3330) Politically Motivated Misuse of History: An Analysis of Muriel Mirak-Weissbach’s "Reflexions” on the Armenian Issue

25.11.2011
Maxime Gauin
Journal of Turkish Weekly

The German contribution to Turkish studies is considerable, but the contribution of some, let’s repeat, some Germans to the prejudices against the Turks is not less considerable.[1] In addition to the tradition of Protestant fundamentalist, which is vehemently anti-Muslim and even more, if possible, anti-Turkish, there is the temptation to share the horrible recollection of the Shoah with another people. The idea of trivializing the Shoah is by no means new in some segments of German society. One of the best known examples is the attempt of the conservative historian Ernst Nolte to deny any specificity, other than technical, to the suppression of the European Jews. But at least Ernst Nolte is a scholar who, in addition to spurious conclusions, provided interesting contributions to historical knowledge, especially by being among the first scholars who classified the Action française in the right category—fascism, instead of classical reactionary. In the case of the German self-proclaimed experts in the Turkish and Armenian issue, we see only . .

Read Full Post !

3329) Can Turks And Armenians Be Agreed On Genocide Claim?

by Faruk Arslan *

I can not find a clear answer to that question in my mind: Each nation and each community who speaks a different language may establish a state, should they do? In the past, state-building experience poor Kurds and Armenians were the ones whose ideal of an independent state, has to be constantly postponed. Armenians, in 1991, Armenia got this dream with a dead birth.

Kurdistan’s birth is delaying because in the process of pregnancy it had a gestation period that is full of anomalies. Thus, it is inevitable the baby will be born deformed; it will be trouble for its guardian and also his neighbour! Head nurse at the birth of Kurdistan, who had to flee from Iraq, the United States, midwife, the financier, mentors Israel and Germany; the child not crippled but was born dead.

Anyway, let’s leave the Kurds alone with their . . .

Read Full Post !

3328) To Be, Or Not To Be, A Turk

Updated at 15 Dec 2011

November 16, 2011

Muriel Mirak-Weissbach

Reflections on the Inner-Turkish Debate on 1915/1916

Why does Turkey have such difficulty in dealing with its historical past? Why can the Turkish authorities not acknowledge that in 1915 the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire was the victim of genocide? If the German post-war political elite was capable of facing up to the Holocaust and establishing relations with the Jewish people, in Israel and elsewhere, why cannot the Turkish leadership do as much?

The question was raised during a seminar in Potsdam, Germany on November 5, on “The Inner Turkish Discussion of 1915/1916.”

Other issues discussed were the history of Turkish denial and . . .

Read Full Post !

3327) "No Higher Honor" A Memoir Of My Years In Washington by Condoleezza Rice

The powerful Armenian American lobby has for years pressured Congress to pass a resolution branding the Ottoman Empire’s mass killings of Armenians starting in 1915 as genocide. There are many historical interpretations of what happened but it was clearly a brutal, ethnically motivated massacre. Still, the killings did occur in 1915.

My first experience with this problem had come in 1991, when I was working in the White House under George H. W. Bush. It had fallen to me, as acting special assistant for European affairs, to mobilize an effort to defeat the resolution in the House of Representatives. The Turks, who had been essential in the first Gulf War effort, were outraged at the prospect of being branded for an event that had taken place almost a century before —under the Ottomans!

Back then I had succeeded in my assigned task, and in the years that followed every U.S. president and secretary of state had tried to fight off the dreaded Armenian genocide resolution. It was not that anyone denied the awful events or the tragic deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Armenians. But it was a matter for historians—not politicians—to decide how best to label what had occurred. Now, in 2007, in the midst of tensions on the Turkish-Iraqi border and with Ankara’s forces on high alert, the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted in favor of the resolution. I’d begged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to do something to prevent a vote, but she said there was little she could do. Defense Secretary Bob Gates and I delivered a press statement outside the White House, reiterating our opposition and saying that our own commanders in Iraq had raised the prospect of losing critical bases in Turkey. Eight former secretaries of state signed a letter opposing congressional action on the issue. All this occurred over a resolution condemning something that had happened almost a hundred years before.

We managed to convince the Turks that we would do everything possible to prevent a vote in the full House, which we eventually did. But that was just one example of how the tendency of the Congress to grandstand on hot-button issues can severely interfere with the conduct of foreign policy. This case was all the more galling because the democratically elected Armenian government had little interest in the resolution. In fact, it was engaged in an effort to improve relations with Turkey, and it didn’t need it either. The separation of powers didn’t always work to the advantage of U.S. interests. Few countries were willing to believe that the President of the United States couldn’t prevent a vote of that kind if he really wanted to.

. . .

Read Full Post !