Garo Ghazarian, chairman of the Armenian Bar Association and co-chair of the Armenian Genocide Centennial Commemoration Committee of Western U.S., wrote the following in response to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s statement on the 99th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide:
The statement by Mr. Erdogan is woefully inadequate. It is nothing other than a baseless denial, yet again, albeit rephrased.
First, I suggest Mr. Erdogan reviews the elements of the corpus delicti of the crime as defined by Article 2 of the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Next, I suggest Erdogan evaluates the Turkish government’s policy of extermination of the Armenian Nation throughout all the provinces. Following the same pattern, prominent Armenians were arrested and on the pretext of transferring them to another location, were killed on the side of the road, then, it was the men’s turn, followed by the women and children.
Perhaps Mr. Erdogan can explain how the Turkish plan was anything other than an intentional act to exterminate the Armenian nation.
Specifically, acts such as the destruction of the Armenian male population; acts such as the tortures Armenians were subjected to during the Armenian Genocide; acts such as skinning Armenians alive or having their skin torn off by tongs or skewers; burning Armenians alive, treating Armenian clergy with particular severity; and killing Armenian priests through brutal tortures, by tearing out their beards, blinding their eyes, and cutting off their tongues and noses. Perhaps he can explain all possible means and instruments which were used in killing the Armenians: rifles, bayonets, swords, knives, axes, pitchforks, sickles, spades, ropes, and stones.
All this, in addition to having the Armenians thrown into pits, drowned in rivers, burned, and buried alive, expose the deliberate intention and perpetuation of the Armenian Genocide by his ancestors!
In the face of all indisputable historical and documented facts, Erdogan’s remarks today remind us of the Armenian Proverb: “even a cooked hen would laugh”—(meaning: his statement is ridiculous).
The statement is a remark by a wolf disguised as sheep, in a desperate effort to appear to be sensitive, all the while being insensitive, insulting, patently dishonest, and morally bereft.
As we enter the 100th year of the Turkish Regime’s denialist policy, Erdogan’s remarks are not fooling the international community.
As for us Armenians, they serve to empower us to press ahead, to continue to remember, to remind the world, and to demand and strive for Justice for our Grandparents, the victims of the Armenian Genocide.
Just like the Armenian Proverb aptly states: “the sun won’t stay behind the cloud,” so too, the truth of the Armenian Genocide, despite all efforts to deny it by Turkey.
Erdogan and Turkey should try to pull their heads from the sand and face the truth, if they can muster the intestinal fortitude to abide by the universal moral compass.
We shall never forget. What our minds know, our hearts will forever draw from, and we will pass it on to our children and our grandchildren for eternity.
We remain resolute to seek and achieve our objectives:
Recognition, Restitution, Reparations, and Respect for the memory of the Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide at the hands of Genocidal Turkey 99 years ago.
Garo Ghazarian
Chairman, Armenian Bar Association
Co-Chair, Armenian Genocide Centennial Commemoration Committee of Western U.S.
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Excellent touche! I got a note from a sympathetic non-Armenian friend of mine, happy that the Turkish prime minister had finally said the right thing. I have given her an explanation of why she misread his statement; she didn’t recognize it as denial. So she needed to hear from me on that. Thanks for this great rebuttal — I’m sending it along to my friend, too!
It is quite interesting that so many (as you say, Diane, non-Armenians) have the impression that Erdogan and, by extension, Turkey has ‘acknowledged’ the Armenian Genocide based on the Prime Minister’s vague and feeble lip sync. Erdogan has said and uttered so many meaningless and, frequently, comic and off-planet statements over the last few months, how is it that he seems so credible to so many, I wonder? In a historical context, Hitler was just as credible in his time. The sheep followed their shepherd . . . . ..
It is all strategically calculated to attempt to throw dust in our eyes or others… to distract and divert and disarm intellectually and to create a whole different framework.. It is stating that ‘the lie is the truth and the truth is a lie’.. Let us not be fooled. “Be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” – Matt. 10:16 .. The war of Vartanants (451AD) and other oppressors have not annihilated us. Let us learn..
Demonstration In Sisly…Istanbul…did you see…!!!
Recent immunity developed against “so-called: Fear”…
Fear from offspring of Ottoman savages …
Fear “No longer exists” …
They don’t care if they’re slayed…!
They want to prove, that they lived there …
In Constantinople…so-called Istanbul…!!!
Armenians, Jewish, Greeks…Before Christ
Aren’t they all humans …!!!
They must live and exist …
Suppressing by their courage…by their wills
Something… so-called “Fear”….!!!
Congrats…continue what you wished
You must win …if not today… tomorrow still exists…!!!
Sylva~MD~Poetry
April 24, 2014
Written instantly
Well said Garo Ghazarian!!!
Your remarks give me a great satisfactorial feeling that the quest and eventual victory for Justice will be carried on by the future generations of Armenians.
Your pen is as sharp as a sword, and has cut through the pile of insincerity that Mr. Erdogan has spoken.
Dear Garo,
This is what Polish idiom said about Turkish Sermon:
“Siedzieć jak na tureckim kazaniu. To sit like in a Turkish sermon. (To not make head or tail of things, to not understand a thing”.)
Better translation:to not be able to understand something at all!!
This is why this guy is the head of Turkish herds, but not for their intellectuals, where Turkish penal code 301 constantly forcing them to flee their country!
How many times do we have to repeat and repudiate them.My father-may he rest in peace-told us you don’t slap to the face of a prostitute that you are one,or to a thief you are one..
They full well know what they are.I gave it to their so called intellectuals invited by Western armenian Council here in yerevan and latter reciprocally are to visit them in ISTANBULLA-read Constantinople and Angora….I am surprised at some of our Paremid8kin minded-not to say Barzamid*simple minded, that they do this on purpose so as to show to West and East that they are “engotiating”with Armenians peace or to that effect.
Mr. you have to say we DID COMMIT GENOCIDE AND ARE READY TO PAY CONSEQUENCES,LIKE THE gERMANS DID TO jEWS.PERIOD
If you play the fabricated Turkish tales about the Armenian Genocide of 1915 backwards you can only come to one conclusion and that is: A genocide that, according to the Turkish deniers, never occurred and the “unfortunate” murders of 1,500,000 Armenians from the unborn in his mother’s womb to the old and the sick was the work of everyone else but the Turks themselves, including the earth the sun and the moon, has all of a sudden turned into a so-called “shared memory” first according to the Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, turned into “shared pain” now according to the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, an outspoken and vehement genocide denier.
Why such a change of heart, albeit a fake one, by Erdogan who never shied away from nor did he hesitate to call the Armenian Genocide a lie every chance he got? A man who, not so long ago, categorized the Armenians as the good (referring to the Armenians in Istanbul under his control), the indifferent (referring to the Armenians in Armenia under illegal border blockade) and the bad (referring to the descendants of the murdered Armenians in Diaspora). Well, because this man is an insincere opportunist and a liar attempting to fool the world once again. Like a deer caught in the headlight, he has to reinvent himself every time he feels the noose around his genocidal neck is tightening by taking a few fake steps to falsely portray Turkey as a “compassionate” and “benevolent” nation to the rest of the world to appease them and to throw the Armenian Genocide recognition off-course and by making hollow statements with no substance such as the one he made recently.
The last time he showed his real face was when he allowed the renovation of the Armenian monastery of Akhtamar, most likely using the funds donated by the Armenians themselves, on occupied Lake Van but only allowed Akhtamar be used by the Armenian congregation once a year and used it the rest of the year as a tourist site to fatten the Turkish treasury.
To further show his “compassion” for the Armenians was when he enacted the Turkish Criminal Code 301, better known as “Insulting Turkishness”, a bogus and arbitrary law to keep the Armenians and others sympathetic to the Armenian Cause in check in Turkey with threats of severe punishment and imprisonment. The cold-blooded murder of the peaceful conciliatory and prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist and editor was a direct result of this law.
His next “good” deed toward the Armenians came when his government attempted to fool the Armenians by signing, in front of the world, the so-called reconciliatory protocols to normalize relations with Armenia unconditionally but instead announced after the fact, on an official visit to the artificial state of Azerbaijan, the normalization process will now be conditional on the withdrawal of the Armenian liberation forces from the newly-liberated ancient Armenian province of Artsakh under illegal Azerbaijani occupation for seventy years, all the while Turkey herself got to invade and occupy Cyprus since 1974, and in return for cheap Azerbaijani oil.
As you can see there is a pattern here by a con man Erdogan, a wolf disguised as a sheep. His latest announcement of “shared pain” after a century of denial that genocide even took place is yet another plot and scheme to fool us and the world. Realizing all the acknowledgements the Armenian Genocide recognition has gained and acquired over the years and faced with the Armenian Genocide centennial commemoration and its significance, this insincere and opportunist hog is trying to minimize the liabilities Turkey will be facing by sounding conciliatory, but on his own terms, to perhaps make a false apology, make some financial compensation using confiscated Armenian properties and assets valued in billions in order to make the Armenian Cause a thing of the past, BUT to continue keeping Western Armenia occupied and empty of the Armenians which was Turkey’s ultimate goal for carrying out the deportation and mass extermination of the indigenous Armenians in the first place!
Well done dear Garo