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ARMENIAN GENOCIDE REMEMBRANCE DAY AND THE PRESIDENT'S NEW INITIATIVE
By Nina Shea
National Review Online
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/296890/armenian-genocide-remembrance-day-and-president-s-new-initiative-nina-shea
April 24 2012
Yesterday, at a commemorative event at the Holocaust Museum here in
Washington, President Obama announced a new initiative - the creation
of a committee to be named the "Atrocities Prevention Board." This
group is supposed to build on the president's 2011 directive to
prevent and stop genocide and other mass atrocities.
As Mark noted below, today, Obama's resolve will be put to an
immediate test, because it's Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. Will
the president or his new committee dare to speak up? This is the
fourth chance Obama has had as president to acknowledge this other
holocaust. As a presidential candidate, he excoriated the Bush
administration for failing to speak up about the Armenian genocide,
yet his administration has also remained silent.
Some 1.5 million Armenians are estimated to have been slaughtered in
Turkey as Ottoman rule collapsed between 1915 and 1923. About 750,000
Arameans or Assyrians and 350,000 Pontic Greeks are also thought
to have perished during this period. (For an unforgettable account
of the ordeal of this last group, whose story is not generally well
known, read Thea Halo's Not Even My Name.) These Christian populations
were victimized under a radically secular movement of "Young Turks"
that had risen up and set in motion a "Turkification" program which
shaped in no small part Ataturk's government and is reflected in some
of Turkey's current laws and policies.
Today, Christians, who have been reduced to a mere 0.15 percent of
Turkey's population, are treated as a fifth column by the state,
thwarted in their ability to preserve their churches. All of Turkey's
Christian traditions still face tight restrictions: rules against the
possession of churches, bans against seminaries to train new clergy,
and prohibitions from wearing religious garb in public. And while
the government recently gave back a Greek Orthodox orphanage (though
there are no longer orphans to reside there), and allowed liturgies
to be carried out once a year in a few long-confiscated churches,
last year it also oversaw the strategic continuation of oppressive
patterns: the state confiscation of part of a 1,600-year-old Syriac
monastery and the conversion of the Nicean Saint Sophia church,
where the first Christian Ecumenical Council met in 325, into a mosque.
After ten years in power, the Islamist AKP government has failed
to rescind the onerous regulations that are contributing to take
a toll on the country's 2,000-year-old Christian church. Not only
has Turkey never acknowledged the genocide of a hundred years ago,
it still criminally punishes those who even try to raise it.
The late Armenian editor Hrant Dink was one example. Dink's writings
criticizing Turkey's treatment of its Christians and other minorities
brought him a conviction under Article 301 of the criminal code for
"insulting Turkishness." Also, his widow told me, Dink received over
6,000 death threats before being murdered in 2007. Last January, most
of the defendants in the murder trial were acquitted, and many in
the international human-rights community concluding that the court's
failure to find a broader plot defied the evidence.
These facts, and others, led the congressionally established U. S.
Commission on International Religious Freedom to issue last month
a recommendation to the Obama administration to designate Turkey
as a "Country of Particular Concern" (CPC) under the International
Religious Freedom Act. Revealingly, the three commissioners appointed
by President Obama all voted against this non-binding recommendation.
Furthermore, a political appointee in the State Department "reached
out" to influence another member of the "independent" Commission to
change his vote, though it came too late. (Since the Uscirf vote
stirred some controversy, it bears noting that the Commission's
General Counsel issued a legal opinion upholding the vote for the CPC
recommendation. It found: "In the absence of a quorum, the Commission
cannot revise the previously-agreed upon schedule for submitting
comments and/or dissents and cannot re-open the previously-adopted
country designation for Turkey.")
At Monday's Holocaust Museum ceremony, President Obama uttered fine
words about a noble goal - preventing genocide. Michael Abramowitz,
director of the Committee on Conscience at the Holocaust Memorial
Museum, responded that the steps Obama outlined "are potentially -
and I stress the word potentially - very important." He is right to
be cautious. This cause is too critical to be exploited as a campaign
tactic. The president must be willing to take action on the hard cases,
including Turkey.
Instead of embittered words and acts of denial - which include
threatening other countries whose legislatures and parliaments wish to
recognize the Armenian genocide - Turkey, an emerging leader in the
Muslim world, needs to face up to the horrors that were unleashed a
century ago and offer apologies. President Obama should take the lead
in encouraging Ankara to cooperate in an open, impartial investigation
into what exactly occurred during this period, not least because those
historical events cast a shadow over Turkey's religious minorities
even now. Today would be a good day to start.
- Nina Shea is the director of Hudson Institute's Center for
Religious Freedom and a former commissioner on the U.S. Commission
on International Religious Freedom.
By Nina Shea
National Review Online
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/296890/armenian-genocide-remembrance-day-and-president-s-new-initiative-nina-shea
April 24 2012
Yesterday, at a commemorative event at the Holocaust Museum here in
Washington, President Obama announced a new initiative - the creation
of a committee to be named the "Atrocities Prevention Board." This
group is supposed to build on the president's 2011 directive to
prevent and stop genocide and other mass atrocities.
As Mark noted below, today, Obama's resolve will be put to an
immediate test, because it's Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. Will
the president or his new committee dare to speak up? This is the
fourth chance Obama has had as president to acknowledge this other
holocaust. As a presidential candidate, he excoriated the Bush
administration for failing to speak up about the Armenian genocide,
yet his administration has also remained silent.
Some 1.5 million Armenians are estimated to have been slaughtered in
Turkey as Ottoman rule collapsed between 1915 and 1923. About 750,000
Arameans or Assyrians and 350,000 Pontic Greeks are also thought
to have perished during this period. (For an unforgettable account
of the ordeal of this last group, whose story is not generally well
known, read Thea Halo's Not Even My Name.) These Christian populations
were victimized under a radically secular movement of "Young Turks"
that had risen up and set in motion a "Turkification" program which
shaped in no small part Ataturk's government and is reflected in some
of Turkey's current laws and policies.
Today, Christians, who have been reduced to a mere 0.15 percent of
Turkey's population, are treated as a fifth column by the state,
thwarted in their ability to preserve their churches. All of Turkey's
Christian traditions still face tight restrictions: rules against the
possession of churches, bans against seminaries to train new clergy,
and prohibitions from wearing religious garb in public. And while
the government recently gave back a Greek Orthodox orphanage (though
there are no longer orphans to reside there), and allowed liturgies
to be carried out once a year in a few long-confiscated churches,
last year it also oversaw the strategic continuation of oppressive
patterns: the state confiscation of part of a 1,600-year-old Syriac
monastery and the conversion of the Nicean Saint Sophia church,
where the first Christian Ecumenical Council met in 325, into a mosque.
After ten years in power, the Islamist AKP government has failed
to rescind the onerous regulations that are contributing to take
a toll on the country's 2,000-year-old Christian church. Not only
has Turkey never acknowledged the genocide of a hundred years ago,
it still criminally punishes those who even try to raise it.
The late Armenian editor Hrant Dink was one example. Dink's writings
criticizing Turkey's treatment of its Christians and other minorities
brought him a conviction under Article 301 of the criminal code for
"insulting Turkishness." Also, his widow told me, Dink received over
6,000 death threats before being murdered in 2007. Last January, most
of the defendants in the murder trial were acquitted, and many in
the international human-rights community concluding that the court's
failure to find a broader plot defied the evidence.
These facts, and others, led the congressionally established U. S.
Commission on International Religious Freedom to issue last month
a recommendation to the Obama administration to designate Turkey
as a "Country of Particular Concern" (CPC) under the International
Religious Freedom Act. Revealingly, the three commissioners appointed
by President Obama all voted against this non-binding recommendation.
Furthermore, a political appointee in the State Department "reached
out" to influence another member of the "independent" Commission to
change his vote, though it came too late. (Since the Uscirf vote
stirred some controversy, it bears noting that the Commission's
General Counsel issued a legal opinion upholding the vote for the CPC
recommendation. It found: "In the absence of a quorum, the Commission
cannot revise the previously-agreed upon schedule for submitting
comments and/or dissents and cannot re-open the previously-adopted
country designation for Turkey.")
At Monday's Holocaust Museum ceremony, President Obama uttered fine
words about a noble goal - preventing genocide. Michael Abramowitz,
director of the Committee on Conscience at the Holocaust Memorial
Museum, responded that the steps Obama outlined "are potentially -
and I stress the word potentially - very important." He is right to
be cautious. This cause is too critical to be exploited as a campaign
tactic. The president must be willing to take action on the hard cases,
including Turkey.
Instead of embittered words and acts of denial - which include
threatening other countries whose legislatures and parliaments wish to
recognize the Armenian genocide - Turkey, an emerging leader in the
Muslim world, needs to face up to the horrors that were unleashed a
century ago and offer apologies. President Obama should take the lead
in encouraging Ankara to cooperate in an open, impartial investigation
into what exactly occurred during this period, not least because those
historical events cast a shadow over Turkey's religious minorities
even now. Today would be a good day to start.
- Nina Shea is the director of Hudson Institute's Center for
Religious Freedom and a former commissioner on the U.S. Commission
on International Religious Freedom.