Harut Sassounian

By Harut Sassounian

President of the 5W Public Relations firm based in New York City Ronn Torossian had signed a contract to represent Turkey as its PR agent, The California Courier publisher Harut Sassounian said in an article on Wednesday, November 15.

Justice Department records indicate that Torossian signed the agreement on May 25, 2017. His firm will get paid an additional $60,000 for the period of May 16-Nov. 16, 2017, which is automatically renewable for another six months. This payment is in addition to the amount specified in the contract signed on August 10, 2016.

It is noteworthy that Torossian signed the agreement with Turkey nine days after Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan watched his bodyguards beat up a group of demonstrators in front of Turkish Ambassador’s residence in Washington, DC. Three days after the protesters were beaten and injured, Torossian published an article in The Algemeiner, titled: “Deport Radical Islamist Preacher [Gulen] and Maintain American Interests.”

“I called Torossian’s office twice. Each time a staff member assured me that he would return my call. I never heard from him. Torossian is not only impolite in not responding to phone messages, but he is reported to have a bad temper against his employees and others! The New York Times described him as “brash and aggressively outspoken.” He is also reported to have business dealings with shady Jewish and Russian oligarchs, according to [journalist] Louise Neu. Even though Torossian has an Armenian last name, I was not able to confirm if one or both of his parents are Armenians, or neither one!” Sassounian says.

Ronn Torossian is also “a partner, Chief Marketing Officer and advisory Board member of JetSmarter,” according to his Linkedin profile. JetSmarter is a controversial company described as “uber for planes.” The CEO of JetSmarter is Sergey Petrossov, the son of Vatchagan Petrossov, who definitely has an Armenian name.

“The main reason I was interested in Ronn Torossian’s employment as a PR agent for Turkey is that there was a similar situation with Barry Zorthian who worked from October 1980 to February 1984 for the lobbying firm of Gray and Co., hired by Turkey. Zorthian was a former executive for Voice of America and Time, Inc. In 1968-69 he was the chief U.S. spokesman in Saigon, Vietnam,” Sassounian says.

“After I had become aware that Zorthian was simultaneously an executive at a lobbying firm for Turkey and Board Member of the Armenian Assembly of America, I called him to ask if his dual roles did not create a conflict personally or for his firm. As a sign of respect for a fellow Armenian, I cautioned him that if he answered my questions, it could lead to his dismissal from his job. Zorthian, 63, replied that he did not care if he lost his $65,000-a-year job as senior vice president of Gray and Co. He went ahead and honestly answered all my questions. Zorthian explained that he worked in the public relations office and not on the Turkey account which was handled by the firm’s lobbying department.

“As soon as my article was published on the front page of the California Courier on January 19, 1984, the Turkish newspaper Tercuman reported my interview with Zorthian which caused a great embarrassment to the Turkish Foreign Ministry, finding out that an Armenian-American was a top executive for the lobbying firm that was getting paid $300,000-a-year by Turkey.

“On Feb. 21, 1984, the lobbying firm’s vice chairman, Alejandro Orfila, told Zorthian that the Turkish Ambassador Sukru Elekdag was extremely irate reading the newspaper report. Orfila quoted Amb. Elekdag stating: “I hired you guys to help me with my political problems, and instead you’re creating problems for me… You must do something drastic that I can report back to my government or else I’ll be forced to cancel the contract.”

“The PR firm’s chairman, Robert K. Gray, cut his vacation short in Acapulco, Mexico, and immediately returned to Washington. Zorthian was fired after rejecting Mr. Gray’s request to resign.

“Even though I was not pleased to see Mr. Zorthian lose his job, but as a young reporter who had started working as a journalist six months earlier, it was very satisfying that my obscure article made the headlines in Turkey and came to the attention of the Turkish Foreign Ministry and Amb. Elekdag. Furthermore, the Washington Post wrote a lengthy article on April 13, 1984, quoting from my article and mentioning my newspaper as the source of this international controversy.

“I urged Zorthian to file a lawsuit accusing Gray and Co., of employment discrimination due to his national origin. Zorthian did file charges with the Washington, D.C. Office of Human Rights, claiming he was illegally fired because of his Armenian background.

“Unfortunately, I do not know the outcome of Zorthian’s lawsuit. Both he and his wife have passed away since then.

If Mr. Torossian is truly an Armenian, how could he do PR for Turkey? More importantly, how could Turkey hire him given Mr. Zorthian’s experience?”

Some countries are so upset by Holocaust deniers that they make it a crime. There have been calls to do the same in Britain but we have, luckily, avoided such a heavy-handed and grandstanding approach to the freedom of speech of idiots, Simon Heffer wrote in his article, published in the International Business Times.

We prefer to see people who deny the Nazi genocide as idiots – or something stronger – and in a very British way content ourselves that the obloquy, contempt and derision such people heap upon themselves by expressing their offensive views is punishment enough, and comes free of charge, the author says.

It is disputed to this day by Turkey that its Ottoman forebears conducted a genocide against the Armenians in 1915.

Armenians see this as their Holocaust and when an entire nation denies it happened, it is denial on a truly grand and awesome scale. Imagine how the Jews would feel if the present German republic itself – not just handfuls of mentally disturbed anti-Semites – said there had been no German-led genocide against the Jews, and you will understand how the Armenians and those who sympathise with them feel about Turkey, a state about to celebrate 100 years of denial, the author notes.

The historical consensus is that 1.5 million Armenians were murdered. Many countries recognise this as an act of genocide. So too did Pope John Paul II, who issued a declaration in 2001 saying as much. Francis chose to quote his predecessor-but-one’s words: but it still upset the Turks, who immediately recalled their ambassador to the Vatican and demanded the Vatican’s man in Ankara come and explain himself, the article notes.

The Vatican, which is also keen to see a diminution of the conflict in that region, wants good relations with the Turks too, but not, to judge from Francis’s remarks, at the expense of pretending not to notice Turkey’s responsibility for an outrage that happened just outside living memory, the author says.

Armenia itself is building up to a formal commemoration of the genocide on 24 April. Last week, Kim Kardashian and her sister Khloe were in Yerevan to lay flowers at a memorial to the victims: the whole performance was captured on the sisters’ reality TV show, so anyone out there who is not aware of this atrocity may soon be alerted to it.

The author highlights that the combination of the Kardashians and the Pope adds up to a PR disaster for Turkey, at a time when in every other respect it is trying to show itself to be a responsible and progressive member of the family of civilised nations.

Source: Panorama.am

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London IBT: Kim Kardashian and Pope Francis left Turkey in PR disaster over Armenian genocide