Tag: Nagorno-Karabakh

Armenians horrified by treaty with Turkey

Genocide forgotten:

A new trade deal is set to gloss over the
murder of 1.5 million people

By Robert Fisk
www.independent.co.uk

In the autumn of 1915, an Austrian engineer called Litzmayer, who was helping build the Constantinople-Baghdad railway, saw what he thought was a large Turkish army heading for Mesopotamia. But as the crowd came closer, he realised it was a huge caravan of women, moving forward under the supervision of soldiers.

The 40,000 or so women were all Armenians, separated from their men – most of whom had already had their throats cut by Turkish gendarmerie – and deported on a genocidal death march during which up to 1.5 million Armenians died.

Subjected to constant rape and beatings, some had already swallowed poison on their way from their homes in Erzerum, Serena, Sivas, Bitlis and other cities in Turkish western Armenia. “Some of them,” Bishop Grigoris Balakian, one of Litzmayer’s contemporaries, recorded, “had been driven to such a state that they were mere skeletons enveloped in rags, with skin that had turned leathery, burned from the sun, cold, and wind. Many pregnant women, having become numb, had left their newborns on the side of the road as a protest against mankind and God.” Every year, new evidence emerges about this mass ethnic cleansing, the first holocaust of the last century; and every year, Turkey denies that it ever committed genocide. Yet on Saturday – to the horror of millions of descendants of Armenian survivors – the President of Armenia, Serg Sarkissian, plans to agree to a protocol with Turkey to re-open diplomatic relations, which should allow for new trade concessions and oil interests. And he proposes to do this without honouring his most important promise to Armenians abroad – to demand that Turkey admit it carried out the Armenian genocide in 1915.

In Beirut yesterday, outside Mr Sarkissian’s hotel, thousands of Armenians protested against this trade-for-denial treaty. “We will not forget,” their banners read. “Armenian history is not for sale.” They called the President a traitor. “Why should our million and a half martyrs be put up for sale?” one of them asked. “And what about our Armenian lands in Turkey, the homes our grandparents left behind? Sarkissian is selling them too.”

The sad truth is that the 5.7 million Armenian diaspora, scattered across Russia, the US, France, Lebanon and many other countries, are the descendants of the western Armenians who bore the brunt of Turkish Ottoman brutality in 1915.

Tiny, landlocked, modern-day Armenia – its population a mere 3.2 million, living in what was once called eastern Armenia – is poor, flaunts a dubious version of democracy and is deeply corrupt. It relies on remittances from its wealthier cousins overseas; hence Mr Sarkissian’s hopeless mission to New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Beirut and Rostov-on-Don to persuade them to support the treaty, to be signed by the Armenian and Turkish Foreign Ministers in Switzerland.

The Turks have also been trumpeting a possible settlement to the territory of Nagorno-Karabagh, part of historic Armenia seized from Azerbaijan by Armenian militias almost two decades ago – not without a little ethnic cleansing by Armenians, it should be added. But it is the refusal of the Yerevan government to make Turkey’s acknowledgement of the genocide a condition of talks that has infuriated the diaspora.

“The Armenian government is trying to sweeten the taste for us by suggesting that Turkish and Armenian historians sit down to decide what happened in 1915,” one of the Armenians protesting in Beirut said.
“But would the Israelis maintain diplomatic relations if the German government suddenly called the Jewish Holocaust into question and suggested it all be mulled over by historians?”

Betrayal has always been in the air. Barack Obama was the third successive US President to promise Armenian electors that he would acknowledge the genocide if he won office – and then to betray them, once elected, by refusing even to use the word. Despite thunderous denunciations in the aftermath of the Armenian genocide by Lloyd George and Churchill – the first British politician to call it a holocaust – the Foreign Office also now meekly claims that the “details” of the 1915 massacres are still in question. Yet still the evidence comes in, even from this newspaper’s readers. In a letter to me, an Australian, Robert Davidson, said his grandfather, John “Jock” Davidson, a First World War veteran of the Australian Light Horse, had witnessed the Armenian genocide: “He wrote of the hundreds of Armenian carcasses outside the walls of Homs. They were men, women and children and were all naked and had been left to rot or be devoured by dogs.

“The Australian Light Horsemen were appalled at the brutality done to these people. In another instance his company came upon an Armenian woman and two children in skeletal condition. She signed to them that the Turks had cut the throats of her husband and two elder children.”

In his new book on Bishop Balakian, Armenian Golgotha, the historian Peter Balakian (the bishop’s great-nephew) records how British soldiers who had surrendered to the Turks at Kut al-Amara in present-day Iraq and were sent on their own death march north – of 13,000 British and Indian soldiers, only 1,600 would survive – had spoken of frightful scenes of Armenian carnage near Deir ez-Zour, not far from Homs in Syria. “In those vast deserts,” the Bishop said, “they had come upon piles of human bones, crushed skulls, and skeletons stretched out everywhere, and heaps of skeletons of murdered children.”

When the foreign ministers sit down to sign their protocol in Switzerland on Saturday, they must hope that blood does not run out of their pens.

October 29, 2009
Senate Resolution Reshuffles Political Cards in Ankara, Yerevan and Beyond

On October 21, while introducing the Armenia-Turkey Protocols to the Turkish Parliament for ratification, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu exposed his government’s true intentions.

Davutoglu stated that Armenia’s acceptance of the agreement, calling for the study of historical archives, indicated that Armenians no longer insisted on their unilateral interpretation of history. He further stated that the Protocols safeguarded Turkey’s territorial integrity from any future Armenian claims by reconfirming the present borders based on past treaties, and that the agreement would contribute to the “liberation of Azerbaijan’s territories,” meaning Karabagh (Artsakh).

While it is understandable that Davutoglu would try to put the best possible spin on the Protocols in order to secure their ratification by the Turkish Parliament, the three advantages he cited are exactly the reasons why most Armenians have so vehemently objected to this agreement.

As expected, Davutoglu was severely criticized by the opposition parties in Parliament that reject the Protocols. The most unexpected attack, however, came from Selahattin Demirtas, head of the Kurdish faction (DTP) in Parliament, who took the government to task for distorting and denying the facts of “the Armenian massacres.” Such a criticism has never been voiced before in the Turkish Parliament. Demirtas brazenly continued: “We believe that we now need to address an issue that has caused so much suffering to the Armenian people — one of the key problems facing the Republic of Turkey. A hundred years ago, the Ittihad Party, with a policy of Islamizing and Turkifying the entire Anatolia, sought to eliminate the non-Muslims, particularly the Armenian people, from these lands through exile, expulsion, deportation and massacres.”

Ignoring the insults hurled by members of the ruling party (AKP) and others, Demirtas condemned the government’s policy of denial that had the aim of escaping the consequences of this “tragedy,” prompting the creation of “a fake history.” He noted that the persecutions and massacres of Armenians were presented as if they never happened. “We need to speak about all of these things and correct the record,” Demirtas concluded.

Immediately after addressing the Turkish Parliament, Davutoglu flew to Baku in order to quell the Azerbaijani uproar over the signing of the Protocols. Realizing the depth of their anger, Davutoglu was forced to make several outlandish declarations: “Azerbaijan’s lands are sacred for us and their liberation is Turkey’s utmost priority. We will not change our position even if the sky falls down to earth!” He also assured them that “if need be, 72 million Turks are ready to die in Azerbaijan!” Azerbaijan’s leaders, however, were not too impressed with Davutoglu’s highly inflated pronouncements. They continued to shut down mosques financed by Turkey, removed Turkey’s flags from a monument for Turkish martyrs in Baku, and threatened to raise the price of gas sold to Turkey.

While Davutoglu had his hands full in Baku, a news flash from Washington came to reshuffle Ankara’s political cards. A Resolution was introduced in the U.S. Senate that called for the reaffirmation of the Armenian Genocide. This unexpected development sent a powerful message not only to Turkey, but also to the leaders of Armenia, Russia, the European Union and the United States.

To their dismay, Turkish leaders discovered that the Protocols would not put an end to the pursuit of recognition and justice for the crime of genocide committed by their ancestors.

Turkey’s Ambassador to Washington Nabi Sensoy was alarmed by this unexpected development and wasted no time in condemning the Senate Resolution during a Voice of America interview. He called the timing of the Resolution “regrettable” and “unfortunate,” coming just one day after the introduction of the Protocols in the Turkish Parliament. The esteemed Ambassador failed to indicate, however, when would be a better time to introduce such a Resolution!

Turkey’s leaders are now caught in the horns of a dilemma. If they rush to ratify the Protocols in order to prevent the House and Senate Resolutions from gaining political support, they would alienate their oil-rich Azerbaijani “brothers” for not having delivered on their promises on Karabagh. On the other hand, if Turkish leaders delay ratification until after April 24 — waiting for Armenia to make concessions on Artsakh — they would run the risk of having either the House or the Senate or both pass the Genocide Resolutions. Since 2010 is an election year for all House Members and a third of the Senate, members of Congress are usually more responsive to their constituents, raising the likelihood of the passage of the Genocide Resolutions. Furthermore, even if Pres. Obama has no intention of keeping his campaign promise on the Armenian Genocide, he would feel compelled to pressure the Turks to ratify the Protocols before April 24, with or without concessions from Armenia on Artsakh, in order to provide a face-saving cover for his next “Meds Yeghern” statement!

Therefore, if Armenia’s leaders stand firm on their repeated public commitments not to make concessions on Artsakh linked to the Protocols, they would be in the driver’s seat in terms of controlling Ankara’s next steps.

Pres. Sargsyan must also keep his solemn promise not to allow the Protocols to undermine Armenia’s efforts for genocide recognition. A good start to demonstrate the Armenian President’s resolve on this issue is to send a letter to the leadership of the House and the Senate, encouraging them to pass the pending Resolutions. It should be noted that the Turkish government has never hesitated to use its considerable political muscle to lobby against past Congressional Resolutions on the Armenian Genocide. Sending a simple letter of support to the U.S. Congress is the least Pres. Sargsyan could do!

The Armenian government’s backing for the newly-introduced Senate Resolution would also send a message to Washington, Moscow and beyond that Armenia is not giving up on its historic rights, even though it is being pressured to make major concessions in other areas.

It is high time for Armenian leaders to reassess the nation’s difficult predicament and take all necessary measures to avoid further missteps.

October 27, 2009

Improbable Embrace – Turkey and Armenia

Hubble-Bubble

Melik Kaylan, 10.23.09, 12:01 AM ET

Turkey and Armenia are about to restore diplomatic relations. At the very least, they signed a landmark agreement to do so on Oct. 10 in Switzerland–after some tense last-minute wrangling in a Zurich hotel room with Hillary Clinton mediating. An astonishing development. A marvel to see in one’s lifetime, not unlike the fall of the Soviet Union. Two ancient peoples in eternal enmity. Sounds utterly implausible. Ancient hatreds never go away.

That, at any rate, is the narrative–an arguably fraudulent one–that we’ve been fed for several generations. In fact, depending on how you calculate it, Turks and Armenians lived peaceably together for almost 600 years–or almost 900 years–until the 20th century. The calculation depends on whether you date their time together from the Seljuks or the later Ottomans–and where you end the timeline. Either way, it was an epoch or two, possibly an unprecedented achievement. Then, according to the prevailing interpretation, the Turks turned suddenly on their cheek-by-jowl neighbors, unprovoked, and wished to obliterate them from the Earth entirely as a people. It’s possible. Strange things have happened in the annals of genocide, though not after that long a duration of mutual tolerance. If so, why then? What changed?

Here you enter into difficult terrain. Because you can easily slip into an alternate viewpoint, one that goes something like this: Turks and Armenians lived in peace until Czarist Russia began to move southward down the Caucasus, purging Muslims downward into Turkish territory–throughout the 19th century. All those fiery Daghestanis, Chechens, Abkhaz, Kurds. Many ended up in Ottoman lands, some say half a million. At one point, Russia actually occupied a whole swath of Turkey, including the provincial capital of Kars, for several decades until World War I ended. The Russians did their conquering explicitly as a Christian Crusade, claiming the complicity of all Eastern Christians (including Armenians) in that part of Turkey, an area seething with displaced Caucasus Muslims and Muslim Kurds. In short, if you are curious about a proximate cause for catastrophic bloodshed, look no further than Russkie provocation–a plausible scenario considering their conduct right up to the present in Georgia–of stirring one ethnicity against another for imperial ends.

Discretion being the better part of valor, let us leave the historical dispute delicately hanging there for professional historians to sort out. The present is complicated enough. What happens if Turkey and Armenia bury the hatchet? Azerbaijan gets upset, for sure, and Azeris are close kin to the Turks. Why does that matter to America and the West? The Armenians carved out a slice of Azerbaijan in a secessionist war with Russian help during the post-Soviet chaos in the Caucasus. Azeris want it back. Armenians wish to keep it. Azeris don’t want Turkey to make peace with Armenia. Azerbaijan is a critical source of non-Middle Eastern oil to the West via pipeline through Turkey. Azeri oil will help liberate Europe from Moscow’s oil. No wonder foreign minister Sergei Lavrov attended the signing ceremony in Switzerland: Russia would benefit from driving a wedge between Turkey and Azerbaijan. The Azeris are already threatening to re-route their oil through Russia. So why is Turkey ready to alienate Azerbaijan?

As many have observed, Turkey is pushing a neo-Ottoman strategic vision under Prime Minister Erdogan and his busybody foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu. Until their collapse in the 20th century, the Ottomans pursued a centuries-long game of diplomatic promiscuity with other world powers, allowing Venetians and Genoese trading rights early on, giving Sephardic Jews a new home after their expulsion from Spain, letting the British help them against the Czars and against Napoleon, inviting the Russians and Hapsburgs to compete over privileges in Ottoman lands.

As the Ottomans declined militarily they used the country’s strategic position diplomatically to stay afloat. Under the more insular nationalist republic of Ataturk, Turkey allied exclusively with NATO and stayed out of regional engagement. Now Ankara is making friends with all its neighbors. Suddenly, the minefields along the Syrian border are being lifted and Syrians may enter Turkey with minimal red tape. Georgians have similar status. Baghdad and Ankara have just signed a slew of deals involving water, oil and trade. Greece and Turkey are friendlier than they’ve been in, say, 200 years with Greece actually backing Turkey’s candidacy to the E.U. Natural gas comes in from Russia while Turkish construction companies are doing more than anyone to build infrastructure across the Russian Federation. In short, a neo-Ottoman approach means that Ankara is allowing all the neighbor countries to gain so much benefit from Turkey’s evenhandedness that all are invested in keeping the country stable and prosperous.

There are side benefits too. A Syria dependent on Turkey may become less dependent on Iran economically. Ankara’s deals with Baghdad show Iraq’s Kurds that hostility to Turkey will only leave them out of the loop economically. In the past, almost all neighboring capitals had a hand in aiding the Kurdish insurrection within Turkey–Moscow, Athens, Damascus, Baghdad and all the Iron Curtain belt nearby played that game. These days only the E.U. and the U.S. are pushing the issue of Kurdish rights. Prime Minister Erdogan calculates that as Turkey gains increasing leverage through befriending one and all indiscriminately while shifting an inch this way or that (such as publicly snubbing Israel), even the U.S. and E.U. will have to ease pressures or risk pushing Ankara further into the arms of rivals. The Erdogan government may calculate that Azerbaijan, too, will come around and realize that it will only lose from a rift with the Turks as the Azeris can, in reaction to the Armenia demarche, only befriend the Russian bear–and only for a while before it swallows them whole.

Meantime, Ankara is going about eradicating the leverage of outside powers over Turkey over such matters as ethnic rights. The Kurds now have broadcasts in Kurdish. Armenia may finally have a partner other than Russia to trade with–that’s a lot of incentive. It’s a lot of incentive for the U.S. to climb on board too. Turkish-Armenian amity in the region will soon de-fang the various genocide bills so beloved of the Armenian diaspora.

All this comes under the rubric of “neo-Ottoman” for another reason. The Ottomans held Islam’s Caliphate for five centuries, and it was under Islamic laws that they extended rights to religious minorities while ostensibly treating all Muslims as equals with no preference to ethnicity. Erdogan’s slide toward Islamist inclusiveness ironically stirs a beneficent echo in the hearts of Armenians in the region. They have flourished relatively unhindered in the Middle East under countries hostile to the West, such as Syria and Iran. They’ve had no problem living under anti-Western regimes such as the Soviet Union. Their historical sense of identity is anchored in ambivalence toward the West going way back to their doomed alliance with the Persians against Roman power. Throughout the Middle Ages they identified with Eastern Christianity against the Vatican. The Armenian patriarch showed no friendship toward proselytizing Protestant missionaries in the Ottoman era. In short, Armenians of the region feel no discomfort with Mid-eastern traditions or Islamization, and certainly not Erdogan’s apparently moderate version of it.

One can only dream and hope for the day when Armenians, like Greeks do now, interact with Turkey in large numbers and perhaps even settle back into their interrupted history there. But that it happens under an Islamizing umbrella–and there’s the rub. For it’s not at all clear that once you drift in that direction, there can be any way back–that is, short of a Kemalist or, much worse, a Soviet-style enforced secularism. Erdogan’s strategy of giving all comers a stake in the stability of Turkey also anchors them in Turkey’s renewed Islamist pull. Israel is unlikely to benefit from this, except perhaps in the leverage it gives Turkey to negotiate for Israel with Islamic countries. The Europeans will soon lose all purchase on Turkey’s cultural and political center of gravity as the Turks learn that money from non-Western allies outdoes any expected benefits from the E.U.

Erdogan’s policies are neo-Ottoman in this way too: in decline, Ottoman state policy, the Sultan or the Sublime Porte in Western parlance, was open to the influence of the highest bidder outside or inside the country. Everyone may benefit in the short term, especially the Turks with their new-found diplomatic clout. But in the long term, that kind of polity cannot be transparent. It can be enlightened in all sorts of ways except a fully Westernized one. Erdogan’s government is already swallowing up independent news media a la Putin. Backroom deals fill his party’s coffers and reward party loyalists at all levels of the economy. This kind of thing went on aplenty under the secularists too, but you can manifestly turn back from secularism, whereas Islamism looks like a one-way street and derives larger financial benefits from Saudi and Gulf investment. As money flows in–the IMF ranked Turkey as the world’s 17th-largest economy last year–the Turks can easily leave off struggling for their own freedoms.

Republican Turkey has offered the single example, thus far, of a Muslim country living under Western democratic laws, however clunkily. But Islamic nostalgia is a powerful and insidious force. What people forget is that, from the 1400s onward, Turkey was as much based in Europe as in Asia. The Turks do not harbor a fundamentally eastern identity as many in the West mistakenly believe. The U.S. and E.U. can still keep the Turks in their camp. But first they must want to do so. And finally, they must start bidding higher.

Melik Kaylan, a writer based in New York, writes a weekly column for Forbes. His story “Georgia In The Time of Misha” is featured in The Best American Travel Writing 2008.

Read more Forbes Opinions here.

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October 23, 2009

Menendez, Ensign Introduce Genocide Resolution in Senate

Oct 21st, 2009 @ 11:52 am › Asbarez Staff
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Senators Menendez (left) and Ensign (right)

WASHINGTON—The Armenian National Committee of America welcomed the introduction Wednesday of the Armenian Genocide Resolution in the U.S. Senate by Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and John Ensign (R-NV).

The measure is similar to legislation in the U.S. House, H.Res.252, introduced earlier this year by Representatives Adam Schiff (D-CA), George Radanovich (R-CA), and Congressional Armenian Caucus Co- Chairs Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and Mark Kirk (R-IL). This measure already has more than 130 cosponsors.

In introducing the measure, Sen. Menendez noted, “Only when history’s darkest hours are acknowledged and understood can we truly learn from them and build a peaceful future upon those lessons. One and a half million Armenians experienced Hell on Earth, and to sweep their plight under the rug is to insult their memories and their descendants. It is long past time that our nation help set the historical record straight and provide a foundation of understanding that helps prevent future atrocities.”

Senator Ensign explained, “It’s inconceivable that after so many years the international community has yet to affirm that the deportation, expropriation, abduction, torture, massacre and starvation of the Armenian people was genocide. By joining together and affirming that genocide was committed on the Armenian people, we send a strong message to the international community that we will not turn a blind eye to the crimes of the past simply because they are in the past.”

“On behalf of all Armenian Americans, we thank Senators Menendez and Ensign for their tireless leadership in moving America toward a full and proper commemoration and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide,” said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. “This legislation, in seeking to end U.S. silence in the face of Turkey’s
denial of this crime, not only honors the past, but also, very powerfully, helps make Armenia and all the world safer from future genocides.”

Earlier this month, Senator Menendez spoke out about the importance of international affirmation of the Armenian Genocide, and condemned provisions in the Turkey-Armenia protocols, which would create a historical commission as “frankly absurd” and an “insult to the Armenian people.” He went on to note, “It is time that Turkey recognizes it [the Armenian Genocide] and accepts it. It is time that the world acknowledges this fact of history and moves on towards a viable peace that honors the true history of the Armenian people.” His complete remarks, delivered at an event supporting the efforts of the ANCA Eastern Region can be viewed at:

The resolution introduced today calls upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide.” The resolution includes extensive findings from past U.S. hearings, resolutions and Presidential statements on the Armenian Genocide from 1916 through the present, as well as references to statements by international bodies and organizations.

October 23, 2009
Genocide conference in NYC

As Genocide Continues to Shape World History, Landmark Conference will Seek Answers and Understanding

International Group of Scholars Gather to Focus Lens on Genocide through examination of Raphael Lemkin, Advocate and Initiator of United Nations Genocide Convention in 1948
Wed Oct 21, 2009 8:30am EDT

NEW YORK, Oct. 21 /PRNewswire/ — Current news headlines are a sad reminder
that genocide has been, and continues to be, a stain on human existence in all
corners of the world, from Rwanda to Armenia, to Darfur and beyond. Those
headlines also underscore the urgency of addressing every instance of the
crime, particularly in light of a statement made by Adolf Hitler before
invading Poland in 1939: “… I put ready my Death’s Head units, with orders
to send to death, mercilessly and without compassion, all men, women, and
children of the Polish race or language. … Who, after all, still talks
nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?”

Inscribed on the wall of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., that quote
illustrates that Hitler was emboldened by the lack of international response
to Turkey’s killing of more than a million ethnic Armenians during World War
I. By contrast, however, that episode in human history was also the spark that
led to the tireless efforts of one man to define the crime of genocide under
international law and enable perpetrators, such as a recently arrested suspect
in the Rwandan genocide, to be charged and brought to justice. That man was
Raphael Lemkin, whose life-long devotion to the cause not only coined and
defined the word “genocide,” but led to the 1948 United Nations Convention on
the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The invaluable contributions of Lemkin will be the focus of an international
public conference, “Genocide and Human Experience: Raphael Lemkin’s Thought
and Vision,” to be held Sunday, November 15, from 9:00 a.m.-6:30 p.m., at the
Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street in New York City. Bringing
together for the first time an international group of historians, political
scientists, anthropologists, philosophers, philanthropists, and legal
authorities to explore the tremendous legacy and impact of Lemkin’s work, the
landmark conference will also delve into perpetually relevant questions of
human rights and the nature of human behavior.

“Raphael Lemkin died in 1959, and while few people today may recognize his
name, most feel the impact of his work,” said Michael Glickman, Center for
Jewish History COO. “As a young Jewish lawyer in Warsaw almost 90 years ago,
Lemkin could not understand why it was a crime for an Armenian youth to murder
the Turkish official responsible for the attempted destruction of the Armenian
community in the Ottoman Empire, but not a crime for the government to murder
more than a million Armenians. That question inspired Lemkin to devote the
rest of his life to fight against such horrors and to wage a campaign of
international advocacy that led to the United Nations Genocide Convention.”

A wealth of Lemkin’s correspondence, along with papers documenting Lemkin’s
work as an activist, are housed in the archives of the American Jewish
Historical Society at the Center for Jewish History. The documents include
correspondences with public figures such as Eleanor Roosevelt, General Dwight
D. Eisenhower, and Pearl S. Buck; Lemkin’s unfinished manuscript History of
Genocide; and archival footage of interviews from the 1950s. The Lemkin
archives will also be the subject of a special exhibition at the Center for
Jewish History in partnership with Yeshiva University Museum scheduled to run
from November 16, 2009, to March 19, 2010.

Even though the crime of genocide is often understood as mass murder alone,
Lemkin viewed genocide as a nuanced concept, which shapes and is determined by
the spheres of economics, law, society, and culture. Through Lemkin’s archival
writings, the conference will focus on these gradations of genocide, as Lemkin
understood them.

Opening the conference will be an historical overview and brief biographical
account of Lemkin’s life, legal and other accomplishments, and perspectives on
the human condition, setting the context for the panel discussions to follow.
Topics to be explored by three different panels fall under the broad subjects
of Lemkin’s perspective on cultural genocide, the complex economic and social
issues surrounding genocide, and the challenging relationship between
international law and genocide.

Among the distinguished list of presenters are Vartan Gregorian, President,
Carnegie Corporation of New York; Peter Balakian, Colgate College; Donna-Lee
Frieze, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia; Alexander Laban Hinton,
Rutgers University; Jim Fussell, PreventGenocide.org; Tanya Elder, American
Jewish Historical Society; Berel Lang, Wesleyan University; Benjamin
Valentino, Dartmouth College; Lawrence Woocher, US Institute of Peace; Hilary
Earl, Nipissing University, North Bay, Ontario; Benedict F. Kiernan, Yale
University; Muhamed Mesic, Bosnia; William A. Schabas, National University of
Ireland; and Steven Leonard Jacobs, University of Alabama.

“It is the hope of the Center and the conference sponsors that this historic
gathering will not only provide some clearer understandings of both the
extraordinary courage and dynamic intellect of one individual, but will also
clarify the challenges that lie ahead in confronting the evil of genocide in
the modern world,” continued Mr. Glickman. “It is said that those who do not
learn from history are doomed to repeat it. ‘Genocide and Human Experience:
Raphael Lemkin’s Thought and Vision’ represents one small step to teach the
lessons humankind so desperately needs, as history continues to repeat itself
in the 21st century.”

The conference is open to the general public. For more information, visit
www.cjh.org/lemkin; or to register, log on to www.smarttix.com or call
212-868-4444.

SOURCE Center for Jewish History

Cathy Callegari, +1-212-579-1370, cathy@callprinc.com

URL:

October 23, 2009
Turkish Foreign Minister to Meet with Azeri Counterpart, President

ANKARA (Combined Sources)—Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will travel to Baku on Thursday for a ministerial meeting of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) where he will also address what Turkish media is describing as growing concerns by Azerbaijan over Turkey’s push to normalize ties with Armenia, the Turkish Hurriyet Daily reported.

Davutoglu is expected to meet with his counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov and President Ilham Aliyev on the sidelines of the meeting, Hurriyet said.

The meeting will come a week after Aliyev threatened to derail the Western Backed Nabucco pipeline project to bring gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe via Turkey.

Media reports in recent weeks have said the historically strong Turkish-Azeri alliance is in danger of breaking down due to Baku’s uncompromising demands for the Karabakh conflict to be linked to Turkish-Armenian rapprochement.

Although Aliyev presented his threat as a purely commercial move, analysts believe the underlying motive was to send a signal on the Turkish-Armenian deal.

Baku’s outbursts have been seen as a tactic to force the Karabakh linkage on Armenia, which is already under heavy international pressure to quickly normalize its relations with Turkey and resolve the Karabakh conflict.

“The timing of Aliyev’s announcement, less than a week after the accord between Yerevan and Ankara was signed, left little doubt.” Said Brian Whitmore, a senior correspondent at RFE/RL. “Baku had argued strenuously that a deal to reestablish relations between Ankara and Yerevan should not be signed while Armenia continued to occupy Nagorno-Karabakh, and it threatened to take unspecified countermeasures if one was.”

Turkish President Abdullah Gul, meanwhile, phoned his Azeri counterpart, Ilham Aliyev on Wednesday to brief him on discussions with US President Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev on the Karabakh conflict, the Anatolian News Agency reported.

The two leaders also discussed the recent removal of Turkish flags from a diplomatic mission in Azerbaijan a monument for Turkish soldiers who fought for Azerbaijan in the early 20th century. The move, a breach of international agreements between Azerbaijan and Turkey, was officially protested by Turkey’s ambassador to Azerbaijan.

Diplomatic sources have said Turkey and Azerbaijan are confident that the two countries will overcome “this period of strain” and will continue their cooperation for providing regional stability.

According to the Anatolian, Gul and Aliyev agreed that “misunderstandings and misperceptions brought about by some emotional reactions” while the two countries “were passing through hard times have been cleared.” It added that the two leaders “confirmed that impressions that ties between Turkey and Azerbaijan had weakened were not good for both countries.”

The Turkish flag was removed after Azeri flags were banned by FIFA at the Turkey-Armenia World Cup qualifying match soccer match in Bursa on October 14. The Turkish flags were replaced Tuesday, Azeri media reported, speculating that the decision to remove the flags came in response to a “Turkish ban” on Azeri flags in Bursa.

Asbarez

October 21, 2009

Tag: Nagorno-Karabakh

Armenians horrified by treaty with Turkey

Senate Resolution Reshuffles Political Cards in Ankara, Yerevan and Beyond

Improbable Embrace – Turkey and Armenia

Menendez, Ensign Introduce Genocide Resolution in Senate

Genocide conference in NYC

Turkish Foreign Minister to Meet with Azeri Counterpart, President