Washington Post article underscores contradictions in US vote on Armenian claims

A recent article in the Washington Post newspaper has called on Turkey not to take seriously the US Congressional vote on the non-binding resolution on the so-called Armenian genocide bill.

Post writer Jackson Diehl asserts that Turkey's behavior regarding the controversial bill should be "like one of the Western democracies," and that Turkey should simply "shrug its shoulders" and move on with regards to the bill. Diehl also notes in his article that no one much will place importance on the non-binding Armenian bill, pointing to another non-binding resolution passed by the House of Representatives against the Iraq war as an example.

Dielh also uses his article to point to the estimated 70-80 ethnic Armenian voters who live in US Congressman Adam Schiff's district, a fact he asserts helped shaped Schiff's heavy involvement in the writing of the bill. Diehl also recalls that many other ethnically Armenian voters live in Speaker Nancy Pelosi's district; Pelosi has reiterated her support for the bill many times.

At one point in his article, Diehl touches on what he portrays as the lack of knowledge on the part of most House of Representatives members to even decide on such a long past subject as the alleged Armenian genocide. Says Diehl, "Just think, 435 House of Representative members, most of whom don't even know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite, will decide on whether or not to approve of Adam Schiff's version of events which occured 92 years ago in the northeast region of Turkey."

Imagine…

ANDREW FINKEL, Zaman Gazetesi

Is Turkey about to get its second Nobel Prize winner? There was a very earnest recommendation made at a formal evening I attended in London this week hosted at the headquarters of Amnesty International UK but sponsored by many of the country’s other human rights organizations, including Index on Censorship, Open Democracy and English Pen. “A Turkish patriot” is how one speaker described the hoped for recipient. “A Martin Luther King,” said another. “A symbol that there is a way out of the current impasse,” said a third. The award would have to be made posthumously since Hrant Dink is dead.
The gathering I attended was a tribute to the murdered journalist at the end of what is, by Armenian custom, a period of mourning. That same custom holds that the soul of the deceased lingers for 40 days on earth and that it is incumbent on friends and family to wish it Godspeed as it finally departs. Of course Hrant Dink was a determined iconoclast, and I have a feeling that his spirit will hover far longer than the statutory 40 days.
Interesting about Wednesday night’s tribute was not just how many people managed to brave a blustery wet London night to attend (there were similar events in Istanbul and cities throughout the world) but the spirit in which it was conducted. I had been warned by a colleague that there was a feud going on over who “owned” Hrant Dink’s memory -- the assumption being that there would be an effort to appropriate the grief and outrage over his death to push for different political agenda including that of genocide recognition. However, there was no unseemly squabbling over his memory. Ronald Suny, an extraordinarily well-respected American political scientist of Armenian ancestry, made a point of stressing how Hrant’s greatest ambition was to see Turkey as a modern, fully democratic country and how this had often brought him into conflict with those in the diaspora motivated by the need if not for revenge then at least satisfaction.
The mood of the evening was that if Hrant Dink’s life symbolized anything, it was that there had to be a reconciliation between Turk and Armenian other than through silence and between Turkey and Armenia.
This is how I interpreted, at any rate, the tens of thousands who marched in his funeral cortege saying that “we are Armenians,” “we are all Hrants.” This is not everyone’s stated view. I read recently of an accusation (Feb. 26) by the head of the Turkish Historical Society, Yusuf Halaçoğlu that large segments of the crowds were organized subversives. They would not succeed in their aims, he said, because the march had the reverse effect of what they intended. Public opinion has hardened against them and “it is impossible to make anyone accept the genocide.”
It is odd in the extreme that a gathering organized by civil libertarians in London avoided turning Hrant Dink’s death into a parody of the genocide issue where the head of an august body like the Turkish Historical Society failed. I am shocked that a man of Professor Halaçoğlu’s education could be so insensitive. No doubt in the unlikelihood of Hrant Dink being given a Nobel Peace Prize, this too would be interpreted as an attempt by Scandinavian subversives to divide Turkey.
My own reading of these remarks, of those of some editors-in-chief of newspapers, of some hard-line nationalist politicians and even ministers, is that they are afraid. Just as others fear a wave of ultranationalism in Turkey, others fear that some people in society have slipped under the ropes used to corral them in. They fear they might lose the power of control.
I don’t want to exaggerate. What happened in 1915 is still a highly emotive issue in Turkey. But just for a moment, imagine a world in which Turkey, upon being told that the US Congress (or the Icelandic Althingi or the Japanese Diet), was thinking about recognizing a genocide did not 1) spend millions on expensive lobbyists; 2) boycott McDonald’s except on grounds other than health; 3) otherwise threaten to hold its breath until turning blue. Instead as a nation Turkey would shrug its shoulders, raise its eyebrows in exasperated fashion and say ,”Oh yes, once upon a time we used to think it was important to have an official history, to tell people what to think, but that was before we decided it was much less trouble to let them do so for themselves.”

SUPPORT THE ARMENIAN PATRIARCHATE OF JERUSALEM IN HOLY FIRE CEREMONY

In response to a worldwide plea issued by the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, Archbishop Oshagan issued an appeal in yesterday’s Crossroads E-Newsletter, encouraging everyone to immediately register their support of the Patriarchate on the ongoing dispute surrounding the Holy Fire Ceremony in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
The Holy Fire Ceremony is a religious ceremony that takes place on the Saturday of Holy Week, within the Tomb of Jesus Christ in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. The Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox and Jacobite-Syrians, all participate in this miraculous Holy Saturday ceremony where the Holy Fire descends from Heaven and lights up the lamp within the Tomb of Christ. The ceremony is conducted according to precise and clear rules and arrangements, which have been in existence for hundreds of years. According to the centuries-old practice, the Greek Patriarch and Armenian Patriarch (or representative) enter the Holy Tomb together, kneel down in front of the Tomb together, and witness the miracle of the descent of the Holy Fire together. They then transfer the Holy Fire to members of the Eastern Churches through two windows located in the wall of the Angel’s Chapel.
During Easter of 2002, the newly elected Greek Patriarch, Irineos I (now deposed), incited a conflict inside the Holy Tomb with the Armenian Patriarch’s representative, by demanding a deviation for the status quo arrangements. Since that time the conflict has continued.
The Armenian Patriarchate has made petitions and requests to the Israeli government for a decision on the matter. After five years only promises have been given without any decisions. The Patriarchate is asking all Armenians to petition the Israeli government to act with a sense of duty and responsibility, and to uphold the centuries-old rights of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

Fax or Email your messages today.

To read the Patriarchate’s appeal, names and addresses of officials to contact, and a sample letter, visit

www.armenianchurch.net/news/photos/holyfire.pdf

PM Erdogan to oversee re-opening of restored Armenian church on Van Lake

Hurriyet gazetesi

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in what many are viewing as a surprise response to Armenian diaspora efforts to get the so-called Armenian genocide bill accepted in the US Congress, has announced plans to personally open up the Armenian Sacred Cross Church on Van Lake's Akdaman Island.

The church, which has been carefully restored in a Ministry of Culture and Tourism project, will be re-opened on March 29, a date which some speculate has been chosen to proceed the April date when the Armenian bill is to be debated in the US Congress. Erdogan is reportedly planning to attend the opening ceremony for the Sacred Cross Church with a crowded delegation of ruling AKP cabinet and MP members. High ranking members of the Armenian diaspora are reportedly also to be invited to the opening, including Armenia's own Minister of Culture and Tourism, Hasmik Poghosyan.

Meanwhile, debate as to whether or not a cross is to be put on the top of the Sacred Cross Church's steeple rages on. Atilla Koc, the Minister of Culture and Tourism, has noted "If it turns out the original had one, then this one will too." The church, which sits on the Akdaman Island in Van Lake, was originally built by Vaspurakan King Gagik I between the years of 915-921 AD.

Armenian Genocide Resolution: Turkey's Chutzpah

Editorial Board
The Jewish Press

We are certainly not insensitive to the significance of Turkey’s support of Israel. But the Turkish government’s attempt to capitalize on that support by pressing the American Jewish community to oppose a Congressional resolution that condemns as “genocide” Turkey’s murder of a million and a half Armenians during World War I strikes us as being the height of chutzpah.

As The New York Sun reported, on February 5 the Turkish foreign minister met with representatives of several major Jewish groups and “made a hard sell” against House Resolution 106, which now has 176 co-sponsors. The Turkish official reportedly appealed to the participants by noting – outrageously, we think – the uniqueness of the German genocide against the Jews.

(Read more)

Movie Review: The Source (Zdroj)

"The Source"
Directed by Martin Marecek
Set in Azerbaijan, documentary, 2005

75 mins.

(Czech with English subtitles)

This witty documentary was sadly and miserably funny at times and sobering and depressing at most others. The film looks at the broad issue of oil prices by focusing on the Baku oil industry. Baku was the home to the world's first oil rig and until today continues to be the site of huge oil wealth stemming from the Caspian.

The Source examines the irreparable ecologic damage done to the country-side by "the gift of Azerbaijan". With radiation rates 100x the average, local villagers (70% of which live in poverty) live in areas which resemble tanker spills rather than neighborhoods.

Perhaps the most eyeopening issue addressed in the film is the inability for workers to feed their families on their wages earned. While the Aliyev clan and family get rich on oil money, the people of Azerbaijan struggle to make ends meet. Rated #130th country on the corruption scale (Transparency International), Azerbaijan, by means of falsified elections has become a hybrid-dictatorship.

The newly erected BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) pipeline, among the world's longest oil pipelines, has been more of a bane than blessing for the people of Azerbaijan. The government routinely confiscated land to build on without compensating poor farmers and has contaminated a large portion of farmland. In the words of an Astafa village Azeri women, "One day we will take shovels and break that pipeline ourselves..."

The bottom line here is that NOBODY in Azerbaijan outside the Aliyev family will ever seen any benefit from Azerbaijan's rich natural resource.

The Cry for Blood

BEKIR COSKUN: Hürriyet gazetesi

They had never been this excited by anything before. But they were thrilled to "be Ogun Samast." Thousands of them yelled "We are all Ogun Samast" at the match.

They never much cared for fighting for democracy.

They weren't ones to struggle against reactionaryism or backward thinking.

Working for a clean society was never their thing.

Nor was putting up a front against thieves and robbers.

Never, not even one day, did they ever shout out in anger about poverty, hunger, or the powerless in this country.

But what they all just loved doing was "being Ogun Samast."

Yes, they fill the weekend football stadium stands yelling "We are all Ogun Samast," over and over.

Ogun Samast, the murderer.

They say "We are all Ogun Samast."

And there are so many of them.

One, two, three, ten, one hundred thousand......

*

Meanwhile, here we are stupidly debating the deep state, who the real killer is, whether or not there is a secret organization at work, and who exactly might be behind this murder.

When all the time, the truth is being shouted in those football stadium stands: "We are all Ogun Samast."

Some are putting on replicas of that same white beret Samast wore when he committed the murder, the better to resemble him....

Just look around you. They're everywhere.

They're all yelling that they are each one "Ogun Samast."

A killer.

But when it comes to being equipped, cultured, knowledgeable, good citizens, people in whom their families can feel pride, well, there is no reaction from these same crowds.

They have never yelled with such ferocity when it comes to just growing up and becoming men. Nor when it comes to becoming human. What they want is to "be Ogun Samast." And so they yell in unison "We are all Ogun Samast."

Listen and listen well: this is the loud cry which yells out that peace and love can never come to this country. This is the cry of blood.