In case you missed, the news that Kurdish rebells have killed 17 or so Turkish soldiers has made world headlines. 

But the fact that, according to the same sources, “Turkey’s military general staff said 32 rebels were killed in continuing clashes in the southeast” doesn’t make headlines such as “32 Kurdish rebells killed.”

It’s the Turkish soldiers who we care about, because “Turkey’s tougher stance has helped propel global oil prices to record highs over the past week.”

And for that reason, perhaps, America’s president Bush “strongly condemns the violent attacks in Hakkari Province and extends his condolences to the families who lost loved ones and to all the people of Turkey.”  

But when it comes to extending his condolences to all the Armenian people for the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians, Mr. Bush… “HEY, the gas prices are rising I have to run.”

So yes, 17 Turkish soldiers are worth more than 32 Kurdish rebells and 1.5 million Armenian civilians. 

Thanks to our reader Ani for bringing the news item to our attention.

In a recent interview to the Los Angeles Times, visiting Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan said he doesnt think “Turks will invade Armenia” if the United States House of Representatives passes a symbolic resolution calling the Armenian Genocide as such.

An interesting article in The New York Times about the Armenian Genocide and some Jewish communities of the East summs up the Foxman issue that wasn’t brought up to such a national level at the time of the heat a few months ago.

Our friends at Jewcy.com are also quoted in the article. Click here to read the article.

The debate in this affluent Boston suburb, home to many Jews and Armenians, centered on a local program to increase awareness of bias. The issue was not the program itself, but its sponsor, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish advocacy group, which has taken a stand against a proposed Congressional resolution condemning the Armenians’ deaths as genocide.

“If you deny one genocide,” said Dr. Jack Nusan Porter, a child of Holocaust survivors and a genocide studies scholar who attended the meeting, “you deny all genocides.”

A wonderful article by a brave Turk in the Turkish Daily News

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Orhan Kemal Cengiz  There is a book on my bookcase which has been waiting for some time to be read. There is a picture on the cover of the book: Turkish and Armenian flags tied to each other. The name of the book is “The Truth Will Set Us Free” and it is written by George Jerijan, a British citizen of Armenian descent. While I was again considering reading the book I came across a newspaper article and I learned that the book had already been translated into Turkish and Mr. Ragıp Zarakoğlu, the owner of the Belge publishing house that translated and published the Turkish version of the book, is now being tried under article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code. This Thursday the directors of the weekly Armenian journal Agos were punished with one year of imprisonment under this article.

  What happened in 1915 in the Ottoman Empire cannot be discussed in Turkey freely. Either prosecution or “street violence” can interfere with any discussion on this matter at any time. We do not discuss it and we are very angry if foreigners discuss it too. Unfortunately an American resolution will not contribute to this “no discussion situation” in Turkey in any positive way. On the contrary, we will witness a sharp increase in xenophobia and ultra-nationalism, and we may witness some violent acts against non-Muslim minorities who have always been regarded as the “internal extension of external enemies.” I really hope the government is now taking the necessary security precautions to protect these vulnerable groups and make sure that they will not be harmed by any vandalism potentially perpetrated by ultranationalist groups in the wake of the passage of the Armenian genocide resolution in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. Congress.

  Turkey is going to do everything in its power to stop the passage of this bill by the U.S. Congress. Every year we have the same “crisis.” This resolution appears on the agenda of the U.S. Congress and Turkey does whatever it can do stop the passage of this resolution and then we “achieve” to stop it. But no one discusses how we stop it. Do we convince the Americans that nothing like the genocide has happened in our history or is it stopped as a result of threats to American interests? How long can Turkey continue to “convince” Americans on this subject? What are we going to do with other countries that have already accepted similar resolutions in their parliaments and with those in the process of accepting them? How long can we continue this “I am not discussing it and I will not allow the discussion of this matter by anyone else!” attitude? Us versus the rest of the world! I am one of those people who believes that the discussion of and confrontation with our past is first and foremost necessary for our own “psychological health”! How long can Turkey continue with this total amnesia about some parts of its history? I think that the label, the name or qualification, of what had happened in history is not very important at the moment. Something terrible happened in these territories. When the topic arises we keep saying, “Armenian gangs attacked Ottoman forces, Armenians were about to break up some parts of the country, they killed Turkish people, they were in alliance with foreign forces,” but what else? Many things happened, there is no doubt about that. But what happened to the Armenians? Why do not we see any emotional reaction to what happened to the Armenians? We are a nation that pays respect even to its enemies who tried to invade this country. We have monuments to the memory of Australian and New Zealander soldiers who lost their lives trying to occupy our country. Why don’t we see anything built to the memory of the Armenians? Why don’t we witness any trace of sorrow or pain for Armenians who lost their lives in Anatolia? We are talking from our heads only and nothing comes out of our hearts! Is this possible? We, Turks and Armenians, lived together for hundreds of years side by side, we shared good and bad. How can we not feel anything for those people, for our old neighbors?

  Armenian reactions not healthy either

  On the other hand, I do not find Armenian reactions healthy either. I witnessed Armenians saying “Turks are not human beings.” I heard Armenians saying that “I cannot stand to see a Turkey on its feet.” I saw the hate in their eyes still burning! These are not healthy feelings either. Maybe they are thinking that if they do not keep their hate alive, Turkey one day will manage to convince the world that nothing happened. There are also Armenians who fight against racism towards Turks, who condemn the Armenian gentleman that sees Turks as “animals.” There are healthy, wise people on both sides and I believe they will create the future. I would like to finish this article with the remarkable comments of George Jerjian, whom I mentioned at the beginning. He says: “Armenians will need to overcome their high expectations of what Turkish recognition of the genocide will mean and, in turn, the Turks will need to overcome the serious limitations of their high school history syllabus. Reconciliation can only take place when truth and truce are declared. What happened cannot be undone, but we need not be prisoners of the past. The truth will set us- Armenian and Turk- free.”But, everything starts with courage, openness and loyalty to the truth. To be able to do this we need to discuss everything and we should be free to be able to that. Turkey should get rid of 301 and similar articles as soon as possible and Armenians should also get rid of their 301s. Then maybe, first with reason and after with our hearts we will really comprehend what happened! 

  * Orhan Kemal Cengiz can be contacted at [email protected]

It is like the administration’s immoral stance on the Armenian Genocide resolution wasn’t echoed by much of America’s “independent” media that the U.S. State Department had to release this shameless piece of propaganda called an article.

Had the article appeared on the State Department website a week or so ago I would dare to see a conspiracy between the anti-Armenianaism in the American media and propaganda articles on the State Department website. 

This piece of garbage is not only clearly anti-Armenian in nature but specifically tries to show that Armenians controll the Congress:

Nonbinding resolutions are not sent to the president following congressional approval, said Ornstein, who appears frequently on American television as an expert commentator on politics, Congress and elections.  Rather, the resolutions are used as a “symbol” of congressional opinion or sentiment on a matter, he said. 

But symbolism is “not meaningless,” Ornstein said.  The Armenian resolution, he said, was a “cheap and easy way” for members of Congress “to express their solidarity with the Armenian people and especially with the Armenian-American population.”

Ornstein said the resolution “has been around for a long time,” because of the “significant population” of Armenian Americans in the United States.

Armenian Americans are an “extremely affluent and articulate population,” and “they care passionately” about the killing of their people during the Ottoman Empire, he said.

History Today, world’s premier and perhaps oldest history magazine, has my article about the Djulfa destruction in the November 2007 issue.

The printed magazine, that includes three more photographs, should be available in most western libraries and many bookstores.  The online version features the entire article with one photograph, but you have to pay to view the article in full. 

When, in the summer of 2005, Scottish researcher Steven Sim visited the region of Nakhichevan, an exclave of the South Caucasus republic of Azerbaijan, in order to study medieval Armenian monuments, he found out his trip was in vain – there was nothing there for him to research. After being detained and questioned by security police, Sim was asked why he expected Armenian Christian churches in a region where only Muslims lived. A villager, too, told him Armenians had never lived in Nakhichevan. When the researcher explained that a book had directed him to the ancient Armenian church in the village, an old man blasted out words in what Sim thought was German. The translator explained that the man was talking to him in Armenian, apparently to see if Sim was an Armenian spy. Knowing Armenian in a place where no Armenians ever lived seemed too awkward.
But Sim did not confront Azeris in Nakhichevan about history. Neither did he resist orders to put his camera away in a military zone at the Azerbaijani-Iranian border when his train was passing by world’s largest surviving Armenian medieval cemetery – Djulfa (Jugha in Armenian). Sim might have done otherwise if he knew back then he was going to be the last known outsider in this remote area – on the border with Iran – to glance at the thousands of sacred and beautifully ….

Via ArmeniaNow.com from Boston.com

Pelosi: Armenian genocide vote in doubt

By ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer 8 minutes ago

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday the prospects of a vote on Armenian genocide were uncertain, after several members pulled their support amid fears it would cripple U.S. relations with Turkey.

“Whether it will come up or not, or what the action will be, remains to be seen,” Pelosi told reporters.

The House proposal, which would label as genocide the killing of Armenians a century ago by Ottoman Turks, has inflamed U.S. tensions with Turkey, which says the death toll has been inflated and was the result of civil unrest, not genocide. Support for the nonbinding resolution deteriorated this week after Turkey recalled its U.S. ambassador to Ankara and several lawmakers spoke out against it.

A member of NATO, Turkey also is considered a rare Muslim ally to the United States in its war on terrorism. A U.S.-run air base there has facilitated the flow of most cargo to American troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rep. John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat considered influential on military affairs, said his party’s leadership miscalculated support for the resolution. He predicted that such a vote would easily fail.

“If it came to the floor today, it would not pass,” with some 55 to 60 Democrats opposing the measure, Murtha told reporters. As of Thursday, House Democrats will hold a 233-200 majority.

Pelosi, D-Calif., is expected to hold off on a vote at least until she gets a better idea of how many House members will support it — a task assumed behind the scenes by the resolution’s primary co-sponsors, including Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.

“While a few members have withdrawn their support for the resolution, the truth is on our side, and support for the resolution remains high,” Schiff said in an e-mailed statement on Tuesday. “As with almost all legislation in Congress, there are many members who are not listed as co-sponsors of the resolution but support the measure.”

In a White House news conference on Wednesday, Bush warned lawmakers against further inflaming U.S. relations with Turkey. On the same day, Turkey’s parliament approved a possible offensive in northern Iraq against Kurdish rebels known as the PKK; Bush said he opposes such military action.

With all the pressing responsibilities facing the nation, “one thing Congress should not be doing is sorting out the historical record of the Ottoman Empire,” Bush said.

Said Murtha: “We don’t have the number of allies we used to have. We’ve lost so much credibility worldwide.”

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said there have been two to three battalions of Turkish forces just across the border in Iraq, in a valley south of the mountains where the PKK is known to operate. That presence, he said, goes back to the late 1990s, and has been widely known by the U.S. and the Iraqis. A battalion is generally about 800 soldiers.

Morrell said the Turkish troops are limited to information gathering, and are largely confined to their base with only limited travel. Their movements, he said, are coordinated with the U.S. and the Iraqis.

___

Associated Press Writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.

Over a dozen democrats have dropped their support for the Armenian Genocide resolution in the last 24 hours, reports the New York Times.

If you are not seeing many of this week’s posts it’s because we just experienced hatehack by Azeri and/or Turkish nationalists.