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

  • Letter From Turkkaya Ataov to Senator Feinstein

    Letter From Turkkaya Ataov to Senator Feinstein

    ( senator at feinstein.senate.gov )
    Sent: March 27, 2009

    Dear Honorable Senator Feinstein,
    I am a Professor of International Relations, and I received my educational degrees from American schools, including a B.A., two Masters and a Doctorate (Syracuse University, 1959).

    I devoted three decades of my life, inter alia, to the study of Armeno-Turkish relations, on which I published no less than eighty books/booklets. Three of the most recent ones were printed in New York. They are entitled: (1) Armenian Falsifications (2008), (2) What Happened to the Ottoman Armenians? (2006), and (3) The British Blue Books: Vehicles of War Propaganda, 1914-18. I shall do my best to mail to you a copy of each of the last-mentioned three publications.

    You may also be interested in knowing that I am presently on a rather long speaking tour of the United States that will eventually total no less than thirty-six public addresses, mostly in various universities and a few meetings with some US Congress members, or their chief advisors.

    I have in my possession now the draft resolution pertaining to the Armenians, prepared by a group of members of the House. I have also seen your reply to Mrs. Nisan Giftgi on the same question.

    Both the text, prepared by Mr. Schiff and co-sponsored by some other House Members, and your private letter, reflect a totally one-sided and biased approach that omits crucial facts and presents a distorted picture that has no relation with the actual events in history. I have no intention to take this opportunity to reply to the inaccurate assertions, outright exaggerations and scandalous omissions. A proper response can only be expressed in book form. You may consider that I have done this in the eighty publications since the early 1980s.

    I may underline here that it is the duty of scholarship to question the validity of a mainstream idea. The idea in this case happens to be a prejudiced attitude or the equivalent of a “trial” in your Congress, where you as “prosecutors” and “judges” are trying to pass through a “verdict”, moreover in the name of the American people.

    The draft resolution does not take into account any Turkish view. It does not seem to have taken into any consideration even Armenian confessions, expressed in memoirs, war histories, series of articles and official communications, all describing how armed Armenians, acting as independent units or in the ranks of Turkey’s enemies, killed Turks and other Muslims. Those Armenian and some third party sources agree that both armed Armenians and their victims had reached six-digit figures. There exist a host of reliable documents and acknowledgements to this effect in published works as well as in the archives of the interested parties. A total disregard of this wealth of information goes to prove that the US Congress is not the place to pass a verdict on this topic.

    The draft resolution is basically a product of the Armenian ethnic lobby, well-organized and well-to-do but already facing a complaint registered with the US Department of Justice, the Internal Revenue Service, the Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the Senate.

    I wish to come to your short reply to Mrs. Giftgy, in which you state the following: “We must remember and recognize this tragedy to ensure that it never happens again”.

    Your generalization, which misses the point entirely, is misleading in ways more than one. It is a rationalization that may comfort you but actually helps to hide the origins of genocide. Unless you are able to accept the correct diagnosis of the true source of this brand of crime, massacres will occur, thanks in part to such incorrect assessments.

    I shall put aside the fact that you are virtually under the arrest of carefully-selected justifications, with absolutely no mention of opposing documentation. You have never become a part of scholarly debate on that issue. For instance, a prominent British source (Stephen Pope and Elizabeth-Anne Wheal, Dictionary of the First World War) recorded that between 1 and 1.5 million Armenians were living in Turkey in 1914, and that the Armenians “slaughtered an estimated 120,000 non-Armenians while the Turkish Army was preoccupied with mobilization.” It adds that the armed Armenians attacked the Turkish quarters of the Ottoman city of Van in April 1915, and proclaimed there a government of their own, seceding in the process this province from the State. This was the beginning of Armenian massacres, pillage and rape directed against the non-Armenians.

    Notable Armenians (such as the first Prime Minister of independent Armenia Hovhannes Katchaznouni, K. Serope Papazian), British functionaries (Captain C.B.Norman, A.G.Hume-Braman, Sidney Whitman) and men-of-letters (C.F. Dixon-Johnson, Bernard Lewis, Roderic Daveson, Andrew Mango, Norman Stone), Russian officers (General Mayevski, Lieutenant-Colonel Tverdo-Khlebov, Captain I.G. Plat, Dr.Khoreshenov), American academics (Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, William L. Langer, Stanford J.Shaw, Justin McCarthy, Heath W. Lowry, Edward J. Erickson, Guenther Lewy), men from legal professions (Samuel A. Weems) and many others do not share the mainstream opinion about the “innocence” of the Armenians. You may kindly familiarize yourself with such sources. Fact-finding in history demands that all relevant parts of the truth is taken into consideration.

    Let me come back to your misleading generalization that you intend to end genocide by punishing the Turks. I have to underline that genocide is a product of racism; and racism was born and rose in certain parts of the Western world. It is an offshoot of a particular level in the development of the capitalist society; it is the result of an advanced stage of a certain mode of production. It is like a hand and a glove with the process of colonial and imperialist exploitation.

    One may believe to be “different” from the “other”, in terms of racial, ethnical or religious background. But when this difference is regarded as innate and unchangeable, and moreover, justifying a sense of superiority over the other, then, one is confronted with a racist attitude or a set of beliefs, which also expresses itself in the practices, institutions and structures which help to justify it. Racism theorizes about human differences and things badly about another group. It proposes to establish an order, a permanent group hierarchy believed to reflect “laws of nature” or even God’s preference. This is what the British, French, German, Spanish, Dutch and, the Americans have done in various parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

    Racism has two components: difference and power. It originates in the mind that regards “them” as different from “us”, and the difference is supposed to be permanent and unbridgeable. Government-sanctioned segregation, colonial subjugation, exclusion, enslavement and genocide may follow that racist orientation. White supremacy, Christian selectivity, and anti-semitism are the result. The Blacks, the Muslims, and the Jews were tolerated as long as they stayed in “their place”. In some Western societies, racism was fully worked out, elaborately implemented, and carried to its extremes.

    There is no racism in the Turkish psyche. It has never been a part of the Turks’ social, political, and psychological set-up. They are the ones who recognized the Orthodox, Armenian, Jewish, Catholic, and Protestants as separate peoples with the right to worship in their own way, built their own religious structures, elect their own representatives and be led by them, go anywhere within the large confides of the State, indulge in any kind of profession or work, and eventually join the State administration. This is known, dear Senator, as the famous “millet” system about which you give no hint of having accumulated sufficient knowledge. The Turks achieved all that when Europe was fighting religious wars, when Cromwell was pursuing his Catholics, the French butchering their Huguenots, and others subduing the Calvinists.

    The Turks recognized the Armenians as a separate community as early as 1461 when the Christian centers virtually excommunicated this Gregorian people for centuries. Consequently, the Ottoman Foreign Minister only a year before the outbreak of the First World War was an Armenian – Gabriel Nouradoungian. Would Hitler appoint a Jew to be his Minister of Foreign Affairs? Did even the Weimar Republic do that? Antisemitism, thus, is a disease of the Western societies. Hitler did not learn anything from the Turks. There was enough racism accumulated in Germany, Austria, and in some other Western nation-states. They were the ones who gave to the world racist theoreticians – for instance, Gobineau in France, Chamberlain in Britain, Nietzche in Germany, and the Social Darwinists in the United States.

    The Turks, on the other hand had saved the whole of European Jewry from total extinction during the Inquisition in 1492. Turkey was a place of refuge for all of those running away from Russian autocracy, the failure of the 1830 and the 1848 Revolutions, the setback of the progressive political movements in Hungary, Poland, and elsewhere and of course the onslaught of Fascism in Italy, and Nazism in Germany. Likewise, the Turks made no contribution to racist theories, but presented to world civilization the celebrated Renaissance men such as Sinan the Architect, Yunus Emre the great humanist poet, and Ibni Sina whose book on medicine was utilized as the basic text book in all schools of medicine in Europe for 300 consecutive years.

    But the Catholic missionaries from France and Protestant missionaries from the United States came to Ottoman Turkey to “teach” the Gregorian Armenians that they were “superior” to the Muslim Turks, by virtue of the fact they happen to be Christians. An American Protestant missionary (A.W.Williams) and the president of the Armenian Patriotic Alliance in New York (M.S. Gabriel), in their joint book, printed in Chicago as late as 1896, or only four years before our entry into the twentieth century, wrote the following on the Turks: “… the Turk is not a member of the best human race- the Indo-European, or Arian, like the Armenians. The Turk does not belong even to the next best of races, the semitic…the Turk is a wild beast to be caged. [We] beg pardon of the hounds, hyenas…and all wild beasts for using their names in simile or metaphor…” It is unfortunate that racist publications have become the teachers of a number of parliamentarians and conditioned them, along with the organized and politicized propaganda of the Armenian pressure groups who are so active in Washington, D.C.

    However, such an assault on the Turks, and their views represents something like a lynch mob. One should note that such an attitude may well augur the advent of a new form of a totalitarian society.

    You are merely helping the Armenians to redefine their identity as a group of “victims”. In Freudian terms of psychology, this form of selection is called “the egoism of victimization” that totally disregards the bloodshed and the trauma that the so-called “victims” have caused to others. Such a distorted version of events contradicts what actually happened in history. Throughout the First World War there was a non stop news coverage in the Western Allied press on the Armenians. Non of the attacks, destruction, murder, massacre, theft, pillage, and rape by the Armenians were ever reported. There was even a law against such reporting, on the basis of “aiding the enemy”. In the meantime, however, the Ottoman Armenians had joined hands with Turkey’s enemies who provided that minority with weapons, ammunition, military training, uniforms, logistics, lines of communications, and money.

    Self-styled leaders may try to convince themselves and mislead others that if their selected “scapegoat” is punished, things will be right. This will never be the case, so long as the actual breeding source of genocide, which is racism, remains as it is in some Western societies.

    Best wishes,
    Türkkaya Ataöv
    Professor of International Relations

    Prof. Turkkaya Ataov is the Trukish Forum Advisory Board Member


    Turkey ‘Hawk’ Touted As Obama’s Man For Europe By Stefanos Evripidou, Cyprus Mail, Cyprus, March 28 2009
    THE US Senate Foreign Relations Committee gave President Barack Obama’s next ‘man in Europe’ a grilling over his apparent ‘pro-Turkish’ stance during his confirmation hearing on Thursday.

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  • ANC Australia Demands Senator Ferguson’s Apology

    ANC Australia Demands Senator Ferguson’s Apology

    March 26, 2009

    The Peak Public Affairs Committee of the Armenian-Australian Community
    SYDNEY: The Armenian National Committee of Australia (ANC Australia) has called on Senator Alan Ferguson (LIB South Australia) to apologise for labelling the Armenian and Pontian genocides “debatable” and stating they “cannot be accurately depicted” today.

    Senator Ferguson’s speech on 18th of March was in reaction to a visit he received from the Turkish ambassador – whom he referred to as a “personal friend”. The ambassador revealed information about a recent address by South Australian Attorney General, the Hon. Michael Atkinson, where he addressed Turkey’s atrocious human rights record by referring to the genocides of the Ottoman Empire’s Christian minorities.

    ANC Australia, who yesterday watched South Australia’s Legislative Council pass a motion recognising the Armenian Genocide, wrote to Senator Ferguson, stating:

    “The full facts of the Armenian Genocide are undeniable. Any scholar denying that 1.5million of our ancestors were massacred, starved and death marched from their homes in 1915 is discredited by the ‘International Association of Genocide Scholars’.”

    The letter also addressed recently uncovered history of Australia’s first ever humanitarian effort, which saw clothing, money and infrastructure donated to survivors of the Armenian Genocide. The letter continued:

    “Not recognising the Armenian Genocide means not recognising the great efforts of Australians to come to the aid of this oppressed people.”

    And sighting Australian WWI POW accounts of the horrors being committed against Armenians and other Ottoman Christian minorities, it continued:

    “Not recognising the Armenian Genocide means not recognising the accounts of our Australian soldiers.”

    ANC Australia Political Relations Officer, Mr. Vache Kahramanian said: “The Senator must realise that he has offended the Armenian-Australian community. We join the Greek and Assyrian communities and request he apologises and retracts his speech.”

    Please click here and sign your name to a joint petition from the Armenian, Pontian and Assyrian communities demanding Senator Alan Ferguson’s apology.


    FULL LETTER FROM ANC AUSTRALIA TO SENATOR FERGUSON

    ATT: Senator the Hon. Alan Ferguson
    Commonwealth Parliament Offices
    100 King William Street
    Adelaide SA 5000

    RE: SENATE SPEECH – 18 MARCH 2009

    Dear Senator Ferguson,

    We refer to your speech in the Australian Senate on the 18th of March 2009, titled ‘The Turkish-Australian Community’. That day, you took offence at a statement made by South Australia’s Attorney General, the Hon. Michael Atkinson regarding the genocide campaigns of Ottoman Turks against its Christian minorities – including Armenians, Pontian Greeks and Assyrians – in the early 1900s.

    You stated that you shared the concern of your “personal friend”, the Turkish ambassador at Mr. Atkinson’s remarks, and that the Armenian and Pontian cases were “debatable” and “cannot be accurately depicted” today.

    Senator, you continued your support for modern Turkey’s internationally condemned denialist agenda by stating “we should not be passing judgment when we do not know the full facts”.

    The full facts of the Armenian Genocide are undeniable. Any scholar denying that 1.5million of our ancestors were massacred, starved and death marched from their homes in 1915 is discredited by the ‘International Association of Genocide Scholars’.

    The word ‘Genocide’ was coined by Mr. Rafael Lemkin in 1948, when he used the Armenian Genocide and Jewish Holocaust as references when sharing examples of organised attempts to exterminate an entire people.

    Senator, your speech on 18th of March was ironically followed seven days later by your home state, South Australia’s Legislative Council recognising and condemning the Armenian Genocide. The motion, which was introduced by Mr. David Ridgway (Liberal MLC and Opposition Leader of the Legislative Council) and passed unopposed, also recognised a key component in South Australia’s history.

    South Australians, along with Australians from other states, took part in Australia’s first ever international relief effort by donating clothing, money and infrastructure (orphanage for child survivors in Lebanon) to the victims and survivors of the Armenian Genocide.

    Not recognising the Armenian Genocide means not recognising the great efforts of Australians to come to the aid of this oppressed people.

    Further, Australian World War I prisoners of war (POW) accounts reveal testimonies of the horrors being committed against Armenians and other Ottoman Christian minorities.

    Not recognising the Armenian Genocide means not recognising the accounts of our Australian soldiers.

    Senator, your statement has deeply offended Armenian-Australians, Greek-Australians and Assyrian-Australians. The Armenian National Committee of Australia and the Armenian-Australian community joins the Greek and Assyrian communities in requesting you retract your statement with an appropriate apology.

    We offer to meet with you to discuss this further and provide material to assist with your research towards correction.

    Yours Sincerely,

    Varant Meguerditchian
    President

  • South Australia Passes Armenian Genocide Motion

    South Australia Passes Armenian Genocide Motion

    MEDIA RELEASE March 25, 2009

    The Peak Public Affairs Committee of the Armenian-Australian Community
    ADELAIDE: An Armenian National Committee of Australia (ANC Australia) delegation was present as South Australian Parliament’s Legislative Council passed a motion recognising the Armenian Genocide as “one of the greatest crimes against humanity”.

    The motion, introduced by the Hon. David Ridgway MLC (Leader of the Liberal Opposition in Legislative Council) and seconded by the Hon. Bernard Finnigan (Member of the Labor Government in Legislative Council) went through unopposed, and sees the Upper House of South Australia’s parliament join the New South Wales parliament in condemning “the genocide of the Armenians and all other acts of genocide”.

    However this motion is unique, as it is the first to include recognition of recently-uncovered material detailing the significant humanitarian effort by the people of South Australia who aided the victims and survivors of the Armenian Genocide almost a century ago.

    South Australians, as part of the global Near East Relief effort, answered to calls for aid by donating clothing, money and infrastructure – an orphenage in Lebanon which housed the child survivors of the attempt by Ottoman Turkey to exterminate its Christian-Armenian minority.

    When introducing the motion a fortnight ago, a proud Mr. Ridgway said: “I would like to recognise South Australia’s role in the first major international humanitarian relief effort. As was the case for the genocide itself, that effort was not broadly publicised.”

    Mr. Ridgway added: “It goes without saying that such acts as the Armenian genocide epitomise prejudices against race, religion and culture. For most Australians those attitudes are difficult to comprehend but, unfortunately, they remain commonplace in many societies today.”

    Mr. Finnigan also addressed the house in seconding the motion: “In light of growing international awareness of the Armenian genocide – and given the horrific nature of the genocide itself – it is time for we South Australians to do our part.”

    ANC Australia Political Relations Officer, Mr. Vache Kahramanian commended Mr. Ridgway, Mr. Finnigan and their Legislative Council colleagues for recognising what he described a “proud intertwining of histories for Armenian-Australians”.

    He said: “It is fitting that South Australia is the first to honour this significant moment in Australian history – the first time this great nation came to the aid of a needy people a whole world away.”

    Mr. Kahramanian added: “It is important for nations like Australia to recognise and condemn all acts of genocide, as some – like the Armenian Genocide – remain unpunished.”

    Mr. Ridgway commended the Armenian-Australian community and ANC Australia for their excellent leadership.

    “I am grateful to be in an ongoing working relationship with the Armenian community,” he said. “The Armenian National Committee is dedicated to a campaign which advocates recognition of the genocide, and today’s motion is also a tribute to its tireless efforts on behalf of the Armenian community.”


    THE MOTION IN FULL

    That this Council recognises that the Armenian Genocide is one of the greatest crimes against humanity and –

    I. joins the members of the Armenian-Australian community in honouring the memory of the innocent men, women and children who fell victim to this genocide;

    II. condemns the genocide of the Armenians and all other acts of genocide as the ultimate act of racial, religious and cultural intolerance;

    III. recognises the importance of remembering and learning from such dark chapters in human history to ensure that such crimes against humanity are not allowed to be repeated;

    IV. acknowledges the significant humanitarian contribution made by the people of South Australia to the victims and survivors of the Armenian Genocide; and

    V. calls on the Commonwealth Government to officially condemn the genocide of the Armenians.


    ———-YORUM – RESPONCE BY SUKRU SERVER AYA ————————-

    To: [email protected]; [email protected]
    Subject: Counter Comments For The Genocide Motion
    Att: Hon David Ridgway and Hon Bernard Finnigan,

    We’ll publish your response in full, if you care to respond

    Kind Regards

    ———————————————————-

    AVUSTRALYA ‘YA  İLK  DİREKT  CEVAP  SAHİPLERİNE  ULAŞTI –  BAKALIM CEVAP  VEREBİLECEKLER Mİ?

    Reply By Sukru Aya (Bold & Blue)

    Armenian National Committee of Australia, March 25, 2009

    ADELAIDE: An Armenian National Committee of Australia (ANC Australia) delegation was present as South Australian Parliament’s Legislative Council passed a motion recognising the Armenian Genocide as “one of the greatest crimes against humanity”.

    The motion, introduced by the Hon. David Ridgway MLC (Leader of the Liberal Opposition in Legislative Council) and seconded by the Hon. Bernard Finnigan . . (Member of the Labor Government in Legislative Council) went through unopposed, and sees the Upper House of South Australia’s parliament join the New South Wales parliament in condemning “the genocide of the Armenians and all other acts of genocide”.

    However this motion is unique, as it is the first to include recognition of recently-uncovered material detailing the significant humanitarian effort by the people of South Australia who aided the victims and survivors of the Armenian Genocide almost a century ago.

    * Armenians in the city of Van Revolted and declared their own Republic in mid April 1915. Their (235) leaders in Istanbul was rounded up on April 24th (the day they commemorate as Genocide) and ANZAC landing started next day, on April 25th! Law of temporary relocation was enforced in late May and people in war zones or sections causing fifth column activities were sent to Southern provinces where there was no war. None was sent as south as Beirut where there was no war! Hence, Armenians in Beirut cannot claim any connection with relocation or victimization! There is no verdict or even a court case to name this past drama “genocide”. The parliament is fabricating a verdict by self-given authority!

    “The administration committee at Beirut, until the recent Cilician exodus, has been free from the more pressing problems of general relief until has been able to place large numbers of orphans in homes, thereby reducing the number of orphans in Near East Relief institutions in Syrian area to 6.775.” ( p.9 Near East Relief Report, US Congress 22.04.1922 No.192)

    South Australians, as part of the global Near East Relief effort, answered to calls for aid by donating clothing, money and infrastructure – an orphanage in Lebanon which housed the child survivors of the attempt by Ottoman Turkey to exterminate its Christian-Armenian minority.

    * There were several RELIEF ORGANIZATIONS, the largest one being U.S. Near East Relief Organization. Excerpt proves that the orphans at Beirut, were those of the Armenians who were sent to Syria-Palestine, who did not die, and went back with the British and later French troops in 1919, some in soldier uniforms. New atrocities met resistance of the people and French armies had to make peace and evacuate the lands in Sept. 1920 signing peace with Nationalist Government. The orphans in Beirut are those mentioned in the Relief Report. They have no connection whatsoever with the relocation; they were the children of those who went back to resettle again to Turkey (estimated 150 to 300.000) but decided to leave with the French army. Beirut was the transfer port of those to several countries, Egypt, Greece, France, USA etc.

    When introducing the motion a fortnight ago, a proud Mr. Ridgway said: “I would like to recognise South Australia’s role in the first major international humanitarian relief effort. As was the case for the genocide itself, that effort was not broadly publicised.”

    It is ironic that Mr. Ridgway, does not remember why the ANZACS went to Gallipoli -to fight people they had no connection,- and die there, yet building a reciprocal sentiment of chivalry, respect and decency even under warfare. The Armenians successfully collected money from all countries, to buy arms, ammunition under excuse to save victims. (Reno Evening Gazette, Oct.15, 1915: “Professional beggars who have bled their own countrymen for years and now trying to induce kindly Americans to support them, not caring whether United States would or should not be embroiled with Turkey…” . The Armenian contribution to WW1 was to be one of the largest trouble mongers, exploiting the benevolence of all other Christian nations. ANZACS did not only donate money, but they lost their lives there for unjust cause, and not this vital part but the money part of the episode is remembered!

    Mr. Ridgway added: “It goes without saying that such acts as the Armenian genocide epitomise prejudices against race, religion and culture. For most Australians those attitudes are difficult to comprehend but, unfortunately, they remain commonplace in many societies today.”

    The speaker has not read anything on the subject, other than what has been drafted to him by lobbyists and in doing so, he forgets the dramas and genocide executed to the Aborigines in their own homeland. The speaker is in no position to lecture other nations tens of thousands kilometers away. There was never any genocide or racial hatred! These charges are lie!

    Mr. Finnigan also addressed the house in seconding the motion: “In light of growing international awareness of the Armenian genocide – and given the horrific nature of the genocide itself – it is time for we South Australians to do our part.”

    Mr. Finnigan speaks of “international awareness” but not of international law and justice and right of defense. He does the mistake of supporting a huge slander, to please some politicians of Armenian ethnicity who bring their old mythological grudges all the way to Australia, to provoke societies, spreading hatred instead of compassion and tolerance.

    ANC Australia Political Relations Officer, Mr. Vache Kahramanian commended Mr. Ridgway, Mr. Finnigan and their Legislative Council colleagues for recognising what he described a “proud intertwining of histories for Armenian-Australians”.

    He said: “It is fitting that South Australia is the first to honour this significant moment in Australian history – the first time this great nation came to the aid of a needy people a whole world away.”

    These are cheap salesmanship talk. Did this person offer any condolence or respect for those ANZACS who lost their lives for no serious justification? No! Their concern has always been benefit – money for their own. Let others die, but pay!

    Mr. Kahramanian added: “It is important for nations like Australia to recognise and condemn all acts of genocide, as some – like the Armenian Genocide – remain unpunished.”

    Mr. Kahramanian is selling a fabricated lie, not even scholarly argued for the truth essence in it. This person, like his forefathers is “selling victimization”, buttering others with polished words, as long as they serve ANC’s interests only!

    Mr. Ridgway commended the Armenian-Australian community and ANC Australia for their excellent leadership.

    “I am grateful to be in an ongoing working relationship with the Armenian community,” he said. “The Armenian National Committee is dedicated to a campaign which advocates recognition of the genocide, and today’s motion is also a tribute to its tireless efforts on behalf of the Armenian community.”

    Armenian Communities are famous for their Monuments and Museums for blood and hatred. Did they ever think of contributing anything or participating one of the remembrance days held every year in Gallipoli for the ANZAC martyrs? [From Reno Evening Gazette Oct.15,1915: “. . by apocryphal tales of outrages, have procured contributions from their Armenian countrymen abroad and in this country and have lived in luxury on the proceeds for the past 30 years.”

    THE MOTION IN FULL
    That this Council recognises that the Armenian Genocide is one of the greatest crimes against humanity and –

    I. joins the members of the Armenian-Australian community in honouring the memory of the innocent men, women and children who fell victim to this genocide;

    II. condemns the genocide of the Armenians and all other acts of genocide as the ultimate act of racial, religious and cultural intolerance;

    III. recognises the importance of remembering and learning from such dark chapters in human history to ensure that such crimes against humanity are not allowed to be repeated;

    IV. acknowledges the significant humanitarian contribution made by the people of South Australia to the victims and survivors of the Armenian Genocide; and

    V. calls on the Commonwealth Government to officially condemn the genocide of the Armenians.

    The details and justifications shown in this selfish motion, serves nothing to the interest of Australia. On the contrary it injects feud and hatred in the minds of “peaceful, well-wishing people” and exploits the Australian society’s sense of benevolence and fairness.,


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  • Armenian Golgotha

    Armenian Golgotha

    By Andrew G. Bostom
    FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, March 27, 2009

    Recently, I was privileged to receive an advance copy of the first time English translation, released today, of Grigoris Balakian’s epic personal memoir of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1918, “Hai Koghkotan,” “The Armenian Golgotha,” originally published in Vienna, in 1922. The 1922 volume 1, and the second volume (which apparently “fell into a void for lack of funding,” was found among Grogoris Balakian’s sister Rosa Antreassian’s post-humous papers in 1956, and published in Paris in 1959) are presented in a very accessible, elegant English translation by Grigoris Balakian’s grandnephew, Professor Peter Balakian-an accomplished scholar of the Armenian Genocide himself-with the able assistance of two colleagues, Anahid Yeremian, and Aris Sevag.

    Modern genocide historians who have been wont to re-examine the disintegrating Ottoman Empire’s World War I jihad genocide against its Armenian minority through the prism of The Holocaust, often cite a comment by Hitler that the mass killings of the Armenians served the Nazi leaders as an “inspirational” precedent for predictable impunity. During August of 1939, Hitler gave speeches in preparation for the looming invasion of Poland which admonished his military commanders to wage a brutal, merciless campaign, and assure rapid victory. Hitler portrayed the impending invasion as the initial step of a vision to “secure the living space we need,” and ultimately, “redistribute the world.” In an explicit reference to the Armenians, “Who after all is today speaking of the destruction of the Armenians?,” Hitler justified their annihilation (and the world’s consignment of this genocide to oblivion) as an accepted new world order because, “The world believes only in success.”

    Grigoris Balakian’s eyewitness account of events from 1915-1918-recorded in his diaries during World War I, and already published by 1922-provide a unique, independent confirmation of this ideological, and genocidal nexus, and antedate The Holocaust by two decades. Specifically, Balakian’s striking observations (on pp. 280-281) from a chapter entitled, “The Treatment of the Armenians by the German Soldiers” captures attitudes of German military officers towards the Armenians that foreshadow, chillingly, the genocidal depredations they would inflict upon European Jewry during World War II.

    The German officers on their way to Palestine and the Mesopotamian front had no choice but to pass before the Bagche [Asia Minor] station [train]. All of them used offensive language with regard to the Armenians. They considered us to be engaging in intrigue, ready to strike the Turkish army from the rear, and thus traitors to the fatherland…deserving of all manner of punishment.

    Although most of the Armenians living in Turkey had been deported, scattered, and martyred in the spring of 1915, a few hundred thousand survivors still perishing in the deserts to the south-wasting away to nothing. Nevertheless the German officers’ Armenophobic fury continued, and not a word of compassion was heard from their lips. On the contrary, they justified the Ittihad government, saying, “You Armenians deserve your punishment. Any state would have punished rebellious subjects who took up arms to realize national hopes by the destruction of the country.”

    When we objected, asking if other states would dare to massacre women and children, along with men, and annihilate an entire race on account of a few guilty people, they replied: “Yes, it’s true that the punishment was a bit severe, but you must realize that during such chaotic and frightful days of war as these, it was difficult to find the time and means to separate the guilty from the innocent.” This was also the merciless answer of the chief executioners-Talaat, Enver, Behaeddin Shakir, Nazim-and their Ittihad camarilla.

    The German officers pretended ignorance of the widespread slaughter of more than a million innocent Armenians, irrespective of sex and age, and referred only to deaths by starvation and the adversities of travel during the deportations. Thus they exonerated the Turkish government, saying that its inability to provide for hundreds of thousands of deportees in a disorganized land like Asia Minor was not surprising. Meanwhile Turkish government officials prevented the starving refugees from receiving bread distributed by the Austrians and Swiss, stating, “Orders have come from Constantinople not to give any assistance. We cannot allow either bread or medicine to be given. The supreme order is to annihilate this evil race. How dare you rescue them from death?” The German officers would often speak of us as Christian Jews and as blood sucking usurers of the Turkish people.

    What a falsification of the wretched realities prevailing in Asia Minor, and what a reversal of roles! Yes indeed, there was an oppressor. Either the Germans were consciously distorting the facts and roles, or the Turks had really convinced them that the Turks were the victims and the Armenians were criminals. How appropriate it is to recall here this pair of Turkish sayings: “The clever thief has the master of the house hanged” and “The one who steals the minaret prepares its sheath in advance, of course.”

    Many German officers had no qualms about turning over to the Turkish authorities Armenian youths who had sought refuge with them; they knew full well that they were delivering them to their executioners. If an Armenian merely spoke negatively about a German-be he the emperor or [Baron] von der Goltz Pasha [a German military aide to the Ottoman Empire], or the average German-or dared to criticize German indifference toward the Armenian massacres, he was immediately arrested and turned over to the nearest Turkish military or police authority. And if the Germans found a certain Armenian particularly irritating, they pinned the label of spy on him.

    Mistaking me for an Austrian, a few German officers boasted of having turned over several Armenians to the Turkish police, adding with a laugh, “Only the Turks know how to talk to the Armenians.”

    The career trajectory and personal attitudes of Wilhelm Hintersatz (born 1886; died 1963) epitomize these genocidal connections. Hintersatz achieved the rank of colonel serving the Kaiser’s Austrian armed forces in Turkey, during World War I, where he became an assistant to Enver Pasha-one of the ruling Ittihad (Young Turk) triumvirate architects of the Armenian Genocide-and converted to Islam, assuming the name Harun-el-Raschid Bey. During World War II, he joined the Waffen SS as Standartenfuhrer (Colonel) of a unit that merged Waffen groups operating in the Ural Mountains, and Central Asia, from 1944-1945. As described by Professor Kurt Tauber in his meticulously documented two volume tome (published in 1967) on the post World War II era phenomenon of residual anti-democratic German nationalism, Beyond Eagle and Swastika, Wilhelm Harun-el-Raschid Bey wrote Aus Orient und Occident; ein Mosaik aus buntem Erleben [From the Orient and the Occident: A Mosaic of Varicolored Experiences], ostensibly “…about his personal experiences and travels, interlarded with his reflections,” which was published in 1954. However, as Tauber observes, cleverly avoiding strict German laws against the publication of overtly Antisemitic writings which were stringently applied during the early post World War II period, Harun-el-Raschid Bey concealed his Jew-hatred behind a “folkish” façade.

    Yet, in doing so he presented a clear and penetrant racist orientation, masquerading as lighthearted story telling and simple good fun. Some of the descriptions of people and events have an almost Stürmer-like quality, including even the attempted seduction by a Russian Jewess!

    Wilhelm Harun-el-Raschid Bey represents the apotheosis of two conjoined genocidal 20th century ideologies-jihadism, and ethno-nationalism. And as a true believer in both, he remained seemingly unrepentant even in the aftermath of the genocidal killings these hatemongering ideologies provoked.


    Andrew G. Bostom is a frequent contributor to Frontpage Magazine.com, and the author of The Legacy of Jihad, and the forthcoming The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism.

    Andrew G. Bostom
    Andrew G. Bostom is a frequent contributor to Frontpage
    Magazine.com, and the author of The
    Legacy of Jihad,
    and the
    forthcoming The
    Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism
    .

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    250px Mass statehouse eb1

    WATERTOWN, Mass.-The Massachusetts State House will display “iwitness,” a unique photography exhibit of portraits of Armenian Genocide survivors. The exhibit is free and open to the public and will take place from Mon., March 23 through Fri., March 27 in Doric Hall at the Massachusetts State House. Parian will lead a guided tour of the exhibit on Tues., March 24.

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    The “iwitness” exhibit will be accompanied by ALMA’s traveling genocide exhibit, which combines statistics and other accounts in text and photographs in an effort to educate the public about the first genocide of the 20th century.
    The one-week display will then travel to ALMA, in Watertown, where it will be displayed in the Museum’s Bedoukian Hall from Thurs., April 2 through May 2009.

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    Ara Oshagan has photographed extensively in Nagorno-Karabagh for a book project with his father, well-known author Vahe Oshagan. Featured in Photo District News, the book is scheduled to be published by Powerhouse Books in 2009. His work from Karabagh also took third place in the prestigious Visions 2001 National Photographic Project Competition sponsored by the Santa Fe Center for the Visual Arts.

    Working with the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture, Oshagan received a California Council on the Humanities Major Grant in 2001 to photograph the Armenian experience of Los Angeles. This work, called “Traces of Identity,” was exhibited at the LA Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall Park from September to December 2004 and is currently on view at the Downey Museum of Art.

    Oshagan also worked in collaboration with Leslie Neale of Chance Films on Juvies, a project documenting high-risk juvenile offenders being tried as adults in California.

    Oshagan’s work is in the permanent collection of the Downey Musuem of Art in Downey, California and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Yerevan, Armenia.

    He currently lives in southern California with his wife Anahid and four sons.

    To learn more, and view the above-mentioned projects, visit .

    Levon Parian is an artist who works in the medium of photography to project his ideas and concerns. He is best known for his series of nudes printed on emulsion coated metal plates, like the Ferro-type process developed in the late 1800’s (tintypes). Some of his ongoing projects include the book “Lost Memories,” a series of short stories and water-damaged pictures from his childhood, and “iwitness.” His current work involves experimentation with stereo (3-D) film and still-cameras and viewers. His subject incorporates “the male gaze” and the complexities of human interactions.

    Parian studied art photography in 1977 at Southern Illinois University and commercial photography in 1980 at Art Center in Pasadena, Calif. He completed his master of fine art degree in 2008at California State University, Northridge, where he is currently on the faculty.

    Parian specializes in people photography and photomontage. His works have been exhibited throughout the world and have received numerous awards. Parian’s clients include MGM, DreamWorks, Warner Brothers, Columbia/Tri-Star, Capital Records, PolyGram Records, Epic Records, Electra, Toyota and others.

    His work is in the following collections: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Library of Congress, Paradjanov Museum, Museum of Modern Art in Yerevan, Museum of Photography in Paris, Southern Illinois Univeristy Museum and the Downey Museum of Art in Los Angeles. His books Nudes and Scopophilia are available for purchase at www.abril.com.

    He currently lives in California with his wife Maro (an artist of theatre in her own right) and two children, Arthur and Sona, both 10 years old.

  • WHERE DO WE STAND AND WHAT LIES AHEAD?

    WHERE DO WE STAND AND WHAT LIES AHEAD?

    ‘March 26, 2009

    panel discussion organized by the ARMENIAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE OF MASSACHUSETTS.

    Featuring Dr.

    Seyhan Bayraktar (University of Konstanz, Germany), Prof. Louis
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    The even

    will be held at the Hellenic Cultural Center, 25 Bigelow Avenue, Watertown,
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    for more information please contact

    ANC

    47 Nichols Ave
    Watertown, MA 02472
    (617) 926-1918