Recently the National Assembly, France’s lower legislative chamber, voted to criminalize the denial of the Armenian genocide in 1915, imposing a potential prison sentence of up to one year as well as a maximum fine of 45,000 euros. The timing of this controversial initiative seemed to represent a rather blatant Sarkhozy bid for the votes of the 500,000 French citizens of Armenian descent in the upcoming presidential election. It follows similar pre-election initiatives in 2001, when the French Parliament officially declared that the massacres of Armenians in 1915 were an instance of genocide, and in 2006 when the Assembly first voted to criminalize Armenian genocide denial, an initiative that never became law because the French Senate failed to give its assent. And this, hopefully, may happen again with respect to this recent Assembly move.
Predictably, the French action was perceived by Turkey as a hostile provocation. The Turkish government, which has so far refused to describe the 1915 events as ‘genocide,’ immediately reacted, warning France of adverse economic consequences if this initiative went forward, and has reacted by withdrawing its ambassador and freezing inter-governmental economic relations. The Turkish Prime Minister, Recip Teyyip Erdogan, denounced the action of the French Assembly that had been initiated by a prominent member of Sarkhozy’s party. Erdogan, known for his forthrightness, advised the French Government that instead of criminalizing the Turkish unwillingness to acknowledge the 1915 events as genocide, France should busy itself with determining whether its harsh tactics used during the 1950s in Algeria, supposedly responsible for up to a million Algerian deaths during the long French campaign to hold onto to its north African colony, constituted genocide.
There are many issues raised by this turn for the worse in French-Turkish relations, and its embittering dialogue about historic events. Perhaps the most important is whether it is ever justifiable to criminalize the expression of an opinion about a set of past occurrences that goes against a societal consensus. It is true that genocide or Holocaust denial can be hurtful to those who are survivors or descendants of survivors, and identify with the victims of such severe wrongdoing, and its attendant suffering, but whether the sensitivities of these communities should ever be protected by the criminal law seems doubtful, conflicting with freedom of expression and censuring inquiries into historical events that are unpopular and controversial, but occasionally illuminating enough to challenge conventional wisdom. It would seem that informed agreement and social pressure should be sufficient to deter all but the most extremist instances of denial if a genuine and sufficient consensus exists as to the locus of responsibility and the character of the events. In this instance, such criminalization is especially unfortunate as even if the facts of the 1915 events are reasonably well established, the relevance of genocide is certainly ambiguous and somewhat problematic, especially from a legal perspective.
Against this background, where Turkey has not yet been willing to describe the events of 1915 as ‘genocide’, the criminalization of the denial is more likely to raise tensions that encourage a long overdue accommodation. Of course, there are related irritants to the Turkish-Armenian relationship, especially the unresolved conflict over the future of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in Azerbaijan. Among thoughtful Turks there continues to be some questioning of the character of the World War I events in question, not about their tragic character or even a willingness to condemn Ottoman wrongdoing, but there remains a Turkish governmental and societal reluctance to pin the label of genocide on these occurrences. It is well known that the Armenian diaspora has long been seeking to induce key governments around the world to make formal declarations to the effect that what happened in 1915 was genocide, and some 25 governments have done so, as have many lesser political entities such as sub-divisions of the state or cities. Such efforts to legalize historical truth, as distinct from mourning historical events, is itself a political gimmick to circumvent diplomacy and accommodation. But to criminalize genocidal denial represents a still further escalation of Armenian efforts to resolve the controversy over this potent g-word through branding of denial as a crime. We would insist that rather than resolving the conflict, such steps make a politics of reconciliation that much more difficult for both parties.
The discourse on genocide has always been confusing, multi-layered, and often toxic. The word ‘genocide’ is weighted down by its implications, explaining both why there is such a strong impulse to invoke it and an equally intense effort to deny its applicability. We need to distinguish genocide as a crime in international law from the political assessment of historic events as genocide due to a clear pattern of deliberate killing of an ethnic or religious group. And such a political assessment needs to be further distinguished from a moral condemnation of a pattern designed to destroy systematically a beleaguered minority that might properly be described as ‘genocidal,’ or what has been more recently described as ‘ethnic cleansing’ in the setting of Bosnia, which is distinct from the judicially certified ‘genocide’ that shook the foundations of Rwanda in 1994.
From a legal perspective it is not plausible to call these events in 1915 as genocide. After all, the word did not exist until coined by Rafael Lemkin in 1943, and the crime was not so delimited until the Genocide Convention came into force in 1951. Beyond this, and more telling than this technical observation, is the fact that the indictments at Nuremberg did not charge the surviving Nazi leaders with genocide, but convicted these Germans of ‘crimes against humanity’ for their connection with genocidal conduct, and even here only if the alleged criminal acts were associated with World War II, found by the tribunal to be an unlawful war, and thus a ‘crime against peace.’ If the Holocaust perpetrated against Jews and others did not seem to the Nuremberg tribunal to be a distinct crime, then it seems untenable to regard the Armenian tragedy as embodying the crime of genocide. When the UN expert body, the International Law Commission, put into words what was done at Nuremberg it explicitly affirmed the Roman dictum prohibiting retroactivity: no crime without law (nulla crimen sine lege). Such a dictum touches on a fundamental component of justice to the effect that behavior, however detestable from moral and political points of view, is not a ‘crime’ until so designated in advance of the acts in question by a competent judicial body. This principle has never been contested, and it pertains to the genocide debate whenever attached to pre-1951 events, whether the Armenian experience or to the destruction of a variety of indigenous peoples in various parts of the world or to the barbarous institution of slavery.
At the same time, if what took place in 1915 were to have occurred any time after the Genocide Convention became effective, it would seem beyond any reasonable doubt to qualify as genocide. The International Court of Justice in the course of examining the Bosnian allegations of genocide, put the bar high by requiring written or documentary evidence of a clear intent by Serbian governmental leaders to commit the crime of genocide that was not available (except the particular incident involving the horrific massacre of several thousand Bosnian males at Srbrenica in 1995 was declared to be genocide). While such evidence was difficult to provide to the satisfaction of the World Court in relation to this notorious Bosnian experience of the 1990s partly as a result of a questionable arrangement with the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia not to release documentary evidence tying the Belgrade regime to the anti-Muslim cleansing operations in Bosnia, the situation with respect to Armenia is different. Unlike Bosnia, documentary evidence from the ruling Ottoman authorities does exist in sufficient quantity and quality to make a persuasive argument to the effect that ‘genocide’ took place in 1915, but because the events occurred 36 years before genocide formally became a crime such a showing is legally irrelevant.
If this reasoning is accepted, it has important implications, including establishing some political space for bringing closure to the issue: Turkey could formally declare that if what happened to the Armenians in 1915 took place in the 1960s, it would have been genocide, while those on the Armenian side could accept the idea that the 1915 massacres were not then genocide, but that their extent, character, and evidence would constitute genocide if taking place now, or any time after 1951. The French move, if indeed it becomes law, is irresponsible in the extreme as it disallows the explorations of constructive ways that the violence and suffering of the past might be mitigated. As post-apartheid South Africa has illustrated, it might sometimes be politically and morally preferable for a victimized people to opt for ‘truth and reconciliation’ than to insist on the criminalization of past wrongs however heinous.
It seems to me that such an approach would have mutual benefits. It would bring a conflict that has endured for decades nearer to closure. It would allow Armenians to regard their victimization as genocide from a political and moral perspective, while enabling Turkey to make such a concession without fearing such legal implications as Armenian demands for reparations and the recovery of lost property. Turkish good faith and remorse could be further expressed by appropriating funds for the establishment of a major museum of Armenian History and Culture in Ankara, by recognizing April 24th as a day of Armenian remembrance, and by encouraging honest historical inquiry into these horrific occurrences.
Of course, such a politics of reconciliation can only have any hope of succeeding if there is a large display of goodwill and a sincere search by Turkish and Armenian leaders for positive relations between the two peoples. It is to be expected that extremists on both sides would strenuously object to such an accommodation. Admittedly, there would not be complete satisfaction even among that largely silent majority of Armenians and Turks who might welcome a pacifying development. What would be created is valuable, a new opening that would allow a more benevolent future to unfold for both peoples that could include a joint cathartic reexamination of the past. Such a development might add to the solemnity and dignity of the expected worldwide observances in 2015 of the 100th anniversary of these events and avoid these occasions from being little more than sad remembrances and shrill recriminations.
Our national wound will never heal, and the Armenian Genocide will NEVER be forgotten… We will REMEMBER and hold this attempt to annihilate us from this earth in our hearts forever in what they did to us and our nation will go on from generation to generation… THIS CRIME WILL NEVER BE HEALED.
WHAT YOU ARE SAYING IS TRUE. IT WILL GO ON FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION. I SAW A DOCUMENTARY WHERE ARMENIAN CHILDREN, 5-10 YEARS OF AGE WHOSE MINDS WERE BEING POISONED WITH HATRED BY THEIR TEACHERS, AND, IT APPEARS THAT IT CONTINUES TO DO SO. SO YOU ARE CORRECT, YOU WILL POSION CHILDRENS MINDS FOR GENERATIONS TO COME WITH HATRED, JUST LIKE YOURS.
ARMENIANS TRIED TO JOIN IN WITH THE RUSSIANS AND BRING TURKEY DOWN WITHIN,, BUT ID DID’NT WORK. IN THE PROCESS TENS OF THOUSANDS OF TURKISH VILLAGERS WERE KILLED IN THE EASTERN PART OF TURKEY. BUT OF COURSE NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR THAT, WHO CARES.
BUT I WISH TO CONGRATULATE THE TURKS WHO HAVE DEFENDED THEIR COUNTRY FROM DOZENS OF COUNTRIES, AND ARE STILL STANDING STRONG TODAY.
IAM ALSO CONTENT THAT TURKEY IS AT LEAST TRYING TO NORMALISE ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH ARMENIA. BUT WITH SO MUCH HATRED, I BELIEVE THERE WILL BE NO NORMALISATION.
YOU ARE poisoning your children’s minds. So long as you deny the truth that the entire world knows. Even the Kurds who were direct participants in the Armenian Genocide, even muslim Arabs have said the truth for 96 years now. EVEN TURKISH SCHOLARS have broke their silence and have called upon the Turkish Government to admit to the truth. EVEN MUSTAFA KEMAL ATATURK admitted to the murder of “Millions of our Christian subjects” and a “Shameful act” (he would have said more if he could). THE ENTIRE world knows it is a GENOCIDE.
Now, coming to why it is goint down generation to generation… It is because of your DENIAL.. It is because you are not even HUMAN to understand the pain of humans that you tried to annihilate and now the LAST CHAPTER, DENIAL OF THE GENOCIDE, is exactly all criminals do and have done through the ages.. That is why our pain will never heal.. and yet it will turn to hatred, burning at you criminals, murderers, subhuman anti-human fascists. You are our enemies forever and you will come to see the truth one day.. SOONER OR LATER.. and until then you enemy, you will be hated by us.. and our HATRED IS JUST and DIVINE.
Please do no type in ALL CAPS.
Another clueless article about a subject matter which the authors clearly have no understanding of.
“From a legal perspective it is not plausible to call these events in 1915 as genocide. After all, the word did not exist until coined by Rafael Lemkin in 1943”
Bud, are you sure you’re in the legal field? Because if i was a lawyer, I’d love for the likes of you to show up in front of me, I’d make a fool of you in all of two seconds.
The term Genocide was formed RETROACTIVELY TO DESCRIBE WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ARMENIANS. A 5th grader would even understand that the events of 1915 are every bit legal.
On the other hand sure the term “genocide” was not invented in 1915… yet what happened was actually worse – it was the original HOLOCAUST which later was seemingly monopolized by the Jewish Genocide. There is plenty of evidence of the term Holocaust being used for the Armenian Genocide at the time.
Justice must and will be dictated by the descendants of the Armenian Genocide, not rosy “let’s all be friends” analysts who have no clue about what they’re talking about.
Another worthless article, which is clearly being dictated by the Turkish lobby and its supporters.
I suggest you read the entire article.
I suggest you read the entire article as well.
If you read it, you would have read this part:
“We need to distinguish genocide as a crime in international law from the political assessment of historic events as genocide due to a clear pattern of deliberate killing of an ethnic or religious group.”
And this part:
“When the UN expert body, the International Law Commission, put into words what was done at Nuremberg it explicitly affirmed the Roman dictum prohibiting retroactivity: no crime without law (nulla crimen sine lege).”
Etc. I also wonder if you agree or disagree with the principle enshrined in the US Constitution prohibiting ex post facto laws.
Where is the comment of Georg M, answering “Mike” up there.. Why is it removed?
Where is my comment down there answering Jay? (there was a second comment by me).
I removed your comment. Everyone has been warned to keep it civil, and I already told you comments that don’t will be removed. Calling Turks “animals” and such will not be tolerated here.
This is a very cheap argument to defend the murder of the armenians by the turks. For example, the holocaust was also committed before 1949, so you agree, that the holocaust was no genocide?
Important is the following: This discussion of “whether or not” is obsolet and only a tactical tool since 80 years to deny the genocide of armenians. The goal is to establish a “disputed” armenian genocide “claim” to whitewash turkey.
We know this kind of tactis and your author is playing this game. So, i ask myself, why is the editor of this newsside so eager to support such propaganda?
No, it does not defend the murder of Armenians by Turks, and no, it doesn’t go to say that it wasn’t a genocide, or that the Holocaust was not a genocide.
Are you saying your authors are so incompetent that they make point A then make point B to contradict point A?
I am not impressed with your reply, nor your rebuttal. You are misquoting your article. The passage you cite is not talking about the Armenian Genocide but rather denying it. You need to follow your advice and read your own passage very carefully, it is a disguised denialist tactic which seeks to state that Rwanda was a genocide, but cannot be applied to the Armenian case, which quickly follows – “From a legal perspective it is not plausible to call these events in 1915 as genocide” – Are you able to decipher what this means?
As far as ex post facto, it does not apply to the Armenian Genocide any more than it did not apply to the Jewish Genocide. The Armenian Genocide was also the Armenian Holocaust. The term ‘Genocide’ being formed later does not mean the acts committed by Turkey 50 years earlier were ‘legal’ – that had already been determined by trial to be CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY of which the modern state of Turkey is guilty.
Point B does NOT contradict point A. It’s two separate questions. This is not hard to understand. Read more carefully, it is well explained in the article. Me misquoting? It was a direct copy/paste. You’re being ridiculous. Falk explicitly states in the article that it was a genocide, there is no denial of that fact in this article. You are right, the fact that the term “genocide” was formed later does not mean the genocide was legal. Neither Falk nor I have suggested otherwise.
The Armenian Genocide is a fact of history.
from this article I get the warrantable immpression that Holocaust myth was invented by Americans and their newly adopted evergrowing Jewish lobby back in 1945 for geopolitical reasons to gain more lever in the Middle East and Europe, and the truth was that there were only German concentration and labor camps for variously creeded and religious detainees to serve Nazi regime by hard labour, so there were no intended and pointed extermination policy against Jewish people, and of all this because terminology of Holocaust is so synthetic and recent!
Good job Bud, another flashy flag-waving for the amended principle for freedom of the speech!
There was no “Armenian Genocide” as UN says!!! I’m Sick of fake propaganda of Armenian lobby everywhere
And the world is MORE SICK than you could imagine from Turkish Government attempts to deny its past crimes against humanity.
There was an Armenian Genocide by the Turks! The UN has said that it was a Genocide! I’m Sick of fake Turkish propaganda of Genocide denial and lobby everywhere. Saved that money to feed the hungry in Turkey. This time you will lose.
Al,
Go and feed the hungry in Armenia !!! Your country needs it more than most countries on this earth !
Only thing I read/ever see is how much hatred I read about Armenians towards the Turks yet I never ever read about any Armenian in any way saying something about coming together and making friendship with the young generation which have no animosity towards the Armenians.
It seems that the Armenian ecocnomy would be even worse than it is now (2nd worst in the world by Forbes) if it wasn’t for Turkey. All Armenians do is write/talk about Turkey complain, complain and complain. Now if you would take that away Armenians would have nothing to do but to face their own problems, their horrible economy and actually would have to get off their laze behinds & start working to resolve their own issues.
Without the Turks you wouldn’t have a life.
Just like the Turks massacred the Greeks and the Albanians and the Kurds, they did the same to the Armenians and took their homeland of Western Armenia. Turks are notorious murderers of nations. They are cowards and animals and have exterminated millions of people.
Jake,
If I could use your words, only an ‘animal’ may make such claims and have his brainwashed to such extent. One must be a ‘coward’ to be so one-sided like you!…
The International Association of Genocide Scholars, the relevant body of experts in the field, would beg to disagree with this article’s disingenuous attempts to cast doubt on the use of the term genocide, as it applies to the Armenian Genocide…Shame on FL Journal! Same old Neo Con crap whenever the Armenian Genocide angers the Turks and their sponsors and handlers…
But the article says it was a genocide. Perhaps you did not read the entire article?
If we go with what the ending of this article suggests, then it would be ok to kill all the Turks and then establish a fund for them and build a museum. This should make things ok. This is wonderful. After all that’s what the writer is suggesting for us!
You are right, enger.
“If we go with what the ending of this article suggests, then it would be ok to kill all the Turks…”
Let’s not be irrational.
Welcome to Turkish Bazaar!
The aim of this article is to legalize and award Turkey for the committed Genocide! BUT Genocide was and is not an article of tread for Armenians!
Maybe after Turkey did agree to create a “culture museum for Armenians (with the stolen wealth of Armenians)” on there historic home land in Easy Turkey – where no Armenian is left, Turkey could get a Nobel peace price too!
“The aim of this article is to legalize and award Turkey for the committed Genocide!”
Nonsense.
The truth about Armenian Genocide is that it is TRUE.
The Truth AN NOT be killed- that is what Turkey tries to do by its aggressive denial policy on the state level!
The Genocide law in France is against the export of Turkish denial policy, which is being carried out on the state level.
Toc claim there were no Armenian Genocide would it be as wrong as if one would claim there were no systematic Turkish denial policy on the state level today!
The truth about Armenian Genocide is that it is TRUE.
The Truth CAN NOT be killed- that is what Turkey tries to do by its aggressive denial policy on the state level!
We see in this forum, how important it is to punish genocide denial, because firstly genocide denial is nothing else than an act of hate-speech and agitation.
Secondly, to study freely the concrete details of the armenian genocide, scientist have to be free of the “dispute”, was it genocide or not.
It is highly important to persecute genocide deniers, because nothing is more racist, then murdering a nation, because of their race, and then to deny it.
Everyone, who supports “turkish thesis” is neither credible nor moral.
Greeting from Germany – The country of Genocides
Why is Armenia not accepting the proposal to set up a international committee to decide if this was a genocide or not? If it is the truth then it should be a piece if cake to make Turkey to accept it. The real truth is there are legal and binding documents in Russian and Turkish and even Armenian state archives that will cast doubt on the definition of what happened and everyone in Armenia s higher state apparatus know about this.
Would you tell me then,
1. Why does the Turkish Government spends millions every year to buy scholars, historians, silences its critics inside and outside Turkey?
2. Why did the Turkish Government placed the criminal Article 301 above all heads than admit to the Armenian Genocide inside Turkey, with punishments, confiscations and unofficial threats to the voices that demand justice?
3. Why was Hrant Dink murdered inside Turkey after years of threats, why was his murderer honoured inside the police station by all the policemen who were next to him and took it on video?
4. Why isn’t the murder of Dink solved until today and why all people KNOW that the Government was after his murder?
5. Why does Turkey says “leave it to historians” and yet jails, threatens Turkish scholars(like Pamuk and Shafak), kills, bombs (like R. Zrakoglu’s workplace), why did it threaten scholars and Historians like Akcam, Berktay, Ertem, Gocek, for saying the Armenian Genocide is a fact? Why does Turkey until today never opened its archives for millions of people killed for poltical and ethnic reasons?
6. Why does Turkey says “our archives are open” When we ALL KNOW that the Military archives are restricted to scholars? (open but restricted, you cannot get any archive you want). AND THIS, after 97 years to THOROUGH SIFTING and DESTRUCTION of all archives that point the fingers of guilt at the CUP leaders?
7. Why did Nazi Germany copied and implimented same methods, same tactics, same killing ways of milllions of people and Hitler admitted about no one talking about the Armenina on Aug. 22, 1939 to a group of German generals and officers?
8. When did Turkey ADMIT TO THE GENOCIDE in DARFUR? Why did Turkey deny the Genocide in Sudan and honor its blood stained president Omar al Bashir in Turkey when he is wanted by the ICJ?
9. Why did Turkey support Azerbaijan in all ways, blockade Armenia trying to suffocate it, If Turkey is a “changed country” free form xenphobia or hatred of Christians and minorities?
10. Did Turkey ever apologize for the pogroms of September 6,7,8 1955 in which thousands of christians were murdered in the streets in broad daylight?
11. Did Turkey acknowledge by the mouth of its big mouth Prime Minister that “muslims are unable to commit genocide” when Darfur is there in front of him and he knows the tortures, murders, killings, beheadings of kurds in Turkey from 1925 till 1990s.
12. When was Turkey a country of human rights, expression rights, women’s rights and minorities rights?
Turkey is the country of lies, murders, genocides and endless denials of all thereof.. Turkey will never change… Turkey is the shame of HUMANKIND!
Mani,
1. Could you please prove to me that the Turkish Government has paid anyone to write one-sided academic work on its behalf? Pure words do not suffice to paint black the reputation of academicians who do not swallow make believe stories. Otherwise you could be seen as someone to whom lying comes easy!. Judging from the ANCA messages, it is obvious that the Disapora funds lobbyists to propagate such tell-tale.
2. Articles similar to No301 of the Turkish penal code are available in many European countries’ legal system. It tries only to protect the reputation of the country and its people; has nothing to do with Armenia or Armenians.
3. Why were many (over 40) Ambassadors and their next of kin murdered in all world capitals from 1972-1983? Hrant Dink’s murder was a misguided event, but at least tens of thousands of Turkish people walked on the streets of Istanbul holding placards saying ‘We are all Hrant Dink’. I am yet to hear an Armenian condemn the killing of Turkish Ambassadors.
4. Ditto… Why was the ASALA murderer greeted in Armenia to a hero’s welcome, upon his forgiveness from a France prison in 2000? Besides, Hrant never approved the oppression of freedom laws similar to the one in France which you call ‘denial’ laws. His death seems to help the Diaspora. Are you sure it was not staged by the Dashnaks?
5. The obvious motto: “My enemy’s enemy is my friend” could back bite any time. Akcam is hailed as historian by Armenians upon badmouthing the Turkish Government for giving him jail time due to his Maoist activities in Turkeyin early 70’s. Pamuk opinioned in a subject that he knew nothing about just to gain brownie points in his Armenian girlfriend’s eyes. Zarakolu is an instigator of Kurdish separatists. The only thing common among all of the names you cited is they have at one time spoken against the Turkish Government. Not necessarily truth, but some of them spoke their feelings of vengeance. This is not enough to legalize them?…
6. Why can Armenian Diaspora open its Dashnak archives located in Boston? After 97 years, it is not open even with restricted access to anyone. Many Armenians were caught stealing archive documents from the Turkish archives, so came some control over them. Even after they were opened no incriminating evidence was found in the National Archives, the newspapers of the time, the parliamentary archives. Now you speak of the only archives which you think are closed. Actually, the papers regarding the Armenian issue are published in 6 volumes by ATASE, translated into English and French and can even be found in their web site.
7. Some imagination!.. In an article which uses the photo of massacre applied to Turks and pretending that it is of Armenians, it takes some face to claim Hitler copied the Turks. Way to talk with no reasonable explanation. By the way, you can read the preface to Kamuran Gurun’s Armenian File for the fake Hitler quotation.
8. ??? I do not know much about the Sudan case but you seem to select along religious lines. When Bosnian Muslims were being killed by Serbians, I heard nothing from ‘Christian’ Armenians in their defense.
9. Why did Armenia kill innocent Azeri men, women and children and still continues to occupy their land? Why should Turkey betray an innocent people and side with its open enemy of Armenians?
Xenophobia is the word which could apply to someone else in this equation!…
10. Did Armenian ever apologize for siding with invading Russian forces in 1914? Did Diaspora shun or glorify the ASALA murders. Those ambassadors killed in broad daylight were innocent and elite children of Turkish nation; their only identifying mark was to be Turkish.
11. Someone’s big mouth obviously swallows that Armenia has committed atrocities against Azeri population of Nagorno Karabagh?
12. The question should be “Will France be a country of human rights, expression of truth as they believe it, or minorities’ rights if it allows Armenians get their way for a few votes?”…
Some commenters of this site are full of hatred, xenophobia and vengeance against not necessarily the Turks, but to truth!… One should look into the mirror with the same critical eye he poses the Turks.
1. If the Turkish Government has a budget to fight the Genocide Recognition, and if American, Canadian, Jewish, French, Italian, Russian and also Armenian and even Turkish scholars said that the Turkish Government systematically bribes politicians and academics. Do you need any more proof? Take Richard Gephardt for example, he admitted to the fact that he received ‘gifts’ by the Turkish Government, take McCarthy for example who couldn’t answer where did the funds come into his paycheck when questioned.
2. NO, absolutely wrong, (nice try from you to defend a criminal law) Article 301 is there by Kemal Kerincsiz and Ergenekon terrorists like him to silence anyone who would dare to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide inside Turkey. Europe does not have any laws like “insulting Frenceness,” “insulting greekness” “insulting italiannes” like you have with your fascist law of “insulting Turkishness” and jailing people. Even Abdullah Gul your president publicly proclaimed that Turkey needs to get rid of Article 301 and was opposed by Erdogan and the other hard line Genocide deniers.
3. Why were your ambassadors assassinated? In the 1980’s when Armenians (without a country) have waited for 70 years in vain for any entitiy to acknowledge about our national Genocide, some Armenian groups like ASALA vented their anger in assassinating Turkish diplomats, who were the reason behind world Governments mass silence. That was the ONLY way to make our sound heard. The ambassadors were as guilty as Genocide committers, since they were the deniers (last chapter) of Genocide itself.
Do you think that 21 governments today which subsequently acknowledged the Armenian Genocide because of ASALA murders?, or because these thousands of politicians pondered the extend of the crime and recognized the Armenian Genocide despite Turkish threats, anger and political and economic pressures?
Hrant Dink murder was a murder organized by the Government 150,000 Turks came out to the streets shouting “We are all ARMENIANS”.
4. You never answered my question, I will not answer yours.
5. SO.. ANY Turkish academic, historian who acknowledges the fact of the Armenian Genocide is an “ENEMY OF TURKEY” and thus is guilty of million accusations from right, left and middle right? NO WONDER, we will never accept your farce and false offer to make a joint historical debate” What hypocrites you are.. When official Ankara will accept only a proclamation that says “there was no genocide” right? Thanks for the admission of your terror against freedom of speech. Any turk saying Armenian Genocide is a ‘traitor, badmouther, brownie gatherer, terrorist, instigator of separatism”, etc, etc..
6. REALLY??.. what a LIAR.. Can you name me ONE Armenian who stole one archive sheet from a Turkish archive (that were not open already)?
7. Hitler’s quote is not imaginary as your kemalist nation wishes to depict, it is real, happened, and was witnessed by his German gereral staff. Hitler did to Jews and others exactly as you did to Armenians. German officers in Turkey were the first hand witnesses of the crimes against the Armenians. It was the medical staff officer Armin Wegner a German officer (officially an enemy in the First World War) who took most of these pictures and make them available to the world.
8. OF COURSE YOU DON’T KNOW about the Sudan Genocide, BECAUSE it would behoove you and your denialist fascist Government to deny a Genocide by muslims against other muslims.. WHAT HYPOCRISY!! During the Bosnian war Armenia was in another war against Azerbaijan that was trying to annihilate the Armenians inside Azerbaijan.
9. AND WHY DID Azerbaijan kill EVEN MORE innocent Armenian, men, women and children, why did Azerbaijan burn the Armenian villages of Maragha, Getashen, Martunashen, killing thousands of Armenians.. what? only Azeries died in war? Armenians should always die, be killed by you and when we defend ourselves you call us xenophobes? Well come over again.. we will not greet you with roses.. I guarantee you that myself.
10. Armenians did not side with the Russian invading forces en masse as you try to depict. More than 75,000 Armenian soldiers were fighting on the Turkish side as they did since the Tanzimat that allowed Armenians and other Christians to fight in the Turkish army. EVEN IF Armenians from the Russian side fought turks in Van in SELF DEFENSE (1500 armenian guns against an Ottoman army of 35000) does that give the Turkish Government to kill, burn, rape, cut to pieces women and children in Elazig, Sevaz, Trabzon, Malatya, Adana, and hundreds of villages and cities in a mass organized Genocide? Nazi Germany did the same when it killed Jews with the excuse of the Warsaw Getto uprising that killed many German soldiers.
The Genocide was devised long before 1915 in 1911 in Selaniki by the Young Turks. The defense of Van was in 1915… Any rational man can see that it was plan ready to be implemented. The Armenian mass rebellion across Turkey is Turkish created propaganda and government lie, unsupported by any history nor logic.
10. Again you never answered my question, and I will not answer yours.
11. Tell your bigger mouthed Prime minister that Azerbaijan committed even more horrendous atrocities in Sumgait, Baku, Kirovapat, Maragha and Stepanakert. Where was he then? Why does he see only Azeries killed? And good news to you.. Nagorno Karabagh is ARMENIAN and will stay that way… like it or not.
12. Go ask the French.. see what they tell you.
Your comments are more full of hatred against the truth of the Armenian Genocide. We hate your type for denying the Genocide. Why don’t you look into the mirror yourself to see 700 years of Ottoman tyranny over 31 nations NONE of which wished to stay subject under Turkish rule.. ALL of them MUSLIM or CHRISTIAN fought to become independent from your filthy Ottoman tyrannical, inhuman rule between 1299 until TODAY. (Ask the Kurds for example , see for example what do THEY think about Turkish bloodshedding tyranny.)
Turks created their country by exterminating Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Kurds and others.
Turks defended their country against the Greeks and Armenians during World War-I, a time when all world powers had descended on them. Sizable minorities tried to covet their land while the empire was defeated by great powers of the time like Russia, France and Britain. Armenians and Greeks became puppets in their hands, but were left alone when Turks started winning their war of survival.
Genocide like Holocaust is never allowed to “defend” a country.
Your biggest lie is that Turkey was fighting for “survival” in 1914-1918. Turkey entered the war by Enver Pasha who heeded to the German requests for help. The first attacks on the Caucasian front came by the Ottoman Empire in 1914 not by Russia. It was the Ottoman Empire led by Enver and 90,000 soldiers that attacked Sarighamish in October 1914 and after getting soundly defeated by General Yudenitch, he blamed the Armenians for his defeat to keep his post of Minister of Defense.
Learn history, uneducated.
I don’t think anyone pressing for Armenian Genocide recognition is clamoring for the Genocide Convention to apply retroactively; nor is the Turkish Government making a narrow legalistic point when it refuses to call it ‘genocide.’ Rather, the Turkish Government is clear that it denies that the concept defined by the Convention applies to the events of 1915. In fact, it strongly disavows even ‘milder’ labels such as ‘ethnic cleansing’ or ‘crime against humanity.’ So, I think there is very little reason to believe that your proposal will be acceptable to the Turkish Government, but if it were it would be a significant step forward. My own view is that it is a mistake to frame the issue about 1915 exclusively in terms of the concept of ‘genocide’ because I think that concept is irredeemably flawed, as I try to explain in the following article: http://nyu.academia.edu/PaulBoghossian/Papers/180369/The_Concept_of_Genocide
@ Paul Boghossian
Your article is unscholarly. You only write your “opinion” with smattering.
Firstly a reliable scientist know very well, that terms and definitions are very important.
Secondly you have no idea of genocide conceptions and studies.
If you want to learn something, please contact the “Institute of Diaspora and Genocide Studies” in the Ruhr-Universität Bochum/ Germany
Email: idg@rub.de or Mihran.Dabag@rub.de
Greetings from germany
Turks and Kurds murdered the ARMENIANS, one of the most ancient people on this planet Earth. The Armenians were the original owners of the real estate called Asia Minor and now Turks and Kurds are murdering each other. Why am I surprized. The Armenians should organize, fight back and take their lands back…history is full of small but heroic armies defeating larger entities…this article is a garbage, won’t help anyone. Instead of prosecuting the murderer, it actually justififes the crime through legal mumbo-jumbo.
…”it actually justififes the crime”
Actually, if you read it, it condemns the genocide.
Good point!
1. The Armenian Genocide is not a “historic event” to be studied. It has already been determined to be a fact. It is a politically motivated move on the part of Turkey to steal Western Armenia, and confiscate all properties of the Armenians.
2. If the world stalls the punishment of Turkey for its crimes indefinitely, then it is telling the world, committing genocide is OK, as in the case of Turkey, you can get away with it.
3. The only reason Turkey spends all its money on the military is because it is very well aware of its guilt in history not only against Armenia, but also against Syria, Greece, and Cyprus.
4. Turkey has been illegally occupying Western Armenia for 100 years, and the rent it owes Armenia is increasing every year, when justice comes around Turkey will go bankrupt.
5. The Armenians will never settle for anything less than the return of Western Armenia and reparations for all its victims and their descendants. Deal with it.
Turkey denies the Genocide of Darfur, honours Omar al Bashir the internationally sought after criminal.. I wonder what would FALK think about it.. it that not also appliable to the Armenian Genocide (pre 1951) and Darfer Genocide (after 1951).
Since when a ‘Genocide’ is a Genocide when only the guilty party (Turkey in this case) admits to it, or when nations coin terminologies? Isn’t a crime against humanity, a CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY = GENOCIDE?
1. The Armenian Geno- is far from being a proven fact, without forgeries that is… By selecting only the events suitable to your cause is not enough. All events of the time must eb studied in its entirety. Only some vote hungry politicians have accepted it – not the UN, nor any impartial court of law.
2.
3. Turkey spends money on ots military, because it is surrounded with so many enemies, like Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, Syria, Iran, Irak, Armenia, former SSCB, etc.
4. In order to have something called ‘Western Armenia’ you should prove that there was an independent country called ‘Armenia’ to begin with prior to 1915.
Only for YOU and YOUR type its not a “proven fact”. Since when a murderer or a killer admitted that he killed? All who are in prison are “innocent”.
A couple of more points:
“Turkey spends money on ots military, because it is surrounded with so many enemies, like Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, Syria, Iran, Irak, Armenia, former SSCB, etc.” bla bla.. So.. All these nations are Turkey’s enemies? No wonder even Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki today warned Turkey in a very hard manner to “not get involved in Iraq’s internal affairs and to mind its own business”.
The name of the country, Armenia and people Armens first were mentioned in the cuneiform of Persian king Darii I in the 7th Century BC. The cuneiform was written in three languages-ancient Persian, Accadian and Elammian. In the Persian and Elammian copies the country is mentioned as Urartu, but in Accadian version it is mentioned as Armenia.
Turks invaded Armenia in the 11th Century ad (just like they invaded lands that constitute 31 modern nations today of their former tyrannical, genocidal empire).
We are the INDEGENOUS people of what is Western Armenia that you call Anatolia. You cannot twist history as much as you try. Western Armenia is our land for more than 4000 years.
What an insulting article, not only to Armenians but to Turks — who are coming to grips with the reality that the founding of the Turkish Republic was predicated on the destruction and turkification of its non-Turkish
minorities — a process that continues today.
While Turks are digging in villages for hidden Armenian gold (I have videos from my grandmother’s village, summer of 2011) the authors of this pathetic article (sic) would have us also believe that nobody died from Yersinia pestis “after all” the term didn’t exist when the bubonic plague
spread across Europe.
Following the “logic” in the article, European Jews were murdered for different reasons before and after 1943 because the term genocide didn’t before 1943. To those exterminated, did it make a difference – Falk and Elver say yes! In contrast, Raphael Lemkin, the lawyer who coined the term genocide, stated, “I became interested in genocide because it happened to the Armenians; and after the Armenians got a very rough deal at the Versailles Conference because their criminals were guilty of genocide and were not punished.” in a 1949 CBS TV interview with Quincy Howe. Watch it on youtube.
Oh, I see “it was crimes against humanity at Nuremberg”. The first time this term were used to describe such events was in a joint statement on May 27, 1915, by the governments of Britain, France and Russia who warned
the Ottoman government will be personally responsible for the crimes committed on the Armenian citizens of the Ottoman Empire. The full text reads: “For about a month the Kurd and Turkish populations of Armenia has been massacring Armenians with the connivance and often assistance of Ottoman authorities. Such massacres took place in middle April (new style) at Erzerum, Dertchun, Eguine, Akn, Bitlis, Mush, Sassun, Zeitun, and
throughout Cilicia. Inhabitants of about one hundred villages near Van were all murdered. In that city Armenian quarter is besieged by Kurds. At the same time in Constantinople Ottoman Government ill-treats inoffensive Armenian population. In view of those new crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization, the Allied governments announce publicly to the Sublime-Porte that they will hold
personally responsible [for] these crimes all members of the Ottoman government and those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres.”
While the authors of this article obfuscate the historical record, Adolf Hilter, took inspiration when in a 1931 interview with Richard Breiting in _Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten_ , stated, “We intend to introduce a great
resettlement policy; we do not wish to go on treading each others toes in Germany. In 1923 little Greece could re-settle a million men. Think of the biblical deportations and the massacres of the Middle Ages and remember the eradication of Armenia [oder erinnern Sie sich doch an die Ausrottung Armeniens].”
The authors are not promoting healing, but rather, are rubbing salt on a open wound.
http://www.regionalkinetics.com
“”Following the “logic” in the article, European Jews were murdered for different reasons before and after 1943 because the term genocide didn’t before 1943.”
I don’t see how you get that from the article.
“While the authors of this article obfuscate the historical record,”
How so? Did you read the entire article?
Jeremy R. Hammond, are you the bus conductor on this webpage, or moderator between Armenians and Turks? May I ask why do you have a negating repudiating comment almost under every Armenian person here?
You don’t like what we have to express? Are you a pro-Turk? Just want to know.
Mani, to answer your questions: 1) I am the owner and editor of Foreign Policy Journal. 2) My comments have nothing to do with the nationality of the commenter, and the purpose of my comments are self-explanatory. 3) I have no issue at all with anyone’s expressed opinions here, except those comments which have included personal insults (several of which I’ve deleted) and those that misrepresent the article or attribute to it views that are not expressed therein. 4) No. My sympathies are with the Armenians, and I find denial of the Armenian genocide repugnant.
Why did you keep “Mike”s comment who is calling people idiots and removed other?
I didn’t see Mike calling other commenters here “idiots”, and if he did I would be glad to remove that comment if you direct me to it.
I am glad that you see the truth of the Turkish Government’s tactics. However, i truly and totally disagree with what the author is trying to achieve.
I am sure my Armenian brothers and sisters will allow me to say the following on their behalf..
There will NEVER be peace between Armenians and Turks and Armenia and Turkey without the duely just recognition, retribution and redemption of the Turkish Government for what it did to us. The Armenian Genocide is a world known fact (not necessarily by all Governments, but certainly by all responsible, just and honest scholarly world). As you know, politics is the most filthy game out there. The Genocide is usurped and used by Government to befriend Turkey and to pressure it, when their relations go south.
But all that adds more and more insult, injury and denigration to the memory of millions of our victims and martyrs. I wish that nothing like what happened to us happen to any people (even to Turks). However, my hatred and the hatred of the millions of Armenians is still burning high for we NEVER saw justice… Not even an apology came our way by the Turks.. Imagine if anyone killed, murdered your entire family in the most shocking ways by torture and yet in court denied it all, and even said “you killed his folks”….
I am just one person raising my voice for the truth.. Our truth is often trodden upon, spat upon and forgotten by PRESIDENTS who promised to recognize it and betrayed us over and over, by prime ministers, and other leader… 97 Years passed… nothing.. nothing.. our victims were forgotten..
THAT IS WHY I WILL NEVER FORGIVE, I WILL NEVER FORGET, WE WILL NEVER FORGET.. WE WILL BE ENEMIES FOREVER..
Tell that to Mr. Falk. Let him fell the pain of millions of Armenians living today…
But alas.. he cannot..
I do not know how you arrive at the conclusion from what he wrote that Mr. Falk is unable to sympathize with the pain of Armenians resulting from the genocide.
Agree on all points, except website proposal. No Van = no closure to Armenian Genocide. In my view Van is not negotiable.
Armenians tried to liberate(!) the city of Van once, remember, by burning it down, eradicating Muslim population and handing it over to Russians. Go and ask people of Van if its negotiable or not and be ready to listen to the horror stories in Van and vicinity about how Armenian butchers were doing in WWI. Van incident was one of the reasons for Ottomans to start the arresting of Armenian activists/terrorists in Istanbul (that Armenians commemorate in April 24) and the following relocation policy. Armenians may visit there and take pictures with Armenian flags as they did, as disguised climbers/tourists, at the top of Mt. Agri.
Merhaba Young Turk;
I am a descendant of Vanetzi survivors, my grandparents were both orphaned. Part of the 150,000 orphans of the Armenian Genocide.
Your information is incorrect about Van, there were no Turkish people residing in Van, most were Armenians, Assyrians.
Of course when the 3 pashas ordered the deaths of the Armenian population then your Turkish ancestors enclosed OUR Villages and towns, first killing our priests and leaders (6,000) then the men.
The first steps of genocide is to kill the brains and muscle of the population then take all weapons away from citizens.
Please take a look at the ancient buildings and cathedrals of what the world today knows as the ROT -Republic of Turkey est. 1923. Note WHO or WHOM are the people that built these ancient treasures like St. Hagia Sofia Church (converted to a mosque then a museum) not to mention the Topaki Palace.
Armenians were the builders of ROT long before the ancestors of the modern Turk came across the Mongolian Central Asia into the Anatolia plains, raping, destroying everything in their path except the spirit and rich ancient culture of the Armenian.
Relocation policy was just an excuse to kill the Christians of Anatolia. Today we make up one of the biggest diasporas of the world. From Argentina to Calcutta, we rebuild our communities and become stronger and stronger every passing year.
Merhaba Oberla Khachaturyan,
I think some of your ancestors were lucky but many of my friends family members were not lucky and they now resided at the bottom of the Lake Van. They were kidnapped by Armenians and dropped to Lake Van on the way to the Akdamar island. The affidavits of Turkish victims tell the very same stories, raping, destroying, burning down,etc committed by Armenian butchers.
“…there were no Turkish people residing in Van, most were Armenians, Assyrians”. Could you tell me what is your resources? As far as I know, most trusted resources shows only about 1/3 of were Armenians and muslim population outnumbered Armenians. Also, Armenians killed not only muslims but also pro-Ottoman Armenians including the mayor. A simple googleing would tell the facts but if you want to believe tall Armenian tales, it’s up to you.
@ David Davidian
The governments of Britain, France and Russia were supporting Armenian cause not because of the reasons they claimed but in order to get a piece of Ottoman lands. They tried it by using local non-muslim minorities, including Armenians, as pawns of imperialism and leaving horror stories when they kicked out of Turkey by Turkish forces, and you give their biased statements to support your past and ongoing Armenian political agenda. This article can be criticized for many points but if you want to see an insulting article, I think your logic and comments are one of them.
I would be curious to know what the young Turk thinks about the Resolution 306 recently passed asking Turkey to return all confisciated non-Moslem land, churches, synagogues,schools, etc., BACK to their rightful owners.
Never leave a black cloud to your descendants, the future is not clean and clear for the Turk no matter where he goes he has offended. The Ottoman Yoke and Sword had many victims, even their fellow Moslem Arabs in the middle east slaughtered.
Read T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) book on his leading the Arabic tribes against the Ottoman spread. How they defeated the Ottoman Turks by bombing their railways.
To the gates of Vienna, the Ottoman knew no boundaries when it came to blood thirsty conquest. The Turk of today, has to suffer for their ancestors and are not allowed to learn or speak of their history prior to 1923.
And now the Gulencis are trying to restore another neo Ottoman Empire and are offending everyone. They had a hand in the masacres and bombings of the your Kurdish children 2 weeks ago. Not to mention the jailing of Turkish Journalists and lawyers who dare speak the truth.
1
Many Reputable Scholars Challenge The Conventional, One-Sided Anti-Turkish Narrative And / Or Refrain From Alleging The Crime Of Genocide
http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2009/06/2889-ottoman-armenian-tragedy-is.html
[Editor’s note: THIS COMMENT HAS BEEN EDITED. Please do not repost entire articles in the comments section. Providing the link and offering a brief comment about its content is sufficient.]
Educate yourself and the rest of the deniers. This is Genocide for the dummies.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16352745
Zubeyde let me make one point VERY VERY CLEAR..
This statement made by the infamous 69 “scholars” was called the “Lewish affair”. They signed this document in March 1985.
A Jewish scholar Kenneth S. Stern exposed these 69 scholars in his book “Most of the 69 academics apparently benefited directly or indirectly from Turkish largess.”(Kenneth S. Stern. Holocaust Denial. Amer Jewish Committee, 1993. ISBN 087495102X. Р. 86-87.)
Most of these so-called “scholars” especially Lowry, McCarthy Lewy, Lewish, Mango and the type were paid directly by the Turkish Government to publicly deny and denigrade the Armenian Genocide.
In October 2000, when the House of Representatives of the USA was to discuss the resolution on the Armenian Genocide, Turkish politician Mustafa Shukru (Turkish: Mustafa Şükrü Elekdağ) lamented that the statement of 69 scholars was pointless as this time NONE OF THEM besides Justin McCarthy have agreed to sign the new declaration. (Lou Ann Matossian. Politics, scholarship, and the Armenian Genocide. Armenian Reporter. July 19, 2008) (Şükrü Elekdağ. Soykırımı balonu nasıl patlar? Milliyet. 02.10.2000)
So in one word, your Turkish tactic here is OLD, it began in 1985 in the haydays of Ecevit, Reagan, Thatcher days, when there was not even an independant Armenia… The Soviet Union was still there.. Alas for you, the scheme to deny the Genocide fell apart in 2000, after 15 years.
So do not go and copy paste from your old Turkish websites, play another.. As much as you try to deny the Genocide, the more people are getting convinced that your lies will not go far.
Mani, let me make one point VERY VERY CLEAR..
Any academician who does not swallow the Armenian claims hook-line and sinker is quickly blamed for being in the Turkish payroll. However when anyone who has an axe to grind with the Turkish Republic (like Taner Akcam) becomes a ‘genocide academician’.
MANI: Please, let me make it VERY VERY CLEAR TO YOU, that not all readers are idiots. We can identify when someone who is branwashed comes up with ‘white’ titles for their own kind and ‘black’ titles for their opponents.
There are good and bad people in every nation.
I think Mani could pass up as a big-mouth, but not a good person for any nation.
She needs to read the Armenian hero Garekin Pastremadjiyan’s book Why Armenia Should Be Free, Boston, 1918 to find out that 150,000 Armenians fought in the Russian Army. If those armed soldiers had a mom, dad and two siblings, you do the math: the total comes up to one million terrorists and their supporters.
You are so blinded to your brainwashed upbringing that you are unable to think for a minute to common sense.
Read Katchaznouni, the first Prime Minister of Armenia’s manifesto to the Dashnaks written in 1918. Read Captain Emory Niles and Mr. Sutherland Report for the outrageus number of Muslim property decimated in comparison to Christians’ in Eastern Anatolia.
But better yet, stop being jealous of what Turkey got, and get a life for your own!…
.. and I knew you could never answer the 3 questions.
@Mani, your comments do not deserve a decent answer, and most of your claims including Ataturk have already been falsified, but the most recent one about NK massacres which is well documented is beyond my imagination:
Numerous observes and resources reported (including Memorial Human Rights Center, Human Rights Watch, foreign journalists, etc) the massacre was committed by the ethnic Armenian armed forces, with help of the Russian 366th Motor Regiment. More importantly, Mr. S.Sargsian himself, for instance, acknowledged the role they played in the massacre during the interview he gave to Thomas de Waal for his book titled “Black Garden”.
I was not expecting you would accept what was obvious to everyone. Nobody denying it except few die hard Armenian nationalists. Many cities in the world host Khojaly massacre monuments and there will be more as Turks and Azeris figured out the rule of the game.
1- The GENOCIDE is a “mythological story” invented after 1965 to justify ASALA killings.
2- There is a Tribunal under U.N. Secretary founded in 2003 and parties MUST apply there for a verdict.
3- I have not ever SEEN even ONE authentic document confirming genocide, nor unbiased witnesses
4- US Senate + Archival Documents evidence that the
opposite took place.
5- Who can kill 10.000/day x 150 days= 1.5 millions by hand, dig 150 pcs stadium size graves by hand…none ever found. TALK SENSE no garbage!
6- Start learning by reading posting http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2008/10/2610-genocide-lies-need-no-archives.html PROVE if any of references in there is untrue! Write to blog, they will post your counter evidences and I can answer publicly in there…
7- Seems you are unaware that Armenian Legion in the Nazi Army (22.000, 4.800 of them SS troops) under command of General Dro Kanajan, were Hitler’s best aids in rounding up Jews and sending them to death camps.
SSS
Another Turkish LIAR who distorts history. Your “comment” is so pathetic, it is obvious your brainwashing from your genocidal Turkey is quite crude and primitive.
As far as “Nazi connection” why aren’t you mentioning that Turkey signed a friendship pact with the Nazis? Why aren’t you mentioning that your Azeri Turks formed Nazi battalions to help the Nazis?
General Dro did not help the Nazis – he wanted Armenia to become independent of Bolshevik rule thus he tried to take Armenia with his battalion which the Nazis were not against, but found as welcomed because it would get rid of Communism. When Dro was unable to reach Armenia, this hope was abandoned and the Armenians actually joined the Soviet Union to help get rid of Nazism – probably more than any other ethnic group in the Soviet Union – if you take into account the Armenian population the Armenian helped the most as an ethnic group in WWII in all of the countries.
Take you cheap propaganda back to where you got it from, you are pathetic.
Dear George M.
Are you aware that your words do apply to you as well: ‘LIAR who distorts history. Your “comment” is so pathetic, it is obvious your brainwashing from your loser upbringing is quite crude and primitive’?
In your article you have verified that Armenian leadres like Dro would do anything to get in power. They sided with Russian Czars during World War-I against the Ottoman Empire, then with the Nazis against the Bolsheviks and then with the Bolsheviks against Germany… The number of turncoats is quite telling how independable they were in contrast to Ataturk.
Your propaganda is a shame against the nice Turkish-Armenians of istanbul that I know.
If both sides have same horror stories, why one side claim they were innocent and label the other side as murderers, liars, brainwashed, etc.? All I see some Armenians with big mouth cannot digest their lost, do not know what their ancestors have done and have no respect or empathy for the other side. Be ready to hear more about our side of the story, the untold one and find another glue to keep you united.
Another critical point is in 1915 the Turk out numbered the Armenian population about 16:1. Only arriving in the Anatolia from Mongolia (Central Asia) some 6 centuries before the Mongolians worked at surpassing the indigenous populations that existed some 11 centuries before their invasions.
Turks educated out of Turkey know their true history like Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk who was scorned by his fellow Turks instead of hailed as a Turkish Treasure because he dared to mention the killing of Armenians and kurds. Turkish Article 301 and other Turkish laws, consider this an insult to Turkishness.
They don’t want to admitt that many Turks have Armenian blood in their veins like Attorney Fettiye Cetin who discovered her Grandmother was an Armenian Orphan.
@Oberla Khachaturyan
I am glad you accept Turkish/Armenian population ratio of 16:1. To answer to your question, it is the very same process and reason why Armenians now consist of 97% of Armenia whereas they were not a majority nor a Caucasian by nature.
BTW, Pamuk studied at my college, in Turkey. I may ask you to stop misleading people but I think its too much to ask or expect.
FYI, if any Turkish citizen have an Armenian blood, I would be proud of them as I believe its culture what define people and Armenians added value to our culture.
The reason Armenia consists 97% of Armenians is because 3/4 of historical Armenian lands were stolen during the Armenian Genocide, and the population was squeezed into the modern Armenian lands, not to mention Nakhichevan and Karabagh were slashed from Armenia and given to Azerbaijan by the Communist Russia.
Armenia had many wars, some were lost and some were won, but when there was systematic killings targeting everybody of one race, its called genocide. Accept it and move on.
Since you insist let us start hearing the “Other side” of the Holocaust.. 5 MILLION Germans died in WWII.. Germans did not give innocent victims like the bombing of Dresden or the rape of 2 million German women???
But that never negates the fact that they committed the Holocaust. JUST like you committed the Armenian, Greek, Assyrian genocides between 1915-1922.
Armenians have waited this long and will wait another hundreds years if it takes to prove their point and get what they justly deserve, an apology and return of lands to its original owner, Armenia. You can agrue your heart out and fabricate as many lies as you wish, but now you know what the end will be. Have a good day.
Genocide Denial will be punished in Europe. People like Falk are the losers and i hope they will lose their chairs too.
France is implementing an EU-Directive and the other EU states will follow. This Directive is against Incitement, Racism and Xenophobia. Genocide is the most extreme type of incitement and racism.
Jeremy Hammond and co. are supporting incitement and genocide by propagating articles from unschorlarly “scholars” like Falk.
They are accessories.
Levon, read the whole article. Falk states explicitly that it was a genocide.
When a whole ethnic Armenian population is wiped out. By killing, torturing, raping, strangling, stabbing, cutting unborn baby out of womb, cutting ears, heads, breasts, and other body parts of 1.5 million people. And stealing western Armenia which is today eastern Turkey. Today Turks are denying genocide, tomorrow, they will protest to legalize genocide.
God bless the souls of ALL genocide victims. Where is the Justice People?
The same vulgar atrocities that you cite ehre plagued the Turkish women too during those years. Turkish people were killed, tortured, raped, strangled, stabbed, unborn babies were cut out of womb, their ears, heads, breasts, and other body parts were cut out and it is a proven fact that 1.5 million Turks were killed (some in the hands of teh Armenians or the enemy they collaborated with as well as famine and deisease caused by the Great War. As long as you ignore that Turks are people too, you will not gain my support.
I am not surprised when you claimed no Turks were killed or no Turkish villages were burned down. There were hundred of villages destroyed and hundred of thousands of Turkish victims. We have memorials (ziyarets) for them mostly in Eastern Turkey. The tallest one in city of Igdir, a 36 m monument close to Armenian border. In 1992, when Armenians committed massacre of 600+ Azeri Turks in NK, they were in denial until foreign press documented their crimes. Today, about 1 million of them exiled from their lands by Armenians. Who is liar?
You are the Liar and the falsifier and the denier of the crime of the century.
1. If Turkish villages were attacked and burned by Russian forces, does it mean that ARMENIANS did it? (Wishful thinking that is made into propaganda)
2. The Turkish Government killed and wiped clean the Greek, Assyrian and Arab chrisian exitence inside Turkey WHAT? Did they also go out and “massacre Turks”.. You SEE HOW YOU LIE?
3. The entire world press, missionaries, doctors, even German Officeres (Remember Ottoman Turkey was Germany’s ally in WWI) were repulsed and disgusted by the crimes against Armenian men, women and children. 1.5 million people died in the deportation routes in Raqqa, Meskeneh, Margadeh and Deir al Zawr in Syria.. If Turkish villages were “under attack” as you say.. what the !@#$% were Turkish ottoman special troops doing deporting caravan after caravan or doomed innocent people for weeks and months to the syrian deserts??? If Turkey won the Gallipoli war and the attacks against Mush against Russians in March 1916, what Turkish dead are you talking about? If Russian regiments killed turks and kurds why TURKEY NEVER BLAMED RUSSIA or ACCUSED RUSSIA OF GENOCIDE??? because there was no such thing when Turkey was busy to its neck with the elimination and annihilation of it christian minorities..
Two more things to make even your LEADERS expose your lies..
1. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founder of the modern Turkish Republic in 1923 and worshipped like god throughout Turkey, in an interview published on August 1, 1926 in The Los Angeles Examiner, talking about former Young Turks in his country…
“These left-overs from the former Young Turk Party, who should have been made to account for the MILLIONS OF OUR CHRISTIAN subjects who were ruthlessly driven en masse, from their homes and massacred, have been restive under the Republican rule.”
Notice that ATATURK admitted to the killings of millions of Armenians by CUP murderers.. Never mentioning any “civil war”, “inter-ethnic war”, “burned Turkish villages by Armenians” and other invented crap that your Government invents and makes you swallow it.
2. Regarding the Azeri dead in Khojali i would ask you to read the confession of the former President of Azerbaijan Ayaz Mutalibov who said that the massacre had been committed not by Armenian soldiers but by Azerbaijan Popular Front militants who shot their own civilians escaping through the corridor. (source http://www.regnum.ru/news/223355.html)
TELL ME why was the Azerbaijani journalist Chingiz Mustafayev who recorded the Khojaly Massacre was killed very suspiciously while he was trying to gather information about the attack of the Azerbaijan Popular Front militants to their own civilians?? Why was HE KILLED inside the zone controlled by the Azerbaijan National Front which took its army against Abulfaz Elcibey and killed hundreds of Azerbaijanis in a fight between Surat Huseynov and Abulfaz Elchibey??
3. WHY ARE YOU deliberately and knowingly not talking about the Azeri massacres in side Azerbaijan (Sumgait Feb. 27-March 1, 1988, Kirovabad Nov. 1988, Pogrom of Baku against all Armenians in the city Jan. 13, 1990, and Maragha April 10, 1992)?? I know why, because you are one-sided inhuman butchers and killers of the human race, and liars for the sake of covering your crimes..
WHO IS THE LIAR?? We all know it you Turks. Even Ataturk and Mutalibov say so.
Janaan when you copy and paste my writing then change the word “Armenian” to “Turkish” it does not change the fact of Armenian genocide. remember if it was not for some Turks risking their lifes and hiding Armenians in their homes when the Turkish army was killing Armenians and marching them in the deserts, many Armenians that are alive today would not be here, thanks to those Turks who saved some Armenians from death march. Even today in Turkey there are a lot of Turks that accept what happened was a systematic killings orchestrated by the Ottoman Turkish government. Ataturk put them on trial and gave them death penalty in “absentia”. Elif Shafak, Pamuk, Zakaroglu, Hrant Dink and many intellectuals, journalists, and writers are in Turkish jails, dead or live in fear of their lives, because the government has brainwashed its population with “Turkishness” go figure.
I have been to Armenia several times so I speak from some experience, but am not brainwashed on the issue. At the same time, I am not of Turkish descent or have any particular interest in Turkey.
But Armenia needs to wake up!
They have no open borders with Azerbaijan because of Karabagh. They have no open borders with Turkey because of the Genocide issue. They have Iran to the south, which much of the world distrusts and hates.
Rather than get hung up on the Genocide issue that happened almost 100 years ago, Armenians should concentrate first on more pressing current issues, such as getting rid of their corrupt government and President that have done nothing for the Armenian people since the end of Communism (except protect the oligarchs that brought them to power, lined their pockets, and shamefully kept much of the population in poverty).
Armenia could have easily increased their wealth beyond anything they could ever hope to get out of Turkey, if they had moved forward with the times, rather than wallow in self-pity. If they continue the same path, they will lose out. Armenia is landlocked. It relies upon Georgia and Iran for trade (two countries that also need – and will – maintain positive relationships with Azerbaijan and Turkey).
And another thing, if Turkey is such a terrible country, and should never be forgiven for what they did, why is that so many Armenian’s are quite happy to take a charter flight to Antalya each summer for a vacation and buy so many Turkish products that freely come into the country via Georgia? And why is that so many Armenians are happy to continue to live in what they believe is such a terrible country (there is a huge Diaspora population in Istanbul)? For some reason, the word ‘Hypocrites’ comes to mind!
I believe much of the Armenian population has never even read an alternate account of what happened. Instead they just listen to what they are told by parents, who listened to their parents. Whether it was Genocide or not, you cannot move forward until you at least read or listen to the Turkish viewpoint.
If you read many of the comments from Armenians here, you can see quite clearly that most of them react without actually reading or understanding what the article is saying. This is, sadly, typical of many Armenians – who have joined the self-pitying, Genocide cult!
Answer to “on the fence”
Another nice try to bribe us? To hell with your money.
Bribe you? About what?
Another typical Armenian comment! – no sensible response to make so instead of admitting the truth, you come up with something that makes no sense.
I am tempted to address the numerous points in your article which seem like rhetorical “gimmicks” (to use your unfortunate word), make unsupported assumptions and have little relevance to the articulation of the two main issues: the true meaning of genocide and how to bring about closure for it. One of these adventitious elements is the reference to the Karabagh issue, which has minimal relevance, at best, to the matters dealt with but has a nonetheless transparent political purpose.
But let me focus on the 5th paragraph where you say, “We need to distinguish genocide as a crime in international law from the assessment of historic events as genocide due to a clear pattern of deliberate killing of an ethnic or religious group.” This, by and large, is the meaning of genocide as understood in ordinary speech, narrow legalisms aside. This is where the paragraph in question should have ended. But it does not end there. It rather closes with an obscure sentence that throws a pall over what has just been clearly stated. I can only say this: If Turkey were half way as close to acknowledging the reality of what happened in 1915 as your article suggests, the best way for it to begin showing it is by demolishing the tomb in which Talat’s bones are enshrined in Istanbul’s “Monument of Liberty” and changing the names of all streets, boulevards and other public places that bear his name. If that had been done five years ago the controversial French Bill may never have come to a vote. Until that happens Armenians will have no choice but to continue in their struggle for closure.
Why is the Karabagh issue irrelevant?
Because it shows the crude side of the Armenians that you try to portray as innocent?
Would you rather blindsight that Armenian soldiers bet if the gender of the baby was a boy or a girl before cutting the Azeri woman’s womb to verify it?
All commenters in here with the suffix of -ian need to realise that they have become the kind of person that they try to blame the Turks with.
End with the propaganda and self pity.
End with the mythological empire (which lasted only 3 years) under Tigran the Great (who sold the country in exchange for money).
During World War-I, while all major powers of the World like: France, Britain and Russia were attacking Turkish lands, greed to establish an ‘independent Armenia’ with seafront in both the Black Sea and the Mediterranean was too much to swallow for the minority Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire which comprised less than 16% of the said lands.
Please pass on my comment to Peter Falk. He must have been duped just like Donald Bloxham (see: http://eurasiacritic.co.uk/category/author/jeremy-salt).
See the Report of International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars, Wash D.C. 1914, pp 326-330 for the Russian description of the state of Edirne). When Edirne fell, the large Ottoman garrison was disarmed, imprisoned, and left without food and shelter. Observers commented on corpses lying in heaps, men sleeping in the open in winter, the great incidence of cholera and all the other horrors that had been inflicted on them. What seemed to cause the greatest impression upon Western Europeans however was the fact that all the trees on the island of detention had been stripped of their bark “as far as a man can reach” (Same Report p.111)
Gustav Cirilli, who had witnessed the entire siege of the city of Edirne by the Bulgarians in 1913 saw Bulgarians rape and murder accompanied by pillage. (See Journal du Siége d’Adrinople, Paris, 1913, pp:155-156). See also F.O. 371-1763, No:15648, Young to Grey, Philippopoli, 5 April 1913.
Pardon me for not reading the rest of the article which highlights a major falsification at its start-up.
OK, I am reading the article, and here are my thoughts:
It is not that the Turks are not accepting the Armenian allegations of ‘genocide’. The Armenians are unable to prove their claims. Not counting the vote hungry politicians, they have been unsuccessful to convince any international court over the 95 years.
Their ‘evidence’ was refused by Great Britain’s Chief Justice during the Malta Trials while the Ottoman leaders like Talat Pasha were detained with the accusation of ‘Armenian killings’ in 1920. The Blue Book was available at the time and was not found reliable by the Chief Justice.
Also, even the courts do not condemn whole nations, with the grand children of a generation squeezed out of its land. Only Nazis were found guilty in the Nuremberg Trials. Only few leaders who gave out orders were found guilty of Srebrenica massacres, whereas Armenians worldwide have been blindly attacking all Turks and anything Turkish.
It is obvious that three generations of Armenian population is poisoned with this aggressive propaganda, creating a sick people. But it is not up to me to heal them. Whoever poisoned them, their Sunday School teachers (See the Reader’s Digest column of Line Abrahamian at: http://www.readersdigest.ca/mag/2006/10/hate_to_hope.php OR failing to find it there, please check out: http://www.tallarmeniantale.com/huseyin-hatred.htm ), summer camp organizers or Dashnak leaders, whoever brainwashed these masses should help them get over the sickness from their minds.
Raphael Lemkin was a 15 year old child during the said events of 1915 and he has never been in the vicinity to get a glimpse of the said events. Any opinion he had about the Armenian ‘geno-‘ was based on pure say so, tainted by Armenian propaganda. He had never listened to the Turkish side. Verdict without the defendant is neither ethical nor legal.
Unless you are referring to forgeries like the one shown in the purported ‘photograph’ of Armenians instead of that of the Balkan Muslims of 1913 or Naim Bey memoirs as ‘evidence’, there is no ‘evidence’ of Ottoman government orders to wipe out Armenians from Eastern Anatolia upon their collaboration with invading Russian Armies.
The French do not accept any guilt over killing of 1 million Algerians after the 1948 convention of genocide, why should the Turks be forced to feel guilty for defending their land during World War- I (1914-1918) from invading enemy and their collaborators? “Pipe Dream”!
The authors must be blind not to recognize that it is the Armenian side that is refusing the historic commission, not the Turkish side.
After investing heavily on their propaganda and keep using it as a glue to keep them united, I do not think Armenians will give up and accept for less. Their track record indicates that. They did it once when they claimed an Armenia from Trabzon to Adana (although they were NOT majority) before, during and after WWI. They sided with enemies of Ottoman Turks and killed, murdered, raped, burned, etc hundreds of thousands of Muslims. They rioted and handed over Van to Russian army before their delusional leaders arrested (the root of April 24). No need to say they lost. Armenia also lost an estimated 250K-400K after their first independent state in 1920-1922 due to famine, cold, drought, diseases, etc, the very same causes that claimed thousands of Turks and Armenians during WWI in Ottoman Turkey. Today, they do not have former allies of imperialist powers and the Sick Man of EU, yet they sided with Islamophobia/ Turkophobia and do exploit the weakness of political systems in the West. I bet they will lose again as power shift moving to the East and their Christian fellows and modern imperialists will not have power to dictate their policies upon Turkey. Their agenda is not sustainable. The landlocked Armenia lost 1/4 of her population in last 20 years and people are still fleeing away. Hope they, and Armenian diaspora, will find a better way and answer the Turkish proposal in 2005 to establish a bi-lateral commission to investigate the events and to accept the outcome. But, again, I am less hopeful as their current president claimed, his generation liberated(!) NK, and next generation should do the same for Eastern Turkey.
Regarding Janaan’s comment on Jan. 16, 1020:
“Why is the Karabagh issue irrelevant? Because it shows the crude side of the Armenians that you try to portray as innocent?”
Yes Janaan, exactly, you got it: because in the context of a supposedly scholarly and objective analysis an irrelevant comment intended to reflect badly on Armenian character is suddenly thrown in to reinforce the official Turkish position on a current political conflict. It has no legitimate place in the “analysis” and if were left out one would see that the paragraph would read much better. While we are at it though, if we wanted to pick and choose “irritants” in Armenian Turkish relations the unsolved assassination of Hrant Dink could have been mentioned as well, and so on, ad infinitum.
If
If Turks had wanted to kill non-Turks and non-Moslems, there would be no Hungarians, no Slavs, no Greeks, no Romans, no Armenians today. Armenians started killing Turks, burning villages
with the support of Russians, Europeans and Americans after 1878 and the massacre continued
until 1920’s. They even killed the Armenians who
refised to help the killer gangs. Armenians killed by Turks killed were either soldiers or militia, or teihr helpers. The real situation is admitted even by Armenian writers and those books can be found in Russian archives.
Why don’t you (for a change) pick up one book from Romanian, Hungarian, Serbian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Greek, Armenian , Arabic or Kurdish history book to read what your ancestors did to these peoples between 1299 and 1918?
It seems you have no notion of what history is.
Turqas you did a good job killing into Europe to the gates of Vienna. No surprise that civilized Europe wants no part of the Turkou in the EU.
Until you can settle your 12,000 human rights violations sitting in European Human Rights court.
Turks have killed many people and have lame excuses for each bloody murder of:
Alevis
Pontic Greeks
Assyrians
Lebanese Maronites
Arabic Tribes
Kurds
Armenians
Greeks
Cypriot Greeks
And many many more. Poor Turkey has a dark psyche and cloud hanging over them because they are in denial (the last stage of genocide is denial or blaming the victim)
Oh Yes, those darn Armenian 150,000 orphans caused it themselves. The Armenian traitors caused their own death by siding with Russia. All the women, children and elderly. Every Armenian business stolen, farms ransacked, Armenian women put into Turkish Harems for the sick sexual pleasure of the Turk. ALL THEIR FAULT.
Thank goodness 20 countries agree with the Armenian Genocide and over 43 states in the USA have proclaimations supporting the Armenian Genocide. Lets see if the Yahudis will also mandate the Armenian Genocide since they have no love lost for the backstabbing Turk anymore.
A lot has been made of Hrant Dink’s murder by a teenager in Istanbul. Most Turks did not approve of what happened,and thousands mourned for him. Yet, when the Armenian terrorist group ASALA assassinated dozens of Turkish diplomats around the world in the 1980’s, the Armenians applauded their “accomplishments” and collected money for their defense. The assassinated Turks are forgotten in the West. (Is the death of an Armenian more tragic than the deaths of dozens of Turks?)
Here in the United States we believe that a person, or entity, is innocent until proven guilty. After World War I, the British Crown brought 144 Ottoman officials to the island of Malta to try them for war crimes. After two years, they could not find evidence that the Turks had the intention to annihilate their Armenian citizens. The “Andonian Documents” submmited by the Armenians were proven to be forgeries. The United States was consulted, and the State Department replied that it had no proof to prove the Turks guilty. Consequently, the Turks were let go without any conviction.
Come on Armenians, your efforts at pressuring governments around the world to pass resolutions in your favor is not worth the paper they are written on. Since you are convinced that the Turkish-Armenian conflict was a genocide, and not the result of a bitter civil war fought by about 200,000 armed Armenians over the ownership of territory on which the Turks were the majority, then open up your archives in Armenia, Beirut, and Boston. Agree to have scholars and legal experts to come together and study those archives cited above as well as those in Turkey, Washinton D.C., and Moscow. Even though some may think it would be a “double jeopardy” to try the Turks again after a century, prove that it was a genocide in an international court.
Nejla
Watch the documentary by German filmakers on the Armenian Genocide called “Aghat” and see live footage how Turkish military guards the archives where their dark history before 1923 is.
No need to explore it, as the Europeans who established missionaries and orphanages for the ARmenians kept EXCELLENT records as well as American Ambassador Morganthau to Turkey with photos and extensive research in the Library of Congress.
Very very well documented even at the Vatican library.
Denmark
Austrailia
France
Lebanon
Ethiopia
and many other countries have first hand documentation and photos.
I apologize for not catching the fact that “amoral” was a typo for “a moral” in the 5th paragraph and therefore made too much of it. I close with the hope that Turkey will some day acknowledge the truth so that all of us can be liberated from the toxicity in which we are caught.