Dr Pat Walsh is a political analyst and historian. He has written a number of books on the Great War of 1914 and the Armenian question. His latest book, ‘Britain against Russia in the Caucasus: Ottoman Turks, Armenians and Azerbaijanis caught up in Geopolitics, War and Revolution’ will be published shortly by Manzara Verlag. In the following piece Dr Walsh reviews Prof. Hans Keiser’s recent book on Talaat Pasha.
drpatwalsh.com/2020/06/13/the-talaat-pasha-question/
By Harut SassounianPublisher, The California Courier
www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com
The High Advisory Board of the Turkish Presidency met last Tuesday for five hours to discuss how to respond “to groundless and anti-Turkey allegations” regarding the Armenian Genocide of 1915. The Advisory Board includes President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Ismail Kahraman (former Chairman of Parliament), Bulent Arinch (former Deputy Prime Minister), Cemil Chichek (former Chairman of Parliament), Koksal Toptan (former Chairman of Parliament), Mehmet Ali Shahin (former Chairman of Parliament), Yildirim Akbulut (former Prime Minister), President’s Chief of Staff Metin Kiratli and Presidential Communications Director Fahrettin Altun.
It is very satisfactory to Armenians worldwide that the Turkish government, after lying about the occurrence of the Armenian Genocide for a century, going to extraordinary lengths to blackmail other countries economically and politically, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on hiring lobbying firms and publishing denialist propaganda, is spending long hours wondering how to counter “the Armenian lobby.”
This means that all of the Turkish efforts for 105 years to deny the Armenian Genocide have been in vain. Turkey has wasted a huge amount of resources and time to deny the undeniable! The Turkish government is welcome to try again to convince the world that no such genocide has taken place. Eventually, the Turkish leaders will give up seeing that they cannot persuade anyone to believe their lies. The day will come when the Turkish government will admit that it is much easier to tell the truth than to continue its useless strategy of distorting a well-established historical fact. It is in Turkey’s best interest to come to terms with the Armenian government and its Diaspora and negotiate a proper compensation and restitution for the damages caused to the Armenian people during the Genocide. Once Turkey acknowledges the historical facts and makes amends, it will no longer have to worry about the world’s reaction to the Armenian Genocide. On the contrary, the Turkish leader will receive accolades from the international community for facing the facts and dealing honestly with its past crimes.
In the meantime, the Turkish government is foolishly continuing its hopeless campaign of denial of the Armenian Genocide. After last week’s five-hour High Advisory Board meeting behind closed doors, President Erdogan’s Communications Director Fahrettin Altun relayed the President’s following statement: “hostility seeds that were tried to be sown through distorted historical events would not be able to find the opportunity to flourish in the land of truth.” He accused the “Armenian lobby” of exploiting the “challenging and painful era endured by all Ottoman citizens for the sake of political calculations through lies and slanders that were invented by various power groups.” Furthermore, he said that during the meeting, “comprehensive steps” were discussed to prevent the Armenian lobby from using the 1915 events to “defame Turkey and our nation and also the propaganda made by countries through unrealistic allegations that manipulate the issue with political calculations.” The Turkish Presidential meeting also deliberated on projects and activities set to “shed light” on the issues with historical and legal aspects, along with “facts for the national and international public,” he added.
This new Turkish Genocide denial plan may have been triggered by the resolutions acknowledging the Armenian Genocide by the U.S. House of Representatives (405-11 votes) and the unanimous vote of the U.S. Senate last fall.
The question is why would Turkey’s leaders spent five hours deliberating on genocide denial at a time when the coronavirus pandemic is raging in the country, its economy is in shambles, the Turkish Lira has collapsed and Erdogan is losing the public’s support. According to some analysts, this is Erdogan’s tactic to deviate the Turkish public’s attention from his misrule and misadventures both within and outside the country.
Last month in a TV speech, Pres. Erdogan, showing his exasperation at the multiple problems of his government, once again lashed out at the “Armenian lobby,” among others. He vowed: “We will not give up before the forces of evil, either FETO, the PKK, the Armenian and Greek lobbies, or centers of hostility in the Persian Gulf.”
The Armenian government quickly reacted to Pres. Erdogan’s lies about the Armenian Genocide. This is a welcome development, as previous Armenian governments ignored all such Turkish outbursts. The Armenian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman Anna Naghdalyan responded: “The statements made by the Turkish President on justifying the Armenian Genocide and insulting its victims are not a novelty and are manifestations of hate speech, which have an impact on maintaining and strengthening the atmosphere of xenophobia against Armenians in that country…. Denialism has no future, no matter who and how frames it. Despite the efforts of the authorities of Turkey to suppress the truth, the truth has been prevailing.”
The European Armenian Federation for Justice and Democracy also issued a statement calling Erdogan’s latest plans to deny the Armenian Genocide a “dangerous xenophobic policy of the Turkish authorities, directed against the activists of the Armenian cause…. Unfortunately, the denial of the Armenian Genocide and the incitement of hatred against Armenians are a state policy in Turkey.”
In addition, the Armenian National Committee of America Western Region along with Assyrian, Greek and Jewish organizations issued a joint statement slamming the Turkish government’s latest announcement on countering the Armenian Genocide: “Understanding that denial is the final stage of genocide, enforcing the erasure of a people’s history and suffering, we call on people of good conscience to bring awareness to the plight of the victims of genocide both past and present, to hold accountable those who seek to distort historical truth, and ensure that never again will the world watch in silence while genocide is perpetrated.”
My advice to President Erdogan and his cronies is to abandon Turkey’s century-long failed efforts at denial of the facts of the Armenian Genocide, acknowledge the truth and embark on a mutually agreed plan to compensate for the losses suffered by the Armenian nation as a result of the Genocide.
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, June 06, 2020 Region: Europe, USA Theme: Media Disinformation, Police State & Civil Rights, Science and Medicine
“The media is the most powerful entity on earth. Because they control the minds of the masses, they have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power…If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X
“For one bright moment back in the late 1960s, we actually believed that we could change our country. We had identified the enemy. We saw it up close, we had its measure, and we were very hopeful that we would prevail. The enemy was hollow where we had substance. All of that substance was destroyed by an assassin’s bullet.” – William Pepper (page 15, The Plot to Kill King)
***
Across America, as well as in Western Europe, there is an ongoing campaign against racism following the dramatic events in Minneapolis. Our thoughts are with George Floyd, his family and friends. We stand in solidarity with African-Americans who are the target of police killings and racial discrimination. Colonial and contemporary history has left its mark. Today, African-Americans are also the victims of neoliberalism which triggers poverty, social inequality and unemployment.
The campaign against racism including the protest movements cannot be divorced from the broader battle against neoliberalism and the carefully designed instruments of economic and social oppression.
At this juncture, there is an important question which must be addressed. The Covid-19 pandemic, which is based on manipulated data coupled with a fear campaign is destroying people’s lives. It is an act of economic and social warfare against humanity. It is carried out Worldwide.
The most recent evidence from a leaked report of Germany’s Ministry of the Interior confirms that the COVID-19 virus is a “Global False Alarm”. According to the team of experts contracted by the German Government, Covid-19 is of lesser significance than the 2017-2018 seasonal flu, which barely made the headlines. While the report acknowledges the dangers to public health, it nonetheless emphasizes that “The danger is obviously no greater than that of many other viruses. There is no evidence that this was more than a false alarm”. [in German in the report: globalen Fehlalarm]
Other reports come to similar conclusions not to mention the manipulation of death certificates.
Italy’s lockdown in early March was justified by quoting “fake data”. Vittorio Sgarbi, MP stated in Parliament that the closure of 60% of Italy’s economy was taken on the basis of an “estimated” 25,000 Coronavirus deaths.
“It’s not true,” he said. “According to the National Institute of Health, 96.3% did not die of coronavirus, but of other pathologies stated Sgarbi – which means that only 925 have died from the virus and 24,075 have died from other things claimed Sgarbi, “… the virus was little more than an influenza. Don’t lie! Tell the truth!”
The lies are numerous: Both in Britain and the US, “duplicate counting” has been used to inflate the reported positive cases.
Many prominent scientists and politicians have courageously spoken out:
Senator Dr. Scott Jensen of Minnesota “received a 7-page document that showed him how to fill out a death certificate as a “COVID-19 diagnosis” even when there isn’t a lab test confirming the diagnosis”. According to Jensen:
“Right now Medicare is determining that if you have a COVID-19 admission to the hospital you get $13,000. If that COVID-19 patient goes on a ventilator you get $39,000, three times as much. Nobody can tell me after 35 years in the world of medicine that sometimes those kinds of things impact on what we do.” (Dr. Sen. Scott Jensen, from Fox Interview, emphasis added)
Meanwhile, politicians have been lying through their teeth, the media has been entrusted to sustaining the fear campaign. People’s lives are threatened. Lies and Bribes are the driving force. Politicians and scientists are co-opted.
All of which is intent on justifying “social distancing” as well as enforcing the infamous lockdown which confines people to their homes, in many cases without income, food and medical attention. And people obey because they are scared.
But why have these issues not been raised by the anti-racism campaign?
Confinement is “racist”. It serves as a justification to deny peoples’ fundamental right to employment. It’s social engineering. The lockdown destroys our institutions, undermines family life and social relations, destroys culture (including music and the arts), closes down schools and universities, and of course it impoverishes large sectors of the World population.
And if the pandemic is “A Global False Alarm” (Official Germany Report), there is no justification for closing down the economy. But that report along many other independent reports is subject to media censorship.
The Anti-Racism Campaign and The Lockdown
The lockdown from the outset is being used as a means to destabilize the US economy and create massive unemployment. Why then is the campaign “against racism” firmly supportive of the lockdown?
This campaign against racism is not a protest movement against the financial elites who are pressuring governments to postpone the reopening of the national economy as long as possible.
Big Money controls the politicians. They control the media that wages the fear campaign. They are also the creditors of the State, who are now in the process of concocting a multi-trillion dollar loan package for indebted governments. Their intent is to deregulate the labor market, and pick up the pieces of bankrupt enterprises.
The protests and the riots serve their interests. The financial elites are not the target of the protest movement. Quite the opposite: their elite billionaire foundations are supporting many of the progressive NGOs which are waging the campaign against racism, while also paying lip service to the Democratic Party which is firmly against the reopening of the US economy as part of their 2020 election campaign.
BLM’s #WhatMatters2020 is a campaign aimed to maximize the impact of the BLM movement by galvanizing BLM supporters and allies to the polls in the 2020 U.S Presidential Election to build collective power and ensure candidates are held accountable for the issues that systematically and disproportionately impact Black and under-served communities across the nation.
BLM’s #WhatMatters2020 will focus on issues concerning racial injustice, police brutality, criminal justice reform, Black immigration, economic injustice, LGBTQIA+ and human rights, environmental injustice, access to healthcare, access to quality education, and voting rights and suppression.
This initiative will inspire and motivate people to ask themselves and their candidates are you really addressing What Matters in 2020?
“What Matters in 2020?” While rightly focussing on the police killings and the criminalization of justice,What Black Lives Matter fails to address is that African-Americans are the victims of the COVID-19 pandemic fear campaign, which in practice is contributing to social divisions, racism and the development beyond bounds of a police state apparatus.
It’s a scam: Confinement creates unemployment, affecting African-American communities across the United States. It is an instrument of “economic injustice”. It’s neoliberalism.
The economic and social “collateral damage” of COVID-19 is mass unemployment, poverty, death and despair. It emanates from the financial establishment.
Supporting the lockdown which creates poverty and disrupts economic activity Worldwide has de facto racist overtones. Why? Because it destroys peoples lives.
The damage incurred by a “global economic lockdown” far exceeds the health impacts of the corona virus.
The objective of the financial elites, the billionaire foundations and philanthropists is the concentration of wealth, bankruptcy of the real economy, mass unemployment, social inequality and racism.
If you are against racism, an end to confinement, the reopening of the national economy and the restoration of employment should be a number one priority.
To put it bluntly: There is no mass protest movement against the COVID-19 lockdown. The lies are accepted at face value.
The WHO is funded by the Gates Foundation and Big Pharma, politicians around the World are co-opted and bribed. But at the same time, the billionaire charities and foundations (including Soros, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller et al) are financing the “progressive” anti-racist NGOs, which are acting as a “controlled opposition”.
Manufactured dissent and the funding of dissent is also a multibillion dollar undertaking. “The mechanisms of “manufacturing dissent” require a manipulative environment, a process of arm-twisting and subtle cooptation of individuals within progressive organizations”.
And these NGOs have decided to overlook the fact that African-Americans are the victims of neoliberalism and the lockdown of the US economy.
And the lockdown is an integral part of the 2020 election platform of the Democratic Party, which is a neoliberal pro-war racist agenda imposed by Wall Street, Big Pharma, the Military Industrial Complex, et al.
You cannot wage a battle against the Empire and then ask the Empire to finance your protest movements.
“Everything the [Ford] Foundation did could be regarded as “making the World safe for capitalism”, reducing social tensions by helping to comfort the afflicted, provide safety valves for the angry, and improve the functioning of government (McGeorge Bundy, former National Security Advisor and president of the Ford Foundation, (1966-1979)
BLM does not in any way “endanger” global capitalism:
“… Black Lives Matter is increasingly awash in cash, raking in pledges of more than $100 million from liberal foundations [2016]… [including] The Ford Foundation and Borealis Philanthropy … That funding comes in addition to more than $33 million from top Democratic Party donor George Soros …, as well as grant-making from the Center for American Progress.” [headed by John Podesta Jr., Obama’s White House chief of staff]
This is not an issue of “choice” between Republicans and Democrats both of which are racist and corrupt. It is an issue of confronting the “Big Money” architects of this diabolical project to destabilize the economy, social relations and institutions of the entire planet. The police state and racism is an integral part of that “destabilization agenda”.
A Real Grassroots Movement
What we need is a real grassroots movement, across the land, nationally and internationally, independent of corporate funding. The Coronavirus crisis is an act of war against humanity. We must reach out to all those who are victims of the corona crisis. The legitimacy of the COVID-19 pandemic depends on fear, disinformation and submission to higher authority.
Breaking the lie means breaking a criminal project of global destruction, in which the quest for profit is the overriding force.
What is required is the development of a broad based independent grassroots network at all levels of society, urban areas, towns and villages, work places, parishes. Workers and farmers organizations, professional associations, business associations, schools, student unions, veterans associations, artists, musicians, church groups would be called upon to integrate this movement. The COVID-19 pandemic is based on a Lie. The consensus has to be broken. The original source of this article is Global Research Copyright © Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2020
Comment on Global Research Articles on our Facebook page
Become a Member of Global Research
215 Articles by: Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research. He has taught as visiting professor in Western Europe, Southeast Asia, the Pacific and Latin America. He has served as economic adviser to governments of developing countries and has acted as a consultant for several international organizations. He is the author of eleven books including The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003), America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005), The Global Economic Crisis, The Great Depression of the Twenty-first Century (2009) (Editor), Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011), The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity (2015). He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages. In 2014, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit of the Republic of Serbia for his writings on NATO’s war of aggression against Yugoslavia. He can be reached at crgeditor@yahoo.com
By Harut SassounianPublisher, The California Courier www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com
An article in the Jewish Press of February 13, 2020 exposed the activities of the Turkish Government to take over the Armenian and Christian Quarters of Jerusalem. The article by journalist Baruch Yedid is titled, “Turkey Working to Take Over Armenian Quarters in Jerusalem’s Old City.”
Jerusalem’s Armenian “residents have told TPS [Tazpit Press Service] about efforts of Turkish officials in recent years to persuade them to deny the Armenian holocaust perpetrated by the Turks a century ago and other actions to acquire property owned by local Christians, according to Yedid.
A Jerusalem Armenian, whose grandfather had survived the Armenian Genocide, told TPS that 40 minutes into a meeting with a Turkish female diplomat, she tried to convince him to drop his activities for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. “I realized that she wanted to persuade me to cease my activity to preserve the Armenian massacre.” The Armenian said that he immediately showed the door to the Turkish diplomat who understood that the Armenian community will never give up on the recognition of the Genocide. “We will wait another 100 years, but we will never rescind our demand for compensation until we reach a payment agreement, like the one that Israel signed with Germany,” the Armenian said.
Other Armenian property owners in Jerusalem told TPS that Turkish government representatives recently offered them $3,000 grants for their various needs. However, Armenians rejected the Turkish bribes, calling them “silencing grants designed to ensure that the Turkish government will not be sued for the 1915-1917 massacres.” Even though the Israeli journalist Yedid uses the term ‘massacre’ in line with the Israeli Government’s denialist policy, he quickly deviates from that policy by explaining that “the Armenian extermination was a deliberate and systematic genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire during the First World War against the Armenian population in its territory. Even after World War I, Turks, Kurds, and Arabs continued to massacre Armenians until 1923, and it is widely believed that about half the Armenians in Turkey, about 1.5 million people, were murdered.” Turks and Kurds did commit Genocide against Armenians, but I am not aware of any massacres of Armenians by Arabs.
Yedid continued his article by citing examples of Turkish attempts to purchase Armenian properties in Jerusalem: “Turkish pressures are also manifest in its activity to acquire Armenian assets. TPS learned that a few months ago, the residents of the Armenian Quarter were shocked to find that one of their homes was sold to a Muslim, three times its real value. An inquiry revealed that funding for the purchase of the Armenian property came from Turkey. Following the incident, some of the community leaders met to review the chain of events and took action to prevent the leakage of the community’s assets to the Turks. There is still a lingering fear among the Armenians of the Turks taking over or buying more property.”
Yedid cited another Turkish scheme to take over Christian properties in Jerusalem: “One Christian trader, who asked to remain anonymous, said that the Turks recently transferred to the Jordanian Waqf [Muslim endowment] very old ownership certificates, some crumbling, including Ottoman-era documents and property ownership documents in the Armenian and Christian Quarters. The trader, who showed TPS photos of several of the certificates, says the Turks have asked the Waqf to verify the documents which are being used to purchase the assets.” It is paradoxical that the Turkish government would not disclose from its archives the certificates of properties (deeds of trust) owned by Armenians prior to the Genocide, yet it would send copies of property certificates to a Jordanian Waqf.
Yedid also covered in his article “the growing Turkish activity in Jerusalem and its support for the Muslim Brotherhood [which] are of concern to Israel. In its recent annual intelligence assessment, the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] Intelligence Division has, for the first time, defined Turkey as a threat.”
Yedid then described Israel’s reluctance to recognize the Armenian Genocide: “Israeli officials have often raised the possibility of recognizing the Armenian holocaust as a counter-reaction to Turkish activity against Israel, which includes the hosting of Hamas’ terrorist headquarters in Turkey. Over the years, Israel has refrained from officially recognizing the Armenian genocide, fearing that such recognition would damage diplomatic relations between Israel and Turkey.” This is a nonsense argument as Israel’s relations with Turkey are already damaged and its recognition of the Armenian Genocide will not cause any further damage, just like last fall’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the U.S. House and the Senate did not negatively affect US-Turkish relations.
The Israeli journalist correctly pointed out that “Turkey monitors all publications on the Armenian genocide and considers the issue of great significance to Turkish national security, and accordingly, the Turks have not relented with their attempt to persuade the Armenians in Jerusalem to cease their commemorative endeavors.”
Yedid also reported that the Turkish government has been encouraging Turkish tourism to Jerusalem by paying the cost of travel to mosques in Jerusalem and the West Bank: “Turkish nonprofits operate in Jerusalem daily, helping mainly the Muslim Brotherhood and Jerusalem religious activities. A source in the Armenian Quarter said that Turkish tourists in the Old City have also recently been working against the Armenians, tearing up posters and publications about the Armenian genocide. Graffiti inscriptions in condemnation of the Armenians were sprayed on the Quarter’s walls.”
Furthermore, the Turkish ‘Heritage’ Society is active in Jerusalem “in the fields of education, culture, real estate and welfare, and also carries funding for the ‘convoy project’ to transport thousands of Muslim worshipers to mosques as well as funding tens of thousands of meals to break the Ramadan fast,” according to Yedid.
Similarly, TIKA, Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency, funded several projects in Jerusalem. Dozens of mosques and houses have been renovated by Turkey.
It is up to the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem to counter the Turkish efforts by precluding local Armenians from selling their properties to Turkish buyers. The Armenian Government’s Office of the High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs should assist the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem to oppose the Turkish attempts to encroach on the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem.
Diplomat, Statesman, Politician
Birth: 07 Temmuz, 1921
Istanbul, Turkey
Education
Ankara University Faculty of Political Sciences
Diplomat, politician and statesman. He was born on July 7, 1921 in Istanbul. He graduated from Ankara University, Faculty of Political Sciences (1944). He worked at the Foreign Affairs Ministry as; Frankfurt vice consulate (1947), general secretary (1964), Ambassador to London (1966), Head of Turkish delegation in UN (1969). He was the foreign affairs minister in Nihat Erim, Ferit Melen and Naim Talu governments (1971-1974) and the general secretary of CENTO (1975-1977). After 1980 September 12, military coup he was appointed as a general secretary of the President and also as a contingent senator. He was the Minister of National Defense in Bülent Ulusu government (1980-1983).
He was the Antalya deputy from MDP in 1983 elections. After his party has dissolved itself, he continued with his duty as an independent deputy. He has received numerous charters, medals and badges at national and international levels. Some of these are; Great Cross Order of Merit from the President of Federal Germany (1965), Spain Catholic Isabel Order (1964), Great Victoria Order of the Queen of England (1967), Sitarei Pakistan Order of Pakistani President (1970) etc.
He died in Ankara (2007) and was buried in Karşıyaka Cemetery.
WORKS:
Değişen Dünya Koşullarında Ortak Güvenlik ve Savunma Kuruluşları (1977), Birleşmiş Milletler ve Hukukun Üstünlüğü İlkesi (1979), İnsanlığın Barış İdeali ve Atatürkçü Dış Politika (1981).
REFERENCE: Türkiye Kültür ve Sanat 2008 Yıllığı (2008), İhsan Işık (TEKAA, 2009).
Turkey makes their own masks now. They share with the US because even though the US chose to support the YPG (an offshoot of the mutual enemy PKK, designated a terrorist organization by both Democrat and Republican administrations), Turkey and the US are still allies.
Hopefully US policy will mature so we can repair the damage done by the support to that group. The reported reason for that partnership between US and YPG was to fight ISIS. But the problem is that YPG only allied with US to fight ISIS to take territory belonging to Syria, not because we’re old allies. We aren’t. We were enemies with PKK, but the Pentagon rebranded fighters to sell the concept to the American public who is not paying attention to such things. It’s a mess. There are no real US allies out of that conflict.
There’s a very fundamental misunderstanding among many Americans, regarding Turkey. People question why we’re friends.
We’re friends because we have common goals and common interests and common values, believe it or not. Our continued friendship, business relationship, and military alliance is valuable and mutually beneficial.
An alliance with communist rebels is not beneficial, especially when it damages our relationship with Turkey, an actual nation and long-standing member of NATO who hosts our military personnel on bases on their soil (even when many EU countries refuse to do so, Turkey stands with us and supports us. We’re the ones who have not shown them support, withholding missile systems while allowing them to partner with us on the F35. It sends mixed signals and makes them turn elsewhere for equipment they need for their defense. Why do they need extra defense? Because we’re supporting their enemy in the neighboring country!)
Source: Quora
