2408) Lesson of the Boston Massacre to Armenian Genocidists

If you attended school in the United States, and took social studies, what do you remember about the "Boston Massacre"?

It's not like the Boston Massacre, all the way back from the late 18th century, is a driving event in many Americans' minds. It's not like we are going to go out of our way to discover the real ins and outs of the Boston Massacre.

I'll tell you my overall impression of the Boston Massacre, based on what I was taught, which I guess would be the similar impression of fellow Americans. . .

The British soldiers were in Boston, the Bostonians did not like them, insults and perhaps a few stones were hurled, and the British soldiers cruelly shot into the crowd and murdered unarmed Americans.

Monsters!

My impression of the Boston Massacre was fortified through images as the one above.
Clearly, the aggressors were the British soldiers, and there was no justification for the cold-blooded murder they committed. (Yet this particular depiction was among the fairer ones, as we can see a few Americans attacking. Take a look below.)


We don't really need to go much farther than what this historical event has been called: "The Boston Massacre." A massacre involves the murder of a large group of innocent, unarmed people.

(Only four Americans were killed, by the way, which many would say barely qualifies as what we'd normally think of as a real massacre. However, the Boston Massacre would at least qualify as a "genocide," according to certain "genocide scholars.")

Naturally, this event was used to inflame the passions of Americans of all the colonies, in order to awaken and to fight against the unfair and murderous British.

Paul Giametti stars as John Adams

There is currently an HBO television mini-series entitled John Adams, which seems to have been produced with care and integrity (in other words, the historical facts as regards the Boston Massacre seem legitimate; but if not, I would be perfectly willing to "revise" my opinion once more trustworthy facts come along. The film is based on the book, John Adams, by the historian David McCullough, who appears to have done an excellent job with his research), and I learned the British soldiers were taken to trial over this incident.

Taken to trial in an American, and not a British, court, yet.

Now that certainly did not jibe with my impression of the Boston Massacre. The British were the cruel occupiers and the aggressors. Taking to court their own agents of aggression sounded ridiculous. And allowing them to be tried in a courtroom of their victims, the people they were oppressing, sounded unfathomable.

I suddenly realized that there might be more to this historical event than what I was taught, or the way in which I took whatever facts I was taught and formed my own conclusion. (After all, I am an American, and at least sub-consciously, I was going to choose sides.)

Soon I learned that the British were defended by John Adams, who would later become a United States President.

John Adams' loyalty to the United States cannot be disputed; I didn't need this film to tell me that. He was one of the great founding fathers of the United States. Yet here are the British soldiers, whose presence repulses him as the good American patriot he is, but because he is known as a man of integrity, the accused British seek him out to be their attorney.

Now there is a man who puts his personal honor before his "patriotism," and a man I can admire. A man who can serve as a role model to the Armenians obsessed by genocide, but of course he won't — because these Armenians sadly have trouble clearing their hearts and minds to the extent of considering the concept of personal honor.

The trial begins, and it turns out the rabble provoked the British. A witness (an African-American who nobly put the truth above political necessity, much to the consternation of the other Americans around him, as depicted) admits that it was the Americans who gave the order to "fire," which, in the confusion, the British obeyed.

A most profound parallel to the Hunchaks and Dashnaks of the Ottoman Empire who committed violence and massacres against the Muslims, in order to anger the Muslims to do the same against the Armenians, so as to invite the European imperialists whom these terrorists were dumbly counting on to give the Armenians free hand-outs. In other words, these immoral fanatics deliberately sought for their own brethren to become "martyred," strictly to reach a political objective. (An example that does not perfectly parallel the actions of the Americans of the Boston Massacre, because at least the Americans who did the provoking were bravely in line to get shot. The cowardly Hunchak and Dashnak leaders would rarely be near the scenes of the innocent Armenians who got murdered by those the terrorists provoked.)

The British soldiers were acquitted!

That was a shocker, and certainly not in line with my deeply held belief that these British soldiers were callous murderers.

(Not to say there were not callous murderers among the British, as the Revolutionary War progressed. But that goes with any war.)

What we have here are the British evilly using Americans as target practice. But we are not done yet...

What are the lessons here, ladies and gentlemen?

For one thing, patriotism must never supersede the truth.

The "end-justifies-the-means" mentality of the Dashnaks, currently in charge of the Armenian diaspora and the Republic of Armenia, teaches too many Armenians to lie, as long as Hai Tahd, or the Armenian Cause, is upheld. The tradition and the ideology of the Dashnaks are rooted in terrorism, and as the missionary Cyrus Hamlin instructed way back in 1893 (once he was appalled at the revelations of a Hunchak), "Falsehood is, of course, justifiable where murder and arson are."

(Of course, there are too many Armenians who are not consciously lying, so brainwashed have they become through their parents, teachers and churches, that they simply go into a trance over their religious "genocide," and don't have the ability to separate fact from fiction. The problem is, they don't care to separate fact from fiction.)

The genocide has become a great stain to the honor of the Armenian people, and it will be a long while before the Armenians can rescue themselves. Practically no honorable Armenians are stepping in to remedy the situation.

The movie gives us a clue as to why this may be. At the trial's end, the British officer warns John Adams that he might be in line to get hurt by the crazy American patriots, implying that Adams has proven himself to be a traitor to the American cause. (Imagine... defending the enemy!)

It was the program of the Hunchaks and the Dashnaks to assassinate, or hurt in whatever way possible, the Armenians thought to be loyal to the Ottoman Empire. Soon many loyal Ottoman-Armenians learned that they either must comply, or possibly die.

This program is now being carried out not by a few hundred revolutionaries, but through the millions of Armenians worldwide. (That is, those who have become genocide-crazed. Of course, the majority of Armenians, whose humanity and dignity are well intact, prefer to keep mum — because of the Armenian "Curtain of Fear." Some among the "Silent Majority" who know the truth also keep quiet out of "patriotism," which would not make them very honorable.) These diasporans (the real extremists among them who have learned the treasured bombs and bullets of old can now be counter-productive to the Cause) are waiting to sling mud at, or otherwise hurt, anyone who says their precious genocide does not conform to the historical truth. (Here is what happened to the exceptionally rare honorable Armenian who stepped out of line, and bravely decided to make the case public.)

Patriotism has been said to describe one who loves his country, but one who feels it is his duty to speak out against the crimes of his country. That makes perfect sense. For if you keep quiet when your country commits crimes, mindlessly waving the flag of the country, "right or wrong," then the ones who are running the country are encouraged to become even more immoral or criminal (because, as we all know, power corrupts), until there is little left of the country that you first loved.

If you love your country, and you see your country doing something we all know is wrong (for example, if you are a French citizen and you see that your beloved country, historically known for enlightenment and justice, is immorally bowing to political forces and making it a crime to speak your mind as regards to whether an event is not a "genocide," you must speak up to discourage a further descent into Stalinism or Hitlerism), you can't keep quiet. It's as simple as that.

We can see the glorification of Dashnaks is as wrong as wrong can be. These self-serving calculators and/or fanatics were criminals and murderers, responsible for great crimes not only against those designated as the Armenians' enemies, but against the Armenian people themselves. A few Armenians have certainly been truly patriotic enough to criticize them, and to warn their people, such as Arthur Derounian (John Roy Carlson). Kerope S. Papazian wrote a 1934 book warning his people and the world against them, so correctly and appropriately entitled, "Patriotism Perverted."

(While both Derounian and Papazian were far truer patriots than the Dashnaks, their emotions took sway as well, for believing the Ottoman Turks had conducted an extermination policy against the Armenians. It appears they considered this belief a form of "patriotism" as well, which also accompanied a hatred of Turks, at least in the case of Papazian. A patriotism based on hatred serves oneself, and not the country, and it is a form of "Perverted Patriotism" in its own right — as one refreshingly honorable Armenian has beautifully implied.)

This one does not pull any punches. The British are clearly shown as the aggressors, and the crowd is depicted as lambs for the slaughter. The engraving is identified as "THE BLOODY MASSACRE," and it was created by the great American patriot, Paul Revere! (It's hard to make out the words in Ye Olde English — a larger view is available at Mr. Lauger's Website, from where the above was snatched — but the poem below begins with "Unhappy Boston!" and the British troops are described as "fierce barbarians"... makes one think Paul Revere would have been much at home in a future Dashnak propaganda bureau.) Is there much difference between what is above and the shot below? (At least the go-for-the-gut words from above do not claim "The carnage ended in the massacre of 50,000 people or more.")

(TAT's Sassun page tells us what really happened.)

It may be said Armenians have at least some excuse, since this genocide belief has been ingrained into them from childhood, famously by their grandmothers, and their emotions and often their hatred of Turks override their ability to think straight (as far as this topic. Otherwise, Armenians are, as we all know, highly intelligent and gifted).

But what about the "neutral" people, the rest of the world whom the extremist Armenians are devoted to buy into the genocide viewpoint, and to share their hatred? What about all the intellectuals, the academicians, the journalists, and all else who unquestioningly accept this vile charge of the worst crime against humanity? (A charge, particularly a charge of this dimension, becomes vile when unfounded.)

As with the Boston Massacre, the "neutral" people think they already know the facts about this genocide they have been hoodwinked to accept, much as they haven't conducted any impartial investigation. (And, really, why should people take the time out of their busy lives to investigate a topic they have no emotional investment in? What layman would want to take the time to study the facts about the Boston Massacre, for example, if there is no real reason to?) It's just another historical episode out of countless others, so irrelevant to our current lives, and who cares? If everyone says it's a genocide, then so many people can't be wrong... can they?

(Of course, those many people we think are correct also have not taken the trouble to investigate, so it is a case of the blind leading the blind.)

There is a big difference, however, in the case of accepting a "massacre" crime casually, and when a supposed intellectual simply accepts the charge and then repeats it in his or her writings. Why don't these supposed intellectuals do their duty and look into the matter? They certainly would hate it if people accused them of a crime without foundation. (In which case, the intellectuals would turn into instant "deniers.")

These people operate along the same lines as a New England clergyman that E. Alexander Powell, the American journalist and author, quoted in his 1923 book, "The Struggle for Power in Moslem Asia," p. 10 (as reported in The Armenian File, Gurun, 1985):

"I don't want to hear the truth about the Turks, I have developed my opinion about them a long time ago."

In other words, ladies and gentlemen, it is simply prejudice. (There are many "Christian conservatives," for example, who dislike the Turks because of the religious factor.)

The other reason, of course, is politics. There are many "liberals" (who are supposed to be fair and tolerant) simply accepting genocide conclusions, because (other than their own prejudices against a people so widely maligned) they feel not to do so would be immoral — after all, genocide is the worst crime against humanity, and if so many others have accepted a genocide conclusion without similarly studying the issues, it's good enough. The reality is, repeating such a charge without objective investigation and verification is far more immoral.

As Kamuran Gurun nicely summed up, "The reason why things have come to this point is that Turks have remained silent, and that false propaganda spread by their opponents, with the addition of religious factors and political considerations, became established in people's minds." (That was back in the early 1980s. Today, with the unchallenged power of both unscrupulous Armenians and the unscrupulous genocide industry, the situation has become much worse, as difficult as that may be to believe — since the situation was already pretty awful in the 1970s and '80s.)

This "human factor" goes well beyond the Armenian matter, affecting far more important issues so relevant to our lives, and with such important consequences, than an invented genocide that took place nearly a century ago. The truth really is not as important to too many people, as too many people would be the first to disagree. People are far more comfortable with legends. The truth takes too much work, and can involve too much pain. (Having one's deep-seated beliefs challenged, for example, is never easy.)

Yet this is not an excuse. Especially for those whose job and duty it is to find and report the truth. Yes, we know we can't rely on journalists anymore, much as it is the journalist's duty to find and report the truth. When we can't rely on historians, however, then there is reason for our hearts to really sink. Only the professional and objective historian can undo the evils caused by the extremist Armenians and the genocide industry, but too many historians have amateurishly accepted what these groups have told the historians, at face value.

If these historians, along with the other "neutral" intellectuals, academicians, and journalists were to stumble upon the "new" facts about the Boston Massacre, assuming they previously felt the British were guilty of cold-blooded murder (as I did, and as I assume many other fellow ignorant Americans have), do you think they would "revise" their views and report the facts honestly? Or would they take out their Stars and Stripes and start screaming, USA! USA!, and still go along with their comfortable anti-British feelings? The odds are, of course, they would have no trouble with the necessary "revisionism."

The really frustrating thing is, however, that these same historians, along with the other "neutral" intellectuals, academicians, and journalists, can be shown the real facts regarding the Armenian tragedy, and they would still insist on screaming, Genocide! Genocide!

What is going on here? Are the "intellectuals" truly so dishonest? Or bigoted? Or stupid? How can that be? It boggles the mind.

One of the first Western historians to look at what truly occurred between the Turks and Armenians, William Langer, wrote (in The Diplomacy of Imperialism):

"...it is the duty of the historian to look at the facts from all possible angles, and to avoid being carried away by the tidal wave of uncritical emotionalism."

(That does not apply only to historians, naturally, but to all honorable people. But the historian has a professional duty to operate in such a manner.)

Of course, a lot of honest historians have been frightened away by the ruthless smear campaigns of extremist Armenians and other genocidists. If more honest historians find the courage to return and to do their duty, the truth will ultimately and indeed set us all free.

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© Holdwater
The source site of this article gets revised often, as better information comes along. For the most up-to-date version, links and the related photos, the reader may consider reviewing the direct link as follows:
www.tallarmeniantale.com/boston-massacre.htm

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Please Click On Image To Enlarge

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2407) Stanford Shaw on How Turks Retained Their Country

Thanks to Cevdet.

THE REPUBLIC OF TURKEY: THE EARNED REPUBLIC by Stanford J. Shaw

Lecture given at Koc University, Istanbul, on 4 November 1998 as part of the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the foundation of the Turkish Republic.

During the tumultuous years that followed immediately after World War I, many independent states were . . established in Europe and the Middle East. Almost all of these were set up by decree of the Great Powers of Europe and America during and after the Paris Peace Conference. They were gifts by the Powers to the different peoples involved. These gifts, however, had many strings attached. The most important of these was the insistence of the Powers that many of the supposedly independent states that they set up be subjected to their control through a system of Mandates or other supervisory systems. These were justified on the grounds that the newly independent states lacked the ability and experience to govern themselves and that they needed to be trained and educated by what the Powers considered to be their own superior ability and experience before they could finally achieve full independence in the very indefinite future. These mandates were in fact disguised efforts by the Powers to continue or establish colonial control over the states who were being promised their full independence. The results of this arrangement were variable. Most of the supposedly independent states continued under the control of the one Power or another until the end of World War II, and even after they emerged with full independence following the war, they continued to suffer from grave internal difficulties which made the achievements of independence seem illustory indeed.

There was only one state that was not given its independence by the Powers after World War I. That state was Turkey. The Powers of Europe, and in particular their most powerful member, Great Britain, in fact decided that the Turks lacked the ability to ever govern themselves and that most of the territory in which Turks formed the majority of the population should in fact be turned over to the other peoples so that the Turks would remain a subjected minority in areas where they in fact constituted sizeable majorities. Even in the small section of central Anatolia which, according to the Treaty of Sevres, was to remain under a presumably independent Turkish state, that state was to be subjected to such control by the Powers that for all practical purpose it would have been no more than another colony in the colonial empires of England and France.

That this arrangement was not carried out was due, not to any revision of policy by the Powers but rather to the will of the Turkish people who, alone among the subject peoples who emerged from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, fought for an d gained their own independence, an independence which was real because it had been secured by their own effort, not by the grant of the Powers. The Turkish Republic was the only Successor State of the Ottoman Empire, which was formed despite the contrary will of the Powers. The Turkish Republic was the only successor state of the Ottoman Empire that was an earned Republic, a state achieved through he will and action of its people in what amounted tot he first War of National Liberation in the twentieth century. The Turkish War of National Liberation set the pattern which would be followed throughout the later years of the century by many people whom the so-called Great Western Powers sought to subject and control.

How was this accomplished? And how in the factors of success did the Turkish people point the way for their future and the future of the Republic that they had created? Let us look at a number of factors.

1.A Very important factor of success was disunity among the Allied Powers that occupied Istanbul and other remnants of the Ottoman Empire following World War I. Great Britain had supplied most of the men and supplies in the occupation, and its commanders therefore dominated the occupation, placing the other Allied commanders in what amounted to subordinate positions, and arranging the occupation in such a way that British economic and political objectives would be achieved at the expense of those its Allies.

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George supported the establishment of a greater Greece, including Izmir, much of Southwester Anatolia and even Istanbul because of the feeling that Greece could be controlled by Britain and it therefore would serve to preserve British domination of the entire East Mediterranean area even after the formal occupation came to an end. But these promises violated similar promises made to Italy in secret agreements signed during the war which turned Izmir and much of southern Anatolia over to Italy as part of its ambition to establish its own Italian empire in the Eastern Mediterranean. Italy therefore initially vetoed the British efforts to turn these territories over to Greece. When Italy boycotted the Peace Conference for a time due to Allied decisions to turn Trieste and much of the Adriatic coast over to the new Yugoslav state they had created, the Allies took advantage of the Italian absence to authorize the Greek invasion of Anatolia in order to enable it to seize these areas by force and thus deny them to Italy. Italy was allowed to occupy the south Anatolian coast, including Antalya and Adalya, but in response to the loss of Izmir to Greece, it began helping the Turkish War for National Liberation. It turned over its won weapons to the Turkish national army which Ismet Inn was forming near Ankara; it allowed Turkish agents to got to Italy and use Italy as a base to buy airplanes and other weapons, to ship them in Italian boats to Antalya, and to transport them through the Italian zone of occupation to the newly formed Turkish national army. It also received in its zone of occupation thousands of Turkish refugees from both the Greek invasion and the French occupation of Southeastern Anatolia, giving them food, housing and medical assistance and then sending them back to join the growing Turkish resistance.

France also began to quarrel with Britain over the results of the occupation. The French commanders in Istanbul increasingly resented British domination and began to turn information regarding British and Greek military movements over to Turkish nationalist agents. In the east, while France initially sought to secure its own colonial ambitions by occupying Cukurova as well as Syria, it resented the fact that Britain had forced it to give up the rich oil fields of Musul and Kerkuk which had been promised to it during the war. France also was embarrassed by the behavior of the Armenian Legion that it brought with to occupy Cukurova. The Legion began massacring large numbers of Turks throughout the area. France therefore deserted the Alliance by signing the separate peace treaty of Ankara with the Turkish nationalist government. Even more important, as it evacuated Cukurova, it turned almost all its cannons, weapons and ammunition over to the Turkish nationalists, who quickly shipped them across Anatolia to the growing Turkish national army.

Then there was Russia, which at the time was embroiled in a civil war fought between the Bolsheviks led by Lenin and Stalin and the so-called White forces, which sought to restore the Czarist of the past. The Bolsheviks had renounced its claim to the territories of Istanbul and Eastern Anatolia, which had been promised, to Russia by the wartime agreements among the Allies, but they still maintained a long-range objective of gaining control, not only of Istanbul but also much of Turkey, by turning the Turkish national movement into a Communist revolution. They wanted to transform the new Turkish State into a Communist satellite and make it the spearhead for spreading communism among all the peoples of the East who had been or were being colonized by the colonial powers as part of the peace settlement. They also had a short range objective of stopping the flow of arms and men which the British and the Greeks were sending through Istanbul and the Black Sea to support the White armies in their struggles against the Bolsheviks. I might point out in this respect that the British arms were accompanied by large numbers of Greek soldiers sent to show Greek support for its Orthodox cousin Russia, and that these were used by the White army to massacre thousands of Jews as well as Russian Christians who supported the Bolsheviks in Southern Russia. Thousands of people were killed, and thousands more were forced to flee across the Black Sea to Turkey, including in the end the commanders and last remnants of the White armies. In any case, both to stop the flow of western arms to the Whites, and to communize the new Turkish national movement, the Bolsheviks sent large quantities of arms to the Turkish national army. The newly established Armenian Republic refused to allow these arms to pass through its territory by land, so for the most part they were sent through the Black Sea, mainly to Trabzon, from which they were sent overland to the Turkish national army.

Of course, Mustafa Kemal and the Turkish nationalists were happy to accept weapons and money whoever was willing to give them, but they had absolutely no intention of allowing the Bolsheviks to communize the Turkish Revolution. And the Bolsheviks themselves, when they saw that their efforts to establish a Turkish Communist Party were being suppressed, decided that it was more important to them to end the British occupation of Istanbul and the British use of Istanbul to supply the Whites than it was to communize Turkey, so they continued to send arms and money even after the Turkish Communists were suppressed in Turkey.

2.A second factor of success was the nature of the Allied occupation itself. While initially the British allowed what was left of the Ottoman government to continue its operations in Istanbul, the fact that many members of that government secretly helped the Turkish national resistance in Anatolia, and that the newly elected Ottoman parliament supported and confirmed the Turkish National Pact, led the British to take over the Ottoman government and imprison many of its leaders. This harsh occupation caused many of those who had initially supported the occupation, as well as those who had secretly helped the nationalists, to flee to Anatolia where they joined the Turkish national movement. British discrimination against Turks in the occupation areas added to Turkish resentment and disabused most Turks of the idea that many of them held that the Allies had come to help them. Even more, however, it was the utter brutality of the Greek occupation of Southwestern Anatolia and of the French occupation of the Southeast, which contributed in major way to determination of most Turks to resist the entire occupation. When the Greek army landed in Izmir, and as it advanced through Anatolia toward Ankara, it slaughtered thousands of Turkish Muslims and Jews with the major assistance of the Greek peasants and urban dwellers who lived in the area and thought the time had come to openly express their hatred of Islam and Judaism which they had concealed for centuries. I might add that later on as the Turkish national movement drove the Greeks out of Anatolia, they burned most of the towns and cities that lay in their path, including the great port of Izmir, in the process establishing the pattern which is followed today by the Serbs as they slaughter and burn Muslim areas in Bosnia and Kosovo, and then blame the slaughtered people for their own destruction.

At the same time in the Southeast, while the French themselves wanted to show the Turks the benefits of French rule, there were very few Frenchmen in the French occupying army. France had just emerged from the devastation of World War I. Thousands of French soldiers had been killed. The country itself had been the scene of most of the devastating battles of the war, so that it lay in ruins. They occupying army therefore consisted mainly of colonial troops from Black Africa assisted by what was known as the Armenian Legion, composed of young Armenians brought from Egypt as well as Europe and America, and committed to a campaign of vengeance against Turks and other Muslims. So while the French tried to establish order and security in the towns of Cukurova, the African troops and even more members of the Armenian Legion spread out in the countryside, ravaging, raiding and killing to the point where the French commanders themselves were outraged. After trying to bring the Legion under control, they finally dissolved it and at least tried to send its members away in an effort to end the carnage, which was being carried out in the name of France. Bu the memory of what had happened stirred most Turks to resist, not just the French occupation, but the entire occupation throughout Turkey.

3.A third factor of success lay in Greece. Just as the Greek War for Independence from the Ottoman Empire in the early years of the nineteenth century could not have been achieved without the help of the British navy, so also the Greek army that invaded Anatolia could not have advanced so rapidly after World War I had it not been for major military assistance given it by Great Britain. But back in Greece these very successes emboldened the Greek people to throw out Prime Minister Venizelos and his government, which had been installed by a British invasion of Greece in 1917 and to bring back Greek King Constantine, who had been dethroned by the British because of his determination to keep Greece neutral or have it join Germany during the war. The restoration of King Constantine in Greece came just in time when the famous British historian, Arnold Toynbee, went to Anatolia as a reporter for the Manchester Guardian and began to publish accounts of the barbarous conduct of the Greek army as it advanced in Southwestern Anatolia. This caused the British people to awaken to the fact that Greek barbarism was being carried out with the material as well as moral support of Great Britain, and when combined with their revulsion against the restoration of the pro-German King Constantine, led Britain to end its support of the Greek invasion of Anatolia. This involved not merely the cessation of assistance with money and arms, but also prohibitions against Greece sending supplies to its Anatolian expeditionary force from the Sea of Marmara, leaving it to send supplies only from its occupation base at Izmir, in caravans and trains shipments which were easily attacked and destroyed by the Turkish cavalry.

4.A fourth factor in Turkish success was the ever present racial and religious prejudice against Muslims in general and Turks in particular by the Christian nations and people in the West. This, of course, had existed ever since the time of the Prophet, and particularly since the time of the Crusades, and I am sorry to say it continues to exist right to this present day. However, much fundamentalists Christians dislike Jews for not accepting Christ as their Savior, they dislike and disdain Muslims even more for following what they consider to be a false religion. Added to this is discrimination against Turks, who for most Christians have been the principal symbol of Islam, again right to the present day. It was as a result of this prejudice that Europe built up the myth of "the terrible Turk" and readily accepted all the myths of massacre and persecution spread by non Muslim immigrants from the Ottoman Empire, completely ignoring the massacre as inflicted on Muslims by the Russian expansion into Central Asia and the newly-independent Christian states of Southeastern Europe, starting with Greek Revolution in the early 19th century which massacred thousands of Muslims and Jews in the process of creating a homogeneous Greek and Christian state. Insofar as this prejudice effected Turkey following World War I, it led the victorious Allies to two fateful policies. First of all, as we mentioned already, the Allies concluded that the Turks as Muslims lacked the ability to ever rule themselves, and that therefore not only non Turkish parts of the Ottoman Empire but also areas where the Turks lived as sizeable majorities had to be placed under the control, either of the Powers themselves, or under the non Muslim peoples who were promised their own independent states regardless of the makeup of the people in the territories which were being given to them. The second result of the racial and religious prejudice of Christian Europe was t think that they could impose such draconian arrangement on the Turks with a relatively small expeditionary force which at its peak numbered no more than 50,000 men, aside from the approximately 100,000 men which were to be provided by Greece for the occupation of western Anatolia and its annexation to Greece. Insofar as the Allies were concerned, not only were the Turks incapable of ruling themselves, but they also were incapable of defending themselves, and would be forced to accept whatever the Allies dictated as their fate. Of course, the Allies were entirely disabused of this idea by what followed.

All of these factor of success could not have automatically brought success to the Turkish War of National Liberation had it not been for the ability of the Turkish people to take advantage of them to neutralize and/or drive out the occupying powers. How were the Turks able to accomplish this? 1.First and foremost, there was the reaction of the Turkish people to the harshness of the Allied occupation. Throughout the 19th century, those Turks who supported Ottoman reform looked to the democratic nations of America and Western Europe as the model of the rejuvenated Empire they hoped would emerge. They thought that these states would selflessly give them assistance they needed to create a new and modern Turkish state on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. They thought that point 12 of Woodrow Wilson's 14 points announced in January 1918, which stated that all the subjected people of the Ottoman Empire, like others, were entitled to their own independence, would apply to the Turks as well as to the other people who had been subjected by the Ottomans. However, the brutality of the occupation along with the realization by most Turks as a result that the Allies had come to Turkey to subject the Turks, not to liberate and modernize them, caused most Turks to unite in the Turkish War of National Liberation. The national movement thus united Turks who were parts of a wide political religious spectrum. There were supporters of the Ottoman Sultans, advocates of a Republic, secularists, religious leaders, who subordinated their personal desires to the common objective of defending the Turkish people and enabling them to defeat the effort to subject them to foreign rule. Without this unity, the Turks could never have taken advantage of the factors of success.

2.The second factor that enabled the Turkish people to take advantage of the factors of success was the unity of the leadership achieved among leaders and followers alike, the willingness of the various Turkish political, religious, and military leaders to work together for the good of the nation as a whole, and the willingness of the Turkish people do whatever was necessary to support their efforts, whether by joining the national army or by providing it with food, supplies and weapons. There were many leaders who lead successful resistance movements in various parts of Thrace and Anatolia early in the war of National Liberation, to name but a very few Kazim Karabekir and Fevzi Cakmak in addition to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and Ismet Inönü. There were all the leaders of the different local resistance groups that arose throughout Thrace and Anatolia in reaction to the occupation, groups that were later given unified names, the National Forces, even though they were anything but unified at the time. Each of them had his own ambitions and policies. But the very reality of the Allied occupation made it essential for them to work together. That they did so was due to the political genius of Mustafa Ataturk. Mustafa Kemal's greatest contribution tot he Turkish War of National Liberation lay in his ability to use the dangers that the Turks faced to bring all the leaders together, to get them to postpone their individual ambitions and political and religious goals, and to get them to work together for the common cause. How difficult a task this was and how brilliant Mustafa Kemal's success in getting all these divergent individuals and groups to unite under his leadership is shown by the disunity that emerged among the same leaders as soon as the war was won and the Turkish Republic was established, and I might add by the political disunity which has seriously damaged Turkey's position in the world in recent years.

3.A third factor which enabled the Turkish people to win out over those who wanted to oppress them was willingness to abandon the past, to lay into the dust of history the Ottoman Empire which had shone so brilliantly well into the nineteenth century but which had been condemned to dissolution of the rise of nationalism and democratic liberalism since the time of the French Revolution and the industrial progress of Europe. The multinational Ottoman Empire which had done so much to enable peoples of different ethnic origins to live together peacefully over many centuries had become obsolete due to the spread among its Christian subject peoples of the kind of nationalism which dictated not only that they had the right to become independent, but that all those who did not share their ethnic myths and their religion had to be massacred or driven out. The nationalistic policy of ethnic cleansing which has been followed by Serbia in recent years, first in Bosnia and now in Kosovo, was in fact born during the Greek Revolution early in the 19th century, when the Christian peoples living in what has become Greece adopted the ancient Greeks as their ancestors, borrowed ancient Hellenic culture as their own, and then went on to massacre or drive out all those who did not accept their vision, including not only Muslims but also Jews. The same policies of ethnic cleansing were followed by the Bulgars, the Romanians, the Hungarians and the Serbs in their drive to create independent states in subsequent years. The excesses of the Greek invasion of Anatolia in the name of the Paris Peace Conference showed the Turks that is they were to survive and to avoid being subjected to extermination in their own homeland, they would have to give up the ideal of the multi ethnic and multi-religious state which they had maintained for so long in the Ottoman Empire and instead create their own national Turkish state, which could be done only if the last vestiges of the Ottoman Empire were abandoned, along with the Sultanate and the Caliphate. While the multi-ethnic demographic composition of the Ottoman Empire was no longer valid for the new state, the Republic turned its attention to defining being Turkish not in terms of race or ethnicity, but regarding those who were of the land and shared common goals of an independent, progressive, contemporary Republic which would be apart of the family of nations, this creating an inclusive rather than an exclusive identity for Turks.

4.A fourth reason that the Turks were able to use conditions to their advantage was their determination to follow policies which they felt were good for their own nation and to ignore the opinions and desires of the Great Powers. This would seem to be obvious, but it was not at the time. Throughout the Tanzimat reform era of the nineteenth century, many Ottoman leaders looked to Europe as the model for the reforms they wanted to follow. They considered Europe to be more advanced, and they sought to create an Ottoman Empire in the image of Europe. This was one of the many reasons that the Tanzimat was not entirely successful, since in many areas it failed to adopt European institutions to meet Ottoman customs and traditions. Even after World War I, however, when the European powers were occupying the country, many Ottoman leaders felt that Europe knew best, Europe was more advanced, the desires of the Europeans had to be followed, and that if the Europeans said that Turks were unfit to govern themselves, then so be it, the diktat of the Powers had to be accepted. One of the Powers, either Britain or the United States, had to be accepted as a Mandatory power to make the Turks capable of governing themselves. Had this opinion been accepted, there would have been no Turkish Republic, at least until the end of World War II. It was because Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and his colleagues refused this idea, refused the plan to establish a British or American mandate, and in the process refused to accept the opinions of the westerners regarding Turks that Turks were emboldened to resist, and resist successfully.

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© Holdwater
The source site of this article gets revised often, as better information comes along. For the most up-to-date version, links and the related photos, the reader may consider reviewing the direct link as follows:

www.tallarmeniantale.com/shaw-earnedrepublic.htm

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2406) An Honorable Armenian Speaks of Anti-Turkism

Of the title below, in case you weren't sure, "Patria" means fatherland, or one's native land. Thanks to Armenian Genocide Resource Center.

The article is followed by another article, Diasporan Armenian Organizations.

Patriotism Versus Patria by Vartan Harutiunyan - Hetq.am

Our patriotism is nothing if not anti-Turkism, and the most patriotic Armenian is the most anti-Turkish. In general, for an Armenian, anti-Turkism and patriotism are directly proportional. . .

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2405) Afghan Genocide?

The following article appeared in countercurrents.org.

One must be very careful before reaching genocide conclusions, and to verify whether the facts are correct, because "genocide" has become a politicized weapon in the hands of those with agendas. For example, an aggressor nation can today levy the charge of "genocide" in order to use it as a pretext for an invasion. In addition, it is to the benefit of too many genocide scholars to falsely pin the genocide label, either because of their obsessive dogma, or because genocide has become their bread-and-butter. . .

The facts and claims can easily be manipulated, and the honorable truth-seeker must always retain a healthy skepticism, and to dig beneath the surface, in order to discern the truth. (In short, just because someone "tells" us something does not mean we should stupidly accept it, because emotions and/or dishonesty are running high, particularly regarding the worst crime against humanity.)

We all must be scrupulous, and look very closely, before we conclude that a conflict meets the terms of the 1948 U.N. Genocide Convention. For example, a line from below reads, "Even traditional self-defense — let alone preemptive self-defense, a deceptive name for aggression — cannot be invoked to justify or excuse the crime of genocide.” Is that true? It is absolutely true. Yet the flaw in that statement (applied generally, and not necessarily to the Afghan case) is that dishonest parties who wish others to accept their false genocide conclusion can now say self-defense is no excuse in any event. But we know from the Ottoman example that it would not be true. (The Ottomans were attacked on all sides by superior nations with the intent to practically wipe the Ottoman Empire off the face of the map, a real life-and-death situation. The Armenians of the Ottoman Empire treacherously joined the enemy. The Ottoman government had the right and the duty to defend themselves, as any other nation (this is inarguable, and even the occasional Armenian historian has agreed, in regards to the Ottomans), and temporarily resettled the Armenians, where some things went wrong, out of the control of the bankrupt Sick Man. Resettlement is not genocide, and yet unscrupulous and unthinking parties have made a "genocide" out of it anyway, for reasons of political gain and prejudice.) In other words, first the genocide needs to be determined as an absolute fact, and then we can see whether claims of "self-defense" are phony or not. (For example, as when the Armenians always claim "self-defense," even though the Armenians have almost always fired the first shot.) To put it another way, even if there is justification for self-defense, nothing can justify genocide; but first the genocide must be impartially and honestly established.

The claims below could well be true and certainly sound convincing. Once verified, one other thing becomes clearer, and it boils down to what Noam Chomsky wrote: "U.S. crimes are off the agenda." The hypocritical and dishonest genocide industry has not made an issue of the Afghan case, assuming it qualifies as genocide, along with so many other historical examples where certain nations get a pass, and where certain peoples are not deemed worthy enough to be deemed as genocide victims.

Thanks to Stephen.


Top US Lawyer And UNICEF Data Reveal Afghan Genocide
By Dr Gideon Polya
08 February, 2008
Countercurrents.org

The United States invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 with the ostensible excuse of the Afghan Government’s “protection” of the asserted Al Qaeda culprits of the 9/11 atrocity that killed 3,000 people. In the light of as many as 6.6 million post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Afghanistan as of February 2008 (see below), it is important to consider the major problems with this Bush-ite and neo-Bush-ite version of events as summarized below:

1. The US has a long history of “questionable” excuses for war e.g. the explosion of the Maine (the Spanish-American War), the sinking of the US arms-carrying Lusitania (entry into World War 1), the Pearl Harbor attack with now recognized US foreknowledge (entry into World War 2), North Koreans provoked into invading their own country (the Korean War), the fictitious Gulf of Tonkin incident (the Vietnam War; recently similarly but unsuccessfully attempted in the Persian Gulf as an “excuse” to attack Iran) and the extraordinary 1,000 post-9/11 lies told by Bush Administration figures, most notoriously about non-existent Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (the Iraq War; post-invasion excess deaths now about 1.5-2 million).

2. The US supported and funded Al Qaeda and the Taliban from the late 1970s to the early 1990s associated with its anti-Soviet policies (see William Blum’s “Rogue State”).

3. Oil- and hegemony-related plans for the invasion of Afghanistan were all ready to go before 9/11.

4. No Afghans were involved in the 9/11 attack according to the “official 9/11 story” of the egregiously dishonest Bush Administration.

5. Even the right-wing, neo-Bush-ite Democrat Al Gore in his recent book “The Assault on Reason” (Chapter 6, National Insecurity, pp178-179) condemns the Bush Administration for effective passive complicity in the 9/11 atrocity i.e. they let it happen, just as a fore-warned US Administration permitted the Pearl Harbor attack to happen in 1941: “Their behaviour, in my opinion, was reckless, but the explanation for it lies in hubris, not in some bizarre conspiracy theory …These affirmative and repeated refusals to listen to clear warnings [prior to 9/11] constitute behaviour that goes beyond simple negligence. At a minimum, it represents a reckless disregard for the safety of the American people.”

6. However, further to point #5, the extremely eminent former 7-year President of Italy, law professor, senator for life and long-term Western intelligence intimate Francesco Cossiga recently (November 2007) told one of Italy's top newspapers that (a) the US CIA and Israeli Mossad committed the 9/11 outrage in order to further US and Zionist aims and that (b) major Western intelligence agencies are well aware of this (for details and documentation see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/18569/26/ ).

As of February 2008, analysis of UNICEF data (see UNICEF statistics on Occupied Afghanistan: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/afghanistan_statistics.html ) allows the following estimate of 3.3-6.6 million post-invasion excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that should not have happened) in Occupied Afghanistan:

1. annual under-5 infant deaths 370,000.

2. post-invasion under-5 infant deaths 2.3 million (90% avoidable).

3. post-invasion avoidable under-5 infant deaths 2.1 million.

4. post-invasion non-violent excess deaths 3.2 million (2.3 million /0.7 = 3.3 million; for impoverished, worst case Third world countries the under-5 infant deaths are about 0.7 of total non-violent excess deaths (see A Layperson’s Guide to counting Iraq deaths: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/5872/26/ ).

5. post-invasion violent deaths about 3.3 million (assuming roughly 1 violent death for every non-violent avoidable death i.e. roughly as in US-occupied Occupied Iraq where the ratio of violent deaths to non-violent excess deaths is 0.8-1.2 million to 0.7-0.8 million; see Continued Australian and US Coalition war crimes in Occupied Iraq: http://ruddaustraliareportcard.blogspot.com/2008/01/rudd-australia-report-card-1-continued.html ). 6. upper estimate of non-violent plus violent post-invasion excess deaths 3.3 million + 3.3 million = 6.6 million excess deaths.

For detailed documentation of the above see “Australian complicity in continuing Afghan genocide”: http://ruddaustraliareportcard.blogspot.com/ . A major cause of the carnage is revealed by WHO (see: http://www.who.int/en/ ) — the “total annual per capita medical expenditure” permitted by the Occupiers in Occupied Afghanistan is a mere $19 — as compared to as compared to $2,560 (the UK), $3,123 (Australia) and $6,096 (the US). This is in gross contravention of Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (see: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/92.htm ) which unequivocally demands that the Occupier must provide life-sustaining food and medical requisites to its Conquered Subjects “to the fullest extent of the means available to it”. Compounding this is the appalling reality of 4 million Afghan refugees.

What is happening in Afghanistan is an Afghan Holocaust. One sees that post-invasion under-5 infant deaths in Occupied Afghanistan (2.3 million) vastly exceeds the number of Jewish children murdered by the Nazis in World War 2 (1.5 million). The upper estimate of post-invasion violent and non-violent excess deaths in Occupied Afghanistan (6.6 million out of an average 2001-2008 Afghan population of about 25 million) exceeds the number of Jews murdered by the Nazis in World War 2 ( 5.6 million out of 8.2 million Jews in German-occupied Europe in the period 1941-1945) (see: Gilbert, M. (1969), Jewish History Atlas (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London) and Gilbert, M. (1982), Atlas of the Holocaust (Michael Joseph, London)).

Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention (see: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html ) states “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

From the data summarized above, it is apparent that the Afghan Holocaust is also an Afghan Genocide as defined by the UN Genocide Convention.

Outstanding US Law academic Professor Ali Khan of the Washburn University School of Law, Topeka, Kansas has also described what is going on in Afghanistan as genocide i.e. an Afghan Genocide (see “NATO Genocide in Afghanistan”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/19831/42/ ).

The key legal verdict of Professor Khan is as follows: “The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (entered into force, 1951) is binding on all states including the 26 member states of NATO. The Genocide Convention is jus cogens, the law from which no derogation is allowed. It provides no exceptions for any nation or any organization of nations, such as the United Nations or NATO, to commit genocide. Nor does the Convention allow any exceptions to genocide "whether committed in time of peace or in time of war." Even traditional self-defense - let alone preemptive self-defense, a deceptive name for aggression — cannot be invoked to justify or excuse the crime of genocide.”

Professor Khan proceeds to analyse the campaign of extermination of the Indigenous Afghan Taliban in Afghanistan in relation to International law. He states that in relation to Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention “In murdering the Taliban, NATO armed forces systematically practice on a continual basis the crime of genocide that consists of three constituent elements - act, intent to destroy, and religious group.” His detailed analysis can be succinctly summarized as follows:

1. “The Genocidal Act” is prohibited as defined in the Genocide Convention as “a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” — but is is clearly occurring on a huge scale as indicated by the above data.

2. “The Genocidal Intent” is expressed in the Genocide Convention as “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”- but is clearly present in the statements of the NATO leaders. The “Intent” is also apparent from the sustained, resolute conduct of this horrendously bloody war for over 6 years.

3. “The Genocidal targeting of a Religious Group” is clearly prohibited by the Genocide Convention by “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group” — but is clearly being carried out with the accompaniment of immense Islamophobic propaganda in the West.

Professor Khan concludes: “It may, therefore, be safely concluded that NATO combat troops and NATO commanders are engaged in murdering the Taliban, a protected group under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to physically and mentally destroy the group in whole or in part. This is the crime of genocide.”

As an agnostic humanist I certainly don’t care for the Taliban beliefs — but what agnostic humanists (such as myself) or people of other philosophic persuasions think about the religious beliefs and interpretations of the Taliban is beside the point from the perspective of the UN Genocide Convention.

And while I strongly object to human rights violations by the Taliban (especially in relation to women and application of their extreme interpretations of Sharia Law) one has to objectively give credit to the Taliban for (a) bringing Peace through victory in the middle 1990s and (b) for destroying 95% of the Afghan opium production in 2001 (as well of course banning the vastly more deadly use of alcohol and for prohibiting Afghan Government employees from the even more deadly practice of smoking tobacco in 1997). Smoking, alcohol and illicit drugs kill about 7 million people annually, the breakdown being 5 million (tobacco), 1.8 million (alcohol) and 0.2 million (from illicit drugs, about half opiate drug-related).

It can be estimated that 0.6 million people have died world-wide due to opiates in the last 6 years, about 0.5 million of these deaths being due to US Alliance restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from 5% of world market share (2001) to 93% (2007) (see UN Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC, World Drug Report 2007: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/world_drug_report.html ).

The 0.5 million global US-NATO-linked opiate drug-related deaths plus 6.6 million post-invasion Afghan excess deaths bring an upper estimate of the carnage due to the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan to 7.1 million deaths. If we include excess deaths associated with UK-US actions against Iraq in the period 1990-2008 (about 4 million) then the gruesome carnage of the Bush I plus Bush II Asian Wars now totals about 11 million excess deaths (and this ignores the impact of the Bush Wars through oil price rises and other factors on Third World avoidable deaths).

Occupied Afghanistan is the New Auschwitz of the US and its complicit allies (including former Axis countries Germany and Japan who have on US instigation joined the US-NATO Afghan Genocide) (see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/7616/26/ ).

Those Bush-ite and neo-Bush-ite politicians, military and Mainstream media executives complicit in the Afghan Genocide should be arraigned before the International Criminal Court (see: http://ruddaustraliareportcard.blogspot.com/ ).

In his 2005 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech (see: http://www.countercurrents.org/arts-pinter081205.htm ), UK playwright Harold Pinter urged the arraignment of Bush and Blair before the International Criminal Court for war crimes and stated “How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought.”

Eleven million? More than enough, I would have thought.

Dr Gideon Polya published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003). He has just published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/ and http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ).

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© Holdwater

The source site of this article gets revised often, as better information comes along. For the most up-to-date version, links and the related photos, the reader may consider reviewing the direct link as follows:
www.tallarmeniantale.com/Afghan-genocide.htm

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2404) Governmental Service And Social Life Of Armenians In Diyarbakir

Res. Assist. Serkan YAZICI

Sakarya University Faculty of Arts and Sciences Department of History / Sakarya

Within the Ottoman Empire in which various ethnic communities lived in peace and tranquility, the Armenians had the closest relationship with the Muslim citizens. This was observed both in the State service and social life of every city of the Empire. In the case of Diyarbakır, too, the Armenians would be met in every part of city life. . .

Diyarbakır, composed of Turkish-Kurds, Armenians, Caledonians, Greeks, Syrians, and Jews at the turn of the 19th century, had maintained its strategic importance of long standing in the Middle East. Having been the capital of many past powers, the city had been multi-cultural, where, throughout history, different ethnic groups could live in harmony. The Armenians, whose numbers were approximately 10-20% of the total population, have played important roles in the social life and the government of Diyarbakır.

Although the Armenians of Diyarbakır chose the city center as a residential area, we could also see them in the countryside. Evliya Çelebi recorded that, in 1655-56, there were a total of fifty-four quarters in the center of Diyarbakır, forty-seven of them were Muslim and seven of them were non-Muslim1. At the turn of the twentieth century, the administrative division of Diyarbakır, according to the Salname (Yearbook) of 1902, was as follows: 3 sanjaks, 14 districts, 58 sub-districts, and 3117 villages2. In addition, Ali Emiri gave statistics about the numbers of religious groups in the villages of Diyarbakır in 19143. (See Table 1.)

Table 1. The Numbers of Religios Groups in the Villages of Diyarbakır in 1914

Muslim Villages 2.871
Miscellaneous Villages 296
Non-Muslim Villages 183
Total 3.350

THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE ARMENIANS IN DIYARBAKIR

The Armenians in Diyarbakır like in other cities engaged mostly in trade, but it is also possible to see them in various other occupations. Under the Ottoman rule, they performed the occupations that the Muslims could not because of religion, like barkeeping. They were also interested in viniculture, a growing market which provided more income. In addition, the tax farming (Mukataa system) of the sheep market, which was the center of stockbreeding in Diyarbakır, was granted to an Armenian named Ibrahim in 15664. Notwithstanding, there were Armenians in economically inferior occupations, like farming, mining, and portage5.

In general, their commercial activities were based on the occupations that necessitated much capital and provided handsome profits, like goldsmithing and mining works6. Mustafa Akif Tütenk, a contemporary observer, says that Armenians took over most of the trade in Diyarbakır after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78. They also conducted import and export businesses thanks to their knowledge of foreign languages and good relations with European merchants7. Though we do not know the trading volume that the Armenians attained, Diyarbakır’s export of

1 Nejat Göyünç, Diyarbakır Maddesi, DİA, vol. 9, pp. 464-472. (468).
2 1320 Senesi Mahsus Salname-i Devlet-i Âli Osmaniye, 1918, p. 649.
3 Ali Emiri, Osmanlı Vilayeti Şarkiyyesi, İstanbul, 1918, p. 32.
4 Göyünç, op.cit, p. 467.
5 BOA, Y. PRK. AZN. 14/5.
6 BOA, A. MKT. UM. 396/54.
7 Şevket Beysanoğlu, Kültürümüzde Diyarbakır, Ankara, 1992, p. 10.

242,800 and import of 274,100 Ottoman liras in 1900’s could give a clue about their capital accumulations and affluence8.

In general, Armenians were one of the well-educated communities of the Ottoman State. Their connections with education were not just limited to being well-educated. A lot of documents in the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archive record that there were many Armenians serving in educational institutions as school directors and teachers9. These schools were generally set up by Armenians and often carried out the missionary activities of Christian sects, such as Catholicism and Protestantism.

For instance, there was a Catholic missionary school in Diyarbakır and two schools in Mardin in addition to a Protestant missionary school in Diyarbakır10. According to the 1901-1902 statistics of the Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul, Azmi Süslü quoted from Baghdjian that there were four Armenian schools in Diyarbakır11. Another source, in which the same statistic (Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul 1901-1902) was used recorded that there were 803 Armenian schools along with 8 Armenian schools in Palu, a qaza (sub-district) of Diyarbakır12. One of them was an Armenian girls’ school directed by an Armenian, Mrs. Surmeliye (her name is mentioned as Mrs. Ameliya in the newspaper Takvim-i Vekayi) in 191113. The staff of these schools was mainly Armenians, and their students graduated from these schools with knowledge of foreign languages and a familiarity with western culture. Some of the teachers faced criminal proceedings since they sometimes resorted to certain methods of education which would rouse the students into revolutionary activities or they provided banned publications. For example, twenty five teachers of the Cüngüş Armenian School were taken to court for such activities14.

8 Göyünç, op.cit, p. 468.
9 BOA, DH-İD, 30-1/37.
10 Ayten Sezer, Osmanlı Döneminde Misyonerlik Faaliyetleri, Yeni Türkiye Mart-Nisan 2001 (Ermeni Sorunu Özel Sayısı), Ankara 2001, pp. 948-960.
11 Azmi Süslü, Ermeniler ve 1915 Tehcir Olayı, Ankara, 1990, p. 46.
12 Azmi Süslü, Fahrettin Kırzıoğlu, Refet Yinanç, Yusuf Halaçoğlu, Türk Tarihinde Ermeniler, Ankara, 1995, pp. 141-142.
13 BOA, DH-İD, 30-1/37.
14 BOA, Y. PRK. AZN. 20/68. This document includes the names of above-mentioned twenty five teachers.


Moreover, Mesrob Krikorian states that the Armenian participation in public health was notable in the provinces of Diyarbakır, Sivas and Elazig. He adds that the Armenians who received medical education abroad came back to these provinces to work15.

The problems that the Armenians encountered in their daily life were solved through the State courts. The courts concluded lawsuits judiciously without consideration of the plaintiffs or the defendant’s nationality. In one lawsuit, certain people claimed to be the owner of an area pertaining to the Armenian Church; the court confirmed that the area belonged to the church and judged it to be restitutive16. In another instance, Armenians, who were deceived that they would be assisted to go to America, resorted to court, and the criminals were caught and put before the judge17. Another disagreement between the prelates of two Christian sects was construction of windows on the wall of Caledenian Church. Armenians rejected their construction and there appeared a disagreement. Upon hearing this news, the officials of the police and gendarme by meeting with the leaders of two sects closed a deal and finally the construction of windows were not allowed18. We see that justice was revealed in another lawsuit in which both the plaintiffs and defendants were Armenian. In the Ergani mine, one of the mine managers, Ohannes, was faced with criminal proceeding after he victimized some Armenians by giving money to his supporters that had been granted to the mine19.

It is remarkable to see that all the people who were put before the court were not accused of any crime; indeed some of them were found not guilty. For example, it was stated in the a telegram that Hamid beg, the governor of Diyarbakır, that the crimes attributed to Kazazyan Osib and his brother in 1890 did not reflect the reality20.

15 Mesrob Krikorian, Armenians in the Service of the Ottoman Empire 1860-1908, Scotland America, 1977, p. 106.
16 BOA, A. MKT. 545/34.
17 BOA, A. MKT. MHM. 617/37.
18 BOA, A. MKT. MHM. 637/47.
19 BOA. A. MKT. MHM. 396/54.
20 BOA, Y. MTV. 43/19.

In terms of rights and freedoms, the Armenians were free to publish newspapers in Diyarbakır21. There were various newspapers published with State permission and supervision. The demands of the Armenians so as to publish newspapers were met by giving a license following a legal proceeding. For instance, the newspaper named Diyarbakır in Turkish and Armenian was one of such papers.22 In 1909, the demand of Hemeyan Aromyan from Palu to publish an Armenian newspaper named Gühan was accepted.”23

In the social life of Diyarbakır, it was seen that the Armenians did not have any problems about their religious matters, and every sect had their own churches. Ottoman tolerance could be seen in Diyarbakır. Indeed, Nejat Göğünç states that there were people who did not believe in any godly religion24. Moreover, those who wanted to change their sects were also tolerated. There was no problem for the non-Muslims to perform their religious duties. An archival document dating 1851 records that permission was granted an Armenian, Sarkis, who wanted to change his sect and return from Antalya to Diyarbakır25. At the same time, many Armenians in Diyarbakır wanted to convert to Orthodoxy.

Their demands were accepted by the State, providing that they should be enrolled in Rum Milleti Defteri (Greek National Registry Book)26.

From a religious point of view, Diyarbakır with its mosques, churches and synagogues reflected the vibrancy of this period. All the members of the different denominations were able to worship freely. It is known that there were twenty-two churches in the center of Diyarbakır over the years.

Eight of them are still standing; one of them is active today. Fourteen churches collapsed or disappeared; either their community vanished or their functions were transferred to new owners. Six of them belonged to

21 Armenians have published newspapers and publications in Armenian 350 in İstanbul, 38 in İzmir, approximately 70 in almost 20 cities and districts from
1832 to 1970’s. Sezer, op.cit, pp. 63-66.
22 BOA, A. MKT. MHM. 435/39.
23 BOA, ZB. 330/76.
24 Göyünç, Osmanlı İdaresinde Ermeniler, İstanbul, p. 26.
25 BOA, HR. MKT. 44/75.
26 Davut Kılıç, Osmanlı İdaresinde Ermeniler Arasındaki Dini ve Siyasi Mücadeleler,Ankara, 2000, p. 89.

the Armenian community. Today27 the Virgin Mary Church is active and is attended by Assyrians28. The Ottoman Empire usually permitted the construction and repair of the churches. An archival document bearing the date of 1919 shows that the Ottoman parliament decided to draw a budget for one of the churches in Ergani as it was not right to leave it in ruin29. It is beyond a doubt that this data should be evaluated in light of the political conditions of 1919.

The activities of the Church and clergy that were particularly important in the Armenian question can be seen during the Armenian events of Diyarbakır, too. Originally the churches were low buildings until the idea of establishment of an independent Armenia in Eastern Anatolia; however, their dimension began to be seen as a symbol of power and ability. For example, the Small Church (Küçük Kilise) in Diyarbakır was torn down by the Armenians and its bell tower was reconstructed higher than the minaret of Şeyhmatar Mosque30. If the Armenian events of Diyarbakır are thoroughly examined, it is seen that the churches sometimes became centers of propaganda, arms, and sometimes harbors for fugitive Armenians.

THE ARMENIANS IN GOVERNMENTAL SERVICE OF DIYARBAKIR

From the mid of 19th century onwards, Armenians began to be employed in major and minor civil services. The Ottoman Empire entrusted the Armenians with the task of administering many governmental services. Being appointed to high ranking offices according to their education and proficiency, they became the part of the Ottoman State system. Şevket Beysanoğlu states that many Armenians were employed

27 Nurşen Mazıcı records that thirty three churhes were inactive and four of them are in Kırıkhan, İskenderun, Kayseri and Diyarbakır. Nurşen Mazıcı, Uluslar arası Rekabette Ermeni Sorununun Kökeni, İstanbul, 1987, p. 141. According to the Ministry of Culture, Mart Thoma, Meryem Ana, Kırklar, Mart Pityon Churhes are towering churches of Diyarbakır. http://www.kultur.gov.tr/portal/destinasyon_tr.asp?belgeno= 47281&belgekod =45868& baslik=Detay (28. 07. 2004).
28 Orhan Cezmi Tuncer, Diyarbakır Kiliseleri, Diyarbakır, 2002, p. 13.
29 BOA, M. V. 215/92.
30 Beysanoğlu, op.cit, p.10

in the court, council, and police and gendarme services, and an Armenian, Dikran, was even the dragoman of the governor. Further, Şevket Beysanoğlu states that Dikran misinformed the State about the Armenian affairs. For example, he expresses that Dikran gave reports that informed that the theatrical performance which had no drawbacks actually included revolutionary propaganda and was staged in Armenian31.

In this regard, an archival documents (see Tables at appendix) from the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archive records a table including detailed information about the Armenians serving in governmental service.

According to the table prepared on August 30, 1893, the Armenians had been in governmental services for a long time; some of them had high ranking offices, gained high salaries, and were granted decorations. This table includes forty-seven state officials’ appointment dates, salaries, their ranks, decorations, and their names with additional information.

It would be useful to give information about some of them instead of all of them. Namely, fourteen who had shown general circumstances are mentioned. The sixteen officials in the table have worked voluntarily, one with revenues and the rest with salary.

In addition, twenty-five Armenians were in governmental service, one in the Duyun-u Umumiye (Ottoman Foreign Debts Administration) of Diyarbakır, one in Maden Reji (State Management), and twenty-three in the Duyun-u Umumiye of Cizre32. Mesrop Krikorian gives similar information about twenty-five Armenians who had key positions and some of them were included in this table. His attainments are much like the ones given in the table33. Another important development about the Armenians of Diyarbakır was their candidacies in the deputy elections.

For example, in the election of 1914, an Armenian Istepan Çıracıyan entered parliament34.

It is interesting to know all their offices, salaries, ranks and positions, but it is more interesting to see the strategic position of their offices. It

31 Ibid, p. 10.
32 BOA, Y. PRK. UM. 35/125.
33 Krikorian, op.cit, p. 24.
34 http://www.ermenisorunu.gen.tr/turkce/iliskiler/milletvekilleri.html (22.06.2006).

is seen from the table 2,3,4 that the Armenians were employed as police officers, telegram managers, telegram clerks, assemblyman in municipal council and members of provincial administration. This state of affairs on one hand indicates the Ottoman’s reliance on the Armenians, and, on the other hand, questions the claims as to the massacring or committing malevolent offences against the Armenians. As it is seen many Armenians were employed in various branches of the communicative, executive and judicial official authorities.

Though the Armenians were employed in various governmental offices and involved in undesirable events until the First World War, the Ottomans continued to accept and employ Armenians in civil offices. However, some of them were involved in illegal activities and were faced with judicial proceedings. For example, in 1916 the telegram manager of Cüngüş provided a way for many Armenians to avoid military service by leaking official correspondences. This led to a recruitment of only 8-9 draftees from an area that could actually provide 300. As a result, he was faced with a judicial inquiry35.

So far I have endeavored to explain the condition of the Armenians in the social life of Diyarbakır with their commercial and social activities, daily lives and religious affairs, and their relations with judicial and official institutions through various examples. What I have mentioned is a sign that the Armenians experienced favorable conditions during the period of the “Armenian Question.” For example, after the Armenian events of 1895 in Diyarbakır, in a document bearing the date of December 9, all the non-Muslim clergymen who affirmed their lack of any connection with the events, said, in their own words, what the Ottomans contributed these communities: “Our religion and sect, language, life, property, and virtue are all under the protection of the Sublime Porte”. They also spoke about the Muslims as “our beloved neighbors, the Muslims”36. Moreover, the Ottoman officials, on November 1-3, 1895, namely ten days after the events, claimed a list of needy Muslims and Armenians

35 BOA, DH. EUM. EMN. 90/64.
36 BOA, Y. PRK. AZN. 15/1.


to be assisted. It is an indicator that the State, despite all the negative activities, maintained its good intentions for the Armenians37.

Subsequently, it is seen from the examples that the Armenians, who had important roles in all the cities of Anatolia and governmental offices, held their places in the social and governmental life of Diyarbakır. It is a must to recognize this structure in order to comprehend properly the evalution of the “Armenian Question” and the fall of the Ottoman State with all their historical, social, political, and economical dimensions. If the question is handled justly on its social dimension and if the imperialist policies of certain states on the Ottoman land could not be considered, it is impossible to feel the pain and anguish suffered in every strata of society during the last fifty years of the Ottoman State, namely, the separation of two societies which had lived together in the same State in peace and harmony could not be understood.

In short, it can be proposed that the Armenian question can be solved by means of dialogue. But realization of dialogue is impossible so long as one of the sides considers genocide as its national history.

Table 2. Armenian Employee Officialdom within Diyarbakır Province

ARMENIAN EMPLOYEE OFFICIALDOM WITHIN DİYARBAKIR PROVINCE38

Dİyarbakir Sub-District Explanation Place Of Employment And Name Medals Ranks Salaries Appointment Dates Of Current Position First Dates Of Appointment Of State Service Before He Was Employee At This Office
Member of Court of Appeal Handanyan Karabet Efendi
— 3rd
Voluntary
or Without
Money
15 April 1893 Unknown
“
Member of Court of Appeal Boyacıyan Osib Efendi
— —
Voluntary
or Without
Money
15 April 1893 “
He has been a member of this court for almost a decade
Member of City Minasyan
Ohannes Efendi
4th
Class of
Ottoman
Medal
3rd
Voluntary
or Without
Money
13 April 1893 “
37 BOA, A. MKT. MHM. 636/20.
38 BOA. Y. PRK. DH. 6 / 94.


Dİyarbakir Sub-District Explanation Place Of Employment And Name Medals Ranks Salaries Appointment Dates Of Current Position First Dates Of Appointment Of State Service

He was a member of Abolished commercial court of Diyarbakır Proceeding Clerk in Chamber of Law of Civil Court of First Instance Tuhman Efendi — — 300 13 July 1888 “ Proceeding Clerk in Chamber of Civil Court of First Instance Haçadur Efendi — — 300 28 November 1889 “ Before he was convention clerk in Diyarbakır Siverek Sub-district Deputy of Notary of Civil Court of First Instance Bedros Efendi — — 300 24 Agust 1891 “ Member of Civil Court of First Instance of Diyarbakır Bedros Efendi — — 225 “ “ Before he was a government treasurer in Diyarbakır Member of Civil Court of First Instance of Lice Sub-district Aleksandır Efendi — — 225 15 April 1889 “ Chief (Şefdö) of Diyarbakır Foreign Correspondence Amaysan Efendi — — 900 1884 “ Accounting Clerk in Principal Directorate of Diyarbakır David Efendi — 650 1892 “ Principal Officer of Diyarbakır Foreign Correspondence Altunyan Efendi — — 570 1890 “ He was former Chief of Adana Foreign Correspondence. He was appointed to this position on 15 December 1890. Principal Officer of Diyarbakır Foreign Correspondence Kazamir Efendi — — 570 “ He was former officer of Halep Foreign Correspondence. He was appointed to this position on 17 June 1889. Officer of Diyarbakır Foreign Correspondence. İstefan Efendi — — 500 “

Dİyarbakir Sub-District Explanation Place Of Employment And Name Medals Ranks Salaries Appointment Dates Of Current Position First Dates Of Appointment Of State Service

Principal Officer of Diyarbakır Foreign Correspondence Dikran Efendi — — 500 April-May 1885 “ He was former officer of Kalozmon Asylum. He was appointed to this position on 30 April 1893. Principal Officer of Diyarbakır Foreign Correspondence Aristidi Efendi — — 400 “ He was former officer of Musul Foreign Correspondence. He was appointed to this position on 1 November 1888. Principal Officer of Diyarbakır Foreign Correspondence Aram Efendi — — 400 “ Principal Officer of Diyarbakır Foreign Correspondence Zoryan Efendi — — 380 5 May 1890 “ Operator of Diyarbakır Foreign Correspondence Agop Efendi — — 400 March-April 1865 “ Telegram Sergeant of Ergani Oakim Aga — — 285 September-October 1885 “ Responsible Clerk of Musul Correspondence in Diyarbakır Telegram Service Ohannes Aga — — 142 28 February 1887 “ Responsible Clerk of Musul Correspondence in Diyarbakır Telegram Service Artin Aga — — 142 19 January 1891 “

*This term is used in the original text, which is the abbreviation of a French word “chef de station”. Krikorian states that in 1892 he was the head of telegraphic service in Diyarbakır. Krikorian, op.cit, p. 23.


Table 3. Armenian Employee Officialdom Within Maden Sub-District

Maden Sub-District Explanation Place Of Employment And Name Medals Ranks Salaries Appointment Dates Of Current Position First Dates Of Appointment Of State Service

Accountant Principal Accounting Clerk in Maden District Artin Efendi — — 400 18 November 1891 13 August 1881 Clerk of Maden District Aleksan Efendi — — 225 7 Mart 1892 27 September 1881 Treasury Attorney of Maden District İstepan Efendi — — Stipendiary 13 June 1890 13 September 1897 Member in the First Instance of Maden District Bedros Efendi — — 360 15 April 1893 1873-1874 Lietunent Member in law Department of Maden District Agop Efendi — — 270 18 April 1887 10 May 1886 Executive Member of Council of Maden District Mardiros Efendi — — Voluntary or Without Money 1892-1893 13 Mart 1881 He is also member of executive committe of the Bank Member in Council of City Hall of Maden District Murad Aga — — Voluntary or Without Money 26 March 1885 26 March 1885 Mining Engineer Aram Efendi — — 1500 February-March 1889 March-April 1888 Police Officer in Maden District Karabet Efendi — — 300 1889-1890 March-April 1880 Executive Member of Council in Palu District Mıgırdiç Aga — 5th Voluntary or Without Money 9 May 1886 10 October 1873 Attorny Treasurer of Palu District Agop Efendi — — 360 21 May 1893 21 May 1884 Member in Council of City Hall of Palu District Sahak Aga — — Voluntary or Without Money 13 March 1890 13 March 1890 Session Clerk in Court of Palu Gabriel Efendi — — 160 13 December 1879 13 December 1879 He is also serve as public notary Member in the First Instance of Palu District Bogos Efendi — — 225 13 March 1892 13 May 1869 Member in Council of City Hall of Palu Donabet Aga — — Voluntary or Without Money 13 March 1890 13 March 1890

Maden Sub-District Explanation Place Of Employment And Name Medals Ranks Salaries Appointment Dates Of Current Position First Dates Of Appointment Of State Service

Executive Member of Council in Palu District Bakdasar Aga — — Voluntary or Without Money 27 April 1897 27 April 1897 Member in Council of City Hall of Çermik District Minas Aga — — Voluntary or Without Money 13 February 1897 25 April 1892 Member in the First Instance of Çermik District İguş Efendi — — 225 1892-1893 1882-1883 Member in Council of City Hall of Çermik District Mahsa Aga — — Voluntary or Without Money 10 September 1890 10 September 1890 Executive Member of Çüngüş Sub district Murat Aga — — Voluntary or Without Money 3 June 1891 3 June 1891 Executive Member of Çüngüş Sub district Bogos Aga — — Voluntary or Without Money 3 June 1891 3 June 1891 Member in Council of City Hall of Çüngüş Sub district Ohannes Aga — — Voluntary or Honorary 23 October 1885 23 October 1885 Member in Council of City Hall of Çüngüş Sub district Karagöz Aga — — Voluntary or Honorary 23 October 1885 23 October 1885 Member in Council of City Hall of Çüngüş Sub district Serkis Aga — — Voluntary or Honorary 23 October 1885 23 October 1885

Table 4. Armenian Employee Officialdom within Mardin Sub-District

Mardin Sub-District Explanation Names Medals Ranks Salaries Appointment Dates Of Current Position First Dates Of Appointment Of State Service

He has been telegram clerk for ten years. He was appointed to Mardin on 20 July 1892 Vice Telegram Clerk of Correspondence of Mardin Mıgırdiç Rasim Efendi — — 380 20 July 1892 — He is actually an Armenian affiliated with Assyrian Patriarchate Member of Court of First Instance of Nusaybin Sub district Herbo — — 225 March-April 1893 —
.

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2403) Turkish Anti-Defamation League (TAL)

Project One: Freedom of Expression
The initial mission of the Turkish Anti-Defamation League (TAL) is to provide legal advice and counsel to Turkish Americans regarding their constitutionally guaranteed right to free expression. The right attaches, in varying degrees, to public school textbooks and instruction; permits for demonstrations; and, the print, broadcast, and Internet media. Turkish Americans most frequently perceive a limitation of their freedom of expression when encountering one-sided depictions of controversial issues related to their ancestral history or current issues related to . .
Turkey or Turkish Americans.

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Your Rights
You Have Rights, But You Must Speak Out
The pronounced biases in certain parts of American society against Turkey, persons of Turkish ethnicity, and the Ottoman Empire can be dispelled if the usual stereotypes, caricatures, and errors are disputed in the classroom, in town meetings, in public gatherings, and in all manner of public gatherings. These day-to-day refutations are the best vehicle for altering general attitudes towards Turkey and Turks, which translates into fairer treatment by local, state, and national government. TAL arms Turkish Americans with knowledge of their legal rights to freedom of expression, which should encourage them to speak openly and forcefully against historical mistakes or distortions about Turkey, its history and heritage, without fear of retaliation.

Add Your Perspective In Lieu of Suppressing Someone Else’s
Correspondingly, we firmly believe that Turkish Americans should eschew attempts to suppress biased or twisted speech in favor of adding a Turkish perspective to the free marketplace of ideas. Students and adults alike should be trusted to draw reasonable conclusions based on their exposure to a rich array of educationally suitable viewpoints. Indoctrination is not education. It stunts the mind and the ability to think. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis had the right idea by insisting that the proper remedy for foolish or mistaken speech is more speech, not enforced silence.

The constitutional right to freedom of expression is enshrined in the First Amendment and hundreds of Supreme Court decisions interpreting the Constitution’s text. The Supreme Court has repeatedly lectured that neither legislators nor educators may suppress or muffle an idea because it is politically unpopular. The First Amendment, however, draws a sharp distinction between government action and private speech. While the amendment prohibits government officials and laws from discriminating against disliked ideas, ordinary citizens may do so. The First Amendment does not prohibit a private organization to require members to subscribe to the Armenian genocide. On the other hand, private citizens may be sued for defamation if they falsely accuse Turkish Americans of odious activities to frighten them into silence or otherwise.

The following First Amendment principles are most relevant to Turkish Americans:

*Turkish Americans cannot be denied public jobs or be demoted or fired because of the views they hold on any issue, such as the Armenian issue, the PKK, Cyprus, or any other issue of special concern to Turkish Americans. Nor can they be denied an opportunity to speak on equal terms with other attendees in a public forum, including city council or board of education meetings.

*Turkish Americans cannot be denied public permits or licenses to demonstrate or rally in support of specific views.

*Turkish Americans may insist that public instruction on issues relating to Turkey or the Ottoman Empire be based solely on educational suitability, and not on the political power of Armenians, Greeks, Greek Cypriots, or otherwise.

*Turkish Americans may petition state educational authorities to alter or supplement textbook materials to enrich their educational value.

*Turkish Americans may protest biased or misleading lectures in public education. The protests should demand more speech and additional viewpoints, not suppression of objectionable views.

*Turkish Americans may petition city councils, mayors, state officials, Members of Congress, and the President to complain about prejudices, stereotypes, or errors on matters of concern to them. But they do not have a right to have all their complaints accepted.

*Turkish Americans have the same right of access to public or public school bulletin boards to post their views as any other group.

TAL will seek to resolve problems through both legal and non-legal avenues. Some issues can be resolved with a firm letter. Others can be settled with mediation. A lawsuit generally should be the last remedy.

Turkish Americans, however, must be vigilant in detecting problems and bringing them to the attention of TAL. Passivity is unacceptable. All that is necessary for bigotry and injustice to triumph is for good Turkish Americans to do nothing.

We seek your active involvement. Your rights can be preserved, but you must speak out. If you feel that you or your child has been the victim of suppression of free speech or similar right, please contact us and we will help you to evaluate the matter and, if necessary, identify methods and resources for seeking redress.

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Tal Contacts:

Bruce Fein
Biographical Sketch of Bruce Fein

Bruce Fein is a resident scholar at the Turkish Coalition of America (TCA).

Over the past decade, Mr. Fein has written and spoken extensively on Turkish-American relations; the PKK; the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and the Annan Plan; the Armenian genocide narrative and the politics of congressional Armenian resolutions; Turkish constitutional reform; Turkey’s blossoming democracy; and, Turkey’s anxieties over Northern Iraq, including Kirkuk. He was a guest speaker at a conference sponsored by the Foreign Policy Institute and Bilkent University in Ankara to critique the interim Iraqi constitution.

Before joining TCA, Mr. Fein was a resident scholar at the Assembly of Turkish American Association and columnist for the Turkish Times. He also served as a consultant to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, and evaluated the terms of the Annan Plan. He has appeared regularly on VOA and Turkish television to discuss current political events and their implications for Turkish-American relations.

An honors graduate from Harvard Law School, Mr. Fein brings to his Turkish and Turkish-American scholarship a nationally acclaimed expertise in constitutional and international law. He has advised scores of countries undergoing political or constitutional transitions, including matters of secularism, freedom of expression, federalism, and military subordination to civilian authority.

Mr. Fein’s oral or written commentary is invariably incisive, vivid, succinct, and quotable. His worldwide experience adds special depth to his observations about Turkey and the evolution of Turkish-American relations.

Selected Writings:
"Armenian and Muslim Tragedy? Yes. Genocide? No" Assembly of Turkish American Associations
"Turkish Victims of International Infamy" Washington Times, May 2001.
"Armenian Resolution Is Misguided" San Francisco Chronicle, Oct 4, 2007
"Unveiling the PKK" Washington Times, Jan 3, 2008
"Tawdry Genocide Tale" Washington Times, Sep 2, 2007
"Turkey, Terrorism, And Double Standards" Washington Times, Nov 13, 2007 Letters to Boston Globe, Aug 2007

David Saltzman

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Events
Turkish American Events of Other Interest

March 26-April 6, 2008
OTTAWA, CANADA
Photo Exhibit
Preserving riches of history A photo expose on the destruction of cultural heritage and ancient monuments. Presented by Azerbaijani Community of Ottawa. Ottawa University, 85 University Street, University Center (at the Lounge -Area outside Student Federation Clubs)

April 11-13, 2008
MASSACHUSETTS
Turkish American Scientists and Scholars Association Annual ConferenceHarvard Medical School Conference Center, Boston info: www.tassausa .org

April 13-16, 2008
WASHINGTON, DC
ATC-AFOT/TAIK-DEIK 27th Annual Conference on US Turkish Relations
2008 Annual conference will celebrate the continued vitality of one of the most important bilaterel relationships in the world. info: www.the-atc.org

May 15-17, 2008
WASHINGTON, DC
28th Annual ATAA Convention:"Peace in the World" info: www.ataa.org

24 May 2008
NEW YORK
27. Türk Günü Yürüyüsü info: www.tadf.org

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Turkish Anti-Defamation League
1025 Connecticut Avenue, Suite 1000, NW Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-370-1399 ext.3, Fax: 202-370-1398
www.turkishantidefamationleague.org

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2402) Armenia Is Forcing The Boundaries

While the Armenians, who had betrayed to numerous countries in the past, do not remember any of their betrayal, they never forget the 1915 relocation. Their intention is to cause a headache to Turkey with the genocide lie. . .

While Armenians, who were exposed to countless immigration and deportation incidents, do not bring any of these incidents on the agenda, they are attempting to cause a problem under the title of so-called genocide by putting forward the relocation in 1915 that was posed by the Ottoman Empire with justified motives. In fact, the Armenians were exposed to relocations, similar to that one in the past as a result of their betrayals. Sasanis’ deported 70 thousand Armenians to Iran in 379; Byzantine deported 40 thousand Armenians in Eastern Anatolia to Sivas and Kayseri in 1025; Memluks deported 10 thousand Armenians to Egypt in 1250; Iranians deported 24 thousand Armenians to the interior parts of Iran in 1743; and also Russians, who invaded Crimea in 1777 deported thousands of Armenians to steppes. It is a historical fact that Armenians are merely attempting to destroy the integrity of Turkey with the genocide trick.

The support of Western countries, which was a mere spectator to the numerous genocide moves that occurred in Africa and Balkans during the history, to the Armenian lies, is a clear indicator. The relocation was called as a massacre and genocide by the Armenians and the propaganda campaigns opposing Turkey has continued continuously until the present day. The move for relocating the Armenians at the region of Eastern Anatolia to more secure lands in 1915 was a motion intended for the security of the Armenians, contrary to the lies that were presented. There was definitely no intended or planned genocide. So, despite all these reasons, a headache is attempted to be given to Turkey via the genocide evil.

The Diaspora, which gathered all the Armenians abroad under one roof, is in an extensive effort for slandering the image of Turkey all around the World. The Diaspora, which has reached at a position that organizes all the activities of the Armenians in abroad and direct the foreign policy, is attempting to become a center of power in Europe and in particularly at the USA, France, England and Germany. The Armenian Diaspora, which makes activities that can effect the relation of our country with Europe Union, gained strength day by day with the propaganda activities which are directed at recognizing the so-called genocide. When Armenia gained independence, the Diaspora, followed a policy, which attempted to direct the governments of the countries they inhabit with genocide claims. The Armenian institutions have influenced negatively the relations between Turkey and the other countries with the activities they organized for being able to bring their genocide claims and their lobby activities, especially over the USA administration, at the international agenda.

The Armenian Diaspora has determined a broad based strategy aimed at posing the greatest problem to the international relations of Turkey after the year 2000 and introduced their campaign on genocide into the policy of the countries they inhabit. At the present time, there are countries, which attempt to exploit Armenian society politically and economically, as in the past. Memorials are being erected, which accuses Turkey and Turks with so-called genocide in some countries, resolutions aiming the recognition of the so-called genocide, are put forward the Parliaments in some countries, and even in some countries these resolutions are being accepted. These issues, which should in fact, be left to the historians, turns into a tool of interest at the hands of the politicians. The goal of the Armenian terrorism, which involves in the massacres from the day it appeared until the present time, was to voice the so-called Armenian genocide to the World opinion. They have relatively achieved that. The point they desire to reach now is the “Great Armenia” dream.

1881 Ottoman-Russian War was a war, which the Turkish nation was never able to forget and a war which was full of wounds that could not be cured. During the mentioned war, which was called as “’93 War” the Ottoman Empire has also lost its loyal nation, the Armenians. The Armenians cut the supply roads of the Ottoman, which was fighting against the Russians on one hand; on the other, they revolted. The Russians reached at Çatalca by capturing Edirne. The Ottoman Empire had to demand for peace. So Ayastefanos Treaty (Presently Istanbul/ Yesilköy) was signed among the parties.



The Armenian issue had first appeared at international correspondence of the peace treaty, which was signed between the Ottoman Empire and the Russia in 1878 at Ayastefanos (Presently Istanbul/ Yesilköy). Until that date, the reform demands comprised not only a society, but all the Christian subjects. Nevertheless, according to this treaty; the Ottoman Empire had to make reforms at the places, where the Armenians inhabited. The treaty had opened the Balkans and the Eastern corridor for the Russians. This situation had caused the reaction of the European countries and because Russia could not risk a new war, she had to accept a congress that would meet in Berlin. The dispersal of the Ottoman Empire had accelerated with this treaty. If a starting point is required for the Armenian question, then that would be the Ayastefanos Treaty that was signed following the Ottoman-Russian War (1877-78) and the Berlin Conference. The existence of the Ottoman Empire had exceeded for a while with the Berlin Congress, which relived the conditions of the Ayastefanos slightly.

Even though the so-called genocide issue is based on the baseless sources, unfortunately it has been recognized by 18 countries, which wishes to close Turkey’s way at the international arena.

(…) The most extensive activity of the Diaspora, which attempts to spread its genocide lie, is in USA, France, Germany and England. The biggest institution of the Armenian Diaspora in the USA is Armenian Assembly of America (AAA). The prevention of the USA aides for Turkey, sales of arms and supporting Armenia at every issue are the main goals of the Armenian lobby in the USA. France is the second country, where Armenian activities are exercised intensively. Also, France Diaspora managed to pass a bill which criminalizes the ones who express that there is no Armenian genocide and they would be punished with 45 thousand Euro and 5 years of imprisonment even though it is against the European Rights Convention.

When the Ottoman Empire was defeated at the Ottoman-Russian War (1877-1878) and the Russian army came to Ayastefanos, the Armenian Patriarch Nerses Varjabedyan resorted to Russian Commander-in-Chief Grand Duke Nikola and secured including some articles in Armenians favor to the peace treaty that was signed at Ayastefanos. The Ottoman Empire undertook the necessary reforms and arrangements at places where Armenians inhabited with the article 16 of the peace treaty that was signed at Ayastefanos on 3 March 1878. During the Berlin Congress that was led by German Otto von Bismarck, who determined that the gains of Russia was contrary to his interests, Varjabedyan sent a delegation to Berlin at the presidency of Patrick Kirimyan and included the articles of the Ayastefanos Treaty also into the Berlin Treaty. The article 61 of the Berlin Treaty had placed a load on the Ottoman Empire by assigning her the obligation to make reforms at the districts where Armenian population heavily inhabit. With this article Russia, France, Germany and England could sent delegations to various districts of the Ottoman Empire, harsh diplomatic notes, and secured them various advantages. It also helped them to gather information about the Ottoman and to influence the decisions they took. Many incidents that discontented Turkey started to occur since 1894. If they did not have the support of Europe the Armenian question would have never existed.

(…)The Armenian genocide claims will be thought at the courses that would be organized by the schools of Canada/ Toronto. In this context, a course on “Genocide, Rwanda and Armenian Genocide” would be given to student starting from autumn. Reacting to the decision, the Turks at the district have started a signature campaign. One thousand and two hundred people have supported the campaign that was organized by Turkish-Canada Committee by giving their signatures. Lale Eskicioglu, the head of the Committee, warned at the statements which were reflected to Canadian press that the Canadian citizens of Turkish origin would be exposed to the violence of the children, so the decision is wrong. The Canadian Parliament had recognized the Armenian genocide claims in 2002. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper had also used the expression of “Armenian Genocide”

The Foreign Minister of Denmark Per Stig Moeller stated that they do not recognize the claims which points out that the Ottoman had committed genocide against the Armenians in 1915. Moeller replied the question “If they were recognizing the genocide claims officially or not” of Morten Messerschmidt, who is a member of Parliament from Denmark Peoples Party, which is extreme rightist ally of the liberal-conservative coalition and a member of the Foreign Affairs Commission. Foreign Minister Moeller, who gave a written respond to the member of the Commission stated: “According to the government; this is an issue, which should be left to historians.”

It was stated that the USA Congress, which is has the majority of the Democratic Party members would have to make a choice between pragmatism and keeping principles on the Armenian genocide claims. Los Angeles Times daily pointed out that the expectation for bringing the genocide claims on the agenda of the USA Congress within this year has increased, because of the majority gained by the Democrat Party at the lately elections. Reminding that the Democrats have given messages towards the Armenian society in the USA that the genocide claims would be recognized; the newspaper stated that a high level diplomat of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the following: “We never said that there was no genocide. We just didn’t use that word. Our thoughts on this issue are as following: We have encouraged this argument by not allowing the Turks to say ‘This is a foreign pressure, which is an effective approach.’ ” It was also noted in the article that both Armenian lobby, which adopts this thought and the Democrats favor the use of the word “genocide” by the Washington administration.

European Union demanded us to accept the genocide slander with insolent pressure. Armenian master card was reflected on the reports as an instrument of blackmail. As this was not enough, they suggested us to establish bilateral relations and open the borders.

When the relations between Turkey and the European Union are examined, it can be observed that the Armenian question has always used as a mater card against Ankara. Using this institute as a political tool, the pronunciation of these by authorized officials, including these to official documents and insistence of EU, can never be accepted.

As a matter of fact, this kind of attitude is contrary to current law of EU. In this framework, it is evident that the genocide trouble, which keeps on aching our heads, would be one of the probable obstacles in front of Turkey path to EU. The European Parliament (EP) had taken a decision over the so-called Armenian genocide, which infuriated Turkey on 18 June 1987.

This resolution, which was taken as “The Political Solution of the Armenian Question” has taken its place at the pages of the history as the first significant verdict of the Institution on Turkey. According to the resolution; the incidents that had occurred in the lands of Anatolia during 1915-1917 were characterized as genocide as to 1948 United Nations Convention and also it was indicated that refraining from recognizing it would constitute an obstacle in the way of Turkey. Furthermore, in accordance with the aforementioned resolution, it was also demanded that EU should call Turkey for recognizing the so-called Armenian genocide and entering dialogue with the Armenian representatives.

Following Armenia declared its independence in 1991 and recognized by EU and the diplomatic relations started in 1992, Turkey-Armenia issue was added to this question. The Armenian delegation complained about the negative effects of the blockade that was applied towards Armenia by Turkey at “The EU-Armenia Parliamentarian Cooperation Commission” that was organized in Brussels in 2001.

Following the meeting, the EU members had called Turkey for lifting the blockade. the EU members had otherwise threatened Turkey to present new obstacles in her path to EU membership. Moreover, the EU representatives, who attended the meeting, expressed that they are committed to the resolution on recognizing the so-called Armenian genocide approved by the European Parliament in 1987. Turkey report dated 15 December 2004 of the European Parliament is one of the most shameful resolutions it has approved over the issue. The articles 39, 40 and 41 were demanding the recognition of the so-called Armenian genocide. The Armenian claims and Turkey-Armenia relations were also reflected in the reports of the European Commission. It was also attributed to the resolution of the European Parliament at the declaration of the EU Brussels Summit dated 17 December 2004.

Besides the institutions of the European Union many EU member countries has adopted similar resolutions on the Armenian claims at their parliaments. It is essential to stress how these resolutions could be adopted at the institutions of the European Union. And the starting point should be the Armenian Diaspora in Europe.

(…) The Armenians dared to show Eastern Anatolia as a place belonging to them at a poster that was printed in Yerevan and distributed in Europe. They told a lie by saying 1, 5 million of Armenians were killed in 1915.



The expressions of Pontus and Syrian genocide were first voiced at a report that was accepted at the Foreign Relations Commission for the European Parliament in 2006. Camuel Eurlings, Christian Democrat parliamentarian from Netherlands, stated at his report that Turkey was not ready for EU membership. The report was accepted once it was reinforced with diverse proposals of the Greek parliamentarians. While the acceptance of so-called Armenian genocide was presented as a precondition for Turkey’s membership, it was also demanded to “recognize Pontus and Syrian genocide as well” at the report where 52 parliamentarians voted “Yes”, six parliamentarians voted “No” and 8 parliamentarians had abstained voting. So, the slander for Pontus and Syrian genocide had first entered to the official reports of the EU.

(…) Armenia had blockade European Parliament for including Armenian genocide to the bill. Armenian Foreign Affairs Minister Vartan Oskanyan had underlined the importance of Turkey’s recognition of the so-called Armenian genocide once again during a speech at Foreign Affairs Commission of the European Parliament on October 2007. Oskanyan had called for including genocide at the bill. Three issues went to the fore at Oskanyan’s speech. These are; genocide, opening borders between Armenia-Turkey and the Karabakh question. Oskanyan, who referred to the article 301 relating Turkey’s offer for a commission of mutual historians for discussing 1915 incidents said: “How can we discuss these issues, where there is no freedom of thought and freedom of speech? 1915 incidents are genocide. Those incidents include the definition of the UN Genocide Convention. Recognizing genocide would help Turkey to confront her past. ”



Oskanyan, who stressed that opening of the borders between Turkey and Armenia was extremely important stated the following: “Turkey does not have any reason for not opening of the borders between Turkey and Armenia. Armenia is not in a war with Turkey. Single sided decision for closing the borders cannot be accepted. EU should put pressure on Turkey. This issue should also be dealt at the EP. Armenia is ready for an unconditional dialog with Turkey.”

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza indicated that Turkey should develop relations with Armenia. During his visit to Armenia together with the Russian and French co-chairmen, Bryza, who is the co-chairman of the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in European (OSCE) and who is the mediator at the Karabakh question, which is under the Armenian invasion, attended an international conference on “Greater Black sea: Regional and International Security Perspectives” which was organized by NATO and some local institutions of OSCE in Yerevan. During his speech at the conference Bryza stated that his country’s policy on the Black Sea is creating a co-operation that would include various spheres like economy, energy, and regional security.

One of the most significant issues in this context is the establishment of relations between Turkey and Armenia and opening the borders. Stating that the move in question would strengthen the process of producing mutual projects and economic relations, Bryza noted that the normalizations of the Turkish-Armenian relations has been connected to Upper Karabakh issue.“ Expressing that Turkey has presented some conditions for normalizing her relations with Armenia, however, those conditions are hoped to be lifted by USA, Bryza said: “Armenia is right at her will for not bringing any preconditions forward, but then she should recognize her current borders with Turkey.”

Indicating that USA has called Turkey for not to present any preconditions at the diplomatic relations with Armenia and develop her relations with Armenia without mentioning about a third country like Azerbaijan, Bryza said: “The thought of ‘One nation two governments’ should be changed among the relations of Turkey and Armenia.” Bryza noted: “That change would not occur immediately; it will take some time.”

Romano Prodi, the former Chairman for the EU Commission had stated that the borders between Turkey and Armenia should be opened. During his press conference with Vartan Oskasyan, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prodi, who had paid a visit to Armenia September 2004, had expressed that the issue of borders could be one of the preconditions for Turkey on EU. Prodi had stated: “I neither like the borders that are closed between Turkey and Armenia nor the lack of diplomatic relations between the mentioned countries.”

The Armenian lobbies are active at the total of 1228 institutions in the USA, where they choose as the center of propaganda. Their goal is to reach their dirty desire of spreading Turkish hostility all over the World.

The Armenians, who immigrated to America, were actively involved in the process, which aimed at directing the USA as the most significant propaganda center of the Diaspora. Accordingly, the race of the Armenians, who became a toy in the hands of the USA, for slandering the Ottoman in the past, has currently turned into a accusation campaign against Turkey. The Armenian ethnical lobby, which is active in the USA, has managed to take out a considerable financial and political support from the US Congress in the last 20 years. The support in question can be considered as following: Approximately 90 million dollars of annual support for Armenia passed a law for preventing support for Azerbaijan, activities for preventing bills, which favors Turkey and for leading the USA to recognize the so-called genocide by the USA administration. The mutual goal of all the Armenian institutions is “Turkish hostility”. The Armenians, who do not have any other strategic feature other than the so-called genocide master card, are attempting to attract the World public opinion with their oppressed identity. 1228 institutions have started to organize effective studies under a single roof entitled Armenian Assembly of America: AAA in the USA, where the Armenian lobby is most influential country. Bryan Ardouny, the executive director of AAA had advocated that recognizing the so-called genocide claims would lift the physiologic obstacles between the Turks and the Armenians.

The leading Armenian lobbying groups in the USA have started a new attempt on the genocide thesis towards the candidates at the pre-election race, which is the first step of the presidency election. In the written statement by the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) it was reported that “The Armenian voters would have crucial role at the pre-elections so question forms were sent to the Democrat and Republican candidates.” Some questions within the form, is as following: Will you characterize Armenian genocide as genocide in your official statements? What are your opinions on Armenian genocide bill? Which steps will you be taking regarding Turkey’s denial of the Armenian genocide? Also, there are questions on Turkey’s attempt for opening borders, Nagorno Karabakh question with Azerbaijan and Armenia-USA relations in the form. It was indicated at the statement that the voters in USA are both the members of Democrat and the Republican Party and Armenians can vote who ever they consider appropriate.

The missionary organizations, which incite Armenians, had brought discord to Anatolia. Because of her geo-political position, Turkey had become a region, where intrigues had occurred. America, which demanded to erase the Ottoman Empire from the scenes of history, had used Armenians, at its intrigues and incited them via its missionaries. Assistant Professor of the International Department of the Faculty of Economy and Administrative Sciences of the Kirikale University Dr. Senol Kantarci, who is known with his studies on the Armenians stated that when the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission (ABCFM), the missionary organization in the USA, had sent its first missionaries to Anatolia and when the American Protestant Church had chosen Armenians as the target group, have led the development of the Armenian movement.

Noting that the first seeds of the Armenian question were rooted by this missionary organization in Anatolia, Dr. Kantarci stated the following: “The American missionary organization had reached almost all the cities and villages. They even had entered in each Armenian’s house. None of the organizations could manage to study so extensively. ABCFM had studied study so extensively that it managed to open 624 schools and 436 buildings for religious purposes in Turkey.”

At the same time, stating that America had gained statute of most protected country at the Ottoman Empire with the agreement that was signed on 7 May 1830, Dr. Senol Kantarci, the chief consultant of International Relations and Strategic Analysis Center of Turkey (TÜRKSAM), said: “So, while the merchants from the USA was entering to the Anatolian markets, a business area was opened for the Armenian brokers. When volume of the trade had increased, accordingly, the number of Armenians had also increased. So, a group of wealthy Armenians came out. The group of wealthy Armenians became American citizens. On the other hand, missionaries started to sent Armenian students to America. The young Armenians, who were raised up as extreme Turkish enemies, played an active role at the spread of Turkish hostility to the World.”

The USA had intimidated Ankara by bringing the genocide card on the agenda following an energy agreement was signed and a close relation had developed between Turkey and Iran. The support for Armenia was once again displayed when the Foreign Affairs Committee of the USA House of Representatives adopted the bill on the 1915 incidents. The Armenian bill numbered 106, which were taken up on 10 October 2007; the USA administration was called for recognizing genocide. The support of the Jewish lobby for the bill, which was used as a master card against Turkey for years, called everyone’s attention. At the session, which was headed by Tom Lantos, California Congressman from the Democrat Party, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the USA House of Representatives adopted the bill, which characterized the 1915 incidents as genocide with 27 votes against 21 votes. Priest Karekin, who entered the hall following the bill was adopted, said: “We are relieved after 90 years when bill is adopted.” The voting was also observed by the TBMM delegation headed by Egemen Bagis, from AKP Party, who had gone to Washington to explain Turkey’s thesis against Armenian bill.



Prior the bill was discussed USA President George Bush, USA Minister of Foreign Affairs Condoleezza Rice and Minister of Defense Robert Gates demanded the bill to be rejected because of the possibility of ruining relations with Turkey. Gates and Rice had sent a letter warning the leaders of the House of Representatives that if the bill is passed it would ruin Turkish-American relations. The pressure of Turkey and the administration of USA had resulted positively and the bill was prevented from coming to the general assembly when some congressman withdrew their signature.

Nancy Pelosi, the Head of the House of Representatives, is known as one of the leading passionate defenders and speakers of the Armenian lobby in the Congress. Pelosi, who has deep and strong ties with the Jewish and Armenian lobbies, is the first speaker of Congress in the history of America. Nancy Pelosi, who is 66 and is involved in the active politic for 20 years, is known for her support for the Armenians under the roof of House of Representatives. Pelosi had constantly voiced that USA should adopt the Armenian thesis.

The bill, which suggests Bulgaria to recognize Armenian claims on the 1915 incidents officially and was prepared by deputies of the extreme leftist ATAKA Party in Bulgaria, was once again rejected at the general congress of the parliament. The bill was brought on the agenda for the third time to general assembly of the parliament by the deputies of ATAKA. The bill was rejected at the voting where 173 deputies attended with 63 voted against 50 votes. 60 deputies were abstainers.

Remzi Osman, a deputy of the “Rights and Freedoms Movement” (DPS-HÖH) in which most of the members are Turks, stated that bringing forward this issue is disrespectfulness both to historical facts and to the Parliament. Noting that various similar incidents have occurred in many countries, Osman stated that “incidents should be evaluated according to the period and circumstances it occurred. Reminding that Armenian gangs had organized bloody actions against the Turkish nation and the Turkish army with the incitement of the foreign countries, Osman said: “The decision for relocation was adopted under these circumstances. The evaluation and the judgment of the history is not a duty of a parliament. We should leave history to historians.”

Armenian priest Karekin had consecrated the USA House of Representatives, which adopted the so-called genocide lie on October 2007. The prayer, which is performed every morning at the USA House of Representatives, was performed on the day, when the genocide lie was to be discussed by Armenian Patriarch Karekein II, who is the spiritual leader of 6 million Armenians all over the World. Karekin who exploits religion for politics, has not abstain from defending the bill, which opposed Turkey, during his prayer. Karekin, who smiled at everyone around him, chatted with the citizens, who had experienced the so-called genocide. Nadeam Elshami, Nancy Pelosi’s speaker, claimed that the Patrick’s visit, which overlapped with the bill, was merely a coincidence.

Kasim Akdogan-Yenicag Daily Newspaper-17.01.2008

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