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

Turkish Entanglement

DIFFERENT REPORTING.  Mail didn't have name or photograph. Turkish papers, evidently better briefed, had both, and claimed to know whom arrested Brit had been working for.


What is the score with Steve Kaszynski, the British journalist arrested in Turkey over a month ago, and accused of links to a banned terrorist organisation?  His arrest was reported somewhat inadequately in the British press at the time, and one or two people who knew him commented, though not saying much.

With so much attention focused on the election in the past six weeks, and on the plight of refugees on the Med, as well as on police violence in the United States, I'm not complaining that the case of one man apparently caught up in Turkish conspiracies and state machinations has not been in the spotlight.

But an online search brought up next to nothing in the British press, and no one has replied to an enquiry on Facebook I made. 


One website, taking its name though I suspect not its politics from the late peace campaigner Brian Haw, notes that the Daily Mail reported a British man had been arrested, but without managing to give either a name or a photograph.

Turkish reports were supplied with both, and with the accusation that the arrested man had been no mere innocent astray, nor even a misguided revolutionist, but was a British agent, albeit working for the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), German intelligence service.
http://rt.com/uk/247385-british-national-arrested-turkey/ 

From this the Haw site has woven a plot to divert attention from Turkey's involvement with Western powers and Israel in waging war on Syria, and a Gladio-style strategy of tension inside the country.  I'm a bit dubious about neat conspiracy theories in which disparate pieces are made to fit, and more than dubious about this one.
 
But I'm willing to think something 'funny' is going on.  

http://brianhaw.tv/index.php/index/3132-daily-mail-claim-they-do-not-know-name-of-invisible-brit-called-steve-kaczynski-arrested-in-turkish-dhkp-c-gladio-operation-06-04-2015



  http://www.aa.com.tr/en/turkey/490109--turkey-briton-linked-to-hostage-takers-to-appeal-arrest 

Incidentally one voice that was raised in defence of Steve Kaczynsky and those arrested with him was that of the hardline Republican Sinn Fein in Ireland, who reject the accomodation reached by the Provisionals with the British government. In a statement calling for the "release of arrested comrades in Turkey" the RSF said that in particular "Cihan Keskek and political activist Steve Kaczynski ... are close friends of the Republican Movement in Ireland. Steve is a regular reader of the republican monthly SAOIRSE. Only some weeks ago, Cihan and Steve met with a representative of Republican Sinn Féin."
https://rsfnational.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/r-s-f-demand-release-of-arrested-comrades-in-turkey/

This makes it seem extra strange that the British and indeed Irish media have so far had little to say
about the case.  An item in the Times on April 7 did say Steve Kaczynski had worked for the BBC for some time, since which he had contributed to left-wing publications. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article4403794.ece

I have come across some of his contributions in left-wing publications, e.g. http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/365/political-prisoners-in-turkey/ and on websites. I would not have thought this branch of journalism, however good the work, pays very well.  Not at all, in my experience.

Anyway, here are how the arrest was reported in Turkey:

Briton detained in raids against terrorist organization

MEHMET SOLMAZ

ISTANBUL

Published April 3, 2015 Turkish police detained Stephan Shak Kacynski, a British national of Polish origin, in operations against the terrorist organization DHKP-C in Istanbul on Thursday. He is accused of having close ties with the organization.

Among the suspects detained at the Turkish National Police's dawn raids at several locations in Istanbul on Thursday against the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) was Stephan Shak Kacynski, a British national of Polish origin.

The 52-year-old freelance journalist is accused of having links to the terrorist organization that killed a prosecutor on Tuesday and attacked a police headquarters on Wednesday.

He was reportedly at the offices of İdil Culture Center associated with the group when he was detained by police.

Speaking to Daily Sabah, officials from the British Embassy in Ankara stated that they "closely working with Turkish partners to tackle DHKP-C." However, no comments were made on the claims that the detained British national is allegedly a spy working for British intelligence. "We condemn group's acts of terrorism in Istanbul this week. Condolences to the family of the prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz. We are aware of the detained British national and we are offering consular assistance to him," the statement added.

Kacysnki, who occasionally writes articles on the terrorist organization on various websites, is a frequent traveler to Turkey. According to media outlets, he is a former member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, a Marxist-Leninist movement and he monitored the trial of an Austrian national accused of joining a DHKP-C rally for the Scottish Socialist Party. He was present as an observer on trials of DHKP-C members in the 1990s and early 2000s. Turkish media outlets, quoting intelligence sources, reported that Kacysnki was involved in the "activities" of the terrorist organization in Germany and Greece and often visited Istanbul and had contacts with various groups affiliated with the DHKP-C.

Turkish police had rounded up dozens of supporters of terrorist organizations in operations against the group in Istanbul and several other cities. Apart from Kacyznski, six senior figures of DHKP-C and members of a band known for its support of the terrorist organization, were detained in operations in Okmeydanı, a working-class neighborhood on Istanbul's European side. Okmeydanı is known as one of the strongholds of the DHKP-C and it is often the scene of violent riots by the organization's supporters. Along with suspects, police seized several weapons, ammunition and jammer devices. Turkish media reported that the raided places had tight security and police had to remove a set of 11 steel doors in one location to enter inside before the suspected militants burned or destroyed evidence that might link them to the organization.

The terrorist organization is known for having support from abroad, especially from far-left organizations in Europe. The support from abroad for the DHKP-C is not confined to individuals. Greece and Syria, two neighbors of Turkey, is known for harboring members of terrorist organizations. Greece houses Lavrion, a refugee camp where the militants, treated as asylum seekers, are trained by senior leaders of the organization. Syria, where the terrorist group was founded in 1994, is also known for openly harboring militants, especially at a time of strained relations between Turkey and its southern neighbor. According to reports in the Turkish media, the DHKP-C has a "base" in Syria's coastal city of Latakia and supported by al-Mukhaberat, formidable intelligence service of the al-Assad regime. An article in the Yeni Şafak newspaper quoting intelligence sources says 52 DHKP-C members are trained at the base and Turkish intelligence suspects they may carry out attacks in Turkey. The article also points out that Mihraç Ural, a Turkey-born militant who heads a splinter group of a movement that the DHKP-C fell out with, now coordinates training of DHKP-C members in Syria.
http://www.dailysabah.com/nation/2015/04/03/briton-detained-in-raids-against-terrorist-organization

But while this report links the armed organisation to what might be called traditional enemies, a subsequent article points in a different direction:

British citizen detained in DHKP-C terror probe works for German spy agency BND

DAILY SABAH

Published April 4, 2015

AA Photo
 

The investigation into Stephan Shak Kacynski, a British national of Polish origin, has revealed that the suspect who was recently detained under the scope of the DHKP-C probe is a spy working for Germany's Federal Intelligence Service Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND).

Kacynski and several others were arrested under the scope of the DHKP-C operation on Saturday.

According to reports, Kacynski was not only responsible for giving instructions to the terrorist organization and providing communications between the DHKP-C and BND, but was also responsible for providing funding from Europe. It was reported that he occasionally participated in protests organized by the terrorist organization and frequently contacted the organization in Istanbul.

Stephan Shak Kacynski was among the suspects detained at the Turkish National Police's dawn raids at several locations in Istanbul on Thursday against the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C).

The 52-year-old freelance journalist is accused of having links to the terrorist organization that killed a prosecutor on Tuesday and attacked a police headquarters on Wednesday.

Kacysnki, who occasionally writes articles on the terrorist organization on various websites, is a frequent traveler to Turkey. According to media outlets, he is a former member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, a Marxist-Leninist movement and he monitored the trial of an Austrian national accused of joining a DHKP-C rally for the Scottish Socialist Party. He was present as an observer on trials of DHKP-C members in the 1990s and early 2000s. Turkish media outlets, quoting intelligence sources, reported that Kacysnki was involved in the "activities" of the terrorist organization in Germany and Greece and often visited Istanbul and had contacts with various groups affiliated with the DHKP-C.

http://www.dailysabah.com/investigations/2015/04/04/british-citizen-detained-in-dhkpc-terror-probe-works-for-german-spy-agency-bnd

This is not the first time that the finger of allegations has been pointed at one of Turkey's NATO allies. It was claimed that a Canadian intelligence agent was involved in helping British nationals cross into Syria to join ISIS.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2991628/Man-held-Turkish-authorities-helping-three-
British-girls-cross-Syria-join-ISIS.html  

Whatever the truth of such allegations, or the Turkish government's motives for making them, it looks as though what is really happening in Turkey is more complicated than any conspiracy theory.

Meanwhile, it is not just the established media that is being strangely quiet about this case. Hopefully as soon as parliament is back in business there will be questions asked. But also maybe friends on the Left, some of whom say they have met Steve Kaczynski and that he is a nice guy, will be raising calls for his release - and perhaps considering their own investigation?

Turkey Alight

WHATEVER its place in the tangle of Middle East power struggles, with revolt in Syria, a truce in the long-drawn Kurdish freedom fight, and the Mavi Marmara case opening -Turkey has been convulsed by an upheaval that has taken commentators by surprise.

Whatever the outcome, two things seem clear. One is the brutality of the police, with their armoured vehicles, water cannon and US-supplied riot gas. Turkey's deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arinç apologised for their heavy-handed tactics, which he said were "wrong and unjust", but the forces of repression were obviously well equipped and waiting for the chance to use this equipment.

The other side of the barricade sees the red flags of communists, socialists, secularists who see themselves defending Ataturk's heritage, and even some socially-progressive Islamists joining the environmental campaigners whose protest to save a park set off the touch paper. The revolt has spread from Istanbul to Ankara and other cities, and been joined by major trade unions. Though some groups remain uncertain and hesitate to join, it is hard to question the social character of this unrest.

The Left sees the destruction of Istanbul's Gezi Park for a shopping mall as part of the Erdogan government's neo-liberal capitalist agenda, and suspects the government of turning towards Islamic reaction to cover its measures.   

Here is a statement issued by the Day-Mer Turkish and Kurdish community centre in London:

On 27th May 2013, a police escorted demolition team arrived at the Taksim Gezi Park in Istanbul Turkey to flatten the entire park and destroy all the parkland, including the trees. Despite resistance from local people and environmentalist groups, the site was cleared and demolition work proceeded. The police then clashed with protesters who began to occupy the Park. The activists have been camping there for three days in an attempt to stop the destruction. The demolishing soon grounded to a halt after Sırrı Süreyya Önder, an MP for the Peace and Democracy Party, stood in front of one of the bulldozers for three hours. This led to a wider resistance building up and galvanised a massive stand against the demolition of the site. The determined environmentalists, community groups, members of political parties and trade unionists continued to occupy the park until 30th May 2013.

On the morning of 30th May 2013, approximately around 5am in the morning, the police have used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse the crowd. This only increased the support for the protesters and attracted hundreds more from all sorts of backgrounds to make the resistance stronger. Turkish riot police continued to fire tear gas and water cannons into crowds of demonstrators gathered in Istanbul’s Gezi Park on Friday 31st May 2013. Despite the order by an Istanbul court for the temporary suspension of the project to uproot trees in the park, the extensive use of tear gas and water cannons on crowds resulted in serious injuries. Amnesty International has called Turkish government to halt the brutal police repression and investigate all abuses.

Despite this hundreds of working people, students, environmentalists, socialists, trade unionists, ordinary people continued to gather at the Taksim Square to oppose and show their anger against the excessive use of power by the police and the state. The standoff between security forces and protestors, now numbering thousands, has continued well into early hours of Saturday, with its end not yet in sight. Most media organisations have turned a blind eye on what is happening and stopped reporting news to the world. The government have tried to block all 3G mobile phone signals to stop the news spreading over social network sites. But there is now a wider anger against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the police in Turkey.

The unrest has spread to many cities such as Ankara, Izmir, Kayseri, Izmit, Bodrum and many more. Slogans such as ‘Erdogan must go’, ‘Erdogan out,’ and ‘Chemical Erdogan’ have been echoed by thousands of people around the country. Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan and the Istanbul Mayor, Huseyin Avni Mutlu, have denied any wrongdoing and defended vehemently the actions of the police. They went as far as labelling the protestors ‘trouble makers’ with designs to use the protests for advancing their political interests. At the time of writing this statement 3 people were confirmed to be killed and resistance of people getting bigger in every city in Turkey.

What sparked this rebellion? Turkey over the past decade has been ruled by the AKP party which is known to be an Islamic-leaning and conservative political party in Turkey. The AKP government, now in its second term in office under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, came into power with promises of EU membership, ‘zero-problems with neighbours’ foreign policy, as well as better and peaceful living conditions for all citizens. Over the first term the AKP government has failed on the assurance of EU membership primarily because of having a poor record on civil liberties, as well as not resolving the Kurdish and Alevi issue. Erdogan in his second term in office has failed dramatically over the promises of better relationships with neighbouring countries by either being in war or on the verge of war with countries such as Iran, Iraq, Syria and other Middle Eastern neighbours. Most of these issues were a result of the foreign policy demands of the US from Turkey.

Despite making some efforts on the Kurdish issue, the AKP governments’ hesitance to completely resolve this issue have raised questions concerning its honesty and willingness to resolve this major issue of Turkey. This is in spite of the fact that Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) calling a ceasefire after almost 30 years of guerrilla fighting. Its promise of a prosperous and wealthy society has seen workers up and down the country taking strike actions for better pay and working conditions.

Major strike actions taken by Turkish Airline workers and DHL workers have raised international concerns regarding how workers have been treated by the employment laws imposed by the AKP government. In addition, high profile strike actions have been taken by workers in the manufacturing, coal mining and agricultural sectors against the pay and working conditions imposed by the AKP government. The biggest attack during the AKP reign has been the attacks on civil liberties, particularly on the freedom of expression. Thousands of journalists, lecturers, writers, politicians, intellectuals and ordinary people have been imprisoned and made to wait for trial in prisons in Turkey. Most recently Erdogan and his AKP party has put a ban on alcohol sales after 10pm and continued their transformation of turning the Republic of Turkey into an ‘Islamist heaven’. We need your help in stopping this state and police brutality. Given these important developments, we are urging all our friends in UK to show their solidarity by signing our online petition. This is a petition which demands the end to the violence and release of all people in custody. 

 This is a petition which demands the end to the violence and release of all people in custody. SIGN HERE

For the price of a phone call to Turkey...

IT may have been the first fruit of President Obama's visit to Israel and Palestine, small but still significant. Not the favourable response he received from an audience of Israeli students when he spoke about Palestinian rights, but Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu lifting the phone to Ankara, though not yet lifting the siege of Gaza..

"In a remarkable about-face after three years of adamant refusal, Bibi Netanyahu has apologized to Turkey’s premier for Israel’s 2010 massacre on the Mavi Marmara.  He’s also promised financial compensation to the families of the nine Turkish citizens murdered during the attack.  Reports also indicate an Israeli agreement to ease the Gaza blockade, though the provisions are uncertain".

That also seems to be the positive spin put on this development by Turkish media supporting their government. 

My friend Dror Feiler, who sailed on the Freedom Flotilla and has not let rough treatment by Israeli captors deter him from further sailings, welcomed the Israeli prime minister's apology, but with caution. In a note to the Jewish Socialists' Group Facebook page offering "Some thoughts after Israel's apology to Turkey for the attack on the Freedom Flotilla (31/5/2010)",  Dror wrote:

"Some thoughts after Israel's apology to Turkey for the attack on the Freedom Flotilla (31/5/2010).
The Israeli apology to Turkey is of course a step in the right direction. But The apology to Turkey that Israel and Turkey agreed upon is not enough. In the apology Israel is defining a murder as a “mistake and/or “malfunction" and this is unacceptable.
Israel has not acknowledged that the Freedom Flotilla action was/is a legitimate struggle against the blockade and occupation. A real apology should be formed along the lines that Turkey and the Freedom Flotilla demanded from the beginning – An apology and compensation, the establishment of an international investigation committee and lifting of the blockade on Gaza."
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/top-turkish-officials-rapid-steps-to-restore-turkey-israel-ties-to-commence-in-coming-days-1.511470

US-based blogger Richard Silverstein in his Tikkun Olam blog quoted above did not hesitate to see this as Obama's bargain, and accepted that Israel was going to pay compensation and had made some promises re Gaza. 

 Mavi Marmara compensation

Of course shooting a cameraman in the head at close range is more than a "mistake", and no amount of compensation brings those killed back to life, but Netanyahu's phone call wan't just a climb down for him. It was a smack down to former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, and a slap to the kind of Israelis who support Beitar Jerusalem but scream abuse at its recently acquired Chechen player, and had added "Hating Turks" to "Killing Arabs" among their listed hobbies. To them and to their slightly more pretentious Western backers.  Here's Richard Silverman again:

"This is such a strange and sudden development that it begs speculation about what caused it.  First, earlier refusals were grounded in Avigdor Lieberman’s rejection of an apology.  Given that Lieberman immediately attacked the apology, it seems he hasn’t changed his mind.  Contrition lies with Bibi.  Given that Pres. Obama left Israel today one can’t deny the critical role that he played in brokering the deal.
But given that Obama had tried and failed before, something more must’ve been offered to Bibi.  This is where I fear what transpired during this visit.  What could Obama offer Bibi that would move the latter from rejection to acceptance of a development that surely rankles the pride the any red-blooded Israeli nationalist."

He continues by discussing a serious fear:

Given that Iran was at the top of the mutual Israeli-U.S. agenda on this trip.  And given that Bibi didn’t object when Obama told the world that Iran was at least a year away from the nuclear threshold, despite the fact that Bibi placed that date right around now when he broached the subject in his fall UN speech;  this leads to the sneaking suspicion that there was a Grand Bargain made that involved an American commitment to attack Iran with or without Israel in the coming year.

However, on the off-chance that this reconciliation between Israel and Turkey came with Erdogan’s acquiescence to an attack on Iran, then I’d take back everything I wrote in the paragraph above.  I find it impossible to believe that Erdogan would agree to such an attack on a former ally.

Well, what are  the practical consequances of the promises so far? Not a lot, according to the Gisha site monitoring the Gaza siege: .

Sunday, March 24, 2013 – Amid assurances to Turkey by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of easing Gaza access, Israel has tightened restrictions on the movement of people and goods into and out of Gaza, as part of what appears to be a new policy of openly blocking civilian access in direct response to fire by combatants. Gisha-Legal Center for Freedom of Movement sent an urgent letter today to the new defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, demanding that the new restrictions be lifted (an English translation of the original letter is available here).

Since Thursday, Gaza's only goods crossing has been closed, and travel by Palestinians into and out of Gaza through Israel has been blocked, except for medical patients and other exceptional cases. Israel also reduced the fishing zone off the coast of Gaza from six to three nautical miles. The restrictions came after militants from Gaza Thursday fired rockets at civilian population centers in southern Israel.

On Friday, in a phone call in which Netanyahu apologized to Turkish Prime Minister Tayyep Erdogan for mistakes made during the May 2010 interception of a flotilla bound for Gaza in which nine Turkish citizens were killed, Netanyahu noted that Israel had substantially lifted restrictions on goods entering Gaza. News reports quoted Erdogan as saying that Netanyahu also promised to improve humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip.

In Gisha's appeal today to the defense minister, the human rights organization condemned the rocket attacks as a blatant violation of the international law prohibition against deliberate or indiscriminate fire toward civilians and noted that Israel, too, is obliged to avoid harming civilians:

"Because of the severity of the prohibition against deliberately harming civilians, the steps taken by Israel, also aimed against civilians, are entirely unacceptable", Gisha Director Sari Bashi wrote. "In the last month, there appears to be a new policy toward the Gaza Strip, in which Israel is openly restricting civilian movement to and from Gaza, not because of a concrete security necessity, but rather as a punitive step taken against the civilian population – in direct response to fire by combatants".

The letter noted that this is the second time in less than a month that Israel has openly blocked civilian travel and goods transfer, in direct response to rocket fire by militants, and called on the defense minister to refrain from engaging in collective punishment.

Read the full letter sent to Minister Ayalon (English

http://www.gisha.org/item.asp?lang_id=en&p_id=1889#.UVAP6v7D1bU.facebook 

But it seems there is one by-product, judging from a report in the New York Times today:

"With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against PresidentBashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders."  

Turkey steps up arms to rebels

Did "Deep State" order Kurdish women's murder?

WERE three Kurdish women murdered in Paris victims of a rogue Turkish state organisation out to sabotage peace talks with the Kurds and possibly bring down the Turkish government itself?

Sakine Cansiz, 55, a founder member of the Kurdistan Workers party (PKK) living in Europe;  Fidan Dogan, 28, president of a Kurdish lobby group, based in Strasbourg; and Leyla Soylemez, a young Kurdish activist, living in Germany, were killed on Wednesday, . None of the three women lived full time in Paris, but were visiting a Kurdish information centre near the Gare du Nord when they were killed.

It was reported yesterday that each of them had been shot several times in the head, which suggests a professional killer. They had their outdoor coats on, indicating they had either just entered the building or were about to leave. This also counters suggestions that they must have opened the door to their killer or that the assassin had to know the door entry code to gain access. It is possible they had been followed and/or that the killer was waiting for them to leave.

It has echoes of the murder in 1976 of Egyptian communist Henri Curiel at his home in Paris. Curiel, who was under secret state surveillance at the time, was about to step from the lift on his way out when gunmen who had entered the foyer. No one was ever caught for this murder.


The three Kurdish women were murdered on the same day that the Turkish press reported the government had reached an outline agreement with the imprisoned PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan,  to end the 30 years old conflict with Kurdish guerrillas in the south east of the country, which has cost an estimated 40,000 lives.

Kurdish leaders have rejected suggestions from either French or Turkish sources that the killing was the result of an  “internal split” among Kurdish militants. They blame the “deep state”, as both they and Turkish leaders have called it, a network of Turkish officials and senior army officers who distrust the elected government and are opposed to any concessions to minorities or form of Kurdish autonomy.

Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has himself referred to this "deep state" before, and whether it would allow him to govern. But Erdogan has been casting around this past week, claiming the murder in Paris must be part of a struggle among Kurds, and making diversionary accusations. 

Complaining that France's President Francois Hollande had spoken with Sakine Cansiz, Erdogan said that Cansiz, one of the foundrts of the PKK, had been placed in custody in Germany in 2007, but was released soon after."We notified French Interpol just two months ago," Erdogan said. "France didn't do anything about it. The French head of state must explain why he was seeing these terrorists,"

But reports in the Turkish press say Cansiz was in favour of the PKK ending its armed struggle, and had been involved in negotiations in Oslo between the Turkish state and the PKK. She reportedly met with members of the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MİT) in recent months.

According to the conservative daily Yeni Safak it was Sakine Cansaz's job to communicate to factions in European countries once she received information from Abdullah Ocalan.

The French police were initially reported investigating the possibility that the attack was a robbery or a dispute about money. There are reportedly a number of investigations into political fundraising from Kurds in France. But the women's handbags had not been touched.Police found a neatly packed suitcase in offices of the Kurdish Information Centre, which is on the first floor of a residential building in the Rue Lafayette..

After it was revealed that the women had been shot several times in the head, and that the gunman had used a silencer,  the view was strengthened that this was a professional killing.  French Interior Minister Manuel Valls said the slayings were "without doubt an execution."

Those who suspect this was the work of conspirators within the Turkish state remembered the murder of  newspaper editor Hrant Dink on 19 January 2007 outside the office of his journal Agos. Dink was an ethnic Armenian, and had campaigned for recognition of the 1915 masacre of Armenians in Turkey. A juvenile killer Ogün Samast was arrested, but many people refused to believe he acted alone, or without encouragement. A video clip was released showing him posing with two police officers. A suspect accused of helping Samast was linked to right-wing nationalists, and had been a staff member of the Gendarmerie intelligence service, JITEM.


Some 20,000 people marched through Istanbul last year on the fifth anniversary of Hrant Dink's murder, both to honour the murdered journalist  and demand that the authorities conduct a full investigation into those behind the murder.

Hundreds of Kurds have been demonstrating outside Turkish embassies in Paris and London over the murder of the three Kurdish women. Joining demonstrators in London on Friday, I ventured to one of the organisers that it was difficult to know exactly who might be behind this killing. "It is difficult," he agreed. "But we know the Turkish prime minister himself was talking recently about the 'deep state', and whether they would let him govern. We think it is the 'Turkish Gladio'" (a reference to the right-wing secret armies established in NATO countries during Cold War years).  France is a funny country...We know there were also Turkish threats against the Armenians there". 

  SAKINE CANSAZ

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/paris-murders-jeopardize-turkish-kurdish-peace-process-a-877025.html

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/03/12/120312fa_fact_filkins


http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/threat-of-sanctions-erdogan-slams-racist-france-over-genocide-bill-a-811118.html
^{http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/new-owners-of-turkish-deep-state.aspx?pageID=238&nid=37921} 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16632890

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/