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A TURKISH TALE, Gallipoli and the #ArmenianGenocide

February 18, 2017 By administrator

BY ROBERT MANNE,

There are two puzzles about the story at the centre of Australian folklore, Gallipoli. One is obvious: why did the story of the Australian troops’ landing at the Dardanelles Straits on 25 April 1915, and their subsequent participation in one of the British Empire’s most comprehensive military defeats, become the country’s foundation myth? The other puzzle has never been discussed, but can be expressed as follows.

During the exact time Australian troops spent in hell on Gallipoli, another event of world-historical importance was taking place on contiguous ground: the Armenian Genocide. Some contemporary scholars think that during this catastrophe, one million people were murdered. The crime was committed by the leadership of the Ottoman Turkish Empire: the empire which Australian troops, as part of the Anglo-French force, invaded. The Gallipoli landings took place one day after the mass arrest of the Armenian intelligentsia in Istanbul, the date Armenians regard as the beginning of the genocide and thus have set aside as their day of national mourning. Australians remember 25 April as their most solemn national day; the Armenians remember 24 April. As it happened, the Dardanelles campaign failed. In the months between the landings at Gallipoli and the mid-December 1915 evacuation, the overwhelming majority of the million deaths took place a few hundred kilometres east of the Dardanelles Straits: in eastern Anatolia, Cilicia and, after the terrible death marches, in the deserts of Syria and Iraq.

And yet, despite the fact that the Armenian Genocide was one of the great crimes of history; despite the fact that it took place on Ottoman soil during the precise months of the Dardanelles campaign; despite the fact that that campaign is regarded as the moment when the Australian nation was born, so far as I can tell, in the vast Gallipoli canon, not one Australian historian has devoted more than a passing page or paragraph to the relationship, or even the mere coincidence, of the two events. Concerning the Armenian Genocide, in the space of two large volumes on Gallipoli, Charles Bean is silent; Les Carlyon gives the issue three or four lines; John Robertson allows half a page. Alan Moorehead, in his mid-’50s classic, is unusual by devoting a full three pages to the Armenian Question.

Among Australians, only the poet Les Murray has managed to hold the two events together in his mind. His strange creation, the German Australian Fredy Neptune, is accidentally attached to the Turkish Navy at the outbreak of the Great War. Fredy swears to himself that he will desert if forced to fight Australians at Gallipoli. Soon after, he witnesses, at the Black Sea port of Trebizond, Armenian women being doused in kerosene and set alight. He is numbed by this experience for the remainder of his life. Murray’s epic begins with the words of an Armenian poet: “These eyes of mine – How shall I dig them out, how shall I, how?” For Murray, Armenia prefigures the horrors of the twentieth century. For him and him alone, Gallipoli is imaginatively proximate.

Concerning the coincidence on Ottoman soil of the Gallipoli campaign and the Armenian Genocide, there are many questions – though Australian historians have not seen them – that are worth discussing. Here is one. The Germans on the Western Front were not held by the Australian troops in high regard: their Belgian atrocities were exaggerated and neither forgiven nor forgotten. By contrast, for reasons that are not easy to fathom, ever since the time of the Anzac presence at Gallipoli, the Turkish enemy, responsible for crimes against Armenians far more terrible, seems to have been respected, not so much by the Australian troops but by those who recorded the experience of Gallipoli on their behalf.

In the enormously influential Anzac Book, compiled by Charles Bean from contributions of those who served, Bean included a poem of his own, ‘Abdul’. It ended with the following verse:

For though your name be black as ink

For murder and rapine

Carried out in happy concert

With your Christians from the Rhine,

We will judge you, Mr Abdul,

By the test by which we can –

That with all your breath, in life, in death,

You’ve played the gentleman.

In all his subsequent work, Bean continued to claim that the Anzac troops left Gallipoli with respect for the basic decency of the Turkish troops more or less intact. In 1934, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, Mustapha Kemal Atatürk, reciprocated with fine conciliatory sentiments of his own. I use the translation of Adrian Jones:

Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets where they lie side by side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears. Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land, they have become our sons as well.

Bob Hawke completed the cycle in 1990, moving from respect for the foot soldier, “Johnny Turk”, to highest praise for the commander and founder of the postwar regime:

It is remarkable to reflect that the tragedy of our first encounter has been the source of nationhood for both our countries. It was through his brilliant defence of the Gallipoli Peninsula … that the great Mustapha Kemal Ataturk demonstrated the singular qualities of leadership which enabled him subsequently to create the Turkish Republic.

Please continue Reading The rest on: https://www.themonthly.com.au/monthly-essays-robert-manne-turkish-tale-gallipoli-and-armenian-genocide-459 

Filed Under: Genocide, News Tagged With: A TURKISH TALE, armenian genocide, gallipoli

Was Brussels Attack another Turkish False Flag Operation? “Erdogan Gallipoli Speech”

March 22, 2016 By administrator

Snake in the Grass 001

In the following article from last Friday (3/19), Erdogan warned Europe that “Brussels could fall victim to terror.” Speaking at a ceremony to commemorate the 101st anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli in the coastal town of Canakkale, Erdogan said, “there is no reason why the bomb that exploded in Ankara cannot explode in Brussels, in any other European city.” “The snakes you are sleeping with can bite you any time,” he added.

It seems to me that, given the explosions in Brussels today and the number of false flag attacks that occur in Turkey and Europe that Turkey itself may have had something to do with these attacks and is the very snake to which Erdogan refers.

Turkey has been wracked by conflict in mainly Kurdish areas of the southeast and suffered a string of attacks, including two on its capital that were claimed by an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

Brussels and Washington, like Ankara, list the PKK as a terrorist organization. But the West supports Syrian Kurdish groups that Turkey considers as affiliates of the PKK and a threat to its national security.

http://www.greenfieldreporter.com/view/story/2e8f57b804da4056b7d69ec7d7e09c6e/EU–Turkey

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: attackErdogan, brussels, gallipoli, speech

GENOCIDE Turkey backtracking Battle of Gallipoli to March 18 in state of last year 24 April to ignore the genocide centennial commemoration of the

March 13, 2016 By administrator

arton123160-400x300Last year, in order to ignore the commemorations of the centennial of the Armenian Genocide, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had decided to shift the Victory ceremonies of Gallipoli (Dardanelles) in Turkey … on 24 April. But this year, the commemoration of the Battle of Gallipoli has resumed its usual date and will be celebrated on March 18 according to the Turkish news agency Anadolu (Anatolia) with two events. Note that contrary to expectations of Ankara, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide at the genocide memorial in Yerevan had a global echo with dozens of media in the world came in the Armenian capital to cover the event. And unlike the Gallipoli ceremonies had been ignored by the media …

Krikor Amirzayan

Filed Under: Articles, Genocide Tagged With: backtracking, gallipoli, march 18, Turkey

The Three Monkeys of Gallipoli

March 5, 2016 By administrator

By Len Wicks/Tigran Hakobyan

By Len Wicks/Tigran Hakobyan

By  Len Wicks,

Privates Key, Turnbill and Cameron are deaf, dumb and blind, while WWI allies Canada, France and Russia (and even the Ottoman’s allies Austria and Germany) have the courage to recognise the worst of crimes – genocide.
Turkey effectively blames invading nations like New Zealand, Australia and the UK for the deaths, saying it had to ‘deport’ its Christian citizens in case they supported the Allies (‘deport’ means to kill more than 1.5 million Armenian children, women, aged and unarmed male citizens by burning, crucifixion, bayonets and other gruesome means, steal their property and crush more than 2,000 churches).
The truth is that Turks have been massacring indigenous Christians since they invaded Asia Minor in 1064 because of their Christian faith, while New Zealand, Australia and the UK shamefully appease Turkey, instead of defending human rights.
Lest we Forget (the genocide of Christians – Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks).
Note to veterans: the NZ, Australian and British cartoon figures are representing political leaders, not courageous Gallipoli soldiers, many of whom recognised this crime against humanity.
Note to publishers: the cartoon may be freely reproduced but must have the following credit: Len Wicks/Tigran Hakobyan. A larger image is available at http://originsdiscovery.com/Cartoon.JPG.

 

Filed Under: Genocide, News Tagged With: armenian genocide, gallipoli, Monkeys, The Three, Turkey

Turkey: Gallipoli events lose flair with many no-shows, low-level reps

April 22, 2015 By administrator

209811_newsdetailOnly about 20 heads of states will be attending the Turkish government’s centenary commemorations of World War I’s Gallipoli Campaign — also known as the Battle of Çanakkale — on April 24-25, a date chosen to deflect attention from Armenia’s centennial commemoration of what they consider to be genocide.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had invited 102 heads of state, including Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan, to the Gallipoli commemorations, which are traditionally commemorated on March 18 every year. Sarksyan in an open letter to Erdoğan turned down the invitation and called on Turkey to stop its “denial policy.” report Zaman

Sarksyan had previously invited Erdoğan to the centennial commemorations of the Armenian “genocide” in Yerevan. Turkey denies that the mass killings and deportations of Armenians in 1915 at the end of World War I amount to genocide.

The Prime Ministry’s Directorate General of Press and Information (BYEGM) announced on Wednesday that the 100th anniversary of the battles of Gallipoli in Çanakkale and the İstanbul Peace Summit to be held on April 23-25 will be attended by senior representatives from 73 states, including 20 heads of state, three parliamentary speakers, three vice presidents, five prime ministers, two former presidents, 28 ministers, seven deputy ministers and five general secretaries of international organisations.

Today’s Zaman has learned the Arab League was not among the international organizations that were invited to the Gallipoli ceremonies.

A foreign diplomat in Ankara told Today’s Zaman the Turkish government at first stressed that the invitations were originally only for heads of states, heads of governments and ministers but after receiving poor responses, the government notified the embassies in Ankara that invitations to the Gallipoli commemorations are also extended to ambassadors as well.

A number of countries, including the US, are attending the commemorations at the ambassadorial level. A US Embassy spokesperson told Today’s Zaman on Wednesday “Ambassador [John] Bass will be the US representative at the Çanakkale ceremony.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin will be going to Yerevan for the centennial commemorations in Armenia, while Russian Duma speaker Sergey Naryshkin will be attending the April 24 Gallipoli events.

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic will also be attending the ceremonies in Yerevan, while the country is sending its First Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic to attend the Gallipoli commemorations.

French President François Hollande will also be attending the ceremonies in Yerevan and is sending a minister of war veterans to the ceremonies in Turkey.

Filed Under: Articles, Genocide Tagged With: Event, gallipoli, no-show, Turkey

The Allies at Gallipoli: Defeat in 1915, Disgrace in 2015

April 1, 2015 By administrator

By David Boyajian,

Erdogan Smoke Screen

Erdogan Smoke Screen

April 25 will mark 100 years since the Allies – the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and France – made their ill-fated landing on Turkey’s Gallipoli peninsula during WW1. Having barely gotten off the beaches after months of fighting, the Allies withdrew in defeat leaving over 44,000 dead and 97,000 wounded.

As in recent years, thousands will flock from the Allied countries and elsewhere to Gallipoli for the Turkish-led April 24-25 commemorations. Numerous world dignitaries, including Australia’s and New Zealand’s prime ministers and Prince Charles, will also attend.

In April, the UK, Australia, and NZ hold Gallipoli remembrances on their own soil and elsewhere.  And throughout the year, their citizens visit Gallipoli to pay tribute to the UK’s 21 thousand, Australia and NZ’s 11 thousand, and France’s 10 thousand dead.   This is proper and honorable.

However, thronging to April’s sham commemoration staged in and by Turkey, a notorious human rights violator? Which had mistreated Allied POWs? Which today abuses its remaining Christians, as well as Alevis, Kurds, and Jews? Which also committed genocide and pillage against millions of indigenous Christian Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek civilians during the Gallipoli battle and for years afterward? And which arrogantly denies having done so?

The UK, Australia, and NZ themselves have made the Gallipoli ceremonies in Turkey something less than solemn.  Smiling lottery winners receive tickets to the event. Youngsters vie to become Gallipoli “youth ambassadors” and win all-expense paid trips. Is Gallipoli the resting place of valorous Allied troops – or Disneyworld Turkey? 

Turkey’s Gallipoli Charade

Westerners often do not understand Turkey. The Turkish government does not mourn the Allied dead any more than it cares about the victims of its genocides and the deliberately unmarked, mass graves in which they lie.

Turkey enjoys the spectacle of defeated foreigners trudging to Gallipoli. Indeed, Turkey holds a huge Gallipoli celebration the month before. This year, it displayed a victory banner 1915 meters long.  Meanwhile, Turkey’s Defense Ministry has reportedly removed the names of non-Muslims from the list of its soldiers who died at Gallipoli.

2015’s Gallipoli attendees can anticipate a lecture by Turkey’s egomaniacal President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He just built himself a gaudy 1100-room palace for a reported $615 million.  In 2013, Erdoğan killed demonstrators in Gezi Square who were protesting his authoritarian rule, and regularly sues and jails journalists.

Genocide and Denial

The Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek genocides in Turkey were reported extensively at the time in Allied countries’ newspapers. France, Great Britain, and Russia issued Turkey this famous warning in May 1915: “The Allied governments … will hold personally responsible … all members of the Ottoman [Turkish] government and those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres.” Australian and New Zealand (Anzac) POWs, such as Captain Thomas Walter White, witnessed and later wrote about the genocides. 

Winston Churchill termed them a “holocaust.”  “Race extermination,” declared U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau in 1915. It was that extermination which first motivated Raphael Lemkin, the Polish Jewish lawyer who later coined the word “genocide.”

The parliaments of the European Union, Canada, France, Lebanon, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, Uruguay, and many others, as well as a U.N. sub-commission, the Vatican, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), have recognized the Armenian genocide. IAGS has also recognized the Assyrian and Greek genocides. In 1951, the U.S.

referred to the Armenian “genocide” in a filing with the International Court of Justice (World Court).

But the governments of the UK (except for Scotland and Wales), Australia (except for New South Wales), and NZ refuse to acknowledge these genocides. They fear Turkey’s reaction. Contrast their gutlessness with the courage of Allied soldiers at Gallipoli. 

By ignoring the Armenian genocide, New Zealand and Australia are “tacitly complicit in” genocide denial, says NZ writer and businessman Stephen Keys. “Is [Turkey] the sort of government we as New Zealanders are proud to stand alongside on April 25, 2015?” Officially, 2015 is “The Year of Turkey in Australia.”  A more apt name: “The Year of Turkish and Australian Genocide Denials.”

France, on the other hand, has acknowledged the Armenian genocide despite Turkish threats. A large French delegation headed by President Hollande will be in Armenia on April 24 for the Genocide Centenary. On that day in 1915, Turkey arrested and murdered hundreds of Armenian intellectuals, doctors, priests, writers, and other community leaders as part of the genocide.

Turkish Bullies

Turkey enjoys bullying others over Gallipoli. Five years ago, it initially refused to issue visas to Australian and New Zealand archeologists who were to map Gallipoli’s battlefields. Turkey was angry that Bonnyrigg, a Sydney suburb, had allowed construction of a monument commemorating the Christian Assyrian genocide.

Two years back, Turkey threatened to ban New South Wales MPs from Gallipoli because NSW had recognized the Armenian genocide.

Afraid of further incurring Turkey’s wrath, earlier this year NSW installed – surreptitiously – a plaque in Sydney’s Hyde Park honoring the Turkish hero of Gallipoli, and later president, Kemal Atatürk.  The plaque’s fine words, allegedly penned by him, are undoubtedly insincere and perhaps inauthentic. Moreover, this “hero” continued the evil deeds of his predecessors.

Ataturk, Genocide, and Hitler

Atatürk welcomed veteran genocidists, such as Abdülhalik Renda and Şükrü Kaya, into his new government. From 1919 to 1923, Atatürk’s forces murdered and expelled Christians who had survived the genocides.

In 1937, Atatürk directed the slaughter, sometimes using poison gas, of thousands of Alevi Kurdish civilians, including women and children, in the Dersim region.  Among the victims were Armenians who had found shelter there.

Hitler admired Atatürk’s brutality. Atatürk was “the greatest man of the century,” the Führer told Turkey’s Milliyet newspaper in 1933, and “Turkey was our role model.” Indeed, in WW1, some German officers took part in the Armenian genocide.

Visitors to Gallipoli will bow before Atatürk’s statue unaware of his appalling record.

The Dead Speak

The Allies fought WW1 gallantly.  Armenians from many countries were among them.  Armenians even formed a special French Foreign Legion unit that fought with particular distinction. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians also served in Allied armies in WW2, while Turkey remained neutral and cozied up to Nazi Germany.

Beneath Gallipoli’s shores and hills, the courageous Allied dead surely whisper, ‘Please, honor our memories by going elsewhere in April, and shun Turkey’s victory dance on our graves and those of millions of Christian innocents.’

The author is a freelance Armenian American journalist. Many of his articles are archived at Armeniapedia.org.

Filed Under: Genocide, News Tagged With: allies, defeat, Disgrace, gallipoli

Number of countries to attend Turkey’s Gallipoli events drops by 25

March 24, 2015 By administrator

189740The number of countries to be represented April 24 at the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli Campaign of World War I, dropped by 25, according to Agos.

Earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated that invitation letters had been sent to 102 leaders.

The figure has now decreased to 77, with Ankara attempting to increase the number of participants. So far, only the arrival of the Charles, Prince of Wales and his son Prince Harry has been confirmed.

French and Russian leaders Francois Hollande and Vladimir Putin confirmed their participation in the Armenian Genocide centennial events on April 24 in Yerevan

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sent official invitations to more than 100 world leaders, including Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, to take part in the ceremonies dedicated to 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli Campaign of World War I. The date designated for these commemoration events—April 24—created uproar among Armenians worldwide, while Turkish human rights groups urged world leaders to boycott the Gallipoli events.

On Jan. 16, Sargsyan responded to Erdogan’s invitation to Turkey in a strongly worded letter. “Turkey continues its conventional denial policy and is perfecting its instrumentation for distorting history. This time, Turkey is marking the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli on April 24, even though the battle began on March 18, 1915 and lasted until late January 1916, while the Allies’ operation started on April 25,” he wrote, adding, “What is the purpose [of this] if not to distract the world’s attention from the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide?”
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Tert.am: Число приглашенных на 24 апреля в Турцию стран уменьшилось

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: attendee, drop, gallipoli, Turkey

Alex Christie-Miller, is utterly disgusting, Erdogan changing the date of Gallipoli

March 21, 2015 By administrator

4STBl_l2_biggerThe change in date of this year’s commemorations has been widely perceived as a crude attempt to distract attention from Armenian commemorations of the 1915 massacres and forced deportations which decimated the Ottoman Armenian population, which Armenians — who consider the events of 1915 to constitute genocide — commemorate on April 24. “The game TR gov’t is playing with Gallipoli – politicising it to compete with Armenian Genocide commemorations – is utterly disgusting, IMO [in my opinion],” Alex Christie-Miller, an İstanbul-based journalist working for The Times, Newsweek Europe and the Christian Science Monitor, posted on his Twitter account on March 19.

Joost Lagendijk, a former Green Party deputy in the European Parliament who also served as the co-chairman of the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee, also criticized Turkey’s move to commemorate the Gallipoli Campaign on the same day as the Armenian commemorations, calling it a “shameless and all-too-transparent effort” to try and distract attention from the Armenian “Genocide” in his Today’s Zaman column on March 17. Lagendijk said that shifting the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli Campaign to the same day “won’t work and it will unnecessarily discredit Turkey.”

Turkey’s move also offended Turkish citizens of Armenian descent. Speaking to Agos ­– a Turkish-Armenian weekly formerly edited by murder victim Hrant Dink — after Erdoğan’s invitation, many Turkish citizens of Armenian descent reacted strongly to Erdoğan’s invitation to Sarksyan, calling it a “joke” and an “ill-mannered” act, and further criticizing it as a “political maneuver.”

 

The game TR gov’t is playing with Gallipoli – politicising it to compete with Armenian Genocide commemorations – is utterly disgusting, IMO.

— Alex Christie-Miller (@AChristieMiller) March 19, 2015

Filed Under: Articles, Genocide Tagged With: Armenian, disgusting, Erdogan, gallipoli, Genocide

History: March 18, 1915, the last chance for Manoug Atamian

March 18, 2015 By administrator

arton109185-480x323We know that April 25, 1915, the Allies and particularly the British tried to conquer the peninsula of Gallipoli in the Dardanelles and they suffered a failure, after months of fruitless fighting. It’s the landing that the Turkish government is preparing to commemorate the centenary, shifting from a day to coincide with the April 24, one wonders why …

But this attempt was only following the failure of the Franco-British naval attack on March 18, whose objective was the capture of Constantinople, and whose success would, in my view, prevented the implementation of the Armenian genocide. Unfortunately, following the loss due to undetected mines, some old ships that had been purposely placed in the squadron head, panic won the English Admiral John de Robeck appointed to this position only two days earlier and he decided to withdraw its ships.

It was Winston Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, that is to say, Minister of Marine, who was the main instigator of this strategy, the failure was wrongly attributed to him, despite a commission investigation which exonerated completely. What were the motives of such a project?

- In early 1915, Russia was already weakened by the blows of the German armed and lacked ammunition and even simple rifles to equip its new troops. The Caucasian front was threatened by the Turks (this was just before the defeat of Enver to Sarikamich), as the Grand Duke Nicolas, Commander in Chief of the Russian armies, asked the British to act against the Ottoman Empire to relieve their burden (much like Stalin demanded the same thing to the same English 1941-1943).

- All the more so since the entry into Turkey war in November 1914, Russia was completely isolated and above all, she could not export wheat with financial consequences that could “erase crescent Russia as main factor, “wrote Churchill. This required him at any cost reestablish the connection with his allies and this could be done by deviating Turkey conflict with a bold and decisive blow.

- The success of this project would have decided the Balkan states hesitant (Greece, Bulgaria, Romania) to join the Allies in the war and the rapid defeat of the Ottoman Empire, already defeated in 1912, would inevitably followed.

- The capture of Constantinople, from the beginning of the conflict, would have dealt a severe blow to the morale of German states, already shaken in their convictions by the battle of the Marne and the resistance of Serbia. (Ludendorff, the main German strategist, admitted afterwards that it could shorten the two-year war)

- The side of the main front in France, the situation was blocked. Any attempt to break was doomed to failure, despite the obstinacy of Allied generals that cost unnecessarily the lives of hundreds of thousands of French and British soldiers, and, to the 1917 riots due to this stupid strategy. It was therefore necessary to attack the “soft underbelly” of the Central Powers, ie Turkey and especially the peninsula of Gallipoli which protected the capital of the Mediterranean side but was then defended by two divisions.

And from the outset, we envisioned a combined land and naval attack, but the War Minister of the United Kingdom, the prestigious Lord Kitchener, declared that he had no troops available, and then gave a division, the 29th, ready to go in February, ships to transport dock. Then he changed his mind and canceled everything. Churchill then found an alternative in getting the agreement of Venizelos, the Greek Prime Minister to land several divisions of Gallipoli, and therefore go to war against the Ottoman Empire. Deportation by the Young Turks of hundreds of thousands of Greeks from Asia Minor in 1914 was not forgotten. But then that the Tsar wished to prevent at all costs the entry of Greeks in Constantinople, vetoed this intervention. Indeed, the Allies had promised that at the end of the conflict, he would get the annexation of the “Second Rome”, an old Russian dream … And then Churchill, in his memoirs of the Great War written in twenty years (and which have just been published in French) was a cry from the heart: “Was there then no finger to write on the wall, no grandfather spectrum to appear before this unfortunate prince, the image of the fall of his house, for the destruction of his people – the bloody basement of Yekaterinburg? “. Yekaterinburg is the city in which the imperial family was murdered in 1919 by the Bolsheviks, but by his short-sighted decisions including the one discussed here, Czar has sawed the branches on which he sat sadly by practicing with him millions of victims and indirectly the Armenian people.

And following the failure of 18 March (“do not persevere – there was the crime,” wrote Churchill and the general strategy expert Sir Basil Liddell Hart expressed the same opinion) the Young Turk government, which was preparing to flee the capital, shouted victory the most powerful world fleet had turned back! The consequences were fatal for Armenians: the extermination plan prepared in previous months, was implemented. In his latest book written with Yves Ternon, historian Raymond Kevorkian time this decision between 22 and 25 March, less than a week after the retreat of allied ships! And in late March, the Turks “tested it” the feasibility of the deportation plan, starting with the town of Zeitun, which order their valiant people submitted themselves at the behest of Catholicos of Cilicia, which hoped to preserve the life of Armenians in the province an illusion … Now if Constantinople was conquered in March as possible, the flight of the Young Turk government would inevitably disrupted the implementation of the criminal plan. Massacres would probably products, even if only to pay the Armenians the fall of their capital so hard won in 1453, but the organization of the genocide would probably have been stopped. Such an act can not commit a few days, and the Turks in hands free, precisely because of the retreat of March 18, yet began months to complete their crime, which continued until 1916.

Conversely, the Allied invasion of April 25 fell too late. The roundup of the Armenian elite dated from the day before, with all that ensued. And anyway, the failure of this “Plan B” was predictable, the Turks and their German military officers, accused of the attack had strengthened their defense and tripled the number of divisions in the peninsula and they kept them very steep hills.

As for the Allies, the consequences of this ill-organized campaign from the start, were the exact opposite of the aim: we wanted to extend a helping hand to Russia, it failed completely, and it ended with the Revolution and the withdrawal of Russian battlefield; and secondly, after this failure, Bulgaria entered the war in September 1915 the German-Turkish side, which caused the collapse of Serbia and especially the territorial junction between Germany and Turkey, which could and be rescued with arms and ammunition and to continue the war until 1918. Not only fails to link the Allies, but it is ultimately the Central Powers which found themselves in one piece, from Brussels to Mecca .

For that genocide “successful” as is the case in accident, you need a combination of causes. For the Armenian people, the last of these cases was the failure of the March 18, 1915, the evil sign of Destiny.

Wednesday, March 18, 2015,
Stéphane © armenews.com

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: France, gallipoli, UK

Gallipoli commemorations cancelled due to lack of international interest #armeniangenocide

February 22, 2015 By administrator

LAMİYA ADİLGIZI / ISTANBUL

the Battle of Gallipoli, took place, is seen in this file photo. (Photo: DHA)

the Battle of Gallipoli, took place, is seen in this file photo. (Photo: DHA)

Centennial commemorations of the Gallipoli Campaign of World War I initiated by the Turkish government and to be celebrated on April 24 of this year — the same date as the centennial commemorations  “Armenian genocide” — have been cancelled due to the unwillingness of international leaders to visit Ankara and overshadow the genocide ceremonies in Yerevan.

“The Gallipoli celebrations have been cancelled. All preparations have been suspended as the number of RSVPs to the invitation is not positive. Only five countries have accepted the invitation and they will not be represented by high-level officials,” an official from the government, who asked to remain anonymous, said in a talk with Sunday’s Zaman.

The suspension of the Gallipoli commemorations, which were being organized by the Turkish Ministry of Youth and Sport, is part of longstanding war of words between the Turkish and Armenian leaders following an exchange of invitations by both sides urging each other to accept the request and honor their victims of the World War I in their respective countries. However, neither side appears to be compromising.

The tense ties between Armenians and Turks became particularly strained after Ankara decided to commemorate the Gallipoli Campaign on the same date as the 100th anniversary of the 1915 events that led to the killing of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during WWI. The Turkish government sent invitations to more than 100 leaders around the world, including Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, to attend the event. The campaign was one of the most famous battles of WWI when Ottoman troops resisted the invading Allied forces who sought to control the Gallipoli peninsula on the Dardanelles strait.

“We fought together as one of a kind. That’s why we invited Sarksyan,” a government official was quoted by local media as saying, referring to the participation of Armenian minorities alongside Turks in the Ottoman army.

Yerevan rejected the invitation and in an open letter to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Sarksyan said the invitation itself showed Turkey’s continuing policy of denying the Armenian genocide and emphasized that Turkey needs to recognize the 1915 killings as a genocide.

A couple of months earlier Sarksyan had first invited Erdoğan — after he was elected president in August of last year — to join Armenians in commemorating the victims of the Armenian “genocide” in Yerevan on April 24. The invitation was presented by Armenian Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandyan during the first official visit of an Armenian minister to Ankara.

Armenians claim that 1.5 million Armenians were systematically killed in the final years of the Ottoman Empire in a way that constitutes genocide, a claim categorically denied by Turkey. Ankara says the death toll is inflated and denies that the events of 1915 amounted to genocide, arguing instead that both Turks and Armenians were killed when Armenians revolted against the Ottoman Empire during WWI in collaboration with the Russian army, which was then invading Eastern Anatolia. Every year on April 24, Armenians around the world commemorate the Armenian victims who died at the end of WWI.

The latest debacle in the already heated relations between Turkey and Armenia was Sarksyan’s withdrawal of the Zurich protocols from the Armenian Parliament. “The Turkish government has no political will, distorts the spirit of the protocols and continues its policy of setting preconditions,” Sarksyan said in a statement issued on Monday, adding that Turkey’s “policy of denial and rewriting of history” on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the 1915 killings is being revived in Ankara.

The Zurich protocols, intended to normalize ties between Turkey and Armenia, were signed in Zurich on Oct. 10, 2009 with the aim of establishing diplomatic relations and opening the two countries’ land border, which was closed in solidarity with Azerbaijan after Armenia-backed armed forces seized Azerbaijani territories as part of the Nagorno-Karabakh war. The normalization process had been deadlocked ever since as neither Parliament approved the deal. Both Ankara and Yerevan have accused each other of setting new conditions on the deal agreed to in Zurich years ago. Turkey has many times stated that any development, such as reconciliation or opening the border between the two estranged nations, could not be expected until Armenia settles the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Azerbaijan, Turkey’s ally in the region.

Instead, Ankara extended its commitment to the peace protocols. Calling Armenia’s decision “inconsistent and insincere,” Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgiç said on Tuesday that Armenia wanted further reasons to criticize Turkey ahead of the 100th anniversary of the 1915 events.

“The real test will be in April,” said Richard Giragosian, the director of the Yerevan-based Regional Studies Center (RSC), adding that although the current developments seem to taint relations, they do not necessarily signal the death of the normalization process although the process itself has reached its lowest point.

Relating the tense political atmosphere on the Armenian-Turkish normalization to the domestic issues in both countries — the upcoming June general election for which Erdoğan is trying to secure votes and Sarksyan using the protocols to deal with his own domestic political troubles — Giragosian says the test will depend more on what Turkish leaders say and do on April 24.

Last April Erdoğan extended his condolences to Armenians over what happened in 1915, although the act did not meet the expectations of Yerevan or the Armenian diaspora.

In Ankara, Güner Özkan, an expert on the Caucasus at the International Strategic Research Organization (USAK), is not positive about any new developments in the Turkish-Armenian ties at least until the upcoming general election in Turkey on June 7.

Calling Sarksyan’s latest step a “unilaterial decision,” Özkan doesn’t seem convinced as to the continuation of the precedent established by Erdoğan a year ago: “I don’t expect any sudden move [from Turkish leaders including Erdoğan] especially under the increasing pressure on Ankara on the eve of the approaching 100th anniversary of the so-called genocide and the upcoming election.”

Filed Under: Genocide, News Tagged With: armenian genocide, cancelled, commemorations, gallipoli, Turkey

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