By Varoujan Der Simonian,

Thursday, Aug. 25, is the deadline set by President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan demanding that the Armenian population living in bordering towns of Berdzor, Aghavno, and Sus vacate their homes. Otherwise, they will be forcefully deported. Aliyev openly declares his aspirations that Syunik, the southern region of Armenia, along with other territories will become part of Azerbaijan. He proclaims that the 2,804-year-old capital of Armenia, Yerevan, is an Azeri city. Last month, during a week-long Holocaust and Genocide Educational Seminar held at Temple Beth Israel, I was invited to speak on the Armenian Genocide. The focus was to highlight what Hitler learned from the Armenian Genocide, which led him to proceed with the Jewish Holocaust.

This is the Aghavno Village that Armenians in Artsakh are being forced to vacate

There were so many strikingly similar statements made by Talaat Pasha and Hitler in carrying out their crimes against humanity. I shared with my audience that around 1895, individuals representing the Ottoman, Russian and German empires expressed their mindset of Armenia as follows: First by Marshall Colmar von der Goltz, professor at Istanbul Military College (1883-1895). He advocated to his students — future Young Turks — the forcible evacuation of the Armenian population residing in the Armenian Highlands which was part of the Ottoman Empire.

Second by Sultan Abdul Hamid II, Ottoman Emperor (1876-1909), who stated: “Armenian question? Omit, by removing Armenians.” And third by Aleksey Borisovich, Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky, Russian foreign minister (1895-96), who said: “Russia needs Armenia without Armenians… we need only one Armenian, to be placed in a museum.” In 1916, Dr. Bahaeddin Sakir, member of the Turkish ruling party, stated to Stapleton, acting American consul at Erzerum: “It is important that from Istanbul to India and China there be only one Muslim population with Syria serving as a nexus between the Mohammedan world of Asia and Africa. This vast project will be accomplished through the scientific genius and organizational talent of the Germans and the valiant arm of the Turks.”

These thoughts have been the fabric of Turkish political foundation for over a century. Today, presidents Recep Tayyip Erdogan pf Tirleu and Aliyev are making similar slogans and threats. Their intent is to expand Turkish ethno-cultural link to the Central Asian republics. They also want economic influence through the oil pipeline to Europe and beyond. Since the 2020 war, Azerbaijan has been seizing more lands from Armenia and thereby closing the territorial gap between itself and Turkey. In addition, Azeris continue to hold over 150 Armenian POWs hostage in Baku. And still the world is silent. In his book, “German Responsibility and the Armenian Genocide,” 1996, Vahaken Dadrian, the foremost scholar on this topic, summarizes that: a) once the genocide began, the refusal to intervene became the focal point of German policy. b) This policy, explicitly approved by Kaiser, was publicly justified on the grounds that Germany must retain the “trust” of Turkey as a valuable wartime ally. And c), Germany was unwilling to restrain Turkey to further its own interests.

One hundred years later, we are witnessing a similar situation. To retain the “trust” of Turkey and Azerbaijan, Western powers did not intervene in order to further their own interest in helping to export Azeri oil to Europe. Ethnic cleansing of the Armenians in Artsakh is in full force. Is this acceptable to the Western world? No intervention suggests that the current leaders are in concurrence with Joseph Stalin’s policy of further dismantling and weakening Armenia. It appears that they have no objection to the mindset expressed by Marshall Goltz, Sultan Hamid II, and Lobanov-Rostovsky, the outcome of which was the Armenian Genocide. Today, the removal of the Armenians from their ancestral homeland continues to remain the major objective of the Turkish-Azeri strategy.

The government made Turkey’s population registers public for the first time, identifying ethnic Armenians and other minorities, and excited Turks immediately crashed the system.
Fehim Tastekin @fehimtastekin

February 19, 2018

During the days when Turkey still hoped to join the European Union, its people were becoming willing to question their ethnic and religious ancestry. Since then, the country has reverted to a time when people were disgraced and denigrated, with the government’s blessings, as “crypto-Armenians.”

Hrant Dink was the editor of the Armenian-language newspaper Agos in 2004 when he wrote that Sabiha Gokcen, the first female military pilot of the Turkish Republic, was of Armenian parentage. Because of this and other articles he penned, Dink found himself the subject of an investigation by the Justice Ministry. He was assassinated in 2007 for reasons thought to be related to his strong support for Armenian causes.

Dink’s story illustrates why population registers in Turkey were kept secret until recently. The topic has always been a sensitive issue for the state. The confidentiality of data that identifies people’s lineage was considered a national security issue.

There were two main reasons for all this secrecy: to conceal that scores of Armenians, Syriacs, Greeks and Jews had converted to Islam, and to avoid any debate about “Turkishness.” Its definition, “anyone who is attached to the Turkish state as a citizen,” was enshrined in the constitution as part of the philosophy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founding father of the Turkish Republic and its first president.

For a long time, the official policy was that Turks formed a cohesive ethnic identity in Turkey. But less than two weeks ago, on Feb. 8, population registers were officially opened to the public via an online genealogy database. The system crashed quickly under the demand. Some people who had always boasted of their “pure” Turkish ancestry were shocked to learn they actually had other ethnic and religious roots.

On the darker side, comments such as “Crypto-Armenians, Greek and Jews in the country will now be exposed” and “Traitors will finally learn their lineage” became commonplace on social media.

Genealogy has always been a popular topic of conversation in Turkish society, but also a tool of social and political division. Families often acknowledged in private that their lineage was Armenian or that a long-dead relative was a convert to Islam, but those conversations were kept secret. Being a convert in Turkey carried a stigma that could not be erased.

Ethnic Armenian columnist Hayko Bagdat told Al-Monitor, “During the 1915 genocide, along with mass conversions, there were also thousands of children in exile. Those who could reach foreign missionaries were spirited abroad. Some were grabbed by roaming gangs during their escape and made into sex slaves and laborers. The society is not yet ready to deal with this reality. Imagine that a man who had served as the director of religious affairs of this country [Lutfi Dogan] was the brother of someone who was the Armenian patriarch [Sinozk Kalustyan].”

He went on, “Kalustyan, who returned to Turkey from Beirut in 1961, was remembered as a saint in the Turkish Armenian Patriarchate and as someone who had served in the most difficult times after 1915. During the genocide, his mother sent the children away and converted to Islam. Later she married [a man called] Dogan, who was of high social standing, and had two girls and a boy. The boy was Lutfi Dogan. When the mother, who was then with the Nationalist Action Party branch in Malatya province, died, his uncle came in priest garb from Beirut to attend the funeral. Nobody could say anything.”

The mindset of society was starkly clear when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan once complained, “We are accused of being Jews, Armenians or Greeks.”

There were those who feared that data obtained from population registers could be used to stigmatize the famous and used for political lynching campaigns. After the database went down, they spoke out against its restoration. One of them was Tayfun Atay, a columnist for Turkey’s daily Cumhuriyet.

“I was advised in a friendly manner not to admit that I am a Georgian. That was the lightest form of pressure. What about those who risk learning they are of Armenian ancestry or a convert? Just think: You think you are a red-blooded Turk but turn out to be a pure-blood Armenian. Imagine the societal repercussions,” he wrote Feb. 12.

As the debate raged, the system suddenly came back online Feb. 14.

Many Turks are questioning the timing of making this information available.

“If they had done this a few years ago when we were [becoming more tolerant], conspiracy theories would not have been as strong as today, when the state behaves as though we are in a struggle for existence. This is how Turkey reinvigorates the spirit of the Independence War” to inspire patriotism and pro-government thinking, journalist Serdar Korucu told Al-Monitor.

Those who oppose the system fear that a society already in a morass of racism will sink into it even further. Others, however, say that though reality might be shocking, couldn’t it be useful in eradicating racism?

“Yes, definitely. Everyone in Turkey is curious about their ancestry. That is a fact,” Korucu responded. “Why is facing reality so hard?” He said of the Sabiha Gokcen story, “That turned the country upside down.”

Korucu believes data confidentiality is essential to prevent population registers from being misused as instruments of political defamation, but warned, “The state organs already know everything about us.”

In 2013, Agos reported that the government was secretly coding minorities in population registers: Greeks were 1, Armenians were 2 and Jews were 3. The covert classification of religious minorities was met with wide outrage.

“What’s worse is these facts emerge when it is time for a young man for report to military conscription. In short, there are those who know us better than we do. So why not tell us about it?” Korucu asked.

“Population registers are dangerous. That is why Hrant Dink was murdered,” the columnist Bagdat noted. “The director of the Genocide Museum in Yerevan told a delegation from Turkey [about] the three most-discussed issues by those who were able to escape. Armenians first tell us about the Muslims who helped them escape the genocide, then the Armenians who betrayed them and only then do they narrate their catastrophe. If we make public the names of Armenians who were forced to convert to Islam, their grandchildren will be in danger today.” 

He added, “This is how the situation is after 100 years: The Turkish state asked us to accept being Turks. Fine, let me say I am a Turk. Will I be given a public job? No. When I say, ‘No, I am an Armenian,’ I am treated as a terrorist. Nothing has changed. Opening of the population registers means nothing to me. How can we forget Yusuf Halacoglu, the director of the Historical Society of Turkey in 2007, who had bluntly threatened, ‘Don’t make me angry. I have a list of converts I can reveal down to their streets and homes.’ These words, by this man who later became a politician in the Nationalist Action Party, were a threat to Turkish politics.”

Is the information in the now publicly accessible registers complete?

Another ethnic Armenian, journalist Yervant Ozuzun, has doubts. ”We don’t know if anything changed. We know ethnic origins were marked with different codes in the register. We as Armenians were code No. 2. Has this changed? I don’t think so.”Government officials aren’t saying one way or the other. 

Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2018/02/turkey-turks-become-obsessed-with-genealogy.html#ixzz7cWv5SApH

Israel Charny explores how Turkey pressured the First International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide to silence talk of the Armenian Genocide.

By GLENN C. ALTSCHULER

In the spring of 1982, shortly before the First International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide was scheduled to begin in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, the Turkish government demanded that the six sessions on the Armenian Genocide (out of 150 overall) be canceled, and Armenian speakers prohibited from participating. If the Israeli government, which was co-sponsoring the conference, did not comply, Turkish authorities threatened to end protection to Jews escaping from Iran and Syria through their country.

Under pressure from Israeli officials, Elie Wiesel resigned as president of the conference; Yad Vashem withdrew its offer to host the opening ceremonies; Tel Aviv University backed out as a co-sponsor; the Szold National Institute for Research in the Behavioral Sciences in Jerusalem and Hunter College of the City University of New York stopped participating; many speakers, including professors Yehuda Bauer and Alan Dershowitz canceled; donations from philanthropists dried up; pre-conference coverage in the Jewish press was curtailed; and the number of registrants shrank from 600 to 300.

Nonetheless, Israel Charny, the originator and director of the conference, decided to go ahead. The proceedings are now regarded as an important event in the development of the field of genocide studies, marking the first recognition of the Armenian Genocide in an international setting.

In Israel’s Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide, Charny, an American-Israeli psychologist, co-founder of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, author of How Can We Commit The Unthinkable: Genocide: The Human Cancer and editor-in-chief of the two-volume Encyclopedia of Genocide, revisits the conference, attempts by the Foreign Ministry to torpedo it, and issues a scathing indictment of Israel’s refusal, then and now, to officially recognize genocidal wars against other peoples.

Understandably, perhaps, even after 40 years, Charny approaches his subject with a mixture of pride and pain. Intent on setting the record straight and speaking truth to power, he steps on his analysis by going over familiar ground, repeating himself in clumsy prose, and inserting long lists of panels, presenters, book titles and extended excerpts from essays written by him and other human rights advocates in the 1980s and 1990s. And on occasion, Charny seems determined to settle scores.

That said, serious consideration of Charny’s claim – “the basic and horrendous commonality” in all genocides, including the Armenian tragedy, should override obsessions about uniqueness and a consensus definition of the “category name” – is as urgently necessary as it has ever been.

Because he defied the Israeli government in 1982, Charny states, the rector of Tel Aviv University denied him tenure at the School of Social Work, despite favorable recommendations by the relevant committees. The decision “hurt deeply” and “may have contributed psychosomatically” to “the development of cancer a few years later.” Charny sued Tel Aviv University, was appointed a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and for a time collected a TAU pension along with his Hebrew University salary. Grateful in retrospect for being forced to choose between personal, professional and financial security and fundamental ethical values, the experience, he now believes, was “a Turkish delight.”

Charny maintains that in response to Turkey’s threats and the Israeli government’s intervention, he considered reducing the visibility of the Armenian sessions at the conference, but not eliminating them. He indicates as well, rather contradictorily, that he was convinced that “threats of this sort should never be honored to any extent whatsoever.” And then lets himself off the hook by adding that an official of the US State Department assured him, “almost without any reservation or uncertainty,” that the Turks were bluffing.

In any event, Charny makes a compelling case that the principal reason Israeli leaders opposed the conference was their determination to keep the Holocaust, the “unbearable cataclysmic tragedy” of the Jewish people, “at the ultimate untouchable apex of a hierarchy of genocidal suffering… the greatest evil ever seen in human history.” 

Wiesel, who “believed entirely – naively and, one might say, messianically – in the virtue, decency and integrity of the miraculous State of Israel,” Charny writes, warned him “not to use genocide in plural.”

When Jews deny genocide

Charny emphasizes that he is a Zionist, proud of Israel’s survival in the face of enemies determined to destroy the Jewish state, and its efforts “to achieve a secure country that is basically still largely democratic.” He also blasts Israel’s quest for exclusivity and superiority; for refusing to acknowledge “the genocidal massacre of unarmed civilian Arabs” in Kafr Kassem in 1956; for indifference toward the forced expulsion of the Rohingya in Myanmar; persecution of Uighurs in China; and “genocidal orgies” in Yemen; for arm sales to Azerbaijan, “where there are gathering storms of potential genocide;” and for recent “fascist trends,” including discrimination against non-Jewish people who are fully entitled citizens of Israel.

Irrepressibly candid and combative at age 91, Charny has thrown down the gauntlet. Whether or not they “claim to be the most important and chosen victim people,” he insists, those who have “experienced fiendish genocidal destruction” should have “heightened sensitivity and caring for others who became victims.” And it is unnecessary, unproductive and unjust for them “to continue denying hard historical facts” about the commission of brutal acts of genocide.

The writer is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.

• One country Created and Supported ISIS that is Turkey like the #ArmenianGenocide Turkey got a free pass Never been Punished
• The terrorist group invaded the Yazidi homeland in Iraq on Aug. 3, 2014, and unleashed mass violence and murder
• Many of the genocide survivors are today IDPs trapped in a miserable life in camps with few facilities or services

DUBAI: On August 3, Yazidis around the world will come together to mourn their brothers, sisters, parents, and other loved ones who were massacred by Daesh eight years ago.

It was on that fateful day in 2014 that Daesh hordes invaded the historic Yazidi homeland, Sinjar, in Iraq. The terrorist group murdered 1,268 people on the first day; and throughout the weeks that followed, 6,417 Yazidis were kidnapped, 3,548 of whom were women and underage girls who were thrown into sexual slavery and forced labor.

The entire community fled, seeking safety in the mountains of Sinjar. More than 65 percent of Yazidis became displaced.

“I am able to announce, that based upon independent and impartial investigations, complying with international standards and UN best practice, there is clear and convincing evidence, that the crimes against the Yazidi people, clearly constituted genocide,” Karim Khan, of the UN Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Daesh, told the Security Council in 2017.

A few months into the 2014 genocide, Sinjar and US-based Yazidis established an organization, Yazda, as an emergency response unit to help rescue their community from extinction. It became clear after the release and escape of some women that Daesh was deliberately targeting and sexually enslaving Yazidis due to their religious identity.

Dabiq, the online magazine used by Daesh for Islamic radicalization and recruitment purposes, published fatwas calling on the militants to enslave Yazidis as they were considered “devil worshippers.”

Yazda has logged testimonies from survivors who recounted militants telling them their community would “never welcome them back after what was done to them.”

As of today, 3,545 Yazidis have returned to their families; 1,205 of whom are women who risked their lives to escape captivity.

The survivors were physically, sexually, mentally, and spiritually devastated, with Yazda offering full access to psycho-social and protection services, while also documenting testimonies.

Some spoke of forced abortions, others shared how they self-harmed in order to miscarry after they learned the militants were keen on keeping the children. Some women even decided to complete their pregnancies and did their best to raise their children through re-education programs.

Today, many of these survivors are internally displaced persons trapped in a miserable life in camps. They complain that the facilities are in miserable condition with no access to critical services such as food, water, electricity and safe housing.

There are no recreational spaces to help encourage community-building activities, and women and children are also unable to complete their education.

Against all odds, Yazidi women continue to fight for themselves.

A platform created within Yazda, the Yazidi Survivors Network, has given women from the community the space to advocate for their cause as they felt it vital that their voices are present when decisions were being taken.

“I want to be able to speak for myself and not have others speak for me,” one survivor and YSN member said.

Another said: “We want to participate in every decision that affects us as survivors. We want to be our own voice in all projects that concern us because only we know what we have been through and what we need in order to achieve the peace and security we desire, as well as to recover from our suffering.”

Justice, though, can be achieved through different ways for the survivors.

Yazidis have been advocating to bring Daesh militants to court and prosecute them for crimes against humanity, namely for genocide. But while many petitions have been filed and are receiving funds to cover costs, what they lack is the quantity of legal advocacy needed for commitment to the cases that have piled up.

Apart from legal prosecution, the safe return to Sinjar is another form of justice Yazidis have been hoping for since their exile, where they can find their missing family members and give a proper burial to the ones they lost.

Another aspect of justice is global recognition of their genocide. To date, there has been no follow-through from the international community on helping the Yazidi community. More surprising is that no Middle Eastern country besides Iraq has formally recognized the genocide.

Even in Iraq, where the genocide is legally recognized under Article 7 of the law, the acknowledgement has not been fully realized. At a commemorative event, YSN member Nasrin Hassan Rasho said: “I demand the Iraqi state adopt a national project for transitional justice that explicitly and clearly includes a legal recognition of the Yazidi genocide and that of other minorities.”

Many female survivors expressed their concern on being treated like second-class citizens in Iraq and the Kurdistan region. Despite their history of shared violence under the brutality of Daesh, there have been no efforts of reconciliation or efforts to resolve the discrimination.

On a personal level for survivors, the lack of their inclusion affects their productivity, independence and sense of self, which in turn hinders their psychological rehabilitation and treatment.

Suzan Safar, a Yazidi genocide survivor and founder of the Dak Organization for Ezidi Women Development, said: “This marginalization, carelessness and negligence of the Sinjar cause practiced by the government makes us feel and gives us the impression that unfortunately we are not first-class citizens, but second-class ones.

“This is what we are sensing from the actions that we are witnessing from the Iraqi government.”

In his  2017 presentation to the Security Council, UNITAD head Khan did recognize that genocide had occurred — which in itself is a big step forward in the pursuit of justice.

Underscoring the importance of this development, members of the YSN have said: “This genocide recognition by UNITAD is very important for all Yazidis. For us, the genocide qualification of the crimes is very important since it is the only way to prevent other genocides against the Yazidis and other minorities from happening again in the future.”

By BETH HARRIS,

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Joe Manganiello marveled at the years-old mysteries in his family that were solved through DNA by researchers on PBS’ “Finding Your Roots,” including a revelation involving the actor’s paternal grandfather.

It was so surprising that host Henry Louis Gates Jr. had to call Manganiello with the news so he wouldn’t find out first during taping.

“My family and I had a betting pool of what it is, like what’s so bad that you can’t announce it on the episode?” Manganiello told a TV critics meeting Thursday.

Gates informed Manganiello that the man the family believed to be the actor’s paternal grandfather really wasn’t.

“My grandfather was a Black man of mixed race,” said Manganiello, who is white. “That was fascinating.”

As a result, Gates told him, “You are zero percent genetically related to anyone named Manganiello in the world.”

Gates didn’t stop there. The show’s research traced back to the actor’s fifth great-grandfather who was a slave who became free before slavery was abolished in Massachusetts, where Manganiello’s father was born outside of Boston. His father’s family came from Italy.

Manganiello found out his distant relative joined the Continental Army and fought alongside other Blacks for the colonies against the British in units that were non-segregated.

“None of us would have guessed that if we’d had 10 years of guessing,” the actor said. “If Manganiello’s not my last name, what is?”

Another mystery from his mother’s side was solved, too.

Manganiello’s maternal great-grandmother was a survivor of the Armenian genocide during World War I in which her husband and seven of her children were killed. She was shot, but played dead and escaped with an eighth child, who later drowned while they traversed the Euphrates River.

Manganiello was told his great-grandmother was incarcerated and met a German officer stationed at the camp. He said she became pregnant by the officer, who later returned to Germany without her. The actor’s aunt had a picture of the man, which later got lost.

“We had nothing to connect us being German other than this,” he said.

The show’s researchers found that the actor’s mother and aunt were the children of the half-German baby.

“That was a really profound moment for me,” he said.

Gates said it took nearly a year to uncover the ancestry in part because the Turkish government doesn’t give researchers access to vital records and population documents dating to the Ottoman Empire.

Manganiello was filming in Europe last year, and the locals mistook him as being German.

“To think that I don’t look like the other people in m family is because I look like the Germans, OK, now that makes sense,” he said. “It’s really wild what we uncovered.”

The 45-year-old actor known for “True Blood” and “Magic Mike” was born and raised in the Pittsburgh suburb of Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania. He is married to Colombian-born actor Sofía Vergara.

The new season of “Finding Your Roots” begins Jan. 3. Among those featured are Oscar winners Viola Davis and Julia Roberts, as well as Carol Burnett, political activist Angela Davis and actor Danny Trejo.

In 2020 In October, RA Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced that “Turkey has returned to the South Caucasus after a hundred years to continue its genocidal policy against Armenians.

It is clearly stated in the national security strategy of RA adopted in July 2020. “Turkey’s use of illegal force against neighboring countries and peoples threatens the stability of the region and makes its possible actions against Armenia even more unpredictable.” After the war, Pashinyan began to receive positive signals from Turkey and to bring to life the era of peace he imagined. Now the government of RA, defeated in the war, keeps assuring us that Turkey is not our enemy and there will be no more problems with it. A few days ago, in a telephone conversation with Erdogan, Pashinyan congratulated Erdogan on Kurban Bayram, and Erdogan congratulated Pashinyan on the occasion of the Transfiguration of Christ. We have combined Pashinyan’s contradictory thoughts and opinions about Turkey and Armenian-Turkish relations since 2017 in one video.

Opposition lawmaker Aram Vardevanyan has reacted to Monday’s phone call between the Armenian and Turkish leaders, accusing Nikol Pashinyan of acting against his statements.

The Armenian opposition maintains that Ankara has not dropped its preconditions for Armenian-Turkish normalization.

“Obviously, any public officer must be accountable for their statements. Moreover, the bar is much higher when the country’s leader is involved. It has been publicly announced multiple times that the normalization of relations with Turkey cannot be considered separately from Turkey’s role based on the circumstances of the 44-day war [in Artsakh],” Vardevanyan, who represents the Hayastan alliance, said on Facebook on Tuesday.

He recalled Pashinyan’s statements regarding Turkey in October 2020.

“Turkey has returned to the South Caucasus to continue the Armenian Genocide,” the premier said.

He accused the Turkish authorities of recruiting terrorists to fight against Artsakh on Azerbaijan’s side.

“Turkey has come to the South Caucasus to continue the policy it is carrying out in the Mediterranean against Greece and Cyprus, or in Libya, or in Syria, or in Iraq. It is an expansionist policy. Turkey’s expansionist plans to the north, to the east, and to the southeast are well known, the point is that Armenians in the South Caucasus are the last impediment on that way. And now Turkey is not tackling the Karabakh issue at all. Turkey is trying to continue its genocidal policy, since Armenians in the South Caucasus are the last remaining obstacle on its path to advancing that expansionist policy to the north, east and south-east,” Pashinyan said in an interview.

“No action has been taken following the statements, no consistency has been demonstrated. Turkey has not changed its policies, signing the disgraceful Shushi declaration. In response, the ‘Armenian prime minister congratulated the Turkish president on Kurban Bayram’,” he wrote.