Announcement

Collapse

Forum Rules (Everyone Must Read!!!)

1] What you CAN NOT post.

You agree, through your use of this service, that you will not use this forum to post any material which is:
- abusive
- vulgar
- hateful
- harassing
- personal attacks
- obscene

You also may not:
- post images that are too large (max is 500*500px)
- post any copyrighted material unless the copyright is owned by you or cited properly.
- post in UPPER CASE, which is considered yelling
- post messages which insult the Armenians, Armenian culture, traditions, etc
- post racist or other intentionally insensitive material that insults or attacks another culture (including Turks)

The Ankap thread is excluded from the strict rules because that place is more relaxed and you can vent and engage in light insults and humor. Notice it's not a blank ticket, but just a place to vent. If you go into the Ankap thread, you enter at your own risk of being clowned on.
What you PROBABLY SHOULD NOT post...
Do not post information that you will regret putting out in public. This site comes up on Google, is cached, and all of that, so be aware of that as you post. Do not ask the staff to go through and delete things that you regret making available on the web for all to see because we will not do it. Think before you post!


2] Use descriptive subject lines & research your post. This means use the SEARCH.

This reduces the chances of double-posting and it also makes it easier for people to see what they do/don't want to read. Using the search function will identify existing threads on the topic so we do not have multiple threads on the same topic.

3] Keep the focus.

Each forum has a focus on a certain topic. Questions outside the scope of a certain forum will either be moved to the appropriate forum, closed, or simply be deleted. Please post your topic in the most appropriate forum. Users that keep doing this will be warned, then banned.

4] Behave as you would in a public location.

This forum is no different than a public place. Behave yourself and act like a decent human being (i.e. be respectful). If you're unable to do so, you're not welcome here and will be made to leave.

5] Respect the authority of moderators/admins.

Public discussions of moderator/admin actions are not allowed on the forum. It is also prohibited to protest moderator actions in titles, avatars, and signatures. If you don't like something that a moderator did, PM or email the moderator and try your best to resolve the problem or difference in private.

6] Promotion of sites or products is not permitted.

Advertisements are not allowed in this venue. No blatant advertising or solicitations of or for business is prohibited.
This includes, but not limited to, personal resumes and links to products or
services with which the poster is affiliated, whether or not a fee is charged
for the product or service. Spamming, in which a user posts the same message repeatedly, is also prohibited.

7] We retain the right to remove any posts and/or Members for any reason, without prior notice.


- PLEASE READ -

Members are welcome to read posts and though we encourage your active participation in the forum, it is not required. If you do participate by posting, however, we expect that on the whole you contribute something to the forum. This means that the bulk of your posts should not be in "fun" threads (e.g. Ankap, Keep & Kill, This or That, etc.). Further, while occasionally it is appropriate to simply voice your agreement or approval, not all of your posts should be of this variety: "LOL Member213!" "I agree."
If it is evident that a member is simply posting for the sake of posting, they will be removed.


8] These Rules & Guidelines may be amended at any time. (last update September 17, 2009)

If you believe an individual is repeatedly breaking the rules, please report to admin/moderator.
See more
See less

Kinzer Article Nyt 2000

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Kinzer Article Nyt 2000

    May 10, 2000

    Turkish Region Recalls Massacre of Armenians


    By STEPHEN KINZER

    ELAZIG, Turkey, May 7 -- Groves of mulberry trees at lakeside resorts are about all that remains from the days when this region was a center of Armenian life.

    One of the gnarled trees used to stand beside a long-gone Armenian Orthodox church. Now it shades Tahire Cakirbay, 66, as she looks out over her fields and shimmering Lake Hazar below.

    "They took the Armenians up there and killed them," Ms. Cakirbay said, pointing to a hill above her. "They dug a hole for the bodies. My parents told me."

    More than one million Armenians lived in what is now eastern Turkey until their community was shattered in an orgy of ethnic violence that exploded 85 years ago this spring. Many aspects of what happened then are still hotly debated, but here where the killings took place, few people doubt they occurred.

    "They don't teach it in school, but if you're interested there are plenty of ways you can find out," said Yasemin Orhan, a native of Elazig who graduated from the local university last year. "Many Armenians were killed. It's for sure."

    Ms. Orhan said she had learned about the killings from her grandmother. Here in eastern Turkey, the passage of several generations has not been enough to wipe them from memory.

    In the rest of the country, however, most people know little about the killings of 1915. Turkish textbooks refer to them only indirectly. They stress that Armenian militants were rebelling against the crumbling Ottoman Empire, and discount or ignore the killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians after the abortive revolt.

    Conflicts over how to deal with this episode have provoked a worldwide propaganda war between Armenia and Turkey.

    Armenian lobbyists want foreign governments to declare that what happened in 1915 was genocide. Some Armenian nationalists say that if Turkey can be forced to concede this, their next step might be to claim reparations or demand the return of land once owned by Armenians.

    Turkish diplomats resolutely resist these efforts. They assert that Muslims as well as Christians were killed here in 1915, and that it is unfair to blame only one side.

    To most Turks the events of 1915 seem distant, but in the Armenian consciousness they are a vivid and constant presence. Awareness of what is simply called "the genocide" is acute in Armenian communities around the world.

    Often it is accompanied by fierce anger at Turkey's recalcitrance.

    This anger boiled over into violence during the 1970's and 80's, when a group calling itself Commandos of the Armenian Genocide mounted a campaign against representatives of the Turkish government. It killed Turkish diplomats in the United States and elsewhere, and bombed targets including the Turkish Airlines counter at Orly Airport in Paris.

    Since then the battle has shifted back to the diplomatic arena. Each spring, foreign leaders issue carefully worded commemorations of the killings.

    Last month, President Clinton issued a proclamation recalling "a great tragedy of the twentieth century: the deportations and massacres of roughly one and a half million Armenians in the final years of the Ottoman Empire." He did not use the word "genocide."

    In the past year, Turkey has greatly improved its relations with Greece, but there has been little progress with Armenia. The two countries feud over a variety of political issues, but the wound that 1915 has cut into the Armenian psyche also plays an emotional role in keeping them apart.

    In recent months, some of the first efforts toward reconciliation between Turks and Armenians have begun. One was a conference of Turkish, Armenian and American scholars who met at the University of Chicago to begin a joint inquiry into the events of 1915.

    "This was the most difficult paper I have ever written in my life," said Selim Deringil, a historian at Bosporus University in Istanbul, as he presented his analysis of Turkish-Armenian relations. "Venturing into the Armenian crisis is like wandering into a minefield."

    The scholars who gathered at Chicago plan to meet again. Another group plans to open a series of conferences later this spring in Austria.

    In a different kind of gesture, seven Turkish and Armenian women, all in their 20's, have joined in a campaign aimed at improving relations between their peoples. The group's first project will be raising money to restore an Armenian church near Van, a city in eastern Turkey that was once an Armenian capital.

    "This kind of thing has never been tried before," said one of the organizers, Safak Pavey, a Turkish journalist. "We want to give an example of unity between two peoples who lived together for a long time but became alienated from each other. It's about restoring a church as a way of restoring souls."

    Elazig is just one place where Armenians were killed by Ottoman soldiers and Kurdish tribesmen in the spring and summer of 1915. But because several foreigners were living in the area and recorded what they saw, the killings here were unusually well documented.

    One of the foreigners was an American consul, Leslie Davis, who took a trip around Lake Hazar, then known as Lake Golcuk, after the massacres. "Thousands and thousands of Armenians, mostly helpless women and children, were butchered on its shores and barbarously mutilated," he later wrote.

    Armenian houses, churches and schools in this area have long since been destroyed or allowed to collapse. New villages have sprung up along the lake. Residents picnic under the mulberry trees that Armenians planted around their summer homes a century ago.

    It is still possible to find artifacts of Armenian life here. At one antique shop near Elazig, $250 will buy a heavy copper serving tray inscribed with the name of its former owner in distinctive Armenian script.

    Just last month, a couple of men were discovered digging at what they believed to be a former Armenian cemetery. They were apparently looking for gold that, according to local lore, was often interred with wealthy Armenians.

    Nevzat Gonultas, manager of a telephone substation on the lakeshore, is considered a local historian because his father spent many hours telling him stories from the past. Like most people around here -- although unlike their brethren in other parts of Turkey -- he knows what happened in 1915.

    "Other people don't know because they don't live here," Mr. Gonultas said as he sipped tea on a recent evening. "My father told me that Turkey was weak at that time and the Armenians decided to stage an uprising. Then the order came to kill them.

    Almost all were killed. It wasn't a war, it was a massacre."

    The Turkish authorities do not accept this version, and many Turks never hear it. A historical atlas issued by a leading Turkish newspaper does not show that much of this region was under Armenian rule for centuries.

    At historical sites in this region, signs and brochures often discount or omit facts about the earlier Armenian presence. According to one new travel book, "guards are under instruction to eavesdrop on tourist guides who might be tempted to tell another story."

    Anyone who seeks to learn about the events in 1915, however, need only come here.

    "This used to be an Armenian area, but now they're gone," said a factory worker named Selhattin Cinar. "Dead, killed, chased away. Our government doesn't want to admit it. Why would you want to say, 'My yogurt is sour'?"
    General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”

  • #2
    More Kinzer

    A journalist's dangerous mission

    By Stephen Kinzer

    Boston Globe
    January 20, 2007


    THE LAST TIME I met Hrant Dink, the Turkish-Armenian journalist who was
    murdered in Istanbul
    yesterday, I felt a sudden need to do more than just exchange
    pleasantries. This was several months
    ago, and we were sampling one of Turkey's great delights, dinner aboard a
    boat cruising the
    Bosphorus. Life for Dink, however, had become less than delightful. He was
    being fiercely denounced
    by the ultra nationalist press, and seemed subdued and preoccupied.

    I pulled him aside and told him how important his work was, how much
    support he had in Turkey and
    beyond, and what a journalistic hero he had become. "I understand," he
    replied simply. "I do not stop."

    Dink was in the forefront of a growing number of Turks who want their
    government to admit that
    leaders of the crumbling Ottoman Empire directed a mass slaughter of
    Armenians in 1915. These are
    the same Turks who want their country to break away from its authoritarian
    past and complete its
    march toward full democracy.

    Some Turkish nationalists, however, feel deeply threatened by their
    country's progress toward
    modernity. During the 1980s, they gunned down the country's leading
    journalists. In the 1990s they
    concentrated their fire on Kurdish nationalists, hundreds of whom were
    killed by death squads that
    acted with absolute impunity.

    In recent years, many Turks had allowed themselves to believe those bad
    days were over. But with an
    election campaign approaching, nationalist rhetoric is again surfacing in
    political speeches and
    militant newspapers. Much of it contains ugly insinuations that Armenians,
    Kurds, and members of
    other minority groups threaten Turkey's national unity and its very survival.

    Rare is the government official or military officer who condemns this
    rhetoric. Some not only
    encourage it but protect accused killers from prosecution. That has
    emboldened radicals and led
    them to believe that the state tacitly supports them.

    By their silence, and by failing to condemn attacks like a bombing
    evidently staged by army
    officers in the Kurdish town of Semdinli 14 months ago, Turkish political
    leaders and military
    commanders helped set the stage for yesterday's murder. In his weekly
    newspaper, Agos, which was
    published in both Turkish and Armenian, Dink wrote as he pleased, refusing
    to observe unwritten
    taboos that shackle the Turkish press. He was charged several times with
    the Orwellian crime of
    "insulting Turkishness." On one occasion he was convicted, although his
    six-month sentence was
    suspended. Each time he appeared in court, a crowd of ultra nationalists
    staged a violent scene,
    showering him with abuse and trying to assault him.

    This was the same gang that screamed insults at the Nobel Prize-winning
    novelist Orhan Pamuk when
    he was brought to trial last year. Dink attended Pamuk's trial in a show
    of solidarity, driving the
    militants to new heights of fury.

    Turkish nationalists believed they won a great victory when, at the end of
    last year, the European
    Union suspended talks aimed at making Turkey an EU member. They still hope
    to turn back the
    democratic tide that is engulfing their country. Some apparently believe
    that if they cannot do it
    by indicting free thinkers, they can do it through murder. This attack has
    generated revulsion
    across Turkey. It will undoubtedly galvanize the country's large and
    increasingly bold corps of
    human rights advocates.

    Their first step may be to intensify their campaign for repeal of the
    notorious Article 301 of the
    Turkish penal code, which places a series of restrictions on free press.
    To achieve that, and to
    finish reshaping Turkey's political system, will not be easy. Turkey is
    being torn by an epochal
    crisis of identity. The old and oppressive political tradition is dying,
    but its death throes are
    becoming disturbingly violent.

    Political leaders, and their colleagues in uniform, seem to believe they
    can tolerate and even make
    use of ultranationalist ideologues. Yesterday's murder shows how dangerous
    that course is. Reports
    from Istanbul suggest that the man who committed the murder was very
    young, perhaps a teenager. His
    arrest will not calm outraged Turks. Their anger is directed not simply
    against the man who pulled
    the trigger, but also against those who created the venomous climate that
    made this crime possible.

    Turkey's violent ultra nationalist fringe, long supported by elements in
    the police and military,
    aims not only to kill journalists but also to stop the progress of Turkish
    history. No government
    has tried seriously to crush it. Yesterday's murder, and the wave of anger
    it has set off, gives
    Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan a chance to do so.


    Stephen Kinzer is a former chief of the New York Times bureau in Istanbul
    and author of "Crescent
    and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds."
    General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”

    Comment


    • #3
      Though unrelated to this thread, I just had to post the following story. Bahceli says the sky is falling. He truly makes me smile even if that is not his intention.



      Nationalism being undermined, separatist plot brewing'

      The New Anatolian / Ankara
      25 January 2007


      In the wake of incidents implicating the state, a dangerous lynching campaign has begun to erode the faith of citizens in the state, warned Devlet Bahceli, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader, yesterday.

      At a press conference, Bahceli stated that Turkey is being left defenseless against threats from both inside and out. He added that last week's murder of journalist Hrant Dink is a scenario aiming to sow political tension.

      Bahceli claimed people's emotional and human reactions are being cruelly exploited to blacken the nation's values and the sensitivity of the Turkish people and added that the country is passing through a very dark, dangerous period.

      "A new chance for exploitation was made by certain groups waiting for the signal to condemn Turkey to convict it under an international plan," charged Bahceli. "Dramas staged in recent days after much rehearsal showed the concrete signals of hostility and provocative campaigns targeting Turkey. A risky road strewn with mines stretches ahead of Turkey."

      Stating that the slaying of Dink is, above all, a heinous act that should be condemned by every citizen who hasn't lost human dignity, Bahceli added that the wave of indignation at the murder will be seen as an ethic and humane reaction, as long as it stays within these limits.

      "Non-Muslim minority Turkish citizens binding their fate and future to Turkey's are respectable individuals having equal rights and responsibilities of Turkish society," said Bahceli. "Alienating or discriminating against these people just because of their ethnic roots goes against Turkish nationalism and love of country."

      Bahceli stated that groups marching through the streets with banners and black flags already found the culprit for the murder and convicted the state by chanting "Murderer state will give account," or "Here's the state, here's the genocide." He explained that following this, "so-called intellectuals" set up tribunals in their newspaper columns or on TV screens.

      "These people took being the police, prosecutor, judge and executor as a natural right," said Bahceli. "Through these slogans, Turkish nationalism and Turkish Penal Code (TCK) Article 301 were equated with a miserable criminal and they were declared as the instigators behind the murder."

      The MHP leader pointed to the slogan "We're all Armenian" chanted at every stage of this "lynching and smear campaign." "Given the emotional atmosphere, this slogan can be seen as an expression of solidarity at an individual level," he said. "Yet, everyone should evaluate as far as their conscience is concerned what this slogan means to circles claiming that Turkey has undergoing a crucial transformation."

      Bahceli claimed that while Turkish nationality has been presented as an unfavorable idea, activities are underway to give a legal green light for political sectarianism.

      "These provocations to transform Turkey to a new bilingual, multinational partnership republic by dividing the nation have reached a very dangerous level under the political auspices and clemency of the ruling party," said Bahceli.
      General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”

      Comment

      Working...
      X