Garo Paylan’s strong reaction to Erdogan’s ‘sword leftover’ expression

May 12, 2020 By administrator

HDPE Diyarbakır Armenian MP highlighted the Garo Shares in Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent scandals statement. In one of his last speeches, Erdogan used the words, “Although the numbers have decreased very much in our country, we still do not allow the sword-lefted terrorists who continue to exist to seek action.”

In response to this statement by Erdogan, Paylan made the following statements:

In his hateful speech last night, Erdogan again used the term “sword leftover”.

“Sword leftover” was invented for orphans like my grandmother who survived the Armenian Genocide.

Every time we hear it, our expression flies.

Unscrupulous expression …

Libya’s Interim Government Recognizes The Armenian Genocide Once Again

May 11, 2020 By administrator

By Harut Sassounian,

Libya’s Interim Government recognized the Armenian Genocide on April 24, 2020, for the second year in a row. On April 19, 2019 the provisional government had issued a similar recognition.

While this recognition may surprise many people because there is hardly a single Armenian living in Libya, there are, however, geopolitical reasons for taking such an action. Ever since the toppling and killing in 2012 of Muammar Gaddafi, the leader of Libya, the country has been in constant turmoil with various military factions fighting each other to rule Libya.

The officially recognized government of Libya is limited around coastal Tripoli and Misrata, while most of the Libyan territory is occupied by the Interim Government led by military leader Khalifa Haftar. The internal civil war has been considerably expanded by the interference of external powers in Libya’s domestic affairs. Turkey and Qatar have supported the Central Government with Islamic fighters and military hardware, while the Interim Government has been endorsed by Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The countries on the opposing sides in Libya are also involved in diplomatic clashes and mass media wars. Last month Saudi Arabia announced that it was blocking access to Turkish news agencies and websites. In return, Turkey blocked Saudi and Emirati news outlets. Furthermore, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan supports the Muslim Brotherhood, while Saudi Arabia, Egypt and UAE are opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt and Turkey have been feuding ever since the pro-Muslim Brotherhood President of Egypt Mohammed Morsi, supported by Turkey, was toppled in 2013. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and UAE have asked their citizens to boycott Turkish products and travel to Turkey.

These various regional and internal feuds have prompted the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the Libyan Interim Government’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation on April 24, 2020. Here is the text of the announcement translated into English:

“We recall today the genocide of the Armenian population by Turkey which falls on April 24 of each year. The State of Libya commemorates this anniversary in implementation of Government Decision No. 238 of 2019, which approved this day as a national day to revive it.

“Turkey’s criminal actions against the Armenian people by burning, deliberate killing, forced deportation, and other ugly acts contrary to all divine laws is a crime against humanity and it must be recognized and granted an official apology to the Armenian people and compensate them for the pains that these massacres have caused which cannot be forgotten from the memory of Armenians and the whole world. As we condemn this crime devoid of any element of humanity, we again call upon the countries of the world to recognize this heinous crime.

“It is today’s Turkish government, in its new situation, which commits crimes against the peoples of the world by its blatant interference in their internal affairs. Perhaps what it carried out yesterday by bombarding the city of Tarhuna [Libya] with missiles and drones, killing children, the elderly and women, destroying humanitarian convoys, food and medical aid, fuel tanks, bringing in mercenaries and supporting terrorists are other crimes added to a chain of Turkish crimes against people and confirms to the whole world the extent of Erdogan’s arrogance and his disregard for all international laws and norms.”

On April 19, 2019, the Libyan Interim Government had issued a similar statement through its Foreign Ministry which reads as follows:

“The Interim Government officially adopted a resolution in March recognizing the Armenian Genocide.

“On 24 April 1915, the Ottoman authorities rounded up, arrested, and deported from Constantinople (now Istanbul) to the region of Ankara, 235 to 270 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders, the majority of whom were eventually murdered.

“This was followed by the deportation of women, children, the elderly, and the infirm on death marches leading to the Syrian Desert. Driven forward by military escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to periodic robbery, rape, and massacre.

“The final death toll of the genocide is reported to be 1.5 million.”

It should not be surprising that the Libyan Interim Government has issued a statement on the Armenian Genocide because it serves its anti-Turkish political agenda. It would have been more surprising if such an announcement would be made contrary to its own interests.

All countries cater to their national interests. The Armenian government must also act in a similar manner. Libya is a good example. This is the second year in a row that its Interim Government has recognized the Armenian Genocide. What has been the reaction of the Armenian Government? We are not aware of any public comment to this effect. Wouldn’t it be proper for the Armenian Foreign Ministry to issue a statement welcoming the Libyan announcement? Someday the Interim Government may become the legally recognized government of Libya. Now is the time for Armenia to establish friendly relations with Libya. As Turkey has been isolating Armenia from its neighbors by its blockade and its anti-Armenian economic and diplomatic efforts, Armenia in response should join hands with supportive countries and isolate Turkey to whatever degree it can.

By establishing good relations with the Libyan Interim Government, Armenia would also be in a good position to affirm its relations with Egypt and the United Arab Emirates and mend its non-existent relations with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I am sure these countries would appreciate the friendly hand extended by the Government of Armenia.

Libya’s Interim Government Recognizes

The Armenian Genocide Once Again

By Harut Sassounian

Publisher, The California Courier

www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com

Libya’s Interim Government recognized the Armenian Genocide on April 24, 2020, for the second year in a row. On April 19, 2019 the provisional government had issued a similar recognition.

On April 19, 2019, the Libyan Interim Government had issued a similar statement through its Foreign Ministry which reads as follows:

“The Interim Government officially adopted a resolution in March recognizing the Armenian Genocide.

“The final death toll of the genocide is reported to be 1.5 million.”

Zigmas Vitkus. “The Armenian Genocide – not forgotten”

May 9, 2020 By administrator

An extended article by Lithuanian historian Zigmas Vitkus about the Armenian Genocide and the cosntruction of Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex has been published in the website of Lithuania’s National Radio and TV. ARMENPRESS presents the article.Lithuanian National Radio and Television has published

In the 1930s, the Armenian Genocide, organized by the political elite of the Ottoman Empire in 1915-1917, had already been forgotten by Europeans. Apparently, it was not in vain, that Nazi führer Adolf Hitler, on the eve of the invasion of Poland to justify the violence against the locals, cynically and rhetorically asked his generals: “Who now remembers the Armenians?”

Today, however, 105 years later, the memory of those events is still alive, and the fact of Genocide is recognized by respectable states, including Lithuania. During the Soviet era, this painful story was sought to be pushed out of public memory. In the spring of 1965, it returned with incredible force…

Search for a Scapegoat

In the late 19th century, Armenians were the largest non-Muslim community in Turkish Anatolia (also known as Asia Minor). In many respects, their position in the Ottoman Empire was reminiscent of the situation of the Jews in Europe.

Not having their own state (Armenians lost their statehood in 1375 when they were conquered by the Egyptian sultanate), marginalized economically and politically, isolated in a religious sense, the nation was still able to find niches that ensured high social status: crafts, trade, industry and agriculture. The Armenians stood out from the rest of the empire residents with an education that provided them with considerable opportunities in the liberal professions and local politics.

Historians agree that the massacre of Armenians organized by the Ottoman Empire’s political elite was carried out due to a number of key factors: the fundamental vulnerability of Armenians within the country, which allowed them to be turned into scapegoats in the event of any state crisis of military failure; World War I, largely unsuccessful to Turkey and the decline of the empire throughout the 19th century, which provoked radical and paranoid governmental reactions to the activities of the Armenian community (they were accused of infidelity). Already in 1894–1896, between 80,000 and 300,000 Turkish Armenians were killed during world-shocking pogroms. It was a prelude to even greater massacres.

The Genocide, which, considering its scale, organization, and consequences, some historians call the first modern Genocide of the 20th century, began in 1915, April 24. That day, several hundred prominent and influential Armenians were arrested in the major cities of the Ottoman Empire.

Soon, most of them were killed. Armenian men, who served in the Turkish army, were demobilized and began to be systematically killed even earlier. The deportation of the rest to concentration camps in the Syrian desert began in May. Along the way, they had been awaited by armed criminals, deliberately released from prisons by the government, as well as by incited Kurdish and Turkish peasants through whose lands the road was stretched. Those, who were not killed, died of starvation and disease.

It is estimated that between 1915–1917 there were killed from 600 thousand up to 1.5 million Armenians. Whatever the exact number, at the end of the First World War, 90 percent of Armenians who had lived in Turkey until then, disappeared. Moreover, in the late 1920s, Turkey invaded the newly established independent Republic of Armenia and occupied most of its territory. The massacre continued during this invasion.

Completely weakened after the war, Armenia could no longer withstand Bolshevik Russia, whose army entered Yerevan and occupied a part of Armenia, which was not yet occupied by the Turks. In October 1921, part of the Armenian lands, including the territory with the central symbol of the nation’s identity, Mount Ararat, were finally assigned to Turkey by the Treaty of Kars signed between the Bolsheviks in Russia, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey.

The silent topic of the Soviet era

The question of the Armenian Genocide in Soviet Russia (since 1922 – in the Soviet Union) remained untouched in public and existed only in the memory of families. According to German historian Susanne Buckley-Zistel, the Stalinist regime had already implemented, in her words, a strategy of “deliberately chosen amnesia” that avoided complicated discourses that could strengthen Armenian national feelings and “stay on the path of socialism”, ostensibly, without looking at the past. In addition, it evaded the antagonism between Turkey and Armenia, which was to the detriment of the regime. Turkey and the Soviet Union under Stalin (and later) tried to coexist “amicably” and had even signed a nonaggression pact.

Armenians that were returned from Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, the Balkans, and other countries to Soviet Armenia in the 1950s (Stalinist regime organized a special action for it in 1945-1949) did not gain a voice, although the regime made some concessions for them. Suppose, the new settlements were allowed to be given the old Anatolian place names, including those areas where the Genocide took place. Of course, it did little to change, as the articulation of the Armenian Genocide in public sphere (if such existed in the Soviet state at all) continued to be repressed. Up until 1965, when forced silence accumulated and turned into unprecedented demonstrations.

Spring of 1965 in Yerevan

In 1965, the huge Armenian diaspora prepared to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Genocide. As this date approached, the construction of monuments in memory of the victims of the Genocide began in various countries, lived by Armenians. The traditional Armenian stone sculpture was also erected in 1965 in Armenia, on a plot belonging to the Armenian Catholicos in Echmiadzin, near St. Cathedral of Our Lady (by the way, it is the oldest cathedral in the country, built on the foundations of a 4th century church). It was dedicated to the “victims of the 1915 Genocide” listing the ten largest sites of mass murder on the monument. However, it was a small and informal memorial in a “private” area.

Armenian SSR authorities were not going to silence the anniversary (there were too many witnesses of the Genocide in the country) and even prepared some “measures”, but decided to hold the main event behind closed doors and broadcast live to the crowd through the speakers everything, that was happening inside (the event was scheduled at the Yerevan Opera House). The acceleration of Nikita Khrushchev’s warming period, which allowed people to breathe at least a little bit more freely, was still being felt, and tens of thousands of Armenians in 1965, April 24 even before the official event, gathered for an informal demonstration on Lenin Square in Yerevan. It was probably the first national rally of this scale, not only in Armenia, but also in the entire Soviet Union.

At the statue of Lenin, the crowd was shouting “[our] lands! [our] lands!”, demanding the release of students arrested by the government a year ago for forming an informal group to fight for the preservation of the Armenian language. The crowd then spilled across the city, urging people to join, and gathered again in the Opera Square in the evening. The above-mentioned official commemoration event, which was attended by the political and intellectual elite of the Armenian SSR, took place in the building of the Opera House. Demonstrators tried to get inside and hand the petition to the authorities. One would say that they tried to break in physically, but at the same time symbolically as well. Their aim was to show that the memory of Genocide is not just a privilege of the government.

The demonstration featured Armenian national songs and anti-Turkish slogans, photographs of victims, posters with the number 50, and images of Ararat. In addition, people demanded recognition of the Genocide and the erection of a national monument to commemorate the event. Also, to return Armenian lands from Turkey (handed over by the Soviets, as I mentioned, in 1921) and from neighboring Azerbaijan SSR. Thus, not only the foreign but also the domestic policy of the Soviet Union was questioned, and at the same time, the power of national self-consciousness was demonstrated. Understandably, the militia did not let people in. Then stones flew into the building. It was answered with a stream of water. The crowd, however, stormed in, and those, who were in the hall, withdrew through the emergency exit.

Why did the government not use more force back then? This can be judged by the material of the meeting of the Central Committee of the Armenian SSR Communist Party held after the demonstrations. The reaction was mitigated by the fact that the demonstrators did not question the Soviet system itself, and the government (with the chairman of the Communist Party Central Committee, Jakov Zarobian) thought similarly as the “ordinary people.”

At the meeting, he called for the Armenian national sentiments to be taken into account, actualized the rally in a “proper” ideological context according to Soviet rhetoric, spoke of the Genocide as a Turkish crime behind which German capitalists were standing, and so on. During the meeting, of course, obeisance was paid to the Soviet Union, as, allegedly, it was only thanks to it that such a commemoration could have taken place in general, however, the demonstration was not condemned in principle – only “hooliganism” and “nationalist and demagogic elements”.

The first monument to the victims of the Genocide in the Soviet Union?

One of the demands of the 1965 demonstrators was a call to the authorities to build a memorial to the victims of the Armenian Genocide. In fact, this project had already started before the demonstrations. In addition to national sentiments (of which there were many), the supreme government of the Armenian SSR realized that the national monument was a good way for the state to control the public genocide commemoration process and in March granted permission to build an obelisk and announced a nationwide competition in the local press. However, the demonstrators did not care much about it … This time, Moscow (having maintained friendly relations with Turkey) was reassured that the monument will be dedicated to the Armenian martyrs of the First World War.

In the Soviet country, due to lack of funds, the implementation of any major architectural projects usually took longer, but in this case, the process of design and construction work proceeded surprisingly quickly and smoothly: the competition was announced in 1965 and the monument was completed at the end of 1967. This pace shows that it was also a priority project for the government. The memorial was built on Tsitsernakaberd (Swallow’s Castle) hill, rising above Yerevan. This mountain offers a view of Mount Ararat, the symbolic significance of which for Armenian culture and identity is difficult to overestimate – it is the Armenian Jerusalem, the Heavenly Jerusalem of all Christians in the world, which is longed for but at the same time remains inaccessible.

The authors of the monument, architects Arthur Tarkanian, Sashur Kalashian, and sculptor Hovhannes Khachaturian, designed a two-part monument: a round Shrine of Remembrance and a 44-meter-high Obelisk of the Revival, symbolizing the rebirth of the Armenian people. The obelisk consists of two compressed parts as if growing from each other: the smaller one represents the diaspora, the larger one – Armenia.

The round memorial hall is designed from twelve sloping basalt steles (symbolizing 12 lost Armenian provinces and the figures of mourners) arranged in a circle around the eternal fire. The hall is sunk to a depth of 1.5 meters, which is reminiscent of about 1.5 million Armenians killed during the genocide. Between 1988-1990, the traditional Armenian crosses (khachkars) were erected in the neighborhood of the memorial, commemorating Armenians who died and were killed during the conflict with Azerbaijan.

Unveiled on November 29, 1967, on the occasion of the 47th anniversary of the Armenian SSR, the memorial had no inscriptions, although everyone knew what this memorial space was for. In Soviet times, the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Genocide was never legalized in Armenia, but it actually existed. Like the monument to the victims of the Genocide. The Armenian SSR authorities also took part in the semi-official commemoration, officially honoring the “Armenians killed in World War I” in the official version, while thanking the Soviet Union for peace and security and condemning the imperialist ambitions.

At the same time, along with the memorial to the victims of the Genocide, a monumental sculpture by Ara Arutiunian “Mother Armenia” was unveiled in Yerevan Victory Park, an official symbol intended to unite Armenian people and express its self-image (the sculpture was erected on the same pedestal from which the figure of Stalin was removed five years ago then).

If the monument to the victims of the Genocide showed hope, then “Mother Armenia” (like “Mother of the Cross”) was more in line with the Soviet narrative and spoke of the victory that was (and still is) being commemorated on May 9. To this day, these memorials are axial symbols of Armenian memorial culture along with the other one- bestowed by nature – the Ararat Volcano․

End Of An Era: Bangladesh’s Last Armenian Dies

May 9, 2020 By administrator

Michael Joseph Martin, Bangladesh’s last Armenian, has died aged 89, bringing an end to the more than 300-year presence of the once thriving and powerful minority Christian community.

Martin spent decades as custodian of the Armenian Church of the Holy Resurrection which was founded in 1781 in what was once the heart of the Armenian community in Dhaka.

Armen Arslanian, the church’s warden who is based abroad, said Martin “was instrumental in maintaining the survival of the Armenian Church in Dhaka.

“Without the many personal sacrifices and complete devotion to the church, the premises and the history of the Armenians in Dhaka would not have survived today,” he added as he announced Martin had died on April 11.

The Bangladeshi capital was once home to hundreds of Armenians who first arrived in the 16th century and became major traders, lawyers and public officials in the city.

Martin came to Dhaka in 1942 following in the footsteps of his father who had settled in the region decades earlier. He was originally a trader.

Martin — whose Armenian name was Mikel Housep Martirossian — went on to look after the church and its graveyard where 400 people are buried, including his wife who died in 2006.

The marble tombstones he tended display family names such as Sarkies, Manook and Aratoon from a time when Armenians were Dhaka’s wealthiest merchants with palatial homes who traded jute, spices, indigo and leather.

“The earliest surviving Armenian tombstone is that of Khojah Avietes Lazar who died in Dhaka on June 7, 1714, this makes the known Armenian presence in Bangladesh to be over 300 years, similar to that of the community in Kolkata,” Liz Chater, who did extensive research on the Armenian presence in South Asia, told AFP.

Martin had said the Armenians, persecuted elsewhere, were embraced in what is now Bangladesh first by the Mughals in the 16th and 17th centuries and then by the British Empire.

“Their numbers fluctuated with the prospects in trading in Dhaka,” Muntasir Mamun, a historian at Dhaka University, told AFP in 2009.

But they dominated business. “They were the who’s who in town. They celebrated all their religious festivals with pomp and style,” he said.

The decline came after the British left India and the subcontinent was partitioned in 1947 with Dhaka becoming the capital of East Pakistan and then Bangladesh after it gained independence in 1971.

In his last years Martin worried about who would take over as the church caretaker after his death.

“This is a blessed place and God won’t leave it unprotected and uncared for,” Martin said.

“When I die, maybe one of my three daughters will fly in from Canada to keep our presence here alive,” Martin said, speaking broken Bengali with a thick accent.

“Or perhaps other Armenians will come from somewhere else.”

The present warden of the Armenian Church visits Bangladesh every two to three months.

Taner Akçam: Deniz Gezmiş THKO and ASALA

May 8, 2020 By administrator

Deniz Gezmiş THKO ve ASALA
Benim kuşağım, Deniz Gezmiş ve arkadaşlarına büyük sempati duyar, hayranlık besler ve idamlarını büyük bir yürek acısı ile hatırlar ama yine benim kuşağımın önemli bir kesimi, ASALA’yı terörist bir örgüt olarak saymakta asla tereddüt etmez.

Taner Akçam*

6 Mayıs 2020, Deniz Gezmiş, Yusuf Arslan ve Hüseyin İnan’ın ve idam edilişlerinin 48’inci yılı… Onların idamı, benim kuşağım için çok anlamlı ve önemlidir.

Hiç unutmam, Üniversiteye yeni girmiştim ve ODTÜ yurtlarında, arkadaşlarımızla yataklarımızda hüzünle ve göz yaşlarımızı gizleyerek dinlemiştik idam haberini…

Hakikat hakikattir fakat tarihçiler, aynı hakikati yıllar ilerledikçe, yeni ve farklı bir hikâyenin parçası olarak anlatırlar.
Geçmiş yıllarda Deniz Gezmiş ve arkadaşlarının idamları onların savundukları ideolojik görüşler, Kemalizm ile irtibatı vb. birçok boyutuyla konuşuldu tartışıldı. Ama artık, Deniz ve arkadaşları, giderek savundukları ideoloji ve bunun için kullandıkları araçlar vb.’den bağımsız, benim kuşağım için geçmişe yönelik bir nostaljinin, bir özlemin sembolü oldular.

Onlar benim kuşağımın hiç yaşlanmayacak üç gencecik fidanıdır.

Bir kuşağın gerçekleşmemiş ve bundan sonra da gerçekleşmeyecek gibi duran hayallerinin temsilcisidirler. Hâlâ genç, hâlâ sıcacık…

Bu yıl, Denizlerin idam edilişini bir başka hikâye ile bağlantılı olarak anlatmak, anlamlandırmak, aslında bir soru sormak isterim:

Deniz ve arkadaşları THKO (Türkiye Halk Kurtuluş Ordusu) adlı bir örgüt kurmuşlardı. Benzeri örgütleri, İbrahim Kaypakkaya (TİKKO) ve Mahir Çayan ve arkadaşları da (THKP-C) kurmuşlardı. Bu insanlar, aralarında bazı ideolojik farklar olmasına rağmen, inandıkları bağımsız bir Türkiye’yi kurmak için, mevcut devleti önce gerilla sonra da onun yaratacağı halk savaşı ile yıkmayı amaçlıyorlardı. Nihai hedefleri sosyalizm idi ama ondan önce demokratik devrim şarttı.

ASALA da (Ermenistan’ın Kurtuluşu Gizli Ordusu) benzeri bir örgüttü, isimdeki benzerlikler tesadüfi değildi. ASALA da benzeri bir amaç için savaşıyordu. Onların hedefi de birleşmiş bağımsız bir Ermenistan idi ve bu Ermenistan da ileride sosyalist olacaktı.
İlginç olan, benzeri bir yönelişin Almanya ve İtalya’da da olmasıdır. Acaba niçin ABD, Fransa ve İngiltere değil, fakat Almanya, İtalya ve Ortadoğu? Cevabı verilmesi gereken çok önemli bir sorudur bu…

Elbette bu örgütlerin aralarındaki önemli farklar üzerine de konuşulabiliriz ama görmek gerekir ki, bir dönemin birbirlerine çok benzer örgütlerinden söz ediyoruz burada.

Peki, niçin birilerine hayranlık, diğerlerine ise teröristlik yaftası yapıştırıyoruz?

Her iki örgüt veya örgütler için (THKO, THKP-C, ASALA) aynı kanaatlere sahip olmak daha mantıki değil mi?

Cevabı için çok konuşmak ve tartışmak gerekecek. Çünkü zannederim burada yazılanları duymak bile zor gelmiştir…

Dedim ya, tarihçinin görevi, aynı olgular hakkında süreç içinde değişen sorular sormak ve bu sorulara bağlı olarak yeni ve değişik hikayeler anlatmaktır. Yoksa tarih bilimi olmazdı.

Denizlerin idamının üzerinden 48 yıl geçti. Zannediyorum, artık özellikle yeni kuşaklar açısından bu dönem üzerine farklı düşünmek, farklı konuşmak vakti gelmiştir.

Ümit ederim, yeni kuşak Ermeni, Kürt ve Türk gençleri bu yakın geçmiş üzerine, benim kuşağımdan farklı bir ortak konuşma dili yaratabilirler.

Bölgemizde ortak bir gelecek kurabilmek biraz da bu yakın geçmişimiz üzerine değişik bir konuşma tarzı yaratmamıza bağlı. Türkiye’nin ve bölgenin geleceğinin barış ve kardeşlik temelinde yeniden inşası, yakın geçmişe ilişkin yeni bir hikâyenin anlatılmasıyla mümkün.

Bir de son bir gözlem, Deniz Gezmiş’i, 1968 Almanya gençlik hareketi önderi Rudi Dutschke ile, THKO’yu Alman RAF (Kızıl Ordu Tugayları) ile kıyaslasam muhtemel böyle bir yazıyı okuyanlar, “ne var ki bunda” der, kıyaslamamda herhangi ilginç bir taraf bulmazlardı.

Haklı da olurlardı.

Aslında burada yaptığım kıyaslamamın hiçbir ilginç tarafı yok. Tek ilginçlik ve önemli olan, bunu okuyan gözde ve anlamak isteyen beyindedir. Yani benim yazım değil, yazımı okuyan gözün gördüğü ve beynin okuduğudur asıl önemli olan. Ve bu önemdir ki bize yakın tarihimiz üzerine yeni bir hikâye anlatmamızın kaçınılmaz olduğunu söylüyor.

Not: Yukardaki satırların yazarı, siyasette şiddetin bir araç olarak kullanılmasını son derece tehlikeli ve yanlış bulur.

*Prof. Dr. Clark Üniversitesi Tarih Bölümü Öğretim Görevlisi

Deniz Gezmiş THKO and ASALA
My generation is very sympathetic, admires and remembers their execution with great heartbreak for Deniz Gezmiş and his friends, but again, an important part of my generation never hesitates to consider ASALA as a terrorist organization.

Taner Akçam *

May 6, 2020, Deniz Gezmiş, Yusuf Arslan and Hüseyin Inan, and their 48th year of execution… Their execution is very meaningful and important for my generation.

I never forget, I had just entered the university and we listened to the news of death in METU dormitories, with our friends in our beds, sadly and by tearing our tears…

Truth is truth, but historians tell the same truth as years go by, as part of a new and different story.
The executions of Deniz Gezmiş and his friends in the past years included their ideological views, their contact with Kemalism, etc. Many dimensions were discussed and discussed. But now Deniz and his friends have become the symbol of a past nostalgia and a longing for my generation, independent of the ideology they are defending and the tools they use for this, etc.

They are three young seedlings of my generation that will never age.

They represent the dreams of a generation that have not come true and that will not come true from now on. Still young, still warm…

This year, I would like to tell the meaning of the execution of the seas in connection with another story, to make sense of it, and actually ask a question:

Sea and friends THKO (People’s Liberation Army of Turkey) had established an organization called. Similar organizations, İbrahim Kaypakkaya (TİKKO) and Mahir Çayan and his friends (THKP-C) also established. These people, although there are some ideological differences between them, which they believe Turkey to establish an independent, after the guerrillas before they sought to overthrow the existing state of war with its people will create. Their ultimate goal was socialism, but before that democratic revolution was essential.

ASALA (Armenian Secret Liberation Army) was a similar organization, similarities in the name were not accidental. ASALA was fighting for a similar purpose. Their goal was a united independent Armenia, which would become a socialist in the future.
The interesting thing is that a similar trend is also in Germany and Italy. Why not the USA, France and the UK, but Germany, Italy and the Middle East? This is a very important question to be answered.

Of course, we can talk about the important differences between these organizations, but we must see that we are talking about very similar organizations of a period here.

So why are we sticking admiration to someone and a label of terrorism to others?

Isn’t it more logical to have the same opinions for both organizations or organizations (THKO, THKP-C, ASALA)?

You will need to talk and discuss a lot for the answer. Because I think it was hard to hear what was written here…

As I said, the task of the historian is to ask changing questions about the same facts in the process and to tell new and different stories depending on these questions. Otherwise, there would be no science of history.

48 years have passed since the execution of the seas. I think it is time to think and talk differently about this period, especially for new generations.

I hope that the new generation of Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish youth can create a different spoken language on this recent past than my generation.

Being able to establish a common future in our region depends a bit on creating a different way of talking about this recent past. Turkey and the reconstruction of peace and brotherhood on the basis of the future, it is possible by introducing a new story about the recent past.

A final observation is that those who read Deniz Gezmiş with the 1968 German youth movement leader Rudi Dutschke, who read such an article, which is likely to compare THKO with the German RAF (Red Army Brigade), say, “But in this one,” they wouldn’t find any side.

They would be right.

Actually, there is nothing interesting about my comparison here. The only interesting and important thing is the brain that reads it and wants to understand. In other words, it is not my writing, it is what the eye reading my writing sees and the brain reads. And it is important that he tells us that it is inevitable to tell a new story about our recent history.

Note: The author of the above lines finds it extremely dangerous and wrong to use violence as a tool in politics.

Prof. Dr. Clark University Department of History Lecturer

Source: https://www.gazeteduvar.com.tr/forum/2020/05/07/deniz-gezmis-thko-ve-asala/?fbclid=IwAR0FM60Q7pRS5hNFLP4EF9wnfX9x-smq41Yo9xNHJ_mf292ar471dJz75NE

Israel’s failure to recognize the Armenian Genocide is indefensible

May 6, 2020 By administrator

By EMILY SCHRADER

Many of Israel’s leaders have publicly recognized the Armenian Genocide at various points throughout Israeli history. But as a nation, the Jewish state has refused to do this.

Israelis and Jews around the world recognize and remember the six million Jews who were barbarically and cruelly murdered in the Holocaust at the hands of the Nazis. But only a few days after Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah), another genocide remembrance day falls – for the Armenian Genocide. April 24 is the official memorial day for the Armenian Genocide commemorating more than a million Armenians murdered at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. Yet in Israel, this day could pass without most of the country noticing. Despite Israel’s history and the collective trauma of ethnic cleansing and pogroms against Jews from Arab states, and of course the Holocaust, Israel has not recognized the Armenian Genocide, nor does Israel place an emphasis on educating about the Armenian Genocide. In fact, the Knesset has failed to recognize the Armenian Genocide repeatedly due to various political interests, in an embarrassing national display of moral failure.

Many of Israel’s leaders have publicly recognized the Armenian Genocide at various points throughout Israeli history. But as a nation, the Jewish state has refused to recognize the genocide due to fear of Turkey’s reaction, a state which has historically been a key ally for Israel’s security. Today, the relationship with Turkey has changed due to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s marked hostility toward Israel. Yet Israel has still not recognized the Armenian Genocide. In 2018, MK Tamar Zandberg proposed a bill to address this gap, but the bill was cancelled due to government opposition. In 2019, many government leaders called on Israel to recognize the Armenian Genocide including Blue and White’s Yair Lapid, and Likud’s Gideon Saar, but the vote was delayed and ultimately cancelled – again, due to lack government (coalition) support. This political failure in 2020 on the most basic of issues is simply unconscionable.APRIL 24, 1915, is internationally known as the start of the Armenian Genocide. But the murderous campaign of the Turks began many years before that in the 1890s under Sultan Abdul Hamid, whose leadership oversaw the murder of 100,000-300,000 Armenians.

On April 24, the Turks doubled down, launching an ethnic cleansing campaign against Armenian Christians, more horrific than the world had ever seen. They began by rounding up and murdering 250 Armenian intellectuals, and they continued with the Tehcir Law. Armenians were robbed of their property and belongings and deported en masse. They were sent on death marches into the Syrian desert in inhumane conditions, and women and girls were raped and enslaved. Those who survived were sent to concentration camps, executed, or left to die. Nearly 50,000 Armenians were tossed into the Black Sea and left to drown. Between 1914 and 1918, 1-1.5 million Armenians were murdered by Ottoman Turks, the direct predecessors of modern Turkey, in the largest race-based genocide in history (at the time).

Unlike Germany, Turkey and Turkish leaders have adamantly refused to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide at all, even oppressing Turkish citizens who do publicly acknowledge the crime against humanity. To date, there has been no recognition and no reparations made to the Armenian people for what is seen by many historians as a precursor to the Holocaust. Even Hitler himself is reported to have said in 1939: “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”Imagine if the major perpetrators of the Holocaust were never caught for their crimes, and that adding insult to injury, the State of Germany denied altogether that the Holocaust had occurred. Imagine if Germany instead punished anyone who said otherwise, and threatened to end diplomatic ties with nations who recognized the Holocaust. On top of this, suppose Germany also had a long and rich track record of destroying concrete evidence the Holocaust ever occurred so as to quash internal dissent. This is exactly what the modern state of Turkey has done, and that in and of itself should be a crime – just as Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany today.ISRAEL’S LEADERS from the time of its founding in 1948 have carried with them the solemn obligation and promise to ensure that “Never again” is a reality. It is a promise that we as a people reaffirm this week with Yom HaShoah, remembering the six million Jews who were murdered by the Nazis. But part of ensuring that never means never is recognising what genocide looks like.

Some of Israel’s leaders already have, such as President Reuven Rivlin, who has long called for such recognition, stating in 2015: “It was… one of my eldest brothers, who said 25 years before the Holocaust that if we do not warn against what is going on with the Armenians, what will happen afterwards when they try to do it to us…? There is a saying that the Nazis used the Armenian genocide as something that gave them permission to bring the Holocaust into reality… ‘Never again’ belongs to every one of you, all the nations.” It’s time for Israel’s leaders to exercise true leadership and, as a state, recognize the Armenian Genocide. For the State of Israel, the Jewish state, to not recognise the Armenian Genocide is one of the greatest symbolic failures in the Israel today. There are some lines that no political interest should be above. One of them is most certainly recognizing the Holocaust, which nearly all nations do today – but another is recognizing the Armenian Genocide, which far too many countries do not. Part of Israel’s historical challenge in recognizing the Armenian Genocide is the lack of moral clarity in the rest of the international community on this issue, giving Turkey more power to “punish” states which recognize the genocide.

At various points in Israel’s history, this may not have been a button Israel could push alone, without an existential risk. But Israel’s survival is not dependent on what Turkey and its current dictator Erdogan think of Israel today, and it’s high time that Turkey’s bullying tactics be universally and unequivocally rejected by all nations. For the world, and for Israel: Recognize the Armenian Genocide now.Emily Schrader is the CEO of Social Lite Creative and a research fellow at the Tel Aviv Institute.

Coronavirus Provided Opportunity To Pursue the Armenian Cause Online

May 4, 2020 By administrator

By Harut Sassounian,

The coronavirus pandemic disrupted the traditional plans of Armenians around the world to commemorate the 105^th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide on April 24. However, very quickly Armenians discovered new ways to commemorate the Genocide by changing the street protests and large gatherings to online marches and internet programs. In the future, when this pandemic is over, Armenians can use some of the new internet and video methods on April 24 in addition to the public events.

This year, Armenians in various countries carried out virtual programs on April 24 instead of the traditional street protests and indoor commemorative events. Today I will focus on one of these programs, the HyeID virtual march.

HyeID is a Glendale, California-based non-profit organization that was formed three years ago to plan the future Diaspora Armenian Parliament. This year, the HyeID group organized a virtual commemoration during the week of April 24, starting on April 22. Within a few days, over 341,000 Armenians and some non-Armenians from around the world endorsed the following message on the April24.Hyeid.org website: “We have to stay home this April 24, but we join the Online March. We demand justice for Turkey’s Genocide of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915.”

Within few hours of making this website public, it came under persistent and massive attack from Azerbaijan and Turkey trying to hack the site. Fortunately, the HyeID board member, Aram Ter-Martirosyan, a software engineer, and his team, reacted quickly by blocking the hacking efforts. Such an organized hacking attack could have only come from the governments of Azerbaijan and Turkey. This is called “Denial-of-service attacks” which Wikipedia describes as “a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connected to the internet. Denial of service is typically accomplished by flooding the targeted machine or resource with superfluous requests in an attempt to overload systems and prevent some or all legitimate requests from being fulfilled.” By working around the clock for two nights, Ter-Martirosyan’s staff was able to block the flood of attacks on the April 24 link.

Another unfortunate disruptive act was caused by google which blocked the HyeID app on google play that was created by Aram Ter-Martirosyan and his staff. The Turkish and Azeri hackers, having failed in their disruptive efforts, probably complained to google to remove the app that powered the April 24 program. Google’s negative action limited significantly the number of online march participants.

Google sent the following offensive message to Aram: “We don’t allow apps that lack reasonable sensitivity towards or capitalize on a natural disaster, atrocity, conflict, death, or other tragic event.” Google also blocked the google account of Aram’s company, ConnectTo Communications, Inc., disrupting and causing damage to his business. Aram immediately filed an appeal with google, advising that the State of California, where google is headquartered, and the United States had recognized the Armenian Genocide. Google has not responded to Aram’s appeal. I suggest that HyeID or Aram file a lawsuit against google to revoke its wrongful decision on the app.

The HyeID group also posted its April 24 link on facebook, generating a large number of responses. This virtual march generated over 341,000 participants from 198 countries and territories, which included 310,000 Armenians and 41,000 non-Armenians. A major achievement was that Apple Store ranked the April 24 app as the top 10 downloaded app in the world for iPhones and iPads.

Besides publicizing the Armenian Genocide to 41,000 non-Armenians around the world, a by-product of this effort was that for the first time we discovered that there are Armenians in 198 countries and territories.

The HyeID group was ecstatic that such a large number of Armenians and non-Armenians participated in the April 24 virtual march. Even though this figure is far below the approximately 10 million Armenians worldwide, the HyeID group was surprised to find out that Armenians were dispersed in close to 200 countries. Here is the number of participants in some of the countries/territories:

Russia: 121,415 Armenians; 10,677 non-Armenians.

Armenia: 54,065 Armenians; 3,760 non-Armenians.

United States: 50,390 Armenians; 4,071 non-Armenians.

France: 13,476 Armenians; 1,797 non-Armenians.

Georgia: 9,917 Armenians; 1,049 non-Armenians.

Lebanon: 6,016 Armenians; 828 non-Armenians.

Canada: 5,598 Armenians; 373 non-Armenians.

Belgium: 4,565 Armenians; 313 non-Armenians.

Iran: 4,440 Armenians; 441 non-Armenians.

Germany: 3,748 Armenians; 522 non-Armenians.

Argentina: 3,547 Armenians; 966 non-Armenians.

Netherlands: 2,962 Armenians; 230 non-Armenians.

Ukraine: 2,885 Armenians; 416 non-Armenians.

Spain: 2,473 Armenians; 291 non-Armenians.

Greece: 1,747 Armenians; 187 non-Armenians.

United Kingdom: 1,664 Armenians; 266 non-Armenians.

Austria: 1,223 Armenians; 51 non-Armenians.

United Arab Emirates: 1,174 Armenians; 205 non-Armenians.
Australia: 1,012 Armenians; 61 non-Armenians.

Syria: 1,010 Armenians; 83 non-Armenians.

Artsakh: 961 Armenians; 177 non-Armenians.

Cyprus: 872 Armenians; 77 non-Armenians.

Turkey: 795 Armenians; 410 non-Armenians.

Poland: 651 Armenians; 475 non-Armenians.

Switzerland: 611 Armenians; 156 non-Armenians.

Egypt: 425 Armenians; 85 non-Armenians.

Azerbaijan: 201 Armenians; 99 non-Armenians.

Nakhichevan: 100 Armenians; 33 non-Armenians.

Interestingly, there are a handful of Armenian participants in such unexpected places as: Mongolia, Northern Mariana Islands, Wake Island, Indonesia, Wallis and Futuna, American Samoa, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji, Antarctica, Libya, Algeria, Mali, Madagascar, Mauritius, Chad, Tanzania, Congo, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania, South Africa, Central African Republic, Maldives, Iceland, and Greenland.

To find out the results of the online march in your own country and city, please go to the interactive report: www.HyeID.org. You can also learn the number of participants near you by selecting the distance from your area. As the saying goes, “amen degh Hay ga” [Armenians are everywhere].

Why Turkish series should be removed from Greek television

May 4, 2020 By administrator

For fifteen whole years, 55 different Turkish series have put the Turkish language in almost every Greek home, with countless hours of screenings that show ideal images of a fantastic European Turkey that looks like a real paradise, says Leonidas Koumakis of the International Hellenic Association.

The themes of these TV productions, which have excellent technical perfection, vary from highly propagandistic, such as the “beautification” of the blood-stained conqueror Sultan Suleiman and many others that could not be shown in Greece but are distributed everywhere else and have intensely anti-Greek content – to even the very simple, like a sweet little girl looking for her mother or father, the rich person who falls in love with a poor person and vice versa, etc.

All are based on a long-term program of culturally Turkifying different countries and target areas with excellent and tasteful presentation that shows the whole of Turkey as a magical tourist destination, an ideal place to invest, a Turkey that will emerge as a well-established economic and political “superpower,” and not one to export Turkish Islamists as “cultural influence.”

The vehicle for the operation of the cultural Turkification or “cultural influence” program would be the bravely subsidised Turkish TV series that would be exported to as many countries as possible at “very competitive prices” – almost like that!

Indeed, Turkey’s private sector has been active since the year 2004. When the program was implemented by Islamists in the Russian Federation, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan gave rich subsidies but an inviolable condition and several other conditions.

The inviolable condition is that the series will be shown in Turkish and never dubbed.

The other conditions require the subsidised order to display the family institution as something sacred, it should not show alcohol consumption, the protagonists should not smoke cigarettes or cigars or cheat on their wife, the Turkish flag should appear when the scene allows it, the protagonists will reject black money offered to them without being entitled to it and so on. In other words, each subsidised series would have to be approved by the Turkish Islamists in order to include all the elements of the desired cultural Turkism, regardless of whether all this has anything to do with the harsh Turkish reality.

The subsidised series do not present Turkish society as it really is, but so foreign viewers could exclaim, “how beautiful Turkish society is, how much morality it has, how much it respects the family, how great and powerful Turkey is, how beautiful it is.”

This plan of the Turkish Islamists was a great success: Turkish TV series not only flooded the immediate target areas (Balkans, Caucasus, Middle East, Arab countries) but also traveled to 75 countries around the world, transferring a fictitious image of modern Turkey, according to that with the virtual standards that Islamists around the world wanted to “sell.”

Nowhere in the series are subsidised persecutions, imprisonments and killings of Kurds, the silencing or imprisonment of journalists, academics, judges, military personnel and civil servants – nowhere is there any suspicion of deep-rooted and controlling government aligned with the Far Right Gray Wolves, nor a word about the freedom, oppression and violation of the human rights that millions of Turks suffer from, nowhere to be suspected of the contempt of 184 decisions of the European Court of Human Rights.

If a filmmaker dares to “escape” any bold independent production that is not in the predefined molds, the price is handcuffs and imprisonment with imaginary charges. This happened after the production of the film “Awakening” that saw filmmaker Ali Avci arrested as a result.

In Greece, television stations have been flooding receivers with subsidised Turkish series since 2005. In 2012, George Karabelias, denounced the Turkish series as “cultural Turkification.”

Of the 55 Turkish series shown in Greece, 18 were shown on ANT1, 17 on the old MEGA until 2018, 7 on ALPHA, 7 on STAR, 5 on SKAI and 1 on EPSILON.

26 of the 55 Turkish series, were discontinued without completion either because they were too large in number of episodes and broadcast hours, or because the advertising “interest” was not significant.

Finally, in the last fifteen years, efforts have been made to show in Turkey some well-kept Greek television productions, dubbed in Turkish but which did not have a substantial impact on the Turkish market.

At a time when Turkish aggression against Greece is manifesting itself in the most insidious forms of hybrid warfare; at a time when an extremist Turkey is humiliating every day the notion of our country’s maritime and air borders; at a time when almost all high-ranking Turkish officials are indulging in unstoppable verbal bullying against us with various silly pretexts; at a time when well-known Turkish “artists” are creating songs with wishes to “send” the coronavirus to Greece; at a time when the neo-Ottoman expansion invades like a modern pirates the Cypriot Economic Exclusion Zone, as well as Syria and Libya, we continue to watch indifferently through the receivers of our television the spiritual castration of the Greek society in order for a few channel masters to make profit.

We must finally resist the propaganda raid of the Islamists of Turkey who have been insisting for 15 years to convince us that the virtual reality they present to us through the Turkish series is not just a small percentage of Turkish society, but the whole of it. The image of Turkish history that they put to adapt their neo-Ottoman fantasies of the Islamists is authentic and not fake.

It is characteristic that propaganda of the Islamists has reached the point that it puts in the script of the TV Sultan Abdul Hamid II the exact same words that Erdoğan uses in his speeches.

But now that we have a complete picture, it is time for the daily bombardment of Turkish propaganda series on Greek television to stop immediately.

And it will only stop when Greek companies stop permanently supplying Turkish TV series with advertising funds. This is exactly the goal of the International Hellenic Association’s initiative, which we all hope will succeed!

The two Armenian Executive Directors Interview, Project 1.5 Million meals for 1.5 Million lives, 105th #ArmenianGenocide, Video

April 29, 2020 By administrator

Armen Sahakyan ANCA Western Region Executive Director and Mihr Toumajan Armenian American Assembly Executive Director joint Wally Sarkeesian explain how Armenian Communities in United State have join into the Project Project 1.5 Million meals for 1.5 Million lives .

Watch on Facebook:

Watch on YouTube:

On April 24th, 2020 the Armenian-American community commemorated the 105th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide where the Ottoman Turkish Empire under the guise of WWI undertook the deliberate and systematic eradication of 1.5 million Armenians as well as an additional 1.5 million Assyrians, Greeks, and others.

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, in place of the annual March for Justice demonstration that has historically brought tens of thousands of Armenians to the streets of Los Angeles in calling on Turkey to recognize of the Armenian Genocide, the Armenian Genocide Committee, along with Unified Young Armenians and United Armenian Council for the Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide – Los Angeles, has launched a humanitarian fundraiser in support of Feeding America to honor Near East Relief and provide 1.5 million meals to Americans in need.

Near East Relief was the United States’ first congressionally sanctioned non-governmental organization – and the first major international humanitarian relief operation in the world – that mobilized all facets of the American citizenry to respond to the systematic destruction of the Armenian people half a world away.

Ukraine Dictatorship denies Armenian genocide, refers instead to ‘tragic events of April’

April 29, 2020 By administrator

Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Vasyl Bodnar has urged government agencies to refrain from using the term ‘genocide’ when referring to the slaughter of Armenians a century ago, as it would go against Kiev’s political interests.

An estimated 1.5 million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1922. Bodnar outlined reasons for refusing to recognize the events as genocide in a letter to government officials, which was subsequently leaked on Facebook by a member of the Verkovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament.

According to Bodnar, these events do not fit the UN definition of genocide, which constitutes “actions committed with the intention to destroy, in whole or in part, any national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such.”

His letter, however, confirmed that the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry made that determination mainly for strategic reasons. It argued that modern Armenia is a close ally of Russia, and may vote for resolutions in international bodies hostile to the interests of Ukraine. Kiev has been at odds with Moscow ever since 2014, when an elected government was overthrown in a US-backed coup, prompting three regions of Ukraine to declare independence and one of them, Crimea, to rejoin Russia.

Another thing pointed out in Bodnar’s letter is that the Armenian issue is an “extremely sensitive topic” for Ukraine’s key strategic partner in the region, Turkey. Although the Turkish republic began in 1923 by disavowing its Ottoman past, it has maintained ever since that what happened to the Armenian, Greek and other Christian populations during WWI and its aftermath was not genocide.

Bodnar’s position was blasted on social media as outright genocide denial, with some Twitter users pointing out the irony and hypocrisy of Kiev insisting that the 1932 famine amounted to a Soviet genocide of Ukrainians.

The ‘Holodomor’ has been a similarly controversial topic in the world, with Ukrainian nationalists claiming that the famine was a direct and deliberate attack on them, even though the famine affected other parts of the Soviet Union as well, due to a combination of bad weather and strict agricultural collectivization policies.

Russia is among the 29 countries that have officially recognized the Armenian genocide as of 2020. While both chambers of the US Congress have adopted resolutions recognizing the genocide, during the 2019 crisis over Turkey’s invasion of Syrian territories held by US-backed Kurdish militias, the White House has not signed off on them, so they do not have the force of law.