Several opposition Members of Knesset (MKs) have submitted a bill Tuesday to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide and hold a memorial day for it every April 24, The Jerusalem Post reports.

The bill was submitted by Shas MKs Ya’acov Margi, Haim Biton, and Moshe Arbel alongside Likud MKs Yuli Edelstein, Israel Katz, and Yoav Kish.

This is not the first time an attempt has been made in the Knesset for Israel to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide.

In 2018, Meretz MK Tamar Zandberg proposed a bill to recognize the massacre as genocide, but the bill was canceled due to government resistance.

In 2019, a number of high-profile members of Knesset like Yair Lapid and Gideon Sa’ar voiced support for the move, but again it did not proceed due to little government support.

In the late 1800s, Christians made up 20 percent of Turkey’s population. By the late 1920s, they were down to just 2 percent. New research reveals the scope of the genocide committed by three successive regimes

In May 1919, six months after the end of World War I, a Greek Navy fleet made its way to the city of Izmir in western Anatolia, escorted by British warships. The preceding October, the Ottoman rulers had signed an armistice agreement in Moudros harbor on the Aegean island of Lemnos, an accord that clearly reflected the Allied victory. By its terms, the Ottomans ceded control over large chunks of their empire to Britain, France and Italy, which in turn gave the Greeks the go-ahead to take control of the western coast of Anatolia, an area that prior to the war was populated mainly by Greek Christians. After landing in Izmir, the Greek forces made their way into the country’s interior. At the height of their expansion, in August 1921, they reached the outskirts of Ankara, the capital city of General Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, leader of the Turkish national movement. From that point on, the forces under Atatürk’s command began to push the invaders back in the direction of the Aegean Sea, and on September 9, 1922, their victory was completed. The invading Greek army retreated to its ships and sailed back to Greece; Atatürk’s First Cavalry Division entered Izmir (Smyrna, to

The Armenian Genocide recognition bill will be debated in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the Armenian National Committee of UK reports.

The first reading of the bill will take place in the House of Commons on November 9. It will be presented as a ten-minute rule motion by conservative MP Tim Loughton.

“If the bill passes this stage, the UK would be a step closer to formally recognizing the Armenian Genocide. A crime unpunished is a crime encouraged”, the ANC UK said on social media.

This essay for Hyperallergic’s Sunday Edition addresses the status of arts institutions in Occupied Shush, regarded as Artsakh’s cultural capital and home to six museums. After the seizure of ancestral lands by the state of Azerbaijan, Indigenous Armenian heritage in occupied Artsakh’s museums faces the threat of erasure and cultural cleansing:

“If decolonizing the museum requires reckoning with settler colonial histories, how do we approach decolonization in a state where history itself is a principal target of erasure?”

Image: Installation views of the Shushi State Museum of Fine Arts (photograph courtesy Lusine Gasparyan)

Israeli leaders are motivated by politics, fear of a Turkish and Azerbaijani backlash, and a reluctance to treat the atrocity in the same bracket as the Holocaust

By Yossi Melman in Tel Aviv, Israel

With its continued refusal to recognise Armenian genocide, Israel has reached a new level of cynicism, hypocrisy and double standards.

On 24 April, just as they do every year, the Armenian people marked – along with the rest of the world – the genocide that resulted in the death of between one and 1.5 million Christian Armenians at the hands of the Ottomans during the First World War.

The Armenians were massacred, sent on death marches to the Syrian desert and supjected to mass deportations. The genocide was systematic and well-orchestrated by the “Three Pashas” – Ismail Enver Pasha, Talaat Pasha and Ahmed Djemal Pasha – all members of the “Young Turks” movement and prominent ministers who served in the government of Sultan Mehmet V.

The shameful Israeli refusal to acknowledge the simple historical fact is very systematic and persistent, and has been shared by Israeli governments led by left-wing and right-wing parties

In addition to the killing of Armenians, the leaders of the Ottoman Empire ordered the murders of other Christian minorities, mainly Greeks and Assyrians.

Turkey acknowledges that atrocities took place against Armenians during the war, but it says the killings were not a part of a systematic campaign and do not amount to genocide.

Many countries, including most Western democracies, Jewish organisations and church leaders (including the pope) have recognised the Armenian genocide. Last week, US President Joe Biden followed them. He is the second US president to do so after Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Yet Israel is silent, or rather uses acrobatic language to dance around the issue. Its foreign ministry published a standard reaction, which appears as if it was drafted by a bot operated by an automated algorithm. 

“The state of Israel recognises the tragedy and terrible suffering of the Armenian people.” That’s it. It was not a genocide, only “tragedy” and “suffering”.

The shameful Israeli refusal to acknowledge the simple historical fact is very systematic and persistent, and has been shared by Israeli governments led by left-wing and right-wing parties since the establishment of the state in 1948.

Israel’s chiefs of security and intelligence have also contributed to this disgraceful behaviour. They justified the policy by wrapping it with the magic yet false words of “national security interests”.

Hiding behind fear

But the simple truth is that lying behind the use of “national security” is fear. Israel fears the wrath of Turkey, which time and again has threatened to retaliate against any individual, let alone a government, that accepts that what happened 106 years ago was genocide.

Since a secret meeting in 1958 between Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion and his Turkish counterpart Adnan Menderes, the two countries have upheld often clandestine relations. For Israel to have special ties with a Middle Eastern, majority-Muslim nation was a rarity.

Relations developed over the years into a strategic alliance, which at one point was joined by Iran, when it was led by the Shah. The triparty cooperation supported by the US included secret intelligence and military ties aimed against Arab countries, above all Syria and Egypt. What cemented the connection was the old dictum that the enemy of my enemies is my friend.

The Israeli-Turkish honeymoon came to end in 2010, when Recep Tayyip Erdogan, then prime minister, now president, solidified his power and drifted from pro-Western tendencies to Islamism and nationalism.

Under Erdogan, Turkey disconnected the military and intelligence ties with Israel, which at their zenith witnessed a very intimate and close collaboration between Mossad and its Turkish counterpart, the National Intelligence Organisation (MIT).

Yet in parallel, Israel benefited from the emergence of a new security interest. In the last decade, Muslim Azerbaijan became Israel’s best regional ally.

The trade-off between the two countries is well known. Israel has supplied advanced weapons – especially drones – and intelligence equipment to Baku, which in return allows the Israelis to use Azerbaijani soil as a launching pad for special operations against Iran.

Mossad operatives recruit and run agents from Azerbaijan to infiltrate the Islamic Republic, and military intelligence has special listening posts there.

One incident can illustrate these unique relations. It was reported that the Mossad agents that broke into Iran’s central nuclear archive and stole its content managed to escape with their treasure by crossing the border into Azerbaijan.

Another example is how Israel sold Baku drones and sent military advisors, playing a major role in Azebraijan’s victory over Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh last year.

This constantly strengthening relationship also contributes to Israeli hesitancy to recognise the Armenian genocide. Azerbaijan has close cultural, political and ethnic links with Turkey, and similarly rejects the term.

Hope for change

Security interests are important ingredients forming Israeli national policy. But a decent security and foreign policy must be balanced and complimented also by moral considerations and adherence to international norms. This is how democracies formulate their international relations.

But Israel is playing a double game by claiming to belong to the group of countries adopting and adhering norms of western democracies. 

This is even more evident if one bears in mind that Israel keeps reminding the world that it was founded following the biggest genocide ever: the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were murdered by German Nazis and their collaborators in World War Two.

Israel’s refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide can be explained by its desire to monopolize the Holocaust

The truth, however, is that Israel manipulates the historical memory of the Holocaust to advance its political and security interests. Its refusal to recognise the Armenian genocide can also be explained by its desire to monopolize the Holocaust.

In other words, the Israeli hypocrisy manifests itself in its efforts to portray the Holocaust as the only event that deserves to be recognised as a genocide.

Yet many Israelis hope that if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is voted out and a new government led by opposition leader Yair Lapid is formed, Israel will reverse its policy and follow the footsteps of Biden in recognising the Armenian genocide.

Lapid told Middle East Eye that he would do his best to do so. “It’s our moral duty,” he said.

Source: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-armenian-genocide-cynical-refusal-acknowledge

Erdogan: We, as Turkey, will present relations with Armenia very clearly, openly

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke about the regional developments related to the “3 + 3” platform.

The Turkish president noted that work is underway to create a platform, with the participation of six countries in the region—Turkey, Iran, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Russia—which will bring peace to the Caucasus, Haberler reported.

“However, Georgia has a negative attitude towards this platform. But if everyone approves of this, the region will become a ‘pool’ of peace. Well, [Azerbaijani president Ilham] Aliyev held discussions with Armenia and proposed peace. And we, as Turkey, will present relations with Armenia very clearly and openly. Of course, another course of relations between Georgia and Russia will make our job easier,” Erdogan said.

10/26/2021 Washington, D.C. (International Christian Concern) – International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that on October 26, 2021, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met his Azeri counterpart Ilham Aliyev in Nagorno-Karabakh (Armenian: Artsakh). Turkey supported Azerbaijan’s invasion of Artsakh in Fall 2020, where the two conducted genocide against Artsakh’s Armenian-Christian majority.  

President Erdoğan’s visit to Artsakh came just days after he threatened to expel 10 Western ambassadors whose countries had called for the release of Osman Kavala, a jailed Turkish philanthropist who dedicated his life to the recognition of the 1915 Armenian Genocide. Turkey actively suppresses all information pertaining to the 1915 Genocide, allowing the authorities to build upon those genocidal policies that removed Christianity from the country.  

Victims of the 2020 invasion into Artsakh have often commented that Turkey sought to finish what was started in 1915. A report submitted by the Armenian Bar Association to the United Nations stated, “(Turkey) —Azerbaijan’s ethnic and linguistic “brother nation” and close military ally, which directly assisted Azerbaijan in its Nagorno-Karabakh war. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan used the Turkish term “kılıç artığı,” which means “leftovers of the sword,” in reference to the survivors of the Christian massacres that mainly targeted Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire and its successor state, Turkey.”  

The brutality of the Turkish-Azeri invasion into Artsakh was well-documented by several independent organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. This brutality was supported by Turkish paid Syrian mercenaries, many of whom once belonged to ISIS and had previously committed genocide against the region’s Christians. The invasion was celebrated by a victory parade in Baku, which was attended by President Erdoğan, and the opening of a trophy park which included the helmets of killed Armenians as well as mannequins showing them in degrading circumstances (months later, after much international outcry, both the helmets and mannequins were reportedly removed from the park).   

The invasion of Artsakh is reminiscent of a 2013-2015 statement made by Anadolu Kulture, a non-profit of which Osman Kavala sits as Chairman of the Board. The statement read, “Confronting the past is not a predicament that befell Turkey; it is an issue on the world’s agenda, a universal cause. This is why looking at comparative international case studies from around the world will contribute to transforming the culture of forgetting in Turkey and acknowledging that a remembering culture that would restore a sense of justice is a part of the civilization process. In this respect confronting the past and apology is also about what kind of a society we want to live in and the kind of shared future we want to build.” 

Turkey, who is a NATO ally of the United States, was recommended this year by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom for inclusion on the State Department’s Special Watch List regarding religious freedom. Human rights conditions have worsened in Turkey over the past several years, but an escalation of religious freedom violations have particularly occurred since the 2016 coup attempt. Turkey has exported these violations throughout the region, often in ways that facilitate the elimination of local religious minority groups.  

Claire Evans, ICC’s Regional Manager, said, “One only needs look at the Kavala case and Turkey’s actions in Artsakh to see that Turkey’s ruling government wishes to suppress all historical recognition of the 1915 genocide so that they can continue this genocide in the modern era. President Erdoğan demonstrated Turkey’s strength by successfully invading Artsakh; now he is flexing Turkey’s strength by making threats of western diplomatic expulsion just days before visiting the territory he helped conquer. His messaging is a clear promotion of genocide and an attempt to bully the world’s protestations into silence.”