in "defense of national
dignity."

Protestors call to break off relations with the U.S., to boycott
American goods.

Turkish media reports that dozens of American toys, including Barbie
and Spiderman dolls, were burnt in a shop in southeast of the country,
the RFE/RL reports.

Turkey and the Armenians

Today’s denial is tomorrow’s holocaust

Haaretz
12/10/2007

By Yossi Sarid

Congressman Adam Schiff, who proposed the resolution to name the
Armenian massacre a genocide, is Jewish. The Jewish nation should be
grateful for Schiff’s initiative, for he has saved Jewish honor in
America, Israel and everywhere. He restored our humane image, in
contrast to the cynics and genocide deniers who are forever demanding
payment for being perpetual victims.

Congressman Schiff is following in the footsteps of another Jew, Henry
Morgenthau, who served as U.S. ambassador in Turkey in those days. He
called the massacre "the greatest crime in modern history."

Schiff is also the student of another Jew, Franz Werfel, who on his way
to the Land of Israel stopped in Damascus and was appalled to see "the
starving, mutilated and sick Armenian refugee children." He published
the novel "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh" (1933), which shocked the world.

In 1918 Shmuel Talkovsky, then secretary of Haim Weizmann, wrote with
Weizmann’s approval: "Is there any nation whose fate is more similar to
ours than the Armenians?"

But in Israel today there are Jews who are less than Jewish and Zionists
who are less than Zionist – including heads of state and heads of
government. Denying another nation’s Holocaust is no less ugly than
denying ours. It is also dangerous. Today’s denial is tomorrow’s
Holocaust. The Armenian genocide wasn’t the first in this era. The
German imperial army slaughtered 100,000 Namibians in 1904. In 1915, the
Armenian genocide began; the Ottomans killed 1.5 million of them in
various ways. If the world had risen up in protest against the genocide
of the Namibians and Armenians, the Holocaust of the Jews might also
have been averted. This is not a mere assumption; it’s probably a fact.
A week before invading Poland, Hitler addressed his officers (August 24,
1939): "It’s a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European
civilization will say about me … I have ordered my Death-Head
Formation to kill mercilessly and without compassion men, women and
children of Polish derivation and language. Who, after all, speaks today
of the annihilation of the Armenians?"

Such was Hitler’s calming message to his troops.

The next time some Israel hater – Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for example –
denies the Jewish Holocaust, and we raise a hue and cry about it, there
will be some self-righteous Gentiles ready to say, "You’re right, but we
have our own Turkeys."

As natural and historic victims, we should be the ones to spread the
message from one end of the world to another: what happened to us can
happen again, to us and to the people of Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia,
Sudan, Burma.

There is no need to compare between holocausts to recognize other
nations’ suffering.

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