Johnny Turks Media Watch

US votes on Armenian genocide !

RECENT ARTICLES AFTER THE 23-22 VOTE


Disrespectful Propaganda By ANCA
Saturday, 06 March 2010 15:14

Getting more unabashed with the adoption of so called Armenian genocide resolution in the Foreign Affairs Committee of U.S. House of Representatives, Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) has published a picture, in which Turkish flag is wrapped on the mouth of the statue of liberty.
Publishing an announcement titled "End Turkey's Gag Rule", one of the major lobbying organizations of Armenian diaspora, ANCA wrote that a foreign country has placed gag-rule on the nation's recognition of so called Armenian genocide. The announcement reads, "Using threats and intimidation to block legislation that simply calls upon us all to apply the lessons of this atrocity to help prevent future crimes against humanity."

Going further with baseless claims, ANCA claimed that Turkey outlaws discussion of Armenian allegations, forgetting that Turkey calls Armenia to open archives and establish a joint committee of historians to make researches on 1915 incidents but this initiative cannot be realized because Armenia drags feet. As it claims that Turkey wants to export its "restrictions" to the United States, ANCA should be reminded that a group of intellectuals in Turkey went further than discussing the issue and apologized to Armenians in their behalf. On the other hand, we are sure that Armenian diaspora in United States would love to see a resolution (like the one that France adopted due to the Armenian diaspora's gag-rule in the country) that penalizes denial of Armenian allegations related to 1915 incidents, if they could.

Stating that Turkey puts pressure on the U.S. lawmakers and restricts the free speech of US, ANCA published a picture that Turkish flag is wrapped on the mouth of the statue of liberty. Turkishny.com calls ANCA to be respectful to the Turkish flag and to immediately remove the picture in which our national symbol is used as a propaganda material.


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WALL STREET JOURNAL

REVIEW & OUTLOOK
MARCH 5, 2010
But Who Needs Allies?
"Congress poisons U.S.-Turkey relations."

The diplomats at the House Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday
adopted a view on the urgent matter of world events that
transpired 95 years ago. By a 23-22 margin, the committee
declared that the mass deportations and serial massacres of
Armenians by Ottoman forces during World War I ought to be
called a genocide. The vote has sparked a full-blown diplomatic
spat with Turkey—with Ankara recalling its ambassador to
Washington—but that's really no big deal, says Foreign Affairs
Chairman Howard Berman (D., Calif.).

So much for the new era of U.S. appreciation for the
sensitivities and cultural nuances of America's allies. Instead,
Mr. Berman -- who is often sensible -- airily suggested that the Turks
should not allow their relations with the U.S. "to get
sidetracked by a nonbinding resolution passed by the House of
Representatives." At least the Bush Administration was prepared
to antagonize allies only on issues that really mattered.

It was left to the losing side in the House vote to point out,
as Indiana Republican Mike Pence did, that now is probably not
the best time to antagonize Ankara. Turkey is one of the few
NATO allies that has substantially increased its troop presence
in Afghanistan, and has responsibility for security in Kabul.
Turkey also has an important influence over events in Iraq,
which this weekend holds national elections that will affect the
pace and ease of American withdrawal.

The House vote's most baleful effects may be on Turkey's
relations with Armenia itself. In October, the two countries
signed a historic agreement to normalize relations and open
their common border. The treaty, now before the parliaments of
both countries, contains provisions to establish "an impartial
scientific examination of the historical records and archives."
How is it that what's good enough for the Armenian government
fails to pass muster with the U.S. Congress?

If the Members were really concerned about Turkey's human-rights
record, they might concern themselves instead with what the
Turkish government is doing in the present, which Turkish
analyst Soner Cagaptay describes in a nearby op-ed. As for
judgments upon the distant past, we'll look for truth in the
findings of historians and not grandstanding Congressional
resolutions.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A20

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EURASIA INSIGHT TURKEY: ANKARA MULLS RESPONSE AFTER US CONGRESSIONAL VOTE ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Yigal Schleifer 3/05/10

Turkey watchers in Washington must have been feeling a sense of déjà vu after the March 4 passage by a congressional committee of a resolution recognizing the mass killing of Armenians during World War I as genocide.

The same House Foreign Affairs Committee adopted a similar resolution in 2007, leading Turkey to recall its ambassador to Washington and warn of a serious rupture in relations with the United States. A last-minute intervention by the Bush administration kept the resolution from coming up for a vote in the full House of Representatives. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Post-vote developments this time around are playing out in much the same way as in 2007. Ankara has again recalled its ambassador and has said its ties with Washington could be severely damaged, if the resolution continues on its way to a full vote.
[For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

"[For] a whole year Washington and Ankara are getting along very well, but come March storm clouds start forming," political analyst Mehmet Ali Birand wrote in his March 5 column in the English-language Hurriyet Daily News. "We are watching the same movie over and over again. The only difference is that with each passing year the intensity increases."

This year, the saga supposedly had a different plotline. The historic reconciliation framework that Turkey and Armenia signed last October was widely thought to take the legs out from under any effort to tar Turkey with the genocide label. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

But analysts say a stalled reconciliation process, along with Turkey’s deep emotional reaction to the genocide issue, have, once again, created a potentially damaging situation for Turkish-US relations. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

"We would not have been here, if the protocols had gone forward," says Hugh Pope, Turkey analyst with the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based policy and advocacy group. "Turkey’s insisting on the conditionality, which was not part of the protocols, has led us to where we are today." Pope was referring to a government demand that Turkish ratification of the reconciliation accords was contingent on movement on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, a region of Azerbaijan occupied by Armenian forces.

The signing of the accords was initially hailed in Turkey as an important breakthrough. But Ankara seemed to put the brakes on the process after the protocols whipped up strong domestic opposition, as well as criticism from Azerbaijan, a traditional Turkish ally that is also a key component in Ankara’s energy policy. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].
"Obviously there was an attempt by the Turkish authorities to try something else [other] than what they were doing for the last 95 years, and it failed," says Cengiz Aktar, director of the European Studies Department at Istanbul’s Bahcesehir University.

Now faced with another genocide resolution in Washington, Turkey appears to have returned to the same strategy that it relied on in previous years, one informed by a mix of deep emotional responses and political concerns. "It’s emotional because Turks are very much enraged to be portrayed as grandsons of people who committed genocide, especially when it happened during a time when tumultuous things were happing all over," says Sinan Ulgen, Chairman of the Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies (EDAM), an Istanbul think tank.

"The second aspect [of the Turkish reaction] is the political and legal question; namely if such a bill is adopted in congress, that might lead to a situation where Turkey might find itself as a defendant in a number of legal cases in the United States, which is something Turkey doesn’t want to find itself in," Ulgen added.

One of the important questions now is how far is Ankara willing to take things if the resolution goes to the House for a full vote -- something that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has yet to decide on.
Brad Sherman, a Democrat from California, called Turkey a "paper tiger" and noted that, although France passed a resolution recognizing the genocide in 2001, trade between those two countries has since flourished.

Bahcesehir’s Aktar says he also believes Turkey’s threats are a "bluff." But Ulgen predicted that "all bets are off" if Congress actually adopts the resolution, noting that the genocide issue is "an area where identity and emotion are in a sense superseding pure interests."
"Turkey will certainly feel impelled to take retaliatory action against the United States," Ulgen said. He went on to suggest that retaliation could "take the form of non-cooperation in terms of Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and possibly leading to restrictions on the use of strategic assets, like the Incirlik air base - areas where there is important cooperation."

Another important question is just what happens to the stalled Turkey-Armenia reconciliation process?

"We are determined to press ahead with normalization of relations with Armenia," Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on March 5 during a news conference in Ankara.
But analysts believe the fragile protocols may become a victim of political maneuvering in Washington over the genocide issue. "[Passing the resolution is] a bad idea. Even if it’s done with best intentions by the congressmen, what it will do is hand the process back to the nationalists on both the Turkish and Armenian sides," says the ICG’s Pope.

Added Aktar: "Yesterday’s vote is the last nail in the coffin of these protocols, at least for the time being. I can’t imagine a Turkish government ratifying the protocols right now, even if the Armenian government unilaterally ratifies them."

Posted March 5, 2010 © Eurasianet
http://www.eurasianet.org

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US vote on Armenian genocide angers Turkey
VALENTINA POP
05.03.2010 @ 10:45 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – Ankara on Thursday (4 march) recalled its ambassador from Washington in protest over a resolution passed by US lawmakers recognising the Armenian genocide in 1915.

The foreign affairs committee in the US Congress narrowly passed a non-binding resolution condemning as "genocide" the First World War killings of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman empire.

Turkey strongly rejects the term genocide to describe the mass killings of Armenians back in 1915



Ankara reacted immediately by withdrawing its ambassador from Washington. Turkey rejects the genocide label and argues that 300,000 to 500,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died when Christian Armenians took up arms against their Ottoman rulers and sided with invading Russian troops.

"We condemn this draft resolution, accusing the Turkish nation with a crime that it has not committed," a statement from the Turkish government read.

The government also warned that the move may jeopardise a timid revival of Turkish-Armenian relations, which was strongly supported and mediated by the US and praised by the EU in its last monitoring report.

The agreement signed last year is still pending the approval of the parliaments in Ankara and Erevan.

"Turkey plays a key role in regional security and the promotion of dialogue between civilisations. Significant diplomatic efforts to normalise relations with Armenia were made, resulting in the signature of protocols for the normalisation of relations in October 2009. It is important that these protocols are swiftly ratified by both countries," the commission report reads.

The rapprochement was one of the few positive developments noted by Brussels in the last year. Turkey is moving toward EU requirements for membership slowly, after having started negotiations in 2005. Relations with its neighbours are "key" to its progress said the EU commission.

EU mediation efforts have also been deployed in a frozen conflict involving ethnic Armenians in Turkey's neighbouring country and strong ally, Azerbaijan. The enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh is still controlled by Armenia, after a brief war in the early 1990s, which was backed by Russia. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan are part of the EU's so-called Eastern Partnership aimed at boosting ties with post-Soviet countries.

U-turn on Armenian genocide

The US resolution, which was approved with 23 to 22 votes, calls on President Barack Obama to recognise the "genocide" in his presidential statement marking the Armenian remembrance day on 24 April.

The Obama administration had warned the congress against adopting such a resolution, which may upset its relations with Turkey, a key Nato ally of strategic importance for the US in the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Such approach marks something of a u-turn from Mr Obama's pledges during the campaign trail leading to his election in 2008, when he repeatedly said that "America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian genocide."

Last year, during a common press conference with his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul, Mr Obama carefully avoided the term "genocide" and only referred to a "difficult and tragic history," saying that it was up to historians to decide the terminology.

French parallel

A similar resolution was passed by EU member France, which is very sceptical of Turkey's membership bid to the bloc, as well as Canada.

Meanwhile, a French insurance company, Axa, is said to have paid compensation to thousands descendants of Armenians massacred in World War I based on life insurance policies taken at the time.
Hilda Tchoboian, the head of an Armenian association in the French city of Lyon, told AFP that Axa had agreed to pay nearly 1,000 Armenian, French and American families, and had started sending cheques of about €8,000 each.

Axa is the second insurance company to pay compensation to descendants of massacred Armenians. US company New York Life agreed in 2005 to pay €8.8 million euros to victims' heirs.


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Leylekian: Armenian Genocide Denial: The Turkish Vietnam
By Laurent Leylekian


Once again, Turkish diplomacy is facing a dead-end. Once again, they thought they could succeed by throwing the Armenian Genocide into oblivion with the notorious protocols process. But their own inconsistency and lack of sincerity prevented them from blocking—through the final ratification of these protocols—the course of genocide recognition and the issue of what Turkish-occupied Western Armenian territories.

Thus, once again, platoons of Turkish diplomats will have to go to Washington, D.C., Stockholm, Switzerland, or elsewhere to try to prevent new resolutions, new momentum, new TV broadcasts, or any kind of new genocide-related initiative somewhere in the world.
Turkey is sending its massive PR artillery with the same lack of discernment with which the U.S. used its B52s in Vietnam. Through huge napalm-like injections of money, through nauseous orange agent-like corporate lobbying, through special operations and despicable briberies, they have generally succeeded in temporarily putting out the fire. But as soon as a blaze is supposed to be cooled down, another one appears somewhere else.

Italic text is (of course) the lyrics of “The End”
–
The Doors.

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I’ll never look into your eyes…again

And the brave Turkish diplomats are more and more in despair on the diplomatic front. Year after year, young inexperienced envoys are sent by Turkey to the front—a front of disenchantment Turkey has created for itself—to fight for a cause they don’t share nor care about. They sometimes win certain rearguard battles with the help of their superior diplomatic and political equipment. But it is becoming harder and harder for them to win the hearts and minds of the people they intend to free from “genocide allegations.”

Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need…of some…stranger’s hand
In a…desperate land
Lost in a Roman…wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah
And increasingly, they can see the contempt in their interlocutors’ eyes. And more and more often, Papa Erdogan has to be sent here or there, as a Bell “Huey” helicopter, to save doomed squadrons of private Mehmets from ambush. And actually, Huey Erdogan often succeeds but it doesn’t change the fact that those Turkish commandos who are supposed to bear the denial gospel are less convinced than the ones they are supposed to convince.


And they bitterly realize that without any money, without uniform, without counting on blackmail, but with sincere commitment and with the incomparable weight of Truth and Morality—like a rice bowl they are fed daily—the Hay-Minh from Armenia and the Hay-Congs from the Armenian Diaspora are far more credible. That their special operations trying to split the Western Hay-Congs from the Eastern Hay-Minh is totally failing.
There’s danger on the edge of town
Ride the King’s highway, baby
Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway west, baby
Ride the snake, ride the snake
To the lake, the ancient lake, baby
The snake is long, seven miles
Ride the snake…he’s old, and his skin is cold

And some young Turkish citizens who were supposed to be “good patriots” are now wondering why they have to support hatred ideologies. Why they have to affirm with such suspicious insistence that they are “truly Turks” and hate Armenians. Why they have to use the word “Agri” instead of “Ararat.”

Why some of their old grand-aunts sometimes seem so sad and prudishly look away when Armenians are mentioned.

And why they start feeling some sympathy for Hrant Dink, for Armenians, for Assyrians, for Alevis.
The west is the best
The west is the best
Get here, and we’ll do the rest
The blue bus is callin’ us
The blue bus is callin’ us
Driver, where you taken’ us

And polls are now showing that more and more Turkish citizens are fed up with this insane denial policy and would like their country to be normal, to be democratic, to be open, to be hate-less, to be Susurluk and Kizil Elma and Ergenekon and Bozkurt-less, while their political leaders keep on burning millions of dollars. But now, even some of these leaders are wretchedly looking for unlikely B-plans. Today, after so many years of useless denial, they can’t confess that their state ideology is based on heinous lies.

The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived, and…then he
Paid a visit to his brother, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door…and he looked inside
Father, yes son, I want to kill you
Mother…I want to…f*** you
C’mon baby, take a chance with us
C’mon baby, take a chance with us
C’mon baby, take a chance with us
And meet me at the back of the blue bus
Doin’ a blue rock
On a blue bus
Doin’ a blue rock
C’mon, yeah
And the mask of respectability is now falling apart. Turkey’s leaders still try to appear as honest brokers in the Caucasus, in the Middle East, with Iran. But with their own rogue reputation, with their country’s poor record, and with their inability to put an end to the cycle of violence and impunity, they are simply failing. They cannot even appear as honest brokers for their own Turkish society, a society that is increasingly shaken by riots, violence, and rumors of plots, of conspiracies, of “balyoz” plans.
Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill
This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
And the time is probably not so far away when, after countless Hué, Khe Sanh, and Tet offensives, ultimately Turkish “Hueys” will have to evacuate their left-behind credibility from the rooftops of ideological embassies—surrounded by Hay-Congs, Hay-Minhs, and allied genocide recognitions, motions, calls, demonstrations, and sittings—to carriers overcrowded with genocide deniers, retired ambassadors, crooks and crooked lobbyists, losers, and wheeler-dealers.
It hurts to set you free
But you’ll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die
This is the end

And the time is probably not so far either, when Turkey will collapse as did other people’s prison houses, under the unbearable weight of its own contradictions between what it ought to be and what it is, under the intolerable curse of hate against anyone and everyone, against others and itself, under the insupportable actuality of a genocide and of its denial. And this will be the end.
Laurent Leylekian is the editor of the biweekly France-Arménie(www.france-armenie.net). From 2001 to December 2009, he was the executivedirector of the European Armenian Federation for Justice and Democracy(www.eafjd.eu). He is married, with two children. The author thanks Jirair Momjian for copyediting the article.


MAXIME’S COMMENT:

Laurent Leylekian is a mad, sick, ill person; I believe that he is worse than Harout Sassounian himself. I will sue him for defamation and interference in a court case, because he wrote in January of this year that my complaint is “the spearhead of denialist offensive in France”. If can find one Turkish association with one brain in France, he will be sued also for racist defamation and provocation to racial hate. He wrote an article so vitriolic about Turks, in October 2009, that by comparison, Jean-Marie Le Pen seems to be the president of Amnesty International for France. He asserted that the whole Turkish nation of today is “as guilty as Cain” (sic).

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JEWISH-ARMENIAN COALITION LAUNCHES ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RECOGNITION EFFORT

By Laura Boghosian and Howard Jaffe, Guest Commentary
Watertown TAB & Press

March 4 2010
MA
WATERTOWN — In 2007, Massachusetts residents learned that the
Anti-Defamation League was denying the Armenian Genocide and lobbying
for the Turkish government to prevent Congressional recognition of
this crime against humanity. Fourteen communities, led by Watertown,
as well as the Massachusetts Municipal Association, subsequently
withdrew from the ADL’s No Place for Hate program in protest.

Many in the Jewish community were shocked that the ADL and other
national Jewish organizations would actively work to deny another
people’s genocide. Members of Lexington’s Temple Isaiah and Boston’s
Temple Israel decided to act, and with Boston-area Armenians, formed
the Coalition to Recognize the Armenian Genocide.