Re: "Armenian Patriarch of Turkey in U.S. On Turkish Propaganda Tour Once Again"
look man hes just doing what a patriarch does for his community...protect it and make it prosper...by the genocide bill passing it will give turks an invitation to countinue what they just started with hrant dink...its not easy. and imagine this is the same patriarch that receives death threats daily, even when he is against the genocide resolution...how horrible is that. only god knows how much trouble he will be in let alone the community if turks found out he supports it.
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Re: "Armenian Patriarch of Turkey in U.S. On Turkish Propaganda Tour Once Again"
PATRIARCH MUTAFYAN'S SPEECH CANCELLED BY DECISION OF GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATION
PanARMENIAN.Net
24.09.2007 12:40 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ "The decision to postpone the speech by Patriarch
Mesrob II Mutafyan, religious leader of Turkish Armenians was taken
by the Georgetown University administration after a meeting with the
Armenian community," Armenian National Committee of America Executive
Director Aram Hamparian told a PanARMENIAN.Net reporter.
"We shared with Georgetown our concern that - as a leading American
center of learning - it should not allow itself to be used as a
platform for the Turkish government's hateful campaign of the Armenian
Genocide denial," Mr Hamparian underscored.
Patriarch Mesrob II, who arrived in the U.S. capital last week,
was scheduled to deliver a speech called "The Impasse between Turks
and Armenians Must Be Broken" at Georgetown University's Woodstock
Theological Center.
The Turkish Daily News reported that "the event had been cancelled
following pressure on the university by U.S. Armenian groups over
Partiarch's opposition to the Armenian Genocide Resolution."
A Turkish diplomat said the event did not take place because "the
Armenian lecturer doesn't share the opinion of the Armenian community
of the U.S."
Asked by reporters if his speech was canceled because of U.S. Armenian
pressure, the patriarch said, "it may have been."
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Re: "Armenian Patriarch of Turkey in U.S. On Turkish Propaganda Tour Once Again"
Commentary: Georgetown Rejects Turkish Attempt To Use Patriarch as Tool for Denial
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier
Last week, Turkish denialist circles tried to create a major scandal out of
Georgetown University's cancellation of a planned speech by the Patriarch of
Constantinople (Turkey), Mesrob II, titled "The Impasse between Turks and
Armenians Must be Broken."
Turkish officials, journalists and some "liberal" Turkish and Armenian
scholars (who believe in reconciliation without justice), joined the chorus of
condemnation. They criticized Georgetown for curtailing the Patriarch's "freedom
of expression" and accused Armenians of pressuring the University to cancel
his speech.
The facts are otherwise. In my last week's column, I raised the alarm that
Patriarch Mutafyan was being dispatched by Ankara on a political mission to
Washington, D.C., on the eve of the anticipated vote in the House of
Representatives on the Armenian Genocide. My column did not call for the cancellation of
the Patriarch's remarks. It simply criticized the Turkish government for
trying to use him as a propaganda tool to deny the Armenian Genocide. The column
also took the Patriarch to task for meddling in political matters and not
resisting the devious stratagems of the Turkish government. Finally, I urged
Armenian religious and secular leaders to speak out against the abuse of the
Patriarch's spiritual authority. The Turkish Cumhuriyet newspaper publishedseveral
excerpts from that column before his speech was canceled.
The Armenian National Committee of America also did not call for the
cancellation of the Patriarch's speech. It sent a letter to all Members of Congress
alerting them of the Turkish government various attempts, including the
dispatching of the Patriarch to Washington, D.C., to undermine the passage of the
Armenian Genocide resolution.
ANCA told Members of Congress: "The Turkish government has resorted to a
series of increasingly strident - even desperate - measures. Amid these efforts
by Ankara comes a visit to Washington, D.C., this week, by His Beatitude
Patriarch Mesrob II=80¦. It is truly shameful that Turkey has resortedto using naked
coercion - cynically taking advantage of the concern of Patriarch Mesrob for
the safety of his flock - in a last ditch bid to block the adoption of the
Armenian Genocide Resolution."
Finally, it was reported that several unknown individuals contacted
Georgetown and complained that the University was about to provide a platform to an
individual - the Patriarch - who was not at liberty to speak his honest mind
and was coerced to make denialist statements. Those who made such calls to the
University have the perfect right in a free society to express their opinions
on this issue. Not doing so would be curtailing their right to free speech!
Contrary to these accusations, Georgetown did not curtail the Patriarch's
freedom of speech which had been already curtailed by the Turkish government
long before his arrival in Washington. The University simply did not want to
become an accomplice to genocide denial by providing a stage to the unwitting
spokesman of a repressive and denialist regime. In fact, if a German citizen
wanted to come to the United States in order to deliver a speech denying the
xxxish Holocaust, the U.S. government would not even have granted that person a
visa to enter the United States.
To make matters worse for himself, the Patriarch, for some unknown reason,
decided to give a lengthy interview to Today's Zaman, shortly before his
scheduled visit to the United States. In that controversial interview, not
surprisingly, but sadly, the Patriarch defended the Turkish government's efforts to
cover up the Genocide and expressed his clear opposition to the Congressional
resolution on the Armenian Genocide. He also claimed, falsely, that he has had
no contacts with Diaspora Armenians!
After this scandalous trip to the U.S., which ended up in an embarrassing
cancellation, one would hope that both the Turkish government and the
Patriarch would draw some important conclusions.
Turkish officials, having miserably failed in their attempt to use the
Armenian Patriarch as their propaganda tool in order to hinder the passage of the
Genocide resolution, would hopefully now leave him alone to deal exclusively
with the spiritual needs of the Armenian community in Turkey.
While the Patriarch may not be able to escape the pressures of the regime
at home, the long and oppressive arm of Turkey must not be allowed to reach
far beyond its borders into the halls of Georgetown University -- one of the
most prestigious institutions of higher learning in the Free World.
Finally, the Patriarch himself should finally realize that getting
involved in political matters would cause serious problems not only for himself but
also for his long-suffering community. It may behoove the Patriarch to takea
long vacation in order to think things over and escape temporarily from theall
too frequent Turkish threats to his life!
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Re: "Armenian Patriarch of Turkey in U.S. On Turkish Propaganda Tour Once Again"
PanARMENIAN.Net
Patriarch Mutafyan's speech cancelled over Armenian pressure?
22.09.2007 14:49 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ A planned speech at a Washington university
yesterday by Patriarch Mesrob II Mutafyan, religious leader of Turkish
Armenians has been canceled.
Mesrob II, who arrived in the U.S. capital earlier in the week, was
scheduled to deliver a speech called "The Impasse between Turks and
Armenians Must Be Broken" at Georgetown's University's Woodstock
Theological Center. But an announcement on the center's Web site said
Wednesday the speech was "postponed due to logistical conflict."
Turkish Daily News reports that `the event has been cancelled
following pressure on the university by U.S. Armenian groups over
Partiarch's opposition to the Armenian Genocide Resolution.'
Asked by reporters if his speech was canceled because of U.S. Armenian
pressure, the patriarch said, "it may have been."
The Armenian National Committee of America recently sent a letter to
all 535 Congressional offices regarding the upcoming visit of
Patriarch Mutafyan of Constantinople.
As ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian told a PanARMENIAN.Net
reporter, the letter stresses that: "the Patriarch - like the leaders
of all religious minorities in Turkey - lives in constant fear of acts
of discrimination and retribution by a Turkish government that
actively persecutes those who speak freely on human rights and other
`sensitive' issues. As a virtual hostage, the Patriarch - whose life
has been threatened on many occasions - will, as has in the past, be
forced to follow the Turkish government's line. It is truly shameful
that Turkey has resorted to using coercion - cynically taking
advantage of the concern of Patriach Mesrob for the safety of his
flock - in a last ditch bid to block the adoption of the Armenian
Genocide Resolution."
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"Armenian Patriarch of Turkey in U.S. On Turkish Propaganda Tour Once Again"
Commentary: Armenian Patriarch of Turkey in On Turkish Propaganda Tour Once Again
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier
This week Mesrob Mutafyan, the Armenian Patriarch of Turkey, is making his
second visit to the United States in the past 6 months.
During his highly controversial first visit in April, the Patriarch
participated in a conference organized by a Turkish group at the Southern Methodist
University, in Dallas, Texas. The conference was titled, "Turkish-Armenian
Question: What to do Now?"
Despite intensive efforts by various Armenian-American groups to persuade
the Patriarch not to speak at that conference, he went ahead with his speaking
engagement. All other Armenian invitees, for one reason or another, refusedto
take part. The concern was that the Turks would use the conference as a ploy
to convince the outside world that Armenians and Turks were "reconciling" with
each other, and therefore, there was no need to pressure Turkey into genocide
recognition.
Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, the Primate of the Armenian Church of America
(Eastern Diocese), was so incensed by the Patriarch's planned participation
that he wrote to University officials objecting to its sponsorship of this
politically tendentious and one-sided "Armenian-Turkish dialogue." The University
complied with the Primate's request and withdrew its support from the
conference. Archbishop Barsamian rightly pointed out that Patriarch Mutafyan "has a
very limited ability to freely express his true thoughts and concerns because of
oppressive Turkish free-speech laws." The Primate aptly described the
Patriarch as "a virtual 'prisoner of conscience' of the Turkish government."
Interestingly, the Patriarch repeated word for word in Dallas what he had
said a year earlier during a similar conference held at Erciyes University in
Kayseri, Turkey. The April 2006 conference was entitled: "The Art of Living
Together in Ottoman Society: The Example of Turkish-Armenian Relations."
Patriarch Mutafyan will most probably repeat the same remarks during his
talk on September 20, at the Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. The
sponsors of both the April and September conferences are affiliated with the
Islamic Fethullah Gulen group.
To gain an advance insight into what the Patriarch might say this week,
here are some excerpts of his previously delivered talks in Kayseri and Dallas
which consist of some straight talk mixed with words meant to appease Turkish
officials.
"It is certainly not possible to idealize every phase in the history of
Ottoman-Armenian relations and to say that Armenians never had any problems.
Being Christians, the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire were never first class
citizens. And they certainly did suffer discrimination. However, we know that the
first acquaintance between Turks and Armenians dates back to at least 1300
years agoâ=80¦. In this long history of commercial and political interactions between
neighbors, there are relatively few instances where we observe exchanges of
physical violence," the Patriarch said.
He then went on to say that "especially towards the end of the 19th century
there was an increase in tension in relations, whether responsibility for
this was due to the Ottoman government, or the German, American, French, British
and especially Russian governments, Armenian political parties, or even the
Armenian Patriarchs of Istanbul of that period, who discharged their obligations
under the surveillance of the Temporal Affairs Council that then consisted of
Armenian secularists in Turkey. Even if the various parties were not all
equally responsible, it is not a moral approach in view of the painful
after-effects for any one of them to deny any accountability in the development of these
events, or to place all the responsibility on the other parties."
After several Turkish propagandists delivered their talks at the Dallas
conference, the Armenian Patriarch responded by making the following statement
outside of his written text: "Did some Armenian political parties promote armed
rebellion in the Armenian community? They did. In some areas, did armed
Armenian gangs work together with the Russian army? They did. But the Government of
the Committee for Union and Progress, being in charge of the country, is
chiefly responsible for the painful events that occurred and the great suffering
that was endured. If you do not hold the government in charge of the behavior of
the country as responsible for that behavior, then whom will you hold
responsible? Instead of eliminating in their local areas the armed Armenianfactions
who were in rebellion, the Government of the Committee for Union and Progress
sent all Armenians in the Ottoman Empire on a sort of death march to the
Syrian Desert; it sentenced them to death. Therefore this party is chiefly culpable
for the 1915 events."
A day before his Georgetown speech this week, the Armenian Patriarch is
invited to participate at the 2nd Congressional Interfaith and Intercultural
Ramadan Iftar Dinner on Capitol Hill, where he will speak along with several other
clergymen from various faiths.
There has been some speculation as to who arranged for the Armenian
Patriarch to come to Washington, D.C., shortly before the anticipated vote in the
House of Representatives on the Armenian Genocide resolution and less than a
month before the Pontifical visit of His Holiness Karekin II to the nation's
capital? Many see the sinister hand of the Turkish government orchestratingthe
Patriarch's speaking engagements, using the connections of high-powered lobbying
firms hired by Ankara.
This writer has repeatedly urged the Armenian Patriarch to stay away from
involvement in political matters and instead tend to the spiritual needs ofhis
flock. He must at all cost resist the pressures exerted upon him by Turkish
officials, in order not to allow them to use him as a propaganda tool serving
Turkey's denialist agenda.
In the meantime, Armenian religious and secular leaders have an obligation
to point out that the Patriarch does not speak for the Armenian Church and
that his political statements are made under Turkish pressure and do not reflect
his true views on the Armenian Genocide.
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