English
Հայերէն
Genocide Resolution Passes Through Committee (Updated)
WASHINGTON—On Thurs., March 4, the House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing on the Armenian Genocide Resolution–H.R. 252. The resolution passed by a vote of 23 to 22.
Armenian Genocide survivors attend the hearing.
The resolution will now be sent to the House of Representatives for a vote by the full chamber at a date to be set by the Speaker of the House.
In his introductory remarks, Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, underlined the undisputed fact of the Armenian Genocide, noted that the overwhelming majority of scholars affirm the fact of the genocide, and urged his colleagues for vote for it. He added, “It is now time for Turkey to acknowledge the reality of the Armenian Genocide.”
The passage of this resolution by the committee is a tribute to the hard work of the Armenian American community against substantial lobbying by the government of Turkey.
Turkey recalls ambassador
Turkey says it is recalling its ambassador to the U.S. for consultations following a resolution declaring the killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I as genocide, reported AP.
The move came minutes after the U.S. congressional panel approved the resolution Thursday.
A government statement said Ambassador Namik Tan was being recalled with immediate effect.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee endorsed the resolution with a 23-22 vote, even though the Obama Administration had urged Congress not to offend Turkey by approving it.
Statement by Hachikian on Committee passage
Below is a statement by ANCA Chairman Ken Hachikian on the vote.
A bi-partisan majority today rejected Turkey’s gag rule, setting the stage for Speaker Pelosi and the full U.S. House to properly commemorate the Armenian Genocide. The Committee’s message was simple yet powerful: Turkey doesn’t get a vote or a veto in the U.S. Congress.
As Americans of Armenian heritage, it holds great meaning to see our nation move one step closer to putting the painful lessons of the Armenian Genocide to work in helping to end the cycle of genocide, in Darfur and around the world.
A moral foreign policy has always been among our strongest assets and one of the greatest forces for good in the world. Despite Turkey’s last-minute threats and intimidation, Chairman Berman and the House Foreign Affairs Committee have shown that it’s always the right time to do the right thing.
63 Comments
Robert denialist Turk,
There are enough proofs from numerous sources about the veracity of Talaat’s documents, telegrams to the Syrian governor to exterminate any Armenian who finally set foot in Syria; despite the fact that they were all women and children, who walked the death marches without food nor water, and miraculously survived the death marches, half dead half alive and yet Talaat’s telegram to the Syrian governor distinctly ordered him to kill all Armenians (women and children), and because the Syrian governor didn’t obey Talaat’s orders he had to leave his post. There are numerous such documents by the then US Ambassador Morgenthau alarming the US State Department of Talaat’s systematic annihilations of the Armenians in Turkey. And as of late, a complete diary of Talaat was given away by his wife who systematically plotted the annihilation of the whole Armenian race. Btw; you turks don’t know anything else than to blame every which way on the Tashnags, you don’t know anything else but that.
Btw; Hitler and the Turks have a great deal in common, don’t they? Yes they do indeed. In fact, what Hitler said that if one tells a lie to the people long enough, they’ll eventually start to believe it! Applies exactly to the Turkish population in Turkey, including yourself as you and your people have been brainwashed by your government now for 95 years that Turkey is a peaceful, non-genocidal country and you suckers believe it.
Robert,
What Hitler said in regards to telling a lie long enough to people they’ll eventually start to believe it, it typically applies to the Turkish people in your country and yourself as well; because you people have been so very well brainwashed by your government that for 95 years you people believe that throughout 900 years of your history ever since you mongolian Turks charged in to our country have been peaceful non-genocidal people. What Hitler said it applies exactly to you all brainwashed Turkish people.
Mr Robert…
I feel sorry for you sir.. I feel sorry that your brain cells no longer have their own movements.. the way they brainwashed you is absolutely amazing.. WOW.. i applaud Turkish govt for doing a great job at it..
however, your obsession with Dashnaks and your statements that go back to them at every chance you get will not serve you justice.. why don’t you just drop it and admit that what you are saying sounds soooo ridiculeous that I don’t even want to write anything.. however, my fingers are just typing as if they want to rip your words apart and slap you out of you dream world..
YOU yourself just proved a HUGE point sir Robert.. and I quote… “Hilter once said that if one tells a lie to the people long enough, they will eventually start to believe it..” wow.. what a clear cut statement about Turkey and its people…perfectly describes you Robert and your govt.. Thank you for bringing that out to light.. Appreciate it…:) ENOUGH SAID…..
Have a nice evening Sir…
G
I have one book written by a Turkish historian which footnotes an order to exterminate the Armenians signed by a German high command. Robert, you are telling the lies over and over again. Why, I don’t know. I have a lot of books; probably some or many of them are available in Turkish libraries and bookstores. One of the writers in Hurriyet said for instance Toynbee’s history is readily available. He said books are available on this topic in Turkey which tell the truth, but also he doesn’t feel that he has to be held responsible for the genocide because he didn’t do it. I agree with him. The younger Turks who are not responsible for it should not be held responsible. Perhaps, that is why there is more freedom to talk about this subject in Turkey. The perpetrators of the genocide are dead; perhaps their crimes were being hidden by Turkey since many of them served in the govt. Now that the criminals are dead, there is no longer a reason not to talk about the genocide, about what happened; there is no reason to have article 301, a penal code punishing people for speaking about it. After the genocide, the govt. was ready to make restitutions to the Armenians, but that govt. fell and Ataturk’s took over. Maybe there were too many guilty people in Ataturk’s govt. and they kept their guilt a secret. But now all those people are dead; there is no reason to protect people who are no longer alive. The new generation is not guilty and should be able to speak about the Armenians. Therefore, all Turkey’s gag orders, bribing of our politicians and your posts are no longer necessary; they are sure to be a relic of the past, more so as time goes on.
Gayane,
Since my comments that good people here have found fit to print drive you up the wall give you violent thoughts, here are some alternatives, in fact, two very distinguished Armenian leaders who were in the middle of it all and are as authoritative as anyone else on the topic.
Hovannes Katchznouni was the first prime minister of Republic of Armenia. He was a prominent Dashnak leader. His manifesto he presented in the Dashnak congress in 1923 is an excellent summary of the state of the affairs of Armenians and also a good insiders view of Armenian efforts going back decades to undermine and participate in the destruction of the Ottoman Empire, homeland of so many Armenians. Here are the parts I would like you to really absorb:
“It would be useless to argue today whether our bands of volunteers should have entered the field or not. Historical events have their irrefutable logic. In the Fall of 1914 Armenian volunteer bands organized themselves and fought against the Turks because they could not refrain themselves from organizing and refrain themselves from fighting. This was in an inevitable result of a psychology on which the Armenian people had nourished itself during an entire generation: that mentality should have found its expression, and did so. And it was not the A.R.F. that would stop the movement even if it wished to do so. It was able to utilize the existing conditions, give effect and issue to the accumulated desires, hopes and frenzy, organize the ready forces – it had that much ability and authority. But to go against the current and push forward its own plan – it was unfit, especially unfit for one particular reason: instinct but weak in comprehension.”
Also:
“The Winter of 1914 and the Spring of 1915 were the periods of greatest enthusiasm and hope for all the Armenians in the Caucasus, including, of course, the Dashnagtzoutiun. We had no doubt that the war would end with the complete victory of the Allies; Turkey would be defeated and dismembered, and its Armenian population would at last be liberated. We had embraced Russia whole-heartedly without any compunction. Without any positive basis of fact we believed that the Tzarist government would grant us a more-or-less broad self-government in the Caucasus and in the Armenian vilayets liberated from Turkey as a reward for our loyalty, our efforts and assistance. We had created a dense atmosphere of illusion in our minds. We had implanted our own desires into the minds of others; we had lost our sense of reality and were carried away with our dreams.”
Also here is the letter of one of the prominent leaders of the Armenians, Bogos Nubar Pasa, an Ottoman citizen, sent to the Allies and newspapers in the West, to make a case for inclusion in the Lausanne Conference, on the opposite side of the Ottoman delegates, among the Western powers trying to exctract thast few concessions from the new Turkish Republic:
The name of Armenia is not on the list of the nations admitted to the Peace Conference. Our sorrow and our disappointment are deep beyond expression. Armenians naturally expected their demand for admission to the Conference to be conceded, after all they had done for the common cause. The unspeakable sufferings and the dreadful losses that have befallen the Armenians by reason of their faithfulness to the allies are now fully known. But I must emphasize the fact, unhappily known to few, that ever since the beginning of the war the Armenians fought by the side of the Allies on all fronts. Adding our losses in the field to the greater losses through massacres and deportations, we find that over a million out of a total Armenian population of four million and a half have lost their lives in and through the war. Armenia’s tribute to death is thus undoubtedly heavier in proportion than that of any other belligerent nation. For the Armenians have been belligerents de facto, since they indignantly refused to side with Turkey. Our volunteers fought in the French ‘Legion Etrangere’ and covered themselves with glory. In the Legion d’Orient they numbered over 5,000, and made up more than half the French contingent in Syria and Palestine, which took part in the decisive victory of General Allenby. In the Caucasus, without mentioning the 150,000 Armenians in the Russian armies, about 50,000 Armenian volunteers under Andranik, Nazarbekoff, and others not only fought for four years for the cause of the Entente, but after the breakdown of Russia they were the only forces in the Caucasus to resist the advance of the Turks, whom they held in check until the armistice was signed
The name of Armenia is not on the list of the nations admitted to the Peace Conference. Our sorrow and our disappointment are deep beyond expression. Armenians naturally expected their demand for admission to the Conference to be conceded, after all they had done for the common cause. The unspeakable sufferings and the dreadful losses that have befallen the Armenians by reason of their faithfulness to the allies are now fully known. But I must emphasize the fact, unhappily known to few, that ever since the beginning of the war the Armenians fought by the side of the Allies on all fronts. Adding our losses in the field to the greater losses through massacres and deportations, we find that over a million out of a total Armenian population of four million and a half have lost their lives in and through the war. Armenia’s tribute to death is thus undoubtedly heavier in proportion than that of any other belligerent nation. For the Armenians have been belligerents de facto, since they indignantly refused to side with Turkey. Our volunteers fought in the French ‘Legion Etrangere’ and covered themselves with glory. In the Legion d’Orient they numbered over 5,000, and made up more than half the French contingent in Syria and Palestine, which took part in the decisive victory of General Allenby.
In the Caucasus, without mentioning the 150,000 Armenians in the Russian armies, about 50,000 Armenian volunteers under Andranik, Nazarbekoff, and others not only fought for four years for the cause of the Entente, but after the breakdown of Russia they were the only forces in the Caucasus to resist the advance of the Turks, whom they held in check until the armistice was signed”
Is there anything to add to the above? Most of these people were born and raised Ottoman citizens, they held high posts in the Ottoman government and state! Given the massive and mortal threat Armenians presented, it is even commendable and remarkable how tolerant and accomodating the Ottoman policies were. I am sure very little of this will penetrate. Facts are no match to the power of myths.
Nairian,
You seem to have failed to see the irony and contradictions in your grandafathers service as an officier in the Ottoman army while supposedly Turks, driven mad by extreme nationalism, were trying to exterminate their Armenian citizens. Even a bigger contradiction is of course the fact that Armenians were among the leaders and founders of that dreaded and Armenian-hating CUP! Obviously two sets of facts can not be true at the same time. My grandfather had a Greek camp de aide who saved his life and a Greek doctor in his unit. This did not prevent what followed in 1919-1923. There were of course patriotic Armenians who resented enemy boots on their soil, and they were dealt with rather harshly. Many Armenians who were civil servants or people of means who did not support the Dashnak cause were brutally assasinated. My grandfather witnessed a child assasin take out a partizan leader who was seeking his protection, right in frontt of him – reminds one of the more recent tactics of another fanatical group. He saw first hand the handywork of the fedayi, now all credited goes to the Turks of course. He was astonished to find, based on a tip, a huge cache of weapons in a hidden basement in Akdamar Church, automatic pistols that even as a professional soldier he had never seen before. Armenians by that time had established even underground war academies, they could field troops which fought pitched battles with Ottoman Army, and were instrumental in the fall and capture of major cities in the East, Van as you mentioned, and Bitlis, Mus, Erzurum, Erzincan, etc. not to mention brutal killing of most of their Muslim populations, including my granfather’s family. Do not take my word, check into any of your propaganda books and you will see pictures of well armed fedayi all over the place. They did a lot more than defend themselves having prepared for this battle for decades since the Berlin Treaty. Read my earlier post. Get informed. It is hillarious that you urge me to get educated on the topic while repeating the farce of Talat’s orders and myth of 1.5M dead Armenians. While you are at it, why not quote Hitler too!
Karekin
I believe you underestimate the revolutionary and activist aspect of the Dashnak movement. It does not seem right to portray it as a merely defensive movement. This also seems to be reflected in central Armenian historiography, like Nalbandian’s history of the Armenian nationalist movement, and in Anaide Ter Minassian’s history which even contains a whole chapter named the Bulgarian Way. That is, the strategy to provoke Muslim reprisals and count on the interventions of the powers, like in Bulgaria. The speech of Katchaznouni of course also testifies to this.
But as I have said earlier it is in a way meaningless to make a dichotomy between defensive and offensive strategies. The Dashnaks worked to promote the interests of Armenians, and this might mean to defend local communties but on the other hand to seize the moment as revolutionaries and rebel against the Ottoman State. I believe one should not be moralistic about this. The Dashnaks planned for rebellion like so many peoples who lived as minorities or with foreign masters. They also worked for self-defence. One can hardly blame them from a moral point of view. There is nothing dishonorable in rebelling. But sometimes it is a dangerous game. But dont portray rebels as if they were determined by events and had no choice. It is strange to portray the Ottoman Armenians as if they simply were peaceful peasants and merchants who for some strange reason became victims of genocide.
Murat,
There is nothing that it can derail from the truth or contradictory when we speak about a people’s history. My grandfather for 2 years was in the Turkish academy before he was sent to the front. As a matter of fact he didn’t know the facts about the systematic annihilation of all Armenians in the Turkish empire. He learned it later that all his 35 member family were all either killed on the spot and the women had to walk the death marches. From his whole family only his one younger brother and his sister survived. Thus including himself, 32 members were killed by the Turkish government’s orders. On my father’s side my father was the only survivor in his entire and extensive family. On my maternal grandmother’s side in Smyrna when Cemal Ataturk burned Smyrna, her entire 150 member family were all slaughtered in cold blood. Only 5 of them surved out of 150 members. So yes, these are facts and they are the history of my own family, let alone my entire Armenian nation when more than 1.5 Million of them were annihilated brutally and atrociously. For your information the A.R.F. were not able to do practically nothing at all in Erzeroum or Erzingan when my father recalls that the Armenians after walking the death marches from Erzeroum, they were taken a little further from the city of Kharpert and they were all slaughtered first then thrown into the ditches. My own father saw all these Armenian masses of people coming into town then being taken away. Mr. Davis from the United States who was in Kharpert at the time went and saw how all the Armenians were being slaughtered and where they were being thrown. Davis has recorded all this and his manuscripts still exist.
In Erzencun, you can read what happened to the poor Armenian people in there by reading Soghomon Tehlirian’s memoirs when he defended himself in-front of a jury in Germany. His whole family were slaughtered right in-front of his eyes and he was miraculously saved as he was brutally knocked down and thought to be dead under his family’s corpses. Van was the only city that the ARF’s Fedayis were able to save the people from being slaughtered by the Turkish government, because the ARF was able to arm the people and train them before the Genocide.
Murat,
The truth and facts of our sad history are anything but myths. They are not myths that the Turkish government headed by Talaat Pasha systematically gave the orders to annihilate every Armenian that lived in Turkey in 1915. All you have to do is to educate yourself and speak the truth about it, but you won’t learn this from your denyalist Turkish government of today, there is the 301 Rule in Turkey that is against Turkishness to utter about the Armenian Genocide. Why is that? I know for one thing, because they are afraid that when the whole world passes the Armenian Genocide Resolution they’ll be faced with their country’s ugly truth of Genocide against their harmless citizens who were brutally, atrociously and barbarically slaughtered in cold blood from 1915 – 1923. Isn’t that why the Armenian Genocide preoccupies Turkey so much that they have to give the US congressmen millions of dollars every year to gag them and to vote against the passing of the Genocide Resolution? Face the facts, the truth will set you and your country Turkey free!
To: Nairian
We all have similar family history…. alot in common! My grandfather lost his first wife in Kayseri in 1917? 1918? Grandpa manged to go to Cypus & then to Egypt, His only son survived and later came to Alexandria with grandpa’s sister.Thank you for telling the truth to people who have no sense to read for themselves!
Ragnar,
The case of Ain Wardo and other villages and towns of Tur Abdin shows that it was not merely a case of rebellion and response. I recommend David Gaunt’s book, ‘Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia During World War I’. I would also recommend research on Raphael Lemkin, creator of the legal term ‘genocide’.
Be Well,
Bob Griffin
Bob Griffin,
no, obviously it was not merely a case of a reaction to a rebellion. My departure was from the following words by Karekin:
quote
For anyone, anywhere to assert that minority Anatolian Armenians – most of whom were forced into walking, barely clothed and starving, on dusty roads to Syria, could have decimated the vastly superior armed forces of the Ottoman army of Kurdish bandoleers is just ridiculous. The myth of an Armenian military capable of doing anything is beyond crazy.
Unquote
To my mind this means belittling the role of the Armenian revolutionary movement. To portray those who point to the importance of the revolutionary movement as implying that the deportees could fight the ottoman army is absurd. And neither could the ARF alone fight the Ottoman army. No, the threat was from Armenian guerilla cooperating with the Russian army. This made the Armenians – as guerillas and as civilian population providing sustenance for the Russians – a very dangerous element in the picture in early spring 1915. For me it is strange to deny this.
From Gaunt’s book and many other sources it is evident that many Armenians and other Christians who never rebelled were targeted both for deportation and for massacre. The Armenians were mainly targeted on suspicion, I believe. There were many killers around, like Dr. Reshid. What to my mind is less evident is that this was the result of an explicit policy emerging in a consistent way from the top echelons of the state. possibly it was so, possibly not.
Be well
Ragnar Naess
German Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide: A Review of the Historical Evidence of German Complicity, by Vahakn N. Dadrian, Cambridge, Mass.: Blue Crane Books, 1996. Pp. 304.
“Vahakn N. Dadrian, an internationally well-known scholar on the Armenian genocide wrote an exceedingly important and scholarly book, not directly related to the issue of his long life interest of Armenian Genocide, but on the German Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide. This book is a review of the historical evidence of German complicity in the Armenian genocide. Indeed, Hitler once said “who remembers the Armenians?” in contemplating the Jewish holocaust. The focus of the present study is an examination of the role that German officials (both military and civilian) played in the Armenian genocide by Turkey, then an ally of Germany during World War I.”
This was written for German readers. A review of the book is in findarticles.com