Threatening to damage its uniquely objective reputation in the smallest of the former Soviet states, ArmeniaNow.com has published a partisan commentary on a recent Jewish-American visit to Armenia written by a member of a Diaspora organization often criticized as “soft” for its cooperation with some not-so-pro-Armenian groups.  The same Armenian organization, some say, is now criticizing others for the same thing it has been doing for many years.

The commentary, provided by the Armenian Assembly of America (AAA) to its sponsored publication, reads:

A two man delegation representing the American Jewish Committee (AJC), has just finished a visit to Armenia accompanied by two employees of Gerard Cafesjian (founder of the Cafesjian Foundation and long-time philanthropist/investor in Armenia), where they met with the new president, defense minister and others. Their visit to Armenia in itself is not surprising, since the AJC had sought such a trip in conjunction with the Armenian Assembly of America for the past five years, but the Assembly has repeatedly said “no.”

The Assembly told the AJC that its opposition to the passage of the Armenian Genocide resolution made such a visit under Assembly auspices inappropriate. I was involved in the first rejection, as was the former Executive Director of the Assembly, Ross Vartian. Now, however, Vartian, is the Executive Director of Cafesjian’s private Washington, D.C. operation named USAPAC.

He arranged for Peter Rosenblatt, a prominent leader of the AJC and Barry Jacobs, who has the title of Strategic Studies Director, to meet with Armenia’s top leadership.

Jacobs circulates articles from various sources supporting not only Israeli positions but pro Turkish and pro Azerbaijani policies as well. Jacobs’s bias against Armenia is palpable. A New York Times photograph taken at the session of the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee showed Jacobs seated among a group of Turkish protesters wearing badges saying “NO” to the pending Genocide resolution.

[…]

According to David Boyajian, an outspoken Armenian activist who sparked the recent fight against the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for its refusal to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, the controversy at stake is not as much the obvious anti-Armenian Jewish leaders’ visit to Armenia (which needs to be condemned), but that the Armenian Assembly of America – the organization that now criticizes its breakaway wing – has a long history of cooperating with deniers of the Armenian Genocide itself.

In Boyajian’s words:

It takes chutzpah AAA – long-time apologists for the very Jewish denialists that it is now criticizing – to criticize USAPAC, not that USAPAC does not fully deserve it (and I have been emailing many people the past few days and getting them to call/write USAPAC).
 
And where does Armenia stand on this?  It’s president gave an audience to a genocide denier.  Maybe Armenia deserves some criticism too.
 
Fact is, AAA has done next to nothing to help on ADL/NPFH issue, and we all know it.
 
Suddenly, AAA is now some sort of hardliner?
 
The main reason AAA is criticizing USAPAC now is that the latter is run by Cafesjian and Vartian, who quit AAA.  Whom is the AAA kidding? 
 
AAA would be (very) well-advised to look to its own record.
 
This article is also full of outright falsehoods, and I will be proving it.

Jewcy, a website by young Jewish-American bloggers, has condemned Barry Jacobs, the gentleman who was given a free ride to Armenia by USAPAC, for denying the Armenian Genocide. As a supporter of open dialogue, I myself am not outright against USAPAC’s sponsorship of Jacobs’ trip to Armenia pending on the results. If Jacobs gives up his anti-Armenian campaign, which is highly unlikely to happen, then USAPAC will be proven right in its judgment. 

It has become a major political controversy, and Barack Obama is a favorite among many Armenians for supporting the cause of recognizing the Armenian Genocide. And Ronald Reagan is often mentioned as having used the word “genocide” in describing the WWI annihilation of western Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

And despite all the controversy around formally condemning the Armenian genocide as such, no one knew until now that U.S. is on record recognizing the Armenian genocide as early as 1951 – that is three years after the Genocide Convention was adopted.

In its written statement to the International Criminal Court right after WWII, the United States mentioned the Roman persecution of Christians, the Turkish killings of Armenians, and the Nazi murders of Jews and Poles as “outstanding examples” of genocide.  

INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE

PLEADINGS, ORAL ARGUMENTS, DOCUMENTS

RESERVATIONS TO THE CONVENTION ON THE PREVENTION

AND PUNISHMENT OF THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE

ADVISORY OPINION OF MAY 28th, 1951

CONTENTS

[…]

PART 1.-REQUEST FOR ADVISORY OPINION AND DOCUMENTS OF THE WRITTEN PROCEEDINGS

[…]

SECTION C-WRITTEN STATEMENTS

[…]

4. – Written statement of the Government of the United States of America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

[…]

4. WRITTEN STATEMENT OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

[…]

1. The Genocide Convention

The Genocide Convention resulted from the inhuman and barbarous practices which prevailed in certain countries prior to and during World War II, when entire religious, racial and national minority groups were threatened with and subjected to deliberate extermination. The practice of genocide has occurred throughout human history. The Roman persecution of the Christians, the Turkish massacres of Armenians, the extermination of millions of Jews and Poles by the Nazis are outstanding examples of the crime of genocide. This was the background when the General Assembly of the United Nations considered the problem of genocide. Not once, but twice, that body declared unanimously that the practice of genocide is criminal under international law and that States ought to take steps to prevent and punish genocide.

[Source: http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/12/11767.pdf ]

The document was pointed out to in a blog operated by an Irish professor. The Armenian Assembly of America informed about the document in a mass e-mail.

This new “discovery” will perhaps make the work of Barack Obama easier in recognizing the Armenian Genocide if he is elected as president. The bottom line is that the U.S. has never denied the Genocide. They know politically they can’t mention it given Turkey’s hysteria. Historically, even scholars on Turkish payroll are now backing up from denial.

And so if Armenians could spend 5% of the efforts they spend on genocide recognition on fighting human trafficking, maybe Armenian girls and women won’t have to be sexual slaves in the UAE and Turkey. Am I changing the topic? Yes I am. Isn’t it time to fight our own problems?

The International Herald Tribute has an interesting article on diaspora Armenians immigrating to Armenia.

What would prompt a young family to abandon a comfortable life and move to a poor country where running water is still a luxury for many, politics are messy and the threat of war looms large?

For Aline Masrlian, 41, her husband, Gevork Sarian, and their two children, it was their motherland calling.

“It is something special when you live in your own land,” said Masrlian, who moved here after her family had lived for generations in Syria.

Lured by the economic opportunities in a fast changing country and the lure of home, some people from Armenia’s vast diaspora are moving to the land that their ancestors had long kept alive as little more than an idea. Longtime residents, meanwhile, are no longer fleeing the country in large numbers.

While 3.2 million people live in this landlocked Caucasus mountain nation — the smallest of the ex-Soviet republics — an estimated 5.7 million Armenians reside abroad. The largest disappears are in Russia (2 million), the United States (1.4 million), Georgia (460,000) and France (450,000), according to government data.

[…]

While Turkey says it wants to discuss “the events of 1915” with Armenia, its Ambassador to the United States has fired one of its own payroll scholars for doing the unimaginable – referring to the Armenian genocide as such.

Recounting the fiasco, The Armenian Reporter writes in its May 31, 2008 issue that a in a letter to Turkey’s government “the Middle East Studies Association [MESA] on May 27 condemned the forced resignation of Donald Quataert from the chair of the Institute of Turkish Studies after Prof. Quataert affirmed in a book review that ‘what happened to the Armenians readily satisfies the U.N. definition of genocide.'”

Expecting retaliation  from at least other scholars on Turkish payroll (but apparently not from the Ambassador himself), Prof. Quataert urged pro-Turkish historians “to take their rightful responsibility to perform the proper research” on the Armenian annihilation of 1915.

The above words, mentioned in a scholarly book review by Dr. Quataert, angered Turkish Ambassador Nebi Şensoy – honorary chairman of the Institute of Turkish Studies – who requested the scholar to retract them.

“We are enormously concerned that unnamed high officials in Ankara felt it was inappropriate for Professor Quataert to continue as chairman of the board of governors and threatened to revoke the funding for the ITS if he did not publicly retract statements made in his review or separate himself from the Chairmanship of the ITS,” wrote MESA president Mervat Hatem in the letter of protest to Turkey’s Prime Minister.

The Armenian Reporter states that:

[…]

A professor of history at the State University of New York at Binghamton, Mr. Quataert chaired the ITS board of governors from 2001 until December 13, 2006. In 1985, as an associate professor at the University of Houston, he was among the 69 Ottoman, Turkish, and Middle Eastern area scholars who petitioned against a House Joint Resolution that memorialized “the one and one half million people of Armenian ancestry who were victims of genocide perpetrated in Turkey between 1915 and 1923.”

As he recalled the emerging Ottoman and Turkish area scholarship of the 1980s from a vantage point twenty years later, Prof. Quataert wrote in his book review, “the authors were not writing critical history but polemics” and “many of their works were directly sponsored and published by the Turkish government.” To date, said MESA, most of the scholarship in this area still fails to adhere to the highest professional standards “and as such serves neither the field of Ottoman-Turkish studies nor the interests of the Republic of Turkey and its citizens.”

Nevertheless, both Prof. Quataert in his review and MESA with its 2005 Academic Freedom Award lauded the new wave of critical thinking in this field – specifically mentioning a conference held at Istanbul’s Bilgi University “despite official intimidation and public harassment,” as Prof. Quataert recalled.

[…]

While it is sadenning to see an academic being de facto fired by a politician, it is encouraging that a scholar on Turkish payroll has finally realized and admitted the truth of the Armenian Genocide.  

In his weekly column, California Courier publisher Harout Sassounian writes that “Prof. Quataert’s transformation from a denialist to a believer in the Armenian Genocide is based on the growing body of scholarship in recent years both within and outside Turkey. A comparison of the 2000 and 2005 editions of his book, ‘The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922,’ illustrates the gradual evolution of his position on the Armenian Genocide. In a sharp departure from the cautious language used in his first  edition, Dr. Quataert… comes to the conclusion in his 2006 book review that what had happened to the Armenians in 1915 was indeed a Genocide.”

Reminding that this is not the first controversy including the Turkish-sponsored organization, College of William and Mary professor emeritus Roger Smith wrote in a discussion forum on Armenian-Turkish relations that as a de facto lobbying organization ITS shouldn’t be tax-free.

[…]

The revival of the bloodiest war in the former Soviet Union may start sooner than expected, as Azerbaijan seemingly tries to inflame tensions with neighboring Armenia. Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave, known to its residents and outsiders alike as “a region without rights,” is making clear its refusal to return four captured soldiers that Armenia says erroneously entered Azeri territory.

Additionally, local media in Azerbaijan report the authorities are preparing to “punish” the Armenian soldiers who crossed the border two months ago. According to Trend News, an Azerbaijani Military of Defense spokesperson has said that “Armenians who attempted to commit sabotage in Azerbaijan will be punished in line with the legislation.”

While not specifying what the “punishment” will be, Azerbaijan’s new tough message interestingly accompanied ultra-nationalist president Ilham Aliyev’s visit to Nakhichevan, the region he hails from. Aliyev, who has threatened to restart the war against Armenia over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, made several stops in Nakhichevan including overseeing the opening of a hospital in the district of Djulfa – the same area where local soldiers reduced the world’s largest Armenian cemetery to dust in December 2005.

Djulfa’s destruction, which was condemned by the European Parliament, is part of a number of recent failures by the Aliyev regime which seem to have made Azerbaijan’s authoritarian establishment even more militant. A few months ago, France, Russia and the United States – the three countries involved in negotiating the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process – loudly rejected a resolution on Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijan in the United Nations.

With the enormous oil boom and an almost omnipresent hatred against Armenia, Azerbaijan’s regime seems to think it can afford a war against Armenia. Or maybe they are trying to scare the world?

As I have mentioned before, I will be on a panel discussing the post-election unrest in Armenia this weekend. I hope I will meet some of you in New York during the symposium. For those of you who cannot attend, below is an abstract of my talk:

When Armenia erupted in violence earlier this year, many were hesitant to believe reports of deaths and destruction. Few expected violence in a tiny republic that has been harshly affected by an ongoing economic blockade and a recent war with neighboring Azerbaijan.

But the assumption that Armenians are united given their collective experience of oppression was challenged on the streets of Yerevan. With cries for “Justice,” many Armenians in their homeland protested corruption and a perceived conspiracy by government officials, most of whom were from the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Many Armenians in the Diaspora, concerned with their historic homelands image and national security, viewed the movement as one destabilizing Armenia.

While it is correctly argued that many of the protestors hoped to receive personal gain by supporting the opposition, the Levon Ter-Petrosyan team for many others seemed to be a medium to express outrage against unaccountable and unresponsive government. The opposition was the mean and not the end. Conversely, much of the outcry has been expressed in regional hatred, raising the question whether injustice can bring about justice.

More specifically, one wonders whether a government can change without a change in the society. What’s the relationship between institutions and the society? Which one holds the lead in transforming politics and traditions?

According to Asbarez:

Armenian residents from Batman province in Turkey have begun demanding assets–churches and cemeteries–which have been abandoned since 1915.

The Istanbul-based Sassoun Armenian Relief and Cultural Society, whose members are descendents of Armenians from Batman, Bitlis, Moush and Van has begun a movement to reclaims Armenian churches, cemeteries and other assets.

Established in 2006, the organization’s has begun researching real estate deed registries to pinpoint the said assets, announced the organization’s president Aziz Daghc. “The organization was established in Istanbul, since government officials are more willing to work with non-Muslims,” said Daghc.

These abandoned assets have either been confiscated by the state and are being used for various purposes or have been sold to third parties. The organization is meticulously researching each asset to approach the proper entities for their return to the community.

For example, in the Batman province, efforts are underway to have control signed over to the Armenian community of the Gomg Church, which is being used as a barn, atop the Mareto Mountain and the Ardzvig village church and cemetery.

Daghc has sent an appeal to the proper authorities in Batman province pointing out that the region has no mechanism to defend the Armenian population, which regularly is under attack solely because of their national origin.

The appeal also cites provisions of the Lausanne Treaty, which call for the state to protect churches, cemeteries and other assets belonging to minorities and not purpose them for other uses or sell them to third parties.

Reflecting widespread lack of objectivity and often uninformed journalism in Armenia, A1Plus has a story in which Amberin Zaman, Turkey’s and the region’s reporter for The Economist, is wrongly depicted as an apologist for the Turkish state. Describing a discussion between Zaman, who is of Turkish and Bangladeshi descent, and Turkish politician Cem Toker in Armenia’s capital Yerevan, A1Plus reports:

[…]

“Turkey proudly states that 99.9% of its population are Muslims. And where are the Armenians, Jews, Greeks? Why are they gone? Doesn’t it mean that something is definitely wrong? You can see the investments of the Armenian people while walking in Istambul. I am greatly displeased with Turkey’s attitude towards Armenians”, declares Toker.

Amber Zaman, a Turkish journalist, contradicted him in the description of the current situation in Turkey. Zaman, who introduced herself as a free journalist, is the wife of Joseph Penington, the US temporary Chargé d’Affaires in Armenia. Mrs. Zaman stated that Turkey’s steps towards Democracy are quite evident.

“Turkey still has much to do but it has made a great progress towards democracy lately. Ten years ago the Kurds were imprisoned simply for calling themselves Kurds. Whereas, today they are even allowed to have broadcasts in their mother tongue. Besides, the capital punishment has been abolished in my country. You give a tough assessment of the situation, Mr. Toker”, noticed Amber Zaman.

[…]

A1Plus only describes part of the conversation (and consistently misspells the journalist’s first name). Zaman, who is a good friend as I have mentioned before, has sent me and other pen pals the following e-mail. In Amberin Zaman’s words:

This article misrepresents the discussion that took place at the conference on Turkish-Armenian relations held in Yerevan last week.. It makes it sound as if I were defending the treatment of Armenians in Turkey.

Not in the least, I was merely responding to Cem Ozer’s portrayal of Turkey as a banana republic where elections are a total sham and there has been zero progress towards democracy.

Amazingly, he was in the same breath able to defend the closure case [by nationalist groups] against the [ruling Islamic party] AK on the grounds that it was a  way of restoring democracy!!!

This gentleman is the chairman of a party that stood up for Dogu Perincek, the ultra nationalist politician who made a point of publicly denying the genocide in Switzerland so that he could be prosecuted and draw attention to the Turkish “cause.”

Moreover, I  reminded the Turkish participants who chided Armenia for not embracing Turkey’s proposal for a historic commission that the proposal presupposed the  outcome of the research that would be undertaken that “there was no genocide”.

I also expressed my revulsion at [Turkish Prime Minister] Erdogan’s comments before the National Press Club in Washington that “we even gave the deportees pocket money.”

Finally, I noted that if the Turks thought that in establishing formal ties with Armenia, the diaspora would somehow disappear they were quite wrong,  that the past would not simply disappear and that it was wrong to view the diaspora as some monolithic bloc, that there was a plurality of views  within it.

I deplored the Turkish official efforts to portray the diaspora as  some “malevolent wedge” between Turkey and Armenia and reminded the Turkish participants that some 60 percent of Armenian citizens came from Anatolia too.

While I am not a believer in conspiracies, I suspect one reason behind A1Plus’ inaccurate and selective depiction of the conversion to be sexism. Firstly, Amberin Zaman is a young beautiful woman, and the stereotype in Armenia states that women (especially young and beautiful) are not as intelligent and capable as (especially older) men. Secondly, being the wife of the acting U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, she is expected to be obedient and, thus, behave and say things the way that her own husband is supposed to do (as any United States State Department employee who wants to keep their job under the Bush administration, her husband cannot afford to publicly talk about the Armenian Genocide).

A1Plus’ particular report also resonates with blind anti-Turkish sentiment in Armenia which sees any criticism of the Turkish state as “good.” While Turkey’s current Islamic establishment is not in any way pro-Armenian, nationalist “secular” forces who want to overthrow the current party in charge are far more radically anti-Armenian. Being “secular” in Turkey doesn’t mean believing in freedom of religion (and also in freedom not to be religious); “secular” in Turkey more than often means being fascist ultra-nationalist for whom believing in the greatness of “Turkishness” is more important than believing in any idea including God and spirituality.

A1Plus should write another, more objective and more informed story about the discussion. Amberin Zaman, with her articles in The Economist, has been telling stories of ignored parts of the Armenian Genocide. She is a courageous woman with an objective outlook and needs recognition for her efforts to bring Turkish and Armenian people together through writing.

Reflecting the prejudiced spirit of the post-election unrest in Armenia, nazarian has published a list of “unArmenians” that includes artists, academicians, bureaucrats, oligarchs and even some opposition leaders who are arguably supportive of the current establishment. 

When, on March 1, 2008, a high school friend from Yerevan woke me up with text messages urging me to update Blogian, I asked him why he was involved in the opposition movement. His answer was that Robert Kocharyan (the president at the time who was going to be replaced by Serzh Sargsyan) was a Turk! My friend’s reference was to Kocharyan’s and Sargsyan’s origin in Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave in Turkic Azerbaijan that sustained its independence through a bloody war in the 1990s. Ironically, my friend’s father also hails from Karabakh.

Days after ten people died on the streets, I asked my friend again why he was supporting Levon Ter-Petrosyan (Armenia’s first president and the current leader of the opposition). His answer was that he was fighting for freedom of speech.

While there is a sense of working for justice among people on either aisle of Armenia’s post-election conflict (pro-government people arguing for stability and opposition people arguing for more democracy), there has been an awful hatred in both sides. That hatred, unfortunately, doesn’t only show the division but implies prejudices in Armenia’s society – hating Turks, anti-Semitism, sexism and other kind of biases.

This morning, for instance, I received a fake photo (posted above) of Armenia’s first president Levon Ter-Petrosyan with a kippah with the Star of David on his hand. Ironically, I didn’t receive the photo from a teenager but from a self-perceived intellectual from Iran’s Armenian community (and a reader of this blog). While Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s wife is Jewish, attacks against the opposition have often used anti-Semitic remarks.

More ironically, a self-declared anarchist website, which loudly supports the opposition, also has fake photos depicting Armenia’s government not as Turks, despite the popular sentiment among opposition radicals, but as Nazis.

And Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s official blog posts an image by Ara Aslanyan that depicts Armenia’s current president Serzh Sargsyan’s chest as a vagina (suggesting that the president is a “pussy”). This is after the opposition’s strategy to use women in their protests.

Until Armenia’s society condemns this kind of racism and sexism, their work for justice is not going to prevail.