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Post by thracian08 on Mar 8, 2010 13:23:36 GMT -5
You can believe all you want Kastor - it's in the archives Also Novi, the difference btwen the Balkan Wars and the war with the Armenians is that there was no Ottoman military in Eastern Turkey. Armenians were killing civilians. Of course after the idea of Nationality arose in the 1900's people wanted to become independent. But what the Armenians did was pure savagery. Armenians joined with the Russian forces, and grouped into guerrilla bands. They began attacking the Turkish Army in the rear, and even before the Russo-Armenian forces arrived, they succeeded in capturing Van, massacred its entire Muslim population, and razed the entire city. They then proceeded to “soften up” the area, and in the process killed thousands of Turks and Kurds. There was a massive flow of refugees into Central Anatolia, who survived under extremely harsh conditions. At this point, the Ottoman Government faced severe problems. The Army was being attacked by Russo-Armenian forces in the North and Armenian guerrillas in the South. On the other hand, there were the many Armenian communities who appeared uninvolved in the fighting, but in fact were providing food, shelter and new recruits to the guerrillas. The Muslim populations were beginning to react in kind, and the region was rapidly falling into full-fledged inter-communal warfare. When the Ottoman Army returned to the north, the onset of the Russian Revolution forced the retreat of the Russo-Armenian forces to what is currently Armenia. During this retreat, many atrocities were committed against Turks and Kurds, including the burning of mosques full of women, children, and old men, gouging eyes, and burying people alive. At the close of World War I, the Ottoman Empire was no more. The Ottoman Sultan fled Istanbul on a British ship, and Turkish people were left to fend for themselves against the invasion of the British, French, Australian, Italian, Russian, Greek, and Armenian forces. The Turks fight for independence raged on for several years under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Many more Turkish people died in this struggle, not just from war, but from hunger and disease. There is not one single Turk alive today who did not lose relatives during the Independence War. The Independence War ended with the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne, in which the modern day borders of Turkey were recognized, and the Allies abandoned all claims on Anatolia. Thus, there was neither any planned execution of Armenians, nor such an intention. Demographic studies by Professor Justin McCarthy show that roughly 600,000 Armenians died during the struggles as compared to almost 3 million Muslim deaths. Vartanian claims that 1.5 million Armenians were killed -- however, according to census figures of the British as well as the Ottomans, there were never more than 1.3 million Armenians in Anatolia. Additionally, Vartanian refers to U.S. Ambassador Morgenthau. It should be noted though that Morgenthau was a racist, who believed that Turks were an inferior race and openly printed that Turks had “inferior blood.” One cannot expect accurate reporting from such a biased man, yet it is his reports on which much of the Armenian accounts are based on. Vartanian also refers to a remark by Adolf Hitler, as though somehow the psychotic ravings of a man known for exterminating the Jews can be relied on for accurate history. He also asserts that “claims against the Armenians are purely anecdotal.” I highly doubt that the mass of evidence can be referred to as anecdotal: there are eyewitness accounts of Russian soldiers, demographic evidence, reports from Allied soldiers, photographic evidence, as well as testimonies from the Turkish refugees. Seventy American scholars -- including Prof. McCarthy of the University of Louisville, Prof. Bernard Lewis of Princeton, and Prof. Sandford Shaw of the University of California at Los Angeles -- testified in 1988 in front of the House International Committee that there was no genocide of Armenians. The Clinton Administration continues to back the Turkish people on this issue, because it knows the truth: there was no Armenian genocide.
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Post by oszkarthehun on Mar 9, 2010 1:33:55 GMT -5
ah good old Thracian copy pasting what she likes to hear but not leaving the source/author or even having it sound as if she wote it herself. The article is from here tech.mit.edu/V119/N23/col23guest2.23c.htmland its written by a couple of Turks ... Sevgi Ertan is a graduate student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Cagri A. Savran is a graduate student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. I see neither of them are historians or scholars in the field of this subject. Nor do they provide any hard evidence for their claims. Nice one Thracian , we all believe you now that you have enlightened us with this outstanding scholarly article that you copy pasted and that was written by a electrical engineer and a mechanical engineer. You can believe all you want Kastor - it's in the archives Also Novi, the difference btwen the Balkan Wars and the war with the Armenians is that there was no Ottoman military in Eastern Turkey. Armenians were killing civilians. Of course after the idea of Nationality arose in the 1900's people wanted to become independent. But what the Armenians did was pure savagery. Armenians joined with the Russian forces, and grouped into guerrilla bands. They began attacking the Turkish Army in the rear, and even before the Russo-Armenian forces arrived, they succeeded in capturing Van, massacred its entire Muslim population, and razed the entire city. They then proceeded to “soften up” the area, and in the process killed thousands of Turks and Kurds. There was a massive flow of refugees into Central Anatolia, who survived under extremely harsh conditions. At this point, the Ottoman Government faced severe problems. The Army was being attacked by Russo-Armenian forces in the North and Armenian guerrillas in the South. On the other hand, there were the many Armenian communities who appeared uninvolved in the fighting, but in fact were providing food, shelter and new recruits to the guerrillas. The Muslim populations were beginning to react in kind, and the region was rapidly falling into full-fledged inter-communal warfare. When the Ottoman Army returned to the north, the onset of the Russian Revolution forced the retreat of the Russo-Armenian forces to what is currently Armenia. During this retreat, many atrocities were committed against Turks and Kurds, including the burning of mosques full of women, children, and old men, gouging eyes, and burying people alive. At the close of World War I, the Ottoman Empire was no more. The Ottoman Sultan fled Istanbul on a British ship, and Turkish people were left to fend for themselves against the invasion of the British, French, Australian, Italian, Russian, Greek, and Armenian forces. The Turks fight for independence raged on for several years under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Many more Turkish people died in this struggle, not just from war, but from hunger and disease. There is not one single Turk alive today who did not lose relatives during the Independence War. The Independence War ended with the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne, in which the modern day borders of Turkey were recognized, and the Allies abandoned all claims on Anatolia. Thus, there was neither any planned execution of Armenians, nor such an intention. Demographic studies by Professor Justin McCarthy show that roughly 600,000 Armenians died during the struggles as compared to almost 3 million Muslim deaths. Vartanian claims that 1.5 million Armenians were killed -- however, according to census figures of the British as well as the Ottomans, there were never more than 1.3 million Armenians in Anatolia. Additionally, Vartanian refers to U.S. Ambassador Morgenthau. It should be noted though that Morgenthau was a racist, who believed that Turks were an inferior race and openly printed that Turks had “inferior blood.” One cannot expect accurate reporting from such a biased man, yet it is his reports on which much of the Armenian accounts are based on. Vartanian also refers to a remark by Adolf Hitler, as though somehow the psychotic ravings of a man known for exterminating the Jews can be relied on for accurate history. He also asserts that “claims against the Armenians are purely anecdotal.” I highly doubt that the mass of evidence can be referred to as anecdotal: there are eyewitness accounts of Russian soldiers, demographic evidence, reports from Allied soldiers, photographic evidence, as well as testimonies from the Turkish refugees. Seventy American scholars -- including Prof. McCarthy of the University of Louisville, Prof. Bernard Lewis of Princeton, and Prof. Sandford Shaw of the University of California at Los Angeles -- testified in 1988 in front of the House International Committee that there was no genocide of Armenians. The Clinton Administration continues to back the Turkish people on this issue, because it knows the truth: there was no Armenian genocide.
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Post by oszkarthehun on Mar 9, 2010 2:03:22 GMT -5
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Post by Novi Pazar on Mar 9, 2010 6:18:19 GMT -5
"Ayy, please explain how it was the Albanians caused Yugoslavia to fall apart?
Croats Slovenia, then and Bosnians first split apart, and lastly it was the Albanians"
Thracian, this is what l said to acouple of Albanian debators here in the Turkish forum, you don't analyse the final 5 minutes of a 90 minute football match but the entire 90minutes. Now, there was a riot in serbia's kosovo region in 1981 and there was an evil man named Fadil Hoxha. Besides this, you need to read about the kosovo Albanian nazi division called the SS-Scanderbeg and people like Klissura, Fresheri etc...and you will see why Albanian islamic nationalism was a contributing factor for the collapse of Yugoslavia. Why did l say Albanian Islamic nationalism, not Christian Albanian nationalism?
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Dèsîŗĕ Yèarning
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Post by Dèsîŗĕ Yèarning on Mar 9, 2010 9:50:33 GMT -5
whats wrong with individuals,some of those individuals represent Kurdish institutions or community agencies, couldn't you find any dirt on them ?Did I say anything was wrong with the individuals? It is clear that there isn't a general consensus about your so called genocide. That is the point that I made, there are individuals in Turkey who also believe there was a genocide, thats an OPINION, not a FACT learn the difference. the article shows that there is Kurdish media that indicate that they accept there was a Genocide.See above,same response. I think its clear that there are many Kurdish groups and media who accept there was an Armenian Genocide, I have known about this before not just from that article and there are more sources on the internet that show this is the case I couldnt be bothered listing all of them here but you can find them quite easily if you try.Its obvious that there isn't and if u actually have to SEARCH for such a thing,it means it isn't a popular belief,perhaps a few individuals. You have NOT shown anything that state the Kurdish people just ATTACKED the people they had been living with for 1000 years. Do not lie oh who cares what you think, you get frustrated on your little keyboard and start hurling insults, actually no one cares what are your concerns.Then step away. No one forces u to respond. Hurling insults or questioning your comprehension abilities about a historical situation with very different political dynamics affecting the modern countries?... there is plenty of evidence to see that a genocide was committed if you understand what the definition of genocide is and then open your eyes to what happened, then its quite obvious. Except you cannot post any facts.
what the hell are you talking about every person that studies historical events uses information gathered and provided by others, unless the researcher was actually there him/her/self.EXACTLY - but u disregard all the evidence against the claim, therefore becoming biased in your view and blindly supporting a theory. maybe u need the Dr as I dont recall saying its funny, but rather your comments seem to show that what you think happened to the Armenians was funny.
I think u need to back off this this situation.You haven't any direct link to it, are not a historian, and in fact you don't seem to have much logic either. eg "Kurds smashed them", "I like the Kurds more now" "we should have committed a genocide" etc etc. Yes because a Kurds area people who know how to defend themselves. Poor Armenians decided to start their NATIONAL uprising, which even their RELIGIOUS leader was against, they then murder him. I bet you know nothing of this too
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Dèsîŗĕ Yèarning
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Post by Dèsîŗĕ Yèarning on Mar 9, 2010 11:33:08 GMT -5
hahah guess who the leader of the kurdish parliamentin exile was:abdullah ocalan what a joke.LOL
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Post by thracian08 on Mar 9, 2010 11:50:20 GMT -5
And Ozkart, the Turkish lady who wrote that article quoted historians. Thank you for pointing that out Novi, wasn't the UCK a communist ideological nationalist Albanian group, not Islamic based. We can ask the Albanians themselves here. My point is that the other ethnic groups seceded first before the Albanians. Blaming Albanians on the entire collapse of Yugoslavia isn't fair. Each group wanted to split. Also, why don't you also talk about Serbian Orthodox nationalism here? After all, Milosevic used this to hate Muslims and to call Bosnians "Turks" which is ridicolous.
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donnie
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Post by donnie on Mar 9, 2010 17:22:41 GMT -5
You are correct Thracian. You see, Novi is a retard and therefore you shouldnt pay much attention to his words. Truth is, Albanian nationalism and the advent of UCK cannot be clothed in any religious cloak because it would contradict it precisely because we are religiously heterogenous. It would come as a surprise if the contrary was true that among our most prominent national figures are those of the Christian faith. I will not list any names since they might not tell you much, but anyone with slight knowledge of our history will come tothat conclusion.
If there is a nationalist ideology in the Balkans where religion does play a role, it is precisely among Serbs. Orthodoxy is crucial to their identity, and not being atleast a nominal Serb Orthodox will mean you're not a real Serb. Their religious extremism is what drove them to kill Muslim Slavs in Bosnia (Bosniaks) relentlessly, driven by their inherited hate for anything Muslim and their belief that the Bosniaks are "traitors" and similiar BS.
UCK was as you said not a religious organization, but a national one, hence also the reason why our Christian bretheren fought alongside those of Muslim confession. The religious harmony achieved in our country, though not perfect in all instances, is without precedent and definetely not an area where Serbs should have a say after having shown their true colours in the Bosnian war.
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Post by thracian08 on Mar 10, 2010 13:14:27 GMT -5
"Few Europeans realized that the Turkish Ottoman Sultan Suleiman was the head of the most democratic government of their time."
Harold Lamb, American historian and novelist, noted for his biographies of Genghis Khan, Alexander, and Hannibal
"The tolerance shown to foreign beliefs and hostile faiths by the Ottoman law and Ottoman officials which enabled them to establish their own religious institutions and to shape their own education was such that the thousand year old liberty reigning in France in the field of sects and beliefs, dating from the times of the ancient Gaul, could not be compared with it."
Talcot Williams, Turkey, A World Problem of Today, New York, 1922, p. 194
"Few Europeans realized that the Turkish Ottoman Sultan Suleiman was the head of the most democratic government of their time."
Harold Lamb, American historian and novelist, noted for his biographies of Genghis Khan, Alexander, and Hannibal
"The tolerance shown to foreign beliefs and hostile faiths by the Ottoman law and Ottoman officials which enabled them to establish their own religious institutions and to shape their own education was such that the thousand year old liberty reigning in France in the field of sects and beliefs, dating from the times of the ancient Gaul, could not be compared with it."
Talcot Williams, Turkey, A World Problem of Today, New York, 1922, p. 194
"The Armenians were retreating before the Ottoman Army. They were in danger. Yet they stopped whenever they could to kill the innocent Muslims of Erzurum, despite the risk to their own safety. This kind of hatred and madness cannot be explained. It is often falsely claimed that the Turks committed a genocide of the Armenians. Yet this was the real genocide, a genocide of the Turks."
Justin McCarthy, Professor, University of Louisville, "The Destruction of Ottoman Erzurum by Armenians," 2002
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Post by Vizier of Oz on Mar 12, 2010 3:03:20 GMT -5
The US wants to deny that Turkey's slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 was genocide. But the evidence is there, in a hilltop orphanage near BeirutTuesday, 9 March 2010 The unmarked grave at Antoura for the bones that were found there in 1993It's only a small grave, a rectangle of cheap concrete marking it out, blessed by a flourish of wild yellow lilies. Inside are the powdered bones and skulls and bits of femur of up to 300 children, Armenian orphans of the great 1915 genocide who died of cholera and starvation as the Turkish authorities tried to "Turkify" them in a converted Catholic college high above Beirut. But for once, it is the almost unknown story of the surviving 1,200 children – between three and 15 years old – who lived in the crowded dormitory of this ironically beautiful cut-stone school that proves that the Turks did indeed commit genocide against the Armenians in 1915. Barack Obama and his pliant Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton – who are now campaigning so pitifully to prevent the US Congress acknowledging that the Ottoman Turkish massacre of 1.5 million Armenians was a genocide – should come here to this Lebanese hilltop village and hang their heads in shame. For this is a tragic, appalling tale of brutality against small and defenceless children whose families had already been murdered by Turkish forces at the height of the First World War, some of whom were to recall how they were forced to grind up and eat the skeletons of their dead fellow child orphans in order to survive starvation. Jemal Pasha, one of the architects of the 1915 genocide, and – alas – Turkey's first feminist, Halide Edip Adivar, helped to run this orphanage of terror in which Armenian children were systematically deprived of their Armenian identity and given new Turkish names, forced to become Muslims and beaten savagely if they were heard to speak Armenian. The Antoura Lazarist college priests have recorded how its original Lazarist teachers were expelled by the Turks and how Jemal Pasha presented himself at the front door with his German bodyguard after a muezzin began calling for Muslim prayers once the statue of the Virgin Mary had been taken from the belfry. Hitherto, the argument that Armenians suffered a genocide has rested on the deliberate nature of the slaughter. But Article II of the 1951 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide specifically states that the definition of genocide – "to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" – includes "forcibly transferring children of the group to another group". This is exactly what the Turks did in Lebanon. Photographs still exist of hundreds of near-naked Armenian children performing physical exercises in the college grounds. One even shows Jemal Pasha standing on the steps in 1916, next to the young and beautiful Halide Adivar who – after some reluctance – agreed to run the orphanage. Before he died in 1989, Karnig Panian – who was six years old when he arrived at Antoura in 1916 – recorded in Armenian how his own name was changed and how he was given a number, 551, as his identity. "At every sunset in the presence of over 1,000 orphans, when the Turkish flag was lowered, 'Long Live General Pasha!' was recited. That was the first part of the ceremony. Then it was time for punishment for the wrongdoers of the day. They beat us with the falakha , and the top-rank punishment was for speaking Armenian."
Panian described how, after cruel treatment or through physical weakness, many children died. They were buried behind the old college chapel. "At night, the jackals and wild dogs would dig them up and throw their bones here and there ... at night, kids would run out to the nearby forest to get apples or any fruits they could find – and their feet would hit bones. They would take these bones back to their rooms and secretly grind them to make soup, or mix them with grain so they could eat them as there was not enough food at the orphanage. They were eating the bones of their dead friends."
Using college records, Emile Joppin, the head priest at the Lazarite Antoura college, wrote in the school's magazine in 1947 that "the Armenian orphans were Islamicised, circumcised and given new Arab or Turkish names. Their new names always kept the initials of the names in which they were baptised. Thus Haroutioun Nadjarian was given the name Hamed Nazih, Boghos Merdanian became Bekir Mohamed, to Sarkis Safarian was given the name Safouad Sulieman."
Lebanese-born Armenian-American electrical engineer Missak Kelechian researches Armenian history as a hobby and hunted down a privately printed and very rare 1918 report by an American Red Cross officer, Major Stephen Trowbridge, who arrived at the Antoura college after its liberation by British and French troops and who spoke to the surviving orphans. His much earlier account entirely supports that of Father Joppin's 1949 research.
"Every vestige, and as far as possible every memory, of the children's Armenian or Kurdish origin was to be done away with. Turkish names were assigned and the children were compelled to undergo the rites prescribed by Islamic law and tradition ... Not a word of Armenian or Kurdish was allowed. The teachers and overseers were carefully trained to impress Turkish ideas and customs upon the lives of the children and to catechize [sic] them regularly on ... the prestige of the Turkish race."
Halide Adivar, later to be lauded by The New York Times as "the Turkish Joan of Arc" – a description that Armenians obviously questioned – was born in Constantinople in 1884 and attended an American college in the Ottoman capital. She was twice married and wrote nine novels – even Trowbridge was to admit that she was "a lady of remarkable literary ability" – and served as a woman officer in Mustafa Ataturk's Turkish army of liberation after the First World War. She later lived in both Britain and France.
And it was Kelechian yet again who found Adivar's long-forgotten and self-serving memoirs, published in New York in 1926, in which she recalls how Jemal Pasha, commander of the Turkish 4th Army in Damascus, toured Antoura orphanage with her. "I said: 'You have been as good to Armenians as it is possible to be in these hard days. Why do you allow Armenian children to be called by Moslim [sic] names? It looks like turning the Armenians into Moslims, and history some day will revenge it on the coming generation of Turks.' 'You are an idealist,' he answered gravely and like all idealists lack a sense of reality ... This is a Moslem orphanage and only Moslem orphans are allowed.'" According to Adivar, Jemal Pasha said that he "cannot bear to see them die in the streets" and promised they would go "back to their people" after the war.
Adivar says she told the general that: "I will never have anything to do with such an orphanage" but claims that Jemal Pasha replied: "You will if you see them in misery and suffering, you will go to them and not think for a moment about their names and religion." Which is exactly what she did.
Later in the war, however, Adivar spoke to Talaat Pasha, the architect of the 20th century's first holocaust, and recalled how he almost lost his temper when discussing the Armenian "deportations" (as she put it), saying: "Look here, Halide ... I have a heart as good as yours, and it keeps me awake at night to think of the human suffering. But that is a personal thing, and I am here on this earth to think of my people and not of my sensibilities ... There was an equal number of Turks and Moslems massacred during the [1912] Balkan war, yet the world kept a criminal silence. I have the conviction that as long as a nation does the best for its own interests, and succeeds, the world admires it and thinks it moral. I am ready to die for what I have done, and I know that I shall die for it."
The suffering of which Talaat Pasha spoke so chillingly was all too evident to Trowbridge when he himself met the orphans of Antoura. Many had seen their parents murdered and their sisters raped. Levon, who came from Malgara, was driven from his home with his sisters aged 12 and 14. The girls were taken by Kurds – allied to the Turks – as "concubines" and the boy was tortured and starved, Trowbridge records. He was eventually forced by his captors into the Antoura orphanage.
Ten-year-old Takhouhi – her name means "queen" in Armenian and she was from a rich background – from Rodosto on the Sea of Marmara was put with her family on a freight train to Konia. Two of her two brothers died in the truck, both parents caught typhus – they died in the arms of Takhouhi and her oldest brother in Aleppo – and she was eventually taken from him by a Turkish officer, given the Muslim name of Muzeyyan and ended up in Antoura. When Trowbridge suggested that he would try to find someone in Rodosto and return her family's property to her, he said she replied: "I don't want any of those things if I cannot find my brother again." Her brother was later reported to have died in Damascus.
Trowbridge records many other tragedies from the children he found at Antoura, commenting acidly that Halide "and Djemal [sic] Pasha delighted in having their photographs taken on the steps of the orphanage ... posing as the leaders of Ottoman modernism. Did they realise what the outside world would think of those photographs?" According to Trowbridge's account, only 669 of the children finally survived, 456 of them Armenian, 184 of them Kurds, along with 29 Syrians. Talaat Pasha did indeed die for his sins. He was assassinated by an Armenian in Berlin in 1922 – his body was later returned to Turkey on the express orders of Adolf Hitler. Jemal Pasha was murdered in the Turkish town of Tiflis. Halide Edip Adivar lived in England until 1939 when she returned to Turkey, became a professor of English literature, was elected to the Turkish parliament and died in 1964 at the age of 80.
It was only in 1993 that the bones of the children were discovered, when the Lazarite Fathers dug the foundations for new classrooms. What was left of the remains were moved respectfully to the little cemetery where the college's priests lie buried and put in a single, deep grave. Kelechian helped me over a 5ft wall to look at this place of sadness, shaded by tall trees. Neither name-plate nor headstone marks their mass grave.
www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-living-proof-of-the-armenian-genocide-1918367.html
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Post by Vizier of Oz on Mar 12, 2010 3:05:51 GMT -5
Swedish parliament branded ww1 Killings Genocide ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey recalled its ambassador to Sweden on Thursday and cancelled an upcoming summit between the countries after the Swedish parliament branded the World War One killing of Armenians by Ottoman forces genocide. The move comes only a week after Ankara called home its ambassador to the United States because a U.S. congressional committee approved a similar resolution. European Union member Sweden has been one of the strongest supporters of Ankara's bid to join the bloc, while the United States is generally considered a strong western ally of the NATO-member Turkey. The issue of the Armenian massacres is deeply sensitive in Turkey, which accepts that many Christian Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks but vehemently denies that up to 1.5 million died and that it amounted to genocide -- a term employed by many Western historians and some foreign parliaments. "We strongly condemn this resolution, which is made for political calculations," Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said in a statement, referring to the Swedish parliament vote. "It does not correspond to the close friendship of our two nations. We are recalling our ambassador for consultations," Erdogan said, adding that he was cancelling a Turkey-Sweden summit scheduled for March 17. The Swedish resolution passed by an extremely narrow margin, with 131 parliamentarians voting in favour and 130 against. Another 88 members of parliament were absent. The measure was opposed by Sweden's centre-right coalition government, but three of their parliamentarians voted in favour of the motion, helping the opposition get it through. "DRASTIC EFFECTS" Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said in a blog post that the vote could complicate efforts between Turkey and Armenia to normalise relations after a century of hostility. The countries agreed last year to establish diplomatic ties and open their border if their parliaments approved peace accords, but the votes have not taken place and the governments have accused each other of trying to rewrite the texts. "The decision also doesn't help the debate in Turkey, which has become all the more open and tolerant as it moves closer to the European Union and resulting democratic reform," Bildt said. Zergun Koruturk, Turkey's ambassador to Sweden, told Swedish television programme Aktuellt that the vote would have "drastic effects" on bilateral relations which were unlikely to be overcome in a short time. "I am very disappointed," Koruturk said. "Unfortunately, parliamentarians were thinking that they were rather historians than parliamentarians, and it's very, very unfortunate." A Turkish government source, however, told Reuters that Koruturk would probably return to Sweden soon. "We know the Swedish government has been very active in trying to stop this resolution," the source said. Turkey has signalled that its ambassador to the United States will not return until the fate of the non-binding congressional resolution, which also passed by a razor-thin margin, is clear. The administration of President Barack Obama has vowed to stop the resolution from going further in Congress in a bid to limit the diplomatic fallout. Turkey is crucial to U.S. interests in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and the Middle East www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62A4ZX20100311
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Post by Vizier of Oz on Mar 12, 2010 3:17:45 GMT -5
Kurdish MP Challenges Turkish Parliament on Armenian Genocide -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted GMT 11-8-2009 15:51:21 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "During the last period of the Ottoman Empire, in 1915-16, the Union and Progress Party systematically pursued a policy of extermination of the Christians who had been the native peoples of the country for centuries." These were the words articulated at the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TGNA) by Selahattin Demirtas, the deputy chairman of the parliamentary group of Democratic Society Party (DTP)--the voice of Kurds in the Turkish Parliament. Demirtas had taken the floor at the parliamentary session on Oct. 21 to speak about the protocols signed between Armenia and Turkey. "No national security considerations can be an excuse for the annihilation of a population by means of forced displacement and massacres," he said. "Governments, in an effort to clear themselves of the guilt, resorted to denial and to distortion of historical facts to conceal the truth. They rewrote the history. In school books, Armenians are portrayed as hostile figures, exaggerating the incidents of violence by Armenian activists and never telling the truth about the massacred Armenians." The meeting minutes, available on the website of the TGNA, reveals the interruptions by other deputies, member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), the opposition party Republican People's Party (CHP), and an independent deputy, who called out loud: "What are you talking about? Say what you want to say openly!" or "Shame on you!" or "Don't slander" or "What about the Turkish diplomats assassinated?" "The word 'Armenian' has been used as an insult in this country," continued Demirtas. "Even the president of the Republic of Turkey was accused of having secret Armenian ancestors, as if this was a sin. They did this to humiliate him. And what a shame that the president himself answered this 'accusation' in such a way as to confirm the humiliating connotation of the word, by trying to prove that this was not true." Demirtas suggested the formation of a history committee, consisting of independent historians from both sides, that would aim at revealing historic truths. "Without doing this, no real policy of peace can be pursued in foreign or domestic policy and no real resolution can be reached by ignoring the tragedy, by acting as if the loss of lives was a result of unwanted adverse circumstances. I know that what I say upsets those who remain loyal to the status quo. However for us to avoid recognizing historical truths just for the sake of the status quo would mean betraying our conscience and taking a politically unethical stance. So Turkey should lead the way to uncover the historical facts instead of continuing to carry the burden of a tragedy caused by the Committee of Union and Progress. In order for truly friendly relations between the two countries, it should be acknowledged that this is the only way for mutual trust." This was a first for the Turkish Parliament. There may be parts in Demirtas' speech where one would disagree. But for me, these points of disagreement are less important than the declaration-- in the Turkish Grand National Assembly--of the systematic extermination of Armenians in 1915. And it was a Kurdish MP who made this happen. The Kurds, some of whom actively took part in the Armenian Genocide, were also the first in Turkey to talk and write about the genocide of the Armenians and Assyrians. Demirtas's words weren't in the headlines the next day as one would expect; those days were unusually exciting, as a group of PKK guerillas had just crossed the border and given themselves up to Turkish security forces as a gesture to support the government's peace initiative. TV channels and newspapers were full of scenes of rejoicing and celebrations by thousands of Kurds, old and young, women and men, all welcoming the peace group. The guerillas waved their hands to the crowds, who were joyously demonstrating for peace. A few days passed with puzzlement on the part of the Turkish public and the opinion makers. However, the puzzlement did not last long. A wave of anger surged with columnists condemning such "scenes of outright defiance," "celebrations of PKK's victory," or "shameless display of support to PKK." Then came the demonstrations of the "mothers of martyrs" and others condemning the PKK. The panel discussions on TV featured even democrat and liberal figures criticizing the DTP for rallying Kurds to celebrate the PKK guerillas' return and provoking Turkish nationalism. Just when Demirtas was giving his speech about the Armenia-Turkey protocols, I was called by Agos newspaper to comment on the coming of the PKK group as a peace delegation. I sent them a message saying, in short, that I did not trust Turkey. I explained that given the age-old authoritarian nationalistic policies pursued by governments, instigating hostility and hatred in the minds of people, no real peace policy would be possible. The majority of the Turkish people themselves would not let this dream come true. Although this was what I thought, I still had the hope that this time I might be wrong, that some good things could happen in this country. The pictures in the newspapers, the images on TV of old men and women welcoming the PKK members at the Habur border gate--dancing, waving hands, laughing, and cheerin--were so impressive that one could not help but hope. But Turkey did not put me down and once more not my dreams but my fears came true. The government suspended the peace program and said that the coming of PKK members from European countries was cancelled due to the Kurds' provocative welcoming demonstrations. Shortly after this news, Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the PKK , announced that they too had suspended the process. Now all advocates of peace are waiting for a new sign indicating the resumption of the peace process. Turkey's lack of any tradition of reconciliation and it's deeply rooted authoritarian habits of resorting to violence instead of understanding did its job again. A Kurdish intellectual's comprehensive work about the genocide Speaking about the Kurdish intellectuals and activists who first talked and wrote about the Armenian Genocide in Turkey, I have to mention the book of Recep Marasli, who was one of the victims of the horrible tortures at Diyarbakir Prison in the 1980's and who served 15 years in various prisons. In the preface to his book Ermeni Ulusal Demokratik Hareketive 1915 Soykirimi (The Armenian National Democratic Movement and 1915 Genocide) (Peri Publishing House, 2008, Istanbul), Marasli writes how he first wrote about the Armenian Genocide in 1982, when he was in the Alemdag Prison. It was the first and worst years of the military rule. At the same time, it was a time when Turkish diplomats were assassinated one by one by the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia, and anti-Armenian sentiments were at their peak in Turkey, provoked by the insulting headlines in Turkish newspapers. In the Diyarbakir Prison, those inmates suspected of being of Armenian origin were subjected to special violence, and there were incidents of forced circumcision. During these days, Recep Marasli with a number of his fellow prisoners secretly prepared and circulated a pamphlet about the Armenian Genocide in the Alemdag Prison. This pamphlet would later serve as the outline of his present book. He thinks it may well be the first structured writing about the Armenian Genocide in Kurdish circles in modern Turkish history. Some of the Kurdish inmates found it irrelevant to the circumstances of the day (as the central issue for them was the Kurdish Question); some even thought that Marasli was of Armenian origin. This pamphlet was a turning point in Marasli's efforts on the topic. Marasli and his comrades circulated the leaflets in prison every April 24th to commemorate the genocide, and Marasli started to read everything he could find about the genocide. Afterwards, he integrated the contents of the first pamphlet in his defense statement, which was submitted during his trial in Diyarbakir Military Court for his membership in the Kurdish political organization Rizgari. He developed this piece of writing later on during his imprisonment, served in the prisons of Eskisehir and Aydin, and finally produced this comprehensive 544-page book about the Armenian Genocide, its historical background, its mechanism, and its aftermath--the Turkification policies in the republican period up to the present day. At the end of the book, there is a very interesting list of the old and new names of Kurdish, Armenian ,and Assyrian settlements which I think is a precious resource in this respect. To go back to our starting point, Selahattin Demirtas' address in the TGNA was something one can never expect from a Turkish member of parliament, at least under present conditions. I think much has to be done to explore the factors that bring the grandchildren of the peoples of the old Armenia and Kurdistan closer to each other now. Such exploration and efforts to build on the findings would help a lot in paving the way for a more democratic Turkey that would bring justice to all. www.armenianweekly.com/2009/11/08/gunaysu-kurdish-mp-challenges-turkish-parliament-on-armenian-genocide/
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Post by Vizier of Oz on Mar 12, 2010 3:25:13 GMT -5
Bad things happen when empires fall apartHarking back to Armenia in 1915 will only drive modern Turkey into China’s armsNorman Stone March 8, 2010 The best thing said about the Armenian tragedy was a sermon delivered in the main church in Constantinople in 1894, more than 20 years before it happened. Patriarch Ashikyan had this to say: “We have lived with the Turks for a thousand years, have greatly flourished, are nowhere in this empire in a majority of the population. If the nationalists go on like this [they had started a terrorist campaign] they will ruin the nation.”That Patriarch was quite right, and the nationalists shot him (and many other notables who were saying the same thing).Now a US Congressional committee has had its say, by voting to recognise as “genocide” the mass killing of Armenians by Turkish forces that began in 1915, during the First World War. Is the committee right? When the First World War broke out there were Armenian uprisings and the Patriarch’s fears were realised. The population in much of the territory of today’s Turkey was deported in cruel circumstances that led to much murder and pillage. But genocide? No, if by that you mean the sort of thing Hitler did. The Armenian leader was offered a job in the government in October 1914 to sort things out (he refused on the ground that his Turkish was not up to it). The Turks themselves put 1,600 men on trial for what had happened and executed a governor. The British had the run of the Turkish archives for four years after 1918 and failed to find incriminating documents. Armenians in the main cities were not touched. Documents did indeed turn up in 1920, but they turned out to be preposterous forgeries, written on the stationery of a French school. You cannot really describe this as genocide. Horrors, of course, happened but these same horrors were visited upon millions of Muslims (and Jews) as the Ottoman Empire receded in the Caucasus and the Balkans. Half of its urban population came from those regions and, in many cases, the disasters of their families occurred at Armenian hands. Diasporas jump up and down in the politics of the United States — as an American friend says of them, when they cross the Atlantic, they do not change country, they change planet. Braveheart is, for the Scottish me, a dreadful embarrassment. I have to explain to Kurdish taxi drivers that the whole film is wicked tosh that just causes idiots in Edinburgh to paint their faces and to hate the English, whereas there cannot be a single family in Scotland that does not have cousins in England. But what will be the effect of the resolution in Turkey? The answer is that it will be entirely counterproductive. Yes, the end of the Ottoman Empire was a terrible time, as the end of empires generally are: take the Punjab in 1947, for instance. Disease, starvation and massacre carried off a third of the population of eastern Turkey, regardless of their origin. But of all the states that succeeded the Ottoman Empire, Turkey is by far the most successful; you just have to look at its vital statistics to see as much, starting with male life expectancy which not so long ago was a decade longer than Russia’s. Turkey is in the unusual position of doing rather well. She has survived the financial mess, her banks having had a drubbing some years before, and exports are humming. The Turks are not quite used to this, and this shows with the present Government, which (as the Prime Minister’s unfortunate anti-Israeli outburst at Davos a year ago showed) can on occasion be triumphalist. This Government has been remarkably successful, not least in getting rid of the preposterous currency inflation that made tourists laugh, but it should not be allowed to forget the bases of Turkey’s emergence: the strength of the Western connection, the link with the IMF, the presence in the West of tens of thousands of Turkish students, many of them very able. However, every Turk knows that, during the First World War, horrible things happened, and for Congress to single out the Armenians is regarded in Turkey simply as an insult.The Turkish media is full of tales about the resolution, and there has been a great deal of dark muttering about it. There are Turks who agree that the killings amounted to genocide, and there has been an uncomfortable book, Fuat Dundar’s The Code of Modern Turkey, as some of the government at the time did indeed think of ethnic homogeneity (though not the killing of children). But the dominant tone is more or less of contempt: who are these people, to orate about events a century ago in a country that most of them could not find on the map? It all joins with resentment at US doings in Iraq, and in the popular mind gets confused with the Swiss vote against minarets or Europe’s ridiculous admission of Greek Cyprus to their Union. In practice the Turks are being alienated, and will be encouraged to think that the West is doing another version of the Crusades, that “the only friend of the Turk is the Turk”, and other nationalist nonsense of a similar sort. Nowadays Turkey does not need the Western link as before: trade and investment have been switching towards Russia and Central Asia; the Chinese are quite active in Ankara. Is that what we want to achieve, in a country that is otherwise the best advertisement for the West that anyone could have imagined back in 1950? Norman Stone is Professor Emeritus of Modern History at the University of Oxford and head of the Russian-Turkish Institute at Bilkent University, Ankara www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7053138.ece
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Post by Vizier of Oz on Mar 12, 2010 3:26:19 GMT -5
US Congressional Panel's Decision Against Turkey Shows Blatant Hypocrisy Mon, 2010-03-08 11:27 — editor ArticleBy Habib Siddiqui Last Thursday a U.S. congressional panel approved a resolution declaring, what it called, the Ottoman-era killing of Armenians genocide. The U.S. foreign affairs committee endorsed the resolution with a 23-22 vote even though the Obama administration had urged Congress not to approve it. The resolution now goes to the full House, where prospects for passage are uncertain. Turkey has always maintained, and rightly so based on objective investigation of the matter by unbiased historians that the Armenian toll in 1915-16 has been inflated and those killed were victims of civil war and unrest, not genocide. Turkish government has pulled its ambassador home as a protest of the U.S. congressional panel decision. While the death of those Armenians during World War I has often been dubbed as genocide, perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks, it should be noted that the Ottoman Empire was a distant memory since 1908 after the Young Turks, run by the Freemasons, had taken effective control of the falling Caliphate. It was its Committee of Unity and Progress (CUP) that entered the war on Germany's side in 1914. Those Freemasons had little, if any, love for Islam or the old Ottoman Caliphate. To most Muslims, those secular fundamentalist - Young Turks were traitors. The CUP never developed an anti-Armenian doctrine and yet it is accused of committing genocide. Let’s take a look at the definition of the loaded term. Article Two of the UN Convention on Genocide of December 1948 describes genocide as carrying out acts intended "to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group". From this definition, it’s easy to comprehend why the mass killings in Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo and Rwanda, and of course, the exterminating campaigns during the World War II against the Jews, gypsies and some other minorities qualify as genocidal campaigns. But do the case of Armenians in Turkey (1915-16) fall into that category? The death of those Armenians remains a highly controversial subject. Like any other genocide debate it is also a very sensitive subject for the players involved. Depending on which side one listens to the opinions may vary drastically. Thus, unless one is unbiased and objective, the conclusions drawn may be wrong, further feeding to the controversy. Armenians claim that some 1.5 million died. This number seems untenable given the fact that studies of the Ottoman census by unbiased historians and other contemporary estimates show that far fewer than 1.5 million Armenians lived in the relevant areas before the war. So, how could the number of those killed be more than the total that lived? In this context it is worth pointing out that the census bureau was headed by an Ottoman Armenian --Migirdic Shabanyan from 1897-1903. He can’t be accused of lying on behalf of the Ottoman state. Yusuf Halacoglu, president the Turkish Historical Society (TTK), estimates that with the deportations (excluding inter-ethnic violence) a total of 56,000 Armenians perished during the period due to war conditions, and less than 10,000 were actually killed. Almost all Turkish intellectuals, scientists and historians accept that many Armenians died during the conflict, but they do not consider these events to be genocide. A number of Western academics in the field of Ottoman history, including (late) Bernard Lewis (Princeton University), Heath Lowry (Princeton University), Justin McCarthy (University of Louisville), Gilles Veinstein (College de France), and Stanford Shaw (UCLA) have expressed serious doubts as to the genocidal character of the events. They offer the opinion that the weight of evidence instead points to serious inter-communal warfare, perpetrated by both Muslim and Christian irregular forces, aggravated by disease and famine, as the causes of suffering and massacres in Anatolia and adjoining areas during the First World War. It is not difficult to understand why in his book "Armenia: Secrets of a 'Christian' Terrorist State" the late historian and author Samuel Weems wrote, "Many scholars and authors throughout the Western world are in agreement that rarely, in the pages of history, have facts been so deliberately altered to deceive and create an untrue picture. ... These Armenians are coming up with more Armenians murdered than there were Armenians in Anatolia." Professor Justin McCarthy, an American historian who is an expert on late Ottoman era history, believes that orthodox Western histories of the declining Ottoman Empire are biased, since they are based on the testimonies of biased observers: Christian missionaries, and officials of (Christian) nations who were at war with the Ottomans during World War I. And yet in spite of such overwhelming verdicts of unbiased historians, many in the West have dubbed the loss of Armenian civilian lives as the first genocide of the 20th century. A BBC report even called it the first genocide in recorded history. Forgotten in all such inflated and disingenuous charges is the mere fact that more than half a million Muslim civilians were massacred in that era by Armenian irregular units and Armenian revolutionary groups compromised of the Dashnaks, the Hunchaks, and the Ramgavars, in addition to the French Armenian Legion and the British and Russian backed Armenian volunteer units. In their naked bias, they also ignore that there were other more horrendous crimes that were and continues to be perpetrated by the western colonizing forces. For that we need not go too far down in history lane to the extermination campaigns against the aboriginals in Tasmania and rest of Australia and New Zealand, or against the Native Americans in the Americas. Consider for instance the case of Bengal (Bangladesh) under the East India Company and the British Raj, soon after the fall of Nawabi Rule in the Battle of Plassey. It was their heavy handedness with revenue collection that led to the horrible famine of 1769-1773 (corresponding to Bangla Year 1176-1180, and more commonly therefore known as “Chiatturer monontor”) killing some 15 million people of Bengal (that included Bihar and Orissa states of India). One in every three person perished in that great famine. It was all man-made, triggered, executed and authored by the English colonizers so that the size of the conquered subjects was manageable. Even the inflated number for the so-called Armenian Genocide pales in comparison to the genocide committed by the British against the people of Bengal. As to the extermination campaign against Muslims in Russia, since the 19th century (Imperial period to Putin’s Russia), the least said the better! It was all along, and remains, a pure case of ethnic cleansing in which in some places up to one third of the Muslims died. [Interested readers may like to read this author’s speech at the University of California, Santa Barbara (1982) – The Muslim Minorities of the Soviet Union.] Never mind that the Iraqi War of 2003 was illegal and unnecessary. What about the Anglo-American embargo against Iraq since the Bush Sr. and Clinton era when some half a million children, below the age of five, died before Bush-Cheney’s invasion of 2003? It would be utter folly and blatant hypocrisy to deny the genocidal impact of that embargo that targeted and killed civilians. While American general Tommy Frank may not like to count civilian deaths in Iraq, it is estimated that more than a million unarmed Iraqi civilians died as a result of the 2003 invasion. And all these crimes in the 21st century, in spite of all the so-called humane laws and regulations we have today, and the technically superior killing machines like the so-called “smart” bombs that are supposed to spare civilian lives! The children born in Fallujah nowadays are showing distinct signs of U.S. use of biological and chemical warfare against the Iraqis. If we are looking for an honest evaluation it is not Saddam Hussein that used WMDs but Bush & Blair, who should face International Court of Justice for committing war crimes. They committed genocide. The level of heart defects among newborn babies in Fallujah is said to be 13 times higher than in Europe, i.e., 95 per 1,000 births. The BBC world affairs editor John Simpson visited a new, US-funded hospital in Fallujah and saw children in the city who were suffering from paralysis or brain damage - and a photograph of one baby who was born with three heads. Most of the children born in the post-invasion period in those places where uranium depleted bullets and shells were used have six fingers and toes, instead of five. (BBC.com/news, March 4, 2010) And yet there is such a disregard in the western media and governments for such a calculated genocidal campaign against Iraq by the USA and UK! Why such a double standard when the same governments and media try to exaggerate Turkish government actions of World War I era? While no human loss is small, it is difficult to overlook western hypocrisy that tries to smear the record of the Turkish people and its government while hiding its more horrific crimes under the rug. Lest we forget it was not too long ago that the same US Congress voted against the Goldstone Report on Gaza simply because the objective, fact-finding investigations, led by the Jewish South African Judge, had accused Israel of committing war crimes in its 2008-2009 campaign in Gaza. It is worth noting that the same report, which was rejected by the US Government, was endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council. Through such a decision, the US Congressional foreign affairs committee has once again bared its ugly hypocritical self that it is part of the Israel’s Amen Corner, which hides Israeli crimes of the last year but is all agog with a century-old controversial subject! By so doing, it does a disservice to the American public and the international community that demand fairness and transparency. What could have motivated the US congressional foreign affairs committee to get so excited on this genocide debate? Why now? Does this decision have anything to do with trying to slap Turkey for its Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s condemnation last year of Israel's offensive in Gaza, in which some 1,500 Palestinians were killed? Published media reports in Israel and the Arab world do point to that connection. It is worth recalling that at the World Economic Forum in Davos on 29 January, 2009 Erdogan told Peres: "You are killing people." Later Mr. Erdogan stormed off the stage when he was refused time by the pro-Israeli Armenian-American moderator David Ignatius to refute Peres’s 25-minute long monotone that tried to justify Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. Turkey and Israel had enjoyed good relationship in the past. However, in recent months, the widely popular government of Erdogan has improved relations with its neighbors to the east and south – Iran and Syria, a matter of much annoyance to Netanyahu’s highly racist, nationalist and fanatical government. Turkish Prime Minister has also made a landmark trip to Armenia, thus, trying to improve relationship. Turkey is reportedly against any military strike against Iran over its nuclear program. Are these too much for the pro-Israeli lobby inside the USA to swallow? Nor should we forget that it was Turkey's Grand National Assembly where President Obama made his most direct outreach to Muslims around the world on April 6, 2009 telling that the United States "is not and never will be at war with Islam." Such a scenario is surely not desirable to any hardcore Zionist. With deep connections that Israel had maintained all these decades with Turkish military generals, we may not be surprised to find out a link to the recent failed coup attempt to topple the civilian government there. All these may explain why the Israel-firsters within the U.S. Congressional foreign affairs committee felt that it was necessary to punish Turkey with a century-old libel. However, a careful evaluation would point out that America has much more to lose from any worsening of the relationship with Turkey. It is high time for American public to question their elected officials’ actions that are harmful for the state. - Asian Tribune - www.asiantribune.com/news/2010/03/08/us-congressional-panels-decision-against-turkey-shows-blatant-hypocrisy
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Post by Vizier of Oz on Mar 12, 2010 3:42:55 GMT -5
In Damascus, meanwhile, Syrian Information Minister Mohsen Bilal denied on Wednesday that there is a mass grave of Anatolian Armenians in Deir Zor, Syria, as suggested in CBS’s “60 Minutes” which aired a program called “Battle Over History” on Sunday. “Deir Zor is to Armenians what Auschwitz is to Jews,” said the CBS program information which Bilal labeled as “fictitious.” “If we had information, we would not let them shoot video-footage here,” he also said. www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-203267-100-eyes-on-washington-ahead-of-vote-on-genocide.html
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Post by Vizier of Oz on Mar 12, 2010 10:54:58 GMT -5
I connected some of the Armenian Genocide related posts to this one, and I hope everyone from now on, uses this thread, to write his/her opinions, post updates, articles, and views. Thank you all for your valuable participation.
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Post by hellboy87 on Mar 12, 2010 17:28:20 GMT -5
don't swear or repost something that has already been posted.
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Post by Red Brigade on Mar 14, 2010 7:31:04 GMT -5
Swedish MPs of Turkish origin voted for Armenian Genocide ResolutionThe discussions on the adoption of Armenian Genocide Resolution by Swedish Parliament continue in Turkey. This time fair game of Turks were Riksdag members of Turkish origin. Swedish Social Democratic Party members Ibrahim Baylan and Yilmaz Kerimo, as well as Swedish MP of Kurdish origin Gulan Avci voted for the adoption of Armenian Genocide Resolution. Turks are also enraged with another Parliamentarian of Turkish origin — Mehmet Kaplan. Although, the latter opposed the resolution, he did not vote against it and withdrew, thereby assisting the approval of the motion, Turkish Zaman daily reports. L.A. news.am/en/news/16577.html
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donnie
Senior Moderator
Nike Leka i Kelmendit
Posts: 3,389
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Post by donnie on Mar 14, 2010 15:30:22 GMT -5
Baylan isnt an ethnic Turk. He is a Syriac from Turkey. Dont know about the others.
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Post by hellboy87 on Mar 14, 2010 16:46:28 GMT -5
yea.I thought I heard about Turks in Scandinavia are usually Assyrians
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