Tag: Turkey-Armenia

Turkey threatens ‘serious consequences’
after US vote on Armenian genocide

Strategic partnership at risk despite Barack Obama’s attempts to stop Congress resolution
- Robert Tait in Istanbul and Ewen MacAskill in Washington
- guardian.co.uk, Friday 5 March 2010 21.34 GMT
Foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu says describing the 1915 Armenian killings as genocide is an insult to Turkey’s ‘honour’. Photograph: Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images

Turkey has threatened to downgrade its strategic relationship with the US amid nationalist anger over a vote in the US Congress that defined the mass killings of Armenians during the first world war as genocide.

Barack Obama‘s administration, which regards Turkey as an important ally, was today desperately seeking to defuse the row. It expressed its frustration with the House of Representatives’ foreign affairs committee, which voted 23-22 yesterday in favour of a resolution labelling the 1915 massacre of up to 1.5 million Armenians a “genocide”.

A furious Turkey may now deny the US access to the Incirlik air base, a staging post for Iraq, as it did at the time of the 2003 invasion, or withdraw its sizeable troop contribution to the coalition forces in Afghanistan.

On the diplomatic front, the US needs the support of Turkey, which has a seat on the UN security council, in the push for sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme. Turkey is also helpful to the US on a host of other diplomatic issues in the Middle East and central Asia.

The White House and state department began work today to try to prevent the controversial issue making its way to the floor of the house for a full vote.

In Turkey, Suat Kiniklioglu, the influential deputy chairman for external affairs in the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP), warned of “major consequences” if the resolution was accepted by the full House of Representatives.

“If they choose to bring this to the floor they will have to face the fact that the consequences would be serious – the relationship would be downgraded at every level,” he said. “Everything from Afghanistan to Pakistan to Iraq to the Middle East process would be affected.

“There would be major disruption to the relationship between Turkey and the US.”

His comments reflected deep-seated anger throughout Turkish society, as well as an official determination to press the Obama administration into making sure the resolution progresses no further.

Turkey withdrew its ambassador to Washington for urgent “consultations” immediately after the vote, which was screened live on nationwide television.

Its foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, appeared to blame the outcome on the White House, and said that describing the 1915 Armenian killings as genocide was an insult to Turkey’s “honour”. France and Canada have both classified the killings as genocide, unlike Britain.

“The picture shows that the US administration did not put enough weight behind the issue,” Davutoglu told a news conference. “We are seriously disturbed by the result.”

The mass killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians has long been a highly sensitive subject in Turkey. While the issue is now more openly debated than in the past, Turkish officials insist that to describe it as genocide equates it with the Nazi Holocaust.

Turkey admits that hundreds of thousands of Armenians died, but disputes suggestions that it was part of a programme to eliminate the population, insisting instead that many died of disease. It has also suggested that the numbers have been inflated, and pointed out that many Turks died at the hands of Armenians.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, who is on a visit to South America, stressed that both she and Obama opposed the house vote and wanted to see it go no further. She said any action by Congress was not appropriate. “We do not believe that the full Congress will, or should, act upon that resolution, and we have made that clear to all the parties involved.”

Asked how she squared her support for the Armenian campaign on the election campaign trail with her new position, she said circumstances had changed, with the Turkish and Armenian governments engaged in talks on normalisation and a historical commission established to look at past events.

“I do not think it is for any other country to determine how two countries resolve matters between them, to the extent that actions that the United States might take could disrupt this process,” she said.

The chairman of the Armenian National Committee of America, Ken Hachikian, who led the lobbying campaign to get the house committee to back the resolution, today dismissed the Turkish threat of reprisals. “This is part of a Turkish pattern or huffing and puffing. With the other 20 countries that have passed similar resolutions, they made similar threats and then it was business as usual,” he said.

Hachikian, who is based in Washington, said he hoped the vote would go to the full house before 24 April, Armenian genocide commemoration day. He accused Obama and Clinton of hypocrisy in trying to block a vote, saying they had supported the Armenian campaign during the presidential election.

He said the Turkish government had spent $1m during the past few months lobbying members of Congress. His committee had spent only $75,000, which included adverts in media outlets read by members of Congress and their staff.

Although Hachikian claimed to have the votes needed, and 215 members of the 435-member house have publicly backed the resolution, the chances of a full vote are small, given the opposition from the White House and state department.

The vote came as attempts at rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia – which have no diplomatic ties – had already run aground. A protocol signed in Geneva last October promising to restore relations has yet to be ratified by the parliament of either country.

Both Turkish and Armenian analysts voiced fears that the protocols may now be doomed.
March 7, 2010
Was the 1915 killing of Armenians genocide?

with responce from YUKSEL OKTAY

06 March 2010

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

by Stephen Kinzer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Genocide ruling harms US-Turkey relations | Stephen Kinzer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Respectfully,

Yuksel Oktay

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

Part III

February 28, 2010

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

Andy Rooney,

CBS 60 Minute Commentator

New York, NY

Dear Mr. Rooney,

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

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

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

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

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

Respectfully.

Yuksel Oktay

Concerned American with Turkish Heritage and Past President,

Federation of Turkish-American Associations, NY (1973)

Saturday, 27 February 2010

Washington, NJ

March 6, 2010

Davutoglu challenges U.S. to answer the question whether it wants peace in the region:

Turkish FM calls on U.S., West to say whether they really want Armenia-Azerbaijan reconciliation- UPDATE

05 March 2010 [16:21] – Today.Az http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttuzoe7x4UI

In his televised speech on March 5, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu urged the United States and West to resolve the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.Stability in the South Caucasus can become real only after Armenia withdraws from Azerbaijan’s occupied lands and Armenia-Turkey and Armenia-Azerbaijan reconciliation are ensured, CNN-Turk quoted Davutoglu as saying.

Unilateral reconciliation is impossible, Davutoglu said.

It is difficult to reach a full peace through reconciliation only between individual countries in the South Caucasus region, the Foreign Minister explained. In his view, a full peace is possible if only all existing conflicts are solved.

Davutoglu stressed that not only the Armenian-Turkish reconciliation, but also the Armenian-Azerbaijani reconciliation must be focus of attention adding that the United States and West are interested only in normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations.

“If we want peace, then why we talk only about the Armenian-Turkish reconciliation? Why do not we put forward the Armenian-Azerbaijani reconciliation? Why can not we believe that this can be realized? Why Turkey is mistaken when it talks about the Armenian-Azerbaijani reconciliation? Our American and Western friends need to think about it.”

“The question is clear and open. And our response is clear and open, too. Does someone want the Armenian-Turkish reconciliation? Yes, Turkey wants. And now we ask the question: “Do you want the Armenian-Azerbaijani reconciliation or not?” Let them come out and say: “We do not want.” And we’ll know about it. But if they want, let them do all that it is required,” the Turkish FM underscored.

Peace depends on a political will. The path is difficult, but this is not an impossible goal, Davutoglu added.

———–
13:15

Turkey calls on Armenia to open all archives and not to exert pressure through the U.S. Congress, and negotiate face to face, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said.

“The adoption of the resolution on” Armenian genocide” is comical, as the difference of one vote seems very strange,” he added.

U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs on Thursday adopted 23 votes to 22 a resolution recognizing the so-called “Armenian genocide”.

Armenia claims that the Ottoman Empire committed genocide against Armenians living in Anatolia in 1915. Making greater efforts to promote the issue internationally, Armenians have achieved its recognition by parliaments of some countries.

Signing the protocols with Armenia, Turkey sought to bequeath to future generations of peace and stability among nations, but the adoption of this resolution by the U.S Congress’s Committee shows that Yerevan does not act openly in this matter, he added.

The minister considers erroneous the view that the adoption of the resolution could put pressure on Ankara to ratify the Armenian-Turkish protocols.

“The fact is that Turkey has taken decision on in this issue for ten days while Armenia has done for four months,” he said.

The intervention of a third party, in this case the U.S., in relations between Armenia and Turkey, complicates the process of reconciliation between the countries, he said.

The adoption of a resolution recognizing the “Armenian genocide” indicates that the U.S Congress is very weak in developing a future political strategy, the Turkish minister said.

March 6, 2010

BEYAZ SARAY VE SOZDE SOYKIRIM OYLAMASI

Kritik oylama öncesi şok

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

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

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

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

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

SON DURUM: 25-21 KABUL

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

March 3, 2010

A Look at the Snarled Past of Armenians and Turks

Books of The Times

By DWIGHT GARNER

Published: March 2, 2010
Christopher de Bellaigue’s new book begins with the story of a journalistic blunder, the author’s own. In 2001 Mr. de Bellaigue wrote a long essay for The New York Review of Books about Turkey’s tangled history. It was a topic he thought he knew something about. At the time he was living in Istanbul and working as a foreign correspondent for The Economist.

Bit Ghezelayagh

His essay had barely arrived on newsstands, though, before complaints began to pour in. It turns out that Mr. de Bellaigue, while describing the age-old ethnic conflict between Turks and Armenians, declared that “some half a million” Armenians “died during the deportations and massacres of 1915.” Unknowingly, he had stumbled into bitterly contested territory. James Russell, a professor of Armenian studies at Harvard, was among those who wrote to rebuke him. Three times that many Armenians “were murdered,” Mr. Russell replied, “in a premeditated genocide.” Mr. Russell’s letter to The New York Review of Books continued: “If a reviewer wrote that only a third of the actual number of Jewish victims of the Holocaust had died, or that their deaths came about because they had rioted, or elected to make war against the German government, would you print it?” Mr. de Bellaigue was appalled at the tone of Mr. Russell’s letter, he writes, and at the possibility that he had made serious mistakes. He was shattered when Robert Silvers, the venerable editor of The New York Review of Books, scolded him over the telephone for appearing to be an apologist for the Turks. Chastened, Mr. de Bellaigue — a talented British journalist and the author of “In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran” (2005) — set out to discover the truth about what happened nearly a century ago between the Turks and the Armenians. The result of that quest is “Rebel Land: Unraveling the Riddle of History in a Turkish Town,” a deeply unconventional book that is as much memoir as proper history. It’s a murky and uneven book, too, one that Mr. de Bellaigue’s twitchy intellect and acid prose can’t quite rescue. Mr. de Bellaigue lets us know early on that “Rebel Land” is not going to be, at bottom, a research project. “I would not pore over books in libraries and faculties,” he declares, nor will he “solicit help from the Kurdish and Armenian lobbies.” He decides to “go to the back of the vessel and mix it in steerage with the forgotten peoples. From them I would get the story, gritty and unfiltered, of their loves, their losses and their sins.” What this jaunty bit of cultural condescension (mix it in steerage?) means in practice is that Mr. de Bellaigue begins to spend a lot of time in a small town in southeastern Turkey named Varto, in a district (also named Varto) that was caught up in the turmoil of 1915. Thousands of Armenians once lived there, and the ruins of their churches linger still. This place is a far cry from the cosmopolitan Turkey that Mr. de Bellaigue knew and loved in Istanbul. Speaking of that urban Turkey, the one that mostly prefers to deny its complicated past, he writes, “I would now go behind its back and betray it.” So Mr. de Bellaigue goes to Varto and begins to poke around. Because he is a keen observer and a natural satirist — I would like to read a novel by him — the parts of “Rebel Land” that are akin to travel writing are shrewd. He is good on people, observing one man’s “flowery nose” and “grenadine complexion,” another’s “white parabola” of a mustache, yet another’s “precarious nail-bitten superiority.” Mr. de Bellaigue is a mordant sensualist, noting how a river flows into “curvaceous oxbows” and how boots “sucked and popped” through mud. He is particularly attentive to his meals, enjoying “mezes of superlative quality,” “a delicious apricot cake” and noting how one local man enjoys deep-fried local trout with rocket and radishes. He describes Varto itself as “this curious place with a name like a cleaning detergent.” There is Kafkaesque humor, too, in the way the local authorities trail him, and in the way he tries (and usually fails) to get the locals to trust and to talk to him. Mr. de Bellaigue’s peppery asides rub up awkwardly, however, against the main story he is trying to tell in “Rebel Land,” one that doesn’t lend itself to pithy aperçus. The arc of his narrative becomes lost amid the place names and rumors and dimly remembered family stories. He complains that he “might be told three or four versions” of every event, and the reader begins to feel his pain. This is a book that has a two-page dramatis personae at the front, of the kind that makes your heart sink. Mr. de Bellaigue does not do enough to separate all these living and historical people, to make them distinctive, and they become a jumble on the page. As his book progresses, Mr. de Bellaigue begins to limit his focus to the crucial questions, notably this one: what happened to the Armenians of Varto? His book becomes a kind of intellectual, emotional and forensic detective story. He delivers, piece by piece, a summary of the Armenians’ case against the Turks and he blasts the Turkish historians who, he feels, have whitewashed a portion of their country’s history. Ultimately, he writes, “the big historical question is not whether very large numbers of Anatolian Armenians met with a violent end in the spring and summer of 1915, but whether or not the killings took place by fiat.” In other words, was it genocide or merely the actions of a few bad men? Mr. de Bellaigue worries that “a genocide fixation” has blinded both sides to all shades of gray. “What is needed is a vaguer designation for the events of 1915, avoiding the G-word but clearly connoting criminal acts of slaughter, to which reasonable scholars can subscribe and which a child might be taught,” he suggests. “By raising knowledge about this great wrong, a way might be opened to a cultural and historical meeting between today’s Turks, Kurds and Armenians, for they were not alive in 1915, and need not live in its shadow.” The gimlet-eyed and sensible Mr. de Bellaigue proposes all this, and then immediately realizes his cosmic folly. “But no; this is the prattle of a naïf,” he writes, “laughable, unemployable.”

March 3, 2010
CBS – BY DR. ROBERT B. MCKAY (TURK BOB)
From: ALI CINAR
Subject: BOB MCKAYDEN CBS YORUMU

To Les Moonves, President & CEO, CBS Corp. lmoonves@cbs.com

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

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

Date: February 28, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

1.      1915 through WWI Armenian Russian conspiracy

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

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

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

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

Persons in Azerbaijan.

Period I

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

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

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

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

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

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

genocide and/or war crimes.

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

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

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

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

Period II

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

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

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

Period III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

less enthusiastically viewed.

Cordially,

Robert McKay
March 3, 2010