AFTER DAVOS.. ATTACTS ON TURKISH POINT OF VIEW INTENSIFIED .. BELOW İS AN EXAMPLE … TURKISH FORUM …OpinionBy Rafael MedoffPublished March 04, 2009, issue of March 13, 2009. Robert Morgenthau’s announcement that he will retire after more than three decades as Manhattan’s district attorney caps an impressive career in law enforcement. With his latest case, against banks illegally aiding the governments of Iran and Sudan, three generations of Morgenthaus have now confronted perpetrators of genocide – which is as tragic a commentary on the persistence of human rights abuses in modern times as it is a tribute to a remarkable family that has fought those abuses. It began with Robert Morgenthau’s grandfather. A lawyer and realtor in turn-of-the-century Manhattan, Henry Morgenthau Sr. was an unlikely crusader for human rights. His life took a surprising turn when his support for the long-shot presidential candidacy of Woodrow Wilson was rewarded with the post of American ambassador to Turkey. Under the cover of World War I, the Turkish authorities embarked on a campaign of mass murder against their Armenian citizens. Morgenthau’s desperate cables to Washington about this “attempt to exterminate a race” – relaying details of the wholesale deportations, massacres and rapes – are among the most important evidence of the atrocities. The ambassador persuaded The New York Times and other news media to report on the “race murder,” as he called it; he inspired charity groups to raise relief funds for the survivors. But the Wilson administration, anxious to remain neutral in the war, rebuffed Morgenthau’s appeals to intervene. Morgenthau resigned in frustration in early 1916. While Morgenthau was unable to save the Armenians, his example has stood as a beacon to generations of activists determined to stop genocide. Morgenthau’s experience fills the opening section of Samantha Power’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.” Now a senior foreign policy adviser to President Obama, Power regards “the American nonresponse to the Turkish horrors” as “establishing patterns that would be repeated” throughout the ensuing century. Power, according to recent media reports, is now attempting to break the pattern by urging active American intervention against the genocide in Darfur. Two decades after Henry Morgenthau Sr. resigned his post as ambassador, a twist of fate put his son in a position to act against genocide. As the proprietor of apple orchards in New York’s Dutchess County, Henry Morgenthau Jr. became friends with his neighbor Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In 1934, Roosevelt named him secretary of the treasury. Under ordinary circumstances, the Treasury Department would not deal with matters affecting Jews in Hitler’s Europe, but in 1943 Jewish groups asked the department for permission to send funds into Axis territory to ransom Jews. The State Department’s attempt to stall the rescue plan aroused the ire and curiosity of a senior Morgenthau aide named Josiah DuBois. His investigations revealed that the State Department had been suppressing news of the Holocaust and sabotaging rescue opportunities so America would not have to deal with what one official called “the burden and the curse” of having to care for refugees. In early 1944, Morgenthau confronted Roosevelt with the evidence and urged him to create a government agency to rescue Jews. Just then, leading members of Congress, galvanized by the activist Bergson Group, were pressing the president to establish such an agency. The pressure convinced a reluctant Roosevelt to create the War Refugee Board. During the final 15 months of the war, the board helped save an estimated 200,000 Jews. Like his father and grandfather, Robert Morgenthau chose a career path that one would not expect to embroil him in international affairs. As Manhattan’s district attorney since 1975, Morgenthau prosecuted the usual array of criminals, from muggers to Mafia bosses to white-collar swindlers. Last month, however, Morgenthau announced the results of what is perhaps his most important investigation: His office caught 10 major international banks laundering “billions of dollars” for Iran and Sudan. Part of the money purchased goods that international sanctions prevent Tehran and Khartoum from acquiring. Some of the money was channeled to terrorist groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah. Ironically, Morgenthau’s bank investigators have been collaborating with the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control – the same office that, under the direction of Josiah DuBois, his father worked with during the Holocaust. Three generations of Morgenthaus were unexpectedly thrust into the international arena and rose to the challenge. Henry Sr. exposed the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide. Henry Jr. helped interrupt the Nazi genocide. Now the Sudanese regime that is carrying out genocide in Darfur and the Iranian regime that dreams of genocide against Israel are facing their own Morgenthau. The family’s legacy has come full circle. Rafael Medoff is director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and the author of “Blowing the Whistle on Genocide: Josiah E. DuBois, Jr. and the Struggle for a U.S. Response to the Holocaust” (Purdue University Press, 2008). Source: [2] Makalenin yazarinin Wikipedia girisi:Rafael Medoff is the director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. Medoff received his PhD from Yeshiva University in 1991. In 2001 he was Visiting Scholar in Jewish Studies at the State University of New York at Purchase. He has served on the editorial boards of American Jewish History, Southern Jewish History, Shofar and Menorah Review. He is a member of the Academic Council of the American Jewish Historical Society, and his essays and reviews have appeared in many scholarly journals.[1] He has made a significant contribution to the history of US-Israel relations by examining American Jewish attitudes towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Palestinian Arabs. [2]In The Deafening Silence, Medoff argues that had American Jewish leaders been more forceful in presenting the case for rescue of European Jews to the Roosevelt administration, they could have moved the administration to act. In Deborah Lipstadt’s review of Holocaust literature, she engages Medoff’s argument, but concludes that “There is nothing on record to indicate that their outspoken support would have changed the mind of restrictionist legislators.” [3] Lawrence Davidson of West Chester University cites Medoff’s assertion in Zionism and the Arabs: An American Jewish Dilemma, 1898-1948, that Zionists did not see the Palestinian Arabs as “a distinct national group with national rights-largely because the Palestinian Arabs themselves did not claim the status of a specific national grouping,” to argue against Zionism on the grounds that “no one ruled against self- determination in other parts of Greater Syria where the same views prevailed.” [4] |
Tag: Davos
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Morgenthaus vs. Genocide
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The Islamists Show Their Hand
by Soner Cagaptay
Newsweek, International Edition, Turkey
Pg. 0 Vol. 153 No. 08 ISSN: 0163-7053When Turkey’s justice and development party (AKP) first took power in 2002, it tried to reassure moderates fearful it might chip away at the country’s secular, democratic and pro-Western values. The AKP renounced its Islamist heritage and began working instead to secure European Union membership and to turn Turkey into an even more liberal and pro-Western place. Almost seven years later, however, the AKP seems anything but reformist. The recent performance of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the party’s leader and Turkey’s prime minister, at Davos–where he stormed off a panel with Israeli President Shimon Peres, vowing never to return–has convinced many skeptics that the party is turning its back on the West. So have moves like saying he wants to represent Hamas on international platforms and defending Iran’s nuclear weapons. The AKP now sides with Islamists and ignores their crimes. This is radically different from the Turkey of old. What happened?
To understand the AKP’s turnaround, remember where it came from. The party’s founders, including Erdogan, cut their teeth in an earlier, more explicitly Islamist party, which featured strong anti-Western, anti-Semitic and antisecular elements. The Welfare Party, as it was known, joined a coalition government in 1996 before alienating the secular Turkish military, the courts, and the West, leading it to be banned in 1998. Yet the party never truly disappeared, and Erdogan re-created it as the pro-American, pro-EU, capitalist and reformist AKP.
Its transformation was a cynical one, however, and no sooner had the party gained power than it began to undermine the liberal values it supposedly stood for. In 2002, for instance, it began to hire top bureaucrats from an exclusive pool of religious conservatives, and the percentage of women in executive positions in government dropped.
Efforts by secular institutions to curb the AKP only backfired. When the Constitutional Court tried to prevent it from appointing one of its own as president in 2007, the AKP cast itself as the underdog representative of Turkey’s poor Muslim masses and won a monumental election victory. This hastened the party’s return to its core values. The AKP began abandoning its displays of pluralism, dismissing dissent and ignoring checks and balances and condemned the media for daring to criticize it.
The failure of EU accession talks also hurt. Having made a number of painful reforms in order to improve its chances of entry, in 2005 Turkey nonetheless hit stiff opposition led by France–at which point the AKP decided there was no point in making more painful and unpopular reforms. The nail in the coffin came that same year, when the European Court of Human Rights upheld Turkey’s old ban on Islamic headscarves on college campuses. The AKP had hoped Europe might help recalibrate Turkish secularism into a more tolerant form. But this wasn’t in the cards.
Soon the AKP began abandoning its pro-Western foreign policies as well. Despite Ankara’s historic friendship with Washington, the United States is highly unpopular among the Turkish masses. Following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the AKP realized it could use this anti-Americanism to bolster its own support. And when the Gaza operation began in December, it decided to add anti-Israeli language to the mix, which culminated at Davos, where Erdogan lectured Peres for his supposed crimes before flying home to an orchestrated hero’s welcome.
Such behavior has fanned the flames of anti-Semitism in traditionally tolerant Turkey. Erdogan has blamed “the Jewish-influenced media for misrepresenting facts about Gaza,” and the AKP-run government of Istanbul has erected giant billboards across the city reading, “You cannot be the children of Moses.”
Seven years after the AKP came to power, Turkey’s Islamists have returned to their roots. The AKP experience demonstrates that when Islamist parties moderate, it reflects not a strategic change but a tactical response to strong domestic and foreign opposition. Once these firewalls weaken, Islamist parties regress, driven by popular sentiment. A recent survey shows that the AKP’s popularity jumped 10 percent after the Davos incident, suggesting the party could pass the game-changing 50 percent threshold in the upcoming March 29 local elections. The AKP’s renewed Islamism may play well at the polls. But Turkey, and its allies, will be left worse off for it.
Cagaptay is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of “Islam, Secularism and Nationalism in Modern Turkey.”
Copyright 2009 Newsweek
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Transcript of Peres’ phone call to Erdogan
Turkish media outlets reported that Peres had apologized to Erdogan during their five-minute phone conversation, but Peres’ office denied the report, saying that the purpose of the telephone call was simply to ensure that the “crisis won’t deteriorate.”
The following is a transcript of the phone conversation between the two leaders, issued by Turkey’s state-run Anatolian Agency on Friday:
Peres: Such things happen between friends. I am very sorry for today’s incident. Firstly, my respect towards the Turkish republic and you a prime minister has never changed.
Erdogan: Firstly, of course. There is no doubt that such arguments can happen between friends. But nobody can even speak to a tribe leader so loudly and in front of the international community, and not to the leader of the Republic of Turkey.
Peres: I raised my voice. In fact my friends tell me that I have a quite voice. This has nothing to do with my relationship with the prime minister of the Republic of Turkey. I am very sorry for what happened today.
Erdogan: I heard that you are going to hold a press conference.
Peres: Not today, but tomorrow.
Erdogan: If you express these sincere feelings, which I believe you will, in tomorrow’s press conference, I assume this problem will be mostly overcome.
Peres: Of course I will publicly express these remarks.
Erdogan: Thank you very much for your call Mr. President.
Peres: I thank you and wish you a nice flight.
Source: AA (Turkey), Haaretz (Israel), January 30, 2009
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A cynical use of morality
A cynical use of morality
By Haaretz Editorial
Two outrageous new developments have worsened the already tense
relations between Israel and Turkey. Gen. Avi Mizrahi, the head of the
Israel Defense Forces’ Ground Forces issued a tongue-lashing to
Turkey’s prime minister to remind the country of past atrocities. It
goes without saying that as an army man, Gen. Mizrahi is not tasked
with formulating Israel’s foreign policy, nor does he appraise other
countries. But even more grievous is the liberty he took to denounce
and preach morality to a strategic ally, causing a stir in relations
between Israel and Turkey.At the same time, Israel’s Foreign Ministry pulled out a long worn-out
card, threatening to label the massacre of Armenians in 1915 as
genocide. It is hard to believe that the Foreign Ministry had a sudden
attack of morality regarding the Armenians. For years the ministry has
avoided adopting the word holocaust or genocide regarding the massacre
of Armenians, not only because Israel seeks to preserve its
exclusivity over the word holocaust. Mainly, it knows that adopting
the word genocide in the Armenians’ case would be tantamount to a
diplomatic showdown with Turkey, one that would in all likelihood
result in a severing of ties.This time the Foreign Ministry apparently decided that the Turkish
prime minister’s blunt statements about Israeli policy deserve a
fitting Israeli response, or at the very least the threat of such a
response. The debate is not whether to define the killing of Armenians
as genocide or a holocaust. This is a moral issue that obligates us to
re-examine history and offer a value-based judgment. The criticism is
aimed at Israel’s trying to make political use of the Armenian issue
to “punish” Turkey for daring to be so insolent as to condemn the
military operation, whose results are a matter of controversy even in
Israel.Turkey is one of Israel’s most important allies even if its prime
minister does not always express an understanding of our policies or
resorts to insulting language. The Foreign Ministry’s main efforts
should thus be geared toward containing the dispute and restoring the
relationship to its proper course. If Israel seeks to alter its stance
on the question of the murder of the Armenians, it would be wise to do
so at a more appropriate time, from a worthy position of morality and
not as a way to make threats. It shouldn’t happen whenever a
disagreement erupts with Turkey.
As for Gen. Mizrahi, perhaps the chief of staff should let his
subordinates know when they are overstepping the bounds of their
authority. In a different era, one would have expected the general to
be relieved of his duties because of his comments. -
Israeli army disowns general’s Turkey attack
Saturday, February 14 07:58 pm
The Israeli military on Saturday disassociated itself from remarks critical of Turkey made by one of its generals after Ankara described them as unacceptable and demanded an urgent clarification. Skip related content
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Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Enlarge photoThe remarks by Major General Avi Mizrahi, commander of the Israeli army headquarters, followed a row sparked by Israel’s offensive in Gaza last month and contained “unacceptable claims and nonsense targeting our prime minister and our country,” the foreign ministry said.
The Israeli ambassador to Turkey was summoned to the foreign ministry on Saturday and handed a note of protest, the statement said, adding that “the Israeli authorities were asked for an urgent clarification.”
In Jerusalem, the Israeli army later issued a statement saying Mizrahi’s remarks were not representative of its views.
“General Mizrahi said some things that might be construed as critical of Turkey. The army spokesman wishes to clarify that this is not the official position of the army.”
On Friday, the Turkish media quoted Mizrahi as saying Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who vehemently criticised Israel‘s action in the Gaza Strip, “should first look in the mirror” and spoke about Ottoman massacres of Armenians during World War I and the Kurdish conflict in Turkey.
The Turkish military also denounced Mizrahi’s remarks, saying they “distort the realities and are excessive, unfortunate and unacceptable.”
Such comments “can harm national interests in relations between the two countries,” the statement said.
“We expect the Israeli general staff, which we believe places importance on relations with the Turkish armed forces, to clarify the issue,” it added.
The Gaza conflict has strained relations between Israel and Turkey, a predominantly Muslim non-Arab nation which has been the Jewish state’s main regional ally since the two signed a military cooperation accord in 1996.
On January 29, Erdogan stormed out from a heated debate on the Gaza war at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland after clashing with Israeli President Shimon Peres.
Before walking off, he said Israel committed “barbarian” acts in Gaza, told Peres that “you know well how to kill people” and lashed out at the audience for applauding the Israeli president’s emotional defence of the war.
Mizrahi’s remarks reportedly came at an international conference in Israel on Tuesday in comments on Erdogan’s outburst, after which Israel had sought to defuse tensions, saying that relations would recover in time.
Israel’s 22-day offensive on Islamist Hamas-controlled Gaza left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead and injured 5,300 others.
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tension between Turkey and Israel
IDF: Officer’s criticism of Turkey does not represent official view By Barak Ravid and Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondents, and Reuters An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson on Saturday said that IDF Maj. Gen. Avi Mizrahi’s recent criticism of Turkey does not reflect the official position of the IDF. “While referring to the criticism of Israel by Turkey, Gen. Mizrahi made
statements that could be interpreted as criticism of Turkey’s past,” said a statement by Brig. Gen. Avi Benayahu, a spokesman for the IDF.
“The IDF spokesperson wishes to clarify that this is not the official position of the IDF.”
Turkey earlier on Saturday called on Israel to explain remarks quoted in Haaretz by Mizrachi that questioned Turkish policies toward Kurds and Cyprus, saying ties between the Middle East allies could be at stake.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry also on Saturday summoned Israeli Ambassador Gabby Levy to protest comments by Mizrahi, commander of Israel’s land forces.
Mizrahi was quoted as saying Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan should have “looked in the mirror” before slamming President Shimon Peres last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Mizrachi also said that Turkey was not in a position to criticize Israel’s actions in the Palestinian territories when it stations troops in northern Cyprus.
He also accused Turkey of repressing its Kurdish minority and massacring Armenians during World War I.
The Turkish military said on Saturday that Mizrachi’s criticism threatened to harm relations between the two countries.
The flap was the latest sign of tension between Turkey and Israel, who maintain close military ties but whose alliance has been strained by the Israeli offensive on Gaza.
Erdogan accused Peres of “knowing very well how to kill” in a public debate last month at the World Economic Forum.
The Turkish General Staff, in a statement carried by the state-run Anatolian news agency, said Mizrahi’s remarks were completely unacceptable.
“The comments have been assessed to be at the extent that the national interests between the two countries could be damaged,” it said.
Turkey and Israel’s military cooperation includes allowing Israeli jets to use Turkish airspace for training.
Erdogan told Reuters on Friday there were no plans to halt that agreement.
Turkey keeps about 30,000 troops in northern Cyprus after invading the island in 1974 to thwart a coup attempt by Greek Cypriots. It is the only country to recognize a Turkish Cypriot administration there.
Turkey has also fought a 25-year war against Kurdish separatists seeking to establish a homeland in the southeastern part of the country.
Turkey denies accusations that it committed genocide against 1.5 million Armenians during World War I.
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