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Robert Fisk: Each month brings yet further proof of Armenian Genocide –

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October 14, 2013 | 14:15

175853A new book presenting another proof of the historic fact of the Armenian Genocide has been published.

“The memoirs of Alec Glen, a British army doctor of the 1914-18 war – written privately for his sons, but published by his family – which record the further agony of the Armenians,” journalist Robet Fisk writes in his article published by The Independent.

Robet Fisk recalls that Turkey is preparing to smother the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire by holding celebrations of their victory at Canakkale (Gallipoli).

“But each month brings yet further proof – in the testimony of Westerners – of what Turkey still officially denies: that the genocide of the Armenians was a fact of history,” Fisk says.

The book entitled In the Front Line: A Doctor in War and Peace includes the facts about several thousand Armenian refugees.

“It was an amazing and tragic sight … now and then we passed at a roadside a dying person, or one already dead and half-eaten by dogs and jackals… we lifted some of the younger ones who might recover on to the mules and carried them forward to the next village,” Glen writes.

“Salisbury Craig [a fellow British doctor] told me later that he attended an old refugee in the road who, before he died, gave him a leather belt full of sovereigns, which he asked him to spend to help the refugees.”

Armenian church in Turkish province turned into cattle shed

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October 14, 2013 – 16:32 AMT

171264A historic Armenian church in the village of Germuş, south-eastern Turkey’s Şanlıurfa Province was turned into a cattle shed, hyetert.com said.

The church was reconstructed by Armenians 10 years ago, however, 3 years ago, instead of becoming a tourist destination, the church was turned into a cattle shed, according to urfadabugun.com.

A 3-language sign installed at the entrance of the church tells the story of the building, yet the place is far from being a tourist zone.

The village of Germuş was a home to a number of Armenians before 1915. Yet modern villagers never stopped excavating the land in search of treasures allegedly hidden underground

Turkish Prof. Ugur Ungor Discusses Armenian Genocide, how Western Armenia became part of the Turkish state, and Confiscation and Destruction of Armenian properteis. (Video)

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Ugur Umit Ungor  

dr. Ugur Ümit Üngör
u.u.ungor@uu.nl

Assistant Professor
Department of History and Art History – Political History
Research Institute for History and Art History (OGK) – International and Political History                                         

The Genocide Education Project hosted a presentation by Prof. Ugur Ungor. Ungor’s lecture was based on his two recent books,The Making of Modern Turkey, which addresses how Western Armenia became part of the Turkish state, and Confiscation and Destruction, about Turkey’s seizure of Armenian Property.


Prof. Ungor is assistant professor of history at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He is also a researcher at the university’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and is a regular contributor to the Armenian Weekly newspaper. Ungor received his PhD in Holocaust and Genocide Studies in 2009 from the University of Amsterdam. He is of Turkish descent, born in Turkey and raised in Europe.
From 1913 to 1950, successive Turkish governments subjected the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire to a violent policy of ethnic homogenization. Based on a decade of research on a range of unexamined records,Üngör will demonstrate that the Armenian genocide was part and parcel of this wider process. He will offer insights into the economic ramifications of the genocide and describe how the plunder was organized on the ground. He will conclude that this violent process destroyed historical regions and emptied multicultural cities, but also cleared the way for the modern Turkish nation state.

Prof.Üngör is Assistant Professor of History at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and a regular contributor to the Armenian Weekly newspaper. He studied sociology and history in North America and Europe, and received a Master’s Degree in Holocaust and Genocide Studies from the University of Amsterdam. His PhD thesis, published by Oxford University Press is titled, The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1950.

Profile

Ugur Ümit Üngör (1980) gained his Ph.D. in 2009 (cum laude) at the University of Amsterdam. In 2008-09, he was Lecturer in International History at the Department of History of the University of Sheffield, and in 2009-10, he was Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for War Studies of University College Dublin. Currently he is Lecturer at the Department of History at Utrecht University and at the Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam.

His main areas of interest are state formation and nation formation, with a particular focus on mass violence. These interests necessitate a commitment to inter-disciplinarity at the intersections of social science and history. His most recent publications include Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property (Continuum, 2011) and the award-winning The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1950 (Oxford University Press, 2011).

Apart from his academic life, Ugur writes satirical columns and essays about cosmopolitan life on and across political and cultural boundaries. His essays offer an attempt at placing current global issues and themes in serious and ironic perspectives.

Involved in the following study programme(s)
History
Geschiedenis
Expertise
mass violence – ethnic conflict – genocide

 

New Book Chronicles British Newspaper Reports on the Genocide

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YEREVAN—A two volume book entitled The Times of the Armenian Genocide: Reports in the British Press, 1914-1923 by Katia Minas Peltekian has been released.

british-press-bookThe two volumes compile over one thousand items collected from British newspapers between 1914 and 1923. Through articles, reports, editorials, correspondence, letters to the editor, announcements, as well as the proceedings of the British parliament, the reader will be exposed to the extent of the official and unofficial British interest in the Armenian people and in the on-going massacres in the Armenian provinces in what is now eastern Turkey. History unfolds in pages of British newspapers.

Simple yet agonizing, the one thousand and some articles in these volumes tell the story of a persecuted people whom the Ottoman government massacred and deported in a systematic way to wipe out the Armenian nation. These reports not only tell the story of a genocide but also give details of the peace negotiations at Sevres and Lausanne, and how the Armenian Question was finally swept under the rug when the West’s interests ran incongruent to a persecuted people’s basic human rights.

The events are retold in a day-to-day chronological fashion, transporting the reader back in time.

Katia Peltekianis is an independent researcher who collects newspaper articles. She has degrees in English Literature and Education from the American University of Beirut (AUB, Lebanon) and Dalhousie University (Canada). She taught English at AUB (1988-2005) and Haigazian University (2005-2012). She compiles daily news items for the Armenian News Network Groong.org and translates to English many articles about Armenia and Armenians that appear in the Arabic press.

Her interest for newspapers led to the publication of her first book in 2000, Heralding of the Armenian Genocide: Reports in ‘The Halifax Herald’ (1894-1922), which compiles one Canadian newspaper’s articles and reports on the on-going massacres and deportations of the Armenian population. At the time, the book was distributed free to Canadian members of parliament, a few officials and public libraries, in addition to university libraries around the world and Genocide research centers. Currently, she is preparing another book that compiles thousands of articles about Armenians printed in the British press between 1875 and 1913.

Turkish journalists’ association head says his mother was Armenian

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October 12, 2013 – 11:16 AMT

171178PanARMENIAN.Net – The head of a journalists’ association in Turkey, has revealed that his mother was an Armenian, who was left “in front of an Alevi family’s door” by Armenians during the 1915 Armenian Genocide in his recently published book, adding that his relatives had reacted strongly to this revelation, Hürriyet Daily News reported.

Ahmet Abakay, a journalist and the head of the Contemporary Journalists’ Association, told his mother Hoşana’s story in his book entitled “Hoşana’s last words,” (Hoşana’nın son Sözü) in which he said that he was told by his mother that she was an Armenian only weeks before she died.

“My mother told me about her story 13 years ago and soon after, she died. I could write this only 10 years later, because I hesitated. I hardly wrote it, bursting into tears when writing all of the chapters and I was stuck. I did not imagine that it could get that sentimental for me to write it. My mother was left at some people’s door like an innocent kitten and that idea filled me with grief,” Abakay told the HDN, adding that his mother was one of the Armenian babies left to the Turkish families during the Genocide.

Abakay said his mother Hoşana told him her story, which she kept secret for her entire 82-year-long life, with one condition; that he should not tell it to anyone as long as she was alive.

“My mother made me promise not to tell her story to my wife, daughter or her sisters, as long as she was alive. I told this issue to my inner circle after I lost my mother, to learn whether there are other secrets that we are not told. But my sister told me not to reveal this on the grounds that I am a journalist and she recalled what happened to Hrant Dink [Armenian-Turkish journalist murdered by a gunman in broad daylight in 2007 in Istanbul]. A majority of my relatives could not accept their [new] identity,” Abakay said. Some relatives denied the story, while others claimed that his mother was too old to be aware of what she was saying. Abakay said he received fierce reactions from some of his family members over his revelation in his book.

“My uncle’s children told me ‘how dare you call our aunt Armenian and insult our family’s honor. You will remove the Armenian part from your book, otherwise we will pull it off the shelves,’” said Abakay.

Abakay said his mother used to talk about one of her sisters left with Armenians in the past, but she had never talked about it in detail. Later on he learnt that she was from the southeastern province of Erzurum’s Aşkale district. “I want to research my identity but I doubt whether I can go any further. Now, I am content that I have received my identity back.”

Photo: hurriyetdailynews.com

Diyarbakir Mayor lays flowers at Armenian Genocide Memorial

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October 12, 2013 – 15:56 AMT

171201 Mayor of the Diyarbakir Sur Municipality Abdullah Demirbaş placed flowers at the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Providence on Oct. 10, The Armenian Weekly said.

Speaking at the memorial, Demirbaş said, “We bow in memory of all those who lost their lives.” Kurds had a role in the massacres of 1915, Demirbaş noted. He stressed the importance of confronting the past. He called on the Turkish state to apologize and make amends. “Asking for forgiveness is a sign of maturity,” he concluded.

The mayor was accompanied by members of the Kurdish and Armenian communities of New England.

Last month, Demirbaş apologized in the name of Kurds for the Armenian and Assyrian “massacre and deportations” during the official inauguration of the Monument of Common Conscience. “We will continue our struggle to secure atonement and compensation for them,” he added.

Demirbaş and the Metropolitan Mayor of Diyarbakir Osman Baydemir have adopted a policy of reviving the multiculturalism of the city in recent years, embarking on a series of initiatives that include the renovation of the Sourp Giragos Church, the offering of Armenian and Assyrian language courses, the return of confiscated Armenian property, and the opening of the memorial. Diyarbakir is also the only city in Turkey with a sign greeting visitors in Turkish, Kurdish, and Armenian.

“Today, we are not simply asking for forgiveness in a dry fashion,” Demirbaş noted in an interview with the Weekly editor Khatchig Mouradian in Diyarbakir in 2011. “I am a Kurd. And I want for Armenians what I want for the Kurds.”

Germany working group works to achieve Armenian Genocide recognition

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GermanyOur working group has been acting for 15 years. Its members are representatives of various nationalities and our goal is to achieve the international recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide, Zhirayr Kocharyan, member of the working group on the Armenian Genocide recognition in Germany, told a press conference in Yerevan.

Kocharyan said that the working group cooperates with the Greek and Assyrian communities in Germany and organizes rallies, demonstrations and commemorative events in Berlin every year on April 24.

“We try to cooperate with German politicians as well as with Assyrians and Greeks as both the Assyrians and the Greeks were also subjected to genocide in Turkey,” he said.

The speaker noted that in 2005, the German Bundestag passed a resolution on the Armenian Genocide, which did not recognize the Armenian Genocide, but attempted to reconcile the Armenians with the Turks.

Kocharyan added that the Armenian lobbying in Germany is weaker than the Turkish one and therefore they try to balance the forces, cooperating with other national minorities living in Germany.

 

European Court of Human Rights Provides More Options to Sue Turkey

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By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier

While there is frequent talk about the pursuit of Armenian claims against Turkey in the International Court of Justice (World Court), the possibility of taking legal Sue Turkeyaction in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is rarely mentioned, despite its distinct advantages.

The key difference between the two courts is that only governments can file lawsuits in the World Court, while any individual, group or state can take legal action in the ECHR, giving Armenians countless possibilities for lawsuits against the Turkish state. Litigants before ECHR must first exhaust all domestic remedies and be from one of the 47 member states of the Council of Europe, which includes Armenia and Turkey.

It is not a coincidence that Turkey leads the list of countries being sued in ECHR, as in the last two and half years alone, over 20,000 cases have been filed against that country. Contrary to popular belief, Turkey has no choice but to comply with all ECHR judgments if it wants to maintain its membership in the Council of Europe. This explains why the Ankara government has diligently paid tens of millions of dollars to litigants after losing hundreds of ECHR judgments.

A case in point is ECHR’s October 1, 2013 decision against Turkey, in which the court awarded over 5 million euros (close to $7 million) to two Greek brothers, Ioannis Fokas and Evangelos Fokas, who live in Katerini, Greece. The Turkish courts had barred them from inheriting their sister Polikseni Pistika’s buildings in Turkey because of their Greek nationality.

In their lawsuit, the Fokas brothers claimed that “they had been deprived of the ownership and use of three immovable properties in the Beyoglu district of Istanbul, namely three buildings and land, which they were entitled to inherit from their sister.” The expropriated properties consisted of an eight-story building worth 3.3 million euros, a six-story building worth 1.4 million euros, and a four-story building worth 400,000 euros, based on the appraisal by an Istanbul real estate agency.

The ECHR found that the Turkish courts’ “refusal to recognize the applicants’ status as heirs constituted an interference with their right to peaceful enjoyment of their possessions and that such interference was incompatible with the principle of lawfulness…. Accordingly, recognition of the applicants as the heirs of Polikseni Pistika…would place them in the position they would have been in, had the State [Turkey] not expropriated the deceased’s property.… In those circumstances, an award of compensation for the pecuniary loss seems to be the most appropriate just satisfaction (see Nacaryan and Deryan vs. Turkey, no. 19558/02 and 27904/02, <<<<16-17, January 8, 2008). The Court considers that such an award principally corresponds to the amount that the applicants could legitimately expect to have obtained as compensation for the loss of their property, had there been a mechanism to request such compensation.”

Based on the above ruling, the European Court awarded the Greek brothers 5 million euros for their expropriated real estate, as well as compensating them for their “anguish and frustration which the applicants must have experienced over the years in not being able to use their properties.” The Court ordered the Turkish government to pay the amount of the award to the applicants within three months.

In the referenced Nacaryan and Deryan vs. Turkey case, ECHR found that the Turkish courts had also violated the rights of Yeran-Janet Nacaryan and Armen Deryan by claiming that as Greek citizens, they could not inherit the property of their deceased relative in Turkey “on the ground that the condition of reciprocity between Greece and Turkey had not been met.” ECHR declared Turkey guilty and awarded the two Greek-Armenian applicants a total of 500,000 euros.

At the international conference of Armenian lawyers held in Yerevan last July, Constitutional Court Chairman, Gagik Harutunyan, announced the formation of a committee of experts to study the legal merits of filing a lawsuit against Turkey to remedy the massive losses resulting from the Armenian Genocide.

Given the fact that ECHR provides for European Council litigants many more opportunities than the World Court, the recently-formed Armenian committee of legal experts should cast a wider net in considering the possibilities of filing lawsuits against Turkey in the European Court of Human Rights, as well as in national and international courts.

Turkey: Skulls and Bones Exposed in Mass Grave Near Van

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VAN, Turkey (Armenian Weekly)—Skulls and bones, possibly from the Armenian Genocide, protrude from the soil near a school in the district of Westan in Van, skullsaccording to a newspaper report.

The pro-Kurdish Ozgur Gundem reported that in the village of Ili in the district of Westan (current name Gevaş), a mass grave believed to be from the Armenian genocide has been unearthed during the construction of the Dağyöre Elementary School last year.

The bones remain there, protruding from the soil, to this day. Villagers say the mass grave is likely that of the Armenians who lived in the village a century ago.

The village, Ili (current name Dağyöre), southwest of Gevaş (Armenian name Vosdan), had 21 Armenian households prior to the Armenian Genocide.

school

 

Trabzon court requests merger of Hrant Dink cases

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TRABZON – Doğan News Agency

A Trabzon court has asked for the merging of a case against a gendarmerie commander on charges of neglect of duty over the assassination of Armenian-Turkish n_55646_4journalist Hrant Dink, with the main trial in Istanbul.

Ali Öz, who was Gendarmerie Commander of the Black Sea province of Trabzon during the killing of the late journalist, was sentenced to six months in prison. However, as the Supreme Court of Appeals reversed the decision, he was put in another trial in Trabzon.

In addition to Öz, seven soldiers at his command had also been charged with prison sentences.
Öz was accused of not informing authorities that the crime organization founded by Yasin Hayal, who was charged with being the instigator of the assassination, and his friends were going to commit the crime, despite learning it in 2006. He was also facing charges of forging documents to pretend to have only obtained the information after the incident.

Dink, the renowned editor-in-chief of Agos, was shot by triggerman Ogün Samast in front of his office in Istanbul on Jan. 19, 2007.

In the hearing as part of the new case opened in Trabzon, the suspects’ hometown, against Öz, the court delayed the hearing requesting the merger of the Öz case with the main case into Dink’s slaying in Istanbul.

The interim decision of the court said: ”Ali Öz didn’t take legal action despite receiving the intelligence information that the crime organization founded by Yasin Hayal and his friends was preparing for the assassination. As there is the possibility of serving or aiding and the need of the detection of the organization’s structure and operations, it has been decided that it would be more appropriate for the case to be tried with the case at Istanbul 14th High Criminal Court.”

The main Dink trial resumed on Sept. 17 as the Supreme Court of Appeals verdict defined the acts of all suspects in the case under “an organization formed to commit crime.”

Dink’s family and his supporters rejected the premise of the retrial that the defendants were part of a criminal conspiracy and argued that the state was involved in what amounted to a terrorist conspiracy.

October/03/2013