Turkey on the hunt for skull of great Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan

Sibel Hurtas

Translated by Sibel Utku Bila

 

Earlier this month, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu brought up an intriguing issue about Mimar Sinan, the 16th-century chief architect of the Ottoman Empire, whose ethnic roots have long been the subject of debate. In an infamous episode in the 1930s, the great master’s skull was exhumed from his grave for measurements intended to prove he was Turkish. Davutoglu said the skull had gone missing and he had ordered an investigation to hunt it down.

Armenian animosity rekindled through PKK terror

Pinar Tremblay

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu gave a searing speech Feb. 27 on the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) in the eastern province of Bingol. In his speech he accused the Kurds of taking advantage of the situation in the southeastern border towns of Sur and Silopi. "They are collaborating with Russia like the Armenian gangs used to do. They are opening a diplomatic mission in Moscow," he said.

Armenian Children's Camp in Turkey being returned to its original owner

The owner of the land of the Armenian Children’s Camp, which has been at the center of ongoing controversy with activists attempting to prevent a planned demolition of the former orphanage, has announced that he will be donating it to the Gedikpaşa Armenian Protestant Church Foundation.

“I respectfully announce to the public that I will be donating the land to the Gedikpaşa Armenian Protestant Church Foundation… with the hopes of contributing to social harmony and unity of our country in line with our Armenian citizens thoughts and wishes,” announced Fatih Ulusoy, who owns the land where the former orphanage is located, in a written statement published on May 23, 2015.

Can Davutoglu’s ‘Just Memory’ Concept Bring Justice?

 Andranik Israyelyan

Turkey’s Ahmet Davutoğlu has proposed to solve the Armenian Genocide question by creating a “just memory.” The assessment of the concept reveals why it is simply a denialist tactic.

In 2011, then-foreign minister of Turkey Ahmet Davutoğlu called on Armenians to address the Genocide question through a concept he termed “just memory.” It is “unjust” to place these traumatic events at the center of everything, Davutoğlu noted in the Turkish Policy Quarterly article. A Guardian article later insisted that Armenians (and indeed Christians) were not the only ones to have suffered during this period. “While much of western history tells of the suffering of the dispossessed and dead Ottoman Christians, the colossal sufferings of Ottoman Muslims remains largely unknown outside of Turkey.” The author went on to insist that Turkey had proposed a joint commission in an effort to allow the emergence of a so-called “just memory.”

Genocidio armenio

Emilio Cárdenas

Hoy se cumplen cien años del comienzo -en Estambul- de la terrible y larga serie de atentados y episodios perpetrados entre 1915 y 1923 que conformaron el genocidio de los armenios. El primero del siglo veinte.

Un millón y medio de armenios perdieron trágicamente la vida a través de ejecuciones masivas, marchas forzadas, asesinatos, torturas, deportaciones, hambrunas, así como el horror y la crueldad de los campos de concentración en los que muchos fueran internados. Esto sucedió cuando el Imperio Otomano estaba ya inmerso en su proceso de desintegración, durante y luego de la Primera Guerra Mundial.

Ni siquiera la primera letra de "justicia"

Vartán Matiossián

En menos de una semana se cumplen 100 años de la fecha simbólica que marca el Medz Yeghern, el proceso de exterminio planificado de la población armenia del Imperio Otomano, que Raphael Lemkin, creador de la palabra genocidio, tuvo como uno de los precedentes a la hora de su creación y que identificó como un antecedente del crimen de crímenes ya en 1946. Se han producido numerosos acontecimientos en el nivel internacional, desde el sermón del Papa Francisco hasta la declaración del Parlamento Europeo. Probablemente habrá otros. La repercusión en la prensa y los artículos que aparecen día tras día son la prueba más evidente de que el Medz Yeghern ha dejado de ser el “genocidio olvidado.” O al menos, de que de ahora en más dejará de serlo.

Turkey needs new approach for 1915

Ömer Taşpinar

It is sad to see that Turkey is squandering yet another opportunity to discuss what happened to Armenian communities of  Anatolia in the final decades of the Ottoman Empire.  The  "Just Memory" initiative launched by Ahmet Davutoglu a few years ago is partly to blame for this failure.

Gallipoli Centenary Marks Another Snub for Turkish Minorities

Sibel Hurtas

 

The Gallipoli observances were guided by anti-minority narratives and actions that were enflamed by comparisons between the Gallipoli centenary and the approaching 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, when he was the foreign minister in 2011, said: “We will inform the whole world about 2015. Contrary to what some claim and disparage, we will tell the world that this will not be the anniversary of a genocide but of honorable resistance of a nation at Gallipoli.”

Australian Non-Recognition of the Armenian Genocide Documented

Documents obtained under a Freedom of Information request by the Armenian National Committee of Australia (ANC Australia) confirm that the issue of the Armenian genocide is sidestepped by the Australian government to please Turkey's demands, as reported on January 8, 2015.
In a letter addressed to then-Foreign Minister of Turkey, Ahmet Davutoglu, on May 15, 2014 his Australian colleague Julie Bishop wrote: "Recognising the important interests at stake for both countries, I assure you that there has been no decision to change the long-standing position of successive Australian Governments on this issue."

Textbooks and the Armenian Genocide in Turkey: Heading Towards 2015

Taner Akcam

 

Education is extremely centralized in Turkey. All issues, including setting policy, the administration, and content of education are decided and implemented by the national government. Textbooks that are to be taught in schools are either prepared by the Ministry of National Education (MEB) or must be approved by the Ministry’s Instruction and Education Board.¹ For this reason, there’s a direct connection between the books taught in schools and the Turkish government’s policies. The content of history textbooks, in particular, reveals firsthand information about government policies and goals.

The MEB made elementary and middle school textbooks available on the internet for the 2014-15 school year. Anyone can now download and read these books.² I did a quick review of the history books that are to be taught this year, to see what is being taught to our children about the Armenian Genocide. I have to characterize what I found as both shocking and saddening.

Mahcupyan’s Appointment: A New Step in Genocide Denial Policy?

Aline Ozinian

Turkish Sabah newspaper, which has come to be considered in recent years as the mouthpiece of the ruling Justice and Development Party, announced the appointment of Etienne Mahcupyan as Chief Advisor to Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on October 25. Sabah “adorned” the news of the appointment with the fact that after Erdogan’s “constructive” April 24 message this was yet another important step, this time taken by Davutoglu, toward the “normalization” of relations between Turkey and Armenia (the term used in Armenia-Turkey protocols), by appointing an Armenian as his Chief Advisor.

This appointment was regarded in Turkish press as an important step which would assist Davutoglu in his policy on minorities and the improvement of Turkey-Armenia relations. At the same time, Mahcupyan denies the Armenian-Turkish orientation of his appointment, giving a wider role to his activities. Mahcupyan said that it was a compelling proposal which he gladly accepted. In the meantime, Turkish media is emphasizing his Armenian roots, underscoring that the AKP managed to bring even an Armenian to the position of chief advisor to the Prime Minister.

Armenian Genocide: Erdogan Must Say the Truth

Edward Nalbandian

 Translated by Vartan Matiossian

 

This is the verbatim translation of the French article that the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic Armenia recently published in the Parisian daily "Le Figaro". Several outlets of Armenia (Armenian Public Radio, News.am, Tert.am) posted an English version on September 6, called "full version" in Tert. am, as well as in "Asbarez," which reprinted it on September 8. According to Tert.am, there were "slight abridgements" in the version published by "Le Figaro," which were far from being "slight": FOUR entire paragraphs and HALF of FOUR others were left out, without counting some significant textual differences.

Leak and You Tube Ban in Turkey; U.S. State Department "Deeply Troubled"

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has filed a complaint against Today's Zaman editor-in-chief Bülent Keneş, deputy editor-in-chief Mehmet Kamış, columnist Emre Uslu, journalist Önder Aytaç, and Former İstanbul Police Department Intelligence Bureau Chief Ali Fuat Yılmazer on Saturday, March 29, 2014, a day before local elections in Turkey.

Erdoğan's lawyers said in a petition they submitted to Ankara Public Prosecutor's Office that they seek travel ban for Uslu, Aytaç, and Yılmazer and claimed that Keneş and Kamış humiliated Erdoğan in their tweets.

Perception of Turkey: Good, Bad and Poor Armenians

Aline Ozinian

It was talked about for a long time. The “dirty” population you call the Armenian diaspora were forced from their homes, their land, and were once called the Anatolian Armenians.(*)

It was said that there was nostalgia, that the Turkish words left behind by their grandparents were still in their lives, that they had not forgotten their homeland. It was said that this diaspora was not from Armenia, but rather that these people were the subjects of the Ottomans. Do not divide Armenians into groups like poor Armenians, bad diaspora members or miserable Turkish Armenians. It was said do not develop politics in accordance with this, for they are not a monolith. But apparently no strides at all were taken in the end.

What I Choose It to Mean: On ‘Yeghern’ as the Armenian Translation of ‘Genocide’

Vartan Matiossian

 

“The term Yeghern, or Medz Yeghern, is the only word that really captures the essence of what happened in 1915. The survivors used that word. It is the only word that could really explain what happened in 1915. In a world without genocide denial, it would be the best word.”
–Khatchig Mouradian (2009)¹

 

‘Medz Yeghern’: the Proper Name of the Genocide

In the concluding installment of this study on the semantics, history, and politics of the phrase Medz Yeghern, it is crucial to underscore that the exhausting search for recognition should not block the use of the words that our ancestors have bequeathed us. It has been argued that recognition has been sufficiently ensured by two resolutions of the House of Representatives, 3 federal court rulings, 42 state declarations by legislation or proclamation, a sentence in a document filed in 1951 by the U.S. government to the International Court of Justice and another sentence in Ronald Reagan’s proclamation,² along with official declarations by 20 countries and statements of a host of scholars. “We don’t say that this is the end and the work of recognition has been done; simply, the emphasis should be put on reparation and the rights,” Giro Manoyan, the head of the ARF Bureau Armenian Cause office, declared recently.³

Armenians should not be obfuscated by denial, whether mainstream or from a lunatic fringe, which will probably be as lasting as affirmation. Another worrisome trend—misuse—should not obfuscate them either.

The Armenian Hero Turkey Would Prefer to Forget

Robert Fisk
 

Think Captain Torossian.  Confronted by the chilling hundredth anniversary of the genocide of one and a half million Armenian men, women and children at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1915, Turkey’s government is planning to swamp memories of the Armenian massacres with ceremonies commemorating the Turkish victory over the Allies at the battle of Gallipoli in the same year. Already, loyalist academics have done their best to ignore the presence of thousands of Arab troops among the 1915 Turkish armies at Gallipoli -- and are now even branding an Armenian Turkish artillery officer who was decorated for his bravery at Gallipoli as a liar who fabricated his own biography.

When Dictionaries Are Left Unopened: How ‘Medz Yeghern’ Turned into Terminology of Denial

You may want to know that ‘Meds Yeghern’ does not mean genocide;
it means “Great Calamity.” Armenians used that term before the word
‘genocide’ was coined by Raphael Lemkin in the 1940′s.

–Harut Sassounian¹

These explanatory words appeared after President Barack Obama used “Medz Yeghern” in his April 2009 statement: “The Meds Yeghern must live on in our memories, just as it lives on in the hearts of the Armenian people. … Nothing can bring back those who were lost in the Meds Yeghern.”² He repeated Medz Yeghern twice or three times—always without translation—in each of his April 24 statements between 2009 and 2012.

In this article, we will discuss the use of the phrase and some of the reactions it triggered in Armenian and Turkish quarters, and in one of the many realms of public debate: Wikipedia.