Category: Harut Sassounian

 Harut Sassounian

Pulitzer-prize winning American journalist Seymour Hersh, in a sensational article “The Red Line and the Rat Line,” published in the London Review of Books, discloses that the Turkish government had secretly orchestrated the August 21, 2013 sarin gas attack in Syria, killing hundreds of civilians. Prime Minister Recep Erdogan had hoped that the Syrian regime would be blamed for that chemical attack, leading to a retaliatory US strike on Syria, since Pres. Obama had warned Syrian leaders that using chemical weapons against rebel fighters would cross a ‘red line.’

Erdogan’s plot almost worked! In the aftermath of the sarin attack, Pres. Obama began planning a massive US strike on dozens of Syrian targets, even though British intelligence had informed the US joint chiefs of staff that samples of the sarin gas obtained from the site of the attack did not match the chemical weapons in Syria’s possession. A former US intelligence official told Hersh that “Erdogan was known to be supporting the al-Nusra Front, a jihadist faction among the rebel opposition, as well as other Islamist rebel groups.” Hersh revealed that the US Defense Intelligence Agency had issued “a highly classified” document on June 20, 2013, confirming that “Turkey and Saudi-based chemical facilitators were attempting to obtain sarin precursors in bulk, tens of kilograms, likely for the anticipated large scale production effort in Syria.”

Last May, several members of the al-Nusra Front were arrested in Turkey with two kilograms of sarin. A Turkish court accused the group of planning to acquire other related materials to launch a chemical attack in Syria. Five of the arrestees were freed shortly, while the rest were released pending trial. They were not seen again!

After a special UN mission went to Syria to investigate two earlier chemical attacks in Spring 2013, a person with close knowledge of UN’s activity told Hersh that “there was evidence linking the Syrian opposition to the first gas attack, on March 19 in Khan al-Assal, a village near Aleppo…. It was clear that the rebels used the gas.”

Just before launching the joint US, British, and French attack on Syria in September 2013, Pres. Obama suddenly decided to postpone the strike, using the excuse that he needed congressional approval. The real reason for the delay was the President’s discovery that he was being set up by Turkey for an ‘unjustified’ attack on Syria, but did not want to publicly acknowledge his near blunder with potentially catastrophic consequences for the entire Middle East. Ironically, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was the one who rescued Pres. Obama from embarrassment by securing Syria’s agreement to hand over its chemical stockpile, thus providing the President a cover for canceling his threatened attack.

Investigative journalist Hersh further revealed that the chemical weapons had reached the Syrian rebels through a CIA operation code named ‘rat line’ — a secret Turkish-US agreement in 2012 to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya to Syria through Turkey. After the terrorist attack on its consulate in Benghazi, Libya, the hub of this clandestine activity, the US pulled out of this covert arrangement, yet Turkey continued to supply Libyan weapons to the Syrian rebels.

By the end of 2012, as the rebels were losing the battle against the Assad regime, a former US intelligence official told Hersh that “Erdogan was pissed,” leading him to concoct a scheme to have the rebels use sarin gas and falsely blame the Syrian government, thus instigating an attack by the United States on Syria.

To personally plead his case for a US attack on Syria to save the rebels from defeat, Turkey’s Prime Minister flew to Washington. On May 16, 2013, Erdogan, along with Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and head of intelligence Hakan Fidan, had a working dinner at the White House, with Pres. Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and National Security Advisor Tom Donilon. Infuriated by Obama’s unwillingness to take military action against Syria, Erdogan “fucking waved his finger at the president inside the White House,” Donilon recounted the shocking episode to a foreign policy expert who reported it to Hersh. “The American decision to end CIA support of the weapons shipments into Syria left Erdogan exposed politically and militarily,” Hersh explained. “Without US military support for the rebels, the former intelligence official said, ‘Erdogan’s dream of having a client state in Syria is evaporating and he thinks we’re the reason why. When Syria wins the war, he knows the rebels are just as likely to turn on him — where else can they go? So now he will have thousands of radicals in his backyard.’”

After the August  2013 sarin attack near Damascus, a former intelligence official told Hersh: “We now know it was a covert action planned by Erdogan’s people to push Obama over the red line…. The deal was to do something spectacular…. The sarin was supplied through Turkey.” Another indication of Turkish officials’ complicity was Hersh’s report that phone calls intercepted by the US revealed their joy with the success of their orchestrated chemical attack!

Hersh concludes his exposé by relaying a most worrisome observation from a former US intelligence official: “I asked my colleagues if there was any way to stop Erdogan’s continued support for the rebels, especially now that it’s going so wrong, the answer was: ‘We’re screwed.’ We could go public if it was somebody other than Erdogan, but Turkey is a special case. They are a NATO ally. The Turks don’t trust the West. They can’t live with us if we take any active role against Turkish interests. If we went public with what we know about Erdogan’s role with the gas, it’d be disastrous. The Turks would say: ‘We hate you for telling us what we can and can’t do.’”

For almost a century, successive US governments have failed to understand a fundamental geostrategic truth — Turkey needs the US much more than the United States will ever need Turkey. There is indeed something terribly wrong when the tail wags the dog!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Endless comparisons are made between the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust. However, there is yet another comparison that is rarely made: the Turkish ability to carry out the Armenian Genocide and inability to eliminate the Jewish settlers from Palestine during the same period. Such a comparison has not been made because hardly anyone has studied the Turkish deportation plans of Jews during World War I in relationship to the Armenian Genocide.

 

My preliminary analysis is based on information gleamed from Prof. Yair Auron’s book, “Zionism and the Armenian Genocide: The Banality of Indifference,” Vartkes Yeghiayan’s “Pro Armenia,” and other archival materials. I would like to detail the circumstances of deportations of the Jews and how they were mostly spared, while Armenians were not! More importantly, what steps did the Jewish Diaspora and settlers in Palestine take to avoid suffering Armenians’ tragic fate?

 

Armenians and Jews, as minorities in the Ottoman Empire, were convenient scapegoats for the whims of ruthless Turkish leaders. Interestingly, the Young Turks used the same arguments for deporting both Armenians and Jews. The Turks had accused Armenians for cooperating with the advancing Russian Army, while similarly blaming Jews for cooperating with British forces invading Ottoman Palestine. Furthermore, Jews were accused of planning to establish their own homeland in Palestine, just as Armenians were allegedly establishing theirs in Eastern Turkey. In yet another parallel, Jamal Pasha, one of the members of the Young Turk triumvirate, had cynically commented that he was “expelling the Jews for their own good,” just as Armenians were forcefully removed “away from the war zone” for their own safety!

 

In 1914, when Turkey entered World War I on the German side and against the Allied Powers (England, Russia, and France), Palestine became a theater of war. Turkish authorities imposed a war tax on the population, which fell more heavily on the Jewish settlers. Their properties and other possessions were confiscated by the Turkish military. Some Jewish settlers were used as slave labor to build roads and railways. Alex Aaronsohn, a Jewish settler in Zichron Yaacov, wrote in his diary: “an order had recently come from the Turkish authorities, bidding them surrender whatever firearms or weapons they had in their possession. A sinister command, this: we knew that similar measures had been taken before the terrible Armenian massacres, and we felt that some such fate might be in preparation for our people,” as quoted in Yeghiayan’s Pro Armenia.

 

In Fall 1914, the Turkish regime issued an expulsion order for all ‘enemy nationals,’ including 50,000 Russian Jews who had escaped from Czarist persecutions and settled in Palestine. After repeated intercessions by German Ambassador Hans Wangenheim and American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, these ‘enemy nationals’ were allowed to stay in Palestine, if they agreed to acquire Ottoman citizenship.

 

Nevertheless, on December 17, 1914, Jamal Pasha’s subordinate, Bahaeddin, governor of Jaffa, implemented the expulsion order, deporting 500 Jews who were grabbed from the streets and dragged to police headquarters, and from there forced to board ships docked in the harbor. Homes of Jewish settlers were searched for weapons. Hebrew-language signs were removed from shops and the Jewish school of Jaffa was closed down. Zionist organizations were dissolved, and on January 25, 1915, the Turkish authorities issued a declaration against “the dangerous element known as Zionism, which is struggling to create a Jewish government in the Palestinian area of the Ottoman Kingdom….”

 

In response to protests from Amb. Morgenthau and the German government, Constantinople reversed the deportation order and Bahaeddin was removed from his post. According to Prof. Auron, the condition of the Jewish settlers could have been much worse had it not been for “the influence of world Jewry on Turkish policy…. The American, German, and Austrian Jewish communities succeeded in restraining some of its harsher aspects. Decrees were softened; overly zealous Turkish commanders were replaced and periods of calm followed the times of distress.”

 

Back in 1913, Pres. Wilson had instructed Amb. Morgenthau upon his appointment: “’Remember that anything you can do to improve the lot of your co-religionists is an act that will reflect credit upon America, and you may count on the full power of the Administration to back you up.’ Morgenthau followed this advice faithfully,” according to Isaiah Friedman’s book, “Germany, Turkey and Zionism: 1897-1918.” After arranging for the delivery of much needed funds from American Jews to Jaffa, Morgenthau wrote to Arthur Ruppen, director of the Palestine Development Association: “I have been the chosen weapon to take up the defense of my co-religionists….”

In Spring 1917, the Turkish authorities issued a second order to deport 5,000 Jews from Tel Aviv. Aaron Aaronsohn, leader of the Nili group – a small Jewish underground organization in Palestine working for British intelligence – immediately disseminated the news of the deportation to the international media. Aaronsohn secretly met with British diplomat Mark Sykes in Egypt and through him sent an urgent message to London on April 28, 1917: “Tel Aviv has been sacked. 10,000 Jews in Palestine are now without home or food. Whole of Yishuv [Jewish settlements in Palestine] is threatened with destruction. Jamal [Pasha] has publicly stated Armenian policy will now be applied to Jews.”

 

Upon receiving Aaronsohn’s reports from Palestine, Chaim Weizmann, a key pro-British Zionist in London, transmitted the following message to Zionist leaders in various European capitals: “Jamal Pasha openly declared that the joy of Jews at the approach of British troops would be short lived as he would them share the fate of the Armenians…. Jamal Pasha is too cunning to order cold-blooded massacres. His method is to drive the population to starvation and death by thirst, epidemics, etc….”

 

American Jews were outraged hearing of the deportations in Palestine. News reports were issued throughout Western countries on “Turkish intentions to exterminate the Jews in Palestine,” according to Prof. Auron. Moreover, influential Jewish businessmen in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire demanded that their governments pressure Turkish leaders to abandon their plans to deport Jews. Jamal Pasha was finally forced to rescind the expulsion order and provided food and medical assistance to Jewish refugees in Tel Aviv.

 

(to be continued)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The purpose of this column is to draw lessons from the recent attacks on the Armenian town of Kessab in Syria.

 

Last week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan took two bold actions: 1) he blocked Twitter, a social media site with 12 million users in Turkey, to cover up revelations of corruption about himself and his inner circle; and 2) he aided and abetted the Jihadist fighters’ invasion of Kessab, located in the Northwest corner of Syria, bordering Turkey!

 

What do these two seemingly unrelated events have in common?

 

Erdogan himself indirectly answered this question, during a campaign rally on March 20: “we will wipe out Twitter. I don’t care at all what the international community says. Everyone will see the power of the Turkish Republic.”

 

Clearly, the Prime Minister does not care that he would be criticized for violating the democratic principle of freedom of expression and acting as an autocratic thug. He says and does whatever he thinks is in Turkey’s or his own best interest!

 

US officials reacted by paying mere lip service to Erdogan’s internet crackdown. Samantha Power, US Ambassador to the United Nations, tweeted the following message: “Deeply troubling that Turkey blocked Twitter. Shutting down free access to info inconsistent with democracy; support citizens’ call to unblock.” Douglas Frantz, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and former managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, who was forced to resign after blocking publication of an article on the Armenian Genocide, described Erdogan’s anti-Twitter action as: “21^st century book burning.” Similar benign criticisms were voiced by State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, and European Union Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes.

 

Did Erdogan care about these verbal lashings? Absolutely not! He didn’t give a damn! He had already blocked YouTube for two years, because the website carried videos deemed insulting to Kemal Ataturk. The Turkish Prime Minister now threatens to ban both facebook and YouTube after the March 30 elections.

 

Why don’t Armenian leaders — in Armenia and Diaspora — act more boldly, similar to Erdogan, especially when the survival of Armenians is at stake? It is most appropriate to raise such a question after the invasion of Kessab by Jihadists, taking Armenian hostages, pillaging their homes, and desecrating their churches.

 

Regrettably, repeated pleas by Armenian-American organizations to US officials, to help protect Armenians and other Syrian Christians, have fallen on deaf ears. On March 24, the ANCA sent another strongly-worded letter to Pres. Obama, demanding immediate White House and congressional intervention to stop the attacks on Kessab. The US government does not seem interested in the tragic fate of Syrian-Armenians and other minorities, since Washington is hell-bent on toppling Bashar al-Assad’s regime, ignoring the loss of innocent lives.

 

Armenians should not be content by merely shaking their heads and complaining to each other about the tragic news emanating from Syria. They must wake up from their collective coma and take bold action. Daily demonstrations must be held in major U.S. cities and in front of American, British, French, Saudi, and Turkish embassies and consulates around the world to protest their arming of so-called rebels who are kidnapping and murdering Syrian Armenians, among many others.

 

Urgent meetings should be held with top US, British and French officials, demanding that they immediately halt deliveries of all weapons and financial assistance to ‘rebels’ in Syria, until they cease attacks on civilians!

 

I wrote a column back in 2002 with the following headline: “The Armenian ‘Mouse’ Needs to Roar More Often.” Basically, it was a call for bolder action. I had referred to the short story written by William Saroyan, titled: “The Armenian Mouse,” in which a brave mouse, by its aggressive behavior, manages to defend itself from more ferocious beasts.

 

Remaining silent and inactive are no longer viable options, while our compatriots are getting slaughtered in Syria. Sheepish behavior only serves to embolden the enemies of the Armenian nation.

 

Armenians need to be proactive rather than reactive. On the eve of the Genocide Centennial, they cannot be silent bystanders while the Turkish government and its allies are directly or indirectly embarking on a new campaign of exterminating Armenians in Syria.

 

Armenians must speak up, protest, and take effective action to defend their countrymen in all corners of the world. They need to become the ‘mouse’ that ROARS!

 

 

 

 

 

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s threat to retaliate against anyone in Syria who dares to damage the tomb of Suleyman Shah, grandfather of Osman I, founder of the Ottoman Empire, is the latest manifestation of Turkish government’s utter hypocrisy.

 

Here is a country that has committed genocide against millions of its Christian subjects (Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks), confiscated their possessions, occupied their lands, destroyed thousands of churches, cemeteries and cultural monuments, and yet has the audacity to warn Syrians before any damage done to an ancient Ottoman grave!

 

While the tomb of every human being must be protected and treated with respect, Davutoglu’s threat is a flimsy excuse to interfere in internal Syrian affairs. Ironically, Suleyman Shah’s grave is located in an area not controlled by the Syrian government, but by al-Qaida Jihadists and other rebel groups who have been aided and armed by Turkey to topple Pres. Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The al-Qaida fighters, who have been clashing with other anti-Assad faction in the region where the Ottoman tomb is located, are the ones destroying graves, since radical Islamists believe that the veneration of tombs is idolatrous.

 

Turkey considers the plot of land in Syria where Suleyman Shah’s grave is situated to be sovereign Turkish territory based on the 1921 Treaty of Ankara signed between Turkey and France, which was occupying Syria at that time. According to that agreement, Turkey had the right to station guards and hoist its flag at that site. Ever since 1921, two dozen Turkish soldiers have been guarding the tomb around the clock.

 

Article 9 of the Ankara Treaty allocated to Turkey around 80,000 square feet of Syrian territory, 60 miles south of the Syrian-Turkish border. When the area around the tomb was flooded in 1974 by the newly-built Lake Assad, the grave was moved to a new location, 20 miles from the Turkish frontier. Despite the ongoing hostilities in Syria, Turkey has continued to maintain a contingent of its soldiers at the tomb.

 

In return for giving Turkey territorial rights over this ancient site, France obtained several economic concessions, including the right to have French companies manage the railroad traffic in parts of Turkey and exploit iron, chrome and silver mines for the next 99 years. This questionable trade-off may not be legal under international law, since a colonial power is bartering with someone else’s territory!

 

The 1921 Treaty also established “a special administrative regime” for Turks living in the district of Alexandretta, which was Syrian territory under the French mandate. In 1939, Alexandretta was completely severed from Syria and officially ceded to Turkey as the Hatay Province. After its independence from France in 1946, the Syrian government acknowledged Turkish sovereignty over the land where Suleyman Shah’s grave is located, but never accepted the give-away of Alexandretta to Turkey.

 

In a press conference held in Van last Friday, Foreign Minister Davutoglu warned that any attack on the Ottoman-era tomb in Syria “from the [Syrian] regime, radical groups or anyone else would be subject to retaliation from Turkey. In defending its sovereign territory, Turkey will take all necessary measures without any hesitation…. At the present time, there is no question of any intrusion targeting our territory [the tomb in Syria] and our soldiers, but we stand ready to take whatever steps needed in the event of a threat. The Turkish public need have no doubt in this regard.” Meanwhile, officials from the Turkish Foreign Ministry, General Staff, and National Intelligence Organization (MIT) met on March 13 to discuss the security of the Shah’s grave. Although Davutoglu did not specify what measures Turkey would take, the Turkish media speculated that it might send additional troops to guard their revered site.

 

In my view, Davutoglu’s threat is simply an exercise in saber-rattling against Syria in order to draw the Turkish public’s attention away from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent scandalous and possibly criminal behavior, on the eve of the March 30 municipal elections in Turkey.

 

 

In a series of secretly recorded phone conversations revealed last week, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was heard instructing his son to hide from police tens of millions of dollars of cash stashed in his Istanbul house.

 

This shocking revelation generated widespread calls for Erdogan’s resignation who claimed that the phone recordings are fake or edited. It appears, however, that the wiretapped conversations between the Prime Minister and his son are authentic, according to Guarded Risk, an American cyber company that conducted a comprehensive forensic analysis of the phone calls.

 

It is ironic that Erdogan who came to power as an Islamist with the declared aim of eliminating corruption from Turkish politics, has fallen victim to the dictum: “power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely!”

 

The phone calls were secretly recorded on the day police raided the homes of several cabinet members, prominent businessmen, and the head of the state bank. They were all accused of involvement in bribery and other corrupt practices.

 

Here is the English translation of excerpts from Erdogan’s five wiretapped conversations with his son, Bilal:

First phone call at 8:02 am on Dec. 17, 2013:   Erdogan: …Take everything you have out of your house, OK? Bilal: What would I have, dad? Your money is in the safe. Erdogan: That’s what I am talking about…. Bilal: What shall we do with it, daddy? Where shall we put it? Erdogan: In specific places, in some specific places… . Do it!   Second call at 11:17 am:   Bilal: …My brother [in-law] Berat has another idea. He says we should give some of it to Faruk [Kalyoncu, president of a construction company] for the other job, so he can process them like the previous ones. Shall we do that? We can sort out a big amount of money that way. Erdogan: Possibly. Bilal: OK. For the other part, because we started a business partnership with Mehmet Gur [managing director of a construction group], we thought of giving it to him saying, ‘keep it, you can use it as projects come up.’ This way, we can reduce it and move the rest to somewhere else. Erdogan: OK, fine, as long as you do it…. It would be good if you do… If you can liquidate them all. Bilal: Yes, we will liquidate them all today, God willing!   Third call at 3:39 pm:   Erdogan: Did you complete the tasks I gave you? Bilal: We will finish them by this evening. We sorted some out; We sorted the Berat part, now we will first handle the part with Mehmet Gur, and the rest, we will do after dark…. Erdogan: What did Sumeyye [daughter] do? Bilal: She took them out, brought them over, we spoke, etc. Erdogan: Do not speak on the phone with each other.   Fourth call at 11:15 pm:   Bilal: Hi daddy, I am calling to… we did [it] mostly. Did you call me just now, daddy? Erdogan: No I did not, you called me. Bilal: I was called from a secret number. Erdogan: When you say ‘mostly,’ did you fully liquidate it? Bilal: It’s not zero yet, daddy. Let me explain. We still have 30 million euros that we could not yet liquidate. Berat has an idea. There was an additional 25 million dollars Ahmet Calik [businessman] should receive. They say let’s give this [to him]. When the money comes, we do [something], they say. And with the remaining money we can buy an apartment from Sehrizar, he says. What do you say, father? Erdogan: Whatever, we will sort it out. Bilal: Should we do it like this? Erdogan: OK, do it. Bilal: Do you want them all liquidated, father, or do you want some money for yourself? Erdogan: No, it can’t be left over, son. You could transfer it to the other, with Mehmet you could transfer it there. Bilal: Yes, we gave it to them. We gave $20 [million] to them. Erdogan: For God’s sake, first you should have transferred it. Then you could have done it… Bilal: We were able to give this much for now. It is hard already; it takes too much space. We are putting part of it somewhere else, we gave part of it to Tunc, and then… Erdogan: Did you transfer all to Tunc? Bilal: They asked, I guess he said that he could only take 10 million euros. Erdogan: Whatever! Don’t talk on this [phone]. Bilal: OK, then, we will sort it. Erdogan: OK, do it. I am not able to come tonight. I’m staying in Ankara.   Fifth call at 10:58 am on Dec. 18, 2013:   Erdogan: I decided to call to see if there is anything new. Bilal: No, nothing. We finished the tasks you gave us, with God’s help. Erdogan: Has it been all liquidated? Bilal: Completely! How should I put it? I had Samandira and Maltepe’s money, 730,000 US Dollars and 300,000 Turkish Liras. I will handle these too. We owe 1 million Turkish Liras to Faruk İsik [parliament member]; I will give it to him and tell him to transfer the rest to the academy. Erdogan: Do not speak so openly! Bilal: Shouldn’t I? Erdogan: Don’t. OK? Bilal: OK, daddy Erdogan: I mean, do not keep anything on your person, whatever it is Samandira or whatever… Send it to where it needs to be, why do you keep it on you? Bilal: OK, daddy, but I think currently we are under surveillance. Erdogan: What have I been telling you since the very beginning! Bilal: But is the security staff following us, father? Erdogan: Son, you are being wiretapped. Bilal: But they are also visually monitoring us. Erdogan: That may be true. Now, we’ve just done some things at the Istanbul police headquarters.

 

Additional recordings have since surfaced in which Erdogan and his son talk about rejecting a $10 million bribe offer from a Turkish businessman for being insufficient.

 

Erdogan could end up losing not only his current position and the chance of becoming President later this year, but may also face prosecution and a lengthy jail term for his alleged crimes.