Tag: Nagorno-Karabakh

THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: A CASE OF SELECTIVE MEMORY

Dmitry Babich

RIA Novosti
15:44 09/03/2010
Moscow

A resolution on the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire, passed
by the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Relations, has raised a real
storm in international diplomacy.

Feverish diplomatic activity and apparent hesitations of the
U.S. administration are a clear sign that Turkey’s foreign policy
influence has grown.

The committee’s resolution is non-binding and it is not clear if it
will be placed before the whole house, but Turkey has already recalled
its ambassador to Ankara for consultations, while U.S. Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton, according to The New York Times, has asked
the Congress not to take up this delicate matter now.

When, in 1915, 1.5 million Armenians “disappeared” as a result of the
action undertaken by the Young Turks’ government, Turkey and Armenia
froze all contacts with each other. It was only last year that signs
of thawing first became manifest, and in the fall of 2009 the sides
agreed to establish diplomatic relations. This was viewed as a success
for the Turkish leadership, both the prime minister and the president.

Will now a final “thaw” be postponed again?

That is not likely, although Turkish politicians are certain to take
advantage of the situation to improve their standing.

It is very likely that the current scandal will only boost the prestige
of Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Not so long ago,
he was the first politician in Turkish history to challenge the
military, saying he uncovered a military plot initially scheduled
for 2003. Before that, Erdogan made out a successful case for the
Palestinians as Muslim brothers, harshly criticizing Israel for
its Gaza Strip operation. During the U.S. Iraqi campaign, Turkey
never allowed American troops to pass through its territory, forcing
Washington to invade Iraq only from the south.

Now the ambiguous position the U.S. has maintained for years on the
Armenian genocide, which helped Washington to draw Turkey into NATO,
is beginning to backfire against U.S. interests. This is a good
lesson for all, and it is not limited to the events of 1915. There
are other examples. The Western mass media are still keeping silent
about anti-Armenian violence in Baku in 1989-1990. Most reports
mention only that Soviet troops were introduced into the city.

The reason for such selective memory in American and West European
media is understandable: it is simple to place the blame on Moscow,
forgetting all about previous events. At that moment, the troops
sent by Moscow saved the lives of thousands of Armenians and other
“Russian speakers” in Baku. Even many Russian media find the subject
of the violence in Baku unpopular and almost forbidden. Some say this
could lose Russia advertising contracts and lead to conflicts with
influential people.

“I do not know what has to be done to get the mass media throughout
the world to highlight those events,” says political analyst Andronik
Migranyan, a member of Russia’s Public Chamber. “Will Armenia itself
have to carry out PR campaigns to make things change?”

The point is that the events of 1915 and those of the 1980s in Armenia
and Azerbaijan do not concern only Armenians; they concern everyone.

The anti-Armenian violence in Baku came after an inhumane expulsion
of Azerbaijanians from Nagorny Karabakh, followed by the Khodzhala
tragedy that shocked the world. People must remember everything,
because destruction of human life cannot be forgotten or remembered
selectively. Otherwise, diplomatic embarrassments like the present
U.S.-Turkish spat may become regular.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not
necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

=======================================\

Dmitry Babich




Dmitry Babich graduated from the Journalism Department of Moscow State University. From 1990-1996, he worked as a correspondent and senior parliament correspondent in Komsomolskaya Pravda, which was at the time a respected Russian daily newspaper with a circulation of up to 20 million. He the covered politics for the TV-6 television channel for three years before becoming head of the international department of the weekly newspaper Moscow News. While he was working at Moscow News, Dima won a prize from ITAR-TASS for developing Russian-Ukrainian information exchange following a series of reports from Ukraine. He joined Russia Profile as a staff writer at the beginning of 2004. ======REPONCE FROM ERGUN KIRLIKOVALI =============================== Re: “ The Armenian Genocide: A Case Of Selective Memory”, By Dmitry Babich, RIA Novosti, Moscow, 9 March 2010, (produced below for your convenience – the undersigned thanks www.TurkishForum.com.tr for bringing this anti-Turkish, anti-Azeri, andti-Muslim artcile to my atention, giving me a chance to respond.) THE BOGUS ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: A CASE OF SELECTIVE MEMORY Dear Editor, So this is what Journalism Department of Moscow State University produces: cockeyed look at world events to promote Russian interests at all costs. Here is a writer who will shamelessly complain about selective memory while “practicing” it. Did you read any lines about Azeris killed by Armenians above? Did you see any remorse about Khodjaly exterminations of Azeris (genocide?) by Armenian thugs using Russian advisors and weapons? Any word about the mass killings of Azeris in Karabagh by Armenian soldiers and paramilitaries under the command of Russian “advisors” using Russian tanks? Azeris were killed by Armenians toting Russian Mosins in 1893 and Russian Kalashnikovs in 1993? Both under the leadership of Russian “advisors”. What has changed in the hundred years, other than the model of the murder weapon? How about Armenian aggression in the seven rayons (provinces) surrounding Karabagh? Why is he silent about that? Isn’t that pure aggression and persecution? Most dramatic of all, perhaps, is the embarrassing silence of the Russian writer (and I use the term loosely) about the million or so Azeri refugees bracing, made homeless by the Armenian thugs toting Russian rifles, bracing for the 18th scorching summer after 17th freezing winter endured in leaky tents with little food or medicine. Is this how a Russian “journalist” sees events? Through the prism of selective memory? Just like those biased promoters of a bogus genocide who will… a) remember Morgenthau’s falsified reports but not Bristol’s or Hubbard’s eyewitness reports; b) remember the long-discredited lie of 1.5 million dead Armenians, but not the Paris Peace Conference report dated 29 March 1919 declaring the number “…more than 200,000…” from which the current lie had originated; c) remember the Armenian dead (about 200,00 according to Paris Peace Conference of 1919) but not more than 524,000 Muslim, mostly Turkish dead; d) remember 24 April as the start of a fake genocide, but not the fact that 24 April was nothing more than the Ottoman Guantanamo when the known Armenian terrorists, insurgents, and spies and their suspected accomplices, were arrested for questioning, some of whom were later released; e) remember Turkish retaliations but not the Armenian revolts that started them, the biggest one of all being the Van rebellion of April 1915 which was the 9/11 of the Ottoman Empire when Armenian killed more than 40,000 of thei Muslim neighbors and turned the city over to the invading Russian armies; f) remember Dink, but not Arikan, and 70 other the Armenians killed since 1973; g) remember Armenia Tereset (temporary resettlement of 1915) but not the facts that Armenians backstabbed their own country at a time when the motherland was under brutal foreign invasion in the West (Dardanelles by the French, and Anzacs, in the East (by Russians and Armenians), in the South (by the British in Sinai, Palestine, and Mesopotamia); h) remember Armenians who were resettled because of their treasonous activities and revolts but not the Crimean Tatars (Turks) who were deported in cattle wagons to Kazakhstan, or Meshketian Turks to Uzbekiastan, or Koreans or Ukranians or Chechens or tens of millions of others to distant deserts and barren plains of Central Asia and icy regios of Siberia, who met worse tragic end, if such a thing is possible, at the hands of their brutal Russian handlers… and many more (too long to list here) i) remember to quote the Armenian commentator Andronik today but not the Armenian terrorist Andranik of last century who ruthlessly murdered many non-combatant, unarmed Muslims, mostly Turks, after torturing them in unspeakable manners; or those other Armenian terrorists like Dro, Aram, and thousands of others who were trained and supported by the Russians all along the way; Russians are the last people on earth to talk about selective memory or persecution of defenseless ethnic people. Sincerely, Ergün KIRLIKOVALI President-Elect, ATAA ergun@cox.net 9741 Irvine Center Drive Irvine, CA 92618-4324 , USA Cell: (949) 878-1186

March 11, 2010

France Urges Progress On Karabakh, Turkish-Armenian Ties

France — President Nicolas Sarkozy (L) bids farewell to his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sarkisian at Elysee Palace in Paris, 10Mar2010

10.03.2010

Ruzan Kyureghian in Paris

French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged more intensive efforts to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and a quick implementation of the Turkish-Armenian normalization agreements during talks with his visiting Armenian counterpart, Serzh Sarkisian, on Wednesday.

The two leaders met in Paris on the second day of Sarkisian’s official visit to France. None of them made any public statements after the meeting. Their joint news briefing scheduled beforehand was cancelled for unknown reasons.

Official Armenian and French sources said the talks touched upon bilateral relations, the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process and the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations.

A spokesman for Sarkozy said the French leader called for “developing the dynamic” of the ongoing work on the “basic principles” of a Karabakh settlement put forward by the U.S., Russian and French mediators co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group.

The mediators hope that Armenia and Azerbaijan will iron out their remaining differences over the proposed framework agreement in the course of this year. Armenian leaders have indicated, however, that a breakthrough in the peace talks is still not on the horizon.

France — Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian reviews the presidential guard at Elysee Palace in Paris, 10Mar2010

Sarkozy, according to his spokesman, urged the conflicting parties to reinvigorate their search for a mutually acceptable deal. “One should take the necessary steps that will lead to a lasting peace and would be beneficial not only for the two countries but the whole region,” he was cited as telling Sarkisian.

Sarkozy was also reported to say that Armenia and Turkey should have “the courage to move forward and use this historic opportunity” to normalize their relations. The spokesman said he specifically stressed that a speedy ratification of their fence-mending “protocols” is expected not only by France but the broader international community.

Sarkisian’s office gave no details of the two presidents’ discussions on Karabakh and Turkey, in a written statement issued later in the day. It said only that Sarkozy praised the Armenian leader’s “efforts aimed at establishing peace and stability in the region.”

“Nicolas Sarkozy reaffirmed his country’s intention to develop relations with the Republic of Armenia in all directions and stressed that France has been and remains Armenia’s friend, always standing by its side,” read the statement. He also spoke of a “sincere sympathy towards Armenia and the Armenian people” existing France, it said.

Sarkisian, for his part, described France as his country’s “reliable partner and ally on the international stage. “President Sarkisian noted with satisfaction that French-Armenian relations are dynamically developing in all areas,” his office said.

The Elysee Palace spokesman said the two men discussed ways of boosting bilateral economic ties and welcomed in that regard the French telecom giant Orange’s recent entry into Armenia. He said France is not satisfied with the current volume of French-Armenian commercial contacts and hopes that they will increase in the near future.

https://www.azatutyun.am/a/1980071.html

March 10, 2010
The Meds Yeghern and Turkish Intellectuals

PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo No. 86
Breaking the Nation’s Taboo

The Meds Yeghern and Turkish Intellectuals

PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo No. 86

Nona Shahnazarian
Center for Pontic and Caucasian Studies, Kuban Social and Economic Institute (Krasnodar) September 2009 (Dr Nona Shahnazarian is an anthropologist at Kuban University and a researcher at the Center for Pontic and Caucasus Studies, Krasnodar, Russian Federation (shahnon @ mail.ru).)

An Apology Action
On December 12, 2008, a group of Turkish intellectuals launched an internet campaign to apologize for the World War I-era slaughter of Armenians in Turkey. Significantly, the “apology campaign” did not employ the highly disputed term “genocide” (soykırım), opting instead for a Turkish translation of the term commonly used in the Armenian language, the “Great Catastrophe” (Meds Yeghern or, in Turkish, Büyük Felaket). Signatories to the apology declared:

My conscience does not accept the insensitivity [shown in] the denial of the Great Catastrophe that the Ottoman Armenians were subjected to in 1915. I reject this injustice and for my share, I empathize with the feelings and pain of my Armenian brothers and sisters. I apologize to them.

By July 26, 2009, more than 30,000 members of the Turkish public had signed the online apology. As journalist Suzan Fraser noted, the apology campaign appeared to be “a sign that many in Turkey are ready to break a long-held taboo against acknowledging Turkish culpability for the deaths.” At the same time, many in Turkey criticized the campaign; a group of nearly 60 retired diplomats called it “unfair, wrong, and unfavorable to [Turkey’s] national interests.”

In Turkish intellectual circles and society as a whole, a fierce intellectual struggle has begun, and a schism is now developing with regard to the treatment of the Armenian genocide. The predominant group, which corresponds to the political right wing, uses the Turkish term “deportation” (tehcir), a publicly acceptable concept, for the
1915 events.

Representing this view, the Turkish Historical Society insists on a particular account of the events. First, there were ethnic cleansings during World War I, in which 450,000 Armenians perished, largely as a result of illness contracted during the deportation. Second, these victims were not shot in an organized manner, nor did they all die at once. Third, the persecution was not centrally coordinated, refuting allegations that it was a policy organized and executed by the Turkish government. Finally, killings took place on both the Turkish and Armenian sides, and, therefore, cannot be considered genocide. By comparing Turkish social realities in 1915-23 with the practices of the Third Reich, Turkish historians have concluded that the two tragedies simply do not represent the same phenomenon.

Perhaps as a sign that a post-national narrative of Turkey’s history is developing, a group of Turkish scholars have come to represent another branch of critically thinking Turkish intellectuals–the so-called “critical left wing.” One of the pioneers of critical discourse is Taner Akçam, the first Turkish historian to openly study the Armenian genocide. In Akçam’s view, according to Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker, “the key to understanding the Turks’ refusal to discuss [the events] of 1915” is the linkage between those events and Turkey’s formative nation-building process from 1920 to 1923. Kolbert explains that the Armenian genocide was:

a campaign of ethnic cleansing [that] changed the demographics of eastern Anatolia….For the Turks to acknowledge the genocide would thus mean admitting that their country was founded by war criminals and that its existence depended on their crimes. This, in Akçam’s words, ‘would call into question the state’s very identity.’

“What the World Knows and Turkey Does Not”
In 2005, three Turkish universities cosponsored a conference entitled “Ottoman Armenians during the Decline of the Empire: Issues of Scientific Responsibility and Democracy.” The conference, which was open only to Turkish scholars, was the first in Turkey to address the issue of the Armenian genocide. Ninety years after the tragic events of 1915, the participants, Turkey’s own academics and intellectuals, were ready “to collectively raise their voices [which] differ from…the official [state version of history], and put forth their own contributions.”

The conference, however, was postponed due to government pressure. As Suzan Fraser noted, the postponement may have been an indication that Turkey was not yet “ready to tolerate dissenting voices on sensitive subjects.” It might also have been considered a blow “to Turkey’s efforts to join the European Union, which is pressuring the country to adopt greater freedoms.” The conference was criticized by Turkish officials such as then-Justice Minister Cemil Cicek, who said it “went against government efforts to counter [the] Armenian campaign to have the killings recognized as genocide.” He went as far as to call the organizers of the conference “traitors” and the conference itself a “stab in the back to the Turkish nation” in a session of the Turkish parliament.

Though the conference was ultimately held at a private university amid rowdy protests, it prompted the creation of Article 301, which made it illegal to denigrate Turkey, “Turkishness,” or Turkish state institutions. Author Orhan Pamuk was charged under this new law after a February 2005 interview with a Swiss newspaper in which he said, “30,000 Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it.” The target of a hate campaign, Pamuk temporarily left Turkey, although the charges were subsequently dropped. Many Turks believe Pamuk was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006 for political reasons.

Pamuk was only one of some 60 writers and publishers to face such charges in 2005. Another Turkish author, Elif Safak, ran into trouble after a character in her novel The Bastard of Istanbul, declared that her grandparents had “lost all their relatives at the hands of Turkish butchers in 1915, but she herself had been brainwashed to deny the genocide.” As Kolbert writes, the charges were eventually dropped after Safak successfully argued that a “statement by a fictional person could not be used to prosecute a real one.”

Turkey’s efforts to join the European Union have increased the attention of external observers to problems of ethnic minorities’
rights, cultural diversity, political Islam, and freedom of expression in Turkey. The charges against Pamuk elicited an international reaction and led many to question Turkey’s readiness to join the EU.
Camiel Eurlings, one of five members of the European Parliament who observed Pamuk’s trial, remarked:

Freedom of expression is one of the fundamental rights Turkey has to respect. This is essential for Turkey’s accession to the EU. The cases as filed against Orhan Pamuk, Hrant Dink, [and] Ragip Zarakolu [among others] are not in line with the European Convention on Human Rights and could have a negative effect on Turkey’s accession process.

That said, EU membership no longer holds the same appeal in Turkish society as it once did. According to the Journal of Turkish Weekly, just 52 percent of Turks support EU membership. For many Turks that oppose membership, especially among nationalist, conservative/traditionalist, and political Islamist circles, denying the Armenian genocide serves an eminently practical political purpose
– helping prevent Turkey from ever becoming a serious candidate for EU membership.

The January 2007 assassination by an ultranationalist Turkish youth of Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor Hrant Dink, a vocal advocate of Turkish-Armenian dialogue, proved a turning point in the freedom of expression in Turkey. At his funeral, tens of thousands of mourners marched through Istanbul to condemn the assassination, chanting, “We are all Armenians” and “We are all Hrant Dink.” A series of workshops were launched by Sabanci University in 2008 and 2009 in memory of Dink. After his murder, criticism of Article 301 increased substantially, leading to parliamentary proposals for its repeal.

The end of the taboo against discussion of the Armenian tragedy has led to unprecedented turbulence in Turkish society and an avalanche of admissions that many contemporary Turks are actually closely related to Armenians. Many more have admitted that their great-grandmothers were Armenians who secretly married Turkish or Kurdish men and converted to Islam after 1915. This subject has lent extreme gender sensitivity to the discourse about the genocide. Confessions have poured out in autobiographical novels recounting the lives and confessions of grandmothers and great-grandmothers.

An Armenian Response
Marginalization and isolation, largely products of the post-Soviet transition, have contributed to a continuously growing identity of victimization in Armenia. Among Armenians, a fierce debate rages about the legitimacy of Turkey’s preconditions for reconciliation. After a year of pronouncements anticipating an improvement in Armenian-Turkish relations, some Armenian analysts believed that the two countries’
efforts at so-called “soccer diplomacy” had “stalled.” This seemed especially true, according to an analyst for the EurasiaNet website, after Ankara “expressed its intent to link the reopening of its border with Armenia [to] a comprehensive solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.” Yerevan, for its part, has asserted, as a reporter for ArmeniaNow put it, that “Armenian-Turkish rapprochement must take place without preconditions and should not be linked [to] either the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict” or the campaign for genocide recognition.

In this context, the reaction to the Turkish “apology” initiative in Armenia, Nagorno-Karabagh, and the diaspora has been ambivalent. On the one hand, Armenians of all classes and social strata have recognized and are grateful for what they have been waiting 90 years to receive; on the other hand, Armenians continue to feel vulnerable thanks to the “preconditions” Turkish politicians have established for opening the Armenian-Turkish border.

The Armenian intellectual critique of the apology campaign has been articulated the best by Laurent Leylekian, executive director of the European Armenian Federation (Armenian National Committee of Europe), in a May 2009 speech published in the Armenian Reporter. Critiquing both Turkish intellectuals and Kemalism as a social phenomenon, Leylekian notes a wide range of anti-Kemalist intellectuals in Turkey, some of whom “oppose the Turkish state system” while others “simply want to improve its image.” Regardless of where they stand, Leylekian says that most of these Turkish intellectuals share the political priorities of the ruling AK Party: support for Turkey’s European Union membership; support for institutional reforms (democracy and the rule of law); and respect for human rights and minorities.

At the same time, Leylekian observes that even Turkish intellectuals critical of Kemalism still share “the national goal of getting rid of unwelcome questions or at least their political significance.” They approach the Armenian genocide less as a “political crime in need of an international legal response” than as something that should be dealt with “solely within the Turkish nation and in a way that will be painless for [it].”

Leylekian outlines five methods Turkish intellectuals employ for this purpose. He calls these methods a discourse of humiliation and strategies of containment, formal empathy, rejecting of extremes, and deprivation. A discourse of humiliation “plays upon the Europeans’
guilty conscience toward the Muslim world” and implies that the focus on genocide recognition is a convenient cover for the West’s shabby treatment of Turkey. The strategy of containment seeks to frame the issue of genocide solely within the confines of academic discourse.
Strategies of formal empathy and the rejection of extremes seek to establish that Armenians and Turks all suffered together and that all manifestations of extremism should be rejected equally. Finally, the strategy of deprivation seeks to keep Armenians themselves out of the Turkish debate about genocide. Leylekian concludes by saying that he really sees only two preconditions to dialogue: recognition of the genocide, “not only as a historical fact but also as a political problem today,” and the “acceptance of the political, legal, and moral responsibility of the present Turkish state” as the successor to the one responsible for the genocide.

In the end, unfortunately, the discourse among nationalist circles in Turkey and Armenia is essentialist and one-dimensional. For Turks and Armenians both, the Armenian genocide ( “catastrophe” or “tragedy”) is directly connected to fundamental questions of collective identity. In Turkey, this fact combines with complex processes involving a desperate battle between the ruling Islamists, who are eager to join Europe and attempting to overcome their problems with neighboring countries, and the military-patriotic establishment. For Armenians, the Karabagh war and its consequences of isolation and dependence represent a kind of continuation to genocide, a perception which is reaffirmed by Turkey’s biased defense of Azerbaijani interests in the reconciliation process. Whatever victory Armenians have obtained in Karabagh represents a resolution to this victimization complex, making Turkish preconditions to normalization appear nonsensical and pushing Armenians to be suspicious of the apology movement altogether. In the end, symbolic values and traumatic memories continue to exert a pull on both state policy and social relations.

PONARS Eurasia publications are funded through the International Program of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

(c) PONARS Eurasia 2009

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

Nona Shahnazaryan

Nona Shahnazaryan is Associate Researcher at Center for Pontic and Caucasian Studies (Krasnodar, Russia, from 1999 to present) and Lecturer, Kuban State University (from 2002 – 2005), Kuban Socio-Economic Institute in Krasnodar (from 2006 to present). She received her Candidate s Degree in Social Anthropology from the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, (17 May 2005) and has conducted fieldwork in Russia, USA, Armenia, Georgia, and Nagorno-Karabagh through grants from Memorial (Historical and Human Right organization, Moscow; 2003, 2004), the Soros Foundation (1999), and The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (2004), The Carnegie Fund (2006), Fulbright (2006-2007).

Her recent articles on the Caucasus include, “The Virtual Widows of Migrant Husbands in War-Torn Mountainous Karabagh,” in: Generations, Kinship and Care. Gendered Provisions of Social Security in Central Eastern Europe. Ed: H. Haukanes and F. Pine, Volume No.17. University of Bergen. Center for Women?s and Gender Research. 2005; with Artyom Kosmarski, “Krasnodar, Karabakh, Moscow: Reflections on a Post-Soviet Anthropologist at Home/ in the Field”. Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies 16 (2007), pp. 161-169. Los Angeles; “Gender Scenarios of Ethnic Conflicts: Narratives of the Karabakh War”. Ab Imperio. Studies of New Imperial history and nationalism in the Post-Soviet space. 1/2007. Moscow; “Femina Sovietica: Survival in Caucasian Way”. Vestnik Evrazii, 4, ed. S. Panarin. Moscow, 2006; and La situation linguistique des Arméniens du Haut-Karabagh : l’emprunt lexical comme création intralinguistique // Revue du Monde Armenien Moderne et Contemporain, 6/2001, Paris, Societe des Etudes Armeniennes. P. 51-73.

March 10, 2010
The Armenian Genocide Resolution is a Farce all Around”

Ermeni Tasarisi Elestirisi

ABD Temsilciler Meclisi Dis Iliskiler komitesinde Ermeni iddialarini iceren karar tasarisinin 04 Mart 2010 persembe gunu yapilan oylamada bir oy farkla kabul edilmesi ile baglantili olarak, yabanci medyada cok sayida yorum ve kose yazisi yayinlandi. Asagida, Henry Barkey’in Washington Post’ta yer alan makalesine yanit olarak bir fransiz arastirmaci Maxime Gauin’in okuyucu mektubunu aktariyorum. Gauin, bu yazisinda, jenosid iddiasinin neden temelsiz bir suclama oldugunu ozlu bicimde acikliyor.
Pulat Tacar [tacarps@gmail.com]

Turkish Forum danisma kurulu Uyesi,

Buyukelci (e),

UNESCO Türkiye Milli Komisyonu Başkan Vekili

MAXIME GAUIN’IN HENRY BARKEY’IN

WASHINGTON POST’TA CIKAN MAKALESINE

GONDERDIGI OKUYUCU MEKTUBU

“Mister Barkey,

Your article “The Armenian Genocide Resolution is a Farce all Around” https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/02/AR2010030202375.html?waporef=obinsite) is an interesting and iconoclast analysis; unfortunately, among the pertinent remarks, there is this big error:

“To be clear, the overwhelming historical evidence demonstrates that what took place in 1915 was genocide.”

1. Many respectable historians criticize the “genocide” label, including Roderic H. Davison, Gwynne Dyer, Edward J. Erickson, Michael M. Gunter, Paul B. Henze, J. C. Hurewitz, Yitzchak Kerem, Bernard Lewis, Guenter Lewy, Heath Lowry, Justin McCarthy, Andrew Mango, Robert Mantran, Jeremy Salt, Stanford J. Shaw, Norman Stone, Gilles Veinstein and Robert F. Zeidner.

2. There is simply no evidence of a genocide intent.

— Gwynne Dyer demonstrated as early as 1973 that Mevlanzade Rifat’s book is a crude falsification, and even Yves Ternon, strongly favorable to Armenian nationalists, considers this work as more than dubtious.

— The “Andonian documents” were proved to be forgeries, more than twenty-five years ago: Christopher Walker, who believed in 1980 to the authenticity of “Andonian documents” suppressed almost all references to this material in the second edition of his book (Armenia. The Survival of a Nation, London, Routledge, 1990), then wrote in an article that “doubt must remain until and unless the documents or similar ones themselves resurface and are published in a critical edition” (“World War I and the Armenian Genocide”, in Richard G. Hovannisian, [ed.], The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Time, New York, St Martin’s Press, 1997, p. 247). Absolutely no effort in this sense was made since 1997: it is perhaps the best evidence that Andonian material is nothing but a forgery.

— The “Ten Commandments” are a another forgery. As early as 1973 Gwynne Dyer demonstrated that the authenticity is highly questionable. More recently, even the strongly pro-Armenian historian Donald Bloxham noticed (“Donald Bloxham replies”, History Today, July 2005, Vol. 55, Issue 7) : “Most serious historians accept that this document is dubious at best, and probably a fake. It was the subject of controversy some twenty years before Dadrian rediscovered it for publication in 1993. The document’s donor originally offered it for sale to the British authorities in February 1919, a time when numerous fraudulent documents were in circulation.”

The late Stanford J. Shaw, former professor of Turkish history at Harvard, University of California-Los Angeles and Bilkent noticed: “The British and French authorities to who they had been handed pointed out that they were at complete variance with Ottoman style and vocabulary and were obvious forgeries, as a result never using them in courts of law” (From Empire to Republic. The Turkish War of National Liberation. 1918-1923, Ankara, 2000, tome I, p. 316). Similarly, British historian Jeremy Salt, considers that the text is “certainly a fake” ).

— Ambassador Morgenthau’s story, which was not considered as a reliable source by actual American specialists like George Abel Schreiner and Horace C. Peterson, is refuted even by the personal archives of Morgenthau himself. See Ralph Elliot Cook, The United States and the Armenian Question, 1894-1924, Ph.D. dissertation, Flertcher School of Law and Diplomacy, 1957, p. 129; Heath Lowry, The Story Behind “Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story”, Istanbul, The Isis Press, 1990 (available online: http://www.eraren.org/index.php?Lisan=en&Page=YayinIcerik&SayiNo=19) and Guenter Lewy, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey, Salt Lake City, University of Utah Press, 2005, pp. 140-142.

— The Special Organization was accused by Arthur Beylerian, V. Dadrian and Taner Akçam to be a key of “racial extermination”, but only in using falsified quotations and in neglecting the archival material of this organization, as demonstrated by Guenter Lewy and Edward J. Erickson: https://www.meforum.org/748/revisiting-the-armenian-genocide https://www.meforum.org/991/armenian-massacres-new-records-undercut-old-blame

— The Turkish martial-courts of 1919-1920 violated all the basic rights of defense, and all their original material is lost, as explained by Guenter Lewy in his article and his mentioned before. See also Ferudun Ata, İşgal İstanbul’unda Tehcir Yargılamaları (“The Istanbul Trials of Relocation”), Ankara, TTK, 2005.

3. It is not true that Western sources support mostly the “genocide” allegations.

US journalist George Abel Schreiner, who traveled extensively in Anatolia, wrote that “Turkish ineptness, more than intentional brutality, was responsible for the hardships the Armenian subjected to” (The Craft Sinister: A Diplomatic History of the Great War and Its Causes, New York, G. Albert, 1920, pp. 124-125).

Swedish journalist G. H. Pravitz published an account of his trip in Eastern Anatolia then in Arab provinces, in his newspaper Nya Dagligt Allehanda, April 23, 1917. He concluded that there was no campaign of extermination and that all the allegations of massacres which he checked were false (http://www.tallarmeniantale.com/swedish-eyewitness.htm).

Heinrich Bergfeld, German consul in Trebizond, who served eight years in Turkey and spoke Turkish, checked rumors of “massacre” in his region, together with the US consul Oscar Heizer, on July 17, 1915: they concluded that the rumors were baseless; in other occasions, Bergfeld denounced crimes against other convoys of displaced Armenian, who indeed occurred this time (Guenter Lewy, op. cit., pp. 145-146).

William Peet, the American head of international Armenian relief effort in Istanbul, recalled that Talat Pasha “gave prompt attention to my requests, frequently greeting me as I called upon him in his office with the introductory remark: ‘We are partners, what can I do for you today?’” (Louise Jenison Peet, No Less Honor: The Biography of William Wheelock Peet, Chattanooga, E. A. Andrews, 1939, p. 170).

H. Philips, diplomat serving in US embassy of Istanbul, sent on September 1^st, 1916, a report concluding that atrocities were committed by local officials, without orders from central government (Guenter Lewy, op. cit., p. 231).

Otto Liman von Sanders, chief of German military mission in Ottoman Empire, and not exactly a Turkophile, explained that “In the execution of expulsions many of the terrible and damnable cases of ruthlessness may unquestionably be ascribed to the minor official whose personal hatred and rapacity gave the measures ordered from above enhancement of harshness that was not intended [by Ottoman government]” (Five Years in Turkey, Annapolis, U.S. Naval Institute, 1927, p. 157; translated from German by Carl Reichmann).

The report of General Harbord, approved by US Senate in 1920, does not mention any “extermination campaign” but war crimes from both sides (see the full text online: . The report of Emory Niles and Arthur Sutherland supports the same conclusion, with more details ).

Moreover, the compilation of German documents published by Johannes Lepsius in 1919 was proved to be not only selective, but also full of dishonest ellipses and even containing pure and simple manipulations of texts, as a systematic comparison between the originals of German archives and the published version demonstrates (Cem Özgönül, Der Mythos Eines Völkermordes, Cologne, Önel Verlag, 2005).

4. The “genocide recognitions” forget the crimes committed by Armenian nationalists.

— The crimes committed against the Armenian population herself.

Armenian Revolutionary Federation and Hunchakian Party killed many decent Armenians, who were loyal to Ottoman Empire, or at least, denounced the methods of gangsters used by revolutionary committees, including the Armenian chief of Ottoman police in Bitlis, assassinated in 1898, and the mayor of Van Bedros Kapamajian, assassinated in 1912 (see, among others: Kapriel S. Papazian, Patriotism Perverted, Boston, Baikar Press, 1934, pp. 13-18 and pp. 68-73; Justin McCarthy, “The Armenian Uprising and the Ottomans”, Review of Armenian Studies, 7-8, 2005).

The Armenian revolutionary committees claimed their responsibility in the massacres of Armenians of WWI, explaining that they organized insurrections and recruitment of volunteers for Russian an French army in guessing perfectly the tragic consequence (Gareguine Pasdermadjian, Why Armenia Should Be Free, Boston, Hairenik Press, 1918, p. 43; Aram Turabian, Les Volontaires arméniens sous les drapeaux français, Marseille, Imprimerie nouvelle, 1917, pp. 41-42).

— Then, the great massacres of Muslim and Jewish civilians.

Haig Shiroyan, an Ottoman Armenian who became an US citizens, wrote in his Memories: “The Russian victorious armies, reinforced by Armenian volunteers, had slaughtered every Turk they could find, destroyed every house they penetrated” (Smiling Through the Tears, New York, 1954, p. 186). Niles and Sutherland, in their report mentioned before, noticed: “Armenians massacred Musulmans on a large scale with many refinements of cruelties” and that “Armenians are responsible for most of the destruction done to towns and villages”.

Ottoman archives are full of first-hand accounts about atrocities committed by Armenian volunteers, including burning of babies, cutting of women’s breast, etc.; many documents were translated into Western languages: https://louisville.edu/a-s/history/turks/Documents2.pdf https://louisville.edu/a-s/history/turks/turcs_et_armeniens.pdf Archeological excavations, carried out in Eastern Anatolia thanks to documents and very old survivors, discovered several thousands of skeletons, from 1986 to 2003, identified thanks to specific clothes, small Korans, bullets, and, for the last mass graves, thanks to DNA tests.

— Finally, the Armenian terrorism which supported the “recognition movement” — and was supported by ARF, Hunchak and some personalities of Ramkavar/AGBU. Armenian terrorists killed at least 70 persons, wounded more than 500, and perpetrating 160 attacks by explosives.

One of the Armenian terrorist groups was simply a branch of ARF (Francis P. Hyland, Armenian Terrorism: the Past, the Present, the Prospects, Boulder-San Francisco-Oxford, Westview Press, 1991, pp. 61-62; Gaïdz Minassian, Guerre et terrorisme arméniens, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 2002, pp. 28-37 and 106-109; Yves Ternon, La Cause arménienne, Paris, Le Seuil, 1983, pp. 218-224). ARF of Californian and elsewhere celebrates the racist murderer Hampig Sassounian, sentenced to life by Californian justice, currently in a Californian jail (among many other examples: www.asbarez.com/45716/sassounian-thanks-community-for-continued-support/ www.asbarez.com/46446/more-than-70-000-raised-for-hampig-sassounian-defense-effort/ www.fra-france.com/print_article.php?id=56).

Mourad Topalian, one of the most active Armenian American lobbyists, former president of Armenian National Committee of America, was sentenced in 2001 to 37 months of jail for illegal storing of war weapons and explosives, linked to a terrorist organization. Vicken Hovsepian, principal leader of ARF in USA, was sentenced in 1984 to six years of jail for participation to an attempt of bombing.

Who recalled the terrorist past activities of these peoples during the debate about “genocide” resolution?

In hoping to read more balanced accounts of WWI and Armenian terrorism in your articles,

Regards,

Maxime Gauin,

Paris”

March 10, 2010
TWO NEW STUDIES PUBLISHED ON THE TURKISH ARMENIAN CONFLICT

Study One:

The Armenians and Ottoman Military Policy, 1915
Edward J. Erickson
War in History 2008 15 (2) 141–167 (27 pages)
10.1177/0968344507087001 © 2008 SAGE Publications

First page, first paragraph:

“ Mainstream western scholarship maintains that the Armenian insurrection of
1915 was never an actual threat to the security of the Ottoman state in the First World War and that the relocation of the Armenians of eastern Anatolia was unnecessary. In truth, no study of the Armenian insurrection and its effect on Ottoman military policy has ever been conducted. This article examines the Ottoman army’s lines of communications architecture and logistics posture in eastern Anatolia in 1915. Armenian threats to the logistics and security of the
Ottoman armies in Caucasia and Palestine are overlaid on this system. Evolving and escalatory Ottoman military policies are then explained in terms of threat assessments and contemporary counter-insurgency strategy. The article seeks to inform the reader why the Ottomans reacted so vigorously and violently to the events of the spring of 1915 “

Last page, last paragraph:

“ Nothing can justify the massacres of the Armenians nor can a case be made that the entire Armenian population of the six Anatolian provinces was an active and hostile threat to Ottoman national security. However, a case can be made that the Ottomans judged the Armenians to be a great threat to the 3rd and 4th Armies and that genuine intelligence and security concerns drove that decision. It may also be stated that the Ottoman reaction was escalatory and responsive rather than premeditated and pre-planned. In this context the
Ottoman relocation decision becomes more understandable as a military solution to a military problem. While political and ideological imperatives perhaps drove the decision equally, if not harder, these do not negate the fact that the Armenians were a great military danger.”

***

Study Two:

Captain Larkin and the Turks: The Strategic Impact of the Operations of HMS Doris in Early 1915
Edward J. Erickson
Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 46, No. 1, 151–162, January 2010

Page 1, first paragraph:

“ As the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War in November 1914 there were a
number of troubling events involving Armenians that served to convince the Turks
of impending Armenian insurgency. It is well known that in the Caucasus, numbers
of Armenian men fled to join the Czar’s armies against the Ottoman Empire and
guerrilla warfare between Armenian bands and the Turks broke out on the frontier
near the Black Sea. It is less well known that the Ottomans were also extremely
concerned about Armenian activities in the area of Alexandretta (the modern
Turkish port of Iskenderun) particularly around Dörtyol, a tiny railway stop and
village close by the Mediterranean Sea. This concern was mainly the result of the
operations of the HMS Doris in December 1914 and January 1915. This article uses
British, German, and Turkish archival sources to focus on the ship’s operations in
the vicinity of Dörtyol and on the strategic affect these had on Ottoman perceptions
of threats to the empire and on actual Ottoman responses. The Doris figures
prominently in two critical strategic outcomes – the relocation of the Armenians in
1915 and in the activation of three Ottoman army divisions for coastal defence and
internal security.”

Last page, last paragraph:

“ Arguably, in the end, Larkin’s missions were a failure as the Ottoman lines of
communication were never seriously disrupted nor did the prospective British
amphibious invasion at Alexandretta ever take place. Nevertheless, Captain Frank
Larkin’s voyages in command of HMS Doris in the winter of 1914–15 had an effect
out of all proportion to their duration and scale. Larkin’s activities were so actively
consistent and aggressive that the Ottomans came to believe that a British
amphibious invasion was being coordinated with and supported by an imminent
Armenian insurrection in the vicinity of Do¨ rtyol. Unintentionally, Larkin played a
key role in driving the Turks to some very poor decisions. It is problematic to
imagine that had Larkin actually been tasked to conduct deception operations or
diversionary activities that his raiding would have been nearly as convincing as what
he actually accomplished. In any case, there is no question that Larkin and HMS
Doris helped convince the Turks to make strategic decisions that diverted substantial
valuable and scarce resources away from the war effort.”

March 9, 2010
TURNING POINT IN TURKISH AMERICAN PUBLIC ADVOCACY

ATAA’s Statement on H.Res. 252

Dear Turkish Americans and Friends of Türkiye:

House Resolution 252 passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) by a vote of 23-22 after HFAC Chairman Howard Berman extended the voting period thrice and forced reluctant legislators to show up and vote in favor of the resolution.

The passage of H.Res. 252 represented ethnic politics at its worst, and made a mockery of the U.S. legislative, judicial and foreign policy processes. Indeed, United States foreign policy regarding Turkey, Armenia and the broader region was hijacked by ultra-nationalist Armenian politics in a few Congressional districts.

The recalling of Turkish Ambassador Namık Tan was an expression of Turkey’s disappointment in what now appears to be a contradiction in the United States’ position on Turkish-Armenian rapprochement. It was also an expression in defense of the dignity of the Turkish people to whom the U.S. now appears to have denied fair and just treatment by this prejudicial resolution plagued with blatantly libelous falsifications.

At this stage it is difficult to expect the Turkish people to support the ratification of the Turkey – Armenia protocols, as the people’s interest now turns to whether U.S. President Obama will attempt to rehabilitate U.S. credibility in Turkey and among Turkish Americans, or permit further deterioration in a Proclamation on April 24. Furthermore, an alleged agreement between the White House and HFAC not to bring H.Res. 252 to a floor vote appears empty, if not also deceptive, as confidence in the ability of the Resolution to actually pass Congress is meager.

House Resolution 252 signals a turning point in Turkish American public advocacy. The 23-22 vote reflects the growing efficacy of the Turkish American public advocacy network, including its infrastructure, technical abilities, critical mass, cooperation, solidarity, and resolve. In 2007, H.Res. 106 passed the HFAC 27-21, after the late Congressman Tom Lantos voted in favor of the motion, and was followed by three standby members. In 2005, H.Res. 316 and 195 passed overwhelmingly 42-7 and 35-11, respectively. This is just the beginning, as an awakening Turkish American community and a resurging Turkish Republic take command of their destiny for “Peace at Home, Peace in the World.”

I thank the Turkish American community, particularly YOU – the individual Turkish American and friend of Türkiye — for your tremendous efforts. In solidarity within diversity, over 5000 letters were submitted through the ATAA-FTAA-TCA campaign. ATAA visited most of the HFAC members at least once at the local level and three times on Capitol Hill. On March 3, 2010, the ATAA and FTAA joined in solidarity on Capitol Hill, as we visited each HFAC member one final time.

I also thank the Azerbaijani, Crimean, Turkmen, Turcoman, Uzbek, Kazakh, Kirghiz, and Uighur American communities for their support. The Azerbaijan Society of America in New York – PaxTurcica in Los Angeles – USAN in Washington, DC supported the ATAA-FTAA-TCA letter campaign and Congressional visits. In addition, the Azerbaijanian American Cultural Alliance traveled from Texas to show its support at the March 4 HFAC Hearing.

I thank the Turkish Coalition of America (TCA) for their invaluable support and guidance.

Finally, I thank the ATAA Executive Committee, Board of Directors and Board of Trustees, and ATAA’s dedicated staff for their excellence in representing the Turkish American community in opposition to H.Res. 252 and in support of U.S.-Turkish relations. They have done this in parallel with four major ATAA projects, including Census 2010, SayTurk, Turkish American Broad Advocacy Network (TABAN) grassroots program, Turkish Student Outreach, and www.MediaWatchNow.com.

Our task is not finished, though. In fact, it might be said that it is just starting now. First, we should build on this momentum to maintain our contact with our representatives to educate them on matters concerning Turkey USA relations, so that such “ill-informed” resolutions will not be supported in Congress. We should establish lasting bonds of friendship for future. Next, we should revive, reinvigorate, and grow our component organizations to reach out and touch every Turkish American in 50 states, to deter future misguided attacks on our heritage.

Together we can do it and ATAA is here for you.

Gunay Evinch
President
Assembly of Turkish American Associations

***

Sevgili Türk Amerikalı’lar ve Türkiye’nin dostları:

Sözde Ermeni soykırımı ilgili yasa tasarısı (H.Res. 252) Meclis Dı İlikiler Komitesi (HFAC) den 22 hayır ve 23 evet oyu alarak geçti. HFAC Bakanı Howard Berman oylama süresini 3 kez uzatıp oy vermekte isteksiz gözüken üyeleri zorlayarak tasarı lehine oy vermelerini sağladı.

Etnik siyasetin en kötü ekilde temsil edildiği H.Res. 252 oylaması, Amerikan, yasama, yargı ve dı ilikiler süreçlerini maskaralık haline getirmitir. Nitekim, Amerika Birleik Devletleri’nin, Türkiye, Ermenistan ve bölge ülkelerle olan dı politikası aırı milliyetçi Ermenilerin Kongre seçim bölgelerindeki politikaları yüzünden gasp edilmitir.

Bir hayal kırıklığı ifadesi olarak, Türk Büyükelçisi Namık Tan’ın geri çağrılması, Türk-Ermeni yakınlamasını destekleyen ABD için bir çeliki gibi görünüyor. Bu aynı zamanda, Türk insanının onurunu savunmanın da bir göstergesi olarak da algılanabilir. Bu sakıncalı karar tasarısı ile A.B.D adil tavrından uzaklamı duruyor.

Bu aamada, Türk halkından Türkiye ve Ermenistan arasındaki protokolleri deskteklemesini beklemek oldukça zor görünmektedir. imdi merakla beklenen, Bakan Obama’nın, Amerika’nın Türkiye ve Türk Amerikalılar için güvenirliliği yeniden sağlamak için çaba gösterip göstermemesi ya da 24 Nisan resmi açıklamasını yaparak ilikileri daha da zor bir hale getirip getirmemesidir. Ayrıca, H.Res. 252 tasarısının oylamaya getirilmemesi konusunda Beyaz Saray ve HFAC arasında bir karar sağlanamamakla birlikte bu tasarının Kongre’ den geçip geçmemesi u an için belirsiz gözükmektedir.

H.Res. 252, Türk-Amerikan ortak savunmasında dönüm noktasının sinyallerini vermektedir. 23-22’lik oy sonucu, altyapı, teknik becerileri, kritik kütle, ibirliği ve dayanıma da dahil olmak üzere Türk-Amerikan ortak savunma ağının artan etkinliğini yansıtmaktadır. 2007 yılında, H. Res. 106, Kongre üyesi Tom Lantosun lehte geç oyuyla HFAC de 27-21 oyla geçmiti. 2005 yılında H. Res. 316 ve 195 sırasıyla 42-7 ve 35-11 lik ezici bir çoğunlukla geçti. Bu sadece bir balangıç, aynı zamanda Türk Amerikan toplumu için büyük bir uyanı ve Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nin Yurt ta ve Dünya da Barı” için komutayı ele almasıdır.

Türk Amerikan toplumuna, özellikle de “Siz” değerli Türk Amerikalılara ve Türkiye’nin dostlarına göstermi olduğunuz muazzam gayretten dolayı teekkür ediyorum. Farklılıklar içinde dayanıma ilkesinden yola çıkarak, ATAA-FTAA-TCA olarak yürüttüğümüz mektup kampanyası kapsamında 5000’in üzerinde mektup Kongre’ye gönderildi. ATAA, ABD Temsilciler Meclisi Dı İlikiler Komisyonu’ndaki üyelerin ofisleri yerel düzeyde en az bir kere ve Capital Hill’de birkaç kez ziyaret edildi. 3 Mart 2010’da ATAA ve FTAA birlik olup tüm Komisyon üyelerinin ofislerini ziyaret ettik.

Azeri, Kırımlı, Türkmen, Özbek, Kazak, Kırgız ve Uygur toplumlarına bizden desteklerini esirgemedikleri için teekkürlerimi iletiyorum. New York’taki Azerbaycan-Amerikan Toplumu, Los Angeles’daki Pax Turcica, Washington DC’deki Amerikan-Azeri Network ATAA-FTAA-TCA mektup kampanyasında ve Kongre ziyaretlerinde bize hep destek oldular. Bunun yanı sıra, Azerbaycan Amerikan Kültür Birliği 4 Mart’ta Dı İlikiler Komisyonu’ndaki oturumda Teksas’tan gelerek bizi yalnız bırakmadılar.

Ayrıca, Amerika Türk Koalisyonu’na çok kıymetli destek ve katkılarından ötürü ükranlarımı sunuyorum.

Son olarak, ATAA İcra Kuruluna, Yönetim Kuruluna ve Mütevelli Heyetine ve kendini iine adamı olan profesyonel ekibine, Türk Amerikan toplumunu 252 yasa tasarısına karı en iyi ekilde temsil ettikleri için ve Türk Amerikan ilikilerine yaptıkları katkılardan dolayı teekkür ediyorum. Ayrıca bir diğer önemli nokta, ATAA ekibinin bütün bu çalımaları dört büyük ATAA projesi ile birlikte yürütmü olmasıdır. Bunlar sırasıyla, Nüfus Sayımı için balattığımız Saytürk kampanyası, TABAN projesi, Türk Öğrenci Eriim programı ve medyada Türkiye hakkında çıkan yazıları takip ettiğimiz www.MediaWatchNow.com’ dur.

Daha görevimiz bitmedi. Hala iin baında sayılırız. Bu gibi temelsiz tasarıların Kongre’de destek bulmasını önlemek için, öncelikle yapmamız gereken; mecliste temsilcilerimizle ilikilerimizi sürdürmek ve onları Türk Amerikan ilikilerini ilgilendiren meseleler üzerinde eğitmek olmalıdır. Gelecek için sağlam temelli ilikiler kurmamız gerekir. Bundan sonra, mirasımıza yapılan asılsız saldırıları engellemek; canlanma, yenilenme ve yerel derneklerimize ve 50 farklı eyalette yaayan her Türk Amerikalıya ulamakla mümkün olacaktır.

Beraber baarabiliriz ve ATAA her konuda sizin yanınızda.

Gunay Evinch
Bakan
Türk Amerikan Dernekleri Kurulu

***

Assembly of Turkish American Associations
1526 18th St., NW Washington, DC 20036
Ph: 202.483.9090 Fx: 202.483.9092
www.ataa.org, assembly@ataa.org

March 9, 2010