Tag: Armenian allegations

  • Argentine judge: Turkey caused ‘Armenian genocide’

    Argentine judge: Turkey caused ‘Armenian genocide’

    An Argentine judge says “the Turkish state committed the crime of genocide against the Armenian people” between 1915 and 1923.

    The Associated Press

    BUENOS AIRES, Argentina —

    argentina flag

    An Argentine judge says “the Turkish state committed the crime of genocide against the Armenian people” between 1915 and 1923.

    The ruling Friday also says Turkey should help an Armenian descendant living in Argentina learn the fate of more than 50 of his relatives who disappeared nearly a century ago.

    Many international experts say the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I was genocide. Turkey maintains that far fewer died and due to civil war and unrest, rather than genocide.

    The Turkish Embassy in Buenos Aires has not immediately responded to a request for comment.

    Judge Norberto Oyarbide says his ruling is “declarative” only, with no value other than the truth.

    via Nation & World | Argentine judge: Turkey caused ‘Armenian genocide’ | Seattle Times Newspaper.

  • Obama Again Avoids ‘G-Word’ In Armenian Remembrance Message

    Obama Again Avoids ‘G-Word’ In Armenian Remembrance Message

    U.S. -- US President Barack Obama speaks about reforming Wall Street and the financial reform bill in the Great Hall at Cooper Union in New York, 22Apr2010U.S. — US President Barack Obama speaks about reforming Wall Street and the financial reform bill in the Great Hall at Cooper Union in New York, 22Apr2010

    24.04.2010
    Emil Danielyan

    Backtracking on a campaign pledge, U.S. President Barack Obama on Saturday again declined to describe the 1915 massacres of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey as genocide as he honored the victims of “one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century.” (UPDATED)

    As was the case in April 2009, Obama used instead the Armenian phrase Meds Yeghern, or Great Calamity, to mark the 95th anniversary of the start of the mass killings and deportations. “In that dark moment of history, 1.5 million Armenians were massacred or marched to their death in the final days of the Ottoman Empire,” he said. “Today is a day to reflect upon and draw lessons from these terrible events.”

    “The Meds Yeghern is a devastating chapter in the history of the Armenian people, and we must keep its memory alive in honor of those who were murdered and so that we do not repeat the grave mistakes of the past,” he added.

    Obama at the same time again made clear that he stands by his statements on the subject issued during the 2008 U.S. presidential race. “I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915, and my view of that history has not changed,” he said.

    In a January 2008 statement to the Armenian community in the United States, Obama, then a presidential candidate, called the Armenian genocide “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. I intend to be that president,” he said at the time.

    Obama backpedaled on that pledge after taking office, anxious not to antagonize Turkey, a key U.S. ally. In his April 2009 statement on Armenian Remembrance Day, Obama implicitly cited the need not to undermine the U.S.-backed rapprochement between Armenia and Turkey. The process culminated in the signing of Turkish-Armenian normalization agreements in Zurich last October.

    Obama’s latest message contains no explicit references to the normalization process that has stalled because of Ankara’s refusal to unconditionally normalize ties with Yerevan. It only voices support for continued historical dialogue between Armenian and Turkish societies.

    “I salute the Turks who saved Armenians in 1915 and am encouraged by the dialogue among Turks and Armenians, and within Turkey itself, regarding this painful history,” Obama said. “Together, the Turkish and Armenian people will be stronger as they acknowledge their common history and recognize their common humanity.”

    The current and previous U.S. administrations have strongly encouraged and even sponsored Turkish-Armenian contacts at various levels. The U.S. State Department was, for example, behind the establishment in 2001 of the non-governmental Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission (TARC).

    TARC called for the unconditional normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations before being disbanded in 2004. It is also famous for commissioning a study on the events of 1915 from the New York-based International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ).

    In a 2003 report, the ICTJ concluded that the Armenian massacres “include all of the elements of the crime of genocide” as defined by a 1948 United Nations convention. Former U.S. President George W. Bush repeatedly cited the ICTJ study in his April 24 statements.

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    U.S. — President Barack Obama (L) greets Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, DC, 12Apr2010

    Obama on Saturday also paid tribute to the “remarkable spirit” of the Armenian people. “The indomitable spirit of the Armenian people is a lasting triumph over those who set out to destroy them,” he said. “Many Armenians came to the United States as survivors of the horrors of 1915. Over the generations Americans of Armenian descent have richened our communities, spurred our economy, and strengthened our democracy.”

    These words will hardly placate influential Armenian-American advocacy groups that had strongly backed Obama’s presidential bid and now deplore his reluctance to use the word “genocide.” They have also criticized the Obama administration for opposing a congressional draft resolution affirming the Armenian genocide.

    The Turkish government scrambled to halt further progress of the resolution after it was approved by U.S. House Foreign Affairs committee on March 4. Turkish leaders also warned Obama against uttering the politically sensitive word in his April 24 message. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested after meeting Obama in Washington last week that the U.S. president will heed the warning.

    Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian seemed resigned to that as he addressed the nation Thursday on the future of the Turkish-Armenian normalization process. But he implied that Obama’s failure to term the 1915 massacres a genocide will not halt the decades-long Armenian campaign for genocide recognition. 

    “Our struggle for the international recognition of the Genocide continues,” said Sarkisian. “If some circles in Turkey attempt to use our candor to our detriment, to manipulate the process to avoid the reality of the 24th of April, they should know all too well that the 24th of April is the day that symbolizes the Armenian Genocide, but in no way shall it mark the time boundary of its international recognition.”

    https://www.azatutyun.am/a/2023467.html

  • Pro-Armenian Turks Urged To Mark Armenian ‘Great Catastrophe’ In Istanbul

    Pro-Armenian Turks Urged To Mark Armenian ‘Great Catastrophe’ In Istanbul

    Armenia — Screenshot, Turkish intellectuals call for commemorating victims of 1915 events, 21Apr2010

    21.04.2010

    Prominent Turkish intellectuals have urged their countrymen to join them in marking on Saturday the 95th anniversary of the start of mass killings and deportations of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire with a silent protest in Istanbul.

    “We call upon all peoples of Turkey who share this heartfelt pain to commemorate and pay tribute to the victims of 1915. In black, in silence. With candles and flowers,” they said in an online petition signed by dozens of other Turks.

    “For this is OUR pain. This is a mourning for ALL OF US,” reads the petition posted at .

    The gathering, if it is allowed by the Turkish authorities, will take place in Istanbul’s central Taksim square and mark the first-ever public commemoration of more than one million Armenians massacred by Ottoman Turks in 1915-1918.

    The unprecedented action was initiated by renowned intellectuals challenging the official Turkish version of those events, which holds that the Armenian death toll is inflated and denies a premeditated government effort to exterminate the Armenian population of the crumbling empire. The signatories include journalist Ali Bayramoglu, historians Halil Berktay and Taner Akcam, and other scholars such as Cengiz Aktar and Baskin Oran.

    The petition stops short of calling the massacres a genocide, using instead the Armenian phrase “Great Catastrophe.” “In 1915, when we had a population of only 13 million people, there were 1,5 to 2 million Armenians living on this land,” it says, adding: “They were the grocer in our neighborhood, our tailor, our goldsmith, our carpenter, our shoemaker, our farmhand, our millwright, our classmate, our teacher, our officer, our private, our deputy, our historian, our composer…

    “Our friend. Our next-door neighbors and our companion in bad times. In Thrace, in the Aegean, in Adana, in Malatya, in Van, in Kars…In Samatya, in Sisli, in the Islands, in Galata…

    “On April 24th, 1915 they were ‘rounded up.’ We lost them. They are not here anymore. A great majority of them do not exist anymore. Nor do their graveyards. There EXISTS the overwhelming ‘Great Pain’ that was laid upon the qualms of our conscience by the ‘Great Catastrophe.’ It’s been getting deeper and deeper for the last 95 years.”

    Thousands of Turks signed a similar online petition that was initiated by mostly the same public figures in December 2008. It offered Armenians a personal apology and called for the Turkish government to acknowledge the killings.

    Turkish prosecutors threatened to bring criminal charges against the authors of the appeal under Article 301 of the Turkish penal code, which criminalizes “insulting the Turkish people.”

    The Turkish government has scrambled in recent weeks to prevent further progress of a U.S. congressional resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide. It has also pressed U.S. President Barack Obama to again avoid using the word “genocide” in a statement on the massacre anniversary due on April 24.

    Obama has been receiving diametrically opposite messages from leaders of the influential Armenian community in the United States as well as pro-Armenian U.S. lawmakers. More than a dozen members of the U.S. Senate have signed this week a letter calling on him “to stand on the right side of history and unequivocally affirm the Armenian Genocide.”

    “While we fully acknowledge the importance of the U.S.-Turkey relationship, we should never, for any reason, fail to call a tragedy of this magnitude by its rightful name,” the senators said.

    https://www.azatutyun.am/a/2020635.html
  • Conference on so-called Genocide to Be Held in Ankara on April 24

    Conference on so-called Genocide to Be Held in Ankara on April 24

    ANKARA, Turkey—On April 24-25, a symposium on the Armenian Genocide, titled “1915 within its pre and post-historical periods: Denial and Confrontation,” will be held in Ankara. Organized by the Ankara Freedom to Thought Initiative (AFTI), the symposium will not only address the history, but explore issues like the confiscation of Armenian property and reparations.

    Confirmed participants include Ragip Zarakolu (publisher), Recep Marasli (author of The Armenian National Democratic Movement and 1915 Genocide), Sait Cetinoglu (activist and writer), Dr. David Gaunt (genocide scholar, author of Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim-Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia During World War I), Dr. Henry Theriault (professor of Philosophy, Worcester State University), and Khatchig Mouradian (Doctoral student in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University; editor, the Armenian Weekly).

    Dedicated to the memory of Hrant Dink, the symposium will comprise of four sessions: a) the Armenian Genocide from a historical perspective, b) official ideological denial from the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) to Kemalism, c) Turkification of the Economy and the issue of the confiscated Armenian Property, and d) what needs to be done and how?

    Asbarez will provide in depth coverage of the conference.

    ===========  NOTE FROM TURKISH FORUM  =========================

    It is unbelievable that ARF makes provocation until Ankara. Armenian Weekly is the newspaper of ARF in eastern part of USA; they published calls to murder against archibishop Levon Tourian in 1933, during the months preceding his assassination by 7 Dashnaks, in his proper church; Armenian Weekly published Naziesque articles from 1933 to 1943; Armenian Weekly supported passionately Armenian terrorism of 1970’s and 1980’s, with a openly racist perspective (against the “Turkish Mongol” race), calling even “a success” the assassination of Ahmet Benler, the 27-years-old son of Turkish ambassador in The Heague.

    They are killing Hrant Dink a second time. He was rather stupid and ignorant, but he had fair ideas.

    Will be somebody to this conference to say the truth to this Dashnak and to the rascal who will be with him on the tribune?

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    If this is design to open discussion about validity of Armenian claims,I understand. Otherwise Symposium ought include the following:
    e) Armenian aggression to Azerbaijan
    f) Confiscated of non Armenian properties in Armenia
    g) Role and participation of Armenian people in PKK activities
    Armagan