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Istanbul: ‘Recognize, Apologize, Compensate,” Say Turks During Istanbul Commemoration

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During a commemoration event in Istanbul Monday, participants called on Turkey to recognize the Genocide and apologize and make compensations for the crime.

ISTANBUL—During an event on Monday to commemorate the 102nd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide at the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum located in Sultanahmet district organized by Human Rights Association Commission against Racism and Discrimination, participants called on Turkey to recognize the Genocide and apologize and make compensations for the crime.

Organized by “April 24 Commemoration Platform,” the commemoration event was held with a poster reading “Armenian Genocide, recognize, apologize, compensate,” while participants carried carnations and photographs of the victims of the Armenian Genocide, reported the Istanbul-based Agos newspaper.

A group chanting “We are the soliders of Mustafa Kemal” and “We are the soldiers of Erdoğan,” attempted to interrupt the event but was prevented from provoking participats.

“We are trying to fight against the inherent hatred and vengeance of the state. We are talking about an annihilation that is going on for 102 years,” said Benjamin Abtan, Head of European Grassroots Antiracist Movement, during whose remarks the group attempted the interruption.

Abtan said that commemorating the victims of genocide is to defend democracy. “Fighting against denial of genocide and genocide itself are not peculiar to Turkey. That is why we, non-Armenians, are a part of this struggle.”

Following Abtan’s speech, Meral Cıldır, member of Human Rights Association Commission against Racism and Discrimination, read a written statement on behalf of April 24 Commemoration Platform, which also mentioned the Ottoman Turkish massacres of Syriacs and Pontus Greeks.

Below is the text of the statement:

“Today is April 24. The symbolic beginning of Armenian Genocide. We have to remind that Syriac people had been subjected to genocide in Asia Minor between 1914 and 1923, and Pontus Greeks were subjected to genocide both by Ottoman state and Kemalist movement.

Rule of darkness trivializes even the most horrific evils. It makes criminal actions and situations ordinary. People get used to the injustices to which they have to resist and they experience them as a part of daily life.

Talat Pasha planned Armenian Genocide with a cold-blooded precision; he executed the plan, followed its course and meticulously recorded its results. Today, Talat Pasha and Enver Pasha are buried in mausoleum. They are honored with the place that is given to them in Monument of Liberty.

We invite all people who object against genocide denial to protest the naming of schools after Talat Pasha and his grave in the Monument of Liberty. Anatolia is a land of genocide. Turkey is a land of genocide denial. Today, the mentality of genocide and denial still prevails.”

A second event, a silent vigil commemorating the victims of the Armenian Genocide, took place in Taksim Square and was attended by the Armenian member of the Turkish Parliament Garo Paylan and the parents of Sevag Balıkcı’s an Armenian soldier who was killed on April 24, 2011 in his barracks.

The event, which was organized by the Commemoration of Armenian Genocide Victims Committee, issued a statement, which was read by one of the group’s members Murat Celikkan.

Below is the statement, which did not use the word genocide but called on Turkish authorities to apologize for the crime and referenced Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan “condolence” message to “Ottoman Armenians.”

“We expect an apology, instead of condolence messages talking about the suffering of both sides. It’s been 102 years; don’t wait for 103rd year. Apologize!”

“While a people was annihilated with its entire culture, culture of coexistence was damaged fatally. Anatolia became barren without its cultures and peoples, making all of us, all people who lived in Anatolia for generations alone. This barrenness that influenced, surrounded and sickened all generations can only be ended with confrontation.”

Saying that “In fact, barrenness and loneliness is not the only problem,” Celikkan added: “Confronting the events of 1915 would contribute to adoption of the essence of democracy as the norm.”

The pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), of which Paylan is a member, also issued an announcement on the occasion of the 102nd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

Czech Rep. parliament adopts resolution condemning Armenian Genocide

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Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic on Tuesday adopted a resolution condemning the Armenian Genocide.

A total of 104 deputies voted for the resolution, which was introduced by MP Robin Bohnisch from the Czech Social Democratic Party.

“I believe that it was the Czech Republic’s duty to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide,” said Bohnisch. “Yesterday marked the 102nd anniversary of the Genocide, and the adoption of such a resolution today is symbolic.”

Members of the Czech Chamber of Deputies condemned the Armenian Genocide, and described it as a crime against humanity.

Vancouver: Canadian Armenian rallies commemorate anniversary of the Armenian genocide

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Gagrule.net April 24 Hundred of Canadian Armenian  rallied through downtown Vancouver commemorating 102 anniversary of the 1915 Armenian genocide in Turkey’s Ottoman Empire with protest gatherings and marches.

The Armenian Genocide (1915-23) was the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Christian Armenian population of the Turkish Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was characterized by massacres, and deportations involving forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of deaths reaching 1.5 million.

The majority of Armenian Diaspora communities were formed by the Genocide survivors.

Present-day Turkey denies the fact of the Armenian Genocide, justifying the atrocities as “deportation to secure Armenians”. Only a few Turkish intellectuals, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk and scholar Taner Akcam, speak openly about the necessity to recognize this crime against humanity.

The Armenian Genocide was recognized by Uruguay, Russia, France, Lithuania, the Italian Chamber of Deputies, majority of U.S. states 45, parliaments of Greece, Cyprus, Argentina, Belgium and Wales, National Council of Switzerland, Chamber of Commons of Canada, Polish Sejm, Vatican, European Parliament and the World Council of Churches.

 

UPI: Worldwide rallies commemorate anniversary of the Armenian genocide

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By Mike Bambach,

April 24 (UPI) — Thousands around the world on Monday marked the 102 anniversary of the 1915 Armenian genocide in Turkey’s Ottoman Empire with protest gatherings and marches.

Rallies from Istanbul, Beirut and Paris to Ottawa and Los Angeles — home to one of the largest Armenian communities outside Armenia — demanded Turkish authorities stop their denial of the genocide.

“Wherever there are Armenians, there will be this ceremony,” said Aram Karadaghlian, 31, one of the Beirut event’s organizers.”It’s a duty. They come show respect and appreciation.”

Historians estimate 1.5 million Armenians were killed in massacres organized by the Ottoman Empire government of Young Turks during World War I.

But Turkey has long denied genocide took place, arguing that the killings can’t be separated from the upheaval of World War I.

“We’re going to stand together to voice our desire for justice,” Simon Izmirian, an executive member of the Armenian National Committee of Canada, said in a phone interview from Ottawa, “and for the perpetrators to be held accountable for what they’ve done in 1915.”

U.S. Reps. Adam Schiff (D.-Calif.) and Dave Trott (R-Michigan) last month introduced a resolution asking Congress to formally recognize the genocide.

“Over 100 years ago, the Ottoman Empire undertook a brutal campaign of murder, rape, and displacement against the Armenian people that took the lives of 1.5 million men, women, and children in the first genocide of the 20th century,” Schiff said in a statement.

“Genocide is not a historic relic — even today hundreds of thousands of religious minorities face existential threat from ISIS in Syria and Iraq. It is therefore all the more pressing that the Congress recognize the historical fact of the Armenian Genocide and stand against modern day genocide and crimes against humanity.”

Texas lawmakers holding hearing on Armenian genocide

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April 24 is the 102nd anniversary of the Armenian genocide when the Turkish government killed a million and a half Armenians.

While many countries don’t recognize that the event happened, Texas lawmakers are working to officially acknowledge it with a public hearing.

Armenians from across Texas are at the hearing. Many are testifying and sharing their family stories on what it was like to survive the tragedy.

If the Texas House passes the resolution, Texas will become the 46th state to recognize the Armenian genocide.

Representative Mark Sanford is sponsoring House Resolution 191. He believes it’s time Texas recognizes the genocide which took place during WWI starting in 1915. It was planned and executed by the Turkish government against the entire Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were tortured, massacred, deported and abducted.

A film about the genocide, “The Promise”, starring Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac was recently released. There’s a free screening of the film at 4 p.m. in the Extension Auditorium of the Capitol.

President Trump Side with Islamic State of Turkey Fails to Properly Characterize Armenian Genocide

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WASHINGTON—The White House issued President Donald Trump’s statement on the Armenian Genocide, in which the president did not use the term genocide to describe the events of 1915, once again giving cover to Turkish denials.

Armenian National Committee of America Executive Director Aram Hamparian issued this response to President Donald Trump’s failure to reaffirm the Armenian Genocide in his commemorative statement issued earlier today.

“President Trump has chosen to enforce Ankara’s gag-rule against American condemnation and commemoration of the Armenian Genocide,” stated ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. “In failing to properly mark April 24th, President Trump is effectively outsourcing U.S. genocide-prevention policy to Recep Erdogan, an arrogant and authoritarian dictator who clearly enjoys the public spectacle of arm-twisting American presidents into silence on Turkey’s mass murder of millions of Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, and other Christians.”

“Today, we remember and honor the memory of those who suffered during the Meds Yeghern, one of the worst mass atrocities of the 20th century.  Beginning in 1915, one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in the final years of the Ottoman Empire.  I join the Armenian community in America and around the world in mourning the loss of innocent lives and the suffering endured by so many,” said Trump in his statement.

“As we reflect on this dark chapter of human history, we also recognize the resilience of the Armenian people.  Many built new lives in the United States and made indelible contributions to our country, while cherishing memories of the historic homeland in which their ancestors established one of the great civilizations of antiquity,” added Trump.

“We must remember atrocities to prevent them from occurring again.  We welcome the efforts of Turks and Armenians to acknowledge and reckon with painful history, which is a critical step toward building a foundation for a more just and tolerant future,” concluded Trump.

The U.S. first recognized the Armenian Genocide in 1951 through a filing which was included in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) Report titled: “Reservations to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.” The specific reference to the Armenian Genocide appears on page 25 of the ICJ Report: “The Genocide Convention resulted from the inhuman and barbarous practices which prevailed in certain countries prior to and during World War II, when entire religious, racial and national minority groups were threatened with and subjected to deliberate extermination. The practice of genocide has occurred throughout human history. The Roman persecution of the Christians, the Turkish massacres of Armenians, the extermination of millions of Jews and Poles by the Nazis are outstanding examples of the crime of genocide.”

President Ronald Reagan reaffirmed the Armenian Genocide in 1981. The U.S. House of Representatives adopted legislation on the Armenian Genocide in 1975, 1984 and 1996.

India’s Vice President: Genocide memorial is evidence of Armenians’ sufferings

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India's Vice President: Genocide

India’s Vice President: Genocide

YEREVAN. – The delegation, headed by India’s vice-president Mohammad Hamid Ansari visited Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex in Yerevan on Tuesday.

Vice President was accompanied by Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian, First Deputy Mayor of Yerevan Kamo Areyan, Ambassador of India to Armenia Yogeshwar Sangwan and Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute Director Hayk Demoyan. Hamid Ansari laid a wreath to the Memorial and flowers to the Eternal flame.

Indian official and the Foreign Minister of Armenia took photo on the background of Ararat mount.

Hamid Ansari also visited the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, where he got acquainted with the details of the cruel plan of the leadership of the Ottoman Empire to exterminate the Armenian people. Asked about his impressions, the Indian official noted that the monument which was a reminding of a human mistake.

In the book of condolences he wrote that the monument was the vivid evidence of the fact that the Armenians suffered from severe violence.

Naming the Armenian genocide for what it is – Chris Bohjalian

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Re-published from the Boston Globe

Adolf Hitler kept a bust of Ataturk in his office. Heinrich Himmler considered moving to Turkey in the early 1920s. And Rudolf Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz, admitted in his memoirs (penned while awaiting his execution) that he first killed while serving in the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. Make no mistake: The Young Nazis were serious fanboys of the Young Turks.

The term “Young Turk” today, of course, has come to mean a hard-charging young executive, a bullish entrepreneur who takes no prisoners. A century ago, however, the Young Turks — Talaat Pasha, Djemal Pasha, and Enver Pasha — were the leaders of the Ottoman Empire and the architects of the Armenian genocide: the systematic annihilation of 1.5 million Armenians during the First World War. Three out of every four Armenians living under Ottoman rule were killed by their own government; the nation, outside of Istanbul, was ethnically cleansed of its Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek minorities.
And the Germans, the Ottoman Empire’s ally, were there. They saw it all. The cables from the German diplomats from Aleppo to Erzurum that chronicled the slaughter are as clear as the photographs that German medic Armin Wegner took of starving children and dying women. And while some of those Germans were aghast at what they were witnessing, others clearly were inspired.
After the war, Mustafa Kemal — Ataturk — finished the work of the Young Turks, turning his armies on the Armenians and the Greeks, forcing them out and creating what he hoped would be a homogenous Turkic nation. No minorities to muddy the agenda. Then, with Stalin-like fanaticism, his government began to rewrite history, denying the carnage. Armenians went from victims to traitors; the true story was erased. It’s why Turkey today continues to deny the genocide with pathologic obsession. The last thing they want is for Mustafa Kemel and the Young Turks to be saddled with the moniker “war criminal,” or their nation to risk the sort of reparations that accompany the term “genocide.”
Today is April 24, the day when Armenians around the world commemorate the start of the Armenian genocide: It was that night in 1915 when the Ottoman authorities rounded up the Armenian political, intellectual, and religious leaders of Constantinople and executed almost all of them.
To commemorate this devastating anniversary, the president of the United States will likely find yet another euphemism for the word “genocide,” because heaven forbid America should risk antagonizing Turkey by describing accurately what happened and assigning the blame where it belongs. Trust me, some poor White House speechwriter’s thesaurus is looking pretty dogeared right about now.
Congress has not formally recognized the Armenian genocide either, and I’m not expecting this one to put moral spine before realpolitik.
But, fittingly, Germany has. Last year the German Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of calling the massacres a genocide.
Historians often note how the last stage in genocide is denial, and that denial becomes the first stage in the next one. As a character in one of my novels remarks, “There is a line connecting the Armenians and the Jews and the Cambodians and the Bosnians and the Rwandans. There are obviously more, but really, how much genocide can one sentence handle?”
The Holocaust might have occurred even without the precedent of the Armenian genocide. But as historian Stefan Ihrig proves in his book “Justifying Genocide,” the Young Nazis were there when the Young Turks were at work. They saw how easy it was to blame the problems of the nation on one small ethnic minority, and then rationalize their murder. They grew bold. As Hitler said to his Wehrmacht commanders on August 22, 1939, a week and a half before unleashing his Panzers on Poland, “I have placed my death-head formation in readiness with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
That is precisely why today America must stop mincing words when it comes to the Armenian genocide.

 

Iran: Armenian Protesters in Tehran demand Turkey to recognize Armenian Genocide (video)

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Protesters gathered around Tehran‘s St. Sarkis Cathedral on Monday, April 24 to mark the 102nd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, Ruptly TV reports.

In the capital, the demonstrators called on Turkey to recognize the mass killings of 1,5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide.

102 years have passed since the beginning of the Armenian Genocide, perpetrated in the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1923.

 

https://youtu.be/BFGB8LYNpvc

Two Turks join Armenians in Worcester to recall ArmenianGenocide

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Two Turks – Burcin Gercek, a journalist engaged in Holocaust and Genocide studies and Emre Can Daglioglu, who is also engaged in genocide studies – took part in the events dedicated to the 102nd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide held in Worcester city of the U.S. Massachusetts State, Telegram.com reports.

“We have a duty to face our past. Of course, justice cannot be done for killed people. It’s too late for that. But at least a recognition, an official apology, and some steps concerning the Armenian cultural heritage in Turkey could be positive steps,” Gercek said in his speech at the Worcester Area Armenian Genocide Commemoration event recalling the estimated 1.5 million Armenians.

Raised in secular Muslim family in Istanbul, she said the Armenian Genocide was taboo as a discussion topic when she was growing up in Turkey, and it was only when she travelled to study and work in France that she learned the history.

“I was so shocked over such a big lie that was told to us by the government and media and schools,” the reporter noted.

Emre Can Daglioglu said that they have to apologize for what’s happened in the Ottoman Empire, not only in 1915 but at the end of the 19th century.

“I am part of this denial. (As a citizen of Turkey) I have that privilege to be in Turkey unlike Armenians or Greeks who were killed or deported from Turkey. That’s why I think I have to apologize,” he added.