In this article by a security analyst and a reader of this blog, who will remain anonymous per her/his request, the author deconstructs Turkey’s nationalist “survival” rhetoric.

The national discourse in Turkey that justifies the country’s current borders goes as follows, “European imperialists attempted to carve up the homeland, and the heroic Mustafa Kemal Gazi Pasha Ataturk stopped them.” This perception is not too farfetched when one considers the ulterior motives of the Sykes-Picot agreement, French ambitions in Cilicia, and the Greek invasion of Western Anatolia (although Greeks and Armenians comprised a majority of the city of Smyrna). However, when it comes to Turkey’s border with Georgia and Armenia, Turks usually tiptoe around the issue quietly, and may, if compelled to do so, mumble something unintelligible about Sevres’.

The 1920 Treaty of Sevres’ assigned to Armenia the provinces of Van, Erzurum, Trabzon, and a number of others. Turks justify their claim on this territory by citing demographics; Armenians constituted a minority in these areas. Made possible in part by the Armenian Genocide (aka “humane relocations”), this sly argument is indisputably correct. However, this rhetoric still does not account for present day borders, because it fails to account for the present day Turkish provinces of Ardahan, Kars, and Igdir (and also Artvin with respect to Georgia).

Turkey captured these provinces from the Democratic Republic of Armenia (DRA) in the 1920 Turkish-Armenian War.  With regard to this particular swath of territory, the Turkish anti-imperialist thesis breaks down entirely, and its advocates are forced to mention the Ottoman-Russian border prior to the 1878 Treaty of Berlin. This is truly ridiculous and ad-hoc reasoning, because it would have also entitled Turkey to conquer Libya, Syria, Albania, Bulgaria, and many other countries. Moreover, it does not even apply to Igdir, which had previously belonged to Persia.[i] Turkey’s rationale is further tarnished because it is based on treaties made by the Ottoman Empire, which were repudiated by the Turkish Revolutionary Movement, and in addition would be an association that genocide deniers adamantly argue does not exist.

The capture of these territories also invalidates Turkey’s demographics argument regarding the Sevres’ territories, because Armenians constituted a vast majority in Kars, Igdir, and probably Ardahan.[ii]After hearing this almost universally accepted fact, some Turks will then say that Muslims once constituted a majority in those provinces, but Armenian immigrants swamped them, and that the Russians also exiled the Muslims. However, not only are Turks largely responsible for this demographic shift since many Armenian immigrants came as a result of the Genocide/“relocations,” but by using the principle of historical demographics, Turkey once again undermines its claims regarding the Sevres’ Treaty territories assigned to Armenia. As recently as the mid-nineteenth century, Armenians constituted a majority in the province of Van, and the Ottoman Empire purposely settled Circassian refugees in this area for the express purpose of diluting this majority; this similar to what China is doing to Tibet.[iii] If one wanted to go even further back in history, he would find that Armenians constituted a majority in the territories north of Van as well.

As a measure of last resort, Turks will cite the skirmishes between the DRA and the Turkish speaking tribes in Olti. The Turkish revolutionaries were justified in conquering this region, they will say, in order to liberate their ethnic and religious kin across the border. This argument has several fatal flaws however. First, Turks must acknowledge that the Otli tribes were armed insurrectionists, and in doing so, must either stop yapping incessantly about armed Armenian rebels in order to justify the Genocide, or they must accept that the Armenians would have been entirely justified in “relocating” the Olti tribes in the exact same manner that the Turks “relocated” the Armenians; ultimately ensuring the tribes’ destruction by rape, pillage, and massacre. Lastly, they must also retroactively accept as just, the Russian invasions of Anatolia over the previous century, as those incursions were also conducted under the pretext of liberating coreligionists from infidel oppression.

In essence the Turkish view regarding these three provinces can best be described by using a fortress as an analogy; where, in order to sure up one wall, a Turkish advocate must cannibalize stones from another wall from the same fortress. The conquest of these territories cannot be justified on the basis of demographics, as the Armenians would have equal claim to Van. Nor can it be justified on the basis of the 1877 border, as that links the Turkish Revolutionaries to the genocidal Ottoman Empire. And lastly, it cannot be justified using the Olti tribes, because that undermines their “arguments,” which deny the veracity of the Armenian Genocide. Instead, the truth of the matter is that the Turkish Revolutionaries invaded the DRA simply because they were superior in numbers and arms, because they still had imperialist ambitions, and because they had a deep seated hatred for Armenians; clearly evidenced by Kazim Karabekir’s yearning to obliterate the ruins of Ani purely out of spite. Present day Turks need look more objectively at the past, and stop seeing their ancestors only as innocent victims who fought a just war for survival against insidious imperialists and Gavourler.

[i] Ragip Zarakolu’s “Accusing Armena of denying Kars Treaty, does not Turkey provoke it to refuse recognizing Igdir as Turkish territory?”

[ii] VirtualAni.org  see page on Melville Carter, “The Land Of The Stalking Death: a Journey Through Starving Armenia on an American Relief Train.”

[iii] Van’s Armenian Majority found in Louise Nalbandian’s The Armenian Revolutionary Movement, and resettlement of Circassians found in Taner Akcam’s From Empire to Republic : Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide.

John Hughes, editor of ArmeniaNow, writes a moving column expressing his feelings about Barack Obama’s historic victory:

When, at 8:01 a.m. Wednesday in Yerevan, the television I’d been psychically tethered to all night announced that Barack Obama had been voted the next President of the United States, the image in my head replaced the broadcast on CNN with footage of a childhood that added relevance to the vast historicity of the moment.

Tow-headed and not yet mindful that a world existed outside the narrow one in which I toddled, I stood on a stool in an Alabama public square to drink from one of two water fountains. Turns out that the one I’d chosen for refreshment from the summer heat was marked “Colored”. Had I known, I’d have stepped to the “Whites Only” bubbler. Children don’t know. Bless them.

Laughing, pointing and notifying my parents of their youngest’ violation of custom and law my older brother and sister shamed me for reasons that still baffle me. I’d picked the fountain designated for Negroes. For me, it was just a cool drink.

In that year, the man I happily now call MY president, was born far from Alabama prejudice, and closer to the heart of whatever is right in this world whether there or here.

And when, from the home state of Abraham Lincoln, President-elect Obama addressed the divided nation I have left behind for this developing nation, his message referenced the most famous speech of his hero and mine: “. . . we will get there . . . ”

It is a speech I memorized for a high school project in public speaking, but did not practice aloud for fear that I’d be overheard in a household where Martin Luther King Jr. was a devil, and a future in which a Barack Obama fulfilling Rev. King’s vision was not only inconceivable but horrifying.

It was a world that put me at odds with every form of authority to which I was subjected, whether parent, teacher or sports coach. A minister I idolized in the church I attended told me, earning laughs from those around him: “I’m not prejudiced. I just don’t like niggers.”

It shouldn’t have surprised me, then, when tears welled in my eyes as with those on that CNN broadcast, on realizing that the America that taught me to look beyond the reality of my environment had delivered a dream for an apparently deserving servant and his beautiful and elegant family.

I watched Michelle Obama embrace Vice-President elect Joe Biden, and recalled that for most of my childhood, it was forbidden for American TV to show a white person and black person kissing.

Barack Obama is not America’s right choice because he is black. Nor is celebration of his achievement reserved only for the African-American community. Without white voters, Hispanic voters, Asian voters, Native American voters, this son of Kansas and Kenya would have been another history footnote rather than history maker.

The election of this new American president, beyond all the dangerously Pollyanna reactions to the moment (including mine), represents far more universal ideologies than race or nationality or age or gender. Profoundly simplistic, yes, the November 4 American election revived belief that should not be owned by Americans only.

Listening to Barack Obama’s graciously reserved acceptance speech, I heard a message for my new Armenian wife, whose hope of a better Armenia gets crushed again and again each time an election here goes wrong. I heard a message for my new Armenian children – about the same age as the Obama daughters:

Give democracy and human decency a chance, and a way will be found to fulfill your aspirations.

As an Alabama child I saw dogs released on those whose sacrifice made a way to Barack Obama’s stage in Chicago’s Grant Park, and watched TV coverage of white firemen blasting black protestors with blistering water hoses. In this new home of my middle age, I have seen water cannons turned on those who – for reasons other than race – sought change in this society; have heard minorities of every stripe cursed for either their color, their sexual persuasion, or their ethnicity, among these people who should know better than most the evil of ignorance-based hate.

Whether in the Alabama of my youth or in this Armenia of my current reality caught between socialism’s failures and democracy’s promises; wherever discrimination and doubt muffle the heartbeat of hope, the election of Barack Hussein Obama turns campaign jingo into a dogma that I wish these children of mine to realize, as did I, in the early Wednesday Armenia hours: “Yes. We Can”.

Image: A poster on University of Colorado Denver Professor Glenn Morris’ door.

While Native Americans are United States citizens, they are also considered part of the Fourth World – the Earth’s often invisible indigenous peoples. In a way, Native Americans don’t have much voice in the United States. That’s largely because the “one person, one vote” form of democracy doesn’t always adequately reflect the ideas of the aboriginal people who didn’t really give consent to become part of the United States. But in 2008, Native America seems excited about the US elections more than ever.

I interview Prof. Glenn Morris, a long-time American Indian Movement (AIM) activist and director of the Fourth World Center at the University of Colorado Denver a day after the election.

Morris, who received his law degree from Harvard several years before president-elect Barack Obama did, seems cautiously excited about the next leader of the United States. The indigenous professor says he is happy that he has been proven wrong about his prediction that racism wouldn’t let Obama get elected. He’s worried, though, about false perception of overcoming racism.

Image: Prof. Glenn Morris at the Fourth World Center (University of Colorado)

“My concern has been the tendency to suggest that Obama’s election demonstrates a post-racial era. The danger of defining race as black and white allows the United States to ignore the country’s original sin – the Doctrine of Discovery.” Morris says that racism will be prevalent until the country “looks at the foundational injustice in the creation” of the United States, with a reference to the genocide against Native Americans.

Image: Obama in an indigenous Kenyan dress

The professor says that there are different Indian voices in the elections. But the Navajo nation, explains Morris, had a role in delivering Mexico (and almost Arizona) for Obama. And while the restless activist says he’s excited about Obama’s idea to have a presidential adviser on Native American issues, he hopes that “Native participation will translate into policy.” In Canada, for instance, the federal government often makes decisions affecting aboriginal communities by consulting with First Nations. Morris thinks that consent, not consultation, should be the level of such communication.

Was the Native vote numerically or symbolically important for Barack Obama? Morris says Obama’s outreach to Americans Indians was “partly personal, partly ideological, and partly tactical.”

Obama “may not understand [Native American issues] entirely,” says Glenn Morris, but America’s 44th president seems the only leader so far “who may kind of get it.”

Voices Without Votes, a Global Voices and Reuters project, has just published my post summarizing some Armenian reactions to the U.S. elections. The post is available here. It is also linked on Reuters: http://blogs.reuters.com/us/.

While institutionalized corruption has become an unfortunate norm in post-Soviet Armenia, some flagrant cases of abuse of power can still be shocking. Consider this: the chief of the Ministry of Nature Protection is buidling himself a summer house in an area that he recently delisted from the national preservation list.

According to Hetq:

“A few months ago, when the Armenian government was debating the permissible amounts of water that could be drawn from Lake Sevan, the press was full of reports that the agreed upon 360 million cubic meters of water to be extracted wasn’t needed for agricultural irrigation usage but rather to save the numerous property sites of government officials from the rising lake’s waters.

At the time, government officials and National Assembly Deputies labeled such allegations as ridiculous and without merit.

The private house pictured here on the shore of Lake Sevan, with its numerous annexes, belongs to Aram Harutyunyan, the Minister of Nature Protection. (The photo depicts only a portion of the private compound). Construction on the house began this year and renovation work is still continuing. The house is located on the road that leads from the village of Shorzha to the Artanish Nature Preserve, a few meters removed from the shoreline. Sources close to “Hetq” claim that one year ago the house site was a part of the Artanish Preserve lands and that it was detached from the Preserve’s boundaries after a decision passed by the government. “

“Yes we can do anything we want” is not a new slogan in Armenian politics. Just last month, news broke that the now-speaker of the Parliament was building a hotel complex in another natural reserve.

Photo: Obama’s largest campaign rally in Denver, Colorado, on October 26, 2008

Today I took my Mom to a Lady’s Night at an Armenian friend’s house in Boulder, where in lieu of birthday presents the host had asked guests to donate to the Barack Obama campaign on her personalized page. Although not a citizen just yet, this was not the first time my Mom made a donation to the Obama campaign. In fact, proportionally speaking, she is perhaps a top Obama donor.

While sometimes it feels that to be part of the “real Armenian community” in the United States one needs to live in Southern California, actually right now Colorado is the Armenian-American political center – at least through Tuesday.

I learned from local Armenian-American volunteers for the Obama campaign that there are approximately 3,000 registered voters with “ian” and “yan” last names (the common ending of Armenian names) in Colorado, a swing state. This basically means that Armenian-Americans in Colorado could decide the U.S. elections.