Armenian Solidarity with the Victims of All Genocides

[Mamian George]

PRESS RELEASE
c/o The Temple of Peace, Cardiff
[email protected]
Rwl: 07718982732

Armenian Solidarity with the Victims of All Genocides
Nor Serount Cultural Association, and Seyfo Centre

Unprecedented collaboration between Armenians, Assyrians and Kurds on
Genocide day in the UK parliament, London.

(Establishment of a Permanent People's Commission on 'Reconciliation
after the Anatolian Genocide' proposed)

The irresistible ethical arguments for the recognition of the Anatolian
Genocides as the only ground for Reconciliation between the victim
groups and the Turkish state, was articulated by scholars on Genocide
Day in the House of Commons, London.

Sabri Atman of the Seyfo Centre delivered a passionate interpretation of
the Assyrian trauma at the continuing denial of the Genocide of their
nation. Sara Aziz, also of the Seyfo Centre, put the case for the
criminal penalisation of Turkey under international Law. Ruth Barnett
expounded on the psychological effects of Genocide denial illustrating
the complexities of traumatisation.

Gregory Topalian, concentrating on the Armenian experience, addressed
the issue of possibilities of reconciliation, based on recognition
alone, and how some historians may adversely affect this process.
Desmond Fernandes showed that Genocide still continues in Turkey, and
that Denial owes much to US, Israeli and UK realpolitik. Professor
Khatchatur Pilikian showed in his address, 'A bird's eye view on the
phenomena of Genocide and the Armenian experience of it', that Genocidal
intent of the Turkish state can be traced back to 1878.

Some of the speakers emphasised the universal significance of Genocide
Day, reflecting the increasing adoption of the 24th April as a day to
dwell on all Genocides. Professor Pilikian, in this vein, claimed that
the annual deaths from hunger of 14.6 million constituted 'the
unmentioned Genocide'.

The organiser proposed the establishment of a Permanent People's
Commission (to be based in London in co-operation with UK politicians)
on the Consequences of the Genocides perpetrated by the Turkish State,
to focus on the search for Reconciliation based on truth and honesty. He
also reminded the conference of the brutal murder of three Christians in
Malatya almost a year to the day, as a reminder that Christians, as well
as other minorities, are still living under a sustained threat in
Turkey.

Messages of support were sent from The Halabja Centre London; The
Kurdish Museum, London; The Foundation For The Kurdish Library and
Museum, Stockholm; Ms Rosie Malek Yonan, Los Angeles; Mr Ragip Zarokulu,
Istanbul; Dr Tessa Hofmann, Berlin; Canon Andrew White, Baghdad; Barzoo
Eliassi, Kurdish Ph.D. Student, The Department of Social Sciences,
Mid-Sweden University; Martin Blecher, member of the Israel Group in
Sweden; Sukran Kavak, a Kurdish journalist, Sweden; Shoresh Rahem,
International Affairs for the Kurdistan Student Association and
Kurdistan Youth Freedom Organization; Hediye Guzel, Press secretary for
the Left wing party, Sweden; Gurgin Bakircioglu, Stockholm; Haydar Isik,
Germany, and Greeks from across the world.

The meeting was chaired by Mr Andrew George MP, Mr Daniel Rogerson MP,
both Members of Parliament for parts of Cornwall.

It was also supported by Mr John Marks, on behalf of Baroness Cox, Rev
Stuart Windsor, of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Mr Andrew Stonestreet
of the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East and
The Halabja Centre, London.

Two Ministers at the Foreign Office, the Rt Hon. Jim Murphy MP (minister
For Europe) and Lord Maloch-Brown, sent their apologies to the
conference for their unavoidable absences. The book by Taner Akcam, 'A
Shameful Act' was given to Mr Andrew George to be presented to the
Minister for Europe. This was a gift from The Armenian-Turkish Studies
Group of London.

Attendees were encouraged to buy the book by Kemal Yalcin, 'You Rejoice
My Heart' (Taderon Press). The following quote from Mr Yalcin was read
to illustrate the possibilities ahead:

'I bow to the memory of the Armenians and Assyrians who lost their lives
on the road of deportation through planned killings. That is the
greatest pain of our century, the stigma on the face of humanity. Your
pain is my pain. As a Turkish writer, I beg forgiveness from you and
mankind ...'

-------------------------------------------- --------------------
Excerpts from the speeches:The full speeches will be published shortly
by Nor Serount Cultural Association. Youi may order a copy by contacting
[email protected]
-------------- --------------------------------------------------

Sabri Atman:

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am an Assyrian! I am an Assyrian who lives in
Sweden and have relatives and friends living in many other countries, as
refugees, desperately missing their hometowns and villages.

I am an Assyrian who seeks strength from a piece of stone smuggled out
>From his lost hometown and kept as the most precious item in his home.

I am an Assyrian who has come here to tell you about the Assyrians who,
along with Armenians, were subjected to a genocide in 1915 within the
Ottoman Empire by the Ottoman state.

Assyrians once lived in their hundreds of thousands in the cities, towns
and villages which are geographically located in the east and south-east
regions of today's Turkey.

Then came the 1914- 1915 genocide which targeted Armenians and
Assyrians.

The elderly Assyrians who witnessed the Assyrian genocide still remember
a saying they heard from some of those who got involved in carrying out
the genocide: 'Red or white, an onion is an onion; it has got to be
chopped up'. Meaning: A Christian is a Christian, whether Armenian or
Assyrian: he has got to be killed ...'

We, Assyrians, have gone through a very traumatic experience. SEYFO
opened in the souls of Assyrians deep and painful wounds which are
waiting to be treated. We lost more than half of our population. It is
now the time for humanity to hear and do something about it.
International recognition would not take away the pain deeply rooted in
our souls but would help us feel that we are a part of the humanity
which could not go to the rescue of our grandparents ...

We are still hurting but what we are after is not hate or revenge. What
we want is recognition and reconciliation.

Turkey does not want '1915 incidents' to be a political issue but a
subject for discussion for historians. The 1915 genocide has become an
issue for Turkey only after various countries started to recognise it.
It is now time for Britain as well to recognise the 1915 Assyrian,
Armenian and Greek genocide. Britain was one of the witnesses to the
Armenian-Assyrian genocide. She cannot and must not close her eyes to
the facts just because she thinks recognising it would adversely effect
her economic and political relationship with Turkey. The sooner Turkey
recognises the 1915 genocide the better. Better for Turkey, better for
the Armenians and Assyrians.

Some weeks ago Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed the Israel's
Knesset, and said in Hebrew, 'The Holocaust fills us with shame. I bow
my head before the survivors and I bow my head before you in tribute to
the fact that you were able to survive'.

I wonder when will a Turkish Prime Minister apologize to the victims of
the 1915 Genocide?

I wonder when will a Turkish Prime Minister learn the genocide victims'
languages and apologize to them in their languages?

I wonder when will a Turkish Prime Minister realize that the best way to
build a future together, is recognition

------------------------------------- ---------------------------

Sara Aziz:

!Behaeddin Shakir, a prominent member of the CUP, told the CUP Congress
in Salonika in 1911:

"The nations that remain from the old times in our empire are akin to
foreign and harmful weeds that must be uprooted.. To clear our land"

Abdulahad Nuri admitted receiving orders from Talaat Pasha to "finally
solve the Eastern Question"

Talaat Pasha also noted in another telegram that the "crimes committed
serve the purpose of the government with the long decided
extermination." Also he ordered in another telegram:"to act harshly and
swiftly to speed up the desired deaths in accordance with government's
grand policy."

Lord Bryce stated that: Although the crimes were committed by Kurds they
were functioning under the direct orders of the Turkish Military
Commands.

These findings should suffice to prove the intentions of the Ottoman
government were resolved to systematically annihilate the Assyrians.

One can conclude that If SEYFO had occurred after the establishment of
the Genocide convention, it would fulfill the conditions of article II.
However it didn't.so why did I review the violations against humanity if
it has no sense.because it does.

· Nulla Poena

We know that any penalty is subject to the existence of law as pointed
out by the Nulla Poena legal principle. As Genocide was not legally lied
down in any convention, punishment would not have been possible..however
this is not the case, and I argue to the contrary.

The first international tribunals were established in 1946, one year
after WWII, 2 years BEFORE the Genocide Convention. It were the well
known Neurenberg Tribunals. One of their main characteristic is the fact
that they were trailing EX TUNC; which meant that the Tribunals set the
crimes punishable while they were not at the time of the crime
committed. This is in conflict with the Nulla Poena principle but the
International community justified these Tribunals by considering natural
law above the Nulla Poena principle. The concept was despite that the
Nulla Poena principle was of a fundamental value but it was deemed
unthinkable to allow crimes such as Genocide pass by without being
penalized.

In conclusion Natural law was perceived superior and above nulla poena
principle.

Thus If this was possible after WWII, why not after WWI? If tribunals
could be established while the genocide convention was not present after
WWII, why not now? Why should crimes of WWI be forgotten while the
crimes of WWII have been penalized?

· verjaring

Is it too late to establish tribunals? No its not. According to
International Common law, Genocide is not imprescriptibly. This means If
tribunals are set up today, even now trails could be rendered to
penalize the inheritors of the responsibility of the perpetuators of
Seyfo.



· politics

The decision of the establishment of tribunals however is subject to
motives of the international community. The possibility of Turkey to
enter the European Union is a big current issue and one of the obstacles
is Turkey's fear of returning to a dark page of its past. Europe is
obliged to listen to her population which includes a large number of
Assyrians & Armenians that fear Turkey's entry into the EU without
recognizing the genocide and apologizing for its crimes. By not being
punished Hitler thought to get away with it as well as his famous cite:
Who remember the Armenians?

The International criminal tribunal for Yugoslavia was established by
the International community, not by the allied powers.for unprecedented
move meant that the international community took responsibility for
trailing war criminals.

Concluding,

1. The Crimes against the Assyrians during WWI can be defined as
Genocide.

2. Natural law goes above the nulla poena principle.

3. There is no imprescriptiblility of genocide and there is a legal
foundation for the international community to penalize Turkey.

4. Equally important, Assyrians have the right to preserve and
maintain their identity, so I have the right to demand to be called by
my true Assyrian name Sara Bar-Aziz,"




Ruth Barnett:


Genocide does not stop when the deliberate mass killing ceases. There is
an eighth stage of denial, which continues until the details of what
happened are faced, publicly acknowledged, responsibility owned and
collective mourning of the loss to humanity and memorialisation at the
killing sites take place. Without these psychological processes, closure
is not possible. Therefore, denial is incompatable with reconciliation
and both the survivors and the perpetrators cannot 'move on' while
denial persists. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Aftermath of the
Armenian Genocide: Young Turks today are trapped, by learning only the
distorted history peddled by their elders, into subservience to their
law against 'insulting Turkishness'. The parallel is that Armenians are
trapped by the disbelief and sidelining they receive widely in the world
as a result of Turkey's heavy-handed pernicious and persisting denial.
Neither side has been able to escape this trap; both need the 'family of
nations' to acknowledge and publicise 'the truth'....


Denial means re-traumatising the survivors. They experience it as a
further attack on their group, an attempt to kill their loved ones a
second time by trying to wipe out their memory - as if they had never
even existed. Of course this is exactly what the perpetrators intended
to do. The survivor group, already humiliated and debilitated throughout
the developing genocide, are left with crushed self-esteem which denial
or simply the absence of validation of their experiences, bruises even
further. Their humanity has been attacked, plundered and robbed and they
are not able to function as fully human until this trauma is processed..


The perpetrators are also traumatised in a different way. They too are
not fully human. They abdicated a part of their humanity when they
breached the taboo against killing their fellow humans. As every
military General knows, ordinary men need special training to turn them
into soldiers capable of killing 'the enemy'. The trained capability to
kill does not, however, protect them against trauma, and many leave the
services with post-traumatic disorders. The aim of war is to win and
defeat the enemy. The aim of genocide is to annihilate the target group
to the last man, woman and child. The training for this demands a
structural change in configuration of the psyche - a sort of becoming
sub-human through diminishing or erasing empathy, tenderness and
compassion or banished them into the 'other half' of a double life, as
Jay Lifton describes in The Nazi Doctors. Their humanity can then only
be reclaimed by facing and owning responsibility for their murderous
actions. Many avoid this by hiding behind the claim of 'doing their
duty' and obeying orders.


The traumatisation of the bystander group is perhaps the hardest to
understand and to quantify; yet it is the most important in that failure
of the majority bystanders to act is what creates the impunity that
encourages further genocide. With two world wars and over 50 genocides
in the 20th century, there can hardly be a single family in Europe that
does not carry unprocessed trauma in its family history of the last
three or four generations. Perhaps this has contributed to the current
focus on the cult of the individual (everyone wants and even expects to
become a celebrity) and demands for human rights without acknowledging
the responsibilities that so with them. Self-gratification has become
increasingly a priority over empathy, compassion, dialogue with and
understanding of others. When it comes to 'standing up to be counted' in
the service of 'truth' we tend to hide in the group and close ranks.


The French anthropologist, Rene Girard, claimed that a group or society
that purchases its own togetherness at the cost of innocent suffering
demonstrates its degeneracy. My thesis is that genocide denial erodes
the very core of civilisation.


Gregory Topalian:


What is beyond doubt is that the Armenians DID suffer a genocide and two
historical and impartial international conferences on the issue HAVE
decided that it was genocide. Therefore, all of the mealy mouthed
letters that MPs send out from this House suggesting that we "leave it
up to the historians", are disingenuous to say the least.

The historians HAVE made up their minds, so that formulaic excuse no
longer counts for anything.

Twenty two countries including France and Germany, and forty US States
have adopted resolutions recognising that the Armenian Genocide was a
genuine historical occurrence. Several international organisations have
determined that the term 'genocide' can be applied to "the Ottoman
massacre of the Armenians between 1915 and 1918". Among the
organisations recognising the Armenian Genocide are the International
Association of Genocide Scholars and the United Nations Sub-Commission
on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. Meanwhile,
53 Nobel Laureates have also recognised the fact. So it might well be
asked; what on earth is stopping the government of the United Kingdom
>From doing the same? ...

Germany is a modern democratic State with a relatively liberal outlook.
Germany has admitted its crimes, and paid for them through a collective
guilt, which it can be argued is still ongoing, and financially. How
many of these things have the modern Turkish State conducted?

The conditions are ripe for enquiry in the modern German State, but this
is far from the case in Turkey. What is Turkey afraid of? A study of the
Armenian Genocide is far more problematic than that of the Holocaust
because the Perpetrator State is still intent on manipulating the truth
and stifling the quest for free enquiry, whether the victim is Armenian,
Assyrian or Kurd .....

The Genocide that occurred in the Ottoman Empire is still denied by the
Turkish State, and access to the documents that have not been destroyed
are only open to pro-Turkish scholars, or as Armenian Genocide historian
Ara Sarafian has experienced, are drip fed in order to prevent any
serious research being done ...

The great Welsh politician, founder of the NHS and champion of the
underdog, Aneurin Bevan, was the originator of the phrase "This is My
Truth, Tell me yours". The battle over the historical truth of the
Armenian genocide has created two 'truths', and as long as Turkey
refuses to acknowledge the fact that their massacre of Armenians a)
occurred, and b) constitutes genocide, reconciliation cannot possibly
take place.

However, I am not as pessimistic as some regarding the shift in the
public consciousness in Turkey, and I honestly believe that recognition
of the Armenian Genocide is not as distant as it once seemed. There have
been plenty of positive incidents in the last decade that suggest the
quest for recognition may soon be realised. Once that has been achieved,
reconciliation is the next logical step, and the victims of the Armenian
Genocide can then finally rest in peace.



Desmond Fernandes, Author of The Kurdish and Armenian Genocides: From
Censorship and Denial to Recognition? (Apec, Stockholm):


In recent years, . even as there has been greater international public
recognition of the Armenian, Assyrian, Greek, Kurdish and 'Other'
genocides (as a consequence of concerted initiatives by concerned
individuals, Armenian, Assyrian, Greek and Kurdish communities and other
people and organisations interested in exposing and confronting
international genocidal crimes), certain governments, politicians,
academics and lobbying groups have mobilized (and often collaborated
with each other) to engage in denialism of these "events" due not to
genuine uncertainty about the fate of these targeted "peoples/groups",
but to advance cynical personal and/or nationalist and/or
geopolitical/economic/ideological agendas .

Thomas O'Dwyer, writing in Ha'aretz . has commented upon the manner in
which, "not for the first time, we have witnessed the State of Israel's
complicity in the lie ... This is political expediency at its most
morally bankrupt. Tripping over itself in its stupid defense of the
untenable Turkish position [which denies the Armenian genocide], the
Israeli Foreign Ministry has again and again played an active role in
suppressing even discussion of the issue ... What is shocking is that
there should be any question whatsoever of Israel denying the murder of
a nation ... Turkey's denials of the Armenian massacre will not endure -
but the memory of Israel's refusal to speak out against the denial just
might". To Rabbi Kenneth I. Segal, spiritual leader of the Beth Israel
Congregation in Fresno, California, "a 'political stench'" has, indeed,
"emanated from the role played by the Israeli Embassy in the United
States in the matter" .

Larry Derfner [has] also noted the following in The Jerusalem Post:
"What does the State of Israel and many of its American Jewish lobbyists
have to say about it[?] ... If they were merely standing silent, that
would be an improvement ... Israel and the US Jewish establishment may
say they're neutral over what happened to the Armenians . but their
actions say the opposite. They've not only taken sides, they're on the
barricades ... Ninety years after the Armenian genocide, there is a
decent Jewish response to the sickening behavior of the State of Israel,
the American Jewish Committee and [many] other US Jewish organizations:
Not in our name".

The Israeli academic Yair Auron argues that "the Israeli government's
abetting of Turkey's denial is not only a 'moral disgrace', it also
'hurts the legacy and heritage of the Holocaust" . To Robert Fisk, we
need to be aware that "the holocaust deniers of recent years - deniers
of the Turkish genocide of ... Armenian Christians in 1915, that is -
include Lord Blair" . Concerning the British government's stance over
the matter, it is, in Fisk's view, based upon "a cynical premise by the
Blair government, namely that it could get away with genocide denial to
maintain good relations with Turkey". R.J. Rummel remains critical of
the manner in which, "for political reasons, the [US] State Department
refuses to ... even acknowledge that the genocide took place" . What is
even more shocking about the US official State Department position is
that its own genocide analyst in its Legal Department privately would
appear to be clearly convinced that what occurred was genocide . Despite
this type of private acknowledgement, however, the US government
officially and publicly asserts a denialist position .

The US government and many "establishment" figures, it should be noted,
have a habit of refusing to acknowledge certain past and ongoing
genocides. Those genocides, for example, that might be seen to embarrass
the US government and perceived geostrategic and economic "pivotal"
client states' governments, such as Turkey. It is in this political
context, as Edward Herman has observed, that "establishment politicians,
media, and [establishment] intellectuals use the word genocide with
great abandon, but with a hugely politicized selectivity" that we must
be appreciative of:

Genocide was used often to describe the "killing fields" of Pol Pot, but
not the killing fields of Vietnam where the United States ravaged the
country, killed many more people than did Pol Pot, and left a destroyed
country and chemical warfare heritage of hundreds of thousands of
children with birth defects ...

The word was never used in the US mainstream to describe Indonesian
operations in East Timor, where the invasion of 1975 and murderous
occupation killed off between a quarter and a third of the population .

The word genocide is rarely if ever applied to Turkish ethnic cleansing
and massacres of its Kurds, and in fact Turkey was mobilized to
participate in the 78-day NATO (de facto US) bombing war against
Yugoslavia in 1999, supposedly to terminate "genocide" in Kosovo,
although Turkey's attacks on its local Kurds were far more deadly than
any pre-bombing-war Yugoslav violence against the Kosovo Albanians ...

The obvious explanation of the varying word usage is that Turkey was a
US ally, and its ethnic cleansing and killings were facilitated by
greatly increased US (Clinton administration) military aid, just as
Indonesia's violence in East Timor was greatly helped by greater US
(Carter administration) aid to the killer state.


Yugoslavia, on the other hand, was a US target .

The word genocide . is never used in the mainstream to describe the
"sanctions of mass destruction" that are credibly estimated to have
killed over a million Iraqis. The establishment institutions have
avoided all but passing mention of the numbers dead, and they suppress
even more completely the evidence that the killings were a consequence
of deliberate actions, including the US and British use of the sanctions
system to block the import of medicines and equipment to repair water
and sanitation systems that were destroyed with full recognition of the
disease-threatening consequences .

It [also] remains a power-out-of-the-gun truth that . the United States
can commit blatant aggression with only slightly delayed UN
accommodation, and it and its clients don't aggress, ethnically cleanse,
or commit genocide.

Consequently, they are NOT adequately held to account for international
genocidal crimes. In Turkey's case, as already noted, internationally
respected genocide scholars such as Tove Skutnabb-Kangas point out that
Turkey remains in breach of 2 articles of the United Nations' Genocide
Convention . For geo-political reasons, the US, UK, and German
governments, particularly in the post-Second World War period, due to
NATO linked agendas, 'post-9/11' and other geostrategic and economic
concerns, have not only chosen to not recognize any [Kurdish]
"genocide", they have been complicit and instrumental in facilitating
this very genocidal process. It is important to note that complicity in
genocide is identified as a major international crime by the 1948
Genocide Convention . [Moreover], according to Cengiz Çandar, the
Turkish journalist, Turkey continues to practice cultural genocide
against the Armenians in Turkey. According to the internationally
respected Turkish investigative journalist Ahmet Kahraman, currently in
exile, the Turkish state continues to engage in cultural genocide of
Armenians, Kurds and Greeks. And yet, despite this, from the US and UK
governments who supposedly stand for "human rights", "humanitarianism"
and a commitment towards speaking out against 'genocide', there is no
condemnation or serious examination or appraisal of these "genocide"
charges that have been levelled, just as there is no serious appraisal
or "recognition" of the past Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek genocides.
Or, indeed, serious appraisal or "recognition" of the genocide in
Vietnam, or Iraq (under sanctions, or after). The list goes on ...


Concerning the question:


Do the UK and US governments hinder the process of reconciliation by
their one-sided pro-Turkish government stance?

I think they do. Reconciliation cannot meaningfully take place even as
cultural genocide continues, and the Turkish state refuses to
acknowledge its own ongoing and past genocidal policies and practices,
that themselves derived "inspiration" from the even earlier - also
denied (alongside with the US and UK governments) - genocidal phase
under late Ottoman (CUP) rule. As Andrew Kevorkian has commented:

What is eminently clear is that there is a genocide of the Kurds going
on (since about 1925) ... But, as long as Turkey can lie about the
Kurds, with American support, the genocide will continue - like an
inexorable spreading cancer.

And with a genocide continuing in its many manifestations against Kurds,
Armenians and 'Others', there is little chance of reconciliation
developing meaningfully ...


Professor Khatchatur Pilikian:


A bird's eye view on the chronological history of the genocide of the
Armenians reveals the following:

a) PREMEDITATION & CONCEPTUALISATION
Kmil Pasha (1838-1912) was to become Sultan Abdul Hamid's Prime
Minister four times over. A statement penned by Kmil Pasha was cited
in the prestigious Armenian periodical of the time Pordz (Trial,
Attempt), in Tiflis=3DTbilisi, in 1879. It graphically confirms a
premeditated genocidal concept, even, mind you, before the emergence of
the Armenian political parties, later accused by the Young Turks as the
Casus Belli=3Dwar involvement, of their genocidal deed. The Ottoman
Grand Vizier stated:

"Thus, we must eliminate, leave behind no traces of that Armenian
nation. And to accomplish this task, we are lacking in nothing; we have
all the means we need--Kurds, Cherkez, governors, judges,
tax-collectors, police, in short everything. We can declare a religious
war--waged against a nation that has no arms, no army, and no defender,
whereas, in contrast, we have one of the greatest and richest states of
the world as our comrade-in-arms and the guardian of our Asian world."

b) PRELIMANARY IMPLEMENTATIONS
Kmil Pasha's conceptualised genocidal premeditation was put into an
operational program during 1894-1896 at Sassun, Van, Zeitun and
Diarbekir, resulting in the massacre of 300,000 Armenians, 3000 villages
were burned and "tens of thousands were forced to flee their native land
into all corners of the earth..."

Prof. Em. Dillon (1854-1933), the Irish linguist and journalist, visited
Turkey in 1895. He asserted:

"It is already proven that the pillage and the massacres of Sassun is
the deliberately organised act of the Sublime Porte, an act planned in
advance meticulously and executed mercilessly . . ."

c) PREPARATORY/TACTICAL EXECUTIONS
Kmil Pasha was still around, writing and publishing his "history"
books when the massacres at Adana in Cilicia of April 1909 resulted in
30,000 Armenian deaths. The latter was indeed the 'maiden performance'
of the Young Turks relishing in the prospects of their racist Panturanic
vision. An eyewitness of the Adana massacres, Helen Davenport Gibbons
wrote:

"This massacre was more terrible than those in the days of Abdul Hamid .
. . Those Armenians who had succeeded in escaping the first carnage are
now destroyed. Adana has become a veritable inferno."

It was in Salonika that the conference of August 1910 of "Ittihad ve
Terakke", the party of the Young Turks, took the macabre decision to
Turkify by brute force the diverse multi ethnic nations constituting the
Ottoman Empire. On October 1911, the same party's conference, again in
Salonika, reconfirmed their ominous decision of racist cleansing of
minds, and land cleansing by massacres.

On July 27, 1914, the government of the Young Turks started conscripting
Armenians, before the First World War broke out, to deplete the Armenian
nation of its able-bodied male population who were herded into amele
tabourou=3Dlabour battalions, eventually to order them to dig their own
mass graves.

On August 2, 1914, the Young Turks decided to create, out of its
Teshkilati makhsusa=3Dspecial formation, a new structure to deal with
'interior matters', to start and implement their proto-Nazi party
conference decisions.

On August 6, 1914, a secret agreement between Turkey and Germany
promised Caucasus (including Eastern/Russian Armenia) to Turkey.

Until December 1914, before Ottoman Turkey's declaration of war on the
Entente powers (November 5), 200,000 Armenian civilians, mostly women,
the elderly and children already were uprooted and decimated, not
counting the imminent tragedy prepared for the 300 thousand conscripted
Armenian male population. Few thousand Armenians had managed to flee and
reach Russian occupied Eastern Armenia. Many of them served in the
volunteer regiments of the Tzar fighting in Western so called Turikish
Armenia. An estimated 300,000 Armenians fought with the Entente powers
in Europe and the Middle East including Palestine--a classic example of
cannon fodder of 600,000 Armenians obliging their lives, country and all
for the Imperialist appetites of both the Entente and the Central
powers.

The First World War set the stage for the Final Solution.

d) STRATEGIC EXECUTIONS / FINAL SOLUTION
Kmil Pasha's faithful disciple Nazim Bey Selanikly (1870-1926), the
executive secretary of the Young Turks Central Board, spelled out the
Ittihadist genocidal creed to his comrades-in-arms, early in 1915,
during a Central Board meeting presided over by comrade-brother Talaat:

"It is imperative that the Armenian people be completely exterminated;
that not even one single Armenian be left on our soil; that the name,
Armenian, be obliterated. We are now at war; there is no more auspicious
occasion than this; This country must be purged of all non-Turk
elements".....'

When serving as Editor in Chief of Documents on British Foreign Policy,
Prof. W. N. Medlicott, Stevenson Professor of International History,
University of London, tried to assess the enormity of the Armenian
cultural loss. On September 14, 1974, Prof. Medlicott wrote: "Hardly
less tragic than the actual destruction of life has been the disruption
of an age-long cultural and religious heritage and the loss of an
ancestral home tenaciously defended for over 2000 years. It is well that
these events should be recorded and that we should pay a tribute to the
courage of the survivors of the massacres and their descendants,
scattered though they now are throughout the world."

The basic question remains. Few months away from the 60th anniversary of
the UN Convention on Genocide and the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, what kind of a world are we living in?

For decades, UNESCO has been warning the world that the greatest shame
of the current civilisation is the fact that thousands of children die
of hunger every single day. Today that number has reached the staggering
14.6 million per annum. In other words 44,000 children die of hunger
alone each day of the year. Can there be any doubt that this is also the
unmentioned genocide of humanity, ongoing and an authentic one at that,
which surely is the outcome of our own socio-economic and industrial
military system, now coined with cynical panache as Globalisation,
whereby tens of thousands of nuclear warheads, each averaging at least
20 times the destructive power of a Hiroshima bomb, are already in
deployment all around the world....

When genocides, torture, poverty and wars are justified as "human
nature" or as a historical and economic necessary evil, nay even as
historical inevitability of "so called" clashing civilisations, then and
there silence acquires an obscene eloquence in support of
inhumanity-sheer Barbarism of Total Terror.

In the words of Nazim Hikmet, the Turkish poet laureate of UNESCO 2002:

Insanlar ey, nerdesiniz? Nerdesiniz?

Where art thou, oh, humanity? Where art thou?

Unless, of course, humanity at large will 'rage against the dying' of
its dreams and refuse to become cannon fodder for the 'Profane Patrons'
of Genocide: Mammon, Racism and Terror, thus guarding its deeds of
tolerance and justice, fair share and good care, compassion and
conscience-the true wealth of the world, hence the health of nations.

EXCERPTS OF MESSAGES:

Canon Andrew White - President of the FRRME:

Blessings from Baghdad

I am so sorry that I have been unable to be with you today for this most
important meeting. It is so important as in our life time there has
still been genocide. The Genocide of the Armenians and Assyrians has
never even been recognised. So many of the families of my people here in
Iraq fled to Iraq to find sanctuary in the violence and Genocide of the
Ottoman Empire. Both Assyrians and Armenians were killed in their
masses.

I have dedicated my life to the work of reconciliation. Forgiveness is
indeed the only thing that will prevent the pain of the past from
determining the future, but to have forgiveness and reconciliation you
must have recognition of the evil deeds of the past. We have had clear
recognition of the evil past of Germany and even the Rwanda's but Turkey
still refuses to acknowledge past massacres of the Armenians and the
Assyrians. To me that is totally unacceptable and unforgivable. They
want to join the EU; people say how a can a Muslim nation be part of the
EU. I have absolutely no problem with that but I do have a huge problem
with the nation of Turkey not recognising the genocide of it past.

My prayer is that this horror will not indeed be committed again, thank
you all for taking this most important issue so seriously.

Ragip Zarokulu of the Human Rights Association, Istanbul Branch:
Today, 24th of April, is worldwide recognised as the date signifying the
Armenian Genocide. Only in Turkey it indicates a taboo. The Turkish
state mobilises all its resources to deny the meaning of this date. At
diplomatic platforms Turkish officials and their advocates claim that
they recognise the "big tragedy" and they only object to its being named
as a "Genocide". That's not true. At every occasion in Turkey not only
the Armenian Genocide, but also the great agony of the Armenian people
is denied and attempts are made to justify the genocide.

It was only last month that during a Symposium on the Armenian-Turkish
relations the denialist official theses were voiced one after another,
offending the Armenians in Turkey and elsewhere and insulting the memory
of their grandparents. Lies were told in the name of "science", like
"Armenians have always sold their masters", "deportation was a means of
crisis management", "death toll of deportation is comparable to the
death toll of flu epidemic in England that time", "there is no other
people as noble as the Turkish nation in the world, it is impossible for
them to commit a genocide", and many more, humiliating a people who was
one of the most advanced in science, art, literature, and in all other
aspects.

Denial is a constituant part of the genocide itself and results in the
continuation of the genocide. Denial of genocide is a human rights
violation in itself. It deprives individuals the right to mourn for
their ancestors, for the ethnic cleansing of a nation, the annihilation
of people of all ages, all professions, all social sections, women, men,
children, babies, grandparents alike just because they were Armenians
regardless of their political background or conviction. Perhaps the most
important of all, it is the refusal of making a solemn, formal
commitment and say "NEVER AGAIN".

Turkey has made hardly any progress in the field of co-existence,
democracy, human rights and putting an end to militarism since the time
of the Union and Progress Committee. Annihilation and denial had been
and continues today to be the only means to solve the problem. Villages
evacuated and put on fire and forced displacements are still the
manifestation of the same habit of "social engineering". There has
always been bloodshed in the homeland of Armenians after 1915. Unsolved
murders, disappearances under custody, rapes and arrests en masse during
the 1990's were no surprise, given the ongoing state tradition lacking
any culture of repentance for past crimes against humanity.

Similarly the removal of a public prosecutor and banning him from
profession just for taking the courage to mention an accusation against
the military, a very recent incident, is the manifestation of an old
habit of punishing anybody who dares to voice any objection to the army.
And today's ongoing military build up of some 250,000 troops in the
southeast of Turkey is the proof of a mindset who is unable to develop
any solution to the Kurdish question other than armed suppresion.

Turkey will not be able to take even one step forward without putting an
end to the continuity of the Progress and Union manner of ruling. No
human rights violation can be stopped in Turkey and there will be no
hope of breaking the vicious circle of Kurdish uprisings and their
bloody suppression unless the Turkish state agree to create an
environment where public homage is paid to genocide victims, where the
sufferings of their grandchildren is shared and the genocide is
recognised.

Today we, as the human rights defenders, would like to address all
Armenians in Turkey and elsewhere in the world and tell them "we want to
share the pain in your hearts and bow down before the memory of your
lost ones. They are also our losses. Our struggle for human rights in
Turkey, is at the same time our mourning for our common losses and a
homage paid to the genocide victims".

Rosie Malek-Yonan, Author of The Crimson Field and Board of Advisor at
Seyfo Center:

The absence of the negotiation of world peace is the single greatest
threat to humanity and the future of a violent-free world.

In order to achieve freedom from war, we must examine the actions that
continually create the cycle of anger and hatred as the catalyst to any
conflict between nations.

World peace will always remain a distant thought when reconciliation in
the aftermath of genocide is not at the forefront of all discussions of
human rights violations relative to those crimes.

When we perpetually allow the practice of genocide and holocaust and
consent to the denial of such actions to linger for decades as in the
case of the Assyrian, Armenian and Pontic Greek Genocide, we are in
essence consenting to denial as a compromise. Denial is not compromise.

To the survivors and the children and grandchildren of the survivors of
the Assyrian, Armenian, and Pontic Greek Genocide of 1914-1918 in
Ottoman Turkey and northwestern Iran, there is no valid justification
for the renunciation of facts.

With the acknowledgement of past and present genocides we can slowly
begin to mend the broken bridges that may ultimately lead the human race
to eradicate bloodshed and violence among nations of this world. But so
long as we turn a blind-eye to these killings, we are sanctioning the
ongoing slaughter such as today's modern-day Assyrian Genocide occurring
in Iraq since the beginning of the 2003 war.

A formal pronouncement by the Turkish government of the Assyrian,
Armenian, and Pontic Greek Genocide will bring closure to not only the
survivors of the genocide, but also to the Turkish people in that the
nearly century-old hatred can begin to give way to human solidarity.
Anything short of that will surely continue to threaten all hope of
peace.

Dr Tessa Hofmann, Chairperson of the Working Group Recognition - Against
Genocide, for International Understanding (AGA):

The Armenian Genocide Day Conference poses a demanding and challenging
aim. The recognition of historic facts - Truth - and of justice is the
precondition of any reconciliation and lasting peace, if the ultimate
crime of genocide was committed. The comparative study of genocides of
the 20th and 21st centuries reveals that again and again survivors and
their descendents need legal justice in order to re-establish trust
and the capability to come to terms with their fate.

The case of the Ottoman genocide against 3.5 million Christian
citizens is unique in the duration and obstinacy, displayed by
official Turkey in the refusal to acknowledge the states crimes which
were committed during the last decade of Ottoman rule. The refusal to
come to terms with this past and to take responsibility for the murder
and destruction of Non-Muslim ethnic groups in the process of building
a Turkish nation-state have long ago turned into severe obstacles for
democratization and regional stability in international relations. To
help Turkey to overcome her self-imposed deadlock means the contrary
of a policy of eye-closing and palliation. It means the exploration of
the roots of nowadays hate towards ethnic and religious minorities.

We hope that the Conference will be able to explain the necessity of
such standards to the political decision-makers in the United Kingdom
and thus will immediately contribute both to justice and
reconciliation.

Foundation For The Kurdish Library and Museum in Stockholm, Sweden:

The new Turkish Republic which has been rebuilt on the remnants of the
Ottoman Empire, has to confess once all the history of Turkish legacy of
their ancestor. It is not possible for Turkey to accept parts of Turkish
history and reject the other historical occurrences.

The genocide of Armenians is a historical fact and whole world knows
who committed these crimes. It is time once for all for Turkey, for
the candidate of EU membership, to confess all events in Turkey's and
Turks history. This is necessary for making the peace and democratic
progress secured in the whole region and in the entire world.


Barzoo Eliassi, Kurdish Ph.D. student at the Department of Social
Sciences of Mid-Sweden University:


The transition from the multicultural Millet system of the Ottoman
Empire to the Republic of Turkey created an ocean of killing in the name
of a threatened Turkish nation. It is not an exaggeration to compare the
Nazi extermination of the Jews with the systematic Turkish mass murder,
or aptly put, the genocide against the Armenians during the First World
War. The Turkish governments have been denying this event and labelled
it as a conspiracy against the existence of the Turkish state. Any
demand on raising and debating this issue of genocide and atrocities
against the Armenians is seen as an external threat that attempts to
undermine the political authority of the Turks over the Turkish history.
History books in Turkey see surely this genocide in other terms and
legitimatize it in the name of the Turkish nation and its right to
existence and its right to use any means to protect itself from internal
and external "threats". Using any means included also the genocide of
the Armenians, an evil crime that Turkish history has to pay back to its
victims through recognition.


Martin Blecher, member of the Israel Group in Sweden:


Today our thoughts go to the one and half million that were killed in
Ottoman Empire in 1915-1916. Our thoughts also go to the children and
grandchildren of the survivors who have witnessed the horror by
survivors passing their story along. The Jewish people and our Armenian
brothers have experienced one Holocaust upon us ... We deeply sympathize
with the Armenian nation and encourage them to continue their search for
national justice. It is our responsibility to forget in order to live in
the present and move along the path that leads to peace. It is also our
responsibility not to forget and to tell the story that once were told
to us.


Sukran Kavak, a Kurdish journalist in Sweden:

The legal definition of genocide was found in the 1948 United Nations
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
But the crimes of genocide were committed much earlier then this legal
definition. The world failed to stop the genocide of the Armenians
during and after the First World War by the Ottoman Empire. To honour
the hundreds of thousands of victims and their relatives, the crimes
against the Armenians must be acknowledged as genocide by the world. To
not recognize this is a further crime and insult against the victims,
the survivors and the whole Armenian people.

Shoresh Rahem, International Affairs for the Kurdistan Student
Association and Kurdistan Youth Freedom Organization:

When I came to Sweden at the age of eight, I learnt about Kurdish
history through my family. The Swedish history classes were limited to
the European countries and those who Europe had relations with. Few
people knew that there was a Kurdish genocide in Iraq during 1980's.
Neither did we study that more than one million Armenians were victims
of genocide in Turkey. There is nothing we can do today to get back the
victims of the genocide. But we must inform and acknowledge the crimes
so that it will not be repeated, but also to honor the survivors to the
victims that they are not forgotten. To know that a crime of genocide
has been committed but to deny it is another serious crime. Therefore, I
see as my obligation to the Kurds and to our friends, the Armenians, not
to keep quiet about the crimes of genocide as my teachers and the
politicians did when I grew up.

Hediye Guzel - Press secretary, Left wing party, Kurdish origin:

Reconciliation must be the leading star, when discussing the Armenian
genocide. This awful genocide has also affected the Assyrians/Syrians
and Chaldeans in the Ottoman Empire. But reconciliation must be founded
on truth, not on manipulation of truth. Without true and honest
historical research and approaches, we will never reach this goal. We
must not hesitate to use the right words about happened in the Ottoman
Empire 1915 and the following years. We cannot be afraid of truth! And
we cannot deny or hesitate as the Turkish republic does.

The genocide in the Ottoman Empire is a trauma not only for the
Armenians, the Assyrians/ Syrians and the Chaldeans, it is also a trauma
for the Turkish people. Nationalist and chauvinist institutions and
forces in Turkish society which deny the genocide prevent and punish
people who recognize the genocide of 1915. They stop the development of
reconciliation and peace of a whole society. With a recognition of what
happened in 1915 in the Ottoman Empire, hatred and bitterness can
disappear and reconciliation can be reached.

As long as the Turkish state denies the genocide of 1915 it will be
caught in the past. We have to look at the future and leave the past. To
reach peace and harmony between people, it is necessary to see the truth
and condemn the genocide.

Haydar Isik, Germany:

I am an Alevi Kurd! Where we lived there were no mosques. In my
childhood I admired the ruins of the Armenian churches in the area.
Though their walls had crumbled the domes supported by the columns still
stood. The marvelous pictures painted on them could still be seen. My
birth city was called 'Kizilkilise' or 'Red Church' in the Kurdish
language [it probably had a Syriac or Armenian name before]. But later
like other Kurdish names the Kizilkilise was changed to 'Nazimiye' by
the Turkish government.

My childhood was affected by two important historical events. One was
the Dersim massacre of the Kurds in 1937/38 , when 70,000 of them were
killed by the Turkish army which still is very fresh and sorrowful in my
mind. The other was the Armenian Genocide, of 1915-16 by the Turks which
exterminated one and half million Armenians and a half million
Assyrians. During the winter months I often heard about the sorrowful
fate of our Armenian neighbors and it made me cry.

To achieve racial supremacy in Anatolia, the Turkish regime wiped out
first the Armenians and Assyrians and then the Kurds. General Kazim
Karabekir, who had participated in the killing of the Armenians and
Assyrians once had said: 'le yandan zo zo lari, doenuence de lo lo larin
isini bitirecegiz.' 'We will exterminate the Armenians with an invasion
to the east, on our way back we will do the same with the Kurds.'

It was always the strategy of the Turks to kill or drive out the country
first the Christian Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks to turn the country
into an Islamic nation, then to carry out similar genocide and ethnocide
against the Kurds. To accomplish this Turkish rulers promoted hatred and
incited one people against the other ... The Kurdish feudal chieftains
became instrumental in carrying out these Turkish policies.

The Turkish regime used sunni tribes in Northern Kurdistan who lived
side by side with the Armenians and Assyrians in Mesopotamia to
implement its policies. The Aschirets (tribe) which lived in Van, Urfa,
Agri; Mus and Bingöl were known as Hasenen, Cibran, Zirkan, Sipkan,
Zilan, Milan etc.. These Aschirets were a minority of the Kurds. The
Aleviti Kurds, the yezidis and the rest of the sunni Kurds provided no
assistance to the Turks.

A minority of Kurds was used to kill Christians to prove their loyalty
to Turkey and Islam. Today's Kurds see the massacre of the Armenians
[and Assyrians] as a shame on Kurds. I am ashamed that Kurds were
involved in killing their neighbors in such barbarous manners.

In the shadow of the 1ST world war, during the rule of Pascha Enver
Talat and Cemal, Turks organized the Christian pogrom in Anatolia and
Mesopotamia with the approval and knowledge of Germany. It was the first
genocide in human history that was carefully planned and carried out.
However one needs to see the other side of the coin also. The rag-tag
brigades, recruited by Turkey out of 36 Kurdish tribes, which were used
to massacre the Christian were also incited against the Alevi and the
yezidie (moslem) Kurds.

The regiments were formed exclusively out of the sunni tribes in
Northern kurdistan which means, the young Turkish regime (Ittihat
Terakki) intentions were to incite one section of the Kurds against the
other according to the principle of 'divide and conquer'. Consequently
animosities between Sunni and Alevi Kurds continues to this day.

The Hamidiyeh regiments was also used against the Kurds to undermine the
Kurdish aspirations for independence. Their Attacks against the
Armenians, Assyrians or Kurds remain a blemish in the history of the
Kurds. Nothing holds back the Kurdish descent bandits who attacked
Armenian villages yesterday and killed countless people from killing
their own. One has to ask: is it just for anyone to kill other human
beings because someone orders them to do so?

Yes, the story of humanity is full of such events. About 50 years ago,
German fascism massacred the Jews in industrial fashion. They believed
that their victims deserved to die! ...

Now Turkey is using Kurds to fight their compatriots. Like the Hamidiyeh
brigades of the past which killed 100,000 of their own people, Kurdish
gangs have been equipped to fight against the Kurdish liberation
movement, which fights for liberty and well-being being of the Kurds
living in the mountains.

The same mentality which massacred the Armenians and the Assyrians
yesterday, is responsible for the killing of the Kurds today. The Kurds
in Dersim provided protection for their Armenian neighbors despite
pressure from the Turks, however such kindness cost them dearly when
Turks massacred them in 1937/38, partly for that reason.

Turkey is a country of various people, Turks, Kurds, Armenians,
Assyrians and other minorities. Although Turkey has signed almost all
the international treaties including: The 'General Declaration of the
Human Rights', the 'European Convention of Human Rights', the 'CSCE
treaty' , which promises Equal Rights, Self-determination, and rights of
minorities to teach their mother tongue, Turkey has denied such
liberties to its non-Turk[ish] citizens, yet it wants to join the
European Union.

The Armenians were exterminated by the policy of Turkey in Anatolia. We,
the Kurds would like to live peacefully together with our neighbors,
Armenians, Assyrians and Turks in a country, where the sound of the
church-bells and the call of the Muezzin can be heard side by side. We
are not any more the Kurds who were used as tool by Turkey to
exterminate their Christian neighbors. We are ashamed and would like to
make amend and do well - From: 'Confessions of an Honest Kurd: The
Assyrian & Armenian Genocide, Past and present' - Translated from the
German Language. wm.warda; www.haydar-isik.com.