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IRAN, TURKEY & HOLOCAUST DENIAL
The Jewish Week
July 19 2013
07/19/2013 - 09:26
Douglas Bloomfield
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has described Holocaust denial as one of the
proudest achievements of his eight years as president of Iran. That's
because he was willing to "bring up...a taboo topic that no one in
the West allowed to be heard," he told Fars News Agency, and which,
he boasted, brought him worldwide popularity.
With Ahmadinejad leaving office August 3, the man most likely
to succeed him as the most outspoken anti-Semitic world leader is
Turkey's volatile prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. There may be
competition for the title, but so far he's the frontrunner.
Erdogan is also a Holocaust denier, but of another stripe - this
one involving the genocide of the Armenians nearly a century ago by
the Turks.
The Ottoman government's systematic extermination of the Armenian
minority - complete with extermination camps and the deportation of
women, children, the elderly and infirm on death marches -- killed
between 600,000 and 1.8 million and drove many more out of their
historic homeland.
"[O]ther minority groups were similarly targeted for extermination
by the Ottoman government, and their treatment is considered by
many historians to be part of the same genocidal policy," according
to Wikipedia. "The word 'genocide' was coined in order to describe
these events."
When Armenian-Americans would periodically try to get the Congress to
pass resolutions commemorating the genocide, the Turkish government
would swing into action not only with denials but with threats. Many
of those threats over the years have been aimed at Turkish Jews
and the Israeli government. Sympathetic Jewish members of Congress
consistently sponsor the resolutions, which are often introduced by
lawmakers with large Armenian-American constituencies.
Whenever a resolution started picking up sponsors, the Turks would
send in their designated hitters. A favorite tactic was to pressure
the Israeli government to make the Jewish sponsors back off lest there
be repercussions for Israeli-Turkish relations. During the years I
was the legislative director at the American-Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC), every time an Armenian genocide resolution was
introduced on Capitol Hill I would get at least two phone calls.
The first was from a prominent Jewish lawyer in Washington on the
Turkish payroll warning of the dire consequences for Israel and Turkish
Jewry should the legislation, which was merely commemorative and had
no legal implications, pass. The second was from a senior Israeli
diplomat at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem. Unlike the lawyer,
he was almost apologetic, as he explained the hypersensitivity of
the Turks and the threats they were making to relations between the
two countries.
I assume the Turks, their lawyer and the Israelis took the same message
to the Hill because the resolutions never went anywhere. More recently
when Turkish-Israeli relations plunged, there was talk of reviving
the Armenian genocide resolutions but that was apparently dropped
over concern that it would only make a bad situation worse.
In Ahmadinejad and Erdogan's shared hatred of Jews and Israel is
their enthusiastic embrace of two notorious anti-Israeli terrorist
organizations: Ahmadinejad especially prefers Hizbollah and Erdogan
is a fervent backer of Hamas. Iran has supplied weapons, funds and
training for both.
Another shared trait: Erdogan has called Zionism a crime against
humanity, accused Israel of killing "hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians" and compared Zionism to Naziism.
For more about Erdogan's attitudes toward Israel and Jews, read my
Washington Watch column, "Is Erdogan the new Ahmadinejad."
http://www.thejewishweek.com/blogs/political-insider/iran-turkey-holocaust-denial
From: A. Papazian
The Jewish Week
July 19 2013
07/19/2013 - 09:26
Douglas Bloomfield
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has described Holocaust denial as one of the
proudest achievements of his eight years as president of Iran. That's
because he was willing to "bring up...a taboo topic that no one in
the West allowed to be heard," he told Fars News Agency, and which,
he boasted, brought him worldwide popularity.
With Ahmadinejad leaving office August 3, the man most likely
to succeed him as the most outspoken anti-Semitic world leader is
Turkey's volatile prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. There may be
competition for the title, but so far he's the frontrunner.
Erdogan is also a Holocaust denier, but of another stripe - this
one involving the genocide of the Armenians nearly a century ago by
the Turks.
The Ottoman government's systematic extermination of the Armenian
minority - complete with extermination camps and the deportation of
women, children, the elderly and infirm on death marches -- killed
between 600,000 and 1.8 million and drove many more out of their
historic homeland.
"[O]ther minority groups were similarly targeted for extermination
by the Ottoman government, and their treatment is considered by
many historians to be part of the same genocidal policy," according
to Wikipedia. "The word 'genocide' was coined in order to describe
these events."
When Armenian-Americans would periodically try to get the Congress to
pass resolutions commemorating the genocide, the Turkish government
would swing into action not only with denials but with threats. Many
of those threats over the years have been aimed at Turkish Jews
and the Israeli government. Sympathetic Jewish members of Congress
consistently sponsor the resolutions, which are often introduced by
lawmakers with large Armenian-American constituencies.
Whenever a resolution started picking up sponsors, the Turks would
send in their designated hitters. A favorite tactic was to pressure
the Israeli government to make the Jewish sponsors back off lest there
be repercussions for Israeli-Turkish relations. During the years I
was the legislative director at the American-Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC), every time an Armenian genocide resolution was
introduced on Capitol Hill I would get at least two phone calls.
The first was from a prominent Jewish lawyer in Washington on the
Turkish payroll warning of the dire consequences for Israel and Turkish
Jewry should the legislation, which was merely commemorative and had
no legal implications, pass. The second was from a senior Israeli
diplomat at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem. Unlike the lawyer,
he was almost apologetic, as he explained the hypersensitivity of
the Turks and the threats they were making to relations between the
two countries.
I assume the Turks, their lawyer and the Israelis took the same message
to the Hill because the resolutions never went anywhere. More recently
when Turkish-Israeli relations plunged, there was talk of reviving
the Armenian genocide resolutions but that was apparently dropped
over concern that it would only make a bad situation worse.
In Ahmadinejad and Erdogan's shared hatred of Jews and Israel is
their enthusiastic embrace of two notorious anti-Israeli terrorist
organizations: Ahmadinejad especially prefers Hizbollah and Erdogan
is a fervent backer of Hamas. Iran has supplied weapons, funds and
training for both.
Another shared trait: Erdogan has called Zionism a crime against
humanity, accused Israel of killing "hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians" and compared Zionism to Naziism.
For more about Erdogan's attitudes toward Israel and Jews, read my
Washington Watch column, "Is Erdogan the new Ahmadinejad."
http://www.thejewishweek.com/blogs/political-insider/iran-turkey-holocaust-denial
From: A. Papazian