Was there a captain with the name Torossian?

Orhan Kemal Cengiz

 

In my history lessons in middle school and high school, I never heard any foreigner's name in the Ottoman army when our teachers talked about the Battle of the Dardanelles.

I did not even register this battle in my mind as part of World War I. There was a Battle of the Dardanelles, which was led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and we fought a heroic war against enemies.

So many years later I was shocked to learn that not only was the Battle of the Dardanelles led by German military officers, but also almost the entire Ottoman General Staff was under their control.

Atatürk was a war hero, as it was said, but he just led a battle in this or that front of the Dardanelles Campaign.

Armenian genocide: To continue to deny the truth of this mass human cruelty is close to a criminal lie

Robert Fisk
 

At seven o’clock on Thursday evening, a group of very brave men and women will gather in Taksim Square, in the centre of Istanbul, to stage an unprecedented and moving commemoration. The men and women will be both Turkish and Armenian, and they will be gathering together to remember the 1.5 million Christian Armenian men, women and children slaughtered by the Ottoman Turks in the 1915 genocide. That Armenian Holocaust – the direct precursor of the Jewish Holocaust – began 100 years ago this Thursday, only half a mile from Taksim, when the government of the time rounded up hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and writers from their homes and prepared them for death and the annihilation of their people.

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.

AKP's stance on Armenians worries Christians

Fehim Taştekin

Translated by Timur Göksel

 

Early in its rule, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government raised expectations that Turkey was willing to face its past. But now, as the 100th anniversary of Armenian genocide approaches, the government, let alone facing up to the past, has indulged in a frenzy of casting shadows on the genocide observances and moved Turkey’s traditional Gallipoli celebrations, normally held March 18, to April 22-24.

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.”

Armenian Genocide, a Century on

Vicken Cheterian

 

Geoffrey Robertson started his talk at the Responsibility 2015 conference in New York by telling the story of his great-uncle. William Robertson was an Australian soldier in the allied forces who in 1915 was sent to fight against the Ottoman army and, hardly twenty-four hours after disembarking at Gallipoli and joining his comrades in a charge on the cliff-top defences, was felled by a sniper or machine‐gunner.

Turkey Cancels Gallipoli Commemorations?

The commemoration ceremonies marking the centennial of the Gallipoli Campaign of World War I have been canceled, reported Sunday’s Zaman on February 21, 2015. The paper revealed that the reason for cancellation is the low number of heads of states who agreed to attend Ankara for the ceremonies that were scheduled to take place on April 24—Armenian Genocide commemoration day.

Turquía y la negación del genocidio armenio

El genocidio del pueblo armenio fue perpetrado hace ya un siglo por el gobierno de los Jóvenes Turcos en el Imperio Otomano, desde 1915 hasta 1923. Conocido también como el "holocausto armenio", este episodio, uno de los abominables que recuerda la historia del mundo, consistió en la deportación forzosa y el exterminio de un número indeterminado de civiles armenios, calculado aproximadamente entre un millón y medio y dos millones de personas.

Turkey and the Denial of the Armenian Genocide

Translated by Vartan Matiossian 

 

The genocide of the Armenian people was perpetrated a century ago by the Young Turk government in the Ottoman Empire, from 1915 to 1923. Known also as the "Armenian holocaust," this episode, one of the abominable ones that world history remembers, consisted in the forced deportation and extermination of an undetermined number of Armenian civilians, approximately calculated between a million and a half and two million people.

"The Armenians want an acknowledgment that the 1915 massacre was a crime"

Geoffrey Robertson

 

Just before the invasion of Poland, Adolf Hitler urged his generals to show no mercy towards its people – there would be no retribution, because “after all, who now remembers the annihilation of the Armenians?” As the centenary of the Armenian genocide approaches – it began on 24 April 1915, with the rounding up and subsequent “disappearance” of intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople – remembrance of the destruction of more than half of the Armenian people is more important than ever. Although, as Hitler recognised in 1939 (and it is still the case today), the crime against humanity committed by the Ottoman Turks by killing the major part of this ancient Christian race has never been requited, or, in the case of Turkey, been the subject of apology or reparation.

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.