Turkish Forum

Category: Armenian Question

“The great Turk is governing in peace twenty nations from different religions. Turks have taught to Christians how to be moderate in peace and gentle in victory.”Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary

  • Cautious expectations for relationship between Russia and the US

    Cautious expectations for relationship between Russia and the US

    This online supplement is produced and published by Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russia), which takes sole responsibility for the contents

    Anatoly Torkunov, Professor and Diplomat
    27 Apr 2009

    The estrangement between Moscow and Washington has lately given way – with the election of Barack Obama – to a cautious sense of expectation. The apprehension is palpable in both Russia and the US. Given how much effort both countries have put into improving relations over the last 20 years, it would be a pity to lose the fruits of this difficult rapprochement.

    Having said that, one cannot deal with a partner who does not value the partnership and who ignores your interests. No matter how important America is, friendship or enmity with her is not paramount in the life of the Russian people.

    A new feature of American politics is the recent spate of moderately concerned pronouncements about Russia. Also the changes in personnel. Russia experts have been appointed to the National Security Council, to the State Department and to intelligence. Former ambassadors to Moscow were behind a recent report published by the Bipartisan Commission on US Policy Toward Russia.

    in any case, for the first time in 20 years the American public has been told in no uncertain terms that US interests and those of Russian-border states are not one and the same thing. The commission’s report says that there is no reason to fear Russian investments outside the energy-sector in the US and the EU.

    The report recommends extending the Start 1 treaty, suspending the Jackson-Vanick amendment, and making Russia a member of the World Trade Organisation. It also urges new negotiations on Russia’s participation in the planned American ABM systems in Poland and the Czech Republic.

    Most revolutionary of all is the report’s idea that America should not try to build spheres of influence along Russia’s borders while counting on a “constructive response” from Moscow.

    The report’s key theme is that the US administration must stop ignoring Russia’s interests since co-operation with Russia will be important in achieving American goals such as the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and solving the “Iran problem”.

    Right after the report was made public Moscow was visited by Henry Kissinger. Dr Kissinger was accompanied by a group of Russia experts, including the authors of the report. Now that they have gone, everyone is waiting anxiously for the results…

    Though some of the recommendations made informally by the Americans are encouraging, their formal proposals leave much to be desired. The Americans are trying to sell as a constructive idea a plan that would enhance their superiority of forces while forfeiting the last remnants of our former strategic parity – Russia’s only guarantee, in essence, of military-strategic security.

    The American proposal does not stipulate a parallel reduction of tactical weapons of mass destruction, conventional forces and so-called geographical offensive weapons, meaning America’s new Nato bases near and around Russia.

    The leitmotif of these expert recommendations is that America stop ignoring Russia’s interests. Yet US actions suggest a determination to restore America’s total strategic invulnerability. What does that have to do with Russian interests? Where is the opportunity to consider and defend them? The iron fist in the velvet glove…

    I do not think that Russian diplomacy can easily return to the romantic atmosphere of Soviet-American relations under Gorbachev. “Perestroika diplomacy” was never poisoned by the bitterness of deception. It remained the diplomacy of negotiated breakthroughs.

    But post-Soviet diplomacy is another matter entirely. It has been saturated with the spirit of the disappointments of the 1990s: the Nato-isation of Eastern Europe, Kosovo, poi-soned relations with Ukraine and – worst of all – the military destabilisation of Russia’s borders in the Caucasus.

    To restore honest and respectful relations with the US is one thing; to accept American proposals that do not benefit Russia in order to do so is quite another. If the US is as intent on improving relations with Russia as Russia is on improving relations with the US, it must be prepared for some very tough negotiations – tougher than any since the 1980s – on a broad range of issues, including regional security.

    The US is primarily interested in co-operation with Moscow over non-prolif-eration and Iran. Moscow, by contrast, is more interested in reforming the security system in Europe. We need to learn again how to link such things. The first meeting between presidents Medvedev and Obama seemed to have a generally stimulating effect on diplomats and politicians in both countries.

    At the same time one must be clear: while Russia wants stable and friendly relations with America, for Russian foreign policy this is not an end itself. Rather it is an important tool for building a safer and more prosperous world. Russia will advance along this path in any case – preferably with the US, but if necessary without.

    • Professor Anatoly V Torkunov, a former Washington diplomat, is rector of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations

    Source: www.telegraph.co.uk, 27 Apr 2009

  • Turkish Prime Minister’s Grandfather Killed by Armenians in 1916

    Turkish Prime Minister’s Grandfather Killed by Armenians in 1916

    27 April 2009

    by Seyfi Tolun, Turkish Weekly

    Turkish historian Cezmi Yurtsever argues that grandfather of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish Prime Minister, was massacred by the Armenian militants in 1916. Mr. Yurtsever from Cukurova Strategic Research Center (Adana) said “the Prime Minister should speak the facts. He should declare his grandpa’s story.”

    Yurtsever, who gave a lecture in Seyhan Culture Center, said he found the documents about Mr. Erdogan’s grandfather in the official archives:

    “I saw about 50 million documents in the Ottoman Archives. In 1916 Armenians and Greeks occupied Trabzon and Rize provinces. There were local resistance groups against the Russian occupying forces and around the Russian bases in these regions. Mr. Prime Minister’s grandpa Magatli Recep (Recep from Magat) joined the local resistance and defense movement as a member of one of the significant families in these regions. He was killed in these events. Prime Minister knows the background of the Armenian issue best. Time is not to be quiet. He should speak the realities.”

    Historian Cezmi Yurtsever also told the journalists that he could not understand US President Obama’s 1,5 million Armenian figure for the 1915 events. He further continued:

    “The British and American intelligence declared before that the maximum Armenian lost could be 600.000. This is the intelligence spies’ exaggerated figure. I do not understand how a US President, Obama, mention the number of 1,5 million. He makes a grave mistake. If Mr. Obama saw the Ottoman archives he could not mention such a fantasy figure.

    Source:  www.turkishweekly.net, 27 April 2009

  • Old arguments drive modern-day taboos, pain

    Old arguments drive modern-day taboos, pain

    • Story Highlights
    • Disagreement over events in 1915 continue to divide Turks and Armenians
    • Armenians say one million were killed in genocide
    • Turks reject claim that their forebears were involved in genocide

    By Ivan Watson

    ISTANBUL, Turkey (CNN) — Fethiye Cetin was 25 years old when she discovered her beloved grandmother’s secret.

    The little old lady in the white headscarf was Armenian. Her real name was not Seher, but Heranus Gadarian.

    Cetin says at the age of nine, a Turkish gendarme captain ripped Heranus from the arms of her mother while they were on a brutal death march into the desert. A Turkish couple later adopted the Armenian girl, and gave her a Muslim name.

    When Cetin first learned about her grandmother’s Armenian origins, she was shocked.

    “I felt deceived,” she says. “I felt like going out into the street and screaming ‘they are lying to us.’”

    Instead Cetin, a Turkish human rights lawyer, wrote a book titled my “My Grandmother.” It describes the atrocities that Cetin’s grandmother witnessed and suppressed since childhood. It also recounts Cetin’s reunion, after her grandmother died, with Armenian relatives in the United States.

    The book, which has been translated into six languages, is helping chip away at a taboo in modern-day Turkey about what happened to the Armenians in the final days of the Ottoman Empire.

    According to the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul, in 1914 there were more then 2,000 Armenian churches scattered across what is now Turkey. Today, there are fewer then 50.

    Between 1915 and 1918, as Europe and the Middle East plunged head-long into World War I, Ottoman authorities organized mass deportations that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians living in eastern and central Anatolia. Watch more on this story »

    Every April 24, Armenians around the world commemorate the anniversary of what they call the “Armenian genocide.” They say more then a million Armenians were killed in the massacres.

    The Turkish government vehemently rejects the figure.

    “The people of Turkey do not believe that their ancestors were criminals, were killers,” says Onur Oymen, a former ambassador who is now a member of the Turkish parliament. “The historical fact says that the Armenians killed during this period more then 500,000 Ottoman citizens, Turkish citizens.”

    “Regardless of whether 1,000 people were killed or one person was killed, it was still a human” says Cetin. “I wrote this book to say that people felt pain, people suffered in 1915 — to look at the events from a humanitarian perspective.”

    The battle over history continues to claim victims.

    On January 19, 2007, Cetin’s friend and client, Armenian newspaper editor Hrant Dink, stepped out of his office on to a busy boulevard in Istanbul to go to a nearby bank. He was gunned down in broad daylight by a 17-year-old Turkish ultra nationalist. Television cameras filmed Dink’s body that afternoon, lying on the sidewalk covered with newspapers.

    “Hrant Dink was defending democratization. Hrant Dink was supporting dialogue. And at the same time Hrant Dink was destroying the taboos of the system,” Cetin said. “Therefore Hrant Dink was dangerous for them and he was an important target.”

    Before his murder, Dink received a six-month suspended jail sentence for “insulting Turkishness,” after he wrote an essay urging Armenians and Turks to overcome their mutual distrust. He was battling another court case at the time of his death, after he labeled the massacres of 1915 “genocide” in an interview. He was quoted by the Reuters news agency saying: “Of course I’m saying it’s a genocide, because its consequences show it to be true and label it so. We see that people who had lived on this soil for 4,000 years were exterminated by these events.”

    An estimated 100,000 Istanbul residents poured into the streets in solidarity after Dink’s murder, some of them chanting “We are all Hrant Dink.” But today, his surviving son is still defending himself in court for his father’s genocide comments.

    During his visit to Turkey this month, President Obama was asked whether he would follow through on a campaign pledge to recognize what happened to the Armenians nearly a century ago as genocide. Obama said his views had not changed on the subject, but added: “What I want to do is not focus on my views right now but focus on the views of the Turkish and the Armenian people. If they can move forward and deal with a difficult and tragic history, then I think the entire world should encourage them.”

    Twenty-eight-year-old Aris Nalci, one of the new generation of Armenian journalists in Turkey inspired by Hrant Dink, said he opposed a proposed resolution in the U.S. Congress to formally recognize the Armenian genocide, arguing it would only hurt U.S.-Turkish relations.

    “People and politicians in other countries are using this in a political way,” says Nalci.

    “It will not change the minds of the people walking in the streets and the people living here.”

    But there is one area where the tiny — and shrinking — community of some 70,000 Armenians still living in Turkey is praying for American help.

    During a short meeting with Obama, Armenian Orthodox Archbishop Aram Atesyan urged him to do everything in his power to help Turkey and its northern neighbor Armenia normalize diplomatic relations.

    Borders between the two countries have been shut since 1993, but the two countries have recently engaged in a diplomatic rapprochement. On April 16, Turkey’s foreign minister traveled to the Armenian capital to attend a regional summit.

    “Turkey is our motherland and Armenia is our fatherland,” Atesyan explained. “And we are like orphans, stuck in between.”
  • ARMENIA-TURKEY student exchange programs yolda

    ARMENIA-TURKEY student exchange programs yolda

    Mustafa Oğuz
    Discovering a culture to dissipate prejudices
    ANKARA – In a survey carried out to determine the attitudes
    of university students toward Armenians, it is found that for 44
    percent of 3,095 students surveyed the word ‘Armenian’ has negative
    connotations. However, the majority would prefer opportunities to
    interact more with them

    A comprehensive survey on Turkish university students’ perception of
    Armenians has revealed that while a majority harbor mainly negative
    feelings toward Armenians, they would welcome an opportunity for
    greater interaction with them.

    “Prejudices
    against Armenians exist also at the university students’ level. We
    wanted to pinpoint the reasons by surveying 3,095 students,” said Evrim
    Tan, founder of Turkish University Students’ Perspective, or TÜÖY, the
    student group that carried out the poll, speaking to the Hürriyet Daily
    News & Economic Review.

    The word “Armenian” had negative
    connotations for 44 percent of respondents. Moreover, 35 percent
    preferred to not have an Armenian employer, and almost half of students
    did not want an Armenian spouse. The political appearance of Armenians
    was even more problematic, as 54 percent of students said they would
    not vote for a deputy candidate of Armenian origin and 50 percent said
    they would not want Armenians to have their own publications.

    No common ground
    “We
    think a major reason is the lack of contact with the Armenian culture,”
    Tan said. Despite hundreds of years of co-existence in the Ottoman era,
    now only 33 percent of students suggested that there were common
    grounds and proximity between Turkish and Armenian cultures.
    Contemporary relations are also in a poor stance. Almost 70 percent had
    never heard the Armenian language being spoken, and only 24 percent
    said they would welcome an institute for the Armenian language.

    “Despite
    the large number of negative answers regarding Armenians, many
    interviewees expressed that more studies of a similar type should be
    carried out,” said Mühtan Sağlam, a senior at TOBB and a writer of the
    survey. The percent of students who would like to participate in joint
    social activities with Armenian university students was 42, while 38
    said they would not want to take part in such activities.

    TÜÖY
    found a chance to share the results of the survey with its Armenian
    counterparts in Yerevan, during the Armenia-Turkey nongovernmental
    organizations meeting in March prepared by the Civil Society
    Development Centre in Turkey in collaboration with Civil Society
    Institute in Armenia. “Armenian NGO representatives told us that
    results would be similar in Armenia, if a Turkish perception survey
    would be carried out,” said Ozan Ağabaş, TÜÖY representative for the
    meeting.

    “They know very little about Turkey. Indeed, the most
    widely recognized Turkish figures are Enver, Celal and Talat pashas
    according to information we had at the convention,” Ağabaş said. The
    three pashas wielded the power in the Union and Progress Party that
    ruled the Ottoman Empire during World War I. They are viewed as the
    masterminds of the forced migration of Armenians in 1915, which
    Armenians claim to be genocide.

    Not only the results, which
    will be published as a book, but also the story of the preparation for
    the survey is revealing of some troubling tendencies still prevalent in
    Turkey that cause problems for Armenians.

    “The survey was
    preceded by ‘Dialogue Camp,’ a large student convention to boost
    Turkish-Armenian cultural dialogue in Ürgüp last March, but many
    Armenian youth groups in Istanbul refrained from participating at the
    last minute as their parents asked them ‘not to be seen around too
    much,’” Tan said. “Nevertheless, we observed that young Armenians in
    Turkey are way more eager to establish good contacts with Turks.”

    TÜÖY
    will step up efforts to remedy what it says are false perceptions, and
    seek ways to improve the pace of cultural exchanges between Turks and
    Armenians. “The next step will be to prepare a detailed plan on
    initiating student exchange programs between university students in
    Turkey and Armenia,” Tan said. “Turkish students may be lodged near
    Armenian families and vice-versa. The plan will be jointly carried out
    with our Armenian partners in Yerevan and is scheduled for launch in
    August 2010,” he said.

    © Copyright 2008 Hürriyet | Contact

  • President Obama’s Armenian dilemma

    President Obama’s Armenian dilemma

    Jim Kirdar

    The issue of contention is whether the deaths of Armenians during World
    War I who revolted against the Ottoman Empire (more than once) was an
    alleged genocide or casualties of war.  I choose to believe the latter
    as an objective American with ancestral ties to the region.  As a
    federal employee, I have traveled on official business to Turkey and
    the neighboring Commonwealth of Independent States (Georgia,
    Azerbaijan, and Armenia).  During the course of my travels, I have
    researched the issue of the alleged “genocide” and engaged in numerous
    conversations with the layman of both Turkey and Armenia to determine
    the root cause of the ongoing dilemma.

    For nearly a century, the Armenians claim to have been victims of a
    so-called genocide without merit.  An accurate account of the “event”
    during World War I against the Armenians by the Ottomans was
    retaliatory to the Armenian revolt/uprising.

    ..hence, an effort to
    eradicate NOT exterminate!  There is no denying hundreds of thousands
    of Armenians were deported a
    nd/or lost their lives…but many thousands
    of Turks were also killed.

    You see, the Armenian Diaspora does not want the logical person to ask
    the most fundamental and basic question of all…”Were your [Armenians]
    actions thegenesis for the [Turks] reaction?”  The educated would have
    to conclude regarding the Armenians siding with the Russians to destroy
    the Ottoman Empire as an act of betrayal for nearly 600 years of
    peaceful coexistence.

    The Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were esteemed citizens of which a
    grand portion achieved nobility by serving in official capacities
    within the Ottoman hierarchy as diplomats, cabinet officials, as well
    as scholars and literary icons.

    We need not venture far into our own past to realize the tragic attack
    on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese that directly threatened our national
    security.  As the United States, we reacted accordingly to preserve the
    integrity of a nation by creating internment camps to isolate and
    contain the Japanese community in America.

    I implore CNN, for the sake of journalistic integrity, to inquire
    further  and research on the following:

    The Armenian Revolt against the Ottomans (1890-1920)

    www.tallarmeniantale.com (by American scholars)

    I have been located extensively in both Armenia and Turkey on official
    travel for over 12 years.  I must say in all sincerity neither
    ethnicity wants to continue in defend
    ing or advocating events of nearly
    100 years ago; people want to move on despite political pressure.
    Unfortunately, the Diaspora feels otherwise, thus hampering positive
    and meaningful relationships in the land thousands of miles away from
    Glendale, CA.

    Regards,

    Jim M. Kirdar

    Special Agent at U.S. Department of Justice

    Greater Los Angeles Area

    <[email protected]>

    000000000000000

    BRAVO JIM KIRDAR
    YOUR GRAND FATHER LUTFU KIRDAR ( EX GOVERNOR OF ISTANBUL) WOULD BE PROUD OF YOU ME TOO
    VEDAT ASLAY ABD

    —————————————————000

    On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 10:06 AM, Volkan Duygun
    <[email protected]> wrote:

    I just posted my comment.

    Volkan Duygun

    Los Angeles Turkish American Assocation President

  • Turkey criticises Obama comments

    Turkey criticises Obama comments

    Men stand beside the skulls and corpses of Armenian victims of the Turkish deportation circa 1915 Armenia estimates that 1.5 million people were killed

    Barack Obama’s words on the day marking the killing of Armenians by Turks in World War I were “unacceptable”, Turkey’s foreign ministry has said.

    Though Mr Obama did not use “genocide”, as he did during his election campaign, Ankara said he failed to honour those Turks killed by Armenians at the time.

    “Everyone’s pain must be shared,” President Abdullah Gul of Turkey said.

    President Obama described the deaths of the Armenians as “one of the great atrocities of the 20th Century”.

    He appealed for Turks and Armenians to “address the facts of the past as a part of their efforts to move forward”.

    The two countries agreed this week on a roadmap for normalising relations.

    International recognition… is a matter of restoring historic justice
    Serzh Sarkisian
    Armenian president
    Armenians remember 1915 killings In pictures: Gallipoli remembered

    While admitting many Armenians were killed, Turkey, a Nato member and key American ally in the Muslim world, denies committing genocide, saying the deaths resulted from wartime fighting.

    Armenia has long campaigned for the loss of its people to be recognised as a crime of genocide and it commemorated the event with ceremonies on Friday.

    ‘My view unchanged’

    “I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915, and my view of that history has not changed,” Mr Obama said in a written statement.

    “My interest remains the achievement of a full, frank and just acknowledgment of the facts.”

    In a January 2008 statement on his campaign website, Mr Obama wrote: “The Armenian genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion or a point of view, but rather a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence.”

    “America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides,” the 2008 statement added.

    On Friday, he said the Armenians killed in the final days of the Ottoman Empire “must live on in our memories”.

    “I strongly support efforts by the Turkish and Armenian people to work through this painful history in a way that is honest, open, and constructive,” he added.

    That part of the Obama statement was considered positive by Turkey, a key US ally in the region.

    But “history can be construed and evaluated only on the basis of undisputed evidence and documentation,” Turkey’s foreign ministry statement said.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8018327.stm