The Vatican said Wednesday that it had concluded a treaty to recognize Palestinian statehood, a symbolic but significant step that was bound to be welcomed by many Palestinians but was likely to cause deep concern for the Israeli government.
Formal recognition of a Palestinian state by the Vatican, which has deep religious interests in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories that include Christian holy sites, lends a powerful signal of legitimacy to the efforts by the Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, to achieve statehood despite the long paralyzed Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Israel has grown increasingly alarmed about the increased international acceptance of Palestine as a state since the United Nations upgraded the Palestinian delegation’s status in 2012 to that of a nonmember observer state. A number of European countries have also signaled their acceptance of Palestinian statehood.
Pope Francis, the leader of the world’s 1 billion Catholics, has long signaled his wish for a Palestinian state. For the past year, the Vatican had informally referred to the country as “state of Palestine,” in its yearbook as well as in its program for Francis’ 2014 visit to the Holy Land.
A statement from a joint commission of Vatican and Palestinian diplomatic officials, posted on the Vatican news website, said “the work of the Commission on the text of the agreement has been concluded,” and that it will be submitted for formal approval and for signing “in the near future.”
‘Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot That Avenged the Armenian Genocide’ – The Washington Times
Vengeance is born when justice dies. “Operation Nemesis” is the gripping tale of how a small, ruthlessly determined group of Armenians hunted down the architects of the Ottoman Empire’s World War I program of organized mass murder, specifically intended to eliminate a people, the Armenians, who had lived in Anatolia and other parts of the Ottoman Empire for thousands of years.
Many governments, spiritual leaders (including the current pope), and most independent historians and legal analysts agree that what began in Istanbul a century ago on April 24, 1915, was the first modern genocide. By the time it was over, best estimates are that 1 million Ottoman Armenians had been killed, starved or driven to their deaths — as many women and children as able-bodied men. Trials in Istanbul immediately after World War I convicted and condemned to death in absentia key members of the responsible Young Turk leadership, but political upheaval erupted before most sentences could be carried out. While Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern Turkish republic, personally denounced the mass murder of Armenians as “a shameful act,” his and other successor governments never officially acknowledged what happened. In the perilous early days of the Turkish republic — a poor, war-ravaged country — denial was understandable if not justifiable. The first and only priority was to establish a cohesive Turkish identity to replace the conflicted racial and religious melange that was the Ottoman Empire.
This meant creating a cadre of Muslim Turkish doctors, engineers, artists, intellectuals, architects, bankers and entrepreneurs to replace the Christian Armenians, Greeks and other minorities who had dominated those fields throughout the Ottoman centuries. It also meant avoiding restoration of valuable farmland, commercial property and seized or looted personal wealth to the families of murdered or exiled Armenians at a time when the Turkish economy was struggling to survive. This, in turn, led to rewriting history and demolishing ancient churches and other traces of Armenian civilization that had stood for centuries before the first Turks set foot in Anatolia.
Today, Turkey is a prosperous regional superpower, but its government is still in deep denial. It is as if every postwar German government, from Konrad Adenauer to Angela Merkel, had denied the existence of Nazi atrocities and passed laws banning the discussion of Hitler’s crimes against humanity. Of course, no analogies are perfect. Even as the Young Turk leadership organized and carried out its program of mass extermination, a few Christian Armenians were exempted. A great uncle of mine, a palace architect to the sultan, was already serving as an Ottoman engineer officer when the mass murders — unbeknownst to him — began. His wife, as a senior officer’s spouse, was spared. Uncle Mihran ended up a British POW on the Arab front and would build a new life — and a distinguished architectural career — in America. To his dying day, he had nothing but respect for Kemal Ataturk as a brilliant soldier and nation-builder. Obviously, you wouldn’t have found any Jewish officers in senior German ranks under the Third Reich, and wives of purged Jewish officers would probably have perished in concentration camps.
But that hardly alters the big picture. The mass murders of defenseless Armenian civilians, deportations, abductions of children, unrecompensed confiscation of possessions, and deliberate failure to provide food or medical treatment to Armenian death marchers clearly qualify as genocide. Small wonder then, that in the absence of justice in the early 1920s, a handful of Armenian conspirators took the law into their own hands and hunted down several of the convicted mass murderers living comfortably in cities like Berlin. Sadly, theirs is a story with more villains and victims than heroes. In “Operation Nemesis,” Eric Bogosian, a successful playwright and novelist, portrays the revenge killers warts and all; they included at least one neurotic and one braggart who clearly enjoyed his work a little too much. Worse was to follow. As late as the 1980s, a handful of radical Armenian nationalists with Middle East terrorist links carried out murders of innocent Turkish diplomats, possibly with encouragement from behind the Iron Curtain.
Meanwhile, the bloody shirt of Talaat Pasha, one of the architects of the Armenian genocide — a man who gloated about it and even pressured U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau to turn over any American life insurance benefits paid on the deaths of his victims — was placed on display at the Turkish Army Museum inIstanbul as evidence of Armenian atrocities against Turks; the equivalent would be a contemporary German museum displaying clothing worn by Adolf Eichmann at his execution as evidence of Jewish atrocities against Germans.
Justice has yet to replace revenge, but growing numbers of Turks are seeking — and speaking — the truth, even at the risk of jail. When Hrant Dink, a courageous Turkish-Armenian journalist I was privileged to know, was gunned down by an extreme Turkish nationalist in front of his Istanbul office in 2007, 200,000 mourners, overwhelmingly Muslim Turks, filled the streets carrying signs declaring “We Are All Hrant Dink” and “We Are All Armenians.” What better reminder that the sense of justice is often stronger in ordinary citizens than in politicians?
Armenian Genocide resolution introduced to Germany federal state parliament
On the occasion of the Armenian Genocide Centennial, the parliament of the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, on Tuesday submitted a joint resolution condemning the genocide.
In the Rhineland-Palatinate capital city of Mainz, all parliament factions used the term “genocide” to describe what occurred in the Ottoman Empire in 1915.
“We [i.e. Germans] all have to bear the historic accountability for this Genocide (…). That is why we introduce this joint resolution.
“This is not solely about remembering the victims, but the need to look ahead. Our joint objective is to achieve reconciliation, mutual understanding, and recognition. That is why we support the development of Armenian-Turkish relations.
“The resolution calls on to remember the Armenian Genocide that occurred 100 years ago. The [Rhineland-Palatinate] parliament factions condemn the Ottoman Empire’s actions that led to the extermination of 1.5 million Armenians.
“The parliamentary forces remain faithful to their decision of Armenian-Turkish reconciliation,” the joint resolution specifically reads, reported Rhein-Zeitung.
Cross-stone dedicated to Armenian Genocide Centennial placed in Germany’s Halle
A cross-stone made from Armenian tuff has been placed in the Halle city of Germany’s Saxony-Anhalt state. The cross-stone is dedicated to the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide, yerakouyn.com reports.
According to Hye Tert, the cross-stone was officially unveiled with the blessing and consecration with the participation of Primate of the Armenian Diocese of Germany, His Grace, Father, Archbishop Garegin Bekchyan, President of the Inter-Church Cooperation of Saxony-Anhalt Jurgen Titrich, Temporary Charge d’Affaires of the Republic of Armenia in Germany Ashot Smbatyan, Mayor of Halle Bernd Vigand and others. The ceremony included a performance by the local women’s choir.
Source: Panorama.am
Turkish Obsession with Armenian Territorial Demands
BY HARUT SASSOUNIAN
On the occasion of the Armenian Genocide Centennial, Turkish reporters insistently inquired about Armenia’s territorial claims from Turkey.
In an interview published on April 25, 2015, in the Turkish Hurriyet newspaper, a reporter asked Pres. Serzh Sargsyan if Armenia had territorial demands from Turkey. Below is my translation of Hurriyet’s Turkish text of Pres. Sargsyan’s response:
“Since its independence, the Republic of Armenia has not had any territorial claims from Turkey or any other country. Our government’s foreign policy agenda has not had such an issue, and does not have it today. This is clear. We are a full and responsible member of the international community. As a UN member state, we understand our role in the international community; we respect the principles of international law.… If you pay close attention, Armenia’s demands for land from Turkey are discussed in Turkey, not in Armenia! As to why this is so, I let everyone draw their own conclusions.”
During a meeting with representatives of the Armenian-American community on May 7 in Washington, DC, I asked Pres. Sargsyan to clarify his comments to Hurriyet which were misunderstood or misinterpreted by some Armenians and Turks. The President explained that he had not said that Armenia did not have territorial demands from Turkey. He had simply stated that Armenia did not present such demands, and added: “We have no right to say that we have no territorial demands from Turkey. We also have no right to say that we have such demands.” The President went on to say that “Armenian political parties in the Diaspora are free to present such demands.”
Pres. Sargsyan is clearly indicating that as a head of state, demanding land from Turkey — a powerful and menacing neighbor — could have serious consequences on Armenia’s national security, which is not the case when such claims are made by individuals or organizations.
Earlier that same day, the morning of May 7, during Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian’s press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, another Turkish journalist asked the same question about Armenian territorial claims from Turkey. Nalbandian gave the same answer as the President: “Armenia has not made territorial claims from Turkey.” He also wondered why is this issue raised in Ankara rather than Yerevan?
Four years ago, on July 23, 2011, Pres. Sargsyan gave a firmer answer when an Armenian student asked him about the eventual return of Mount Ararat and Western Armenia:
“It all depends on you and your generation. I believe my generation fulfilled its task when it was necessary in the early 1990’s to defend a part of our homeland — Karabagh — from enemies. We were able to do that…. My point is that each generation has its own task, and it must be able to carry it out, and carry it out well.”
The Armenian President’s answer created a huge storm of controversy in Turkey and Azerbaijan. Journalists and officials in both countries mounted hysterical attacks on Armenia, accusing Pres. Sargsyan of “urging Armenian youth to occupy Mt. Ararat and Eastern Turkey.” Insulting adjectives were hurled at Pres. Sargsyan by Turkey’s then Prime Minister Erdogan, Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc, Minister Egemen Bagis, Pres. Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, and the Foreign Ministries of both countries. Erdogan even demanded an apology from Armenia’s President. To incite the masses, protests were organized in Turkish cities where photographs of Pres. Sargsyan were burned!
It is understandable why Turkish leaders are so apprehensive when the issue of Armenian territorial demands is raised. Knowing full well that their ancestors eliminated the Armenian population from their native lands, Turkish officials are haunted by the fear that Armenians would reclaim their historic homeland of Western Armenia, today’s Eastern Turkey!
In order to unite Armenians around the same set of demands, I believe we should adopt the slogan — “seeking justice” — which includes all Armenian claims from Turkey as expressed in the Pan-Armenian Declaration of the Armenian Genocide Centennial adopted in Yerevan on January 29, 2015, by the governments of Armenia and Artsakh, and leaders of major Diasporan organizations. Paragraph 6 of that Declaration calls for “restoring individual, communal and pan-Armenian rights and legitimate interests.” Furthermore, the Declaration’s preamble specifically mentions “the dispossession of the Homeland,” the Treaty of Sevres of August 10, 1920, and Pres. Woodrow Wilson’s Arbitral Award of Nov. 22, 1920, which granted Armenia a territory several times larger than today’s Armenian Republic.
Iran president: No obstacle to expansion of relations with Armenia
President of Iran Hassan Rouhani called for the expansion of bilateral relations with Armenia.
On Tuesday the Iranian leader received Armenia’s newly appointed ambassador to Iran Hassan Rouhani.
“There is no obstacle to the expansion of Tehran-Yerevan relations,” President Rouhani said.
The Iranian president reiterated that Iran and Armenia have an acceptable level of cooperation in international bodies in addition to their mutual cooperation, Fars news agency reported.
President Rouhani expressed hope that Iran and Armenia would broaden their relations during the mission of the new Armenian ambassador to Tehran.
Toumanian, for his part, said that he will do his best to consolidate Armenia-Iran relations during his diplomatic mission to Tehran.
He said that both Iran and Armenia are willing to broaden their cooperation.
The Jerusalem Post: Knesset Speaker calls to rethink Israel’s stance on Armenian genocide
Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein on Tuesday called to rethink Israel’s stance on the Armenian genocide, calling the murders a “moral stain” on humanity.”
“History cannot be changed,” he said during a speech in the Knesset. “The disaster can’t be obscured by diplomacy anymore.”
Armenia recently marked the centenary of a mass killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915, at the height of World War I.
“It is no secret that Israel has taken an ambivalent position about the genocide,” Edelstein said, calling Israel’s reaction “too hesitant and too restrained.”
“As the Jewish people, we cannot stay silent,” he addressed MKs in the plenum. “We cannot turn a blind eye or lessen the extent of the Armenian tragedy,”
Başbakan’ın Bitlis’te ‘olmadı’ dediği soykırım
Serdar Korucu, Agos
Başbakan Ahmet Davutoğlu, AK Parti’nin doğu illerindeki seçim mitinglerinde gündemine Ermeni Soykırımı’nı almayı sürdürüyor. Son olarak 8 Mayıs’taki mitinginde “Bitlis tarihi şahittir ki zulmü biz gördük” dedi. Halbuki soykırımdan kurtulanların hatıraları Ermenilere yönelik katliamları açıkça ortaya koyuyor.
Başbakan Ahmet Davutoğlu seçim mitingleri sırasında HDP’yi Ermeni Soykırımı üzerinden de eleştirmeye devam ediyor. Özellikle de doğu illerinde.
Son olarak Bitlis mitinginde bir kez daha hedefine HDP Eşbaşkanı Selahattin Demirtaş’ı alan Davutoğlu, “Bugün HDP’nin eşbaşkanı CHP’nin de eşbaşkanı yurt dışına gidiyor, yurt dışında Ermeni diasporasıyla Bitlis’i de Ermenistan’ın içinde gösteren haritalar önünde konuşmalar yapıyor” dedi.
Başbakan ardındansa Bitlis’te 100 yıl önce yaşananlarda Ermenilerin hedef olmadığını savundu: “Bitlis’i böyle yakıp yıkanların yaptığı zulmü unutup sizin dedelerinizin bizim bütün Türkiye’de yaşayanların dedelerinin soykırım yaptığı iddiasına destek verenlere bu meydanları bırakacak mısınız? Onlara Bitlis tarihi şahittir ki zulmü biz gördük.
Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nun 1914 sayımına göre, 117 bin 492 kişilik nüfusuyla Bitlis Vilayeti’nin nüfusunun dörtte birini oluşturan Ermeniler, Merkezi Londra’da bulunan Gomidas Enstitüsü’nün direktörü Ara Sarafian’a görey “tehcir” olmadan yok edilmişti. Sarafian, “Soykırımda Bitlisli Ermeniler ‘tehcir’ süsü vermeye bile gerek görmeden hemen oracıkta sözcüğün tam anlamıyla kesildi. Öyle ki, bugün dünyanın dört bir yanında yaşayan Bitlis kökenli Ermenilerin çoğu soykırım öncesi daha iyi bir yaşam için başka ülkelere göç edenlerin torunları” derken bölgede hayatta kalmayı başaranların hafızalarında da benzer izler bulunuyor.
Prof. Verjine Svazlian’ın derlediği Ermeni Soykırımı’ndan kurtulanların hatıralarından biri, kendini “Bitlis’in yerlisi” olarak tanıtan Ağavni Mıkırtiç Mıkırtıçyan’a ait: “Dışarı çıktık; sokaklar hep öldürülmüş insanların cesetleriyle doluydu; bütün Ermenileri katletmişlerdi. Geri kalan bizleri de sürgüne gönderdiler; ama nereye gideceğimizi bilmiyorduk. Yolda bir gürültü patırtı koptu, feryatlar duyuldu, kargaşalık oldu… Geceleri de kızları ve kadınları kaçırıyorlardı.”
Sadece Bitlis’in merkezinde değil, vilayetin tamamında benzeri olaylar yaşanıyordu. O dönemde hayatta kalmayı başaran Bitlislilerin arasında, Osmanlı dönemindeki vilayet sınırları içinde de yer alan Khılat’ın (Ahlat) Pırkhus (Ovakışla) köyünde 1901’de doğan Sokrat Hakte Mıkırtıçyan da vardı: “Hiçbir kurşun boşuna harcanmıyordu. Hızla sokaklarda ve evlerin içinde cesetler üst üste yığılmaya başladı. Damların ve yolların üstünde de cesetler vardı.
Mıkırtıçyan, katliam sonrasında bölgede Ermeni yerleşiminin kalmadığını söylüyordu: “Eskiden Ermenilerin yaşadığı bizim Khılat bölgesinde tek bir Ermeninin nefesi dahi hissedilmiyordu. O bölgedeki bütün köylerin sakinlerini kılıçtan geçirmişlerdi.”
Bitlis’e bağlı bir başka bölgede Khizan’ın (Hizan) Surp Khaç köyünde 1911 yılında doğan Sırbuhi Mıkırtiç Muradyan da doğduğu bölgedeki dehşeti aktarıyordu: “Yolları kapattılar ve dehşet verici katliam başladı… Kadın, çocuk ayrımı yapmıyorlardı; herkesi öldürüyorlardı.”
HP unveils €5.1m Technology Lab in Bulgaria
HP has opened a 300-square metre Technology Lab in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, part of the company’s Technology Services Lab infrastructure.
HP has invested BGN 10m (€5.1m) in the Technology Lab located in Business Park Sofia. It is the largest investment of this kind the company made in Europe, Iravan Hira, general manager of Hewlett-Packard Bulgaria, said at the recent opening of the facility, according to the Bulgarian News Agency. The Bulgarian prime minister Boyko Borissov, the transport, IT and communications minister Ivaylo Moskovski and US ambassador Marcie Ries were invited to the opening.
“The purpose of the lab is predominantly to allow HP technical staff to have hands-on experience with our latest technology on an ongoing basis, as well as in some instances also replicate customer issues,” an HP EMEA spokesperson told ZDNet.
The Technology Lab will provide support for local academic institutions such as the Technical University in Sofia, the St. Kliment Ohridski University, the New Bulgarian University, and the Sofia-based John Atanasov High School of Electronics. Students will be able to use HP’s resources for learning purposes.
“This will provide a foundation for our staff in Sofia to build a delivery capability at a higher level of quality and complexity to meet the ever increasing requirements of our customers,” HP EMEA’s spokesperson said.
HP has hired over 6,000 professionals in Sofia in the past nine years, according to the company. At the moment, HP has 60 job openings in the Bulgarian capital.
The country offers the sixth lowest tax levels for a medium-sized company in the EU and the European Free Trade Association, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The IT sector in Bulgaria employs over 20,000 software engineers in R&D roles alone, according to Bulgarian Association of Software Companies. Another 20,000 IT professionals work in outsourcing, making IT the fastest-growing sector of the Bulgarian economy.
Documentary Film on the Assyrian Genocide Shown in Sweden
By Bar Daisan, AINA News
Sodertalje, Sweden (AINA) — A documentary film on the Turkish genocide of Assyrians in World War One premiered yesterday in the city of Sodertalje, 36 kilometers south of Stockholm. The documentary, titled Seyfo 1915 – The Assyrian Genocide was directed by Assyrian filmmaker Aziz Said, who lives in Berlin. The film was produced by the Assyrian Federation of Sweden. Nearly 600 people attended the premiere.
The documentary tells the story of the genocide perpetrated by the late Ottoman government against the Assyrians, Greeks and Armenians — the Christian population of Turkey.
“Many of those who came to see the movie are people who themselves have lost relatives who were murdered a hundred years ago,” said Afram Yacoub, the President of the Assyrian Federation in Sweden.
The story of the film starts in Sweden. A Sweden-born journalist of Assyrian origin travels with a film crew to her parent’s homeland in Tur Abdin in southeastern Turkey in order to follow remaining traces of the crimes committed there during the year 1915. Assyrians call the year 1915 Seyfo, meaning sword. The film crew visited the cities Mardin, Diyarbekir, Midyat, Siirt and multiple other locations of where the genocide occurred.
The film includes testimony from several European, Turkish and Assyrian historians, as well as genocide researchers, including Professor Taner Akcam, Dr. Gabriele Yonan and Professor David Gaunt. The film includes testimony from survivors of the genocide.
750,000 Assyrians (75%) were killed in the genocide, as well as 500,000 Greeks and 1.5 million Armenians.
Related: Assyrian Genocide 100
The viewer of the documentary is transported into the villages in southeastern Turkey and confronted with images of devastation, where once proud houses and churches stood. The area looks like abandoned. The evidence of the past horror visible in many stone and wall ruins. The statements of the descendants of the victims of the genocide are heart-wrenching, indicating the scale of the tragedy.
Speaking at the premiere, director Aziz Said said the project was “a very emotional experience…I wanted to share with you this story and what I’ve learned with this film…its objective is to serve as a bridge of reconciliation, acceptance and peaceful coexistence between Turks, Kurds and Assyrians not only in Turkey but also in the European Diaspora. I hope it helps understand history of the region.”
The film contributes 100 years later to the memory of the greatest catastrophe in modern history of the Assyrians. This is particularly important for today’s young Assyrian people in the Diaspora and the interested European co-citizens and Kurdish and Turkish neighbors in Turkey. Such a documentary thus helps to keep the memory of the victims of the genocide alive, because Turkey as the formal successor state of the Ottoman Empire has not recognized this genocide and even vehemently denies it.
“Under the directorship of Aziz Said an impressive and professional document has been created,” said Dr. Gabriele Yonan, author of the very first book published 1989 in German about the Assyrian Genocide and who was among the invited guests in Berlin. “At the same time it is evidence that even after four generations Seyfo is alive among the descendants of victims and perpetrators. Also, it is shows that historical research focused on the Assyrian genocide has made progress in recent decades. Seyfo 1915 – Assyrian Genocide will be certainly an important film for the next generation.”
Two weeks ago the documentary was shown at a private screening in Berlin. While the German Parliament was discussing whether to recognize the genocide, the documentary was shown on Monday, April 22nd to an invited audience at the town hall of Berlin’s Schoneberg, a location famous for hosting John F. Kennedy on June 26th, 1963, when he said “Ich bin ein Berliner.”
Berlin’s audience of about 100 invited spectators were Germans, Turks, Kurds and Assyrians. Also present was the film crew that accompanied Aziz Said for several months in Turkey and Sweden.
“I was deeply touched and my heart was full of compassion for the Assyrian families, victims and relatives alike,” said Imogen Schafer, following the end credits of the documentary while the passionate beautiful music of the film was fading away at the background.