To reap twice-blessed rewards

[Gogor]

The Honorable William J. Clinton
President of the United States
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500

Re: Joint U.S. Military Exercises with Turkey and Israel

Dear Mr. President,

The media reports of the Reliant Mermaid-99 joint naval exercises that took place on December 15 among the U.S., Israel and Turkey are disturbing. The spectacle of the world's leading democracy and Israel, the Middle East's only democracy, joining forces with the military-controlled state of Turkey is alarming to anyone who believes in the values of democracy.

Let us consider briefly the nature of the Turkish state:

1. As the European Union's application of strict conditionality to Turkey's candidacy for the EU shows, Turkey is not a democratic state. Under its constitution the Turkish military exercises key control over foreign and domestic policy;

2. Turkey is a state in which, as documented by the State Department, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other organizations, torture, police brutality, arbitrary arrest and illegal detention are commonplace;

3. As documented by the November 1999 report "The Wall of Denial: Internal Displacement in Turkey" prepared by the U.S. Committee for Refugees, Turkey is carrying out pogroms against its Kurdish minority that truly merit the description of genocide and ethnic cleansing; and

4. Turkey collaborated with Nazi Germany in supplying vital chromium ore for the Nazi war machine which prolonged World War II by several months and thereby increased the number of allied casualties and Holocaust victims. As the official U.S. Government report made clear, Turkey has still refused to make any restitution of Nazi gold and other assets it obtained as the fruits of this collaboration.

The rationale of the entrenched bureaucracy in the State and Defense Departments for overlooking this grisly record is that security takes precedence over democratic values. Whether or not this had any validity during the Cold War (and we do not believe that it did), there is a wide recognition that this is no longer the case today.

Let us further consider the internal contradictions of the Israel-Turkey relationship. The natural purpose of defense alliances is to enhance the mutual defense capabilities of the contracting parties. Normally, the parties concerned are mutually compatible and the arrangement is for the long-term. The Turkey-Israel relationship does not pass this test. Israel is a democracy while Turkey's government is controlled by the military. The relationship is manifestly opportunistic and could be abandoned at a moment's notice by either side. There are already signs that the new Israeli leadership under Prime Minister Ehud Barak places a less high priority on the Turkish connection.

On the Israeli side, even analysts who favor the relationship are clear about the pact's limitations. For example, on September 6, 1998 Mr. Amikam Nahmani, a senior lecturer with the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, commented at a lecture at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars that "it would be far-fetched to say it is a defense strategic pact. Nobody expects Turkish soldiers to come and defend us, or us to go defend them."

Instead of seeing the Turkish relationship as adding to their security, Israel seems to regard the pact as an opening to sell Turkey advanced weaponry and to test-fly aircraft over Turkish airspace. The relationship may also act as a bargaining chip in Israel's dealings with Syria. With the striking progress being made toward Israel-Syria rapprochement in view, this may be counter-productive.

On the Turkish side, the defense relationship with Israel has allegedly brought gains in U.S. lobbying, but has complicated Turkey's relationship with the Islamic world. Moderate Arab states, notably Egypt, are equally alarmed. Turkey regularly comes under attack in the Arab League and Organization of Islamic Conference for its relationship with Israel. Indeed, Egypt has spoken of forming a counter organization. It is noteworthy that Egypt declined to participate in this exercise.

This concern about hostile regional reaction is, of course, additional to the moral dimension whereby U.S. and Israeli military cooperation with Turkey has made both countries accomplices to Turkey's human rights abuses. Given that any Israeli-provided weaponry is most likely to be used for Turkey's war and ethnic cleansing against its Kurdish minority (often likened to genocide), this is a stain on Israel's moral principles. If any country should be sensitive to genocide, it is Israel. This support for Turkey is a stain on both U.S. and Israeli honor.

In your recent visit to Greece you issued a very welcome statement of regret over the US failure to oppose the Greek military junta. In your March 10, 1999 visit to Guatemala, you said that "support for military forces and intelligence units which engaged in violence and widespread repression was wrong, and the United States must not repeat that mistake."

These are precisely the right sentiments. Appeasement of military regimes is not something that the US should be doing. Retrospective regret, however, is not enough. We must abandon present day instances of this appeasement. The most egregious case is Turkey.

I urge you to think how you can bring our relationship with Turkey into conformity with your own words. An apology for the U.S. role in Turkey's 1974 invasion and continuing occupation of 37.3 percent of Cyprus would be an important start.

The Turkey-Israel defense relationship is not in the best interests of the U.S. The only beneficiary is the Turkish military, not the Turkish people. I urge you, Mr. President, to reconsider U.S. support for this ill-conceived policy.

Respectfully,
Eugene T. Rossides
cc: Members of the Congress
Vice President Albert Gore, Jr.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
Secretary of Defense William Cohen
Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott
Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Pickering
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs Marc Grossman
U.S. Ambassadors to Greece, Turkey, Cyprus and NATO
Assistant to the President on National Security Affairs Samuel Berger

[Gogor]

"THE ALLIANCE AND THE EMERGENCE OF ZIONISM IN TURKEY"
Aron Rodrigue from his French Jews, Turkish Jews: The Alliance Israelite Universelle and the Politics of Jewish Schooling in Turkey, 1860-1925,
Chpt. 6, pp. 121-144.

By the time of the Young Turk revolution of 1908, the Alliance had reached, from the institutional standpoint, the height of its power in Turkey. Not only did it exercise a quasi-monopoly over the field of Jewish education through its school network and its effective control of the major Talmudei Torah, but it had created a series of ancillary organizations to supplement the work of its educational establishments.

The Young Turk revolution was received with jubilation by the Jewish communities of the Empire," with high expectations about new opportunities for Jews in all areas of public life in Turkey. There emerged a great demand for education in Turkish. The Alliance increased the number of hours of the language taught in its schools since it too had great expectations about the consequences of the revolution for the future of Turkish Jewrvyand took credit for having prepared it for the era of liberty that had arrived:

The work of education of the Alliance . . . has prepared the Jews to take part in the new political organization of the country. It is from the school of the Alliance that numerous generations have drawn the sentiments of gratitude, devotion and affection for Turkey."

It recognized in the ideas of the revolution a kindred spirit. Bigart put It thus: "...one can say that the Turkish revolution is like a triumph of our ideas, so moderate but so liberal, and inspired by the love of the public good."

Now that all barriers that had prevented full emancipation had been removed and despotism overthrown, the work of the Alliance appeared vindicated. Most of the Jewish communities were administered by its graduates. Three of the four Jews in the new Ottoman Chamber of Deputies, Carasso, Faraggi, and Masliah, were graduates of its schools. Furthermore, some Turkish deputies such as Riza Tevfik Bey, a poet and a philosopher, had also studied in Alliance schools. Talat Pasa, one of the most important leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress, had taught Turkish in the Alliance school in Edirne and had been instructed in French by the daughter of the school director there. The organization now had good friends in high places. It had contributed largely to the emergence of Westernized elements within the Jewish community which could participate in the political process of the country. lts task of preparing Eastern Jewry for the benefits of emancipation appeared to have borne fruit. But as it was to rediscover soon the new situation in Turkey also inaugurated the period which saw the emancipation of important sections of Turkish Jewry from its own tutelage.

[Gogor]

The Uses of Academe

The Turkish-Jewish alliance operates in other arenas as well. In 1987 an academic conference was convened at Brandeis University on May 10- 12,1987 on Jews in the Ottoman Empire. The gathering included a round table discussion of plans to commemorate Turkish tolerance.

In 1988 Yeshiva University hosted another conference co- sponsored by the B'nai Brith Anti Defamation League and the Federation of Turkish American Societies on the topic of "Turks and Jews: 500 Years of Shared History." The Turkish press made it quite clear that this conference and other such activities were designed to recruit the support of the so-called 'Jewish lobby." (Azbarez 3.12.88)

Even the Jewish Museum held a fundraising masked ball with the theme 'In the Court of the Sultan' to herald an exhibit on the Sephardic Jews in the Ottoman Empire. (NYT 3.11.90)

[Gogor]

The Vanishing Jew

Forward

Almost 20 years have elapsed since New Yorkers last elected a Jew - Jacob Javits to the U.S. Senate. More than 50 years have passed since Herbert Lehman, New York state's first and only Jewish governor, held office. New York City and state - once the sources for Jewish political talent in the nation - are no longer fertile ground for Jews seeking high elective of-fice. Ironically, as more Jews have won elective office outside of New York, they have become notably less successful
within New York City and state.

Today, there are 10 Jewish members of the U.S. Senate, but none are from New York. While the neighboring states of New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania have elected Jews to the U.S. Senate - Frank Lautenberg, Joe Liebennan and Arlen Specter - the short-lived tradition of a Jewish senator from New York is now history. In two states, Wisconsin and California, both U.S. senators are Jewish, an achievement that was once unthinkable.

Of the 33 Jewish members of the U.S. House of Representatives, eight are from California and just seven are from New York, although New York State has more than twice as many Jews as California. Furthermore, Jewish Congressmen from states other than New York, such as Sidney Yates, Howard Berman and Henry Waxman, have more power and seniority than most of the Jewish members of the New York state delegation, with the notable exception of Brooklyn Democrat Charles Schumer. The reduction in the size of the New York delegation and the 1990 redistricting - done in accord with the Voting Rights Act - led to the loss of three of New York City's most senior Jewish representatives: Stephen Solarz, William Green and James Scheuer.

Within the state of New York, the most powerful Jewish politicians for many years have been the speakers of the State Assembly: Brooklyn-based Stanley Steingut, Stanley Fink and Melvin Miller, Saul Weprin of Queens and now Sheldon Silver, an Orthodox Jew from Manhattan's Lower East Side. While former Bronx assemblyman. Oliver Koppell, the newly chosen attorney general, is Jewish, he faces a serious primary challenge from Kings County district attorney Charles Joseph Hynes, a highly regarded Irish prosecutor with a strong following among the Orthodox community of Brooklyn. Although Edward Koch, the mayor of New York from 1978-1989, was probably the best-known Jewish politi-cian in the state, if not the nation, the most powerful politicians in the city and state today are Catholic: the governor, the two U.S. senators, the newly elected mayor, Rudolph Giuliam and the majority leader of the City Council, Peter Vallone. This does not mean that Jews have been shut out of elective office; two city-wide Jewish candidates, Mark Green and Alan Hevesi, easily won in 1993, and three of the five borough presidents - who have substantially diminished authority under the revised City Charter - are Jewish as well. Perhaps there is a "glass ceiling" for Jewish candidates that
we don't fully appreciate.

For most of this century, there have been approximately 2 million Jews in.New York City, about one-fourth of the total population. As the 1991 UJA-Federadon of Jewish Philanthropies study showed, New York City now has just more than 1 million Jews, or 12% of the total city population. Brooklyn and Manhattan account for two-thirds of New York City's Jewish population while the liberal Jewish communities of the Bronx and Queens have almost evaporated with their resi-dents moving to the suburbs where their political clout is diffused, retiring to Florida or aging out.

Within the Jewish community, the influx of new immigrants from Russia and North Africa (many of whom are not yet citizens), the rise of the yuppie Orthodox and the widespread concern about safety have reinforced the Jewish move to the right. Jews are increasingly voting for non-Jews over Jews, a trend that was first manifest when Mayor Wagner won the Jewish vote in the 1961 Democratic primary against Arthur Levitt. In the 1993 Democratic primary on Manhattan's Lower East Side, City Councilman Antonio Pagan was strongly supported by Orthodox Jews over long-time liberal Miriam Friedlander, who was trying to regain her council seat. In 1992, Alphonse D'Amato did remarkably well against Robert Abrams in all the outer-borough Jewish neighborhoods. Although liberal Jewish voters make up a sizable portion of the city's electorate, they are not growing in size or political influence. It is no accident that there were two dozen Chasidic rabbis on the podium when Rudolph Giuliani was inaugurated as mayor; Borough Park superseded Park Avenue as a source for votes for the victor in the 1993 mayor's race.

Clearly, the changing fortunes of Jews in New York politics is a product of several forces. Many of the Jewish politicians who emerged from the anti-war and civil-rights movement of the '60s are more liberal than the bulk of Jewish voters. Fur-ther, black-Jewish tensions have weakened the multiracial coalition that once dominated Democratic politics, while the Voting Rights Act has virtually eliminated multiracial legislative and congressional districts where Jews joined forces with other minorities to oppose conservative Catholic politicians. Successful New York Jewish politicians such as Arthur Levitt, Louis Lefkowitz, Robert Morgenthau and Edward Koch have not built political dynasties, as the Kennedys have in Massachusetts, the Browns in California or as the Cuomos may in New York.

Finally, ambitious and talented Jews have found new opportunities for success in careers once closed to them, such as university presidencies, CEO's of major corporations and even white-shoe law firms. For the New York Jewish commu-nity, politics may simply have lost its glamour as other fields have opened up to them in the 1980s and 1990s.

[Gogor]

EU Roasts turkey over Armenians

Don Feder

ISTANBUL -- The European Union's parliament is demanding Turkey admit that its predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, committed genocide against Armenians 85 years ago. It's the type of self-defeating nonsense for which Europeans are justly famous. Armenian genocide resolutions have passed one house of both the French and Italian legislatures. (While thus occupied, Paris doesn't have to deal with the complicity of Vichy France in the genocide that defined the term.)

In October, the U.S. House of Representatives came close to voting on a non-binding resolution on the same subject. The measure was wisely tabled.

Weighing the advantages of such declarations (none) against the very real risk of losing the cooperation of a country critical to Western security should make the matter a no-brainer.

Armenians maintain that early in World War I, the Ottoman Turks slaughtered 1.5 million of their countrymen in an act of calculated barbarism foreshadowing the Holocaust. Turks, who put Armenian casualties much lower, say the objective was relocation, not extermination.

The Ottomans, who were used to shuffling people around in their empire, saw their Armenian subjects allied with their Russian enemy in the Great War. Moreover, say the Turks, atrocities were committed by both sides, including the actions of Armenian partisans intent on creating a homogenous homeland by driving out Turks.

Though acknowledging atrocities against Armenian civilians, conservative scholar Bruce Fein notes: "When Armenians held the opportunity, they massacred Turks without mercy. ... The war ignited a cycle of violence between both groups."

While individual Turkish officers and soldiers behaved abominably, records show the Ottoman government ordered its army to exercise restraint in moving the Armenians.
Like the Jews, Armenians have borne the brunt of history, not only in 1915 but since antiquity. But assigning responsibility for the slaughter, and determining its magnitude, is the work of historians, not politicians.

The EU manifesto comes as Ankara negotiates its entry into the Union. It strengthens the hand of Turkish militants (a few years ago, an Islamic party was briefly in power) and weakens the intellectual heirs of Kemal Ataturk, who would draw their nation closer to the West.

Turkey and Israel are the only democracies in the Middle East. Turkey is also unique as a nation with an overwhelmingly Moslem population and a secular government.
Strategically situated at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East, Turkey borders and helps to contain Iraq, Iran and Syria. Its army is the second largest in NATO.

For almost half a century, Turkey has been a loyal ally of the United States. It stood with us in every conflict from Korea to the Gulf War. In the United Nations, Turkey votes with America more consistently than either France or Italy.

And Turkey has friendly relations with a country desperately in need of friends. It's Israel's major regional trading partner. Israeli pilots train over Turkish airspace.
The Turks are a proud people and understandably indignant when their nation is compared to Nazi Germany. The matter is more than academic. Between 1973 and 1985, 47 Turkish diplomats were assassinated by an Armenian terrorist group. The tragedy of 1915 was the excuse for these atrocities.

Turkey also fought an extended war against the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), another object of Western solicitude. The PKK murdered approximately 30,000 Turks, most of them civilians. The foregoing does not put Ankara in an apologizing mood.

For the West, historical apologies are an emotional cathartic. Clinton can barely blink without expressing remorse for everything from slavery to Reagan's Central American policy.

Facing both internal and external challenges as it struggles to modernize and maintain its special identity, Turkey can't indulge in national psychotherapy.

History isn't edited by current political realities. But the latter injects a note of caution. Damaging a vital strategic relationship to memorialize a tragedy is no bargain.
The people who once reached the European heartland as conquerors now guard its southern flank. Alienating them is in no one's interest -- save our enemies.

[Gogor]

How did the Holocaust story originate?

The Holocaust story of German extermination of the Jews originated during the war. The charge of gassings of Jews in concentration camps was leveled by the Zionist and Jewish organizations appear around 1942 and were picked up and given lip service by the American and British governments at about the same time. Some Zionists were looking to leverage the British into opening Palestine up to more Jewish immigrants. By pleading a refuge in Palestine was needed due to the crisis of Nazi Germany's mass murder of the Jews, these groups hoped to embarrass the British to life immigration restrictions and to pressure the US government to use its influence to get Great Britain to make the changes to its policies regarding the Jews and Palestine they desired.

Other Jewish organizations wished to stop the Germans who were deporting entire Jewish communities east. Many of these deportations were taking place under inhumane circumstances. Various plans were floated to purchase groups of Jews from the Nazi regime to get them out of Europe or to terminate the deportations and though the Nazis appear to have been willing to negotiate, none of them were implemented.

The Soviets also began accusing the Germans of murdering civilians soon after the mass graves containing the bodies of executed Polish Army officers were discovered in the forests near Katyn by the German Army. Stalin accused the Germans of the Katyn forest massacre as well. Katyn was one of the crimes for which Germans were prosecuted after the war. The Russians finally admitted responsibility for that crime only a few years ago.

As a propaganda story among many meant to discredit the Axis war effort and overshadow Soviet atrocities, the genocide charge took on a similar role during the IMT and NMT war crimes trials and the post war de- Nazification programs. The point to it was and is to discredit the NS regime and place it beyond the political pale.
The Holocaust became the paradigm which demonstrated the evil of the Nazi regime and therefore justified the amount of destruction inflicted on Europe to defeat it. The evil of Germany revealed in the Holocaust became the reason Germany and Europe remained divided for so long and why the United States needed to become western Europe's guardian.

Since Europe could not be trusted to protect itself after the defeat of Nazism from the new menace of Russian Communism which had recently swallowed eastern Europe, the United States had an excuse to remain engaged in European politics and retard Germany's political and economic recovery.

As an indication the status quo established by World War Two is still in place, recent commemorations of the Nuremberg trials have lionized them as a dispensation of justice rather than repudiating them for the show-trials they were.
Source: Butz; Berg; Segev; Gauss

[Anonymouse]

I'm just so tired of these long drawn out phucking articles. Aren't things discussed on these boards any longer?

Damn llamas.

[Gogor]

ADL's Zakim Regrets Offense to Armenian Community

JUDITH KLEIN
Jewish Journal Staff

"I regret if any Armenian - or anyone in the community - was offended or made uncomfortable," New England Anti-Defamation League Executive Director Leonard Zakim said this week in an interview with The Jewish Journal, referring to a November 8 ad in the New York Times. The ad, paid for by ADL, the American Jewish Committee, and the Ameri-can Jewish Congress, congratulated Turkey on its 75th anniversary as a republic, and thanked the Turkish government for its long-held support of Jews and the State of Israel.

The ad drew criticism from many Armenians and Jews because it praised Turkey for its "democratic and secular ideals" (see Jewish Journal editorial and article in November 13 issue and letter to the editor and op-ed piece in this issue). Critics such as Harvard Professor James Russell, himself a Jew who teaches Armenian studies, were appalled by the ad's content since Turkey has never acknowledged the systematic genocide of Armenians living within its borders in the early part of the century. Unlike modern Germany, modern Turkey has made no reparations and still refuses to admit the historically documented events.

The ad notwithstanding, Zakim vowed the continued support for the inclusion of the Armenian Genocide in studies cov-ered by ADL-sponsored Holocaust education. As he explained, Holocaust education in this country offers many students the only exposure they will ever have to the facts of the Armenian Genocide. He also emphasized the commitment of all three organizations to bringing human rights issues to the table in dealings with the nation of Turkey. "The ADL and the other Jewish organizations believe that through the continually improving relationship between Israel and Turkey, the op-portunity for dialogue about important issues like human rights and the need for Turkey to further democratize will be more effectively raised." .

Zakim referred to Abraham Foxman, national ADL director, saying that since Foxman is a Holocaust survivor himself, he "is extremely sensitive to the issues of what happens when people stand by, when they don't acknowledge their past, and they don't deal with the issues that remain today." However, Foxman's own remarks to The Jewish Journal were that Tur-key "has a magnificent history of tolerance" and the conflict is "between the Armenians and the Turks. They will hope-fully someday resolve it." These statements were viewed as inflammatory and myopic by some in the Jewish and Arme-nian communities.

Both critics and supporters of the ad acknowledge the crucial support Turkey has given to Israel, the only democratic country in the Middle East, and understand the strategic role Turkey has played in Israel's security. However, many agree with Harut Sassounian who, in the most recent edition of The Armenian Mirror-Spectator, published in Watertown, lam-basts the three organizations for placing the ad, writing "these Jewish groups are distorting the facts about Turkey; sup-porting one of the worst violators of human rights in the world; encouraging the Turkish denials of the Armenian Geno-cide, thereby undermining their own credibility in countering the revisionists of the Holocaust; offending thousands of sensible Jews around the world who must be disgusted by the immoral public stand of these three Jewish groups; and un-necessarily antagonizing the Armenian-American community and Armenians everywhere against Jews."

[Gogor]

ASSOCIATION OF TURKISH JEWS IN ISRAEL A CIVIL-WAR WITHIN WORLD WAR I, NOT GENOCIDE!

As Israeli citizens of Turkish-Jewish origin we would like to express our outrage at the comments of the Minister of Edu-cation Mr. Yossi Sarid drawing a parallel between the so-called "Armenian Genocide" and the Jewish Holocaust.

The Ottoman Empire never exercised a policy of racial or religious persecution or extermination against any nation. The Armenian claims against Turkey relate to a period when the Armenians waged a war of independence against the Ottoman Empire during World War I when Russian army and Allied forces were also invading Anatolia. This war and related events of World War I that cannot be enumerated here, led to tragic deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

With this background of events, any person, Jew or non-Jew alike, who uses the term "Genocide" or Holocaust equating the German holocaust against Jews with death of civilians in a terrible war situation, is guilty of ignorance OR denial of the depth of atrocities committed by the Germans and their collaborators against the Jews. Moreover, such ignorance also does great injustice to the Turkish nation that did its best to save the Jewish minorities through 500 years.

In a period spanning 500 years, starting from the times of Inquisition in Spain, to the German holocaust in the modern age, The Turkish Nation saved hundreds of thousands of Jews from persecution and decimation in the hands of European nations.
The Turkish benevolence towards Jews was an official policy directed by the Ottoman Empire Sultan, but would not have possible without the general tolerance of the Turkish people towards miniroties.

During World War II, several Turkish diplomatic officials worked to save thousands of Jews from the Holocaust. Among these Mr. Selahattin Ulkumen was awarded the Yad HaShem Prize for "Righteous Among the Nations" for his heroic ef-forts to save Jews of Rhodes while risking his own life.

The brief statements of background above are brought to illustrate that unlike some European Nations, the Turkish nation has not had a systematic policy of elimination against minorities under its rule.

In view of our stand expressed above, we call on the Minister of Education, Mr. Yossi Sarid, to retract his comments. We also call on Prime Minister Mr. Ehud Barak, to issue a clarification to the Turkish Government that the irresponsible comments of his minister do not represent the official policy of the Israeli Government.

We hope that the long historical strife that has caused immeasurable suffering to both Turkish and Armenians will be re-solved by direct communication between the two sides. We should note that a sizable Armenian population lives in mod-ern Turkey with full freedom.

At this opportunity we also call on the Ministry of Education to include a special section on the history of Jews in Otto-man Empire, in history textbooks used in Israeli schools. This is the minimum we owe to the Turkish nation without which many of the citizens of Israel would not have been here today.

[Gogor]

I'm just so tired of these long drawn out phucking articles. Aren't things discussed on these boards any longer?

Damn llamas.

I have seen how discussions go here and no thanks.