‘A Suécia vai reconhecer o genocídio arménio‘ in The Local

Though the motion to recognize the genocide of Armenians and other ethnic groups - Chaldeans, Syrians, Assyrians and Pontian Greeks - had the backing of members of five of the seven Swedish parliamentary parties, the vote's outcome was uncertain to the last as the parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs had recommended its rejection.

But with four centre-right politicians ignoring the recommendation and choosing to vote with the opposition, the resolution was eventually passed by a single vote.

Turkey immediately elected to recall its ambassador to Sweden, Zergün Korutürk, who said she was "very, very disappointed" by the vote.

"I'm disappointed and somewhat surprised because I expected the parliament to adopt the normal position that it is not the job of parliamentarians to decide whether or not a genocide has taken place.

"That is a questions for historians, and for researchers to examine before reaching a conclusion," she told news agency TT.

Zergün Korutürk added that Sweden and Turkey had enjoyed excellent relations over the last decade but that this was now certain to change.

"Everything is going to regress. This is going to have a drastic impact on our bilateral relations," she said.

Speaking to The Local prior to the vote, Left Party foreign policy spokesperson Hans Linde expressed his view that the time had come for Sweden to take a stand on the issue.

"Firstly, to hinder any repeat and to learn from history. Secondly, to encourage the development of democracy in Turkey - which includes dealing with their own history. Thirdly, to redress the wrongs committed against the victims and their descendants," Linde said.

The foreign affairs committee, in its comments on the motion, had argued for an open debate on the issue. It also stated that the persecution of the Armenians and other ethnic groups in 1915 would have constituted genocide according to the definition adopted by the United Nations in its 1948 genocide convention if it "had it been in force at the time."

But the committee stated that it does not consider it parliament's role to rule on human rights issues and that this should instead be addressed by "open research, open access to facts, and free debate."

Sweden's Minister of Foreign Affairs Carl Bildt agreed with the committee's position in comments on his blog on Thursday. Under the heading "Don't politicize history," Bildt wrote:

"A politicizing of history in this way risks undermining ongoing reconciliation processes, plays into the hands of those opposing normality in Armenia and reform in Turkey... and creating new tension in Swedish society."

The committee concluded in its comments that the Turkish government has in recent years made some movement on the issue, with conferences arranged on the subject as well as broader media debate.

The Swedish parliament has voted on the issue before, even approving a report in 2000 recognizing the disappearance of as many as 2.5 million Armenians, Chaldeans, Syrians, Assyrians and Pontian Greeks from April 1915 as genocide. But the recognition was later withdrawn "on a technicality", Hans Linde told The Local.

"The parliament also voted against recognition (by 245 to 37) in 2008. The difference this time is that the Social Democrats have changed their position," he said.

Carl Bildt claimed in his statement that the Social Democrat parliamentary group was forced to change standpoint on the issue as a result of a party congress vote, arguing that there are "several that feel deep unease over this."

According to Sweden's Living History Forum, most researchers are now in agreement that the massacres constituted genocide according to the accepted 1948 UN definition. The exception to this is Turkish researchers. The Turkish government has never recognized the events as a genocide and it is illegal in Turkey to claim that it occurred.

The Living History Forum is a Swedish public authority which works with issues on tolerance, democracy and human rights from both a national and international perspective.

The Local has made attempts to contact the foreign policy spokespersons at the Centre and Liberal (Folkpartiet) parties for a comment.

http://www.thelocal.se/25468/20100311/

‘Comissão do Congresso dos EUA reconhece o genocídio arménio‘ in BBC

A US congressional panel has described the killing of Armenians by Turkish forces during World War I as genocide, despite White House objections.

The resolution was narrowly approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Turkey, a key US ally, responded by recalling its ambassador in Washington for consultations. It has fiercely opposed the non-binding resolution.

The White House had warned that the vote would harm reconciliation talks between Turkey and Armenia.

The resolution calls on President Barack Obama to ensure that US foreign policy reflects an understanding of the "genocide" and to label the World War I killings as such in his annual statement on the issue.

It was approved by 23 votes to 22 by the committee.

Within minutes the Turkish government issued a statement condemning "this resolution which accuses the Turkish nation of a crime it has not committed".

The statement also said the Turkish ambassador was being recalled for consultations.

A Turkish parliamentary delegation had gone to Washington to try to persuade committee members to reject the resolution.

'Too important'

In 2007, a similar resolution passed the committee stage, but was shelved before a House vote after pressure from the George W Bush administration.

During his election campaign Mr Obama promised to brand the mass killings genocide.

Before the vote, committee chairman Howard Berman urged fellow members of the committee to endorse the resolution.

"I believe that Turkey values its relationship with the United States at least as much as we value our relations with Turkey," he said.

The Turks, he added, "fundamentally agree that the US-Turkish alliance is simply too important to get side-tracked by a non-binding resolution passed by the House of Representatives".

In October last year, Turkey and Armenia signed a historic accord normalising relations between them after a century of hostility.

Armenia wants Turkey to recognise the killings as an act of genocide, but successive Turkish governments have refused to do so.

Hundreds of thousands of Armenians died in 1915, when they were deported en masse from eastern Anatolia by the Ottoman Empire. They were killed by troops or died from starvation and disease.

Armenians have campaigned for the killings to be recognised internationally as genocide - and more than 20 countries have done so.

Turkish officials accept that atrocities were committed but argue they were part of the war and that there was no systematic attempt to destroy the Christian Armenian people.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8550765.stm

"Império Otomano 1915-1917: o que aconteceu aos arménios? in História nº 68

Poucos acontecimentos na história dos último século têm gerado tanta controvérsia como o destino das populações arménias na fase final do Império Otomano, durante os anos de 1915-1917, num período em que decorriam as hostilidades da I Guerra Mundial. Gwynne Dyer sintetizou bem este problema num artigo publicado em 1976 na Middle Eastern Studies sugestivamente intitulado Turkish ´Falsifiers´ and Armenian ´Deceivers´, onde referia que «qualquer historiador que tenha de lidar com os últimos anos do Império Otomano, mais cedo ou mais tarde vai encontrar-se a desejar desesperadamente que a neblina se dissipe sobre os
arménios otomanos do final do século XIX e início do século XX, especialmente sobre as deportações e os massacres de 1915». Infelizmente, apesar de já terem decorrido quase três décadas desde que Gwynne Dyer fez esta observação, e quase um século sobre os
acontecimentos, o ar parece não estar ainda totalmente límpido, permanecendo uma irritante neblina que dificulta qualquer tentativa imparcial de traçar os contornos exactos dos
acontecimentos. Ver texto integral do artigo.

"Um reino de terror que a História escolheu esquecer" in The Independent, 12 de Outubro de 2007

por Robert Fisk

The story of the last century's first Holocaust – Winston Churchill used this very word about the Armenian genocide years before the Nazi murder of six million Jews – is well known, despite the refusal of modern-day Turkey to acknowledge the facts. Nor are the parallels with Nazi Germany's persecution of the Jews idle ones.

Turkey's reign of terror against the Armenian people was an attempt to destroy the Armenian race. While the Turks spoke publicly of the need to "resettle" their Armenian population – as the Germans were to speak later of the Jews of Europe – the true intentions of Enver Pasha's Committee of Union and Progress in Constantinople were quite clear.

On 15 September 1915, for example (and a carbon of this document exists), Talaat Pasha, the Turkish Interior minister, cabled an instruction to his prefect in Aleppo about what he should do with the tens of thousands of Armenians in his city. "You have already been informed that the government... has decided to destroy completely all the indicated persons living in Turkey... Their existence must be terminated, however tragic the measures taken may be, and no regard must be paid to either age or sex, or to any scruples of conscience."

These words are almost identical to those used by Himmler to his SS killers in 1941.

Taner Akcam, a prominent – and extremely brave – Turkish scholar who has visited the Yerevan museum, has used original Ottoman Turkish documents to authenticate the act of genocide. Now under fierce attack for doing so from his own government, he discovered in Turkish archives that individual Turkish officers often wrote "doubles" of their mass death-sentence orders, telegrams sent at precisely the same time that asked their subordinates to ensure there was sufficient protection and food for the Armenians during their "resettlement". This weirdly parallels the bureaucracy of Nazi Germany, where officials were dispatching hundreds of thousands of Jews to the gas chambers while assuring International Red Cross officials in Geneva that they were being well cared for and well fed.

Ottoman Turkey's attempt to exterminate an entire Christian race in the Middle East – the Armenians, descended from the residents of ancient Urartu, became the first Christian nation when their king Drtad converted from paganism in AD301 – is a history of almost unrelieved horror at the hands of Turkish policemen and soldiers, and Kurdish tribesmen.

In 1915, Turkey claimed that its Armenian population was supporting Turkey's Christian enemies in Britain, France and Russia. Several historians – including Churchill, who was responsible for the doomed venture at Gallipoli – have asked whether the Turkish victory there did not give them the excuse to turn against the Christian Armenians of Asia Minor, a people of mixed Persian, Roman and Byzantine blood, with what Churchill called "merciless fury".

Armenian scholars have compiled a map of their people's persecution and deportation, a document that is as detailed as the maps of Europe that show the railway lines to Auschwitz and Treblinka; the Armenians of Erzerum, for example, were sent on their death march to Terjan and then to Erzinjan and on to Sivas province.

The men would be executed by firing squad or hacked to death with axes outside villages, the women and children then driven on into the desert to die of thirst or disease or exhaustion or gang-rape. In one mass grave I myself discovered on a hillside at Hurgada in present-day Syria, there were thousands of skeletons, mostly of young people – their teeth were perfect. I even found a 100-year-old Armenian woman who had escaped the slaughter there and identified the hillside for me.

There is debate in Yerevan today as to why the diaspora Armenians appear to care more about the genocide than the citizens of modern-day Armenia. Indeed, the Foreign minister of Armenia, Vardan Oskanian, actually told me that "days, weeks, even months go by" when he does not think of the genocide. One powerful argument put to me by an Armenian friend is that 70 years of Stalinism and official Soviet silence on the genocide deleted the historical memory in eastern Armenia – the present-day state of Armenia.

Another argument suggests that the survivors of western Armenia – in what is now Turkey – lost their families and lands and still seek acknowledgement and maybe even restitution, while eastern Armenians did not lose their lands.
http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article3052373.ece
JPTF 2007/10/12

Resolução 398 do Comité dos Negócios Estrangeiros da Câmara dos Representantes, apelando ao reconhecimento do genocídio arménio de 1915

106th CONGRESS 1st Session
H. RES. 398

Calling upon the President to provide for appropriate training and materials to all Foreign Service officers, United States Department of State officials, and any other executive branch employee involved in responding to issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

November 18, 1999

Mr. RADANOVICH (for himself and Mr. BONIOR) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on International Relations

RESOLUTION

Calling upon the President to provide for appropriate training and materials to all Foreign Service officers, United States Department of State officials, and any other executive branch employee involved in responding to issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide, and for other purposes.

Resolved,

SECTION. 1. SHORT TITLE.

This resolution may be cited as the `United States Training on and Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide Resolution'.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

The House of Representatives finds the following:

(1) The Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923, resulting in the deportation of nearly 2,000,000 Armenians, of whom 1,500,000 men, women, and children were killed, 500,000 survivors were expelled from their homes, and which succeeded in the elimination of the over 2,500-year presence of Armenians in their historic homeland.

(2) On May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers, England, France, and Russia, jointly issued a statement explicitly charging for the first time ever another government of committing `a crime against humanity'.

(3) This joint statement stated `[i]n view of these new crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization, the Allied Governments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally responsible for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres'.

(4) The post-World War I Turkish Government indicted the top leaders involved in the `organization and execution' of the Armenian Genocide and in the `massacre and destruction of the Armenians'.

(5) In a series of courts-martial, officials of the Young Turk Regime were tried and convicted, as charged, for organizing and executing massacres against the Armenian people.

(6) The chief organizers of the Armenian Genocide, Minister of War Enver, Minister of the Interior Talaat, and Minister of the Navy Jemal were all condemned to death for their crimes, however, the verdicts of the courts were not enforced.

(7) The Armenian Genocide and these domestic judicial failures are documented with overwhelming evidence in the national archives of Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Russia, the United States, the Vatican and many other countries, and this vast body of evidence attests to the same facts, the same events, and the same consequences.

(8) The United States National Archives and Record Administration holds extensive and thorough documentation on the Armenian Genocide, especially in its holdings under Record Group 59 of the United States Department of State, files 867.00 and 867.40, which are open and widely available to the public and interested institutions.

(9) The national archives of Turkey should also include all of the records pertaining to the indictment, trial, and conviction of the Ottoman authorities responsible for the Armenian Genocide.

(10) The Honorable Henry Morgenthau, United States Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916, organized and led protests by officials of many countries, among them the allies of the Ottoman Empire, against the Armenian Genocide.

(11) Ambassador Morgenthau explicitly described to the United States Department of State the policy of the Young Turk government as `a campaign of race extermination', and was instructed on July 16, 1915, by United States Secretary of State Robert Lansing that the `Department approves your procedure . . . to stop Armenian persecution'.

(12) Senate Concurrent Resolution 12 of February 9, 1916, resolved that `the President of the United States be respectfully asked to designate a day on which the citizens of this country may give expression to their sympathy by contributing funds now being raised for the relief of the Armenians', who at the time were enduring `starvation, disease, and untold suffering'.

(13) President Wilson concurred and also encouraged the formation of the organization known as Near East Relief, chartered by an Act of Congress, which contributed some $116,000,000 from 1915 to 1930 to aid the Armenian Genocide survivors, including 132,000 orphans who became foster children of the American people.

(14) Senate Resolution 359, dated May 11, 1920, stated in part, `the testimony adduced at the hearings conducted by the sub-committee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations have clearly established the truth of the reported massacres and other atrocities from which the Armenian people have suffered'.

(15) The resolution followed the April 13, 1920, report to the Senate of the American Military Mission to Armenia led by General James Harbord, that stated `[m]utilation, violation, torture, and death have left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian valleys, and the traveler in that region is seldom free from the evidence of this most colossal crime of all the ages'.

(16) Setting the stage for the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler, on ordering his military commanders to attack Poland without provocation in 1939, dismissed objections by saying `[w]ho, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?'.

(17) Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term `genocide' in 1944, and who was the earliest proponent of the Genocide Convention, invoked the Armenian case as a definitive example of genocide in the 20th century.

(18) Raphael Lemkin described the crime as `the systematic destruction of whole national, racial or religious groups. The sort of thing Hitler did to the Jews and the Turks did to the Armenians'.

(19) The first resolution on genocide adopted by the United Nations at Lemkin's urging, the December 11, 1946, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 96(1) and the United Nations Genocide Convention itself recognized the Armenian Genocide as the type of crime the United Nations intended to prevent by codifying existing standards.

(20) In 1948 the United Nations War Crimes Commission invoked the Armenian Genocide `precisely . . . one of the types of acts which the modern term `crimes against humanity' is intended to cover' as a precedent for the Nuremberg tribunals.

(21) The Commission stated that `[t]he provisions of Article 230 of the Peace Treaty of Sevres were obviously intended to cover, in conformity with the Allied note of 1915 . . ., offenses which had been committed on Turkish territory against persons of Turkish citizenship, though of Armenian or Greek race. This article constitutes therefore a precedent for Article 6c and 5c of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Charters, and offers an example of one of the categories of `crimes against humanity' as understood by these enactments'.

(22) The United Nations Commission on Human Rights adopted in 1985 a report entitled `Study of the Question of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide', which stated `[t]he Nazi aberration has unfortunately not been the only case of genocide in the twentieth century. Among other examples which can be cited as qualifying are . . . the Ottoman massacre of Armenians in 1915-1916'.

(23) This report also explained that `[a]t least 1 million, and possibly well over half of the Armenian population, are reliably estimated to have been killed or death marched by independent authorities and eye-witnesses. This is corroborated by reports in United States, German and British archives and of contemporary diplomats in the Ottoman Empire, including those of its ally Germany'.

(24) The tragedy of the Armenian Genocide has been acknowledged by countries and international bodies such as Argentina, Belgium, Canada, the Council of Europe, Cyprus, the European Parliament, France, Great Britain, Greece, Lebanon, Russia, the United Nations, the United States, and Uruguay.

(25) The United States Holocaust Memorial Council, an independent Federal agency, unanimously resolved on April 30, 1981, that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum would include the Armenian Genocide in the Museum and has since done so.

(26) President Reagan in proclamation number 4838, dated April 22, 1981, stated in part `like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians, which followed it--and like too many other persecutions of too many other people--the lessons of the holocaust must never be forgotten'.

(27) President Bush, in 1988, speaking of the Armenian Genocide, stated `we must consciously and conscientiously recognize the genocides of the past--the enormous tragedies that have darkened this century and that haunt us still. We must not only commemorate the courage of the victims and of their survivors, but we must also remind ourselves that civilization cannot be taken for granted. . . . We must all be vigilant against this most heinous crime against humanity'.

(28) President Bush, in 1988, stated further `[t]he United States must acknowledge the attempted genocide of the Armenian people in the last years of the Ottoman Empire, based on the testimony of survivors, scholars, and indeed our own representatives at the time, if we are to insure that such horrors are not repeated'.

(29) President Clinton, on August 13, 1992, stated `[t]he Genocide of 1915, years of communist dictatorship, and the devastating earthquake of 1988 have caused great suffering in Armenia during this century'.

(30) Reviewing an aberrant 1982 expression (later retracted) by the United States Department of State asserting that the facts of the Armenian Genocide may be ambiguous, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1993, after a review of documents pertaining to the policy record of the United States, noted that the assertion on ambiguity in the United States record about the Armenian Genocide `contradicted longstanding United States policy and was eventually retracted'.

(31) Despite the international recognition and affirmation of the Armenian Genocide, the failure of the domestic and international authorities to punish those responsible for the Armenian Genocide is a reason why similar genocides have recurred and may recur in the future, and that a proper judicial and firm response, holding the guilty accountable and requiring the prompt enforcement of verdicts would have spared humanity needless suffering.

(32) In a commendable letter on April 9, 1999, Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat, then Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs, pledged that the administration would raise with the Republic of Turkey the issue of the recovery of Armenian assets from the genocide period held by the Imperial Ottoman Bank.

(33) It is important that all Foreign Service officers, officials of the United States Department of State, and any other executive branch employee involved in responding to issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide are made familiar with the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide and the consequences of the failure to enforce the judgments of the Turkish courts against the responsible officials.

SEC. 3. DECLARATION OF POLICY.

The House of Representatives--

1) calls upon the President to provide for appropriate training and materials to all Foreign Service officers, officials of the United States Department of State, and any other executive branch employee involved in responding to issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide by familiarizing them with the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide and the consequences of the failure to enforce the judgments of the Turkish courts against the responsible officials; and

2) calls upon the President in the President's annual message commemorating the Armenian Genocide issued on or about April 24 to characterize the systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians as genocide and to recall the proud history of United States intervention in opposition to the Armenian Genocide.
http://www.anca.org/action_alerts/action_docs.php?docsid=15
JPTF 2007/10/11

Prgrama especial da BBC sobre os massacres e deportações dos arménios em 1915-1917, sob o Império Otomano

Mapa dos massacres e deportações dos arménios em 1915-1917, sob o Império Otomano

"Ancara indignada após un voto do Congresso americano sobre o genocídio arménio" in Le Monde, 11 de Outubro de 2007

La commission des affaires étrangères de la Chambre des représentants états-unienne a approuvé, mercredi 10 octobre, par vingt-sept voix contre vingt et une, une résolution qualifiant de "génocide" les massacres d'Arméniens par les Turcs en 1915. La résolution va désormais être présentée devant la Chambre des représentants en séance plénière, où, selon les dirigeants démocrates, un vote aura lieu d'ici à la mi-novembre. Une résolution similaire, et purement symbolique, circule au Sénat. La Maison Blanche avait averti, avant le vote, qu'une telle résolution ferait un "grand tort" aux relations avec la Turquie, important allié de Washington au sein de l'OTAN. Ankara rejette la position arménienne, soutenue par de nombreux historiens occidentaux, selon lesquels 1,5 million d'Arméniens ont été massacrés durant la première guerre mondiale.

Dès que le résultat du scrutin a été connu, le gouvernement américain a exhorté son allié turc à ne pas exercer de représailles. Le sous-secrétaire d'Etat Nicholas Burns a déclaré que l'administration Bush était "très déçue" par ce vote, qui survient à un moment délicat dans les relations turco-américaines.
"INACCEPTABLE"
Ankara a néanmoins confirmé que son gouvernement envisageait de solliciter l'autorisation du Parlement d'effectuer une incursion militaire dans le nord de l'Irak pour y attaquer des bases de la rébellion séparatiste kurde. Washington s'y oppose par crainte de voir la région – à dominante kurde – déstabilisée.

Le président turc, Abdullah Gül, a jugé le texte "inacceptable" et accusé des hommes politiques à Washington d'avoir sacrifié de graves problèmes à "leurs petites manœuvres".

"Nous espérons beaucoup que cette déception se limitera à des déclarations et ne comprendra rien de concret qui altérerait la très bonne manière que nous avons de travailler avec la Turquie depuis des années", a déclaré Nicholas Burns. "Nous devons continuer à pouvoir travailler ensemble de manière efficace", a insisté le sous-secrétaire d'Etat.

Huit anciens secrétaires d'Etat avaient écrit à la présidente de la Chambre des représentants, la démocrate Nancy Pelosi, favorable à la résolution, pour s'opposer au texte en brandissant un risque de mise en danger de la sécurité nationale américaine.

La Turquie, qui fait partie de l'OTAN, est un précieux allié des Américains. Le gros des troupes américaines en Irak transite par la base aérienne d'Incirlik. Nicholas Burns a indiqué que la secrétaire d'Etat Condoleezza Rice prévoyait de téléphoner, jeudi, à son homologue turc. "Nous insisterons manifestement auprès des dirigeants turcs sur notre profonde déception et le fait que nous nous sommes opposés à cette résolution et que l'administration a travaillé très dur pour aboutir à un autre vote", a-t-il dit.

Avant le vote, le président George Bush avait déclaré à des journalistes que cette résolution n'était pas "la bonne réponse à ces tueries massives et historiques". Selon Burns, le gouvernement américain estime qu'il y a de meilleurs moyens de traiter une question aussi délicate et relève que la Turquie a offert d'ouvrir les archives de l'Empire ottoman, ainsi que de former des commissions conjointes d'historiens avec le gouvernement arménien. "Nous sommes convaincus que c'est une manière meilleure et plus productive d'avancer", a-t-il dit.
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3222,36-965530@51-963706,0.html
JPTF 2007/10/11

"Congresso americano reconhece Genocídio Arménio, rejeitando pedido de George Bush" in Guardian, 11 de Outubro de 2007

Congress today rejected a plea by the White House over a resolution officially recognising as genocide the forced deportation and massacre of Armenians in the last days of the Ottoman empire.
President George Bush warned of the negative repercussions should Congress use the word genocide to describe the persecution that killed an estimated 1.5 million Armenians and forced many into exile.

"This resolution is not the right response to these historic mass killings, and its passage would do great harm to our relations with a key ally in Nato and in the global war on terror," Mr Bush said.

But the House foreign affairs committee, only hours later, voted by 27 to 21 in favour of the resolution. The measure now goes to the full House for a vote.
The secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, had warned the resolution could set back Middle East peace prospects.

Its passage could also put US soldiers at risk in Iraq, the secretary of defence, Robert Gates, said, warning that America risked losing access to important supply routes. About 70% of air cargo for Iraq goes through Turkey.

However, the measure has strong support in the Democratic-controlled House, where more than half of members have signed on as co-sponsors, including the speaker, Nancy Pelosi. About half of the Senate has co-sponsored the measure.

The resolution calls on the president to use the word genocide during the commemoration of the killings each April.

Turkey has spent millions on lobbying to dissuade western governments from labelling the events of 1915-1917 a genocide.

The Turkish military cancelled defence contracts with France last year when its national assembly voted to make denial of the Armenian genocide a crime.

While Turkey does not deny that many Armenians were killed, it claims the deaths were the result of widespread fighting.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2188109,00.html
JPTF 2007/10/11

"Comité da Câmara dos Representantes dos EUA aprova resolução sobre o Genocídio Arménio" in CNN, 11 de Outubro de 2007

A House committee Wednesday evening narrowly approved a resolution that labels the killings of Armenians in Turkey during World War I as "genocide." President Bush urges lawmakers not to pass a resolution he says would harm U.S. relations with Turkey. The House Foreign Affairs Committee passed the measure 27-21, even though President Bush and key figures lobbied hard against it. The president, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates said passage of the resolution would hurt relations with an important U.S. ally. Bush urged lawmakers to oppose the resolution, which he said would cause "great harm" to U.S. relations with Turkey, which he called a key ally in NATO and the "global war on terror." "We all deeply regret the tragic suffering of the Armenian people that began in 1915. This resolution is not the right response to those historic mass killings," Bush said at the White House. But House Democratic leaders said earlier if the Foreign Affairs Committee passed the resolution, they intended to bring it to the House floor. The resolution's sponsor, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-California, said the measure already had 226 co-sponsors, more than enough votes to pass "and the most support an Armenian genocide resolution has ever received." Earlier, Rice and Gates made their comments jointly before reporters at the White House. They said Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. military officer in Iraq; U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker; and Adm. William Fallon, head of the U.S. Central Command, raised concerns about the resolution. "We recognize the feelings of those who want to express their concern and their disdain for what happened many years ago," Rice said. "But the passage of this resolution at this time would, indeed, be very problematic for everything that we're trying to do in the Middle East because we are very dependent on a good Turkish strategic ally to help with our efforts." Watch why Rice and Gates oppose the resolution » The nonbinding resolution refers to the "genocide" of Armenians in the early 20th century during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, which preceded the creation of modern Turkey in 1923. "In the case that Armenian allegations are accepted, there will be serious problems in the relations between the two countries," Turkish President Abdullah Gul said in a letter to Bush. Nabi Sensoy, Turkey's ambassador to the United States, told CNN the resolution's passage would be a "very injurious move to the psyche of the Turkish people." He predicted a "backlash" in the country, saying there would be setbacks on several fronts: Turkish-American relations, Turkish-Armenian relations and the normalization of relations between the nations of Turkey and Armenia. Gates said good relations with Turkey are vital because 70 percent of the air cargo intended for U.S. forces in Iraq and 30 percent of the fuel consumed by those forces flies through Turkey. U.S. commanders, Gates said, "believe clearly that access to airfields and roads and so on in Turkey would very much be put at risk if this resolution passes and the Turks react as strongly as we believe they will." "Our heavy dependence on the Turks for access is really the reason the commanders raised this and why we're so concerned about the resolution," Gates said. The resolution calls on the president "to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian genocide, and for other purposes." A similar resolution passed the committee by a 40-7 vote two years ago, but it never reached the full House floor. House Republican leader John Boehner, noting the critical military and strategic alliance with Turkey, said bringing the resolution to the floor would be "totally irresponsible." "Let the historians decide what happened 90 years ago," Boehner said in a written statement. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer met with Turkish officials in Pelosi's office Wednesday morning. Hoyer said he and Pelosi informed the officials that they support the resolution. Hoyer said he told officials that while he considers Turkey a strong ally, "this was about another government at another time." "I believe that our government's position is clear -- that genocide was perpetrated against the Armenian people approximately 90 years ago and during the course of the First World War. And I believe that remembering that, noting that, is important so that we not paper over or allow the Ahmadinejads of the next decade or decades to deny a fact," Hoyer said. Schiff, who represents a southern California district with many Armenian-Americans, refers to "the systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians as genocide." The term genocide is defined in dictionary.com as "the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group." But the description is hotly disputed in Turkey, the predominantly Muslim, but modern and secular, pro-Western ally of the United States. Turks argue that all peoples -- Armenians and Turks -- suffered during the warfare. But Armenians maintain there was an organized genocide by the Ottoman Turkish authorities, and have been campaigning across the world for official recognition of the genocide. The resolution arrives at a particularly sensitive juncture in U.S.-Turkish relations. The United States has urged Turkey not to send its troops over the border into northern Iraq to fight Kurdish separatist rebels, who have launched some cross-border attacks against Turkish targets. Observers of U.S.-Turkish relations have argued the House resolution could make Turkey less inclined to use restraint in dealing with its longstanding problems with the Kurdistan Workers Party. "The United States has a compelling historical and moral reason to recognize the Armenian genocide, which cost a million and a half people their lives," Schiff said. "But we also have a powerful contemporary reason as well. How can we take effective action against the genocide in Darfur if we lack the will to condemn genocide whenever and wherever it
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/10/us.turkey.armenians/index.html
JPTF 2007/10/11

Robert Fisk sobre a Turquia e o Genocído Arménio: “A verdade deve ser proclamada bem alto” in The Independent

Stand by for a quotation to take your breath away. It's from a letter from my Istanbul publishers, who are chickening out of publishing the Turkish-language edition of my book The Great War for Civilisation. The reason, of course, is a chapter entitled "The First Holocaust", which records the genocide of one and a half million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in 1915, a crime against humanity that even Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara tried to hide by initially refusing to invite Armenian survivors to his Holocaust Day in London.
It is, I hasten to add, only one chapter in my book about the Middle East, but the fears of my Turkish friends were being expressed even before the Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was so cruelly murdered outside his Istanbul office in January. And when you read the following, from their message to my London publishers HarperCollins, remember it is written by the citizen of a country that seriously wishes to enter the European Community. Since I do not speak Turkish, I am in no position to criticise the occasional lapses in Mr Osman's otherwise excellent English.
"We would like to denote that the political situation in Turkey concerning several issues such as Armenian and Kurdish Problems, Cyprus issue, European Union etc do not improve, conversely getting worser and worser due to the escalating nationalist upheaval that has reached its apex with the Nobel Prize of Orhan Pamuk and the political disagreements with the EU. Most probably, this political atmosphere will be effective until the coming presidency elections of April 2007... Therefore we would like to undertake the publication quietly, which means there will be no press campaign for Mr Fisk's book. Thus, our request from [for] Mr Fisk is to show his support to us if any trial [is] ... held against his book. We hope that Mr Fisk and HarperCollins can understand our reservations."
Well indeedydoody, I can. Here is a publisher in a country negotiating for EU membership for whom Armenian history, the Kurds, Cyprus (unmentioned in my book) - even Turkey's bid to join the EU, for heaven's sake - is reason enough to try to sneak my book out in silence. When in the history of bookselling, I ask myself, has any publisher tried to avoid publicity for his book? Well, I can give you an example. When Taner Akcam's magnificent A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility was first published in Turkish - it uses Ottoman Turkish state documents and contemporary Turkish statements to prove that the genocide was a terrifying historical fact - the Turkish historian experienced an almost identical reaction. His work was published "quietly" in Turkey - and without a single book review.
Now I'm not entirely unsympathetic with my Turkish publishers. It is one thing for me to rage and roar about their pusillanimity. But I live in Beirut, not in Istanbul. And after Hrant Dink's foul murder, I'm in no position to lecture my colleagues in Turkey to stand up to the racism that killed Dink. While I'm sipping my morning coffee on the Beirut Corniche, Mr Osman could be assaulted in the former capital of the Ottoman empire. But there's a problem nonetheless.
Some months earlier, my Turkish publishers said that their lawyers thought that the notorious Law 301 would be brought against them - it is used to punish writers for being "unTurkish" - in which case they wanted to know if I, as a foreigner (who cannot be charged under 301), would apply to the court to stand trial with them. I wrote that I would be honoured to stand in a Turkish court and talk about the genocide. Now, it seems, my Turkish publishers want to bring my book out like illicit pornography - but still have me standing with them in the dock if right-wing lawyers bring charges under 301!
I understand, as they write in their own letter, that they do not want to have to take political sides in the "nonsensical collision between nationalists and neo-liberals", but I fear that the roots of this problem go deeper than this. The sinister photograph of the Turkish police guards standing proudly next to Dink's alleged murderer after his arrest shows just what we are up against here. Yet still our own Western reporters won't come clean about the Ottoman empire's foul actions in 1915. When, for example, Reuters sent a reporter, Gareth Jones, off to the Turkish city of Trabzon - where Dink's supposed killer lived - he quoted the city's governor as saying that Dink's murder was related to "social problems linked to fast urbanisation". A "strong gun culture and the fiery character of the people" might be to blame.
Ho hum. I wonder why Reuters didn't mention a much more direct and terrible link between Trabzon and the Armenians. For in 1915, the Turkish authorities of the city herded thousands of Armenian women and children on to boats, set off into the Black Sea - the details are contained in an original Ottoman document unearthed by Akcam - "and thrown off to drown". Historians may like to know that the man in charge of these murder boats was called Niyazi Effendi. No doubt he had a "fiery character".
Yet still this denial goes on. The Associated Press this week ran a story from Ankara in which its reporter, Selcan Hacaoglu, repeated the same old mantra about there being a "bitter dispute" between Armenia and Turkey over the 1915 slaughter, in which Turkey "vehemently denies that the killings were genocide". When will the Associated Press wake up and cut this cowardly nonsense from its reports? Would the AP insert in all its references to the equally real and horrific murder of six million European Jews that right-wing Holocaust negationists "vehemently deny" that there was a genocide? No, they would not.
But real history will win. Last October, according to local newspaper reports, villagers of Kuru in eastern Turkey were digging a grave for one of their relatives when they came across a cave containing the skulls and bones of around 40 people - almost certainly the remains of 150 Armenians from the town of Oguz who were murdered in Kuru on 14 June 1915. The local Turkish gendarmerie turned up to examine the cave last year, sealed its entrance and ordered villagers not to speak of what they found. But there are hundreds of other Kurus in Turkey and their bones, too, will return to haunt us all. Publishing books "quietly" will not save us.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2366519.ece
JPTF 2007/04/25

O “lapso de memória” da Turquia: Massacre de 800 mil arménios (1915-17) não foi genocídio in Spiegel online International, 25 de Abril de 2005

por Bernhard Zand

TURKEY'S MEMORY LAPSE
Armenian Genocide Plagues Ankara 90 Years On. This weekend, Armenians commemorated the 90th anniversary of the genocide of 1915. But Turkey has yet to recognize the crime - the first genocide of the 20th century. By refusing to use the word "genocide," Turkey could complicate its efforts to join the European Union. Genocide in Armenia: Many Turks view the perpetrators as their fathers. Typhoid, the Russians, imperialism and Kaiser Wilhelm II in far away Berlin -- all were responsible for the mass deaths of Anatolian Armenians. At least that's the case if you read the official Turkish history books. According to the Turkish version, the only group that didn't bear any responsibility were the Ottomans, the great-grandfathers of modern-day Turkey, which is now on the cusp of joining the European Union. On Sunday, Armenians all around the world remembered the 90th anniversary of the start of the genocide. This year brought the last decennial memorial in which survivors of the crime, one of the worst of the past century, will still be alive to attend. Never before has the international pressure on Turkey as stronger as it is now for Turkey to address its own history. And Ankara's political elites have never been more steadfast in their efforts to defend the myths Turkey has used to explain the crime or to stamp critics as traitors. The assertion that what happened to the Armenians was genocide is "categorically unacceptable," said Yüksel Söylemez, the chairman of a group of former Turkish ambassadors who are seeking to promote the official Turkish version of events abroad. Turkish president Ahmet Necdet Sezer said the accusations are baseless and "upset and hurt the feelings of the Turkish nation." It is wrong, he added, for our European friends to press Turkey on this issue." At least one of the arguments of the modern apologists evokes the same motives of those which led to the order to deport the Armenians: the leaders of the declining Ottomon Empire saw themselves in 1915 as surrounded by enemies on all sides and created a case for the self-defense of the state. It's an argument that is still used by modern Turkish defenders today. Be it the Kurds, the Armenians, Greece, Europe or even the US -- inside, like outside, the country has nothing but opponents, they claim. "From the first day of its existence," Ankara Chamber of Commerce chief Sinan Aygün said, time and time again people have tried to "unsettle and destroy" Turkey [...].
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,353274,00.html
JPTF 2007/02/27