3703) Video: Cenk Uygur Of The Young Turks, Reaffirms That The Armenian Genocide Is A Historic Fact That Can Not Be Denied

Cenk Uygur is a Turkish-American lawyer, main host and creator of the YouTube program called "The Young Turks" (TYT). He has long been criticized for denying the Armenian Genocide. Together with his Armenian-American co-host Ana Kasparian he has addressed this issue, explaining his views on the Armenian Genocide and depicting the reasons behind his initial genocide denial.

Uygur went on to describe how as a youth growing up in Turkey, he was told lies about the Armenian Genocide. He added that he now understands that the U.S. might have had a hand in it too.

The video regarding these revelations, begins at 3:35

FB Group and FB Page Comments:

Ernes Mendes Nasi: Who cares what he says or not? His co moderator is of Armenian heritage. Do you guys really think the program would ran in the US when he would denial this lie

Osman Odemisli Akbulut This is one topic he has no idea what he is talking about. You can see who pulls his strings. The government of Turkey has opened up all its archives and has suggested all countries do the same regarding this issue. But no, its a lot easier just to throw mud and see how much of it sticks.

Eric Halil: Does he accept that Armenians killed and gave unconditional support to the enemies of the motherlands, what about Armenian betrayals compromising the national security of all they lived with , and does he accept that the burden of proof rest on the accusers, and does he accept the Jews and Nazis the Serbs n Bosnians and others went through an international world court and Armenians have no desire to , other than the gag rule court case with the Perincek and Switzerland /Armenian case that went belly up for Armenians /Swedes

Emre Serbest: Like everyone else Cenk Uygur is entitled to his opinion but what evidence does he have to prove that this was a genocide?

Yes, a large number of Armenians died. No one denies that. But larger number of Turks died as well.

Turkey lost 2.5 million people in 1912-1922 period during Balkan wars, WWI and following Turkish War of independence between 1919-1922. This number jumps up to almost 5 million (See Justin McCarthy’s Death and Exile book) if you include those who died across Caucuses.

Significant number of those who died on the Turkish side were internally displaced ppl too. 538,000 Turks died of armed Armenian gangs committing massacres on Turks across Eastern Turkey along with the Russians, British and French.

And hundreds of thousands of Turks literally died of famine, diseases, harsh weather conditions and other exigencies.
So how do deaths of Armenians constitute genocide and the deaths of 2.5 million Turks across Turkey and Balkans don’t? Do Turks not count as human beings?

See that’s why there’s a UN convention on “genocide” matters out there. It says you need to show proof that a specific government acted with deliberate intent to destroy a population in whole or in part. There is no evidence that Ottoman Government acted to destroy/exterminate Armenians. The government moved the innocent Civilian Armenians out of the war zone with military escort (in 1915) only with the intent to separate the civilians from the revolutionary Armenian gangs cooperating with the Russians. They wanted to destroy the rebel traitor gangs but not harm the civilians. This was done for the protection of those civilians. That right there flat out disproves the “intent to destroy” criteria.

Besides, thanks to the same UN Genocide Convention, the authority to decide & determine as to what constitutes a genocide and what does not, lies with a competent international criminal court, namely ICJ in La Hague. Not with a pair of TV hosts who don’t wanna rough up the feathers because they have a TV business to run.

And btw every time I reject and deny the AG allegations I post here factual documents from archives disproving Armenian allegations. What legal/historical proof do Cenk and Ana have to prove their point other than their opinion?
That’s all I have to say.

E. Serbest

. . .


Cenk Uygur
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cenk Kadir Uygur (/ˈdʒɛŋk ˈjuːɡər/; Turkish: [ˈdʒeɲc kaˈdiɾ ˈujɡuɾ]; born March 21, 1970) is a Turkish-American lawyer, businessman, columnist, journalist, activist and political commentator. Uygur is the main host and creator of The Young Turks (TYT), an American progressive political and social commentary program. Before beginning his career as a political commentator, he worked briefly as an associate attorney in Washington, D.C. and New York City. As a young man, Uygur supported social conservative views, opposing abortion, affirmative action and feminism in the United States. Over time his views changed, now identifying as a progressive.[3]

In addition to hosting The Young Turks, Uygur appeared on MSNBC as a political commentator. From January to June 2011, he hosted a weeknight commentary show on the network; he was replaced by Al Sharpton.[4] After leaving MSNBC, Uygur secured another weeknight commentary show on Current TV, which aired from December 5, 2011, to August 15, 2013.[5] From 2012 to 2013, he was the chief news officer at Current TV, succeeding Keith Olbermann.[6][7]

Early life, education, and career
Uygur was born in Istanbul, Turkey, and emigrated with his family when he was eight years old.[8] He spent his adolescence in East Brunswick, New Jersey, and graduated from East Brunswick High School. Uygur was raised in a secular Muslim household, but became more religious during college before becoming agnostic. He graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1992, where he majored in management[9] and was on the Student Activities Council representing the Turkish Students Association.[10] He then received a Juris Doctor degree from Columbia Law School[11] and worked as an associate attorney at the law firms of Drinker Biddle & Reath in Washington, D.C. and Hayes & Liebman in New York City.[12]

Uygur first appeared as a talk show host on a weekend radio show on WWRC in Washington, D.C. and on WRKO in Boston, Massachusetts. He later wrote for, produced, and appeared on the WAMI-TV news show, The Times in Miami, Florida, then started The Young Turks on Sirius Satellite Radio.[13]

Political views
In college and law school, Uygur espoused politically conservative views during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. He wrote a column in The Daily Pennsylvanian criticizing the University of Pennsylvania's practice of affirmative action.[9] He was pro-life on abortion, criticized feminism, and argued that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was treated unjustly during his Senate confirmation hearings.[14] Since then, he has repudiated these positions and is now ardently pro-choice.[15] He has also criticized organized religion as divisive and based on mythology.[16]

In 1991, Uygur wrote an article in The Daily Pennsylvanian in which he promoted Armenian Genocide denial.[17] He reiterated his position in a letter to the editor of Salon in 1999.[18] In a blog post in April 2016, he rescinded the statements. He went on to claim that he does not know enough today to comment on it.[19] As of 2017, his full acceptance of the term "genocide" has been indicated on the main TYT program: on September 6, he referred to the Armenian Genocide[20] while discussing the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, and on November 29, while discussing the in-court suicide of war criminal Slobodan Praljak, he referred to the Armenian genocide twice.[21] Cenk directly addressed the Armenian Genocide issue on May 13, 2019, with a segment in which he talks about his past denial, explaining the things he was taught as a Turkish child, and how wrong they were, and appealed to other Turks who were taught it was not a genocide to learn the facts and accept the Armenian Genocide for what it was.[22]

Uygur slowly transitioned away from the Republican Party and has said that the decision to invade Iraq was a "seminal moment" in that transition.[3] He is now a progressive.[23][24] On national security and civil liberties issues, Uygur has strongly opposed the practices begun under the Bush administration of indefinite detention, warrantless wiretapping and extraordinary rendition, and believes that waterboarding is an illegal torture technique. Uygur has been a strong critic of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the right-wing Israeli government, has stated that he advocates a two-state solution in the West Bank, and has repeatedly criticized the Israeli government for its failure to materialize.[25] He has also repeatedly criticized former Canadian Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.[26]

Uygur supported Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders for president in the 2016 election. Just before the general election, Uygur stated his intention to vote for the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton.

Uygur has been critic of Turkey's autocratic president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.[27]

On May 16, 2019, Uygur announced that we will make an announcement in Iowa regarding the 2020 election causing speculation that he will make a bid for the presidency.[28]

The Young Turks
Main article: The Young Turks

Uygur created the talk show The Young Turks with the goal of starting a liberal-leaning political and entertainment show.[6][29] It launched on the Sirius Satellite Radio network on February 14, 2002.[30] The Young Turks started a daily news video show on YouTube in 2015 and claims to have been the first.[31] Uygur regularly states that The Young Turks is the largest online news show in the world, and has claimed so since at least 2011.[32] It has amassed over 7.5 billion views on YouTube, and over 4 million subscribers.[33] Leveraging the strength of The Young Turks talk show, Uygur expanded it into a network of channels and shows, beginning with Pop trigger on July 5, 2007.[34] As a network, The Young Turks has amassed over 8 billion views and over 13 million subscribers across all the platforms which they stream.[35] Video of the show is streamed daily on its website and is available as a podcast.[36][37]

On September 20, 2011, Current TV announced that The Young Turks would launch a weeknight TV edition of the show at 7 p.m. EST (M–F) on the network beginning sometime in the fourth quarter of 2011. According to the show's website, the show was introduced as The Young Turks with Cenk Uygur to differentiate itself from the popular web series.[38] The show on Current TV ended on August 15, 2013, with the end of all live programming on Current TV.

On May 17, 2018, The Young Turks launched its own TV format 24 hour channel on YouTube TV which includes both live and prerecorded programming.[39]

MSNBC
On October 21, 2010, MSNBC hired Uygur as a contributor and substitute anchor for the network. On January 21, 2011, Uygur was made the host of the 6 p.m. Eastern slot on MSNBC as the anchor of a new prime time edition of MSNBC Live, after the network parted ways with Keith Olbermann, resulting in a rearrangement of the time slots of MSNBC's other prime time shows. Uygur filled the time slot vacated by Ed Schultz,[40][41] from late January through June 2011, earning first among people 18–34 in the second quarter. His contract was ended when he did not accept a lower profile weekend slot.[4] An MSNBC spokesperson expressed regret at Uygur's leaving.[42]

Uygur gave his side of the story on Democracy Now!, saying that MSNBC President Phil Griffin had called him into his office in April and told him that he had been talking to people in Washington and that they did not like Uygur's tone.[43] MSNBC responded by saying, "We did have numerous conversations with Cenk about his style, not substance."[44]

Wolf-PAC

Main article: Wolf-PAC
In late 2011, after seeing the momentum of Occupy Wall Street, Uygur decided to launch a long term project, a political action committee named Wolf-PAC. Wolf-PAC aims to lobby state legislators to pass resolutions calling for a Convention of the States under Article V of the US Constitution. Its slogan is "A super-PAC to end all super-PACs". The aim of the convention would be to pass an amendment to the United States Constitution that would end corporate personhood and publicly finance all elections in the United States.[45] As of 2017, five states have passed the resolution thus calling for such a convention, though not all states have used identical language in their convention call.[46]

Justice Democrats
On January 23, 2017, three days after the inauguration of President Donald Trump, Uygur co-founded the Justice Democrats.[47][48] The group seeks to steer the Democratic Party in the strongly progressive, social democratic or democratic socialist direction espoused by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. They do this by running progressive candidates in primaries against moderate and conservative Democrats[49] such as Joe Manchin,[50] Joe Crowley,[51] and Dianne Feinstein.[52]

Resignation
Uygur resigned from his position in Justice Democrats on December 22, 2017, after the discovery of blog posts he had written in the early 2000s, which were described as "disturbingly sexist and racist". The statement released by Justice Democrats read "We are deeply disturbed by recent news regarding Cenk Uygur and David Koller. Their language and content is horrifying and does not reflect our values at Justice Democrats".[53]

The next day, Uygur apologized in a video on The Young Turks channel on YouTube for the posts and said he had written them when he was a conservative, stating:

"Some of the stuff that I wrote was totally offensive, insensitive, ignorant [...] to anyone who read it, I certainly apologize because you were right to be offended. I was an immature guy trying to show how cool I was by being edgy and not politically correct. What I have learned through all these years is that political incorrectness may sound fun to young men like myself at the time, but not everybody sees it the same way. [...] You might see it a little differently if you looked at it from the perspective of a woman who has been harassed or assaulted. What we have been trying to do on this show since its conception is to learn to empathize with one another. And, look, it is not an easy process, and I have said a million times, the hardest thing in the world is to escape your own perspective, and I wish I could go back to the younger Cenk and explain that to him. If someone had written this today, I would harshly criticize them on air, and try to explain that to them. [...] For the people who read it and were offended, I ask for your forgiveness, and for all of you your understanding to some degree. I hope we continue to grow and spread empathy on the show."[54]

Personal life
Uygur was born and raised in a Muslim family, but is now a self-described atheist.[55][56][57][58] In 2010, along with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Uygur accepted the "Emperor Has No Clothes Award" from the Freedom From Religion Foundation and later the Humanist Media Award from the American Humanist Association.[59][60]

He is married to Wendy Lang, a marriage and family therapist, and they have two children.[61][62]

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Uygur in 2017
Born Cenk Kadir Uygur
March 21, 1970 (age 49)
Istanbul, Turkey
Residence West Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Citizenship Turkey
United States
Alma mater Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (BS)
Columbia Law School (JD)
Occupation Activist, columnist, entrepreneur, political pundit
Known for The Young Turks
Television MSNBC (2010–2011)
Current TV (2011–2013)
Political party Republican (before 2000)[1]
Independent (2000–2016)
Democratic (2016–present)[2]
Movement Progressivism
Spouse(s) Wendy Lang
Children 2
Awards The Humanist Media Award
Emperor Has No Clothes Award

Cenk Uygur: Twitter

Source




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