EP holds conference on massacres of Armenians in Dersim, despite pressure from Ankara

[Alexandros]

EP holds conference on massacres of Armenians in Dersim, despite pressure from Ankara




19.11.2008 13:40 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ For the first time in its history, the European Parliament welcomed a great conference on the massacres of Dersim (Turkey, 1937-1938). This conference was organized on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of these events and on the initiative of Gesellschaft für Wiederaufbau (union for renaissance) and of the MEP Feleknas Uca (Confederal Group of the European United Left, Germany), under the support of her political party, the European Armenian Federation told PanARMENIAN.Net.

This conference was a huge success and was attended by more than 200 participants including European citizens and natives of Turkey. The complete program of the day will soon be available here. Among the other speakers, Hilda Tchoboian, the president of the European Armenian Federation underlined the continuity of the genocidal tradition of Turkey whose identity was built on the negation of the other. She recalled that at the time of the Armenian genocide, Dersimis – contrary to other Kurdish tribes – had abstained from any attacks towards the Armenian populations and sheltered and protected them; about 40,000 people had been saved and today, one out of four Dersimis have Armenian ancestry.

This conference – and in particular the presence of two town representatives of Turkey - Serafettin Halis, deputy of the province of Tunceli and Songul Erol Abdil, mayor of the town of Tunceli (Dersim) – caused a great agitation in the Turkish press, in particular by their remarks on the genocidal tradition of Turkey. The presence of Hilda Tchoboian to this conference was also interpreted by Ankara like a proof of “the will of the European Parliament to dismember Turkey!” During the conference, the lecturers and organizers revealed that Ankara carried applied intense pressure to prohibit this conference from taking place.

The conference revealed to Europeans that Turkey is not and never has been homogeneous on an ethnic or linguistic point of view. The Kurds, Dersimis, Zazas and innumerable other minorities have all their own identity and collectively they compose the majority of the Anatolian population.

“Turkey has never admitted this diversity of population and tried to deny it by committing different mass killings. It is also this reality which Turkey wants to hide from its own population and other States,” said Hilda Tchoboian.

The conference was concluded by a Joint Declaration signed by Turkish, Kurdish, Armenian and Assyrian-Chaldean organizations, representative’s of populations who have all been oppressed or massacred by Turkey.


PanARMENIAN.Net.

[Alexandros]

Declaration urging Turkey to acknowledge genocides it committed signed in Brussels




20.11.2008 17:31 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ On 13 November 2008, Association of the Democrat Armenians of Belgium, Association of the Assyrians of Belgium, Kurdish Institute of Brussels, European Armenian Federation and Info-Türk Foundation issued a joint declaration calling on the Turkish government to respect the rights of national minorities and acknowledge the genocides it committed, the European Armenian Federation toldPanARMENIAN.Net.

The declaration says:

“For three millenniums, Anatolia has been the homeland or has passed through it countless people. It is a land where coexisted and coexist today Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Arabs, Kurds, Turks, Zazas, as well as a number of other minorities such as Lazes, Circassians, Pomaks, Yörüks, and others. Certain of these people and the majority have adopted the Apostolic Christianity, others have converted to Roman Catholicism or Orthodoxy, some became Nestorians or Chaldeans; while others turned Sunni Muslims, Shiites or Alevi Muslims; and still others remained Yezidis or Mazdeists or kept their shamanic beliefs.

This coexistence naturally led to disputes – sometime very violent – but it led also and above all to a cultural closeness and to an ethnic intermingling which challenge all ideologies that are based on racial or linguistic purity: today, the overwhelming majority of Turkey’s inhabitants are of mixed origins However, the Ottoman Empire and then after it the Kemalist republic have artificially reshaped the land’s multi-ethnic identity by reducing the dominated people into slavery, by denying their identity, and then by promoting the doctrine of the Turkish “race” as the “essential being”. This fascist like thinking has led the authorities perpetrate abominable mass murders such as:

- The Armenian and Assyro-Chaldean Genocide (1915-1916)
- The Koçkiri massacre of Kurds, Alevis and Kizilbachs (1919-1921)
- The brutal expulsion of Greeks (1923-1924)
- Massacres of Kurds and Assyrians after the revolt of Sheikh Said (1925-1928)
- The Dersim Massacre of Kurds, Alevis and Kizilbachs (1935-1938)
- The iniquitous laws and the deportations of Armenians, Jews and Greeks (1942)
- Pogroms of Istanbul and Izmir against Greeks, Armenians and Jews (1955)
- War against Kurds (since 1984)

It has to be recalled, that since its creation, the Kemalist republic targets and represses all political opponents to the regime, whatever their ethnic origin, including ethnic Turkish democrats.

Lastly, the ultranationalist and genocide denial policies of Ankara utilize the Turkish immigrants in the European countries and with the complicity of certain local European political leaders incite them to hatred towards the Armenian, Assyrian and Kurdish communities.

Facing this ideology to hate and its bloody consequences, the united people of Anatolia:

- Rebuke the idea of any racial of religious supremacy and reaffirm their indefectible attachment to the individual fundamental rights of all the Turkish citizens as well as to the collective rights of the people living in this State;

- Reject the fiction of a monolithic Turkey as extolled by the Turkish State and, on the contrary, call upon the State to pride on the ethnic wealth and diversity of the Anatolian people;

- Ask again the Turkish State to rehabilitate itself in rehabilitating the victims of its past exactions, in committing itself on the path of the political recognition of these exactions and in giving an end to their denial or glorification;

- Proclaim their conviction that the incapacity of Turkey to progress on the path of democracy, as well as the state of economical and social backwardness of its eastern provinces are closely linked to the war conducted by this State towards its own citizens;

- Reaffirm their commitment to keep on the political struggle so that Turkey recognize, denounce and disassociate from its past and present crimes; to transform it into a democratic State which would respect its minorities as its various political forces, united in their diversity.”

The declaration was adopted upon the outcomes of the European Parliament ’s conference on the massacres of Armenians in Dersim (Turkey, 1937-1938). Despite Turkey’s pressure, this conference was organized on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of these events and brought together over 200 representatives from European states.


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