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[brother]

So what was he meant to have said? and the media done whatever you allege, also you claim it is rubbish but many say the same about your claims, so tell us your side of the story, its NOT good enough just to allege genocide without proof matey.

[brother]

Gul Calls On The Countries Which have Become A Tool To Armenian Allegations
Published: 3/22/2005
Anadolu Agency

 
ANKARA - ''I launch a call to countries who become a tool of the Armenian allegations: Either you account for what you have done, or prove the allegations,'' Turkish Foreign Minister & Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Gul said on Tuesday.

Gul addressed his party group meeting as the acting Prime Minister.

Mentioning the so-called Armenian allegations, Gul recalled that Turkish and Armenian peoples lived together for nearly a thousand years and contributed to each others' culture and security within this period.

Gul stated that Armenians worked as high ranking officials and Armenian church has been set up in the Ottoman period, and said: ''Armenian language and religion were preserved and developed. Our Armenian citizens, those who consider the issue objectively, and many historians clearly saw those facts. Despite this, there is an enmity against Turkey.''

''The sorrows and dangers experienced by the elements comprising the Ottoman society during the last period of the Ottoman Empire is another fact of the history. Everybody had difficult times in those years. All those were historical facts,'' Gul noted.


-DIASPORA-

Gul said there were documents and evidences of the sufferings of thousands of Ottoman citizens, and stressed that those who affirmed so-called Armenian allegations were the imperialist circles and chauvinist Armenian nationalists.

''Armenian Diaspora living in the United States and Europe are in good spirits. Since they are minority, they needed a tool to preserve their minority conscience and their power. They needed an issue to exploit. They are also guilty as they do not go to Armenia to help their brothers. They have a comfortable life where they live. They exploit this issue both to strengthen their presence there and to use their minority powers.''

''Unfortunately, several parliaments made wrong decisions. We have shown our reactions to the decisions taken in those parliaments, and we will continue to react,'' Gul stressed.


-GENOCIDE-

Emphasizing that genocide was a crime against humanity, Gul said this was not an ordinary crime that can be imputed to anybody. Gul reminded that Turkey also signed the UN treaty on genocide in 1948.

Noting that provisions pertaining to genocide became a part of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK), Gul said, ''in order to consider an act as genocide, members of an ethnical or religious group should be killed with the aim of eradicating them totally or partially.''

Gul said, ''has something like this happened in our history? If it had happened, so why the Armenian churches still exist? Why there are Armenian citizens in Turkey? ''

Describing the allegations as ''sophistry and slander'', Gul said, ''we are launching a call to the parliaments and countries who become a tool of those allegations: 'if you are able to make such allegation, then either you will account for them, or you will prove the allegations.''

''We have invited everybody and we have opened our achieves. We have invited all the scientists, including the Armenian, French, American and British scientists. The archives in Leningrad, Britain, Paris and Armenia should also be opened,'' Gul emphasized.

''If such a tragedy happened in this country, it has been experienced altogether. Families of all of us had experienced such sorrows,'' Gul stressed.

Gul said the (Turkish) parliament and the government from now on would be involved in further activities on such issues.

[brother]

US HISTORIAN REBUFFS SO-CALLED ARMENIAN GENOCIDE CLAIMS


Visiting Professor Prof. Justin McCarthy from the University of Louisville, an expert on the so-called Armenian genocide claims, yesterday asserted firmly that although there was a war in eastern Anatolia during World War I, the Ottomans had never pursued a genocide campaign against Armenians living in the region. McCarthy, who is currently visiting Turkey as the guest of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), yesterday told reporters that in 1915 the Ottoman Empire was only trying to suppress a revolt against the government, something which Armenians wrongly allege amounts to a genocide. “The number of Turks killed in this war far exceeded the Armenian casualties,” he added. “Nobody has ever produced proof that the Ottomans wanted to kill all of the Armenians. On the contrary, we have historic documentation that a senior Ottoman soldier supplied thousands of Armenian refugees with food at that time. Calling the 1915 incidents ‘genocide’ is nonsense. Armenians are trying to distort the facts for political ends.” /Star/

[Red Brigade10]

Orhan Pamuk Turkey's finest pen admits the Genocide: ''They say 'incident'. To me it's genocide ''

Sources :Am Artice published Sunday February 27, 2005 from the neutral source Observer International Guardian Unlimited
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/internat ... 319,00.htm

Orhan Pamuk, wielder of Turkey's finest pen, has spoken and cut a swath through his country's conscience.
'Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in Turkey. Almost no one dares speak but me, and the nationalists hate me for that' said their' the praisworthy novelist.The press attacked him for dishonouring the Turkish state and incitement to racial violence. He has been called a LIAR, 'A MISERABLE CREATURE' and a 'BLACK WRITER' in the daily Hurriyet.''Professor'' Hikmet Ozdemir, head of the 'Armenian ''studies department'' at the Turkish Union of Historians, rejected his statement as a 'great lie'.

A lone voice, Halil Berktay, professor at Sabanci University, supported Pamuk: 'In 1915-16 about 800,000 or one million Armenians were killed for sure'.Furious Turks put charges against Pamuk for speaking the truth , as it is a quite usual phenomenon to silence democratic and progresive voices in Turkey, folowed by a statement from ''attorney''
'Pamuk has made groundless claims against the Turkish identity, the Turkish military and Turkey as a whole. He should be punished for violating Articles 159 and 312 of the Turkish penal code. He made a statement provoking the people to hatred and animosity through the media, which is defined as a crime in Article 312.'


Hrant Dink a Turkish citizen , owner of the Armenian Turkish-language weekly Agos, stated 'Pamuk has always defended freedom of speech and thought, the rights of minorities' ,for 90 years we Armenians have been abused, insulted and discriminated against. We cannot enter certain professions, we Turkified our names. We have learnt to survive and endure without protest.Maybe it is time that the Turkish people also learnt tolerance and endurance from us.'

In London, a thinly veiled propaganda exercise at the Royal Academy trumpets Turkish empires, making far-reaching claims about the origins of the 'Turkic peoples'. Echoes of master-race ideology. Pamuk himself writes in the Academy journal: 'Turks gripped by romantic myths of nationalism are keen to establish that we come from Mongolia or central Asia... scholars have come no closer to offering definitive or convincing evidence to link us with a particular time and place.'


In the show the contributions of other nationals in the Ottoman empire - Armenians, Greeks and Jews - are not credited. Yet their handiwork is EVERYWHERE, in architecture, pottery, carpets, manuscripts.

Britain colludes in this travesty for the sake of oil interests in Azerbaijan, Turkey's closest ally.
Akin Birdal, vice-president of the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues, emphasises: 'No matter we have come to the 90th year of "incidents" Orhan Pamuk talked about, these will of course be discussed on domestic and international platforms. The aggressions carried out against Pamuk are those which have been carried out against thought. Pamuk is not alone.' Pamuk has cut the Gordian knot. He has become the hero of every right-thinking person in Turkey and every Armenian worldwide.

Conclusion...
This is another bright example how the Turks are treating to their most progresive and open minded intelectual Novelists while they are ''ready'' to discuss with their ''historians'' with falsified facts from the Ottoman Empire ''hisorians'', if the Ottoman Empire even had historians, to ''proove'' the opposit ,while they systematicaly want to silence the voices of the Greek ,Armenian, Kurdish and of other minorities, puting pressure with many forms to the other goverments not to recognise the self -evident .It is another deseperate attempt to twist the subject of the Genocide of the Armenian,Greek, Assyrian ,Kurdish and of other Christian Nestorian civilians during the Ottoman era into a non-political issue , as they want to show to Europe their ''democratic'' profile.

One of the numerous Pictures...
http://www.hayastan.com/armenia/genocid ... xt/4-1.jpg



[/url]

[brother]

Unseal Our Borders?
Published: 4/5/2005

 
BY OKTAY EKSI

HURRIYET- Armenians in Armenia are in big trouble. Nowadays, each and every one of them comments on how beneficial it would be for Turkey to unseal its border gate to Armenia. Leyla Tavsanoglu’s interview with Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission (TARC) moderator David Philips was published in Sunday’s Cumhuriyet’s. Philips is obviously one of those who seems sure that we’re too stupid to recognize our own national interests. He mentions 10 times during the interview how we could benefit from opening our border gate to Armenia. He’s actually trying to say, ‘Just open your gates, the rest is easy.’

Not only Armenians, but also proponents of the Armenian ‘genocide’ thesis among us and especially the US have recently been dropping the border gate issue whenever possible. Whatever they are going to say, they begin with, ‘You should open your borders to Armenia…’

All these efforts surely serve a good purpose. Armenia had a population of 3.44 million in 1998. However, by 2004 its population had fallen to just 2.99 million. The reason why almost 500,000 people left Armenia during this six-year period is purely poverty. The Armenian economy is a shambles, and half of its population lives in poverty.

Once they persuade us to open the border gates, their next move will be to try to open out to international markets and improve their economy. Soon enough, they will be trying to corner us and get us to admit their ‘genocide’ claims. Their constitution and declaration of independence are full of hatred against us, and they will be trying to realize their schemes at the earliest opportunity.

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul recently noted that over 40,000 Armenians work just in Istanbul, which is a sign of Turkey’s good will. But what do we get in return? Armenia pushes to make us recognize their ‘genocide’ claims. And next they’ll demand compensation and land from us. They don’t even bother to conceal their aims. What kind of a person would agree to this?

[turkcyp]

Turkey goes on the offensive against Armenian genocide campaign

ANKARA (AFP) - Turkey has urged Armenia to agree to a joint study of the massacres of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire and appealed for international support for the proposal in a bid to blunt a damaging international campaign to have the killings recognized as genocide.

Turkey fears that the 90th anniversary of the beginning of the alleged genocide on April 24 could trigger an outpouring of sympathy for the Armenians and cloud its image at a time when it is bidding to join the European Union.

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul disclosed at a special parliamentary session on Wednesday that Ankara had formally proposed to Armenia the creation of a joint commission to study the genocide allegations as a first step towards normalizing relations between the two estranged neighbors.

The proposal was outlined in a recent letter by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Armenian President Robert Kocharian, Gul said.

"We informed them that if our proposal is accepted, we are ready to negotiate with Armenia on how the commission will be established and how it will work and that such an initiative will serve to normalize relations between the two countries.

"I repeat this appeal once again... Turkey is ready to face its history, Turkey has no problem with its history," Gul said.

Ankara has refused to establish diplomatic relations with Yerevan since the former Soviet republic gained independence in 1991 because of Armenian efforts to secure international condemnation of the World War I massacres as genocide.

In 1993, Turkey shut its border with Armenia in a show of solidarity with its close ally Azerbaijan, which was at war with Armenia over the Nagorny-Karabakh enclave, dealing a heavy economic blow on the impoverished nation.

Gul urged the international community to press Yerevan to accept Turkey's proposal.

The mass killings and deportations of Armenians during World War I is one of the most controversial episodes in Turkish history.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kinsmen perished in orchestrated killings between 1915 and 1917 as the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor of modern Turkey, was falling apart.

Ankara argues that 300,000 Armenians and thousands of Turks were killed in what was civil strife during World War I when the Armenians rose against their Ottoman rulers and sided with invading Russian troops.

The killings have already been acknowledged as genocide by a number of countries, including France, Canada and Switzerland.

Some EU politicans are also pressing Turkey to address the genocide claims in what Ankara sees a politically-motivated campaign to impede its EU membership bid.

The Turkish parliament Wednesday lent support to the government's proposal for a joint study of the allegations by Turkish and Armenian historians in a declaration read out amid applause.

"This proposal should be considered an initiative for peace," the declaration said. "Nations who sincerely want Turkish-Armenian relations to improve are expected to support this proposal."

MPs also signed a letter to the British parliament urging it to publicly concede that a popular book on the Armenian massacres, written upon the request of British war propaganda agencies during World War I, was part of British "disinformation campaign" against the Ottomans at the time.

The book, titled "Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915-1916" and known as "The Blue Book," still serves as a major source for genocide allegations despite the fact that even one of its authors later admitted it was part of war propaganda, the letter said.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s ... acyarmenia

[brother]

Edward Tashji's Book Refuting Armenian Genocide Claims Promoted In New York
Published: 4/21/2005

 
NEW YORK - Ata Erim, the Chairman of the Federation of Turkish American Associations (TADF) promoted the autobiographic book of American citizen of Armenian origin Edward Tashji, who is a friend of Turks, in a news conference he held in New York.

Tashji who is in intensive care unit for three weeks couldn't attend the promotion meeting of the book titled ''Armenian Allegations-The Truth Must Be Told-, but his wife Mary Tashji and relatives were there.

Erim said that the book was a real life story which would refute the Armenian allegations, stressing that even only this book proved clearly that no genocide was committed against Armenians.

Erim said that the book which was written in English would be sent to American senators, parliamentarians, governors, mayors, TV anchormen, newspaper editors, university and high school libraries, members of European Parliament and all members of the United Nations.

Erim noted that TADF united its efforts with the NGOs in Turkey, US and Canada and started a 'counter attack' against the Armenian campaign. A Turkish group would march this year in Washington D.C. on April 24th to protest the Armenian claims of genocide, he said.

Erim added that they also sent a letter to all members of US Congress and another one to leading newspapers in the US like New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times to be published on April 24th as a reply to Armenian allegations.

[garbitsch]

"BERNARD LEWIS CONDEMNED FOR HAVING DENIED THE REALITY OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
According to the court, the historian committed a "fault".

THE COURT of first instance in Paris sentenced the American historian on Wednesday, the 21st of June, to pay 1 franc of damages and intrest to the Forum of Armenian Associations and to the International League Against Racim and Anti-Semitism. The first Civil Chamber, presided by Jacqueline Cochard, ruled that he had committed "a fault" by declaring, on the 13th of november 1993, to the daily "Le Monde" that the qualification of Genocide, given to the massacres perpetrated by the Turks in 1915, was nothing more than "the Armenian version of this story". Although the trial had proceeded in a tense atmosphere (see "Le Monde", 19 may), the sentence was accepted in the greatest calm by the 6 Armenian activists who had come. A bit of applause, a few hugs in the hall, nothing more. An attitude to the image of a decision, which, even if it constitutes a first, is certainly not moderated.

The judges refrained from judging history : "It is not up to the court to decide or to state wether or not the massacres committed >from 1915 to 1917 constitute the crime of genocide", the sentence underlines, "as this concerns events which belong to history, courts do not have the mission of arbitrating and resolving polemics." Especially because, they add, "the historian, in principle, has all the liberty to present the facts according to his personal views".

This liberty, however, has a limit : that of responsibility. Thus, someone who commits a "fault" and causes damage to a third party must compensate for it according to article 1382 of the civil code. Like others, maybe even more than others, a historian must tell the truth and nothing but the truth. And, especially, the whole truth. Thus, writes the tribunal, "it is only by hiding elements which go against his thesis that the defendant was able to state that there was no 'serious proof' of the Armenian Genocide". The sentence refers to the declaration, in may 1985, of the sub-commission of the United Nations charged with the repression and prevention of Genocide, the resolution of the European Parliament in june 1987, or the work of the International colloquium in Paris in August of 1984... A number of elements which, even if they are not indisputable, had to be mentioned in any case, and, absolutely exclude giving any credit whatsoever to the idea that "the reality of the Armenian genocide results from nothing more than the imagination of the Armenian people."

Thus, by ignoring these "elements with converging conclusions", which reveal that "the thesis of the extermination of the Armenian people is not only defended by [the Armenian people]", Bernard Lewis has committed a fault. The Tribunal refused, however, to follow the Armenian associations which accused the eminent orientalist of having acted as a "real propagandist". "Nowhere has it been established that he followed an aim foreign to his mission as an historian", the judges insist. Simply, "he failed in his duty of prudence and objectivity, by expressing himself so one-sidedly on a subject as sensitive as this one.". "His statements, prone to unjustly reviving the pain of the Armenian Community, are erroneous and justify damages." Minimal damages, much less than what was demanded by the Armenian forum. But on wednesday, not one of the activists, present at the Palace, was thinking of accounts. They were only there for the sake of principle.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kevork Oskanian

[cannedmoose]

Quotes from Library of Congress Armenia country study

"In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the Armenians' tendency toward Europeanization antagonized Turkish officials and encouraged their view that Armenians were a foreign, subversive element in the sultan's realm. By 1890 the rapid growth of the Kurdish population in Anatolia, combined with the immigration of Muslims from the Balkans and the Caucasus, had made the Armenian population of Anatolia an increasingly endangered minority. In 1895 Ottoman suspicion of the westernized Armenian population led to the massacre of 300,000 Armenians by special order of the Ottoman government.

The Armenian population that remained in the Ottoman Empire after the 1895 massacre supported the 1908 revolution of the Committee of Union and Progress, better known as the Young Turks, who promised liberal treatment of ethnic minorities. However, after its revolution succeeded, the Young Turk government plotted elimination of the Armenians, who were a significant obstacle to the regime's evolving nationalist agenda.

In the early stages of World War I, in 1915 Russian armies advanced on Turkey from the north and the British attempted an invasion from the Mediterranean. Citing the threat of internal rebellion, the Ottoman government ordered large-scale roundups, deportations, and systematic torture and murder of Armenians beginning in the spring of 1915. Estimates vary from 600,000 to 2 million deaths out of the prewar population of about 3 million Armenians. By 1917 fewer than 200,000 Armenians remained in Turkey.

Whatever the exact dimensions of the genocide, Armenians suffered a demographic disaster that shifted the center of the Armenian population from the heartland of historical Armenia to the relatively safer eastern regions held by the Russians. Tens of thousands of refugees fled to the Caucasus with the retreating Russian armies, and the cities of Baku and Tbilisi filled with Armenians from Turkey. Ethnic tensions rose in Transcaucasia as the new immigrants added to the pressures on the limited resources of the collapsing Russian Empire."

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So far I've resisted getting involved in this thread because the Armenian genocide is one of those issues that I'm not completely familiar with, therefore I didn't want to speak from a position of total ignorance on the matter.

I think it's a trait of any modern, well-balanced country, that it admits past mistakes and attempts to attone for them. However, the Turkish state at the time was a very different place in a very different situation. It viewed the Armenians as a 'fifth column' within its own borders that it had to deal with (much as Stalin viewed many of the ethnic groupings within Russia as a threat to the stability of the nation and hence deported them to deepest Siberia where millions died).

Despite this, it should be recognised that the manner in which the Armenians were persecuted and expelled from their ancestral homelands was a systematic and thus genocidal process. Even if the figures quoted are inflated, it does not counter the argument that before 1915, millions of Armenians lived within Turkey's borders, and after, 90% had either disappeared or fled to surrounding countries. Whether their deaths were the product of starvation on the long march out of Turkey or by their active extermination by Turkish forces is irrelevant. The fact is that something monumental happened, with independent documentary evidence proving widespread persecution. For Turkey to really take its place amongst the, I hesitate to use the expression, 'civilised nations', it should recognise and apologise to the Armenian people for the wrongs done in the name of the state and its predecessor state the Ottoman Empire.

A key example for Turkey is Germany, which has fully attoned for the crimes committed in its name during the 20th century and is greatly respected by its neighbours for doing so. It's still sensitive, but Germany does not deny the events. A model that Turkey seems to be following is that of Japan, which refuses to accept responsibility for the many massacres it perpetrated in China and elsewhere during the 1930s and 1940s. The result is that Japan is not yet fully trusted nor respected by the countries around it.

Sometimes patriotism is about recognising that one's country isn't perfect, but that it has moved on and become a more perfect place by accepting guilt. I hope in Turkey's case, that this will become a reality one day. It would make the whole region a better place to live if the Turkish and Armenian peoples could draw a line under this issue and move forward hand-in-hand rather than stare at each other across a closed border.

[garbitsch]

cannedmoose, what is problematic with this issue is that Turkey refuses to call the mass murdering of Armenians as "Genocide". Not only is this illogical, but it is something that has been used by the organic enemies of the Turks and Turkish Republic. Turkey would have recognised the attrocities commited towards the Armenians, unless there was a pressure from some countries that this was a Genocide, but nothingelse. This ignores the facts that the Ottoman Empire was under the occupation of Greece, Britain, France, Italy, and Armenians backed by Russia. It would be so fun not to claim that not a singe Turk was killed during the occupation of Anatolia by these five nations. The Ottomans were not pursuing a racist goal, as Hitler did, to erase the Armenian race from the world. If it was, they would have done this to the other communities within the Empire. The world should acknowledge that many Turks were also slaughtered by the invading nations (Armenians had their own terrorist groups which had raided many Turkish and Kurdish villages, killing the inhabitants). The problem can be solved, if the Armenians stop claiming that it was a genocide but mass murderings etc, and the Turkish republic appologises for the Armenian losses. Genocide is something very extreme and cannot and will never be accepted by Turks and Turkish Republic. If this will not make us part of the civilised world, then let it not be.