Признания Геноцида в 2007 году

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Turkey's Armenian dilemma

Turkey did not always deny the mass killing of Armenians. As the US House of Representatives prepares to vote on recognising the 1915 massacres as genocide, journalist and historian Bruce Clark looks at how and why Turkish attitudes have changed over the past 90 years.

"The more foreign parliaments insist that our forebears committed crimes against humanity, the less likely anybody in Turkey is to face up to the hardest moments in history."

That, roughly speaking, is the message being delivered by Turkey's hard-pressed intelligentsia as the legislators in one country after another vote for resolutions which insist that the killing of hundreds of thousands of Ottoman Armenians in 1915 amounted to genocide.

"Will the adoption [of a resolution] help to inform the Turkish public... on the great tragedy which befell the Ottoman Armenians?

"No, it can hardly be expected to... broaden the debate on the history of the Ottoman Empire's final period."

So writes Sahin Alpay, a liberal-minded Turkish academic, in a recent column in Zaman newspaper.

What such appeals reflect, of course, is an elementary fact of human psychology: the phenomenon of individual and collective defensiveness.

When people feel completely secure, and among friends, they can be very frank about misdeeds which they, or people close to them, have committed.

But hackles will go up again as soon as they become insecure, because they feel their accusers are acting in bad faith, or that accepting their accusations will have bad consequences.

On the defensive

In recent years, liberal Turkish scholars have expressed the hope that membership, or even prospective membership of the European Union, will give the country enough confidence to discuss the Armenian tragedy without threatening those who use the "g-word" with prosecution.

Sceptics may retort that in recent years, things have been moving in the opposite direction: the revised Turkish penal code and its preamble, adopted in 2005, make even more explicit the principle that people may be prosecuted if they "insult Turkishness" - a crime which, as the preamble makes clear, includes the assertion that the Ottoman Armenians suffered genocide.

It is certainly true that Turkish defensiveness - the sort of defensiveness which can treat open discussion as verging on treachery - has been running high since the 1960s when the Armenians round the world began lobbying for an explicit acceptance, by governments and parliaments, that their people suffered genocide in 1915.

A campaign of violence launched by Armenian militants in the 1970s, who mainly attacked Turkish diplomatic targets and claimed over 50 lives, raised hackles even higher.

All that raises a question: has there ever been a moment, since the events of 1915, when the Turkish authorities might, conceivably, have acknowledged or even freely discussed the view that almost every Armenians regards as self-evident: the view that in addition to relocating the entire ethnic Armenian population of eastern Anatolia, the "Committee of Union and Progress" (CUP) which wielded effective power in the Ottoman empire also gave secret orders to make sure that as few as possible of the deportees survived the experience?

In fact, there was such a moment: the immediate aftermath of World War I.

Tried and executed

At that time the Ottoman government was intact but dependent for its survival on the good graces of the victorious British Empire.

The sultan's regime was desperately trying to distance itself from the actions of the CUP, the "state within a state" which in 1915 had masterminded the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Armenians - and is alleged to have given secret "extermination" orders at the same time.

During the early months of 1919, few people in Anatolia publicly doubted that Armenians had suffered atrocities that were egregious even by the standards of a terrible war.

The sultan and his foreign minister were at pains to reassure the British of their determination to punish the perpetrators of these atrocities, and they held four big and revealing trials whose proceedings were published in the government gazette.

In April 1919 a local governor, Mehmed Kemal, was found guilty and hanged for the mass killing of Armenians in the Ankara district.

But the climate shifted rapidly after May 1919, when Greek troops were authorised by the victorious Entente powers to occupy the Aegean port of Izmir and, in another part of Anatolia, Mustafa Kemal - later known as Ataturk - began his campaign to make the Turks masters in their own land.

Nationalist feeling

Turkish rage over the Greek landing lent fuel to the Kemalist cause, and discredited the Ottoman government.

With every passing month, the British government's leverage over the Ottoman authorities waned, and so did British enthusiasm for the conduct of war crimes trials.

In 1921, the British government made a pragmatic deal to release a group of Turkish prisoners it had been holding in Malta on suspicion (among other things) of crimes against the Armenians.

They were freed in exchange for Britons being held by the Turks.

In Turkish lore, this release is held up as proof that no serious evidence against the captives existed.

What it certainly proves is that British zeal for investigating the past was waning, even as the Kemalist cause gained strength and the British-influenced Ottoman regime faded into oblivion.

In any case, the officially cherished version of the Turkish state's beginnings now insists since the empire's British adversaries and occupiers were the main promoters of war crimes trials, those trials themselves must have been worthless or malicious.

A new state

But in the midst of all this nationalist discourse, something rather important is often obscured, and there are just a few Turkish historians who dare to point this out.

The atrocities against the Armenians were committed by an Ottoman government, albeit a shadowy sub-section of that government.

There is no logical reason why a new republican administration, established in October 1923 in an act of revolutionary defiance of Ottoman power, should consider itself responsible for things done under the previous regime.

In fact, when the nationalist movement was founded in 1919, the climate of revulsion over the sufferings of the Armenians was so general that even the neo-nationalists were keen to distinguish themselves from the CUP.

Some see significance in the fact that the nationalist movement chose to rally round an army officer, Mustafa Kemal, who had never been anywhere near the places where the Armenians met their fate.

The very fact that the Turkish republic bears no formal responsibility for eliminating the Armenian presence in eastern Anatolia (for the simple reason that the republic did not exist when the atrocities occurred) has given some Turkish historians a flicker of hope: one day, the leaders of the republic will be able to face up to history's toughest questions about the Armenians, without feeling that to do so would undermine the very existence of their state.

Fatma Muge Gocek, a Turkish-born sociologist who now works as professor in America, has said there are - or will be - three phases in her country's attitude to the fate of the Armenians: a spirit of "investigation" in the final Ottoman years, a spirit of defensiveness under the Turkish republic, and a new, post-nationalist attitude to history that will prevail if and when Turkey secures a places in Europe.

That makes perfect psychological sense, even if the immediate prospects for a move from phase two to phase three do not look very bright.

Bruce Clark is international news editor of the Economist newspaper.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6386625.stm

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по предложению Ричарда Лугара голосование по резолюции №65 в международном комитете Сената США осуждающей убийство Гранта Динка, существование статьи 301 УК Турции и призывающее к восстановлению Турцией всего спектра отношений с Арменией отложено из-за дефицита времени.

По словам Брайана Ардуни, который присутствовал на этом заседании, работа с сенаторами продолжить и они постараются на следующем заседании принять вышеназванную резолюцию.

http://www.azatutyun.am/armeniareport/report/ar/2007/03/89B0E808-6B2F-4866-85DD-1F84EFF2063A.ASP

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Perinçek's trial starts in Switzerland

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

ANKARA - Turkish Daily News

Workers' Party (İP) leader Doğu Perinçek yesterday went on trial in a Swiss court on racism charges for denying an alleged genocide of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire and calling the claims an “international lie.”

Perinçek told the court that there had been no genocide against Armenians, but there had been “reciprocal massacres,” according to Swiss Radio. “I defend my right to freedom of expression. There was no genocide, therefore this law cannot apply to my remarks,” he said.

In a show of support for Perinçek, some Turkish journalists and 160 members of the Talat Pasha Committee, an organization countering genocide allegations, including former Turkish Cypriot President Rauf Denktaş arrived in the western Swiss city of Lausanne, where Perinçek made his comments at a Turkish rally two years ago. But the group was not allowed to watch the hearing because of not being officially accredited.

However, security officials, Swiss and foreign reporters living in Switzerland followed the hearing, along with a group of Armenians, reported the Anatolia news agency. U.S. historian Professor Justin McCarthy was first prevented by Swiss security from entering the hall but after İP supporters' insistence, the historian, who speaks out against genocide allegations, was allowed to watch the trial for only a limited period of time.

In December 2003, the Swiss lower house of parliament recognized the killings of Armenians during World War I as genocide, which has soured Turkish-Swiss relations.

If found guilty, Perinçek would be the first person sentenced under Switzerland's anti-racism law for denying the alleged genocide. In 2001, a Bern court acquitted 12 Turks facing similar charges.

Anatolia said the hearing would last until Friday.

here

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Have we lost the genocide war?

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Mehmet Ali Birand

The Armenian diaspora is more encouraged each day. They gain ground in the genocide allegations. Because Turkey cannot recover, they get closer to their target.

The diaspora has three aims:

1. To make the world accept the genocide allegations as a historical fact. To engrave in people's minds that Turks have committed genocide against Armenians by converting the data in their research into books and documentaries.

2. Once it is accepted by the international public, to ensure political acceptance of genocide and to convince governments that it is a historical fact.

3. To open ways to receive indemnity and even land from Turkey once the genocide is accepted as such.

We can summarize the latest situation in this three-point struggle as follows: The diaspora has essentially established in the international public that the genocide is a historical fact. As Yasemin Çongar has stated in her marvelous analysis in Monday's Milliyet, genocide allegations have stuck to us primarily in the United States and European publics. We have lost the battle in this field. It would be very difficult, if not impossible, for us to convince people otherwise, regardless of the amount of research we make, books we publish or documentaries we prepare.

Turkey has followed such a reluctant and clumsy attitude, has avoided taking the initiative, and has buried its head in the sand for so long on this issue that I cannot help but wonder sometimes “whether we also secretly believe that there is genocide and that is not why we take no action.” I cannot explain myself why we have been acting so carelessly, why we have been doing nothing.

The diaspora is now at the second level. It is struggling to have the genocide accepted politically.

Turkey is losing ground in this struggle each year, also. The parliament of yet another country gets on the genocide train. And we cannot go beyond vociferating. In any case, there is not much we can do. Will we quarrel with everyone, close our doors, and live in isolation?

Maybe the United States Congress will skip it this year and postpone voting on it until 2008. But what will this change? In the end, Washington will also get on the genocide train.

The weakest link in the Armenian diaspora's long-term struggle is receiving land and alimony from Turkey. As long as Turkey has internal stability and as long as its economy gets stronger, the plans for land and alimony will not work…

Then, will we just stand and watch all of this?

Will we not do anything?

That would be unacceptable… There is so much to do. It would only suffice to have political will and courage…

Let's get Armenia on our side:

Now the strongest advantage Turkey has in the genocide struggle is its relations with Armenia. The importance of this advantage will grow even more during the political phase of genocide allegations in other countries.

Developing economic relations with Armenia and opening borders will both increase Turkey's prominence in the region and ease some of the pressure it is under.

The talks about how to establish relations with Armenia and how mutual approaches can be reorganized will not be binding for anyone. If conditions that cannot be met arise during these talks, the simplest thing to do would be to leave the table. However, even the news that Turkey and Armenia are in meetings will have positive consequences in the international arena.

As you can see, Turkey still has many other alternatives. Suffice it that we want to take action and be courageous.

here

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Turkey's nationalist hotbed

By Sarah Rainsford

BBC News, Trabzon, eastern Turkey

On match days Trabzon turns claret and blue as thousands of football fans stream towards their stadium.

The Black Sea port city was always famous for its football. The only team outside Istanbul ever to win the league title, Trabzonspor, is the pride of this place - its identity.

But the city is now notorious as home to the teenage boy and eight accomplices charged with plotting to kill ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who was shot dead in Istanbul last month.

Some here seem proud of that connection.

'We're all Turks'

When Dink was murdered, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Istanbul and declared themselves Armenian in solidarity.

In Trabzon, football fans held up banners in response that read: "We're all Turks."

"People here are proud to be Turks, without thinking about what it really means. There is a blind nationalism here. Racism has flourished," says local political activist Zeynep Erdugul.

Two years ago she and her friends were beaten in the streets of Trabzon by a furious mob that mistook them for supporters of the Kurdish separatists, the PKK.

Ms Erdugul fears nationalist feeling is now climbing to dangerous new heights.

In public people will say it is bad that Hrant Dink was killed, but to most Trabzon people he was not an intellectual - he was just an Armenian," she says.

'Insecure place'

The alleged teenage gunman, Ogun Samast, is said to have told police the journalist had "insulted Turkishness" by contesting the state position that the mass killing of Armenians by Turks in 1915 was not genocide.

Thousands demonstrated in support of Hrant Dink in Istanbul last month

Tucked away on Turkey's northern coast between snow-capped mountains and the Black Sea, Trabzon was once a cosmopolitan metropolis. It was a Greek colony, then capital of the Trebizond Empire - a bustling trading town on the Silk Road.

As the Turkish Republic was forged a century ago, the Greeks were expelled and the Armenians deported or killed.

When Trabzon people talk about outsiders today, they mean migrants from the next village.

"The nationalist instinct is higher in Trabzon than in other regions of Turkey and it's rising," says newspaper editor Ali Ozturk.

He describes Trabzon as an insecure, even paranoid, place.

"From time to time Trabzon appears on new maps of a Greater Armenia or the Pontus Greek Empire and some groups here see that as a real threat. They think the Armenians and Greeks want to take over their land and that makes them very sensitive," Mr Ozturk says.

'Lost hopes'

But most locals believe it was poverty that drove Dink's alleged killers to murder.

They point to crowds of youths and men wandering the city's cobbled streets or lounging on its benches, unemployed and disenchanted.

Mayor Volkan Canalioglu rejects any suggestion that there is a problem here with ultra-nationalism.

"Murders, rapes and other crimes are on the increase all over the world," he says. "Hrant Dink's killing should be seen in that context.

"The people of this region have characters like the waves of the Black Sea. They explode suddenly then calm down.

"When you add unemployment, broken homes and lost hopes to that character - then it's very easy to influence people here, and provoke them to action."

Unemployment levels here are about average for Turkey, but there is just one factory and it produces young players for Trabzonspor.

Football-mad city

Football is the height of boys' hopes here. It represents their ticket to wealth and status, and a way to prove themselves.

Football is seen as a ticket out of a place that offers little hope

"The young people of Trabzon are so neglected that there are no other opportunities to fulfil their ambitions," says youth team co-ordinator Ozkan Sumer, as boys in pale blue dash about a nearby training pitch.

A former Trabzonspor player himself, Mr Sumer makes mighty claims for the game this city is obsessed with.

"Young people here are left dangling and there's always a danger they could break away from society. Football is the only thing that keeps them from falling," he says.

In depressed city suburbs like Pelitli, there does seem little else to dream of.

The accused gunman and his alleged chief accomplice both come from this neglected neighbourhood, where small children play in puddles and older boys chase a ball down the street.

But even Pelitli has a football team and both the main accused played for it.

The team, Pelitlispor, initially carried messages of support for its ex-teammates on its website.

Friends of those in custody now insist they do not agree with the murder of Dink. But they do share the alleged killer's controversial views on Turkish history.

"As the people of this soil, we don't believe there was any Armenian genocide," says one friend, Serkan.

It is that view - still the official position of Turkey and hotly disputed by Armenians - that Dink challenged in his work.

"This land is ours - and when there are things to defend, we definitely do that," adds another friend of one of the accused.

"But we talk about football or finding a job round here, not about Hrant Dink or any genocide."

Trabzon is a city where nationalism is nurtured and admired. It certainly does not feel ashamed by its association with the murder of Dink. It feels defensive.

The only question people here are asking themselves is what all the fuss is about.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6403813.stm

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Turk goes on trial in Switzerland for denying Armenian genocide

ReutersPublished: March 6, 2007

GENEVA: A Turkish politician went on trial Tuesday in Switzerland for denying that the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War I amounted to genocide.

Dogu Perincek, head of the Turkish Workers' Party, called the Armenian genocide "an international lie" during a speech in the Swiss city of Lausanne in July 2005.

The state prosecutor has called for a six month prison term for violating a 1995 Swiss law that bans denying, belittling or justifying any genocide. The maximum penalty is three years.

Perincek told the Lausanne criminal court that there had been no genocide against Armenians, but there had been "reciprocal massacres," according to Swiss Radio.

"I defend my right to freedom of expression," Swiss Radio quoted Perincek, 65, as saying in German. "There was no genocide, therefore this law cannot apply to my remarks."

The case has further soured relations between Switzerland and Turkey. Ankara criticized the decision to prosecute the case and later canceled an official visit in 2005 by Joseph Deiss, who was the economy minister at the time.

If found guilty, Perincek would become the first person to be convicted under the law. Twelve Turks were acquitted of similar charges in 2001.

Turkey denies charges by Armenia and other countries that 1.5 million Armenians died in a systematic genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turks beginning in 1915.

Turkey says that hundreds of thousands of both Muslim Turks and Christian Armenians died in a conflict during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

A verdict is expected Friday.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/06/news/swiss.php

[ese]

The alleged teenage gunman, Ogun Samast, is said to have told police the journalist had "insulted Turkishness" by contesting the state position that the mass killing of Armenians by Turks in 1915 was not genocide.

[Grigoriy]

программа минимум - это признание Геноцида, восстановление Армении в пределах РА, Арцаха, Нахичевана, Карса, Вана и выход к морю.

Максимум - Севрский договор+Киликия + компенсация за всё+переселение с этих территорий всех неграждан за счет Турции

[Маразм]

Washington Post призывает Турцию “не относиться серьезно” к биллю о Геноциде армян

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Обозреватель Washington Post Дэйл Джексон призывает Турцию “не относиться серьезно” к голосованию в Конгрессе США по поводу билля о Геноциде армян. По его мнению, Турция должна относиться к биллю как к «одному из примеров западной демократии». В статье “The House's Ottoman Agenda” обозреватель в качестве примера сравнивает эту резолюцию с принятым решением по Ираку, согласно которому конгрессмены выступили против войны. По мнению Джексона Дэйла, 70-80 голосов этнических армян, которые живут в округе Адама Шиффа, сыграли свою роль в процессе внесения законопроекта в Палату. Он также упоминает о других выборщиках, которые живут в округе спикера Палаты представителей Нэнси Пелоси, которая обещала им за поддержку принять законопроект о Геноциде армян. Обозреватель Washington Post считает, что “большинство членов Палаты представителей даже не знает о таком далеком событии как Геноцид армян”. «Представьте, 435 членов Палаты представителей, большая часть которых не знает разницы между суннитами и шиитами, должны решить принять или не принять версию Адама Шиффа о событиях, происшедших 92 года тому назад в северном районе Турции», - пишет Washington Post.

[hracher]

Текст резолуции для сената есть?

[Grigoriy]

"«Представьте, 435 членов Палаты представителей, большая часть которых не знает разницы между суннитами и шиитами, должны решить принять или не принять версию Адама Шиффа о событиях, происшедших 92 года тому назад в северном районе Турции», - пишет Washington Post."

Мудак

[Thug]

программа минимум - это признание Геноцида, восстановление Армении в пределах РА, Арцаха, Нахичевана, Карса, Вана и выход к морю.

Максимум - Севрский договор+Киликия + компенсация за всё+переселение с этих территорий всех неграждан за счет Турции

[Grigoriy]

Тук, многие согласны на простое "упс, извините, бывает."

Но Севрский договор кажется ведь 6 вилайятов включал? А я пишу про 2-3 района

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IP leader Perinçek back in Turkey

Monday, March 12, 2007

IP leader Perinçek back in Turkey:

Leader of the Turkish Workers' Party (IP), Doğu Perinçek, returned to Turkey from Switzerland on Saturday after being fined 9,000 francs for violating a law on denying the ..... Armenian genocide, reported the Anatolia news agency. Perinçek in Istanbul called on leaders of all political parties to raise their voice against the Armenian genocide allegations.

here

Пусть там и остается и по миру не разъезжает

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Second group of lawmakers starts lobbying in US

Monday, March 12, 2007

ANKARA – Turkish Daily News

A second group of Turkish legislators started a visit to Washington yesterday to lobby members of the U.S. Congress against a resolution recognizing the killings of Armenians during World War I as genocide.

Ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputies Egemen Bağış, also a foreign policy advisor to the Turkish prime minister, and Reha Denemeç will today join the group made up of AKP deputy Vahit Erdem, main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) deputies Ersin Arıoğlu and Bihlun Tamaylıgil. The deputies are scheduled today to meet Turkish Ambassador in Washington Nabi Şensoy. On Tuesday, they will participate in a meeting of the Turkish-American Council and have talks with the members of the Jewish organizations in the United States. On Thursday they will have contacts with the members of the U.S. Congress and the next day they are expected to return to Turkey. The first of the planned three separate delegations, including members of both the AKP and the CHP, started a visit to Washington in late February to seek support against the resolution, expected to be debated at the House of Representatives soon. The third delegation plans to lobby in Washington next month.

here