Liberation of Western Armenia

[Davo88]

Re: Liberation of Western Armenia

An innovative approach in regards to the liberation of Western Armenia:

"The report includes the highly innovative option of allowing Turkey to retain political sovereignty over the lands in question but demilitarizing them and allowing Armenians to join present inhabitants with full political protection and business and residency rights. This model is interesting in part because it suggests a human rights-respecting, post-national concept of politics that some might see as part of a transition away from the kinds of aggressive territorial nationalisms—such as that which was embraced by the Young Turks—that so frequently produce genocide and conflict."

http://www.armenianweekly.com/2010/05/06/reparations-2/

This website supports ceding a large land corridor to Armenia, linking it to the Black Sea in order to ensure its long term survival.

http://www.sdpa.org/index.html

What could be done in reality is perhaps a combination of both.
-Ceding a part of Western Armenia to the Republic of Armenia.
-Demilitarizing the rest of Western Armenia.
-Giving Diaspora Armenians a possibility of repatriation with a recovery of former belongings.

[Federate]

Re: Liberation of Western Armenia

I don't agree on every point but an interesting article nonetheless. I did not know of Arafat's visits to Armenia. Must have been part of the ASALA-PLO cooperation back in the 70s and 80s.
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Yasser Arafat: “We admire Armenians in all things but one”
[ 2010/08/10 | 10:12 ]
Feature Stories
By Minas Kaynakjian

The other day on Armenian TV, there was a program dealing with the two visits of Yasser Arafat to Armenia back in the 70’ and 80’s. Arafat would spend several hours in Yerevan on his way from Beirut to Moscow for consultations with the leaders of the Communist Party.

Before parting he laid a bombshell at the feet of his Armenian hosts on his second such visit.

According to the program, the Armenian elite at the time hosted their famous guest with all the trappings of Armenian hospitality. The two sides were quick to make parallels between the two peoples, Armenians and Palestinians. Arafat even went so far to confess that he even exhorted his people to be more like Armenians – in terms of their industriousness and love of country.

Arafat is alleged to have told the Armenians that there was one thing he would never tell his people to copy from the Armenian experience. The Armenian delegation at the VIP transit lounge became anxious and more than a bit concerned. What did the leader of the Palestinian national movement have in mind?

Arafat got up and said that Armenians, after being evicted and exiled from western Armenia, took foreign citizenship and started to accumulate wealth and property in their newly adopted countries. This, he pointed out, lead Armenians to forget about the country they had lost, western Armenia. Palestinians, he stressed, would never become citizens of any Arab nation they were living in for this very reason.

Is there any truth in what Arafat said? Have Armenians given up on the dream of returning to their occupied homeland for the very reasons cited by Abu Ammar? Has the accumulation of material wealth and property in foreign lands served as a substitute for the lands that 95 years ago constituted the bulk of the Armenian homeland?

A number of interesting recent incidents lend informal support to this thesis.

We have the results of a 2009 Gallup Poll in Armenian suggesting that Armenians yearn to leave Armenia, many for good. It would appear that Armenians would prefer to migrate than to stay and build a new nation. Any notion of re-establishing an Armenian presence to the west of the Araks River, given this reality, remains the purview of fanciful imagination.

I constantly read many Armenians, supposed political experts, talk about the need to support Armenian claims to the ‘lost lands” in various international tribunals based on the Treaty of Sevres – a dead diplomatic document to be sure. There have been many in the diaspora, over the years, clinging to such ridiculous hopes. They have inculcated the youth under their sway to do the same.

Now I read that young people in Armenia are being similarly brainwashed as well. In Yerevan, they will be marching on the 90th anniversay of the Treaty of Sevres calling on the embassies of the United States, France and italy to “remember” their promises made to the Armenian people in 1920. These are the same Great Powers that conveniently sold Armenia down the drain in the face of a resurgent nationalist Turkey. It seems we haven’t learnt any lessons from the past.

The organizers of such events would do better to tell the youth to march on the Presidential Palace and have Sargsyan declare Armenia’s recognition of the NKR.

Why some still cling to such myths is baffling. To urge young people to take part in such foolish folly is even worse. It displays just how lacking Armenians are when it comes to drafting a political program based on the realities of the day.

When it comes to drafting a comprehensive national political platform, we Armenians, either in the diaspora and the RoA, have not yet been able to agree on what it is we want and are willing to struggle for. We have no set of defined national goals and thus seemingly flip-flop on a host of issues due to the political exigencies of the day.

Then too, we lack any national leaders, with the vision and drive to rally the people. Do we need an Armenian Arafat? Sure, Arafat was a petty despot in his own right and his Fatah movement bilked the Palestinian people out of millions, but what if we could conjure up someone like him, stripped of the negative tendencies.

Levon Ter-Petrosyan wouldn’t do. He puts people to sleep with his analyses that stretch for hours at a time. He also doesn’t believe that democratic change should come from below, from the people in the street. “Go home and do not worry. We will take care of everything”. This was LTP’s advice to the people at every post 2008 rally. The people have no part to play in the movement; it’s those at the top who know best. This ain’t democracy.

Serzh Sargsyan? The current president and drafting a national strategic plan of action seem mutually exclusive. The man just lacks the vision and personal drive.

When was the last time any Armenian public leader actually addressed the people, setting out their vision of where they wanted to take the nation in the next ten years? The only time you’ll see our “leaders” make such a half-hearted attempt is after winning the next in a series of fraudulent elections. No wonder the people are apt to disbelieve what their leaders say and no wonder such officials lack the legitimacy to steer Armenia into the brave new world of the 21st century.

We need someone, or a group of ‘someones’, who will speak out on the pan-Armenian issues of the exodus from the RoA, diaspora repatriation, the rebuilding of the national economy, participatory democracy and the rule of law, halting the environmental pillage of Armenia, a foreign policy based on justice and national interests, the reunification of Artsakh with Armenia, and pooling the resources of Armenians worldwide in the cause of nation-building.

Who then? The nation awaits your list of potential candidates.

http://hetq.am/en/hetq/37370/

[Davo88]

Re: Liberation of Western Armenia

Thanks for posting this interesting article. I didn't know that he has been in Soviet Armenia either, neither did I know that he has voiced his opinion about Armenian issues. The Armenian and Palestinian cases aren't exactly comparable though. For starters, the former suffered genocide while the latter did not.


Here's another one :


At 90, Sevres Treaty is Most Relevant Today

On August 10, 1920, the Treaty of Sevres was signed between the Ottoman Empire and the Allied Powers after World War I. A significant provision of the document was the inclusion of the Wilsonian Mandate for Armenia, which envisioned a Republic of Armenia that included much of its historic territory.

The relevance of this internationally binding document became even more apparent during last year’s sloppy efforts by Armenia and Turkey to enter into a normalization process without regard for history. The reader is all too familiar with the outcome of the so-called protocols process, but the danger of reverting back to that failed approach still remains as neither party is willing to nullify the documents, which served as the basis for normalization.

Much of the discussion of the protocols debacle centered on Turkey’s preconditions for a quick resolution to the Karabakh conflict, in favor of Azerbaijan and the formation of a commission that would discuss the Armenian Genocide. But a more disturbing point of contention in the protocols documents was the absence of an acknowledgement of the Sevres Treaty, which, for all intents and purposes, laid a concise groundwork for that region of the world and provided comprehensive legal mandates for parties involved.

Due to political realities, the pursuit of the Armenian Cause has evolved into the vocal advocacy for the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide. In recent years that movement has achieved momentum due in great part to the perseverance and commitment of Armenians throughout the world who have pressured their respective governments for recognition.

However, the Armenian Cause is multi-faceted in nature and encompasses an equally critical component, which includes restitution and reparations for the crime of Genocide. The Sevres Treaty ensures not only provides a basis for the pursuit of the above elements, but also clearly draws a map, which makes Armenians’ territorial claims legally binding and valid in the eyes of the international community.

Many times inadvertently we fall into the position of justifying our demands, where historically no justification is needed since the facts speak for themselves. The Armenian Genocide is an indisputable fact, as is the need for reparations for that crime. World leaders at the time were more cognizant of that than those who followed them since history has shown that complicity in denial has proven to be more expedient politically and economically.

As we mark the 90th anniversary of this landmark document, all efforts should be directed to how effectively the Sevres Treaty can be implemented today from an international legal perspective and how each of the signatories can be pressured into accepting the mandates outlined within that document.

Futile arguments might ensue from naysayers who claim that subsequent efforts and treatises have shaped today’s reality and reversed the provision of the Sevres Treaty. It is time for national political forces to revitalize the relevance of the treaty. At the same time, the Armenian government must include the appropriate provisions of the Sevres Treaty within the context of any future talks with Turkey.

http://asbarez.com/84064/at-90-sevres-treaty-is-most-relevant-today/

[KarotheGreat]

Re: Liberation of Western Armenia

You know when this treaty will be relevant, the moment we have the power to take back what is ours. No country is going to help us to get it back, no one cares if we get it back or not. You know what this treaty can do for us, it can give us legal ground after we have taken back what is ours, we can show to the world look here's the treaty that says the land is ours. This world is controlled with power nothing more. And we need to build our power to get back what was ours.

The article that Federate posted, there is one funny thing in the article. That the journalist can't comprehend why Armenia hasn't recognized Artsakh. it's not because they don't want to it's because that would be a move that would kill the peace process, make us look like the aggressors to the world and start a war, and the war would be our fault. If Azerbaijan ever starts the war the world knows what will happen and not backlash to Armenia. But right now it would be a stupid move and very counter productive. We should get other countries to recognize Artsakh.

[londontsi]

Re: Liberation of Western Armenia

I heard this case being made on the Armenian TV.


There are moves afoot to establish a Kurdish state with the help of the West.

The only legal footing they have for such an initiative is the Severs Treaty.

Armenian entities should be ready to participate as and when they open this Treaty so we can ask for our rights.

[londontsi]

Re: Liberation of Western Armenia

http://www.tert.am/en/news/2010/08/18/professor/

Turkish professor disavows Armenians' compensation rights: Where is the truth?

Armenians cannot demand compensation from Turkey for property they lost during the end of the Ottoman period, the head of the Turkish Historical Society has said, arguing that the matter was closed in the 1930s.

The compensation issue ended after the payment of $900,000 by Turkey in 1934 as a result of an agreement signed by Turkey and the United States, Professor Kemal Cicek, head of the Armenian Studies Desk at the Turkish Historical Society, told Anatolia news agency on Monday.

Regarding claims that buildings like the Cankaya Presidential Palace and the Erzurum Congress Building were Armenian properties, Cicek said: "Documents on the history of the buildings are found in the archives of Cankaya Palace. The issue has ended for us."

Regarding compensation suits filed by two Armenians living in the United States, Cicek said they had documents obtained from Turkish and American archives.

"These suits don't have legal validity,” he said. “Because according to my research, commissions were established in the United States and Turkey on the compensation demands of Armenians during the period between the Treaty of Lausanne [in 1923] and 1937. The commissions put an end to these demands under an international agreement," he told Turkish Hurriyet Daily News & Economic Review.

Commenting on the statements that the records of the Armenians’ properties that were seized and were lost, Cicek said: “The Armenians that left had their properties recorded and it was required to send a copy of these records to the center. We cannot know whether they were sent or not during times of war. Some of these records may be at revenue offices or at the depots of provinces or townships. This requires extensive research.”

“There is no secrecy and there is no reason to keep these records secret. Considering that this issue was closed with the Treaty of Lausanne and the compensation agreement, there is no reason to keep these records secret,” he said.

“These may have been damaged during the war, like many other documents. Their surfacing would not be disadvantageous to Turkey, as some claim.”

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Anybody would care to comment on this.
Has Turkey paid compensation for our losses?

[Haykakan]

Re: Liberation of Western Armenia

Even if it was paid it was like $0.60 per dead Armenian which is hardly just. The figure is totally insufficient considering what was lost.

[londontsi]

Re: Liberation of Western Armenia

"These suits don't have legal validity,” he said. “Because according to my research, commissions were established in the United States and Turkey on the compensation demands of Armenians during the period between the Treaty of Lausanne [in 1923] and 1937. The commissions put an end to these demands under an international agreement," he told Turkish Hurriyet Daily News & Economic Review.

How was Armenia or Armenians represented in those years?

[Eddo211]

Re: Liberation of Western Armenia

Turks want us to try to liberate Western Armenia....I was told that by a bunch of them on a Pakistani military website.

They want the opportunity to cut our throats. Somehow I get the feeling they don't like us very much and don't want to be friends.

[UrMistake]

Re: Liberation of Western Armenia

Turks want us to try to liberate Western Armenia....I was told that by a bunch of them on a Pakistani military website.

They want the opportunity to cut our throats. Somehow I get the feeling they don't like us very much and don't want to be friends.

I dont know how or when it will happen but we can talk safe that we would secure the territories from future revolts and occupations since we got hamshens and kurds in the area,greeks from pontus will join assyrians will gather up.
And the behold a great future for our new borders.
We can keep the dam area the hard point for me is Cilicia im sure they will keep a hold,maybe iran and syria will give a hand.
Dont know dosent matter if they do we were about to take them in CCCP now we got CSTO dosent matter its viable.
Every day armenia is growing stronger and so the diaspora do the maths why they like now than in future...