Category: Authors

FIRST PRESIDENT ELECT
Turkey is at the verge of deciding who will be her first president elect. The country is really having to go through a phase where many controversial ideas are bound to come up. This will be the first time that the public will go to ballot boxes to cast their vote for the next president of the country. Formerly, it was the Turkish Grand National Assembly that was charged with the responsibility of choosing the President from among the MP’s elected by public vote. There had been instances when the nominee was a high ranking public figure but again the MP’s were to vote.

Currently there are three nominees who will be running for the President’s Office. Mr. Erdogan, the current Prime Minister, nominated by the ruling party, and Selahattin Demirtas, the leader of and nominated by HDP have political identities. However, the third candidate , Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu was initially a faculty member, having traveled extensively, and is known for his Chairing the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Professor Ihsanoglu was nominated jointly by CHP (Republican People’s Party) and MHP (National Movement Party).

The entire world knows about the current Prime Minister of Turkey who has not only beguiled the citizens of his own country but the entire world as well. He started with a very low profile but now has turned into a very authoritarian figure denying all the allegations made against him, changing the rules of law according to his own interests, and most importantly his main goal is to demolish the Turkish Republic and establish a fundamentalist country with him being the sultan and the caliph. This implies Turkey would be governed by Sharia Law, and rather than moving forward she would go backwards to the corrupt times in history.

Unfortunately, since the education system of the country mainly in the eastern provinces is very low as well as the income of the families, they are very gullible and believe in readily to what they are told. And Mr. Erdogan knowing this weakness of these people goes to them quite often giving them food and other sustenance the would be needing, and in return gets their votes. Actually this is not procuring their votes based on their free-will but using bribery as a tool to achieve his goals.

During these past 12 years, unfortunately the country has not developed, on the contrary, gotten poorer. The deficiency in the budget is the worst ever since the establishment of the Republic. People have lost their power of purchasing goods. The minimum wage is ridiculous. There is no way a family of four could survive on that. But when it comes to the salaries of the MP’s, they have more than quadrupled.Erdogan and his family have gotten rich, actually he being the ninth richest prime minister in the world, and the entire country has gotten poorer.

He has been ruling the country so badly that he started off sating there will be zero tolerance for skirmishes with our neighbors, but right now, we are at a conflict with every single one of them. He had said the government would no way bargain with the murderer of 30,000 people including children and women, who is imprisoned on the island of Imrali. He has done just the opposite and will definitely grant him complete amnesty, give him all his rights so that he could run for an office. These are things beyond any reasonable person’s understanding.

These and many more all add up and that’s why we are saying do not cast your vote to this man. You should, on the other hand, consider Professor Ihsanoglu as the only candidate who will be the true and loyal president of the republic and work within the powers bestowed upon him by the Constitution and Laws with abiding faith.

To put it in a nutshell, then who should the Turkish people vote for the joint candidate of CHP and MHP supported by the other minor political parties?

Say YES to Ekmeleddin. Why?
1. It is going to be a strict NO to Tayyip. The only way to say YES to Ekmeleddin is by saying NO to Tayyip.
2. If Ekmeleddin is elected he will be the President of the Republic of Turkey, however, if Tayyip gets the office, he will be an American style president.
3. If Ekmeleddin is elected, Turkey will be remain as a unified nation, whereas if Tayyip gets to power, he will let establish a Kurdish state.
4. If Ekmeleddin is elected, this will be the first tome Tayyip would have lost an election and this will be a great blemish on his charisma.
5. If Ekmeleddin is elected, he will be able to control the dictatorial powers of AKP.
6. If Ekmeleddin gets majority of the votes, Tayyip will no longer be able to say, “who the heck are you?” because Ekmeleddin would stand before him as a president with the support of more than 50 % of the people.
7. If Ekmeleddin wins, he will have gotten more than 50% of the votes, and this would put AKP to a minority status.
8. If Ekmeleddin wins, then the two parties CHP and MHP can again collaborate in the upcoming elections.
9. If Ekmeleddin wins, everybody is going to see that the wife of a Muslim President need not cover herself up, and this will put an end to the headgear crisis,
10. Ekmeleddin is for cultural Islam whereas Tayyip favors political Islam.
11. While Ekmeleddin supports Islamic culture and science, Tayyip backs the Muslim terrorists.
12. Ekmeleddin is heavily busy with writing articles, books, in short immersed in science, whereas Tayyip is busy in trade, buying and selling gold, construction business hence depriving the country of all its wealth.
13. If Ekmeleddin wins, Turkey will have a peace-loving President contrary to Tayyip who is for all kinds of fights.
14. Had Ekmeleddin and same path, then the pro-Tayyips would not have attacked him.
15. Had those who attack Ekmeleddin claim themselves to be pro-Ataturk been for Ataturk in the true sense of the word, then today we would not have needed Ekmeleddin.
There is no way the Turkish nation will let an Islamist dictator run the country. Therefore disregarding all the differences of opinion, putting into oblivion all those remarks made against the candidate, should work for him and make him get the position in the first leg of the elections on August 10. Turkey should pass this first test very successfully.
July 8, 2014
Turkey’s Declining Support in Congress After Blunders at Home and Abroad

“After Opening Way to Rebels, Turkey is Paying Heavy Price”

Despite Prime Minister Erdogan’s dismal record both at home and abroad, he is expected to be elected president next August. Armenians, Greeks, Kurds and other oppressed ethnic and religious minorities are only too happy to see Turkey ruled by an incompetent leader who will bring the country to its knees!

Due to Prime Minister Erdogan’s widespread human rights abuses of his own citizens and foreign policy blunders vis-a-vis Armenia, Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Iran, Iraq, Israel, and Syria, Turkey has lost much of the support it once enjoyed in the United States, and indeed, around the world.

The most recent evidence of this downturn is the adoption of House Resolution 4347 (Turkey Christian Churches Accountability Act) on June 26 by the Foreign Affairs Committee. Because of souring relations between Ankara and Washington, the U.S. Government refrained from spending its political capital on the Hill to prevent the bill’s passage.

In addition, inter-Turkish feuds such as the one between Erdogan and Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric with extensive influence in Turkey and abroad, have deprived Ankara of important grassroots support in the United States. Gulen-affiliated groups did not lift a finger to bail out Erdogan’s government from a humiliating defeat in the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Due to another internal political dispute, the Turkish Coalition of America refused to sign the joint letter sent by three other Turkish-American groups to House Committee members opposing the Churches bill. In a desperate search for supporters, the Turkish groups recruited to their lobbying efforts the Azerbaijan American Council, which has no business sticking its nose in a matter involving the status of Christian churches in Turkey. By signing such a hostile joint letter, the Azeri group further antagonized Armenians worldwide, making it more difficult to reach a fair settlement in the Karabagh (Artsakh) conflict.

Finally, the Turkish government’s clash with Israel after the Mavi Marmara attack and Turkey’s new Ambassador Serdar Kilic’s recent angry letter to the American Jewish Committee for recognizing the Armenian Genocide deprived Ankara of any lobbying support it used to receive in Congress from the Israeli government and some Jewish-American organizations.

In the absence of all support from its traditional allies, the Turkish government could only rely on its hired guns — highly-paid US lobbying firms — implement the standard Turkish tactics used in opposing any initiative that Ankara deems to be against its interests:

1) Object firmly to any anti-Turkish initiative to prevent its consideration;
2) If step 1 does not work, propose amendments to dilute the initiative;
3) Even after diluting the initiative, pressure the committee members to vote against it.

In the case of the churches bill, the Turkish government failed to block its consideration by the House Foreign Affairs Committee and was unable to collect enough votes to defeat the measure. The only thing left for Ankara to do was having some members of the Congressional Turkish Caucus to propose amendments to dilute the bill. This tactic had a modest success because Cong. Ed Royce (Rep.-CA), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, tried to reach a consensus on the bill and went out of his way to accommodate the handful of dissenting members of Congress. After all, who in their right mind would oppose a bill that called for the return of religious properties to their proper owners which happen to be the Christian churches!

This is the second major defeat that Turkey suffered in Congress in the last three months. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had adopted an Armenian Genocide resolution with a vote of 12-5 on April 10 — a further indication of the declining Turkish political clout in Washington. One simply needs to read two recent articles in the New York Times (“After Opening Way to Rebels, Turkey is Paying Heavy Price”) and the Wall Street Journal (“An Unhelpful Ally”) to see the degree of damage Erdogan has caused to his country’s reputation.

In addition to the loss of clout, the Turkish government is wasting the millions of dollars it pays each year to high-powered, but apparently useless American lobbying firms that make big promises, pocket large amounts of money, and deliver practically nothing. When will the people of Turkey demand an account from their corrupt and irresponsible leaders who are throwing away Turkish citizens’ hard earned tax dollars in a vain attempt to whitewash their genocidal history?

Pundits are predicting that despite Prime Minister Erdogan’s dismal record both at home and abroad, he is expected to be elected president next August. Armenians, Greeks, Kurds and other oppressed ethnic and religious minorities are only too happy to see Turkey ruled by an incompetent leader who will bring the country to its knees!

July 4, 2014
Author of UN Report Confirming The Armenian Genocide Passes Away

Benjamin Whitaker, author of a United Nations report qualifying the Armenian mass killings as genocide, passed away earlier this month at the age of 79 in London. The world lost a great humanitarian and a staunch supporter of minority rights.

I worked closely with Mr. Whitaker at the UN in Geneva, Switzerland, for several years. He served as the British expert on the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, while I represented the Indigenous World Association, a Native American non-governmental organization (NGO).

Mr. Whitaker was an activist lawyer, elected to the British Parliament from North London in 1966. He became executive director of the Minority Rights Group in 1971, publishing dozens of studies on minority groups around the world, including a trailblazing report on Armenians.

In 1975, Mr. Whitaker was appointed as British representative on the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, in the midst of a major controversy regarding a reference to the Armenian Genocide in a UN study. Rwandan Special Rapporteur Nicodeme Ruhashyankiko, author of the preliminary study, was pressured by Turkey to delete the reference to the Armenian Genocide.

To counter the Turkish pressures, a handful of Armenian activists, including this writer, successfully lobbied the UN Sub-Commission in 1978 to block the report after the reference to the Armenian Genocide was removed. I then asked Mr. Whitaker if he would be interested in becoming a Special Rapporteur to complete Ruhashyankiko’s aborted report. Mr. Whitaker agreed on condition that he would not do seek any votes for his appointment.

Given his impeccable reputation as a human rights activist, the Sub-Commission members overwhelmingly voted for Mr. Whitaker as the new Special Rapporteur with a mandate to prepare a “revised and updated report on the question of the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide.” The only unhappy delegate was Turkey’s UN representative who knew that his government’s intimidating tactics on Mr. Ruhashyankiko would not work on Mr. Whitaker.

In August 1985, Mr. Whitaker presented to the UN Sub-Commission the revised and updated report, qualifying the Armenian Genocide as an example of genocide in the 20th century. After lengthy debates, Turkey failed in pressuring the Sub-Commission to delete the reference to the Armenian Genocide. By a vote of 14 in favor, one against, and four abstentions, the Sub-Commission adopted the report, thus confirming that the Armenian Genocide met the UN criteria for genocide.

Since then, Turkish denialists have engaged in blatant lies, claiming that there was no such vote and no such UN report! They even alleged that Farhan Haq, spokesman for the UN Secretary General, had told Turkish groups back in 2000 that the UN had “never approved nor supported a report that describes the Armenian experience as ‘genocide.’” I contacted Mr. Haq who told me that he was indeed aware of the report adopted by the UN human rights body which referred to the Armenian Genocide. He had simply told the Turkish groups that the UN General Assembly had not adopted a report on the Armenian Genocide.

Unfortunately, there has been very little effort by Armenians to publicize this critical UN report which acknowledges the Armenian Genocide. More surprisingly, in his UN General Assembly address in 2000, Pres. Kocharian called upon the UN to recognize the Armenian Genocide. The President’s aides had not informed him about the UN Sub-Commission report of 1985!

Since our UN days, I had the distinct pleasure of being in the company of Mr. Whitaker on several occasions. In the late 1980’s, we were both invited to Argentina by the local Armenian National Committee to deliver a series of lectures on the UN and the Armenian Genocide. In 2009, Mr. Whitaker kindly attended my presentation at the British Parliament on the Armenian Genocide and made gracious remarks about our past collaboration at the UN.

The Armenian Republic and Armenian communities worldwide should organize a fitting tribute to Mr. Whitaker, as 2015 is not only the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide, but also the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the UN genocide report.

There are three other members of the UN Sub-Commission who were extremely supportive during the adoption of the genocide report and who are still alive: Leandro Despouy of Argentina, Louis Joinet of France, and Mrs. Erica Daes of Greece. Despouy has already been decorated by the President of Armenia. Joinet and Daes deserve similar recognition by Armenia and the Diaspora!

June 25, 2014
TURKEY: NOW THE STORY ENDS

“Now it is done. Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it.The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again.”

Red Smith

New York Herald Tribune, October 4, 1951

I wish I had written those above words, now so perfect these days for Turkey, poor, suffering, betrayed Turkey.

Eleven-years-old, I leapt from the sofa screaming. The New York Giants, my New York baseball Giants, had just won the National League championship. A miraculous second ago, the Giants had done the unimaginable. If only you had been there! Bobby Thomson hit a homerun and the Giants were champs. And Red Smith wrote about it. And I, screaming-happy, punched the hell out of the air. And I loved everyone and everything and no one that I knew had ever died.

Enter my mother: “Jesus, Mary and Joseph! What happened?” she screamed back to me, “And your hand! What happened to your hand?”

It seems I had punched more than just air. I had shattered the glass lampshade and was bleeding, spraying the carpet like a garden hose. And so off to the hospital with my mother I went. No more Bobby Thomson and New York Giants. Reality had strangled euphoria.

Today, in Turkey, seventy-six years since Atatürk’s death, reality strangled hope. And today I feel like punching a hell of a lot more than air and lampshades.

A religious nonentity with a nearly unpronounceable religious name was selected as an election candidate by the so-called secular, so-called political opposition parties. He will try to lead them (and us) to victory in the coming presidential election. Laboring like a constipated elephant for weeks, interviews, meetings and discussions, yesterday they again sat and strained and sat and strained and finally…Eureka! Out came the candidate. Finally, they eked out someone named Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, another “pious” Muslim. May Allah please save Turkey from “pious” Muslims!

In any other country, the toxic reputation of Turkey’s ruling religious party scoundrels would rule out any candidate even admitting to being a Muslim. Even atheism would be a winner. But not in Turkey. Corruption, stealing, murder and any and all destruction done in the name of religious piety sells well here. I always wonder if their all-knowing Allah knows this.

Ekmeleddin’s opponent? None other than the “pious” war-mongering, war criminal, man-of-43%-of-the-people, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. His “piety” is well-known. He is “beloved” among the Turkish young people for his Gezi Park gassings, blindings, beatings and other “pious” brutalities including murder. He also excels in defiling his dead victims, all young. Provoking his adoringly ignorant crowds to demean the grieving mothers of his victims is another of his sicker stunts. A real sweetheart of a guy, wouldn’t you agree? And when hundreds of coal miners died because of his government’s corruption he and his brutal police beat the mourners after the funerals. His piety is well-known internationally. He and his friend in Washington, the one with the rancid Nobel Prize, entertain their fellow believers by funding Sunni terrorist killers in Syria, and now Iraq.

What, you might ask, is the matter with the Turkish opposition parties? How can they be so stupid? Well, stupidity seems to come easy for them. In fact, they have been collaborating for years to bring these religious nitwits into power. The former head of CHP, Deniz Baykal, himself a fully disgraced adulterer but still a member of parliament, approved a parliamentary deal that allowed a legally ineligible Erdoğan to come to office. Baykal never said he was sorry, even though his party has been trounced in every election since. His successor party head, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, has been similarly inept. The MHP, the other opposition party, headed by a fossil named Devlet Bahçeli, is equally treacherous, having voted for the AKP religious fascist Abdullah Gül to serve as president. Sold-out to America is the best describer of the political opposition.

But it seems weirdly natural for these so-called secular parties to betray their followers and pander for religious votes. A few elections ago Baykal and his CHP had a brilliant idea about gaining the votes of covered women. These geniuses decided that women who wear the oppressively black, total-body drapery called a charshaf would look good with a CHP rosette pinned there upon. They pinned a few to no avail. In another election, the size of wristwatches prevailed. And in another the debate raged about villas. Losers all. Killing hope is their speciality.

So it was and so it will ever be. The secular, democratic idealism that defined the founding of Turkey has been defiled and cheapened through the generations. Imagine a so-called Muslim nation that slaughters its fellow Muslims, the sin of sins in the Koran? Imagine a secular, democratic nation with no functioning democratic institutions ruled by Islamo-fascist gangsters? Imagine a supposedly sovereign nation whose police and military forces are under the control of a foreign power? Imagine an Islamic nation who continually votes its approval of one of the most corrupt, violent regimes in history? Imagine an election campaign between and among religious ignoramuses, fossils and artifacts that determines the fate of tens of millions of young, secular, intelligent, energetic young people? Imagine a government and a prime minister that defames the founder of Turkey, a man, Atatürk, widely considered to be one of the geniuses of any country in any age?

Today’s Turkey is a den of thieves and liars and worse. Today’s Turkey is a mockery of sovereignty, inextricably linked to America, its war criminal government and its morally degenerate CIA.

So what matters? Recep Tayyip Erdoğan? Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu? Elections? Disloyal opposition parties? Obama? The CIA? The answer? None of them! The nation that was Turkey is dead. The Turkish people have strangled it. They should have burned their identification cards with their Islam religious designation years ago. Turkish people, America has strangled you with your Islamic identification ID cards. They brought the traitors to power in your country and now it is too late. The fiction of religion has murdered your country.

So now what is possible? Truth? Virtue? Independence? Trust? Peace at home? Peace in the world? Not a chance! Idealism? The open-faced smiling optimism of youth? Don’t be naïve. Don’t be stupid. Now it is done! Finished!

For Turkey, only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again. Now the story ends.

James (Cem) Ryan

Istanbul

17 June 2014

June 20, 2014
Turkish Denialists Fail to Block Genocide Speech at Australian Parliament

The Armenian Genocide Centennial Committee of Australia had invited this writer to speak at commemorative events in Sydney and Melbourne, and deliver a formal address at the New South Wales Parliament during the week of April 24.

On April 27, the Australian Turkish Advocacy Alliance sent a three-page letter to all Parliament members urging them to boycott my presentation. A Parliament member forwarded a copy of the letter to the Armenian National Committee of Australia in advance of my talk on April 29. The cleverly-worded letter, most likely written by the Turkish Embassy’s professional lobbyists, made several false claims and defamatory accusations.

The Turkish denialist group sought to import Ankara’s human rights restrictions to a democratic country like Australia by trying to muzzle not only this speaker’s right to free speech, but also the Parliament’s right to invite whomever it chose. Calling me a ‘propagandist’ who ‘benefits from conflict and hatred,’ the Turkish letter ‘strongly’ advised Parliament members not to attend my talk.

Gunes Gungor, Executive Director of the Australian Turkish Alliance, falsely reported that I am ‘related’ to Hampig Sassounian, simply because I shared his last name. Hampig was convicted of assassinating the Consul General of Turkey in Los Angeles in 1982. While the life of any human being is precious, Gungor sheds crocodile tears over the death of a single Turkish diplomat, ignoring the wholesale killings of 1.5 million innocent Armenians! How would Gunes Gungor like it if I were to accuse him of being related to several criminals I found on the internet, just because they shared the same last name?

Gungor in his letter also badmouthed the distinguished jurist Raphael Lemkin who coined the term ‘genocide’ based on his detailed studies of the extermination of Armenians by the Ottoman Turkish government. In a desperate search for any reason to tarnish Lemkin’s impeccable reputation, Gungor claimed that “towards the end of the meetings because of his aggressive comments he [Lemkin] was asked to leave the room.” Gungor did not even know how to spell Lemkin’s first name.

The Turkish propagandist finally attempted to draw a distinction between the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust. After pretending to be an expert on the Armenian Genocide, Gungor confessed his ignorance by stating that “much about the late Ottoman Empire has yet to be learned and many conclusions have yet to be drawn.”

Despite Gungor’s attempts to undermine my address, Parliament members and guests, including scholars, elected officials, and Jewish community leaders gave me a standing ovation. Surprisingly, Gungor showed up at the Parliament to hear me speak, not trusting his own ability to have the event cancelled. While members of the audience were given ample time to ask any question they wished, Gungor and his two Turkish colleagues did not ask a single question. More surprisingly, as the three Turks were leaving the Parliament hall, one of Gungor’s colleagues was overheard saying, “on nights like these, I wonder what we are doing here!”

My other talks took place with packed audiences without disruption. According to the ANC of Australia over 1,100 people attended my first talk on April 24 in Sydney. I gave a second talk the next night in the same city. I then spoke at a similar event on April 27 in Melbourne at the presence of around 500 guests.

The only sour note during my journey was Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s message sent to the Sydney commemoration. Taking a page from Pres. Obama’s playbook, Abbott used every other word (horror, tragedy, terrible events, lost lives) except for genocide in his brief message. Vache Kahramanian, Executive Director of the ANC of Australia, wrote to the Prime Minister, telling him that his message will not be read to the audience because it is “of great insult to the Armenian-Australian community with its blatant omission of the Genocide word.” Kahramanian reminded the Prime Minister of his previous year’s message while he was opposition leader in which he had properly characterized the Armenian Genocide. In contrast to the Prime Minister, Australia’s Treasurer, Joe Hockey, the country’s most senior government minister, issued a formal statement clearly acknowledging the Armenian Genocide.

I left Australia greatly impressed with the political activism of the Armenian community of 50,000 which runs circles around the much larger Turkish community of over 200,000.

June 20, 2014
Turkey and United States Conspire to Issue April 24 Statements

While it is not surprising to learn that Turkey and the United States have coordinated their official declarations on the Armenian Genocide, recent revelations have confirmed their shameful behind-the-scenes schemes.

In a speech delivered in Australia late last year, former US Ambassador to Armenia John Evans revealed for the first time that the State Department regularly conferred with the Turkish Embassy in Washington on the content of the US President’s annual April 24 statement on the Armenian Genocide.

This clearly reflects the degree of collaboration between Turkey and the United States on the genocide issue, and even more appalling, American officials’ succumbing to the gag rule imposed by a denialist regime!

The American-Turkish collusion on the Armenian Genocide issue was recently corroborated by Deniz Kahraman in the Aydinlik Turkish newspaper, revealing that the two governments jointly drafted the statement that Prime Minister Erdogan issued on April 23, 2014. He offered condolences to Armenians, Turks, and others who died from various causes during World War I, thus equating the deaths of Turkish soldiers with Armenian Genocide victims.

Basing his information on unnamed diplomatic sources, Kahraman wrote that the White House had been fully aware of the content of Erdogan’s statement in advance of its release. In fact, the Turkish Prime Minister’s text was prepared with U.S. input and finalized by officials in both countries. It appears that the initial text was prepared by the Turkish Foreign Ministry, after which the White House made some modifications, “based on U.S. sensitivities” on this issue. On April 21, the Turkish Foreign Ministry forwarded the final text to Prime Minister Erdogan’s office which released it to the public on April 23.

Kahraman also revealed that in return for accepting U.S. modifications of Erdogan’s statement, Washington offered to block the pending Armenian Genocide resolution in the Senate, after its adoption by the Foreign Relations Committee in early April.

Aydinlik reported that Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has personally followed since last year the Armenian Diaspora’s preparations for the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Turkey is reportedly evaluating its countermoves, which include convincing the Armenian government to revive the comatose Armenian-Turkish protocols, while simultaneously energizing the mediating efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group to resolve the Karabagh (Artsakh) conflict through public diplomacy.

According to Aydinlik, Ankara is evaluating its plans on how best to counter Armenians who are pursuing their demands from Turkey through three separate channels: “legal, political, and public opinion.” Kahraman reported that a serious political rift emerged last June between Turkey and the US, after which Washington started pressuring Turkey to take more resolute steps on the Armenian Genocide issue and normalize relations with Israel. To appease the United States, the Turkish Prime Minister issued a statement on April 23, on the eve of the 99th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

Aydinlik also reported that the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in favor of Turkish denialist Dogu Perincek had strengthened Ankara’s hand in international circles. However, Washington wanted Turkey to be more accommodating on the Armenian Genocide issue. That is why Turkish and US officials orchestrated the release of a public statement by Erdogan on April 23, right before Pres. Obama’s own statement on April 24.

It is therefore not surprising that State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki had high praise for Erdogan’s April 23 statement, describing it as a positive step that would pave the way for improved relations between Armenia and Turkey. Unbeknownst to the public, the State Department was in fact praising a statement that it had helped draft.

While Turkey and the United States are playing a dishonest game of publicly supporting each other’s privately orchestrated statements on the Armenian Genocide, Foreign Minister Davutoglu let the cat out of the bag by announcing in Parliament that Erdogan’s April 23 message of condolences was part of the Turkish campaign to undermine Armenian efforts to commemorate the Centennial of the Genocide.

Finally, I wish to remind all those who have wrongly claimed that Erdogan’s April 23 message was an unprecedented pronouncement by a Turkish leader, almost 90 years ago, on June 22, 1926, Pres. Kemal Ataturk made a truly bold statement in an interview with the Los Angeles Examiner: “These leftovers of the Young Turk Party who should have been made to account for the lives of millions of our Christian subjects who were ruthlessly driven en masse from their homes and massacred….”

June 10, 2014