Tag: Barack Obama

Was the 1915 killing of Armenians genocide?

with responce from YUKSEL OKTAY

06 March 2010

The Question Is Debatable, But It’s Not For The Us Congress To Decide

by Stephen Kinzer

Genocide Vote Harms Us-Turkey TiesFor the US house of representatives foreign affairs committee to decide that the killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915 constituted genocide, as it did Thursday by a one-vote margin, would be acceptable and even praiseworthy if it were part of a serious historical effort to review all the great atrocities of modern history. But the singling out of Turks for censure, among all the killers of the 20th century, is something quite different. This vote was a triumph of emotion, a victory for ethnic lobbying, and another example of the age-old American impulse to play moral arbiter for the world.

Turkey recalled its ambassador in Washington immediately after the vote, which was broadcast live on Turkish television. The resolution now goes to the full House of Representatives. Given the pull of moneyed politics, and President Obama’s unwillingness or inability to bring Congress to heel on this issue, as Presidents Bush and Clinton did, it could pass. That would provoke much anger in Turkey, and might weaken the US-Turkish relationship at the precise moment when the US needs to strengthen it.

In the past few years, Turkey has taken on a new and assertive role in the Middle East and beyond. Turkey can go places, talk to factions, and make deals that the US cannot. Yet it remains fundamentally aligned with western values and strategic goals. No other country is better equipped to help the US navigate through the region’s treacherous deserts, steppes and mountains.

Would it be worth risking all of this to make a clear moral statement? Perhaps. What emerged from Washington this week, though, was no cry of righteous indignation. Various considerations, including the electoral power of Armenian-Americans, may have influenced members of Congress. It is safe to surmise, however, that few took time to weigh the historical record soberly and seek to place the Ottoman atrocity in the context of other 20th century massacres.

Two questions face Congress as it considers whether to call the 1915 killings genocide. The first is the simple historical question: was it or wasn’t it? Then, however, comes an equally vexing second question: is it the responsibility of the US Congress to make sensitive judgments about events that unfolded long ago? The first question is debatable, the second is not.

Congress has neither the capacity nor the moral authority to make sweeping historical judgments. It will not have that authority until it sincerely investigates other modern slaughters – what about the one perpetrated by the British in Kenya during the 1950s, documented in a devastating study that won the 2006 Pulitzer prize? – and also confronts aspects of genocide in the history of the United States itself. Doing this would require an enormous amount of largely pointless effort. Congress would be wiser to recognise that it does not exist to penetrate the vicissitudes of history or dictate fatwas to the world.

This vote has already harmed US-Turkish relations because it has angered many Turks. If the resolution proceeds through Congress, it will cause more harm. This is lamentable, because declining US-Turkish relations will be bad for both countries and for the cause of regional stability. Just as bad, the vote threatens to upset the fragile reconciliation that has been underway between Turkey and Armenia in recent months.

In this episode is encapsulated one of the timeless truths of diplomacy. Emotion is the enemy of sound foreign policy; cool consideration of long-term self-interest is always wiser. Congress seems far from realising this. . .

Genocide ruling harms US-Turkey relations | Stephen Kinzer

This article was published on guardian.co.uk at 00.28 GMT on Friday 5 March 2010

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Open Letter to Stephen Kinzer, long time student of Turkish Affairs and the first New York Times Bureau Chief in Istanbul (1995-2000) and a great guy. Thursday 4 March 2009, Flemington, NJ – Saturday 6 March, Washington, NJ

Your article below was timely and has merits. However, I believe it is time for you to bite the bullet and declare to the world that the events of 1915 can not be labeled as genocide, which I believe you also believe deep in your heart, have but not stated openly in your article. So should Guenther Levy, who wrote an excellent book “Armenian gencide” but rather than stating the positive statement based on all the information presented in his definitive work, he referred to as “Disputed genocide.”. Now, a dozen concerned Turkish-Americans, led by a retired IBM Engineer and flier Sevgin Oktay have published a series of 4 page brochures on the falsifications by a number of Armenian organizations and individuals, which leaves the question to the reader whether it was a genocide or not. I believe it is time for these concerned people and the Turkish-Americans (146,000 according to the new Turkish Ambassador who was recalled to Ankara after the HCFA vote), to stop beating around the bush and face the facts and declare to President Obama, the prime mover of the, that the Armenians fired the first shot, pursued the establishment of a state of their own on lands where they were never the majority through rebellions, took arms against their own government and led uprisings and massacres of Turks, joined the Russian and French Forces even after 1915 when many returned to Turkey from Syria and the USA while hundreds and thousands stayed in the Caucauses, which most Armenians and their blind supporters do not want to talk about.

Who ever reads your article and other publications, and ponder on the question, they will probably answer, “Yes, it was a genocide”, just like the 23 members out of 46 led by a fanatic of the House Foreign Relations Committee did on March 4, 2009, a dark page on the US Congress history, probably because all their lives, they have been continuously exposed to the Armenian propaganda, who were elated by the one vote win. I am sure all of them must have visited the US Holocaust Museum in WDC which exhibits the fabricated Hitler statement on “Who remembers the Annihilation of Armenians” (visited by 2.5 million visitors every year,) and now the untruthful “Morgenthau Exhibit” at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York”, scheduled to run until the end of 2010, competing with Istanbul as the Cullture Capital of Europe 2010. If they have also read 1915 Ambassador Henry Morgenthau’s “Story Book”, and the Israeli Ambassador to US book on 230 year history of America without mentioning the Turkish contributions, Peter Balakian’s book “The Burning Tigris” and the play, “Beast on the Moon” being stage every year near April 24, how can they not answer “yes” to your question, not knowing the truth.

Probably the best authority in the world on the Armenian issue is Prof. Dr. Turkkaya Ataov, the retired Prof of International Affairs who has written more than 100 books and hundreds of articles about the Armenian issue and has given confrences all over the world, from the US to England to Australia, with genuine documents not faked and fabricated ones being used by most Armenian organizations, the last count according to the late Hrant Dink, over 26,000, some of which will be exposed as another brochure by the. I would humbly recommend that Prof. Ataov should appear on US Media and also, instead of asking a similar question on the Armenian issue, “What happened in 1915”, he too should state the truth about the Srmenian revolts that led to the re-location of Armenians, not deportations, as Turkish Ambassador namik tan erroneously stated in the 10 minute CBS program.

Many individuals and organizations are asking, “What next?” My humble recommendation would be to write to both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi not to bring the Resolution to the floor and to President Obama, to stop his support to the Resolution, and to the American people through lectures at Universities (one place would be the March 13, MIT Conference), appearnecs on TV and articels in the media.

Respectfully,

Yuksel Oktay

Open Letter to the Chairman Howard L. Berman and the 46 Members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on, “Battle over History’’, aired by CBS 60 Minute, Feb. 28, 2010

Part III

February 28, 2010

Open Letter to Andy Rooney, the Commentator on CBS 60 Minute Program, on “Battle over History’’, aired by CBS 60 Minute, today, Sunday at 19:00 PM, Feb. 28, 2010

Andy Rooney,

CBS 60 Minute Commentator

New York, NY

Dear Mr. Rooney,

Your commentary at the end of the 60 Minute program today was excellent, as usual. You were right in questioning the wisdom of including all those questions in the 2010 Census Form. I don’t know if you watched the entire 60 Minute program, especially the segment called “Battle over History”, the 10 minute segment prepared by E. Goushon and Drew Moughathan, which was full of fabricated stories, distorted facts, and not a good one. In fact, it was a disgrace to TV journalism, in which CBS is good at. In fact, probably the best program on TV is the “Sunday Morning” originated by Charles H Kuralt who would neverallow the showing of a one sided story on his program. Just like you questioned the Cencus Form, I would like to question the allegations in the “Battle of History”, if possible, with your help, which was more like “ Battle over History with Fabrications, Forged Documents, and Armenian Distortion of Facts”

For years, 60 Minutes has been presenting excellent segments on many subjects that the public has cherished over and over again. I still remember the segment that was presented some years ago on Ahmet Ertegun, a Turkish-American and a music mogul who made Charles Ray famous along with many African-American musicians over the years. He is now buried in a small grave in Uskudar, Istanbul, but his contributions to the American society will never be forgotten.

The 10 minute segment “Battle of History “, was full of fabrications, forged documents and distorted facts, as a result of which, the truth was lost. In 10 minutes, the entire Turkish nation was convicted of a crime which has never been proven in an International Court. Peter Balakian made a new revelation that 400,000 Armenians died in , which is a fabrication. Many of the re-located Armenians did arrive in and all of them were given homes, land and money. Armenians were given an option to return to Turkey in 1916 and 1917, and many did, in fact some joining the French forces and fighting against the Ottoman Empire. The descendants of the re-located Armenians who chose to live in Syria and Lebanon make up a large portion of the 8 million Diaspora Armenians. These facts were not mentioned in the presentation.

Just one site was shown along the Euphrates, claiming that the bones were everywhere, which is questionable after 95 years. Perhaps they were just placed there for the program. The Turkish Ambassador Nabi Sensoy was not given an opportunity to tell the truth, since he appeared for less than a minute, and erroneouslyreferred to the re-settlement as deportations. The Hitler statement that Peter Balakian loves to state at every occasion is a total fabrication which has been proven to be false. The reference to genocide scholars is also distortion of facts since these people are self appointed individuals without any credentials to pass a judgament on what happened 95 years ago. The murder of Hrant Dink was condemned by everyone in Turkey when 100,000 Turks walked behind his coffin, including this writer.

The 10 minute segment was broadcast as a propaganda material to influence the 46 members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee before their vote on the fabricated Armenian genocide resolution on March 4, 2010. I will venture to say that, if they watched this segment, they will not believe all the falsifications and vote “NO” to the Resolution. Below is a letter that I sent to the members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and I hope you too will read it. And I hope you will have a talk with Bob Simon who put this segment on 60 Minutes, tarnishing its reputation. It would be wise if CBS 60 Minute airs “Armenian Revolt”, a documentary made by an American, which tells the truth about the Armenian issue.

Respectfully.

Yuksel Oktay

Concerned American with Turkish Heritage and Past President,

Federation of Turkish-American Associations, NY (1973)

Saturday, 27 February 2010

Washington, NJ

March 6, 2010
Armenia Resolution Won’t Get Full U.S. House Vote, Aide Says

March 06, 2010, 12:01 AM EST

By Peter S. Green and James Rowley

March 6 (Bloomberg) — Democratic lawmakers bowed to concerns expressed by the Obama administration and agreed not to schedule a full House vote on a resolution that labels as genocide the killing of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey, a congressional aide said.

House leaders have no plans at this time for a chamber vote on the measure, which a House committee approved on March 4, the House Democratic leadership aide said yesterday. The aide spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The resolution passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee on a 23-22 vote. Turkey responded by recalling its ambassador in Washington, Namik Tan, for consultations.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had spoken out against a full House vote on March 4 while attending a conference in Costa Rica. She reiterated yesterday that President Barack Obama’s administration “strongly opposes the resolution.”

A full House vote would “impede the normalization process between Turkey and Armenia,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in Washington yesterday before word surfaced of the leadership’s decision. “The best way for Turkey and Armenia to address their shared past is through ongoing negotiations,” he said.

The measure says the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor of modern-day Turkey, killed 1.5 million ethnic Armenians from 1915 to 1923. It asks the president to ensure that U.S. foreign policy reflects “appropriate understanding” of the atrocity and “the consequences of the failure to realize a just resolution.”

Similar Recall

Turkey, a U.S. ally and NATO member, had recalled its U.S. ambassador for a brief period in protest to a similar resolution passed by a House committee in 2007. That measure never came up for a full House vote.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul said on his Web site that the March 4 committee vote was “one-sided and remote from historical realities,” and would hurt talks with Armenia.

“We’ve worked at every level with the American administration on a variety of issues and we’ve always supported Mr. Obama’s vision of peace,” Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in Ankara yesterday. “We don’t expect this contribution of ours to be sacrificed to a few local political games.”

The resolution showed a lack of “strategic vision” on the part of U.S. lawmakers who supported it, Davutoglu said.

Iranian Trade

Turkey has been expanding trade with Iran and Obama in December called the country an “important player” in efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear program.

Turkey’s border and its trade relationship with Iran makes Turkish support vital for U.S. efforts to use sanctions to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, said Bulent Aliriza, Director of the Turkey Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

While the Armenia-related resolution came from Congress and not the administration, Turkey may not see any difference, further hampering U.S. efforts to impose sanctions on Iran, said Henri Barkey, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

“What is clearly very likely is that on Iran we are going to get less cooperation from them,” Barkey said before the aide disclosed that the resolution won’t get a full House vote.

Turkey asserts that the resolution hurts Turkish and Armenian efforts to renew diplomatic relations that were broken over Armenia’s military intervention in Azerbaijan’s Nagorno- Karabakh region following the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.

Clinton’s Intervention

Turkey and Armenia agreed in October to renew relations after Clinton helped the countries overcome a last-minute dispute before a signing ceremony in Zurich. Under the accords, which are waiting to be approved by Turkey’s parliament, a historical commission would investigate the killings.

After the French parliament in 2006 approved legislation making it criminal to deny that a genocide took place, Turkey said France had done “irreparable damage” to relations between the two countries.

The chairman of the Armenian National Committee of America, a lobbying group in Washington, praised the House committee shortly after it passed its genocide resolution. “You cannot have a relationship or a reconciliation based upon lies,” Kenneth Hachikian said in an interview after the vote. “Turkey can’t come to the table and say let’s reconcile but we deny what the rest of the world acknowledges.”

The House resolution noted that England, France and Russia called the killings a crime against humanity at the time, and that Turkey’s own government indicted the leaders of the massacres after World War I.

–With assistance from Hans Nichols in Washington and Steve Bryant in Ankara. Editors: Don Frederick, Mike Millard.

-0- Mar/06/2010 05:00 GMT

To contact the reporters on this story: Peter S. Green in Washington at [email protected]; James Rowley in Washington at [email protected]

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jim Kirk at [email protected]

==========================

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2010/03/05/past-imperfect-present-tense

The Armenian genocide

Past imperfect, present tense

Mar 5th 2010 | NEW YORK
From Economist.com

Congress reconsiders America’s official position on the Armenian genocide

TWO questions faced an American congressional panel on Thursday March 5th as it considered the mass killings of Armenians during and after the first world war by forces of the Ottoman Empire. First, was it genocide? The historical debate is as hot, and unsettled, as ever. Armenians continue to insist that it was the first genocide of the twentieth century, while Turks call the killings merely part of the chaos of the break-up of empire.

But the second question on the minds of congressmen in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives was more urgent. What is more important, fidelity to history or concern for the present? The vote took place as warming relations between Turkey and Armenia have cooled again and those between Turkey and America are under increasing strain over Iran, Israel and other affairs in the region. Turkish diplomats and politicians gave warning before the vote that the consequences would be felt across the range of issues of shared concern to the two countries. In the end the panel narrowly decided against pragmatism and chose to set straight the historical records. A resolution recognising the killings as genocide was sent to the House by a vote of 23 to 22.

When the same House committee passed a “genocide” resolution in 2007 the White House urged that the vote be scrapped. But this year, it had come with a twist; Barack Obama had promised during his election campaign to recognise the event as genocide. But before the vote his advisers said that while he acknowledges a genocide personally, he urged unsuccessfully that official interpretation be left to the parties involved. Congress is far more sensitive to lobbying than the president and to small but highly motivated groups of voters. Lobbyists working for both Armenians and Turks had been active before the vote and Armenians are concentrated in several Californian districts.

But no fashioner of foreign policy–among whom the president is by far the most important–can ignore the strategic importance of Turkey. It is a vital American ally and has the second-biggest army in NATO. The country is home to an important American air base and is a crucial supply route for America’s forces in Iraq. Relations were difficult even before the beginning of the war in Iraq in 2003. The mildly Islamist government denied the Americans the ability to open a second front in Iraq through Turkey. Turkey’s relationship with Israel has deteriorated too. Israel’s two recent wars, in Lebanon and Gaza, have outraged Turkish public opinion. Mr Obama’s more even-handed approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict has improved America’s reputation in Turkey, but not by much.

Turkey itself is caught between forces that make the Armenia issue potentially dangerous. The country’s secular, Western-oriented politicians, among others, have been discouraged by the strict terms offered by the European Union for eventual Turkish membership. In part as a result there has been a gradual realignment in Turkish foreign policy towards its more immediate neighbours. Turkey’s government seeks peaceful relations with countries at its borders, which has meant some cosying up to Iran, despite the fact that most of Turkey’s NATO allies are pushing for more sanctions against the Islamic republic over its alleged efforts to obtain nuclear weapons.

The vote comes at a sensitive time, too, for Turkey’s relations with Armenia. The pair have been at odds since Turkey closed the border in 1993, during Armenia’s war with Turkey’s ethnic cousins in Azerbaijan. Last year, protocols were agreed that foresaw an establishment of diplomatic relations and an opening of the border. But Armenia’s highest court then declared that the protocols were not in line with Armenia’s constitutionally mandated policy that foreign affairs conform to the Armenian view of the genocide. Turkey responded with fury and the protocols were endangered. The American vote will anger Turkey further and perhaps make it even more inclined to turn away from Europe, America and Armenia in favour of its Islamic neighbours.

One hope is that Turkish anger will subside if, as happened in 2007, the House leadership stops the resolution from reaching a full vote. It may do so again. Turkey recalled its ambassador after Thursday’s vote just as in 2007. The Turkish government, in a spat with the country’s nationalist army, may play the foreign-insult card to bolster its domestic strength. But ultimately the Turks are unlikely to weaken their relationship with America lightly.

March 6, 2010
Crisis in Turkey
by Daniel Pipes
National Review Online
March 2, 2010
https://www.danielpipes.org/8009/crisis-in-turkey
German

Portuguese

Romanian
The arrest and indictment of top military figures in Turkey last week precipitated potentially the most severe crisis since Atatürk founded the republic in 1923. The weeks ahead will probably indicate whether the country continues its slide toward Islamism or reverts to its traditional secularism. The denouement has major implications for Muslims everywhere.

“Taraf” broke the Balyoz conspiracy theory on Jan. 22, 2010.

Turkey’s military has long been both the state’s most trusted institution and the guarantor of Atatürk’s legacy, especially his laicism. Devotion to the founder is not some dry abstraction but a very real and central part of a Turkish officer’s life; as journalist Mehmet Ali Birand has documented, cadet-officers hardly go an hour without hearing Atatürk’s name invoked. On four occasions between 1960 and 1997, the military intervened to repair a political process gone awry. On the last of these occasions, it forced the Islamist government of Necmettin Erbakan out of power. Chastened by this experience, some of Erbakan’s staff re-organized themselves as the more cautious Justice and Development Party (AKP). In Turkey’s decisive election of 2002, they surged ahead of discredited and fragmented centrist parties with a plurality of 34 percent of the popular vote.
Parliamentary rules then transformed that plurality into a 66 percent supermajority of assembly seats and a rare case of single-party rule. Not only did the AKP skillfully take advantage of its opportunity to lay the foundations of an Islamic order but no other party or leader emerged to challenge it. As a result, the AKP increased its portion of the vote in the 2007 elections to a resounding 47 percent, with control over 62 percent of parliamentary seats.
Repeated AKP electoral successes encouraged it to drop its earlier caution and to hasten moving the country toward its dream of an Islamic Republic of Turkey. The party placed partisans in the presidency and the judiciary while seizing increased control of the educational, business, media, and other leading institutions. It even challenged the secularists’ hold over what Turks call the “deep state” – the non-elected institutions of the intelligence agencies, security services, and the judiciary. Only the military, ultimate arbiter of the country’s direction, remained beyond AKP control.
Several factors then prompted the AKP to confront the military: European Union accession demands for civilian control over the military; a 2008 court case that came close to shutting down the AKP; and the growing assertiveness of its Islamist ally, the Fethullah Gülen Movement. An erosion in AKP popularity (from 47 percent in 2007 to 29 percent now) added a sense of urgency to this confrontation, for it points to the end of one-party AKP rule in the next elections.

Gen. Ibrahim Firtina, a former head of the air force, was questioned in court about a plot to overthrow the government.

The AKP devised an elaborate conspiracy theory in 2007, dubbed Ergenekon, to arrest about two hundred AKP critics, including military officers, under accusation of plotting to overthrow the elected government. The military responded passively, so the AKP raised the stakes on Jan. 22 by concocting a second conspiracy theory, this one termed Balyoz (“Sledgehammer”) and exclusively directed against the military. The military denied any illegal activities and the chief of general staff, Ýlker Baþbuð, warned that “Our patience has a limit.” Nonetheless, the government proceeded, starting on Feb. 22, to arrest 67 active and retired military officers, including former heads of the air force and navy. So far, 35 officers have been indicted.
Thus has the AKP thrown down the gauntlet, leaving the military leadership basically with two unattractive options: (1) continue selectively to acquiesce to the AKP and hope that fair elections by 2011 will terminate and reverse this process; or (2) stage a coup d’état, risking voter backlash and increased Islamist electoral strength.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoðan, President Abdullah Gul and Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Ýlker Baþbuð met on February 25.

At stake is whether the Ergenekon/Balyoz offensives will succeed in transforming the military from an Atatürkist to a Gülenist institution; or whether the AKP’s blatant deceit and over-reaching will spur secularists to find their voice and their confidence. Ultimately the issue concerns whether Shari’a (Islamic law) rules Turkey or the country returns to secularism. Turkey’s Islamic importance suggests that the outcome of this crisis has consequences for Muslims everywhere. AKP domination of the military means Islamists control the umma‘s most powerful secular institution, proving that, for the moment, they are unstoppable. But if the military retains its independence, Atatürk’s vision will remain alive in Turkey and offer Muslims worldwide an alternative to the Islamist juggernaut.

—
March 4, 2010

BEYAZ SARAY VE SOZDE SOYKIRIM OYLAMASI

Kritik oylama öncesi şok

‘Ermeni iddialarına ilişkin tasarı, yarın ABD Temsilciler Meclisi Dışişleri Komitesi’nde görüşülmeden önce Beyaz Saray’dan yapılan son açıklama moralleri bozdu.

Türkiye, ABD Temsilciler Meclisi Dışişleri Komitesi’nde yarın görüşülüp oylanacak 1915 yılı olaylarına ilişkin Ermeni iddialarına karşı çalışmalarını sürdürüyor.Ermeni tasarısının Dış İlişkiler Komitesi’nde oylanması öncesinde Beyaz Saray’dan ilk açıklama geldi.Vatan gazetesinin haberine göre; Beyaz Saray Ulusal Güvenlik Konseyi Basın Sözcüsü Mike Hammer, “Başkan Obama 24 Nisan 2009’da yayınlanan mesajında 1915’te yaşanan olaylar karşısındaki sürekli duruşunu vurgulamış ve bu konudaki görüşü de değişmemiştir. Gerçeklerin dürüst ve adilce kabulünden yanayız. Bu hedefe ulaşmanın en iyi yolunun Ermeni ve Türk halkının ilişkilerini normalleştirme çabaları dâhilinde geçmişte yaşananları da ele almaları olduğu yönündeki inancımız sürüyor. Bu çabaları gayretle desteklemeye devam edeceğiz” dedi.

Türkiye bu açıklamaya rağmen Washington’da yoğun bir lobi faaliyeti sürdürüyor. Bir yandan iktidar ve muhalefet milletvekillerinden oluşan heyetler yoğun bir diplomasi sürdürüyor. Diğer yandan Türkiye’nin yeni Washington elçisi Namık Tan, kolları sıvadı. Tan, tasarıya karşı Türk tezlerini desteklemeleri için Yahudi lobisi ve derneklerine baskı yapmaya başladı.

Tan’ın temaslarının ilk Yahudi kurumundan tasarıya karşı bir çıkış geldi. Merkezi Washington’da bulunan düşünce kuruluşu Ulusal Güvenlik İşleri Yahudi Enstitüsü (JINSA), Ermeni tasarısına karşı çıkılması ve tasarının kabul edilmemesi gerektiğini belirtti. JINSA’dan yapılan açıklamada “ABD Kongresi, başka zamanlarda başka halkların tarihinin tartışılacağı bir yer değildir. Türkiye ve Ermenistan bağımsız ülkeler. Kongre’nin işe karışması katkı sağlamayacaktır” ifadesi kullanıldı.

Başbakan Erdoğan, Ankara’da yaptığı açıklamada “Her yıl bu sürecin tekrar tekrar yaşanmasını son derece anlamsız buluyoruz” dedi. Tarihçilere bırakılması gereken böyle bir mesele karşısında Temsilciler Meclisi’nin duyarlı davranmasını isteyen Erdoğan, “Türkiye-ABD işbirliği, tarihinin en başarılı dönemini yaşıyor. Bu işbirliğinin, bu tür girişimlerle zedelenmeyeceğini umuyorum. Başkan Obama’nın liderliğine ve sağduyusuna güveniyorum. Dışişleri Bakanı Clinton’la da aksi bir neticenin nelere mal olacağını görüştük. Herkesi, aklıselimle hareket etmeye çağırıyorum” dedi.

SON DURUM: 25-21 KABUL

Dış İlişkiler Komitesi’nde 46 milletvekili bulunuyor. 26’sı Obama’nın Demokrat Partisi’nden. 20’si ise Cumhuriyetçi. Ermeni seçmenine çok yakın olan Demokratların 18’inin tasarıya ’evet’oyu kullanması kesin gibi. Cumhuriyetçilerde ise evetçilerin sayısı 7. Tasarının 21’e karşı 25 oyla kabul edilerek genel kurula sevk edilmesi bekleniyor.Ancak genel kurul gündemine alınıp alınmaması kararı Meclis Başkanı Nancy Pelosi’ye ait. Ermeniler’in çok yoğun olarak yaşadığı California eyaletinden seçilen Pelosi, soykırım iddialarını güçlü bir şekilde destekliyor. Ancak son anda Başkan Obama’dan gelecek bir telefonun kararını değiştirebileceği belirtiliyor

March 3, 2010

CBS – BY DR. ROBERT B. MCKAY (TURK BOB)
From: ALI CINAR
Subject: BOB MCKAYDEN CBS YORUMU

To Les Moonves, President & CEO, CBS Corp. [email protected]

From: Robert McKay, PhD., P. O. Box 126, Eastford, CT 06242 860-974-0392

Regarding: Reply to the Bob Simon/Peter Balakian Story titled “Battle over History”

Date: February 28, 2010

Bob Simon’s story being aired Sunday, February 28, 2010, on 60 Minutes with Peter Balakian is causing concerns about CBS by the Turkish community…concerns that I, too, share.

50 Years ago my wife and I traveled to Turkey. We lived there for 5 years as teachers at the Tarsus American College, Tarsus, Turkey. Finding artifacts going back to 2500 B.C. opened our eyes to aspects of history that never seemed real in a sterile classroom on the rolling hills of eastern Connecticut, University of Connecticut.

One of the many issues that interested me were the events of 1915 and the actions that surrounded them.

However if we take 1915 out of context we do not see the relentless, persistent and predictable deaths that the Armenians have inflicted on their neighbors: Jews, Kurds, Turks, Azeries, and all others who might disagree with them.

A flow of history which shows a uniform and consistent pattern of atrocities by the Armenians would be the 3 periods listed:

1.      1915 through WWI Armenian Russian conspiracy

2.      1980’s Armenians begin worldwide assassinations: Ambassadors and politicians

they didn’t like. The FBI credited Armenia with 25% of international terrorism in the USA.

3.      1992—In the Nagorno=Karabakh region of Azerbaijan Armenian and Russian

forces kill 400,000 Azaries leaving 1,000,000 (IDP’s) International Displaced

Persons in Azerbaijan.

Period I

Let’s talk about 1915 through WWI. It is well documented that Russia wished the demise of Ottoman Turkey and wanted access to oceans. During this period Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire flocked to join Russian forces attacking the Ottomans from their eastern flank. The Armenian Russian forces and guerilla forces with the Ottoman Empire blow up post offices, cut lines of communication and caused the Ottomans to move up to 400,000 troops from the southern flank to protect the Armenian Russian threat. There were massacres and atrocities of equal magnitude on both sides. Bones found in Turkish soil are both ethnically Turkic and Armenian. However, today after all these years people like Peter Balakian, who never had first hand knowledge of the situation, claim that the Ottoman’s committed a genocide: as a side note the term genocide was never used until it had political importance long after WWII.

In brief your concern with the topic is appreciated, but telling only the pro-western/Christian side of the story is not appreciated. In the minds of many scholars, writers and politicians, the Armenian perspective is wrong! There are, in fact, two sides.

Please note that a preponderance of scholars and politicians do not accept the genocide concept. Interestingly the highest ranking Armenian, Hovhannes Katchaznouni, the first Prime Minister of the new independent Armenian Republic in 1923 did not accept the concept of genocide.

a)      Dr. Katchaznouni in his report to the Dashnaq Party’s 1923 Congress clearly accepts Armenian responsibility for the tragedy that befell his country. “We (Armenians) caused this tragedy. Turks knew what they were doing (and) the (Ottoman Turkish) deportation (of Armenians) was right and necessary”

This report has been hidden from researchers for years, however since being uncovered it has been published in a brief 125 page book titled “Dashnagtzoutiun Has Nothing to Do Anymore”, Kaynak Yayinlari (Kaynak Press) pps. 125.

b) The Malta Tribunal, held by England, immediately after WWI and initiated by the Armenian interest could not convict a single Ottoman military officer or politician of

genocide and/or war crimes.

c) U.S. Admiral Bristol, commander of the Sixth Fleet and later first Ambassador to the new Republic of Turkey (post WWI) traveled the country extensively and reported no genocide.

d) Ambassador Elekdar went to England to intensively study a document produced by the English called the “Blue Book”. The Ambassador has shown that most of the the documents were either fraudulently written or slanted so as to draw England into WWI.

Ambassador Elekdar subjected himself to scholars from around the world on his findings. He has not been refuted.

For brevity it is fair to say that the key scholars and leaders of the early 1900’s did not attribute a genocide to the Ottoman Turks.

Period II

During the 1980’s Armenians, who never at any time in the history of the Ottoman Empire had never had sovereignty over even a single square inch of the Anatolian peninsula were beginning to push for land claims and reparation based upon a made up genocide claim.

During this time the Turkish archives were open to scholars. No one has ever found a single note or sentence regarding a government policy of eliminating or getting rid of Armenians.

Armenia would never open its archives. In order to prevent conflicting view the Armenians began a worldwide campaign of assassinating ambassadors and others who disagreed with them. In fact at one point during this period the FBI identified Armenia as being responsible for 25% of international terror casualties in the U.S.A.

Period III

In 1992 interest in oil drive an Armenian Russian genocide of Azeris. As in Period I (1915) Armenians are pawns of Russia.

However since the early 1800’s those people of the Transcaucuses: Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan have been under the control of Russia. The Armenians more that the others, have been willing to be the pawns of Russian geo-political interests.

In the 1990’s Russia had decided that the oil rich region of Nagorno-Karabakh would be an autonomous section of Azerbaijan even though it had a high % of Armenians living there.

The Armenians living in this Nagorno Karabkh region of Azerbaijan began killing any Azari that lived there. In the village of Khojaly (about 7000 people) the Armenians killed every man, woman and child. The Russian 366^th Regiment participated.

The result was that by 1992 Armenians were responsible for killing 400,000 people and leaving over 1,000,000 International Displaced Persons (IDP’s) in Azerbaijan. Where is the popular media outrage? Where is the political outrage? These events are contemporary.

As background information let’s remember that Armenia today is about the same population as Connecticut, slightly over 3 million. Ten years ago the Armenian population was almost double that of today. For economic reasons, Armenians are relocating around the world, a large percentage to Turkey.

In Conclusion
1. The long term actions of Armenia as an aggressor pawn of Russia lends credibility to the Turkish claims that there was no genocide.
1. There is no doubt that more ethnic Turks died than ethnic Armenians,
(International Red Cross figures state that more than 25% of all ethnic Turks died

as a result of war, massacres, diseases and starvation.)
1. There never was an Ottoman policy to exterminate Armenians.
1. Ottoman Turks failed in World War I in large part because Armenian/Russian
forces diverted their capabilities to the eastern part of the empire.
1. At the beginning of the century Armenians were pawns of Russian attempts to
gain seaports. Armenia thought part of the Ottoman Empire would be given to

them.
1. Later in the century (1992) Armenia was a pawn of Russian oil interests.
Again Russia gets oil, Armenia expands its borders into Azerbaijan.
1. Armenian Russian killings in Azerbaijan are 400,000 dead and 1,000,000 IDP’s.
Where is the outrage by the media and U.S. politicians.

Personally I was very unhappy to see any program with Peter Balakian associated with it. He is an Armenian nationalist who, as a “historian” has never attempted to see the truth of both sides.

I could bring a wide range of resources to CBS that would acknowledge the suffering of Armenians and Turks and would like to do so if CBS has any interest in a broader look at history.

Your 60 Minute piece either by plan or coincidence came at a very bad time: the U.S. Congress is considering H. Res. 252 which agrees with the “non historical based claims of Armenia.”

This resolution will harm U. S. Turkish relations and the Armenian-Turkish normalization process for years to come. It will also harm Islam Christian trust for centuries around the world. Alliances between Muslim and Christian countries will be less likely. Certainly Turkish treaties with American backed Israel will be much

less enthusiastically viewed.

Cordially,

Robert McKay
March 3, 2010
Army Ebbs, and Power Realigns in Turkey

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

Published: March 1, 2010

ISTANBUL — The detention of top military officers in Turkey last week was nothing less than a quiet piece of history. The military, long considered untouchable in Turkey, was pushed from its political pedestal with startling finality.

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Umit Bektas/Reuters

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, left, and Gen. Ilker Basbug, at a funeral on Sunday, are thought to have good relations.

The moment, years in the making, was more whimper than bang. But it still raises an existential question for this NATO member: What sort of country will Turkey be?

The question goes to the very heart of modern Turkey, a Muslim democracy whose military was a potent force in the country’s political life for most of its 86-year history. Its strictly secular ideology permeated all aspects of public life, including the education system, the judiciary and the bureaucracy. The military, long considered the ultimate guardian of that secularism, has overthrown elected governments to protect it.

Not only has the military been politically defanged, but it has also proved unable or unwilling to fight back. Dozens of officers were detained last week, and several senior ones were arrested. Top military leaders met and managed to produce only a brief statement, never mind a coup.

“What came out of that?” said Baskin Oran, a professor of international relations at Ankara University. “A big nothing. This is finished. Turkey has crossed the border.”

Now the country is shedding its skin, sloughing off an outdated doctrine, but nervous about what will take its place.

“The old ideology is bankrupt, that much we know,” said Soli Ozel, a professor of political science at Bilgi University. “But what are we going to be putting in its stead? How will we filter the world around us? How will we see ourselves?”

Turkey is moving into uncharted territory, causing deep anxiety among millions of secular Turks who fear that the country’s domineering prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan — a former Islamist who won 47 percent of the vote in the last election and now controls many of the country’s institutions — will trample their rights.

That worry deepened Monday, when the Turkish authorities made two more controversial arrests — of an active duty general and a state prosecutor who had investigated Islamic networks, Turkey’s Anatolian News Agency reported.

How Turkey resolves this identity crisis will reverberate well beyond its borders. The country has the second largest army in NATO after the United States. It is strategically placed, with the former Soviet Union to the north and the Middle East to the south. It is a candidate for membership in the European Union. Decades of growth have made it the seventh largest economy in Europe.

Last week’s detentions and arrests capped a month of high political drama that began in January, when a small independent newspaper, Taraf, published what it said were military documents from a 2003 meeting describing preparations for a coup.

The documents were brought in a suitcase, Taraf’s editors said, and included diagrams of two Istanbul mosques that were to have been bombed, creating an emergency that would justify a military takeover.

The military acknowledged that a meeting had taken place, but said that it was focused only on external threats. The army chief vehemently denied plans for bombings or a coup.

Even so, on Monday of last week, the Turkish authorities began detaining military officers and by the end of the week had more than 60 in custody, including two top retired generals.

“Now the army is completely pacified, eliminated as a power from the political scene,” said E. Haldun Solmazturk, a retired general. “Now the military is touchable.”

That is a profound historical change. Modern Turkey was founded in 1923 by an army general, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who imposed radical changes in language and habits on a largely illiterate, agrarian society. The military, together with the judiciary and state bureaucracy, wielded immense power, guarding Turkish democracy “as if the country was a perpetually immature child,” said Halil Berktay, a history professor at Sabanci University in Istanbul.

“The military came to acquire a sense of, ‘this is our land, this is our Republic,’ ” he said. It deposed elected governments four times, most recently in 1997.

That role began to change with the rise of Mr. Erdogan, a tough-talking Istanbul mayor representing a rising underclass of religious Turks. He was a confounding mix, from a background of political Islam, but with an agenda of bringing Turkey into the European Union, where his supporters did most of their business.

Although he was despised by the secular establishment, his party, Justice and Development, won a national election in a landslide in 2007.

The election vastly diminished the military’s role in politics, but that was changing anyway. None of the alleged coup plots cited by prosecutors ever came to pass because the top leadership stopped them.

And the fact that the military has not responded to the arrests — which include a sprawling legal proceeding against 200 people that began in 2007 — reflects a leadership that is opposed to intervention. The current chief of the army, Gen. Ilker Basbug, has spoken out against military meddling and is believed to have had good relations with Mr. Erdogan.

But to Mr. Erdogan’s critics, the arrests look suspiciously like raw efforts to silence the opposition. And now that he has control over most of the levers of power — the presidency, the government bureaucracy and Parliament — they worry that his impulses will be unchecked.

Many believe that the police and prosecutors have been hijacked by an Islamic network led by Fetullah Gulen, a Turkish preacher who lives in the United States. Nedim Sener, a journalist who has written a book on the network, said the involvement of Mr. Gulen’s followers was an “open secret.”

A looming fear is that the last remaining institution with any power to oppose him, the judiciary, will soon fall to his Islamic supporters, who are unlikely to be less ideological than their rigidly secular predecessors.

Even those who are happy to see Mr. Erdogan prevail say he is a flawed leader with autocratic tendencies. His biggest critic, Aydin Dogan, a businessman and publisher, was slapped with a giant fine last year, and journalists who work for his newspapers say spunky criticism is dead.

Mr. Ozel, the political scientist, described Mr. Erdogan’s party as “a democratizing force, but not necessarily a democratic one.”

Yildiray Ogur, an editor at Taraf who worked on the exposé that led to last week’s arrests, defended the legal cases, saying today’s Turkey was a slow-motion version of the Soviet Union in 1991, when idols fell and people came out of the woodwork confessing secrets.

For better or worse, Mr. Ozel says, former Islamists like Mr. Erdogan are the only ones engaged in the project of creating a new Turkey, with the secularist party “either incapable or unwilling to be part of the process,” routinely blocking legislation required for European Union membership.

But Mr. Sener fears this new Turkey will exclude people like him. “They say this is about democracy, but it ends up increasing their hold on power,” he said.

Mr. Oran of Ankara University dismisses those fears. Borrowing a thought from Marx, he noted that Mr. Erdogan’s supporters, once Islamist and working class, had grown comfortable, sowing the seeds of the party’s transformation. “It has become bourgeois,” Mr. Oran said. “They will always be Muslims, but they won’t be Islamists.”

March 2, 2010