Why can't Turkish government be honest about the past?

FORCED MARCH.  Armenians being deported under armed guard, 1915. People were punished if they tried to help the victims. 

RELATIONS between the Turkish government and Germany could be seriously strained by a row over a massive crime committed a century ago, when the two countries were military allies.  This seems all the more ironic now, when Turkey and Germany are not only NATO allies again but Turkey needs German approval if it is to be accepted into the European Union (EU).

Despite reports that President Tayyip Erdogan was turning away from the long-stalled EU bid, the Turkish leader insisted in January that it was still under way, and said it would be Islamophobic of Europe to refuse Turkish entry.
http://www.todayszaman.com/anasayfa_erdogan-to-deem-eu-islamophobic-if-turkeys-bid-rejected_370724.html

Negotiations have been going on since 2005. In June 2013 it was reported that Germany, Austria and Holland were blocking the Turkish application because of the Turkish government's repression of protest demonstrations.  And last month when a British journalist was arrested in a clampdown on an armed group in Turkey, Turkish papers claimed he was an agent of the German Federal Intelligence Service, BND.

But the latest row appears focussed on events a century ago, when Germany and the Ottoman Empire were allies in the First World War, the government in Istanbul dominated by German agents, and much of the Turkish armed forces came under German command.

Blaming Armenians allied to Russia for their reverses in the Caucasus, the Ottoman rulers began an organised onslaught on the Armenian minority. On 24 April 1915, they began by rounding up 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Istanbul for deportation. This was followed up by  drafting Armenian army conscripts into forced labour units under brutally harsh conditions, massacres of Armenians in several places, and mass deportations of Armenian women, children and elderly people on forced marches into the Syrian desert.

Any Turkish soldiers or officers reluctant to commit atrocities, or civilians who tried to help those on the forced marches with food or water, could be punished.

Reports by neutral observers described what was happening.  Some German officers and missionaries sent reports back to Berlin, as did engineers working on the Baghdad Railway, though the information was censored and suppressed by the Kaiser's government.  

Estimates vary, but it seems around a million Armenians died in this Holocaust (a term first given its modern meaning with reference to the Armenian victims, some of whom were burned in pits).

The regime responsible for this slaughter has long gone. The main perpetrators met rough justice at the hands of Armenian avengers after the First World War. Yet to this day, while Armenians around the world commemorate the events, Turkish governments have refused to acknowledge what happened as genocide, and governments anxious to maintain good relations with Turkey have bowed to this insistence on denial.

Hence the significance of Germany stepping out of line: 

German  Parliament speaker: killings of Armenians genocide

By Associated Press

Published: 21:49, 24 April 2015 | Updated: 21:49, 24 April 2015

BERLIN (AP) — Germany's parliamentary speaker said Friday that the slaughter of Armenians by Ottoman Turks 100 years ago was genocide, and that Germany's own Nazi past makes it important to speak out.

"We Germans cannot lecture anyone about dealing with their past, but we can through our own experiences encourage others to confront their history, even when it hurts," Norbert Lammert told Parliament.

The comments came as Parliament began debate on a non-binding motion saying the Armenians' fate is "exemplary for the history of mass destruction, ethnic cleansing, expulsions and genocides by which the 20th century is marked."

It stresses Germany's awareness of the "uniqueness" of the Nazi Holocaust, to which Lammert also alluded.

"What happed under the Ottoman Empire ... was a genocide," he said. "It did not remain the last in the 20th century."

Parliament was expected to vote to approve the motion before its summer break.

Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, but Turkey denies the deaths constituted genocide, saying the toll has been inflated, and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.

The German government hasn't used the term genocide, but had faced increasing pressure to do so.

On Thursday, German President Joachim Gauck labeled the killings genocide in a speech to a memorial service in Berlin.

Turkey's Foreign Ministry said in a statement late Friday that Gauck doesn't have "the right to attribute on the Turkish people a crime which they have not committed."

It said that the "Turkish nation will not forget and forgive President Gauck's statements." Germany has a large Turkish minority.

In his speech, Gauck also noted that Germany, Ottoman Turkey's ally a century ago, must consider what responsibility it shares for the killings.

German soldiers were involved in planning and carrying out deportations, he said, adding that "tips from German observers and diplomats who recognized the will to destroy in the action against the Armenians were ignored."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-3053889/German-Parliament-speaker-killings-Armenians-genocide.html#ixzz3ZtZYqcWm 



I've added emphasis to those two last pars. The German president deserves credit for this admission of complicity in what happened.

And the Turkish Foreign Ministry deserves condemnation, not only for denial, but for pretending that it is "the Turkish people" to whom blame is being attributed.  We have met this dirty tactic before, and elsewhere, of political leaders trying to drag an entire people to their side when rejecting accusations.

But what is peculiar about this example is that the Turkish government is, for whatever reasons, still defending a long departed regime over a century old crime. In doing so it insults the Armenian people, and takes a share of the crime upon itself.


Further reading:   http://www.jewishsocialist.org.uk/features/item/armenian-holocaust

LONDON meeting.  Thursday, May 14,  7.30pm at the  Indian YMCA, 41 Fitzroy Street, W1T 6AQ,  'On being Armenian in Turkey'. 

Milena Buyum Jackson  is a prominent anti-racist and human rights activist who grew up in a left wing Armenian family in Turkey. She was in Turkey very recently for events marking the 100th anniversary of the genocide and will be combining descriptions of the history with her personal testimony as an activist of Armenian heritage .  

Organised by the Jewish Socialists' Group. 

ALL WELCOME

Remembering a Murdered Editor

HRANT DINK, murdered four years ago in Istanbul. His enemies remain at large.
But his viewpoint continues to inspire.

THE lawyer for a Turkish editor gunned down in front of his newspaper four years ago says those who planned the murder may never be caught.

A teenage gunman and his accomplice are facing trial for the killing of Hrant Dink, who edited a Turkish-Armenian bilingual newspaper. But a stir was caused by the publication of a photograph of the accused youth with smiling policemen in front of a Turkish flag.

Interviewed by the daily Al Hurriyet, lawyer Cetin, who says she was with Hrant Dink when he was found guilty of insulting "Turkishness", under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, says that although he had defied death threats before, he was seriously worried a few days before his death that he was going to be targeted by assassins.

Cetin says those on trial were anti-social types from poor families. "The teenage gunman does not even know why he murdered Dink". But they saw themselves as heroes and believed they would be released after a minimum time in jail.

The lawyer is convinced a right-wing organisation called Ergenekon had planned the killing. A cache of hand grenades found in a retired army NCO's house in June 2007 were linked with Ergenekon. The organisation's hand had been seen in several bombings and assassinations, and plans for a coup in 2009. But some police bureaus had worked to conceal evidence.

"The Ergenekon gang is a deep organisation and as long as the true leaders remain free, the real instigators of Din's muder will never be captured."
(Hurriyet Daily News, January 9, 2011)

Though the killers succeeded in silencing an important voice for truth about the Armenian tragedy and a new understanding between Turks, Armenians and Kurdish people, they have failed to close Hrant Dink's vision or the inspiration it gave. Thousands marched in his honour after his death, and the anniversary is going to be marked by several events.

Information from Wikipedia:

Hrant Dink was born in Malatya on September 15, 1954, the eldest of three sons to Sarkis Dink (known as Haşim Kalfa), a tailor from Sivas_Province, and Gülvart Dink, from Sivas. His father's gambling debts led to the family's move to İstanbul in 1960. A year after their move, Dink's parents separated, leaving the seven-year old Dink and his brothers without a place to live. Dink's grandfather enrolled the boys at the Gedikpaşa Armenian Orphanage. The orphanage children spent their summers at the Tuzla Armenian Children's Camp, on the Marmara beachfront in a suburb of İstanbul, building and improving the summer camp during their stay. It was at the camp that Hrant met his future wife as a child and later married her . The government-led closing of the Camp in 1984 was one of the factors that raised Dink's awareness of the Armenian issue in Turkey, and led to his politicisation.

At Istanbul University, Hrant became a sympathizer of TİKKO, the armed faction of the Turkish Communist Party- Marxist-Leninist. His friend Armanek Bakırcıyan, who changed his name to Orhan Bakır, later rose in TİKKO to membership of the central committee, took part in armed struggle in Eastern Turkey and was killed during fighting in 1978.

Hrant's wife Rakel Yağbasan, whom he first met when she came to the Tuzla Armenian Children's Camp, was born in 1959, one of 13 children of Siyament Yağbasan, head of the Varto clan and Delal Yağbasan who died when Rakel was a child.

In 1915, the Varto clan had received orders to relocate along with the rest of the Armenian population in the region, but they were attacked during the journey. Five families from the clan escaped to nearby Mount Cudi and settled there, remaining without any contact to the outside world for 25 years. Eventually they re-established contact and largely assimilated into the nearby Kurdish population, speaking Kurdish exclusively, although they retained knowledge of their Armenian origin and Christian beliefs.

Staying at the Tuzla Camp during summers and at the Gedikpaşa Orphanage during winters, Rakel learned Turkish and Armenian, and finished primary school. Because she was registered as a Turk, not as an Armenian, she was not allowed to enroll at Armenian community schools and her father did not give permission for her to attend a Turkish school past 5th grade. Not able to obtain further formal schooling, Rakel was privately tutored by instructors at the Gedikpaşa Orphanage. At first her father opposed the marriage, but the young couple insisted

Having graduated from the university, Hrant Dink completed his military service, but whether for his Armenian background or his political record he was denied promotion, something which confirmed him in his activism. Back in Istanbul he and his brothers established a bookstore which became popular with students and expanded into a publishing business. After the 1980 military coup, when restrictions were placed on travel, one of Hrant's brothers was arrested for using false papers, and he himself was questioned about alleged links with Asala, a secret Armenian armed group.

Hrant Dink was one of the founders of Agos weekly, the only newspaper in Turkey published in Armenian and Turkish, and served as the editor-in-chief from its founding in 1996 until his death in 2007. Agos was born out of a meeting called by Patriarch Karekin II when Turkish media started linking Armenians of Turkey with the illegal Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) A picture of PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan and an Assyrian priest appeared in a Turkish daily, with the caption "Here's proof of the Armenian-PKK cooperation".

The view at the meeting was that the Armenians in Turkey needed to communicate with the society at large. The group held a widely covered press conference, followed by monthly press events and eventually formed Agos. Dink had not been a professional journalist until founding Agos., though he had contributed occasional articles and book reviews to local Armenian language newspapers and corrections and letters to the editor to the national dailies.^[21] He soon became well known for his editorials in Agos and also wrote columns in the national dailies Zaman and BirGün.^[28]

Up to the founding of Agos, the Armenian community had two main newspapers, Marmara and Jamanak, both published only in Armenian. By publishing in Turkish as well as Armenian, Hrant Dink opened up the channels of communication to the society at large for the Armenian community. After Agos started its publication, the participation of Armenians in the political-cultural life in Turkey increased greatly, and public awareness in Turkey of the issues of the Armenians started to increase.^[26] Always willing to speak on the issues faced by Armenians, Hrant Dink emerged as a leader in his community and became a well-known public figure in Turkey.

Under Hrant Dink's editorship, Agos concentrated on five major topics: Speaking against any unfair treatment of the Armenian community in Turkey, covering human rights violations and problems of democratization in Turkey, carrying news of developments in the Republic of Armenia, with special emphasis on the Turkey-Armenia relations, publishing articles and serials on the Armenian cultural heritage and its contributions to the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, criticizing malfunctions and non-transparency in the Armenian community institutions.

As a leftist activist, Hrant Dink often spoke and wrote about the problems of democratization in Turkey, defending other authors such as Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk and novelist Perihan Mağden who came under criticism and prosecution for their opinions. In a speech Hrant Dink delivered on May 19, 2006, at a seminar jointly organized in Antalya by the Turkish Journalists´ Association and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, he said:

"I think the fundamental problems in Turkey exist for the majority as well . Therefore, ..., I will speak for the majority, including myself in it and dwell on where, we, as Turkey, are headed."

Dink hoped his questioning would pave the way for peace between the two peoples:

"If I write about the [Armenian] genocide it angers the Turkish generals. I want to write and ask how we can change this historical conflict into peace. They don’t know how to solve the Armenian problem."

Active in various democratic platforms and civil society organizations, Hrant Dink emphasized the need for democratization in Turkey and focused on the issues of free speech, minority rights, civic rights and issues pertaining to the Armenian community in Turkey. He was a very important peace activist. In his public speeches, which were often intensely emotional, he never refrained from using the word genocide when talking about the Armenian Genocide, a term fiercely rejected by Turkey. At the same time, he was strongly critical of the strategy of the Armenian diaspora of pressuring Western governments into official recognition of the Genocide label.

Dink featured prominently in the 2006 genocide documentary film Screamers in which he explains:

"There are Turks who don't admit that their ancestors committed genocide. If you look at it though, they seem to be nice people… So why don't they admit it? Because they think that genocide is a bad thing which they would never want to commit, and because they can't believe their ancestors would do such a thing either."

Indicating that a show of empathy would have nothing to do with accepting or refusing the genocide, Dink called for dialogue:

Turkish-Armenian relations should be taken out of a 1915 meters-deep well."^[26]

Dink was prosecuted three times for denigrating Turkishness under Article 301.

The first charge under the previous version of Article 301, then called Article 159, stemmed from a speech he delivered at a panel hosted by human rights NGO Mazlum-Der in Şanlıurfa on 14 February 2002.^[39] Speaking at the "Global Security, Terror and Human Rights, Multiculturalism, Minorities and Human Rights" panel, Dink and another speaker, lawyer Şehmus Ülek, faced charges for denigrating Turkishness and the Republic.^[40] In the speech, Dink had stated:

"Since my childhood, I have been singing the national anthem along with you. Recently, there is a section where I cannot sing any longer and remain silent. You sing it, I join you later. It is: Smile at my heroic race... Where is the heroism of this race? We are trying to form the concept of citizenship on national unity and a heroic race. For example, if it were Smile at my hard-working people..., I would sing it louder than all of you, but it is not. Of the oath I am Turkish, honest and hard-working, I like the 'honest and hard-working' part and I shout it loudly. The I am Turkish part, I try to understand as I am from Turkey."^[41]

"Of course I'm saying it's a genocide, because its consequences show it to be true and label it so. We see that people who had lived on this soil for 4,000 years were exterminated by these events."

ARMENIAN INSTITUTE

A SONG FOR HRANT

Saturday, 15 January 2011 at 7:30

Nevart Gulbenkian Hall, Iverna Gardens, W8 6TP

(Tube: High Street Kensington)

An informal event bringing together communities of neighbouring cultures.Please bring your favourite song, dish to pass, and friends.

Join Armenian–Turkish–Kurdish musicians in a New Year’s evening of singing and music–making to remember Hrant Dink (d. 19 January 2007). A short excerpt from “Heart of Two Nations”, prize–winning documentary by Nouritza Matossian will be screened.

Donation of £5 welcome to cover costs. Please confirm your attendance by email.

info@armenianinstitute.org.uk.

Looking back at the 'first Holocaust'

ARMENIANS being marched off under armed guard.

ARMENIAN poster in their quarter of Jerusalem's Old City commemorates massacres of May 1915




"Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?". So Adolf Hitler is said to have assured his generals of impunity when he urged utter ruthless, as they prepared to invade Poland.

I was talking about Armenia yesterday evening, to a teacher friend worried about the way "the Holocaust" is taught as an exclusive event, and how it is used and abused in propaganda. As a matter of fact, 'holocaust' a Greek word for sacrifice by fire, was first used by Winston Churchill during the First World War to describe events in the Ottoman empire, during which a million Armenians died, some burned, some drowned, more driven into the desert.

Massacres were nothing new, and without getting into arguments as to whether the deaths in the Atlantic slave trade or Irish famine count, we can say that neither Armenians nor Jews were the first victims of modern genocide.That honour belongs to the Herero and Namaqa poples of what is now called Namibia. In 1904 they rose up against the growing German colonisation of their country, where they faced loss of their land and cattle, and being forced into reservations, or bondage to the settlers.

Before ordering his troops into battle against the Herero, the German commander General Trotha wrote: "I believe that the nation as such should be annihilated, or, if this was not possible by tactical measures, have to be expelled from the country...This will be possible if the water-holes from Grootfontein to Gobabis are occupied. The constant movement of our troops will enable us to find the small groups of nation who have moved backwards and destroy them gradually.".

Unarmed men, women and children were shot and bayoneted, Up to 100, 000 Herero and 10,000 Nama were killed. Many were also herded into concentration camps, where without adequate food, they were worked to death, and some were used in medical experiments. Skulls were sent to German universities, displayed in scientific lectures on the superiority of the white race.

After the First World War, German South West Africa was attached to South Africa, but after it gained independence as Namibia, Herero filed a lawsuit demanding reparations from Germany and the Deutsche Bank, which had financed colonisation. On August 16, 2004, at the 100th anniversary of the start of the genocide, Germany's Minister of Economic Development Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, officially apologized, :
“ We Germans accept our historical and moral responsibility and the guilt incurred by Germans at that time."

Responsibility for the death of over a million Armenians remains in contention, almost a century after. Turkish governments have argued that their predecessors were confronting Armenian revolt, supported by the Russians, and they had no genocidal aim.

Three years ago when a memorial to the Armenians was unveiled in Cardiff's Garden of Peace, hundreds of Turks were bussed up to protest. The memorial was vandalised on the eve of Holocaust memorial day the following year. Journalist Hrant Dink was murdered outside his newspaper's Istanbul office in 2007, the victim of a right-wing hate campaign because he wrote about the Armenian massacres. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in September this year that the Turkish authorities had failed to protect his rights or his life. Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's first Nobel prizewinner for literature, has had to leave his country to avoid a similar fate.

What other governments have to say about the Armenians is influenced by modern day relations with Turkey and strategic considerations. Many Armenian refugees settled in Iran, Lebanon, Cyprus (whence some have been made refugees a second time) and Palestine, as well as Western countries. Armenians in Israel have demonstrated demanding official recognition that what happened to their people was genocide, and today I read that academics from the Bar Ilan and America's Georgetown University have signed a letter to the Israeli government to this effect, also urging it to support the Kurds. Neither of these are progressive institutions, and whatever the Israeli government's temptations to hypocrisy, it may prefer to keep Turkey an ally for now. But since the Mavi Marmara incident the US Congress foreign affairs committee has changed its tune, officially recognising for the first time that what happened to the Armenians was genocide.

What's stranger to understand is why present day Turkish people and governments should feel responsible for the actions of a long past regime, (that of the 'three pashas' Enver, Talat and Cemal, each of whom paid for the crimes one way or another), and for policy aims that were not entirely Turkish. It is ironic that German parliamentarians are among those who have urged Turkey to acknowledge its responsibilities.

On August 3, 1914 Enver Pasha signed the secret treaty allying Turkey with Germany, and the following day Rear-Admiral Wilhelm Souchon was ordered to head with two battleships to Turkey. There the German crews donned the fez before proceeding to attack Russian ports. Souchon was made commander in chief of the Turkish Navy.

Imperial Germany had entirely material aims in this war, extending across Europe and the Balkans and along the Baghdad Railway, to coveted Mesopotamia and its wealth, and threaten British India. But the Kaiser had proclaimed himself "protector of Islam", and Germany's agent Max Freiherr von Oppenheim, urged that the secular Turkish government request the Sultan, as head of the Caliphate, to declare jihad.

Blaming Armenian resistance for setbacks, on February 25, 1915, Enver ordered that all Armenians serving in the Ottoman forces should be disarmed and sent to labour battalions. Special units, recruited from convicts, were formed for action against the Armeninians. On April 24, Interior minister Mehmed Talat declared that the Armenians had rebelled against his government, and ordered mass arrests in the cities. Elsewhere, Armenians were forced on long marches, without food or water, into the Syrian desert.

Satisfied that "the deportation of the Armenians has been decided", General Fritz Bronsart von Schellendorf , at army GHQ., was undertanding. "...the Armenian is just like a Jew, a parasite outside the confines of his homeand, sucking of the marrow of the peoples of the host country". Even when officers reported there were no signs of an uprising. Bronsart still insisted on the "military necessity" of deporting Armenian civilians.
In Germany, military censorship made sure even Reichstag members let alone the general public were kept in the dark about what was being done.

I've written an article on the Armenian massacres in the current issue of Jewish Socialist magazine. It was a chapter on "The First Holocaust" in Robert Fisk's monumental work The Great War for Civilisation which drew my attention to Vahakan N.Dadrian's book German Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide, which I was able to read in the British Library.

While Dadrian's carefully researched work has come under attack from various scholars of whatever loyalty, some much lesser and more scurrilous publications are available on the internet. One of these, also on sale in Yerevan, apparently, (Searchlight, December 2010) is snappily entitled Zionism from Theodor Herzl to Lord Rothschild and the Armenian Response , by Harytium Sarkissian,and purports to show that from the 18th century on there was a Jewish-British and Jewish-Turkish conspiracy against the Armenians. The presence of covert Jews in Enver Pasha's Committee of Union and Progress is presumably the clincher.

I am not sure how this squares with Herzl's failure to obtain backing from the Kaiser or the Sultan, after which the Zionists threw in their lot with the British, from whom Weizman negotiated the Balfour Declaration sent to Lord Rothschild, but I guess I am not patient enough, you have to really believe in such conspiracy theory. Von Schellendorf and co. blamed "the Jew Morgenthau" (US ambassador) for "interfering", and Jewish movelist Franz Werfel for propagandising on the side of the Armenains.

By way of an alternative brand of idiocy, there's an American Zionist pamphlet available on the net which uses the quote from Hitler with which I started to "prove" that responsibility for the Nazi Holocaust lay with Haj Amin el Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, who had served as an officer in the Turkish Army and thus got the holocaust idea. Why the Nazis, whose antisemitism was born in Germany and clad in 19th century racial theory, should need an upstart junior ally from an inferior "race" to inspire them, is not clear. The mufti had been 20 when he was commissioned as an artillery officer at Smirna, and within a year he switched like the Zionists had done the British side. (Moshe Sharett, a future prime minister of Israel also served in the Turkish army). With 12,000 German soldiers having served in Turkey, including top generals and prominent officials of the Nazi regime, Hitler and his officers hardly needed telling about what had been done to the Armenians. Not to mention the Hereros.

Still, I suppose if the right-wing Zionists can blame the Mufti, and Islam in general, they can figure Hitler a mere innocent who was misled, and that would excuse some of their new alliances!

The important thing to establish and teach is not just the truth of mass atrocities, nor the nationality of those responsible, but the kind of policies that lead to such atrocities. Only when we end them can we say NEVER AGAIN -TO ANYONE.

* Massacring the Truth, by Charlie Pottins, is in Jewish Socialist no.67, Winter 2010-2011
£2, from Jewish Socialist, BM3725, London WC1N 3XX. Also from good bookshops.

Denial of the first Holocaust

IT was Winston Churchill who used the word "Holocaust" to describe the killing of Armenians in 1915 in the Ottoman Empire. But it was Adolf Hitler who reputedly reassured his generals, on the eve of the invasion of Poland, that they would get away with war crimes, with the remark "Who today remembers the Armenians?"

It seems the British Foreign Office has been more inclined to follow Hitler's cynical advice in this respect.

Back in July I noted in this blog that BAE Systems (ex-British Aerospace) was among big companies lobbying the US Congress against recognition of the Armenian genocide. Looking at the kind of contracts these companies might be bidding for, it seemed fairly obvious why they might want to butter up the Turkish military and government.

A report this week suggests there has been no need for lobbying in Britain, because the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has engaged in what QC Geoffrey Robertson calls "genocide denial", under both Tory and Labour governments. Robertson, who was commissioned by Armenian groups in London to review the official files, said in his report that "Parliament has been routinely misinformed by ministers who have recited FCO briefs without questioning their accuracy".

The report says there is no doubt that "in 1915 the Ottoman government ordered the deportation of up to two million Armenians - hundreds of thousands died en route from starvation, disease and armed attack".

But despite agreement among scholars and most European parliaments that what happened was genocide, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has stuck to the line that there is "insufficiently unequivocal evidence".

More honestly, a 1999 briefing acknowledged that the British government "is open to criticism in terms of the ethical dimension", but explained: "The current line is the only feasible option", owing to "the importance of our relations(political, strategic and commercial) with Turkey." It said "Recognising the genocide would provide no practical benefit to the UK".

Whatever the reasons for modern Turkish governments to remain in denial over a crime almost a century ago, some Turks have been braver than the British Foreign Office in standing for truth. Nobel prize-winning writer Orhan Pamuk was charged with "insulting Turkishness" for referring to the genocide, in 2005, though the trial was stopped. Several scholars and journalists have signed a petition referring to "the Great Catastrophe that the Ottoman Armenians were subjected to in 1915".

The Armenian issue could be used by those European Union governments which want to block Turkish entry. But right-wing elements in Turkey and among diaspora Turks are belligerently against anything which might weaken chauvinist attitudes today.

As for the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, its respect for truth, and which Turks it chooses to support, business is business. Who today remembers the late Robin Cook and his idea that there should be an "ethical dimension" to foreign policy?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/03/armenia-genocide-denial-britain

http://hyemedia.com/2009/11/03/doughty-street-chambers-published-a-legal-opinion-by-geoffrey-robertson-on-armenian-genocide/

Arms profiteers versus Armenian people

WHY, in these recession-hit times, when companies are backing off so many projects, have six big corporations - one of them BAE Systems(formerly known as British Aerospace) found money to lobby the US Congress, not over trade restrictions, taxes or legislation that might obviously effect business, but on an issue concerning something that happened almost a century ago?

A recent report by Associated Press writer Stephen Singer,featured in the Boston Globe, "Companies lobby (quietly) on Armenia genocide bill, June 13, said:"Five military contractors and an energy company have stepped into a fight over whether the U.S. should label Turkey's slaughter of a million Armenians nearly a century ago as genocide".

The companies concerned are BAE, Goodrich, Northrop Grunman, Raytheon, United Technologies,all in the weapons business, and Chevron, an oil company. Not suprisingly they all have ties with Turkey, "a key strategic ally of the US", as Singer notes.

What is perhaps surprising is that almost a century after the 1915 massacres, when the Turkish government could apologise and say it has nothing to do with what was done so long ago, during the First World War, the Turkish state is apparently still in denial, so much that companies with business in Turkey find it worthwhile to lobby for silence.
Not that the companies have made any public statement.

"They don't want to be seen opposing a resolution that has a very evident human rights element," said Rouben Adalian, director of the Armenian National Institute, a Washington research organization. "It would put them on the side of denying history and denying genocide."

According to the Associated Press report the six companies spent $14 million to lobby Congress in the first quarter of this year. Besides the genocide resolution, the companies lobbied on Pentagon spending, climate change, taxes and more.

"United Technologies, which sells Sikorsky helicopters to Turkey, says it provided information to lawmakers 'that helped round out their understanding of the international trade and national security interests involved.'

"Lobbying on human rights issues comes with risks, said Gerry Keim, associate dean at Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business. Several companies halted their efforts opposing restrictions on white minority-ruled South Africa in the 1980s when anti-apartheid activists applied pressure.

"Originally, they were concerned about markets in South Africa. Then they were concerned about markets here," Keim said. Other analysts say any public backlash against companies lobbying on the Armenia genocide resolution would be minimal because the firms serve governments, not individual consumers who could boycott their products.


"Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million mostly Christian Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I. Turkey denies that the deaths were genocide, saying the number of casualties is inflated and was the consequence of civil war and unrest."

Among the current U.S.-Turkish business links are a $3 billion contract from Northrop to a Turkish company to be a supplier for fighter jets. Goodrich Corp. and a Turkish firm agreed to a joint venture for maintenance and repair work on engine components. BAE Systems and a Turkish company jointly market and supply armored vehicles to the Turkish armed forces.

Chevron holds a stakes in a pipeline that crosses the country. Raytheon has agreed to sell to Turkey Stinger missile launcher systems valued at $34 million and is working to sell its missile defense systems.

Representatives of the U.S. subsidiary of London-based BAE Systems PLC and Northrop referred questions to the Aerospace Industries Association. The trade group defended Turkey as a key U.S. ally and cited "large and growing commercial ties" between the two nations.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2009/06/13/companies_lobby_quietly_on_armenia_genocide_bill/

The Centre for Armenian Remembrance has expressed concern that the big corporations are spending as much as a million dollars a week. "The world-wide Armenian community cannot match this level of expenditure" It is appealing for people to sign a petition that will go to the company heads and key stockholders.

http://www.centerar.org/petition/

Raised voices and proud pedigrees

L'AFFICHE ROUGE - infamous poster denouncing the Manouchian group of resisters (see notes below) as foreigners and criminals.
The Zionist settler Right must make do with its hate lists of Jewish left-wingers and anti-Zionists.

LAST weekend I was at the Jewish Socialists' Group conference, discussing among other things the gains made by the Right in British politics, the Israeli security ban on Professor Norman Finkelstein, the alliance between Zionist lobbyists and right-wing Chistian fundamentalists, and the "arrogant interference of both Israeli and American-based organisations in Jewish communities' affairs".

On the positive side we welcomed the rise both here and in other countries, including the USA, of "independent Jewish associations raising their voices for peace and justice in Israel/Palestine". On the Saturday evening we had a guest speaker, Brian Klug, one of the founders of Independent Jewish Voices, which has gathered some of the best-known Jewishartists,writers and academics, no longer prepared to be ornaments for the establishment and keep quiet about what Israel is doing. His talk was entitled "Next year in Hackney - Reclaiming our futures".

In the past week I've had e-mails from Jewish Voice for Peace, in the United States, which is calling on the lobbyists of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee(AIPAC) to dissociate themselves from protestant pastor John Hagee, who says Hitler was sent by God to make Jews go to Israel. Republican presidential hopeful Senator McCain has renounced Pastor Hagee's support; but the pastor, who heads Christians United for Israel gave the keynote speech at AIPAC's conference, and unlike Norman Finkelstein, had no trouble visiting Israel, where his "no compromise" message was welcomed by right-wing politicians.

I've also received an e-mailed newsletter from the Union Juive Francaise pour la Paix(UJFP), part of European Jews for Just Peace, which is working with the Association des Travailleurs Maghrebins de France, representing North African workers, and the Union des Progressistes Juifs de Belgique(UPJB) to host a series of meetings with Suhad Bishara, of the civil rights group Adalah, campaigning for equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel. Suhad Bishara, who takes a special interest in women's rights, will be speaking at the Assemblee Nationale in Paris next Wednesday evening, and on Thursday in Brussels, going on to meetings in Lyons and Marseilles.

What sort of people are active in UJFP and organisations like it? The ones I've met come from varied backgrounds and across generations. But there are none of the "self-haters" , Holocaust deniers or people having problems with their parents that the Zionist hacks (the kind who lick Pastor Hagee's tochas ) would have us believe. This item from the UJFP newsletter, to which I've added a few notes, makes that clear.

Our Own

This Spring, we also commemorated the 65th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto rising. Five militants of the UJFP dedicated a tet of homage to the fighters of the ghetto. They wrote:

"Sixty five years after the Warsaw ghetto uprising we pay tribute to all those modest heros and heroines who pitted their lives in a battle against the army that controlled nearly all Europe. .
" Faced with oppression there is always resistance: against Nazism in France, in Vilnius, in Germany even and, in later years, in Egypt and in Algeria against the colonial power, as well as in South Africa against Apartheid. It is the same today: the masks change but it is always the same struggle. We, daughters and sons of resisters against Nazism, affirm our support for Palestinian resistance, because the Zionist power in Israel, usurped our collective name (Jews), claiming to be acting on our behalf, to follow a policy of ferocious colonial repression and apartheid.
The homage to our parents, martyrs or survivors, has been as one with homage to the resistance of the Palestinian people whose basic rights, human and national, were mocked, day after day for 60 years ".

As UJFP notes, what speaks as eloquently as the words in this short message are the names of the signatories, and the "CV" of their parents. This tells you something about where their commitment comes from.

Liliane Cordova Kaczerginski, daughter of Schmerke Kaczerginski who took part in the creation of the F.P.O., Fareinigte Partizaner Organizatie (United Partisan Organisation) in the ghetto of Vilnius in 1941. After his escape from the ghetto through the sewers, he fought in the ranks of the Lithuanian guerrillas in Bielorussia under Soviet command; took part in blowing up 50 Nazi military trains. Died in Argentina.

Sonia Fayman, daughter of Lucien David Fayman, member of the Sixth, resistance network of the Eclaireurs Israélites of France(Jewish scouts), hiding children, and of the Buckmaster network (parachuting of weapons and attacks against the Nazi occupiers), arrested by Gestapo in Toulouse, tortured, imprisoned at Fresnes then in Compiegne. Deported to Buchenwald, Dora,, Hartzungen until the liberation. Devoted his retirement to decorating the good people who hid children, at the risk of their lives. Died in 2007.

Patrick Feldstein, son of Mordechaï Feldstein born in Paris in 1927, died in 1993 and grandson of Pinkus Feldstein known in the network under the name of Louis Lefèvre, born in Ploeisti in 1895 in Romania, died in 1971, both of them resistants at Lyons in the network FTP-M.O.I Carmagnole and later in the UJRE in 1943. Pinkus Feldstein, veteran of the Fraenkel battalion of the Dombrowski brigade until 1937, during the war in Spain. Both refused all medals and honors which France proposed to them.

Josiane Olff-Nathan, Martine Olff-Sommer and Perrine Olff-Rastegar, daughters of Raymond Olff, combatant of French resistance F.T.P. (Franc-tireur et Partisans) during the Second World War.

Pierre Stambul, son of Jacov Stambul (Bessarabien), member of M.O.I and the Manouchian group ("triangle " of Boczor). Arrested in November 1943. Tortured by the French police force (show of execution). Deported to Buchenwald, released in May 1945. Died in 1989. And son of Dvoira Vainberg (Bessarabienne), member of M.O.I in Paris, deceased in 1997.

Notes:

Buckmaster, Colonel Maurice - head of British Special Operations Executive(SOE) activity in France, assisting resistance, spying and sabotage.

Dombrowski Brigade - the thirteenth International Brigade, Polish, with large proportion of Jewish volunteers.

FPO - Jewish partisans in the Vilna ghetto. (Vilnius is the modern name for the Lithuanian capital). Hirsh Glik, author of the Partisaner Lied, was from Vilna.
The FPO included communists, left-zionists and Bundists. But the head of the ghetto police who collaborated with the Germans was Jacob Gens, a Revisionist Zionist (forerunner of the right-wing Likud).

FTP - Francs-Tireurs et Partisans - French resistance network led by the Communists.

Manouchian, Missik - Armenian communist whose resistance group, comprising mostly immigrant Jews and Armenians, struck some of the first blows against the occupation, and aroused particular hatred from both Nazis and Vichyites. A notorious poster, l'affiche rouge, identified wanted members of the Manouchian group, and 23 of them were executed in prison.

MOI -Mains d'Ouevre Immigre - Immigrant workers organisation close to the French Communist Party, with sections for immigrants from different nationalities and language
backgrounds.

The Sixth - section of Jewish scouts and guides in France who went underground to help rescue, defence and resistance activity.

UJRE -Union des Juifs pour la resistance et I'entraide (UJRE), Union of Jews for Resistance and Mutual Aid.

French organisations's website:
http://www.ujfp.org/

US Jewish Voice for Peace:
http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/

Independent Jewish Voices(UK):
http://jewishvoices.squarespace.com/

Jewish Socialists' Group
http://jewishsocialist.org.uk/index.html