I wrote last week about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s plans to collect votes from Turkish Americans for his reelection next year by opening an office in Washington for his ruling party (AKP) and hiring his cousin, Dr. Halil Mutlu, as a registered lobbyist. Already, Erdogan has scored an initial political success in the United States with the victory of Turkish-American Dr. Mehmet Oz’s in the Pennsylvania Republican primary for the U.S. Senate.

This week, I would like to report Pres. Erdogan’s similar political efforts in France by planting Turkish moles in the French legislature. This has been the long-term objective of Erdogan ever since 2010, when he urged his compatriots in France, during his visit to Paris, to run for political office.

Naturally, no one can object to Turks in France and the United States to run for political office. However, when such political action is prompted and supported by a foreign government, in this case Turkey, and its autocratic leader, serious concerns are raised that these Turkish politicians can become a tool in the hands of Erdogan to export his despotic policies beyond Turkish borders and propagate anti-Armenian positions.

Heeding Erdogan’s marching orders, Ali Gedikoglu, founder of the Strasbourg-based Equality and Justice Party, “presented 50 candidates in the 2017 [French] legislative elections,” Intelligence Online reported. “Gedikoglu is also known to be a long-time close associate of the Turkish foreign affairs minister and founding AKP member, Mevlüt Çavusoglu.”

For the upcoming June 12 and 19, 2022 French Parliamentary elections, the Turkish news website Medyaturk, in collaboration with the French version of Turkish government-owned Anadolu Agency, has been promoting three Turkish candidates: “French-Turkish dual citizens Celil Yilmaz (for 5th constituency of Ain); Yalcin Ayvali (14th constituency of Rhône); and Ramazan Calli (5th constituency of Saône-et-Loire),” a candidate of the Union of French Muslim Democrats. All three are “involved in the Strasbourg-based association Cojep (Conseil pour la justice, l’égalité et la paix), whose name translates as council for justice, equality and peace,” according to Intelligence Online. Created in 1985, Cojep has an annual budget of 300,000 euros. It “advocates for the interests of the Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ‘Turkish Justice and Development Party’ or AKP, to which its leadership is close.”

Candidate Celil Yilmaz is President of the Cojep association and former town councilor for Nantua (east of France). Cojep’s director Gedikoglu is an active denialist of the Armenian Genocide in the European Parliament where he is registered as a lobbyist with the Parliament’s Transparency Registry. He is also described as “the driving force behind the AKP’s media presence and charity work in France,” according to Intelligence Online.

Given the widespread recognition of the Armenian Genocide throughout Europe, Turks who deny the Genocide become the laughing stock of Europeans, just as in the United States, after both chambers of congress and Pres. Biden recognized the Genocide. Turkish denials of the Armenian Genocide are the equivalent of trying to prove that “the earth is flat.”

Candidate Yilmaz was “indicted in 2018 by the Paris prosecutor’s office for ‘incitement to hatred,’” according to Intelligence Online. “Yilmaz demonstrated his capacity to rally people to his side when, in just a few minutes via social media, he managed to gather a hundred Turks to counter a pro-Kurdish demonstration in front of the Turkish consulate in Lyon in January 2018.”

Intelligence Online revealed that “Yilmaz also arranged for Cojep staff to meet with an official delegation from the Democratic Republic of Congo [DRC] that had travelled to talk with senior AKP members at its headquarters in Turkey in August 2021. The DRC party included President Félix Tshisekedi’s brother Roger Tshisekedi. Yilmaz also relies on Cojep’s Vice President for international relations, Sati Arik, who is a substitute on the board of AKP’s women’s branch ‘AKP Kadin Kollari.’ Arik, who hails from Strasbourg, is close to the Turkish-German AKP Member of Parliament Zafer Sirakaya. According to her biography on the party’s website, she writes reports on “Muslims in France” for Sirakaya. The other two candidates, Ayvali and Calli, only show their association with Cojep via social media, though Calli is its local contact person for Montceau-les-Mines, eastern France.”

In addition to the United States and France, Erdogan has set up a chain of lobbying groups throughout Europe. They consist of “Union of European Turkish Democrats (Union des démocrates turcs européens) created by the AKP in Brussels [Belgium] in 2003 to back Turkey’s candidature to join the European Union. This entity has since become the parent company of several micro-parties close to the AKP, such as “Be.one” in Belgium, the Multicultural Law Party (Multicultural Recht Partij) in the Netherlands and the Alliance for Innovation and Justice (Bündnis für Innovation und Gerechtigkeit) in Germany,” according to Intelligence Online.

This extensive Turkish lobbying effort should be confronted by everyone, not just Armenians. Even though Turkey is a bankrupt country, Pres. Erdogan, has chosen to use his country’s limited financial resources to arm its military and disseminate Turkish propaganda around the world.

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Pres. Ilham Aliyev and the Azeri media frequently disparage Armenian national hero Karekin Njteh for having associated with Nazi Germany during World War II.

However, Azeris never mention the affiliation of Mammad Rasulzade, the founding father of the independent Republic of Azerbaijan in 1918, with the Azerbaijani Legion which fought for Nazi Germany. Pres. Aliyev made no reference to Rasulzade in his 2017 speech, while naming the key figures of the first Republic of Azerbaijan.

In 2020, when Pres. Aliyev accused Njteh of being a Nazi, Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan shot back saying that Rasulzade “worked closely with Nazi Germany and the Nazi Party.” Pashinyan criticized Pres. Aliyev for glorifying Rasulzade. The Vice-Speaker of Azerbaijan’s Parliament Fezail Ibrahimli retorted at the plenary meeting of the parliament in May 2020, saying that Pashinyan’s accusation was “a delusion.”

While Pres. Aliyev keeps making critical comments about the statue of Karekin Njteh in Yerevan, he avoids recognizing that in Azerbaijan there are several Rasulzade streets and avenues, his statues are throughout the country, and his image is on postal stamps and banknotes. Rasulzade also has a municipality in Baku named after him. There is even the “Rasulzade Anatolian high school” in Ankara, Turkey.

Most people would not have been aware of Rasulzade’s concealed connection to Nazi Germany, if it were not for the mysterious last-minute cancelation of a documentary about his life which was to be aired on Azerbaijan State Television on January 31, 2022, the 138th anniversary of his birth. However, just one day before the air date, the documentary was cancelled without any explanation. As a result, Fakhraddin Hasanzade, a producer of the Azeri TV program, announced his resignation.

If aired, Rasulzade’s biographical documentary could have revived talk of his support for Hitler’s Azerbaijani Legion which was composed of 70,000 soldiers during World War II. The Armenian Legion had 11,600-33,000 soldiers, while the Georgian Legion had 30,000 soldiers, according to Wikipedia. The soldiers in all three Legions were prisoners of war who were captured by the Germans. They all hoped that a victory by Germany would liberate their homelands from Soviet occupation.

David Davidian, a lecturer at the American University of Armenia, wrote in World Geostrategic Insights: “Rasulzade established relations with the Nazis in the 1930’s while residing in Romania. At the outbreak of WWII, the German representatives notified Romanian authorities that Rasulzade was their political ally and asked that Rasulzade be issued documents permitting ease of diplomatic passage to Berlin. Rasulzade’s goal was to help Nazi Germany conquer the Caucasus or have Turkey as an ally of Germany do so, clearing the way for an independent Azerbaijan and probably destroying what remained of Armenia.”

Davidian added: “In May 1942, Rasulzade participated in meetings between Nazis and representatives of Caucasian Muslim emigres and actively recruited legionnaires for the German Wehrmacht [armed forces of Nazi Germany] from among Azerbaijani POWs…. Interestingly, Rasulzade remained in Germany until 1947. He eventually resided in Turkey until he died in 1955.”

Rasulzade’s grandson, Rais Rasulzade, wrote in the autumn 1999 issue of Azerbaijan International magazine: “It wasn’t long until Hitler started looking for someone to represent him in the Transcaucasian region. He couldn’t find anyone suitable among the Armenians or Georgians but had heard that Rasulzade was highly educated and cultured.” According to his grandson, when Hitler met Rasulzade in Berlin, he asked him to give a speech to the Azeri soldiers in the Nazi German army.

In a document (WO 208/4367) located in the United Kingdom War Office archives, Hitler was quoted as saying on December 12, 1942: “The Georgians are not a Turkish people, rather a typical Caucasian tribe, probably even with some Nordic blood in them. Despite all explanations — either from [Alfred] Rosenberg [ideologist of Nazism] or from the military side — I don’t trust the Armenians, either. I consider the Armenian units to be just as unreliable and dangerous. The only ones I consider to be reliable are the pure Muslims, which means the real Turkish nations.”

In his article, Davidian reported that the Azerbaijani Field Battalion I./111 “participated in suppressing the August 1944 Warsaw Uprising that killed an estimated 40,000 [Polish] civilians.”

In conclusion, Davidian reminded the Azeris of the proverb: “Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones at others.” I would like to add the biblical admonition: “You hypocrite! First remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye.”

Ever since Archbishop Sahak Mashalian became the Armenian Patriarch of Turkey in 2019, he has made a series of questionable statements on the Armenian Genocide and bestowed lavish praise upon Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for his denialist remarks.

It is understandable, to a degree, why Armenians in Turkey, especially those in leadership positions, are forced to go along with the Turkish government’s denials of the Armenian Genocide, since they are hostages in Turkey. However, there are red lines that no Armenian, let alone a clergyman, should cross regardless of circumstances or locality.

However, we should not ascribe all of the Patriarch’s declarations to threats or pressures from the Turkish government. He has made many subservient statements of his own free will in order to get elected as Patriarch or endear himself to the authorities.

The Patriarch’s most recent controversial statement came in a lengthy sermon he delivered in Armenian and Turkish on April 24, the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide at Istanbul’s Kumkapu Sourp Haroutioun Church. While I welcome his desire to commemorate the Armenian Genocide, I question the accuracy of some of his statements. In my humble opinion, the Patriarch would have been better off giving a short sermon, simply expressing his sympathies to those who lost their lives in 1915. Given his mixed messages, he risked alienating both Armenians and Turks.

Let us now turn to the Patriarch’s sermon. He started by saying that April 24 commemorates Armenians who were killed during World War I. The Patriarch is thus copying the denialist words of Pres. Erdogan who misrepresents the Armenian dead as victims of war, not genocide. The Patriarch also capitalized on the fact that in 2015, Catholicos Karekin II declared all victims of the Armenian Genocide to be “saints,” which led the Patriarch to qualify April 24 as “no longer a day of mourning,” but “a day of remembrance for the consecrated saints.”

The Patriarch then came up with the following strange explanation: “The immortality of the victims of the Meds Yeghern began on the day of their death. We simply awoke to this truth after a hundred years of mourning!” He accused all those who continue to commemorate the Armenian Genocide of wanting “to sink in and remain forever in the inescapable nightmare of labyrinths of the Yeghern.”

While the Patriarch falsely represented the genocide as resulting from war, he also made some accurate assessments regarding the consequences of “Meds Yeghern” on the Armenian people, particularly the loss of their homes and lands:

“Today is April 24. It is the infamous day of remembrance of the terrible tragedy of our nation a century ago; a miserable date that symbolizes the start of one of the darkest chapters of our history…. which is familiar to us as ‘Meds Yeghern.’ …A nation was torn from its centuries-old settlements as a result of a policy cultivated and developed for reasons incomprehensible to us. The word deportation is embossed on our Armenian identity in its most painful shades. This unfortunate practice has led to the emptying of monasteries, the desolation of places of worship, the deprivation of schools of teachers and students, and in general, the settlements from their inhabitants. Families were left to mourn the loss of their parents and children. Men and women, old men and boys, young men and virgins were forced to follow a deadly path. In other words, a negative situation as a result of which hundreds of thousands of people were forced to bear in their wounded hearts the pain of irreversible and irreparable losses.”

The Patriarch continued his mixed messages by condemning the denial of the genocide, while criticizing its recognition by foreign parliaments, describing their actions as “provocations by distant countries.” On the positive side, he dared to use the term genocide once in Armenian and Turkish in his sermon: “It should be noted that the denial of the pain experienced by the Armenians on these lands wounds the conscience. We should also mention that we find contrary to moral principles the efforts that tend to use the pains of our fathers on the international stage as politicized theses against Turkey. Neither the denial nor the genocide resolutions adopted by the parliaments of various countries will bring honor to the pains suffered or to the people who lived through them on these lands. On the contrary, angry and defensive sides, by augmenting the shadows of the past, cause the peoples’ hopes to reconcile and develop natural relations to be dimmed and to block the present and future of the neighboring peoples.”

The Patriarch then suffered from a massive spell of amnesia by falsely describing “the events of the past 107 years… as a painful exception to the millennial common history” of Armenians and Turks. The Patriarch conveniently forgot the centuries of oppression suffered by Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, the Hamidian massacres of the 1890’s that caused the deaths of 300,000 Armenians, and the Adana massacre of 1909 that resulted in the killing of 30,000 Armenians.

The Patriarch, however, did not forget to praise Pres. Erdogan as the “unique figure” who issued sympathetic statements on April 24. The fact is that Erdogan’s statements should be condemned, not praised, for distorting the truth about the Armenian Genocide.

The Patriarch ended his sermon by supporting the ongoing diplomatic efforts for “rapprochement” between Armenia and Turkey. He must realize that without acknowledging the truth and establishing justice, there can be no reconciliation.