Intellectuals Archives

Talaat Pasha’s telegram asked on 2 June 1915 that the Armenian intellectuals be detained

February 24, 2017 by administrator

At Ayache prison should be tried by the Military Tribunal of Diyarbakir

But in mid-August these Armenians were murdered without trial

Kevork Hagopian, an Armenian from Istanbul living in the United States has recovered from the Ottoman archives an encrypted letter issued by Talaat Pasha. After his translation K. Hagopian submitted it to Akunk.net. The handwritten letter of Talaat Pasha, the leader of the Turkish youth and one of the principal perpetrators of the Armenian genocide, is dated June 2, 1915. In a telegram ciphered, the Minister of the Interior of the Ottoman Empire, Talaat Pasha, asks The governor of Ankara to submit Armenian intellectuals and personalities detained in exile and detained in Ayache Prison to submit them to the Diyarbakir Military Court. But despite this telegram in mid-August on a new decision by Talaat Pasha and the deputy governor of Ankara, Atef, Armenian intellectuals detained at the Ayache prison without trial were murdered.

Krikor Amirzayan

Alper Öktem: Turkish Intellectuals Who Have Recognized The Armenian Genocide

January 7, 2016 by administrator

Alper Öktem, Turkish Intellectuals Who Have Recognized The Armenian Genocide

By Hambersom Aghbashian,

Dr.Alper Öktem (born on 11 March 1954 in Dikili- Turkey) is a Radiologist and Human Rights activist. he finished his primary education in Burdur. He started to pursue his secondary education at the Maarif Koleji in Eskişehir, continued in Konya and finished it in Istanbul at the Kadıköy Maarif Koleji. In 1978, he graduated from Faculty of Medicine at Hacettepe University in Ankara. He went to Germany for specialization in radiology. In the 1980s he helped Turkish refugees who underwent torture. He has been supporting the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey for more than twenty years. Moreover, he is a board member of the Democratic Turkey Forum in Germany. Dr. Öktem has been assisting Cem Özdemir, Co-Chairman of the Unity Green Party, especially on the topics of human rights, peace and democracy in Turkey, ever since Özdemir was first voted into parliament in 1993. In 2000-2001 he published the weekly supplement Perşembe for the German daily newspaper “Die Tageszeitung”. Perşembe aimed at bringing together German society and migrants on equal ground in the same media platform, making migrants equal members of society, especially through deepening the dialogue in the media, and reporting human rights violations in Turkey. Dr. Alper Öktem is married, has two children and lives in Bielefeld, Germany, where he works as a radiologist. ⁽¹⁾

According to www.hrantdink.org , “The Fund for the Support of Historical Studies, created with the kind assistance of Dr. Alper Öktem, one of the supporters of the Hrant Dink Foundation, promotes research on humanistic acts during 1915, with the aim to search and find people who with a clear conscience serve as an example for mankind, and consequently to disclose an insufficiently investigated aspect of history. Through the Fund, support will be given to research, academic work and biographies on people – in modern parlance; human rights defenders – who through their humanist acts in Anatolia during 1915 influenced other people’s lives. Such people and their acts may already be known or not known yet. In the latter case, the research should help to reveal these people and that their acts be exposed to public knowledge. ⁽²⁾

On March 14, 2015, Hrant Dink Foundation hold its conference ” Conscience and responsibility in the Armenian Genocide: New research and survivors,” at Cezayir Meeting Hall, Istanbul. The Hrant Dink Foundation’s “History and Memory Research Fund,” which was created with the assistance of Dr. Alper Öktem in 2010, supported the conference. The conference opened with speeches by the coordinators Ayşe Gül Altınay from Sabancı University and Betül Tanbay from Boğaziçi University. Alper Öktem, the sponsor of the fund, underlined the notion of conscience and added: “Today, I still have difficulty talking about the genocide. However, talking is very important to understand it. I think that making it clear that ‘there were righteous people’ could contribute to the acknowledgement process in a pragmatic fashion.” Abdullah Demirbaş, a former mayor of the Sur district of Diyarbakır province, spoke about the experiences of “multicultural municipalism” that he implemented in Sur between 2004 and 2014. “In 1915, they had Armenians for breakfast and in 1924 and 1938, they had Kurds for lunch. That’s why we need to apologize and I as a Kurd apologize on behalf of my ancestors for crimes they committed against people.” Burçin Gerçek, a researcher and journalist, presented the officers who defied orders in Diyarbakır province. Adnan Çelik, a Ph.D. candidate at Paris-EHESS, presented the results of his oral history research on the collective memory of Kurds about the Armenian genocide, conducted with researcher and historian Namık Kemal Dinç. Öykü Gürpınar, a Ph.D. student at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, spoke about the transformation of an Armenian village, Pokr Armıdan, into a Muslim-populated village. Melis Behlil from Kadir Has University presented “The Armenian Genocide and its aftermath in non-fiction film”. ” Özlem Galip from the University of Oxford discussed the policies of remembering in the context of Kurdish novels. Wendy Hamelink from Leiden University spoke about cultural memories of Armenians from Sassoun. Armen Marsoobian from Southern Connecticut State University started his presentation by asking: “Why were some Armenians not deported? Who were the chief actors in the deportation decisions? What criteria were used to exempt families? How many were exempted?” and explained his points. George Shirinian from the Zorian Institute drew a theoretical framework for the narrative of rescuers. “There were many Muslims who welcomed Armenian orphans from the genocide in their houses,” Shirinian said, but added, “This can also be seen as a form of slavery because the overwhelming majority of children above the age of 13 became servants in the houses of Muslims and were Islamized.” Ümit Kurt, a Ph.D. candidate at Clark University, then told the story of Cemil Bahri Könne, a Kurdish officer who helped Armenians exiled from Aintab. Neslihan Sarıhan traced the footsteps of Armenians in Fatsa by examining the life story of an Islamized Armenian.Finally, Ishkhan Chiftjian from Hamburg University presented the story of Hoca Çamurdan, the mufti of Sis (today’s Kozan), who saved six members of the Armenian Faracyan family, including the father.⁽³⁾
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1- http://www.hrantdink.org/Index.php?Detail=724&Lang=en

2- http://www.hrantdink.org/Index.php?Detail=724&Lang=en

3- http://www.turkishreview.org/reviews-briefs/a-door-from-the-past-to-the-future_552737

Aslı Erdoğan Turkish Intellectuals Who Have Recognized The Armenian Genocide

December 17, 2015 by administrator

Aslı Erdoğan Turkish Intellectuals

By: Hambersom Aghbashian,

Aslı Erdoğan (born 1967) is a prize-winning Turkish writer, human rights activist and former columnist for Radikal newspaper. Born in Istanbul, she graduated from Robert College in 1983 and the Computer Engineering Department of Boğaziçi University in 1988. She worked at CERN* as a particle physicist from 1991 to 1993 and received an MS in physics from Boğaziçi University. She began research for a PhD in physics in Rio de Janeiro before returning to Turkey to become a full-time writer in 1996. Her first story “The Final Farewell Note” won third prize in the 1990 Yunus Nadi Writing Competition. Her first novel, Kabuk Adam (Crust Man), was published in 1994 and was followed by” Mucizevi Mandarin” (Miraculous Mandarin) a series of interconnected short stories in 1996. Her short story Wooden Birds received first prize from Deutsche Welle radio in a 1997 competition and her second novel “Kirmizi Pelerinli Kent” (The City in Crimson Cloak), received numerous accolades abroad and has been published in English Language translation. Aslı Erdoğan was the Turkish representative of International PEN‘s** Writers in Prison Committee from 1998 to 2000. She is widely traveled and has an interest in anthropology and Native American culture. From December 2011 to May 2012, at the invitation of the Literaturhaus Zurich and the PWG Foundation, Erdoğan was Zurich’s “writer in residence”. ⁽¹⁾

On Feb. 2, 2007, “www.icorn.org” wrote: ” The Turkish writer Asli Erdogan was a friend of Hrant Dink and, deeply affected by his murder, she wrote to her friends, . . . today my name was listed on the death list because I sold Agos newspaper on the streets with a handful of intellectuals, but it is more important for my voice to be heard.” ICORN also published Asli Erdogan’s letter entitled ” We left a deep, invisible mark behind us” where she wrote” … It was a long, silent walk. Thousands and thousands of people were slowly walking, side by side, under an unexpected winter sun, a luminous sky, reminiscent of spring. A compact, homogeneous crowd was filling the avenues, the streets, the squares. There were blood-red carnations. Black signs spelling out the same message in three different languages.’ We are all Hrant, we are all Armenians.’ Hrant’s face emerges above arms, above heads, an intact face, bearing no signs of aging, with his gentle, comforting smile… Thousands of people, in mourning, heartbroken, intently turned to that face with a sense of loss even deeper than if he had been one of them. ⁽²⁾

In December 2008, two hundred prominent Turkish intellectuals released an apology for the “great catastrophe of 1915”. This was a clear reference to the Armenian Genocide, a term still too sensitive to use so openly. The signatories also announced a website related to this apology, and called on others to visit the site and sign the apology as well. This is the complete, brief text of the apology: My conscience does not accept the insensitivity showed to and the denial of the Great Catastrophe that the Ottoman Armenians were subjected to in 1915. I reject this injustice and for my share, I empathize with the feelings and pain of my Armenian brothers and sisters. I apologize to them. Aslı Erdoğan was one of the Turkish intellectuals who signed the apology.⁽³⁾

According to http://setasarmenian.blogspot.com, under the title “24 April, the anniversary of the 1915s events, will be remembered this year in Turkey, too.”, Taraf Newspaper of 20th April 2010 wrote ” A group of intellectuals as Ali Bayramoğlu, Ferhat Kentel, Neşe Düzel, Perihan Mağden, Sırrı Süreyya Önder, for the first time in Turkey, will commemorate this year on 24 April as the anniversary of the events of 1915, under the leader-ship of “Say Stop!” group. The commemoration will start in front of the tram station in Taksim Square. The group will be dressing in black and carry photos of massacred Armenian intellectuals who were deported from that station.” the following abstracts are from the text of the commemoration activity, “This pain is OUR pain. This mourning is for ALL of US. In 1915, when our population was just 13 million, 1,5 to 2 million Armenians were living in these lands…. In April 24, 1915 it was started “to send them”. We lost them. They are no longer available. They have not even graves. But the “Great Pain” of the “Great Disaster” , with its utmost gravity EXISTS in our pain”. Aslı Erdoğan, was one of the Turkish intellectuals who signed the text. ⁽⁴⁾

Asli Erdogan was invited to Yerevan-Armenia to give readings from her work . She was chosen as the first Turkish writer to be invited by the Armenian Writers for a conference. ⁽⁵⁾

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*CERN: The name CERN is derived from the acronym for the French “Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire”, or European Council for Nuclear Research, a provisional body founded in 1952 with the mandate of establishing a world-class fundamental physics research organization in Europe. Today, CERN is often referred to as the European Laboratory for Particle Physics.

**PEN: PEN International promotes literature and freedom of expression. It is a forum where writers meet freely to discuss their work; it is also a voice speaking out for writers silenced in their own countries.

1- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asl%C4%B1_Erdo%C4%9Fan

2- http://www.icorn.org/articles.php?var=56

3- http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=200_prominent_Turks_apologize_for_great

4- http://setasarmenian.blogspot.com/2010/04/good-thoughtful-and-ugly-from-turks-on.html

5- http://aslierdogan.com/haberler.asp?ssid=162

Ayse oktem Turkish Intellectuals Who Have Recognized The Armenian Genocide

October 31, 2015 by administrator

By Hambersom Aghbashian,

Ayse oktem, the General manager of DVV International in Turkey*, is a Turkish intellectual born in Istanbul to an İstanbulian family with a very mixed ethnic background. Her maternal grandfather was a Sabbatean Jew from Salonika. Her maternal grandmother was of Bogumilian origin – a Christian sect, from mother’s side and the grandfather’s father was a member of Ottoman military. Maybe this was her first impulse concerning the Armenian genocide as she says. Her grand-grandfather, Ethem Pasha, was a miralay, a colonel, in the Ottoman Army. He knew Enver and Talat Pashas and was against them and Young Turks’ policies. He joined the battle of Sarıkamış in 1914, and was killed just at the beginning of the battle and after his death, he was promoted to Pasha, a higher rank in ottoman empire. His wife believed that he was killed because he was against the young Turks policies.
Ayse Oktem had born in very bourgeois and wealthy family, but her parents, were leftists, and left Turkey for political reasons. She spent most of her life in Germany, where she learned to be a migrant, to be a member of an inferior group “the Turks”. On the other hand, as the granddaughter of a Jew, she was part of the Holocaust suffered nation in the land of the murderers. She studied first German Language and Linguistics, than Sociology and earned her Master of Philosophy degree in Sociology. She is currently the Turkey – coordinator of the project “Acting Together”**, financed by German Foreign Office, and implemented by the Germany based Adult Education Organization DVV International, married to a German and lives with her husband in Istanbul.

On April 19, 2014, (EGAM, AGBU Europe and DurDe)***, announced in a press release that for the second year in a row and 99 years after the genocide of 1915, a European delegation
composed of twenty anti-racist and Armenian leaders from 15 countries will be present in Turkey for the commemoration of the genocide against the Armenians, held in that city for the fifth consecutive year. It was a response to the call of EGAM partners in Turkey DürDe! (Say Stop to Racism!) and the Human Rights Association – IHD. EGAM invited AGBU Europe to support the Turkish civil society working for the recognition of the Armenian genocide. The initiative was supported by numerous personalities (including Charles Aznavour, Serge Klarsfeld, Bernard Kouchner, Dario Fo, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Adam Michnik, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Ahmet Insel, Olivero Toscani, Jovan Divjak, and others) and representatives of European civil society, who have signed an appeal published in several prominent European newspapers and was signed by Paul Morin, Executive Director of EGAM (Europe), Cengiz Algan & Levent Sensever, Spokespeople for Durde! (Turkey), Alexis Govciyan, President & Nicolas Tavitian, Director of AGBU (Europe), Ayse Öktem, Platform for “Confronting a Century of Denial” (Turkey),Charles Aznavour, Bernard Henri Lévy, Abdullah Demirbas, Ara Toranian, Serge Klarsfeld, Öztürk Türkdoğan, Head of the Human Rights Association (IHD) (Turkey), Bernard Kouchner, former French Minister of Foreign and many others. (1)
According to Armenia News- NEWS.am, Sept. 22, 2015, Ayse Oktem, the Turkish representative of DVV International, who participated in a media conference dedicated to the first stage of program of Armenia-Turkey reconciliation entitled “Acting Together”, said “If civil society in Turkey is strong enough and recognizes the Armenian Genocide, any government will be forced to retract.” She added, Turkish and Kurdish participants are involved in the project and expressed hope that Germany would recognize the Armenian Genocide, too. “I hope that recognition of the Armenian Genocide by Turkey will not be a result of external pressure, but will come from within, from the people of Turkey,” Oktem added. (2)
About 25 years ago Ayse Oktem began a research about muslimized Armenians, where nobody believed, that there might be muslimized Armenians, expect her mother and her aunt, who – as daughters of Sabbatean Jewish father knew very well, that it can lived with a false identity. After a while she ended her researches and began to work at NGOs in Germany in the field of Migration, Discrimination, Anti-Racism, Empowerment of Migrants. For more than twenty years she worked at several NGOs in Hamburg/ Germany, and became a manager of social work and adult education, in the field of Migration, Education and Empowerment for Migrants, Anti-Discrimination. She managed projects for the education of young migrants, two of the projects with a bilingual, culture sensitive approach esp. for young refugees won important awards. She returned to Turkey about 4 years ago and continued to work in NGOs in the field of Adult Education, also she is democratization, peace and genocide recognition actvist.
She was among the organizers of the commemorations of the genocide in 2014 and 2015.
Remembering her grand-grandfather Ethem Pasa who was killed in Sarıkamış, Ayse Oktwm always asked herself, what would have happened if he , Ethem Pasa , had survived the Sarıkamış battle. Would she have been the granddaughter of the murderer Ethem Pasha or would have been the granddaughter of a real hero, who saved lives and/or refused an order to kill innocent people.
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Thanks to Ayse Oktem for providing information, reviewing and enhancing this article (H.A.).

*DVV International: Is the Institute for International Cooperation of the Deutscher Volkshochschul-Verband e.V. (DVV), the German Adult Education Association.

**Acting Together: Is a joint initiative of DVV International and its partners, the History Foundation (Turkey) and the Armenian Centre for Ethnological Studies “Hazarashen” (Armenia)
and funded by the German Federal Foreign Office. A century after the Genocide, they aim at building bridges between the people of Turkey and Armenia through adult education, journalism, oral history and art.

***EGAM : The European Grassroots Antiracist Movement.
AGBU : Armenian General Benevolent Union.
DurDe : is one of Turkey’s leading civil and human rights organizations

1- www.egam.eu
2- http://news.am/eng/news/287301.html.

Nedim Gürsel Turkish Intellectuals Who Have Recognized The Armenian Genocide

July 16, 2015 by administrator

By: Hambersom Aghbashian

Dr.Nedim Gürsel (born April 5, 1951, in Gaziantep) is a Turkish writer. After graduating from Galatasaray High School in 1970, he studied at the Sorbonne. In 1974, he graduated from the Sorbonne’s Department of Modern French Literature. In 1979, he received his doctorate in comparative literature after completing his dissertation on Louis Aragon and Nazim Hikmet. He returned to Turkey but the unrest there in 1980 persuaded him to go back to France. In 1976, Gürsel published “A Summer without End”, a collection of stories. For that received the Prize of the Turkish Language Academy. After the 1980 Turkish coup d’état, a military tribunal charged that Gürsel’s collection had slandered the Turkish army. In 1983, the Turkish military censored Gürsel’s novel “The First Woman”. Both books were unavailable in Turkey for several years. In 2008, Gürsel published “The Daughters of Allah”. The book prompted the Turkish authorities to charge him with insulting religion. In June 2009, a court in Istanbul acquitted him of the charge. Dr.Gürsel is a founding member of the International Parliament of Writers. Today, a citizen of France, he teaches contemporary Turkish literature at the Sorbonne, and works as the research director on Turkish Literature at the International French Science Research Center (CNRS). He published a long list of books, most of them available on Amazon. 50 of his books are on Goodreads with 766 ratings, and his most popular book is Allah’ın Kızları. Dr.Gürsel received many awards.
In December 2008, two hundred prominent Turkish intellectuals released an apology for the “great catastrophe of 1915”. This was a clear reference to the Armenian Genocide, a term still too sensitive to use so openly. The signatories also announced a website related to this apology, and called on others to visit the site and sign the apology as well. This is the complete, brief text of the apology: My conscience does not accept the insensitivity showed to and the denial of the Great Catastrophe that the Ottoman Armenians were subjected to in 1915. I reject this injustice and for my share, I empathize with the feelings and pain of my Armenian brothers and sisters. I apologize to them. Dr.Gürsel was one of the Turkish intellectuals who signed the apology. (1)
On May 24, 2009, Armenian Genocide Resource Center published Dr.Nedim Gürsel’s interview with Euronews, where he made a very important statement concerning the recognition of the Armenian genocide saying that “I think that Turkey should make a real work of memory. As regards the petition which I signed, I think it’s a good thing, the Armenian issue remains taboo in the collective memory of Turks.”. Also according to ” rehmat1.com ” during the same interview Dr.Nedim Gürsel “suggested to over 99% Turkish Muslim population to forget their Islamic past and accept their past mistakes, such as, the Armenian genocide,….. (2)
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Thanks to Dr. Nedim Gürsel for reviewing this article.
1- http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=200_prominent_Turks_apologize_for_great_catastrophe
2- http://rehmat1.com/2009/05/31/the-daughters-of-allah-book-review/

Ahmet Abakay Turkish Intellectuals Who Have Recognized The Armenian Genocide

May 29, 2015 by administrator

By: Hambersom Aghbashian

Ahmet Abakay

Ahmet Abakay was born in Sivas Province on April 3, 1950, in the village of Divriği. He received his early education from a high school in Erzincan, then continued his education at Ankara University where he ultimately graduated. He was a correspondent to many Turkish newspapers including İsta Haber, Vatan, Anka, and Özgür Gündem. Ahmet Abakay then became involved in the establishment of the Progressive Journalists’ Association of Turkey. The association was established in 23 February 1978 and whose founding member was Alaatin Orhan. Ahmet Abakay became the chairman in 1982 until 1989. By the end of his chairmanship in 1989, the organization had 1,100 members throughout the country. He then became an advisor to the Minister of the Press in 1992–2002. Abakay became the chairman once again in 2005 and continues to serve the position till today. As a critic of the treatment of journalists in Turkish society, he has stated that “Those who are not close to the government can’t survive in the media. Media members are living in fear.” He is also the author of many other books.

Under the title “How Turkey Marked the 96th Anniversary of the Genocide”, it was mentioned ” … a conference was organized on April 19, 2011, by the Surp Khach School and titled “They were journalists, too,” dedicated to the Armenian journalists who were killed in 1915. The chief editor of Agos newspaper, Rober Koptas, along with journalist Bullent Tellan, publisher Ragip Zarakolu, and Bayramoglu were among the speakers who demanded adding the names of those journalists killed in 1915 to the list of “Killed Journalists” in Turkey. The president of the Modern Journalists Association of Turkey, Ahmet Abakay, said they were very late to organize such an event because they were unaware and ignorant of the facts. He said he hoped this would serve as an example for other professional associations.(1)

According to “Hürriyet Daily News”, March 8, 2011, “Ten journalists of Armenian origin who were killed in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire will be added to a list of slain journalists in Turkey by the Ankara-based Contemporary Journalists Association. The newly added names include Krikor Zohrab, a lawyer, author and three-time deputy in the Ottoman Parliament; Taniel Varujan, a renowned Armenian writer; Rupen Zartaryan, Siamento (Atom Yarjanian) and six others, all also pioneers of western Armenian literature. Association head Ahmet Abakay said: “I wish we had the information before and has taken this radical step earlier. He added ” It is a crime to hide from the people those names that have made contributions to the Turkish press. They are all people of this country.”(2)

This was a good step toward the recognition of the Armenian Genocide and unveiling the victims, specially the first group of intellectuals, but those victims were intellectuals more than being journalist as Hürriyet mentioned and were killed to pave the way for the next step, the whole Genocide. http://asbarez.com/ responded to above and wrote ” To bundle these first victims of the Genocide, along with other journalists who were killed as part of Turkey’s intolerant attitude toward journalists is an affront to their legacy. They were not killed for being “journalists,” but rather were part of the first wave of murders of intellectuals, writers and leaders, which was part of the systematic plan to eliminate the Armenians’ leaders in order to gain easy access to the rest of the Armenian population and carry out Genocide.”

Ahmet Abakay wrote a book in 2013 entitled “The Last Words of Hoşana” (Turkish: Hoşana’nın Son Sözü) which describes the life of his mother who was named Hoşana. In the book, Abakay revealed that his mother had told him of her Armenian identity weeks before her death. She had kept her identity a secret for 82 years, which Abakay believes was because “she lived in fear.” Abakay was told by his mother not to tell the secret to anybody. Abakay states his mother was saved from the Armenian Genocide because she was dropped off in front of a door of an Alevi Turk. Due to his revelations, Abakay received threats from his family and particularly his uncle’s children who said, “how dare you call our aunt Armenian and insult our family’s honor. You will remove the Armenian part from your book, otherwise we will pull it off the shelves.”

On October 12, 2013, “www.panarmenian.net” wrote, ” The head of a journalists’ association in Turkey (Ahmet Abakay), has revealed that his mother was an Armenian, who was left in front of an Alevi family’s door by Armenians during the 1915 Armenian Genocide in his recently published book, Hürriyet Daily News reported.” He added “My mother told me about her story 13 years ago and soon after, she died. I could write this only 10 years later, because I hesitated. My mother made me promise not to tell her story to my wife, daughter or her sisters, as long as she was alive. I told this issue to my inner circle after I lost my mother, to learn whether there are other secrets that we are not told. But my sister told me not to reveal this on the grounds that I am a journalist and she recalled what happened to Hrant Dink [Armenian-Turkish journalist murdered by a gunman in broad daylight in 2007 in Istanbul]. A majority of my relatives could not accept their [new] identity. Some relatives denied the story, while others claimed that she was too old to be aware of what she was saying.”
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1- http://www.armeniapedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide_Commemorations_in_Turkey
2- http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/default.aspx?pageid=438&n=armenian-origin-ottoman-journalists-enter-the-list-of-the-slain-2011-03-08

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Sırrı Süreyya Önder Turkish Intellectuals Who Have Recognized The Armenian Genocide

May 8, 2015 by administrator

By: Hambersom Aghbashian

Sırrı Süreyya Önder (born 7 July 1962- in the Southeastern Anatolian city of Adıyaman), is a Turkish film director, actor, screenwriter, columnist and politician. In 1980, he enrolled in Ankara university to study political science. There, he joined a political student movement to protest the military junta, which had overturned the government on September 12, 1980. He was arrested and sentenced to twelve years in prison. In 2010, Önder began a columnist career at the newspaper BirGün, he then continued to write at the daily Radikal. Currently, he writes for Özgür Gündem . Önder was elected into the parliament in 2011as an independent but backed by the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), he later joined the BDP. He was involved in the 2013 Taksim Gezi Park protests and was reportedly hospitalized. He competed in 2014 Istanbul mayoral race, as the candidate of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the sister party of the BDP. Currently he acts as a MP of HDP from Istanbul. Önder’s 2006 film “The International” was awarded the Best Picture Prize at the 2007 International Adana Golden Boll Film Festival, and was entered into the 29th Moscow International Film Festival . He has many other films.(1)

Taraf Newspaper of 20th April 2010 wrote “ …. the anniversary of the 1915s events, this year will be remembered in Turkey, too. The commemoration organized by the “Say Stop!” Group, will start and held at Taksim tram stop. A group of intellectuals, which will be joined also by intellectuals as Ali Bayramoğlu, Ferhat Kentel, Neşe Düzel, Perihan Mağden and Sırrı Süreyya Önder, for the first time in Turkey will commemorate this year on 24 April as the anniversary of the events of 1915.” “This pain is OUR pain. This mourning is for ALL of US.” was part of the groups campaign.(2)

According to ” www.bianet.org “,” At the 97^th anniversary of 1915 Armenian Genocide -April 2012- a commemoration event organized at Taksim Square. 500 people came together in front of the tram stop at Taksim Square; Rakel Dink, Orhan Dink, Arat Dink, artist Metin Kahraman, Prof. Dr. Gencay Gürsoy, BDP parliamentarians Sabahat Tuncel and Sırrı Süreyya Önder, journalist author Oral Çalışlar, Prof. Dr. Baskın Oran, artist Ferhat Tunç and the family of Sevag Balıkçı were among them. Participation in this year’s commemoration event was much more crowded than the previous two years.(3)

Under the title “Armenian Genocide-recognizing MP becomes Istanbul mayoral candidate”, “news.am” wrote on April 12, 2013, ” Ertugrul Kurkcu, Vice-Chairman of the newly founded Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) of Turkey, announced that MP Sirri Sureyya Onder is their nominee for the office of the Mayor of Istanbul. To note, Sirri Sureyya Onder had announced in the Turkish parliament, on April 24, 2012, that a great massacre of the Armenians had taken place in 1915 and that this massacre is called “genocide” in all languages.(4)

According to ” The Armenian Weekly”, April 25, 2012, “In a more meaningful gesture, and according to reports, Parliamentarian Sırrı Süreyya Önder is working on bringing a motion declaring April 24 a ‘Day of Mourning and Sharing the Pain of the Armenian victims of 1915’.”(5)

During the Turkish parliament’s hearings on the proposal for fight against the financing of terrorism, the “Peace and Democracy Party” (BDP) MP Sirri Sureyya Onder reflected on the court ruling on the case of Hrant Dink, the founder and former chief editor of Istanbul’s Agos Armenian weekly, who was killed in 2007. “The person [Erhan Tuncel] who was punished in the trial was punished for placing a bomb in a hamburger-selling company [McDonald’s]. In Turkey, the life of an Armenian citizen is not as important as an American company that sells hamburgers. You cannot touch a hamburger seller, but you can kill an Armenian,” Sirri Sureyya Onder said, Turkish Haberx news agency informs.(6)

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1- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C4%B1rr%C4%B1_S%C3%BCreyya_%C3%96nder

2- http://setasarmenian.blogspot.com/2010/04/good-thoughtful-and-ugly-from-turks-on.html

3- http://www.bianet.org/english/minorities/137858-97th-anniversary-of-genocide-and-the-tradition-of-unsolved-murders

4- http://news.am/eng/print/news/183868.html

5- http://armenianweekly.com/2012/04/25/ak-party-founding-member-apologizes/

6- http://recordarmenews.blogspot.com/2012_02_01_archive.html

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Istanbul: Depo invites audience to think about Turkey’s Armenians, past and present

April 11, 2015 by administrator

BY RUMEYSA KIGER / ISTANBUL

100 Ottoman Armenian intellectuals who were arrested

This is a segment from a collection of portraits by artist Nalan Yırtmaç of 100 Ottoman Armenian intellectuals who were arrested and taken to concentration camps on April 24, 1915, created for the exhibition “Without knowing where we are headed…” Report ZAMAN

A new exhibition at the Depo art and culture center in İstanbul by artists Nalan Yırtmaç and Anti-Pop points a finger at the brutality experienced by Armenian people living in the Ottoman Empire and in Turkey.

On display since April 4 on the first floor of Depo in the Tophane neighborhood, “Without knowing where we are headed…” invites the audience to reflect on both the past and the present day.

The exhibition is made up of portraits of 100 Armenian intellectuals who were among the more than 200 significant figures from the Armenian community who were arrested on April 24, 1915, upon the order of Talat Pasha, the interior minister of the time.

These intellectuals, most of whom were arrested in İstanbul one day before the Allied landings in Çanakkale (Gallipoli), were taken to two concentration camps in Çankırı and Ayaş, near Ankara.

According to the exhibition catalogue, “These arrests constitute the first step of the Committee of Union and Progress government’s decision of deportation, which soon evolved into genocide. Following the arrest of approximately 250 people [starting] the night of the April 23 and lasting through April 24, a massive police operation was set in motion targeting 2,500 people over the course of a couple of days.”

Yırtmaç picked 100 of these opinion leaders and made new portraits of them. “This work pulls them out from under the generic heading of ‘arrested and cast-out Armenians‘ and turns them into people with familiar names and faces, the active participants of the cosmopolitan Ottoman intellectual milieu,” she explains in the catalogue.

She produced the portraits in her own language based on photographs from the few publications that have survived to present day.

On the wall right across from the portraits, another powerful work by Anti-Pop links these killings with a recent one, the assassination of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink in 2007.

“The work created by Anti-Pop immediately after the assassination of Hrant Dink on Jan. 19, 2007 is exhibited alongside these portraits, drawing attention to the agonizing continuity between 1915 and the massacre of Dink. On one side there are intellectuals arrested and killed 100 years ago, and on the other a revolutionary who paid with his life only a few years ago for believing that Turks and Armenians would reconstruct their own identities on healthy grounds and live in equality and freedom,” the artists explain.

The show aims at coming to terms with the great catastrophe experienced in the Ottoman state and Turkey, “to bow our heads and mourn together,” they say.

A letter dated May 30, 1915 written by an Armenian prisoner at the Ayaş camp, Sımpas Pürad, is also featured in the show’s catalogue. It reads: “Last week, from among us, Agnuni, Khajag, Zartaryan, Cangülyan, Dağavaryan and Sarkis Minasyan were summoned by Ankara and they set on the road. We do not know their whereabouts now. I grieve, because although we suffered so much hardship under the autocratic regime, we are still being unjustly persecuted in this era of freedom and constitutionalism. Was this the fortune to befall those who suffered and toiled for the sake of the motherland all those years?”

Journalist, political activist and educator Karekin Khajag also wrote to her wife and family: “My Dear, They’re sending me far, so far away from you, towards Dikranagert [Diyarbakır]. With me, are the following prisoners of Ayaş: Agnuni, Zartar, Sarkis Minasyan, Dr. Dağavaryan and Cihangül. At the Ereğli train station, I met an Armenian who promised me to deliver this letter to you. Look after yourself and my girls Nunus and Alos well. We don’t know why they brought us here, but I have great hope that we will see each other once again. So, goodbye, I’m kissing you and my sweet girls. Yours, K. Khajag.”

“Without knowing where we are headed…” will continue until April 26 at Depo. For more information, visit www.depoistanbul.net, www.anti-pop.com and nalanyirtmac.blogspot.com.tr.

Mehmet Polatel Turkish Intellectuals Who Have Recognized The Armenian Genocide

March 26, 2015 by administrator

By:Hambersom Aghbasian

Turkish Intellectuals Mehmet Polatel

Mehmet Polatel is a Turkish historian focusing on the late Ottoman history and early Turkish republic. His research interests are in the fields of power, state formation, social change, nationalism and genocide. He has conducted research on the fate of Armenian property in the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey. Currently he is a PhD candidate at Bogaziçi University and a research assistant at the History Department of Koç University in Istanbul. He is also a researcher at the International Hrant Dink Foundation.(1)

“Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property” by Ugur Ungor and Mehmet Polatel is the first major study of the mass sequestration of Armenian property by the Young Turk regime during the 1915 Armenian genocide. It details the emergence of Turkish economic nationalism, offers insight into the economic ramifications of the genocidal process, and describes how the plunder was organized on the ground. The interrelated nature of property confiscation initiated by the Young Turk regime and its cooperating local elites offers new insights into the functions and beneficiaries of state-sanctioned robbery. Drawing on secret files and unexamined records, the authors demonstrate that while Armenians suffered systematic plunder and destruction, ordinary Turks were assigned a range of property for their progress.(2)

The Argentine capital of Buenos Aires was host to the International Congress on the Armenian Genocide, held from April 9 to 11, 2014. The event was organized by the National University of Tres de Febrero (UNTREF), Argentina’s Center for Genocide Studies, and the Memory of the Armenian Genocide Foundation, with the collaboration of the Armenian National Committee of South America (CNA) and the Luisa Hairabedian Foundation (FLH) as well as the sponsorship of the Armenian Embassy in Argentina and the Archbishop of the Armenian Apostolic Church of Argentina. The opening day featured important speakers like Chancellor of UNTREF Anibal Jozami, Director of the National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism Pedro Mouratian, Minister of the Supreme Court of Justice Eugenio Zaffaroni, President of the General Audit Office Leandro Despouy, and Director of the Center for Genocide Studies Daniel Feierstein, along with Nelida Bulgourdjian, coordinator of the Congress. Dr. Richard Hovannisian, Gabriel Sivinian, from the University of Buenos Aires, Historian Heitor Loureiro, and many others participated in the Congress. Mehmet Polatel, from Bogaziçi University in Turkey, presented a detailed report on property confiscated by the Turkish state and individuals, that was appropriated from the victims of the Armenian Genocide.(3)

“A History of Destruction: The Fate of Armenian Church Properties in Adana” is Mehmet Polatel’s article in which he examines the fate of religious buildings in Adana after the Armenian Genocide of 1915, in a process of destruction that aimed to erase the proof of Armenian existence in the region. According to him ” The motivation behind the genocidal processes is always related to the destruction of a certain group of people. However, the idea of the community is also related to shared values, everyday routines, culture, literature, and religion. Thus, genocidal processes not only target certain groups of people, but also the symbols, buildings, and monuments that belong to them.” He added “Following the deportation decision, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) carefully controlled the state of Armenian properties then allocated them to immigrants from the Balkans and Caucasus. The CUP aimed to de-Armenize the Adana province, which included the plain of Adana, Mersin, Sis, and Tarsus, and fill them with Muslim immigrants from the Balkans and Caucasus. Armenians were to be “deported without exception” (bilâ-istisna teb’id), and according to Talat Pasha’s own notebook, 699 buildings were confiscated in Adana province.”(4)

In her article entitled ” What do people mean in Turkey by Armenian Genocide recognition?”, Burçin Gerçek wrote on 3 November, 2014 in “REPAIR”, “In spite of many initiatives to develop awareness of the Turkish society regarding what happened in 1915 and appeals to ask for official forgiveness, a deeper reflection needs to be carried out in Turkey about how to render justice a hundred years after the genocide.” she continues then about “Facing 1915, the growing awareness of Turkish civil society” then about “Requesting State recognition” and finally about “Asking for justice and reparations” where she mentions that “Taner Akçam, Ümit Kurt, Mehmet Polatel, Sait Cetinoglu and Nevzat Onaran are some of the few researchers working on the subject of properties belonging to Armenians which were confiscated during and after the genocide. As for the government, its sole proposal for “reparations” has so far consisted in granting a right of return to the country and citizenship to the descendants of the genocide victims.(5)

According to AUA Newsroom, “On February 4, 2015, the American University of Armenia (AUA) hosted a talk by Turkish Historian Mehmet Polatel on ‘Armenian Property Confiscation During and After the Genocide.’ The lecture was part of AUA’s 1915 Centennial series. Polatel’s presentation covered the seizure of Armenian property in three main ways: transfer of ownership by the Ottoman State, extortion and abuses by civil servants and military personnel, and the seizure and looting of Armenian properties during the massacres. Throughout the presentation, Polatel utilized historical documents and texts, including the notebooks of Talaat Pasha and other archival materials, to analyze the process and mechanisms underpinning the seizure of Armenian churches, monasteries, cemeteries, lands, and other goods during the genocide.” Polatel also stated that ” The seizure of properties was not just a transfer of ownership; it was a crucial part of the genocide policy for the destruction of Armenians and Armenianness.”(6)

————————————————————————–————————————————-1- http://armenianweekly.com/author/mehmet-polatel/

2- http://www.amazon.com/Confiscation-Destruction-Seizure-Armenian-Property/dp/162356901

3- http://asbarez.com/121947/int.-congress-on-armenian-genocide-held-in-buenos-aires/

4- http://hyetert.blogspot.com/2011/10/history-of-destruction-fate-of-armenian.html

5- http://repairfuture.net/index.php/en/armenian-genocide-recognition-and-reparations-standpoint-

6- http://newsroom.aua.am/2015/02/05/mehmet-polatel-turkish-historian-discusses-property-confiscation-during-and-after-the-armenian-genocide/

Ayşe Berktay, Turkish Intellectuals Who Have Recognized The Armenian Genocide

February 20, 2015 by administrator

By: Hambersom Aghbashian,

Ayse-Berktay, Turkish Intellectuals

In December 2008, two hundred prominent Turkish intellectuals released an apology for the “great catastrophe of 1915”. This was a clear reference to the Armenian Genocide, a term still too sensitive to use so openly. The signatories also announced a website related to this apology, and called on others to visit the site and sign the apology as well. The complete, brief text of the apology says ” My conscience does not accept the insensitivity showed to and the denial of the Great Catastrophe that the Ottoman Armenians were subjected to in 1915. I reject this injustice and for my share, I empathize with the feelings and pain of my Armenian brothers and sisters. I apologize to them.” Ayşe Berktay was one of the Turkish intellectual who has signed the petition. (2)

Ayşe Berktay was one of the Turkish intellectuals who signed a petition against Denialist Exhibit in Denmark, an exhibition which was planned by the Turkish embassy to support their point of view concerning the Armenian Genocide . ” Don’t Stand Against Turkey’s Democratization and Confrontation with its History! ” was the message to the Royal Library of Denmark who has given the Turkish government the opportunity to present an “alternative exhibit” in response to the Armenian Genocide exhibition.(3)

In the 99th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the members of the 24 April Commemorating Armenian Genocide Platform came together in front of the historical Haydarpaşa Railhead to commemorate the Armenian intellectuals who were put in trains from Haydarpaşa Railhead in 1915 and sent to death. The citizens left red carnations on the placards writing in both English and Armenian reading “We are remembering the victims of Armenian genocide” and they carried the photos of Armenian intellectuals. The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Central Executive Board (MYK) member Garo Paylan, Author Ayşe Berktay, Academiscian Fatmagül Berktay, Human Rights Association (İHD) İstanbul Branch Head Ümit Efe, İHD executives, Armenians coming from Diaspora; and lots of citizens joined in the commemoration activity.(4)

Ayşe Berktay is a translator, scholar, author, cultural and women’s rights activist. Her publications include “History and Society: New Perspectives, 2008”, and “The Ottoman Empire and the World Around with Suraiya Faroqhi”; moreover, she is the editor of “Women and Men in the 75th Year of the Turkish Republic”. Her translations include “The Imperial Harm: Gender and Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1520-1656 “by Leslie Penn Pierce; and “The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922 ,New Approaches to European History” by Donald Quataert.
Over the past decade, Ayşe conducted work at the History Trust, where she was part of the Prime Minister’s Advisory Board on Human Rights. In Dec. 2009 Ayşe became a member of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), which has 36 elected representatives in the Turkish Parliament. In March 2010 she was elected to the BDP Istanbul Province Executive, where she worked in the Press Committee, then in Oct. 2010 she was elected to the BDP Central Women’s Committee, Foreign Relations Office. Ayşe Berktay was arrested on October 3, 2011, and seized personal papers and materials. Eventually, she was charged under Turkey’s anti-terror legislation of “membership in an illegal organization” .She was released from Prison in Istanbul on Dec. 20, 2013 and still faces a lengthy trial process, where she could face up to 15 years in prison. (1)

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1- http://www.pen.org/defending-writers/ay%C5%9Fe-berktay

2- http://www.armeniapedia.org/wiki/200_prominent_Turks_apologize_for_great_catastrophe_

3- http://www.armeniapedia.org/wiki/The_Armenian_Genocide_and_the_Scandinavian_Respon

4- http://www.diclehaber.com/en/news/content/view/398100?page=11&from=314584322

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