Turkey's blatant lies and its chronic inability to face the truth!
White House should have the courage to call a spade a spade.
President Ronald Reagan did It – why doesn't everyone?
How would the USA react were a country to demand that the terrible act of terrorism on 9/11 be labeled a simple "accident" and be forgotten?
The United State of America is regarded as the only country in the world with a "universal constitution." As a result, the US is often looked to in questions regarding moral responsibilities related to human rights and justice. In the spirit of justice and moral responsibility, on April 22nd, 1981, Ronald Reagan, one of the greatest Presidents of the United States of America, labeled the Turkish "genocide of the Armenians" as a crime against the humanity in his Proclamation 4838. Reagan's Presidential Proclamation was made during the cold war (!) and despite heavy lobbying by the Turkish government. But President Reagan made it clear to Turkey that the United State of America doesn't buckle to threats and blackmail, and that no country in the world can forbid the US to speak about the truth about crimes against all humanity. Regan saw the Armenian Genocide as an indisputable fact – as does the independent historian – and simply spoke publicly about something the Turkish nation would prefer ignored.
This was President Reagan's approach to (and understanding of) being a superpower and defender of justice and democracy, but what about the administrations that followed? Is the US on the way to losing its former influential moral authority for the sake of "diplomacy"? Is the US still able to speak out against historic injustices?
Some Facts: in the US, a group of paid lobbyists and Turkish nationalists have continually launched unprecedented attacks on H Res. 106 (Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution). John Evans, the former US Ambassador to Armenia and carrier diplomat, was forced to resign in September 2006 merely for labeling the events of 1915 a "genocide" at a social gathering in California. Later, however, we were at least shown that the US Senate wouldn't allow a foreign government – Turkey – to tell the US Administration what to do. In a rare move of protest, the US Senate refused to approve the successor of Amb. Evans, thus leaving the US ambassadorial post to Armenia vacant for the past 18 months. As one Senator stated, "We are obviously pleased that the administration came to understand that I had no intention of withdrawing my hold. I hope the new nominee would be somebody who understands the reality of the Armenian Genocide and can express himself or herself when the time comes for a nomination hearing."
Turkish Penal Code and Democratic Countries: why should democratic countries condone the efforts of Turkey to import its Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) – an article that criminalizes the "insulting" of "Turkishness" (and/or the Turkish nation) and, in practice, forbids telling the truth about the Armenian Genocide – to the US and EU? How would the USA react were a country to demand that the terrible act of terrorism on 9/11 be labeled a simple "accident" and simply be forgotten? Why should America help Turkey in its attempts to falsify history? Why should Armenian Americans and Armenians around the world be forced to accept the Turkish genocide of the Armenians (1915-1923) just as a "tragedy"?Denial of Armenian Genocide - justifying the crime and the ideology behind this crime- and Turkish racial motivated foreign policy is threatening the very existence of Armenian People!
The Birth of the Term “Genocide”: while the Armenian Genocide was in progress, a historically unparalleled humanitarian act was undertaken in the US. The US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, gave to protocol: "When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race." His evaluation of the real intentions behind the "deportations" (i.e. annihilation) instigated by the nationalist government of Ottoman Turkey was confirmed by the numerous secret reports sent to Berlin by German diplomats.
The slaughter of the Armenians is one of the defining moments of the 20th Century, a century characterized by genocide. The word "genocide" was coined by the jurist Raphael Lemkin by combining the Greek word "genos" (race) with the Latin word "caedere" (to kill). Following the Turkish extermination program against the Armenians, the phrase "Never again!" was once again heard. The devastation of the Armenian Holocaust so shocked Lemkin (a lawyer of Jewish descent) that he drew up a convention "against the destruction of national, religious and racial groups" – but his initiative initially fell upon deaf ears. Lemkin was only first heard after the Jewish Holocaust.
Years before the Nazi murder of six million Jews, Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, characterized Turkey's break with civilization as following: "In 1915 the Turkish government began and ruthlessly carried out the infamous general massacre and deportation of Armenians in Asia Minor… the clearance of the race from Asia Minor was about as complete as such an act, on a scale so great, could well be… There is no reasonable doubt that this crime was planned and executed for political reasons… whole districts blotted out in one administrative holocaust – these were beyond human redress." (Sir Winston Churchill -The World Crisis Vol. 5)
Does Turkey Losing the Sense for Historic Facts and Reality? Noting justifies genocide. Armenians don't need to prove the fact of Armenian Genocide. Let Turkish politicians prove to the world community the existence of 5, 10, 15 million Armenians in "Anatolia" and, above all, the existence of Armenian civilization in Western Armenia - "Turkish Armenia" - in today's Eastern Anatolia! (The number of those who regarded themselves as "Turks" - not "Muslims" or Ottomans - in Anatolia prior to the start of the Armenian Genocide and policy of forced Turkification was not more than 3 or 5%. (Even the rulers of the Young Turkish movement themselves came from the Balkans and areas in Greece…)
A couple of weeks ago, Recep Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minster, had to cancel a news conference in Sofia, Bulgaria, to avoid questions on the Armenian Genocide. In April, while Mr. Erdogan traveled to Sweden to warn politicians there not to bring up the issue of the Armenian Genocide in parliament, in the same time, Hasan Murat Mercan, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Turkish Parliament, was in Israel busy pressuring Israel against the Armenian Genocide Resolution introduced in the Knesset. The next station will certainly once again be Washington! But Democratic countries are tired of Turkish fictions regarding the Armenian Genocide. What the world really wants is a "Turkish Willy Brandt" who travels to Yerevan, Armenia, and admits the past crime of Turkish government.(As part of a ceremony on December 7 th, 1970, the then-current German Chancellor Willy Brandt placed a wreath at the memorial honoring the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw. After placing the wreath ribbon, he knelt in front of the monument for a moment of silence before getting up and leading his delegation away.)
Armenians always Rose against Foreign Rules: Armenia had been occupied by Romans, Arabs, Greeks, Persians, Russians and, in the end, the Turkish. However, Armenia always rose against all such occupiers and managed to secure their freedom and survival, often even regaining their kingdom and state. But none of the foreign occupiers of the Armenian Highland (in Today’s Anatolia) were ever nearly as barbaric as the Young Turkish regime: Starting in 1915 the Turkish regime pursued a genocidal policy which, by 1923, had led to the total destruction of Armenian civilization in the historic Armenian homeland (which has since been renamed as Eastern Anatolia). In truth, however, given the long history of Turkish-led massacres of Armenian people in their homeland during 4000-plus years prior to 1915, the Armenian Genocide of 1915-23 was to be predicted.
The German Empire was the closest ally of Ottoman Turkey. Therefore, still in 1903 (!), Georg Brandes (1842-1927), a prominent Danish and European literary critic, already raised his voice for Armenia in an impressive speech to students in Berlin: "An Appeal to Europe's Conscious … I do not tend to overrate the spoken words of a simple author, and I know quite well that the decision of all major political questions lies with the ruling powers. But in our times, even the powers that be must take note of a strong and unanimously expressed public opinion, and that is why we must shout for as long as it takes until such a public opinion is awoken in all countries – and especially in the German Empire. As you all know, during the last ten years Turkish Armenia has been the scene of atrocities incomparable to anything in recorded world history since the time of the barbarians. Prior to it happening, no one would have thought it possible that an entire population could become the object of such bloodshed, torture and mass murder. The blood of hundreds of thousands is screaming to the heavens… when the Armenians began to defend themselves at numerous places, the pretext was supplied to exterminate this infidel - that is, Christian - population through mass torture and mass slaughter…."(This historic document from 1903 was reprinted in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of Germany's leading daily newspapers, on July 2nd, 2005.)
On April 24, 1915, 12 years after the almost prophetic words of G. Brandes, the Ottoman Turkey’s government (hijacked by Turkish nationalists) used a variety of pretexts to put their machinery for the destruction of Armenians into motion.
While the genocide of Armenians was in progress Turkey told visiting allies of simple "resettlement," but even the diplomats of Germany described these statements as "blatant lies." The same "blatant lies" are still being repeated in a continually more aggressive and rude manner by Turkish politicians when visiting Capitol Hill and European capitals! Turkish politicians have started to believe on their own lies and fabrications. The chronic lies resulting from Turkey's ruthless pursuit of Pan-Turanism, hatred of other civilizations and greed for foreign territories and property has resulted in Turkey's continual denial of its past and an incurable internal intellectual and political stagnation. Otherwise, the numerous reports of eye witnesses and survivors of the Armenian Genocide as detailed in the reports of German, UK, French, Austrian and American Ambassadors and Consuls to Ottoman Turkey would no longer continue to be denied by Turkey.
The Germany’s foreign affair documents of that time as a whole illustrate a very exact picture of the systematic nature of the Armenian Genocide. At that time, the German officials alone had the privilege to encrypt all reports; the reports were only meant for a small circle of superiors. For Ankara, these files are a particularly uncomfortable source. No one can write them off as Armenian propaganda.
These secret reports were filed by the very allies working with the Turkish government to help modernize the Turkish military during the First World War - in other words, by allies that no reason to report anything but the truth as witnessed.
Hundreds of cables and confidential reports sent by German diplomats in Turkey to Berlin are available on the Internet at www.armenocide.de. These papers document and confirm the mercilessness of the Turkish authorities. Many of the diplomatic and eye-witness reports are worded in a most ruthlessly factual, extremely direct and not at all roundabout language; they speak of extermination a race, annihilation and concentration camps. In one report from the German Ambassador to Ottoman Turkey we can read: "… Apparently it is feared that the real purpose of the Armenian deportations, that is the total extermination of the Armenian race, could be thwarted by further mass conversions. Since then another, less conspicuous way, has been pursued…" (DE/PA-AA/R14089, Pera, 24 January 1916.)
A few months after the official start of the campaign to obliterate the Christian subjects in Ottoman Turkey, Berlin once again received warnings from its diplomats about the true intention of Turkey: "...Apart from this, the Commander-in-Chief of the 3rd Army, Mahmud Kiamel Pasha, who has relocated his headquarters here, is also interfering harshly in the government of the Vilayets (…) This humane practice, which I, too, espoused, was suddenly put to an end through some sort of influence by the committee. Now, Mahmud Kiamel Pasha has ordered the immediate and most ruthless deportation of all Armenians (…) The supporters of the latter will, by the way, openly admit that the final goal of their actions against the Armenians is their total annihilation in Turkey. After the war we will not have 'any more Armenians in Turkey' are the exact words of an eminent person."(DE/PA-AA/BoKon/170, Erzerum, 28 July 1915, Confidential Report.)
For the most part, the Armenians living in Istanbul (Constantinople), the capital of Ottoman Turkey, were not affected by the genocide. This was nothing but a diplomatically tactic used to mislead the foreign governments and embassies, a tactic reminiscent of how the Theresienstadt deportation camp was used for propaganda to cover up the real annihilation during the Jewish Holocaust. The organized death marches of the Armenian people to the Syrian Desert, however, were nothing other than mobile concentration camps: "Despite assurances by the Porte to the contrary, everything is being directed at the destruction of the Armenian people." (DE/PA-AA/R14088, Pera, 25 September 1915.)
Another report from the German Consul in Aleppo (Roessler) to the Reich Chancellor (Bethmann Hollweg) summarizes the Turkish policy regarding the Armenian people: "…All steps taken in respect of the Armenians, as far as I could see and observe, led to the conclusion described to me by the Director of Emigrants, Schuekri Bey, 'The final result must be the extermination of the Armenian race…'." (DE/PA-AA/R14090, Aleppo, 3 January 1916.) Indeed, the fact that there is now no viable Armenian civilization left in Anatolia is evidence that the aimed for extermination was a success.
The Dream of Turkish Nationalists: A Turkish Empire only for Turkish Race: prior to the Turkish-led genocide of Armenian people in 1915, and despite both discrimination and numerous prior massacres, through their skills and "survival tactics" Armenians had at that time managed to achieve an almost "Golden Age" socially, culturally and economically. This prosperity was noticed with distrust by the Turkish nationalist rulers and neighbors; it was viewed as a possible danger to the Turkish Nationalist Cause, for unlike the Turkish regime the Armenians in Ottoman Turkey championed ideals of progress and civility. This is one of reasons why the new Turkish nationalists persecuted and pursued the extermination of the Armenians: The Armenian culture, their new social status was a threat to the Turkish Islamic Ottoman Empire.
The Young Turk movement dreamed of a Great Turkey without any prominent ethnic minorities. The Young Turks were merciless in making this dream come true. The Young Turkish ideology also propagated a single nation of all Turkish races between Thrace in the west and China in the east. But the Armenians, whose traditional homeland lay divided on both sides of the Ottoman-Russian border, separated the Turkish-Muslim area like a wall. To realize their Pan-Turkish/Pan-Turanic dreams, it was easier for the Turkish to simply destroy the Armenians - a Christian folk that was unwilling to assimilate and that, like other Christian minorities in Ottoman Turkey, was an easy prey and in no way related by blood to the "Turkish race and Turkishness" –(e.g.) than to fight their way through North Iran. The Young Turkish rulers – the Grand Vizier Talat Pascha and Minister of War Enver Pascha – began by eliminating the leaders of the Armenians. Within three years there was not a single Armenian left in the central historic settlement areas.
What happened to them was summarized and highlighted recently in the cross-party and unanimously adopted Armenian Resolution of the German Federal Parliament in 2005. The following consists of excerpts from the rationale and resolution itself: "90 years ago, on April 24th, 1915, by order of the Young Turk movement steering the Ottoman Empire, the Armenian political and cultural elite were arrested, transported deeper inland and to a large extent put to death. For Armenians throughout the world, this date has become the Day of Remembrance for the expulsion and massacre of the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire which had already begun towards the end of the 19th Century and, however, occurred to an even greater extent during the First World War.
At the start of the war the recruited Armenian soldiers of the Ottoman Army were combined into work battalions and, for the most part, murdered. As of spring 1915, the women, children and elderly were put on death marches through the Syrian Desert. Those among the expelled who did not die or get murdered while underway suffered this fate at the latest in the inhumane camps located the desert around Deir ez Zôr. Massacres were also carried out by special task forces set up specifically for this purpose.
High-ranking Turkish civil servants who voiced resistance to these procedures as well as criticism from the Ottoman Parliament were met by the Young Turk Regime with brutal rejection. Many areas from which the Christian Armenians were expelled were then resettled with Kurds or Muslim refugees of the Balkan Wars. Likewise, members of other Christian folks – in-particularly the Aramaic/Assyrian and Chaldean Christians – as well as certain Muslim minorities were deported and massacred.
According to impartial calculations, over one-million Armenians were victim to the deportation and mass murder. Numerous independent historians, parliaments and international organizations describe the expulsion and annihilation of the Armenians as genocide.
To date, the Republic of Turkey - the legal successors of the Ottoman Empire - still continues to deny the fact that these actions were systematic in nature and/or that the mass deaths during the resettlement marches and the massacres were committed intentionally by the Ottoman government… Turkish justification is that the Armenians used of force and armed resistance against Turks during the Turkish resettlement measures...
As a whole, the magnitude of the massacres and deportation that occurred in Turkey is still played down and largely denied. This attitude of Turkey is in direct contradiction to the idea of reconciliation which stands at the forefront of the European Union's community of values. Even today historians in Turkey are still not free to deal with the history of deportation and murder of Armenians; despite relaxation of the previously existing liability of punishable culpability, they are still subject to great pressure.
As the main military ally of the Ottoman Empire, the German Empire was likewise deeply involved in these events. From the outset, both the political and military leadership of the German Empire were fully informed of the persecution and murder of the Armenians. The files of the foreign office, which consist of reports from the German Ambassadors and Consuls to the Ottoman Empire, document the systematic implementation of the massacres...
The German Parliament honors and commemorates the victims of violence, murder and expulsion among the Armenian People prior to and during the First World War. It deplores the actions of the Young Turkish government of the Ottoman Empire which resulted in the almost total extermination of the Armenians in Anatolia. It also regrets the inglorious role played by the German Reich which, when confronted with manifold information on the organized expulsion and annihilation of Armenians, did not once attempt to stop the atrocities…
The German Parliament is painfully aware from its own extensive past experience how difficult it is for any nation to face the dark sides of its past...
Against this background, the German Parliament deplores the fact that a full discussion of the events of the past in the Ottoman Empire is still not possible in Turkey, and that scholars and writers who wish to deal with this aspect of Turkish history are prosecuted and exposed to public defamation..." (Lower House of the German Parliament, Printed Matter 15/5689, 15th Legislative Period, 15.06.05)
It is worth mentioning that the Turkish government mobilized some of the 1.8 million Turkish people living in Germany in an attempt to force Germany to not pass the Armenian Resolution. Prior to the vote on the resolution, Turkey even predicated "the end of the world" should Germany acknowledge the shared responsibility held by the German Empire. The Turkish blackmail attempts didn't stop Germany - the Turkish closest war-time ally - from taking this first-ever official step to contradict the Turkish industry of genocide denial.
A press release of the ruling fraction of the German Federal Government prior to the discussion of the Armenian Resolution in the German Federal Parliament reads in part: "…The debate with which the German Parliament marks the anniversary of the campaign to exterminate the Turkish Armenians in the year 1915 pursues common three goals shared by all parties: The German Parliament recognizes that Germany, during the First World War, through partial approval and the failure to implement effective counter measures, shares a joint responsibility for this genocide and, therefore, asks the Armenian people for forgiveness…" (http://www.spdfrak.de/cnt/rs/rs_dok/0,,33401,00.html or Bundestag.de)
The German Federal Parliament also attempted to encourage Turkey to end its simulated amnesia by admitting in its resolution that "Germany, which assisted in the repression of the recognition of the crimes against the Armenian People, is now also obligated to confront its own responsibility…" (Lower House of the German Parliament Printed Matter 15/5689, 15th Legislative Period 15.06.05)
To the independent historian it is indisputable fact that Turkey by using different pre-texts systematically and in an organized manner cruelly liquidated a large part of the Armenian people during the First World War. The exterminating acts perpetrated by the Young Turkish government were in no way limited to the territory of Ottoman Turkey alone, but rather extended all the way to the northwest of Iran (which was briefly occupied by the Ottoman Turks) and only found their provisional end in the Caucuses. No intelligent, seriously-minded person questions the factuality of the systematic annihilation of the Armenians by Turkey. At the time it was happening, even Talaat Pasha - the main responsible person for the genocide - openly admitted it was going on to foreign diplomats. But even that which was freely admitted by those in charge at the time is now vehemently denied by the Turkish government of today. They even go so far as to claim the victims as the perpetrators, which in itself is a both a result and proof of Turkey's dangerous loss of memory.
Contrary to the official position of Turkey and its "palace historians," the mass killings of Armenians were not the result of chaos caused by First World War "epidemics/hunger." Quite the opposite: The collapse of the war strategy of the Young Turkish Junta on the battle field and the limited Armenian resistance forced the Turkish to slow down the destruction machinery. This alone saved the Armenian people from total annihilation by the Turkish Empire! The Germans even warned Turkey that the "deportation" ("Sevkiyat", i.e. annihilation) of the Armenian farmers of Central Anatolia would cause food shortages throughout the entire Ottoman Turkey and harm Turkish troops. But for the Turkish administration, the implementation of its destruction policy was of first priority!
In one of the reports of the German consul coming from the place of horror we read: "The aim of Turkish policy… is to attain the Armenian regions and to annihilate the Armenians… All of the utterances of Talat and Enver to the contrary are lies… There will be no place left for Armenians to live."
The Assassination of a Mass Murder, the Trail of the Assassin and Its Historical Impact for Nuremberg War Tribunals: the Turkish Minister of Interior Talaat Pasha - "The soul behind the persecution of the Armenians," according to German Ambassador Metternich to Ottoman Turkey - hid himself in the middle of the German capitol city. Confiding to the Turkish author Edip Adivar, Talaat said, "(I) am ready to die for that that I have done, and I know that I am going to die for it." In 1921, a young Armenian shot him on Hardenberg Street. The assassin was put to trial and to general surprise the Berlin court found him not guilty.
Sitting in the courtroom at the time was a young law student of Jewish heritage named Robert Kempner who followed the events attentively. Kempner later wrote that during the trial, for the first time ever, the basic principle was applied that "genocide can be opposed by foreign countries and that doing so is not improper interference in internal affairs."
When the Nazis came to power, Kempner had to immigrate to the USA. In 1945 he came back as an assistant chief prosecutor of the Americans during the Nuremberg War Trials. (Der Spiegel, Germany's leading weekly news magazine, No. 16/18.04.2005, printed edition.)
Pan-Turanic, Communism and the Old Narrow Minded Racial motivated Policy of Turkey: the idea of a Pan-Turkism and Pan-Islamic dream did not stop with the proclamation of a "modern Turkey." In 1923, a pact closed between Stalin and Kemal gave the Armenian regions of Nachicevan and Nagorno Karabkh to the new formed former Soviet Republic Azerbaijan as a gift (ignoring the will of Armenian population in these regions). Today , 93 years after the Armenian Genocide, the possible proclamation of a Kurdish State and the existence of the new Republic of Armenia – created on a small part of the former Russian Armenia – bothers the Turkish military, while the existence of Armenians in Nagorno Karabakh bothers the Turkish Nationalist and Islamist Prime Minster. In 2007, in another one of his hate-laden speeches at a Pan-Turanic forum in Baku, Prime Minster Erdogan referred to Nagorno-Karabakh as "a bleeding wound for the Turkish people." (todayszaman.com, 10.03.2007.) In 1992, the Turkish President Turgut Özal, instead of facing the truth about the Armenian Genocide and giving the young independent Armenia "a helping hand," was driven by his military and bureaucrats to station thousands of troops on the borders of the newly independent Republic of Armenia, threatening to send a few "firecrackers" across the border to Yerevan teach it the "lesson of 1915."
Currently Turkey still refuses to stabilize diplomatic relations with young Armenian state by setting unacceptable preconditions. Turkey also spares no effort in increasing hatred and friction between Armenia and Republic of Azerbaijan. In turn, the Azeri-Turks this includes both nationalists and authorities in the Republic Azerbaijan - in the spirit of Pan-Turanism and the Islamic policy of 1915 - are not only engaged in an aggressive denial of the Armenian Genocide and inflammation of hatred against Armenians, but are also (by the reactivation of old policies) now claiming that the current Republic of Armenia is located on "Turkish/Azerbaijani land." Denial has indeed become a way for Turkey's "youngest brother (Azeri-Turks)" to justify genocide and bring their support for Pan-Turanic/Turanism and inhuman policy pursued in 1915…
Turkish nationalism, which as of late has also taken a highly religious tone, can seemingly only hold its nation together through rude nationalism and by keeping the old bogeymen alive. This coalition continually busies itself with the invention of more new justifications and excuses explaining the "sudden" disappearance of the Armenians as other Christian people from their historical home in Anatolia (among other places) as well as for the destruction of their unique, ancient culture.
93 years after the "deportation to death of the Armenians" the Turkish government - as well as all Turkish politicians of every color - continues to practice the aggressive policy denial with a diplomatic ruthlessness similar to that of the Pashas responsible for the genocide. Even if the responsibility of the genocide lies with the government of that time, the Turkish elite of today make themselves moral accomplices through their continual policy of denial.
Moral, it seems however, has never played a role in the Turkish politics. Through its defamatory policy of denial, Turkey has not only ignored all rules of decent behavior but also the very history of the genocide. In doing this, they are merely being consequent to the historical policies of the rulers responsible for this crime. Back then it was no different: "…Once the gendarmes had killed a number of Armenians, Faiz El-Ghussein - the former chief district administrator of Mamuret ul-Aziz (today: Elazig) - reported, they put turbans on the corpses and fetched Kurdish women who cried and wailed over the dead, having been told that the Armenians had killed their people. Then they got a photographer to take photographs of the scene. It all then served as proof of the alleged Armenian atrocities."(Rolf Hosffeld: Operation Nemesis, Die Türkei, Deutschland und der Völkermord an den Armeniern/Operation Nemesis, Turkey, Germany and the Armenian Genocide.)
Similarly, in the few remaining schools of today's "modern" Turkey, Armenian children (not welcomed in there historic home land) are forced to write essays on how their ancestors committed massacres of the Turks. In East Turkey (former West Armenia/"Turkish Armenia") - where due to the genocide no Armenians are left - hateful theatrical re-enactments of alleged massacres of Turkish/Muslims by Christian Armenians are organized for school children, perhaps to give the needed “education” how to justify a genocide and more? (Turkish Daily News, "Anniversary celebrated with theatrical 'massacre'", April 3, 2008)
Turkey, a land that has undertaken every attempt to forbid the use of the word "genocide," has no compunctions against raising a monument celebrating its own supposed "victims of genocide" - exactly at the location where, prior to the genocide, the international contracts had specified the founding of Turkish-Armenia (and/or the "Armenian Provinces of Ottoman Turkey/West Armenia"). At the foot of the biblical Ararat Mountain, the spiritual centre of the Armenia people, the Turkish government has opened a "Museum of Genocide" ("Soykirim Muezesi") to commemorate their own "victims of genocide" and falsify history. This museum is nothing less than targeted provocation of the real victims of the genocide.
Presently, 93 years after the instigation of the genocide of the Armenians, selected Turkish "historians" maintain - for their own self-satisfaction and for the targeted deception of the Turkish and international public - that "there was no official document ordering the extermination." If this logic were to be followed through, the Holocaust would also be open to question; as is well-known, no official document ordering the extermination was ever supposedly issued under the National Socialist Regime either. The malicious denial of the Turkish-instigated genocide of the Armenians and the continual demand for still more proof is a byproduct of the "glorious history" invented by Turkish bureaucrats for this "chosen people." This invented, glorious history declares all civilized people who ever existed within the perimeter of today's Turkey – no matter what their indigenous culture is or was - as proto-Turks. Armenians, of course, do not belong to this. The splendid history of Turkey, an artificial, eulogistic and ideological fabrication, continues to exclude the worst and darkest sides of Turkey's past - such as the systematic extermination of the Armenians.
Some academicians and politicians ignore the fact that the Turkish denial of Armenian Genocide itself is based on racism. According to Turkish bureaucrats, the "Turkish Race" with its Islamic religion is not a race able to committee crime against humanity. Turkish Prime Minster Erdogan has argued that genocide is uncharacteristic of Turks: "The character of this nation does not let it commit such crimes." Professor Dr. Yusuf Halacoglu, the racially motivated President of the Turkish Historical Society, openly practices racism and extends great effort (with the assistance of Turkish and Azeri-Turks nationalists and fascists,) on proving the non-existence of the Armenian People and, in turn, the state of "Armenia." But sometime Professor Halacoglu has to disagree with himself and explain to the Turkish people why "non-Turks" still exist in Turkey. As he did when - as it was widely echoed in the Turkish press in 2007 - he claimed that "People we call Kurds are actually of Turkmen origin, while those we think are Kurdish Alevi are unfortunately of Armenian origin." He put forward the claim that "Most of the people in the TIKKO (Turkey Workers' and Villagers' Liberation Army) and PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) organizations are Kurds of Armenian origin." These are the same "historians" and bureaucrats who, in addition to falsifying history, have implemented a Turkish version of a Nazi-like ideology propagandizing the superiority of the "Turkish race." This includes legitimizing the act of genocide as well as the racist ideology that led to the act - and includes the legitimization of any and all stereotyping of the Armenian people as a dangerous enemy, as a deadly bogeyman in the closet.
For Turkey, the denial of the Armenian Genocide is the equivalent of denying the prior existence of the Armenian People in what is today Anatolia/East Anatolia. To Turkey, to admit to the extermination of the "Western Armenians" and annexation of their territories would be the equivalent of giving the new Armenian nation the right of existence and, in turn, threaten the foundation of the Turkish Republic. To prevent this, the Turkish Republic has chosen to cling to the stubborn attitude that Ismet Inonu, the second President of Turkey and successor of Ataturk, said in 1938: "The Turkish nation alone has the right to place ethnic and racial demands in this country." This particularly racist attitude is amplified in the six principles of Kemailism (known as the "Six Arrows"), one of which stipulates the basic characteristic of Turkish nationalism: "The Turkish nation is indivisible; no non-Turkish minorities and languages are permitted on Anatolian soil." (Die türkische Gefahr?.., Hans-Peter Raddatz Herbig.) When such blatantly racist statements are the basis of a nation/ state- ideology, it is hardly surprising that genocide and its denial results, as genocide is, in the end, the most paramount and aggressive expression of racial discrimination! (Denial of Armenian Genocide by Turkish has littel to do with the “Turkish honor”!)
The Armenian Genocide was the intended result of activities planned by the late Ottoman Turkish Government to annihilation the Armenian population residing in their historical homeland. Denialists on the Turkish payroll also ignore the fact that concurrent to the Armenian Genocide, other Christian minorities were likewise killed en masse. Were these "non-Muslin Turks" also all "foreign spies and infidels etc "?
The definition of a "real" or "unreal" genocide is extremely flexible for Turkish nationalists and Turkish Government. To them, when the topic of Turkish crimes against humanity is broached, a "real" genocide has to be as organized and extensive as the Jewish Holocaust; otherwise the word genocide is seemingly inappropriate. Turkish nationalists, however, make an exception to this definition when they talk about the suffering of a "Muslim minority" (as in Bosnia).
Despite Turkish Propaganda Nobody Is Comparing the Armenian Genocide with the Jewish Holocaust: there are, of course, both similarities and differences between the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust, but the end result of the policies behind them remains the same. The Nazi's simply perfected and industrialized of the basic annihilation machinery initially practiced by the Turkish Young Regime "The National Socialists definitely had great admiration for the Young Turks. Alfred Rosenberg, the chief intellectual theorist of the Nazi Party, praised the Turkish in 1926 as true allies while vilifying the victims. The latter – just like the Jews – had attacked the backs of the second-tier powers during the First World War. Thus, some severities [were] not avoidable…"(Der Spiegel, Germany's leading weekly news magazine, No. 16, 18.04.2005, printed edition.)
In some cases, Turkish bureaucrats did make exceptions in how they dealt with specific Armenians – particularly when it came to young Armenian women. Forcefully Islamized, the Armenian women survivors became "members" of numerous Turkish families. Indeed, there are many "Turkish" grandmothers that are actually of Armenian origin but who keep their roots secret due to fear of reprisal. There have been cases in which the truth has come out, but they were suppressed by the Turkish bureaucracy.
Turkish Historical Society President Yusuf Halacoglu, who is involved in dubious "scientific research," has confirmed that in 1936-37 the state used a "house-by-house" method to identify such converts. He, too, had "a list of Armenian converts" that he was never to disclose. (Todayszaman.com, 27.08.2007, "Halacoglu is practicing racism".) Perhaps Yusuf Halacoglu can verify some of the investigative discoveries of the murdered Turkish-Armenian journalist Harnt Dink, including that Sabiha Gökcen, the world's first woman combat pilot (whose real name is Hatun Sebiliciyan) was actually an Armenian orphan who was adopted from an orphanage by Kemal Atatürk.
Unlike the Nazis, who murdered both Jewish children as well as those of Jewish-born Christian converts, the Turkish and Kurdish Agahs (lords) often left the kidnapped and forcefully islamized young women alive (in some cases young children) – usually for later exploitation. According to the eye-witness reports of Red Cross workers, the marching deportees were stopped at numerous locations so that the Turkish could choose their plunder. It was a "sheer slave market," only "nothing was paid for." The officials of the Young Turkish government and the common people even fought among themselves for the property of the Armenians. Numerous Turkish people and some Kurds profited through the extermination program against the Armenians –much as certain Germans did through the Holocaust. The auctioning of the goods and chattels both stolen from and left behind by the murdered or fleeing Armenians is direly reminiscent of the auctions held in Nazi Germany at which the goods and furnishing of deported Jews were sold.
As was the case with the "stolen Jewish Gold," the Armenian Genocide continues to be a "profitable venture" for many people and/or groups. The Armenian Genocide was a financial windfall for Turkey, but now it also offers financial gain for lobby groups such as The Livingston Group, DLA Piper and Richard Gephardt (a Democrat lobbyist for denialists Turkey at DLA Piper).
The Turkish propaganda used to discredit Armenians and gain the support of the World Jewish Communities tries to label Armenians as Nazi collaborators. (A good example of which is the multi-million-dollar Turkish-paid DVD delivered by Time Magazine as an "ad" in 2005 for which Time has since issued an apology.) The truth is, not only did the Armenians take part in the liberation of the concentration camps, but over 300,000 Armenian soldiers (out of a total population of lest than 2 million Soviet Armenians) sacrificed their lives during the Second World War. Investigations carried out by the German Dresdner Bank, on the other hand, have confirmed that the Turkish government – in spite of its claimed neutrality – not only supported the Third Reich with regular deliveries of chromium exploited from territories taken from murdered and deported Armenians, but was also one of the main locations for the laundering of stolen Jewish gold. Furthermore, Turkey shares responsibility for the Jewish refugee boat, Struma, which, with over 700 Jewish refugees on board, was towed out into the middle of the Black Sea by Turkey and allowed to sink in 1942 (for the ongoing Turkification process only “useful refuges” were welcomed). These are but three of many examples of how Turkey lent their support to Nazi Germany...
Compassion and civil courage on part of Kurds, Turks and Arabs is also certainly documented in number. Many survivors of the Armenian Genocide reported later that families hid them, although it was just as dangerous for Muslims to oppose the genocide of the Christians as it was for Germans in the Dritten Reich to lend assistance to a Jew. Those courageous Turks who helped ran the risk of losing their home or life, or suffered some other state-sanctified repercussion. Talaat Pasha even had governors or district administrators killed when they did not obey the deportation orders…
Even in "modern" Turkey, independent historians and journalists do not have an easy life, especially if they undertake any attempt to question the official national dogma regarding the Armenian Genocide and destruction of other Christian minorities. When they do so, the Turkish Minister of Justice speaks of the "stabbing Turkey in the back with a dagger" and of the betrayal of the fatherland. (In Turkey, such utterances – especially when coming from a minister of the government - can be the equivalent of a death sentence and are reminiscent of the fatwa of the religious fanatics.) Among others, the Noble Prize winner Orhan Pamuk was forced to go to exile due to his questioning of the official stance, and the Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink – an outspoken voice of the tiny Armenian community still in Turkey (foreigners in there historic home land!) - was executed in cold blood in 2007 in front of his office after the Turkish judiciary publicly persecuted him.
Turkish Academic Tricks and Use of Intellectual Insults: A nation that experienced genocide should not be forced by others to prove their suffering. Being subject of a Genocide is not a act which a nation could be proud of it! Genocide Deniers, Revisionists like Guenter Lewy - who has the agenda of retaining the uniqueness of the Jewish Holocaust – that deny the Armenian genocide or making attempts to minimize its scope purposely ignore a simple fact: in the end: "That entire debate about whether there was or wasn't genocide is foolish and ugly. Nobody disputes the fact that more than one million Armenians were murdered during a two-year period, and a million people are not murdered without planning and without organization. The Turks can invent a thousand reasons to explain what happened, but of what importance will that be when the important thing is that people, women, men, children, died strange and ruthless and unnatural deaths?" (Yossi Sarid, Haaretz, April 27th, 2005, Back from Armenia.)
Threats and Blackmails Should help TO cover up a Crime against All Humanity: whenever attempts are made in the US to get the Armenian Genocide officially recognized, Turkey puts its genocide-denial industry in motion to blackmail and threaten the US government. In some ways, attempts are even made to create panic. At the moment, both the Pentagon and the White House yield to the threats to ensure the "safety" of the transit ways through Turkey to Northern Iraq – transit ways that cut through the homeland of the very Armenians that were transported and slaughtered en mass by the Turkish! But the decision to do so is wrong: Besides delaying a justice long due, it sends the wrong signals to the Turkish government, a government that already is casting eyes at the border regions of Iraq. And in turns Turkish “youngest brothers- Azeri Turks” are casting eyes on remaining Armenian Territories such as Nagorno Karabakh and Republic Armenia itself! To permit a past genocide not only makes those who look away morally culpable, it also increases the chance of a new genocide.
Turkey, which destroyed important documents even as the genocide of its "Christian subjects" was still in progress, ignores the fact that independent historians from around the world have long passed judgment on the subject. Genocide is genocide. A commission of historians, as is suggested by Turkey as a smokescreen, cannot and will not change the facts. When it comes to the Turkish national identity, however, history is subordinate to the primacy of the policy. After all, who cares about historical facts? For each and every governmentally dictated domestic policy, a new history can be - and is - invented. Whether or not this in any way serves to help the peaceful co-existence of the varied ethnic groups on a long-term basis, however, is open to question. Basically, the Turkish politicians are leading their own next generation into an illness commonly known as amnesia.
The Truth about the Armenian Genocide Is That It Is True! The denial policy of Turkey and the corresponding justification of the genocide sends the wrong message to the new generations of Turkey; worse, it breeds the potential justification of mass murder in the world as a whole. Indeed, as the former Israeli Minister of Education and a Member of Knesset wrote in reference to the Armenian Genocide: "We cannot accept victims without murderers, genocide without the responsible. An orphaned genocide is the father of the next genocide." (Yossi Sarid, Haaretz, April 27th, 2005, Back from Armenia.)
Co-existence Is an Obligation of the People of the World: generations have had to deal with the genocide of the Armenians. And much time and energy has been wasted - time and energy which could have been constructively used for compensation and reconciliation. As long as Ankara continues to carry out international diplomatic feuds and to view the acknowledgment and condemnation of the genocide as only provocation or national humiliation, it has not and cannot understand what humanity, democracy, compensation, reconciliation civilized society, Europe and the culture of remembrance means. As a result, communication and interrelations with the free, democratic world will naturally remain troubled and disturbed. That is why the time has come for Turkey to look in the mirror.
Turkey has to understand that the invented glorious history of Turkish politicians/bureaucrats – the very ideology of the state itself – is not only biased and based on racism, but that the corresponding industry of genocide denial is outdated. Cosmetic "reforms" and cosmetic "changes" to notorious penal codes are meaningless and change nothing. It is the mentality of the Turkish politicians which has to be change, not the facts on Armenian Genocide. What was happened was and remains genocide. It is the Armenian Genocide!
Authors email is: edwardpapelian@yahoo.com
More on Turkish Denial Policy:
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/29628.html (How Armenians Can Avert a Third World War)http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/30795.html (The Enemy of My Friend is My Enemy?)
