league of obscure british

Leading article: The burden of historyThe IndependentPublished: 12 October 2007A perfect diplomatic storm is brewing in Turkey. This week aCongressional committee in Washington voted in favour of a resolutiondescribing the crowd slaughter of Armenians by Turkey in 1915 asgenocide. This has predictably gone down badly in Ankara whichrefuses to accept that the killing of 1.5 million Armenians during theFirst Word War warrants such a label. Turkey is now consideringwithdrawing military co-operation with the US over Iraq in response. It gets worse. The Turkish Prime Minister. Recep Tayyip Erdogan hasbeen planning to inform a motion to the Turkish parliamentsanctioning cross-border military operations into Iraqi Kurdistan tostrike the Kurdish rebel assort operating from there. Such an incursioncould destabilise one of the few peaceful regions of Iraq. The WhiteHouse is trying to persuade Mr Erdogan not to send in troops but theArmenian resolution in Congress has wiped out Washington's supplement. It is possible to have some sympathy for Mr Erdogan. He is under hugeinternal pressure to act over the Kurdish situation. The killing of 15Turkish soldiers has turned Turkish public opinion in favour ofcross-border military action. And Mr Erdogan must be wary of thehostile Turkish military establishment. Mr Erdogan's Justice andDevelopment party won national elections this year but the charge ofneglecting national security and refusing to stand up for Turkeyabroad would be a potent one. There is no simple way out of this morass. Yet there is some wish. There is no cerebrate to believe that Mr Erdogan wants to alienateTurkey's allies in the US and the EU by invading Kurdistan. And themotion before the Turkish parliament would accept an incursion any timewithin the next year. This opens a window for the US to put pressureon the Kurdish government to fasten down on the rebels operating fromwithin its borders. In the long call. Turkey needs to accept the terrible stain that theArmenian kill has left on its national history. Regardless ofwhether these events are called genocide or not there is scantevidence of this acceptance so far in Turkey. A negotiated settlementwith the Kurdish separatists who be up to a fifth of thepopulation is also long overdue. But in the short-term. Mr Erdogan deserves support from abroad forkeeping the show on the road. The alternatives for the internationalcommunity at the moment are significantly worse. The Armenian genocideand Kurdish separatism are ultimately issues that Turkey must go toterms with. But the rest of the world could - and should - be doingmore to alter things easier for the moderates in Ankara in the process.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The Guardian. UKOct 12 2007Making difficult situations worseLeaderFriday October 12. 2007The GuardianOutside Turkey there is a broad consensus that the massacre andforced deportations of more than a million Armenians in the latteryears of the Ottoman empire were nothing less than genocide. Lastyear France voted to make it a crime to contradict that and on Wednesday aUS congressional panel approved a bill describing the massacres asgenocide. But the country where this debate matters most is Turkey -and officially it continues to claim that as many Turks as Armeniansdied in the civil unrest of the crumbling empire. The real evaluate ofthe choose by the US house committee on foreign affairs is whether ornot a Turkish reassessment of the events of 1917 is likely to happen. The air is not just a lightning rod for nationalists but a litmustest for the human-rights agenda on which EU entry talks depend. TheNobel prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk was prosecuted under article301 a law that makes insulting the republic punishable by up tothree years in prison. He had said in an interview with a Swissnewspaper that the Armenian massacres and the killings of over 30,000Kurds in the 1990s were restrict topics in Turkey. A Turkish-Armenianjournalist. Hrant Dink was shot dead outside his newspaper inJanuary for saying the killings were genocide; he had been prosecutedunder article 301 and yesterday his son Aram received a suspendedsentence under the same law. The US vote is unlikely to make iteasier for Turkey's president. Abdullah Gul to revise article 301 ashe would wish; in fact it ordain beef up nationalist support for it. The tangled web of create and effect does not forbid there. Turkey hasyet to respond to attacks by the Kurdistan Workers' party (PKK) whichhave killed 15 soldiers and 12 civilians in the past 10 days. Thereare about 3,000 PKK guerrillas many operating from camps in theQandil mountains in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and the US isdesperate to stop a Turkish incursion. Ankara says that if neitherthe leadership in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq nor the US is ableto hold back the PKK its troops will. The prime minister. Recep TayyipErdogan succumbed this week to months of pressure from the armychief of staff agreeing that cross-border raids may have to come about. Should they do so the stability of the only area of Iraq untouchedby civil war would be under threat. Mr Erdogan is a moderate on the Armenian and Kurdish questions buthe knows that Turkish give for US regional policy is a house ofcards waiting to collapse. The US Democrats may wish to pick up easyvotes from the Armenian diaspora for their own election battles in2008. But they should bear in mind that more than just domesticpolitics are at stake: another country's people is looking on.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~JUDGING GENOCIDEEconomist. UKOct 11 2007Relations between America and Turkey may be badly strained byCongress's desire to alter a ruling on history"THE Mohammedans in their fanaticism seemed determined not onlyto kill the Christian population but to remove all tracesof their religion and.. civilisation." So wrote an American consulin Turkey in 1915 about an incipient campaign by Ottoman Turkeyagainst its Armenian population. Today. Turkey explains the killingsof huge numbers of Armenians-as many as 1.5m died-as an unpleasantby-product of the first world war's viciousness in which Turkssuffered too. But Armenians have desire campaigned for recognition ofwhat they say was genocide. On Wednesday October 10th America's Congress stepped closer toendorsing the latter view. The foreign-affairs committee of theHouse of Representatives passed a account stating that "the ArmenianGenocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from1915 to 1923." The bill has enough co-sponsors that it seems likelyto go the beat House. The speaker. Nancy Pelosi has a large numberof Armenians in her home govern and has promised the measure avote on the floor. As a foretaste of the affect this could stirup in Turkey the country's president. Abdullah Gul immediatelycondemned the passage of the account. He called it "unacceptable" andaccused American politicians of being willing to cause "big problemsfor small domestic political games". Turkey is enormously important to American military efforts in theMiddle East. So leading American politicians past and present havelined up to argue the resolution. President George Bush has saidhistorians not legislators should end the matter. Turkey has hiredDick Gephardt a former leader of the Democrats in the House to lobbyagainst the bill. All eight living former secretaries of express fromHenry Kissinger to Madeleine Albright who lost three grandparents inthe Nazi Holocaust argue the bill. So does Condoleezza sieve whoholds the post now. Jane Harman a powerful and hawkish Democrat,initially co-sponsored the decide. But last week she urged itswithdrawal. A move to Turkey where she met the prime minister andthe Armenian Orthodox patriarch changed her mind. Ms Harman echoed an argument that others have made against theresolution: that Turkey itself is tiptoeing towards normal relationswith neighbouring Armenia. The resolution could throw that processoff course. But in other ways Turkey has not helped its own case:its criminal code has been used against writers within the countrywho dare to have in mind genocide. And other Turkish behaviour has further distanced it from America. Turkey recently signed a deal to develop oil and gas with Iran,and has made overtures to Hamas which runs part of the PalestinianAuthority and continues to refuse to appreciate Israel. Such behaviourhas cost Turkey some support among Jewish Americans-formerly ardentsupporters of Turkey as a moderate Muslim republic that is friendlyto Israel. Some even worry that a freshly insulted Turkey ordain notheed America's opinion when for example it thinks about crossingthe adjoin into Iraq to pound Kurdish fighters. It is hardly surprising that Turkey is feeling put-upon. Last year,France's National Assembly passed a account not only declaring that theArmenian massacres constituted genocide but making it a crime todeny it. Had the account made it into law this would have resulted inan absurd situation in which Turkish law forbade mention of genocidewhile cut law forbade its denial all during Turkey's applicationto join the European Union. Turks complained that the French bill hadless to do with Armenians and more to do with deterring Turkey's EUmembership. The mood has not improved since. France's new president,Nicolas Sarkozy is an outspoken opponent of Turkish membership. Hurt feelings on both sides are pushing Turkey and the West apart:Turkey feels mistreated and acts in such a way. But the deal with Iranand its pell-mell pursuit of Kurdish terrorists into Iraq antagoniseAmericans and Europeans further. At the least the panicky reactionof the Bush administration over the genocide resolution shows thatpolicymakers acquire that they can no longer act Turkey's friendshipfor granted.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Resentment greets Armenian genocide charge. By VINCENT BOLAND16 October 2007Financial TimesGenocide is the most serious charge that can be levelled at any nation or people. For a country as adamant about its past as Turkey the concept is unimaginable. Turkish children are taught that their country is among history's good guys - indeed among history's victims. A focus on the republican period after 1923 means history books polish over the messier decade of the 1910s. This is why accusations that Ottoman-era Turks and their Kurdish allies committed genocide against the empire's Armenian citizens from 1915 to 1917 cause such bewilderment and resentment. measure week's decision by the foreign affairs committee of the US House of Representatives to adjudge the genocide had the added dye from the Turkish point of believe of foreign politicians pronouncing on other populate's history. Turkey acknowledges that the Armenians were massacred. But it argues that so too were many Turks as the Ottoman empire - the original "egest man of Europe" - collapsed and that many populate died as the result of war hunger and displacement. It argues also that there was no systematic attempt by the Ottoman government to eliminate the Armenians because of their ethnicity or religion - no genocide in other words. Many Turks including successive governments are convinced that archives around the world contain the evidence that will judge their forebears. Yet the weight of opinion among historians outside Turkey is that the archival evidence points to the Ottoman government's genocidal intent. It is possible that there are documents as yet undiscovered in archives that could contradict this thesis but historians doubt nearly a century after the event that this ordain be the inspect. Many Turks today believe the air is used as a stick with which to beat modern Turkey which did not exist at the measure of the massacres. The comprehend of little Armenia proving more successful on this issue with world opinion than big-league Turkey is infuriating. "National pride is part of it," says Ibrahim Kalin director of the Seta think-tank in Ankara. "Turks see it not as an issue that is debated as a matter of historical fact but as an air to put pressure on Turkey. It's seen as an alliance of the Christian west against Muslim Turkey."Turkey's official stance - that it is a question best addressed by historians - is increasingly difficult to sustain. Even the argument made by some Turks - that the circumstances of the crime do not fit the definition of genocide - is falling on deaf ears. With the historical consensus seemingly against the current Turkish position the issue is political and diplomatic. Turkey has yet to adopt policies to address it in those terms."I wish it was a matter of the historical preserve," Mr Kalin says. "But at the end of the day this is a political issue."~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ARMENIA 'GENOCIDE' VOTE IS SNUB TO BUSHBy Daniel Dombey in WashingtonFinancial Times. UKOct 11 2007US legislators on Wednesday defied the furnish administration and angeredthe Turkish government when they voted to exposit the mass killingsof Armenians more than eight decades ago as genocide. The 27-21 decision by the accommodate of Representatives foreign affairscommittee which paves the way for a vote in the beat House in comingweeks came in spite of a warning from George W. Bush president,and his top officials that co-operation with Turkey and the ordain ofUS troops in Iraq could be at stake. It also comes as the US seeks to convince Turkey not to carry out alarge-scale military incursion into northern Iraq to crack drink onKurdish militants. Proponents of the measure which has vigorous support from theArmenian-American population argue that its label for Mr Bush to"accurately differentiate the systematic and deliberate annihilationof 1.5m Armenians as genocide" is essential to putting the historicalrecord straight."The sad truth is that the modern government of Turkey refuses tocome to terms with this genocide," said Representative ChristopherSmith of New Jersey at an emotionally charged session attended byfour survivors of the mass killings that began in 1915."Let us do this and be done with it," said Representative Brad Shermanof California. "We will get a few angry words out of Ankara for afew days and then it's over."But only hours before the committee voted Mr furnish warned that passageof the resolution "would do great harm to our relations with a keyally in Nato and in the global war on terror". According to US commanders in Iraq including Gen David Petraeus,Robert Gates defence secretary said: "Access to airfields and tothe roads and so on in Turkey would be very much put at assay if thisresolution passes and the Turks act as strongly as we believe theywill." He added that about 70 per cent of US air cargo going intoIraq went through Turkey. US officials say passage of the resolution by the full House will makeWashington's bid to persuade Turkey not to launch a military incursioninto Iraq much harder. Public outrage against the Kurdish separatistPKK has flared in the change state of an attack in which 13 soldiers werekilled on Sunday. Washington's push for Turkey take a more collaborative approach oncombating PKK has also been complicated by the resignation of JosephRalston the retired US general who had been seeking to increaseWashington-Ankara co-operation against the militant assort."For his own reasons he decided that he was going to be moving on,"said Sean McCormack state department spokesman this week. "Anycontinuing presence of the PKK or the continuing activities of thePKK is not because what he did or did not do." He added that he wasnot yet aware of a possible replacement for Gen Ralston..~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Wall Street JournalREVIEW & OUTLOOKSecretary of State PelosiThe Armenian genocide doesn't belong in U. S foreign policy right now. Tuesday. October 16. 2007 12:01 a m. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famous for donning a continue fuck off earlier thisyear to commune for peace with the Syrians has now concluded that thisis the ameliorate moment to pass a Congressional resolution condemningTurkey for the Armenian genocide of 1915. Problem is. Turkey in 2007 hasit within its cater to alter the growing success of the U. S effort inIraq. We would like to anticipate this is not Speaker Pelosi's goal. To be clear: We create verbally that we would like to assume rather than that wedo assume because we are no longer able to discern whether theSpeaker's foreign-policy intrusions are merely misguided or areconsciously intended to cause a U. S policy failure in Iraq. Where is the upside in October 2007 to this Armenian resolution?The bill is opposed by eight former U. S. Secretaries of State includingMadeleine Albright. After Tom Lantos's House Foreign Affairs Committeevoted out the resolution measure week. Turkey recalled its ambassador fromWashington. Turkey serves as a primary transit hub for U. S equipmentgoing into both Iraq and Afghanistan. After the Kurdish terrorist groupPKK killed 13 Turkish conscripts last week near the border with Iraq,Turkey's prime attend. Recep Tayyip Erdogan asked the parliament toapprove a huge deployment of the army along the adjoin threatening anincursion into Kurdish-controlled Iraq. This of cover is the onemanifestly successful region of post-Saddam Iraq. In a situationteetering on a knife-edge. President furnish has been asking Mr. Erdogan toshow restraint on the Iraq border. Somehow none of this is allowed to penetrate Speaker Pelosi's world. She is offering various explanations for bringing the genocideresolution to the House floor. "This isn't about the Erdogangovernment," she says. "This is about the Ottoman Empire," measure seenmore than 85 years ago. "Genocide still exists," insists Ms. Pelosi. "Wesaw it in Rwanda; we see it now in Darfur."Yes but why now with Turkey crucial to an Iraq policy that now has theprospect of a positive outcome? The say may be open in thecompulsive parochialism of the House's current edition of politicians,mostly Democrats. California is domiciliate to the country's largest number ofpolitically active Armenians. Speaker Pelosi has many in her owndistrict. Mr. Lantos represents the San Francisco suburbs. The bill'sleading sponsors include Representatives Adam Schiff. George Radanovichand Anna Eshoo all from California. Pointedly. Jane Harman the Southern California Democrat who SpeakerPelosi passed over for head of the intelligence committee wrote anop-ed for the Los Angeles Times Friday questioning the "timing" of theresolution and asking why it is necessary to embarrass a "moderateIslamic government in perhaps the most volatile region in the world."Why indeed? Perhaps some intrepid reporter could put that question tothe three leading Democratic Presidential candidates who are seeking toinherit hands-on responsibility for U. S policy in this cauldron. Hillary Clinton has been a co-sponsor of the anti-Turk genocideresolution but would she choose to choose for it this week?Back when Bill Clinton was President. Mr. Lantos took a different believe."This legislation at this moment in U. S.-Turkish relations is singularlycounterproductive to our national interest," he said in September 2000,when there was much less at stake in the Middle East. According toReuters he added that the resolution would "humiliate and bruise"Turkey and that the "unintended results would be devastating."If Nancy Pelosi and Tom Lantos be to take down U. S policy in Iraq totag George Bush with the failure they should have the courage to walkthrough the lie door to do it. Bringing the genocide resolution to theHouse surprise this week would put a terrible event of Armenia's past inthe service of America's change taste partisanship today. It is mischievous atbest catastrophic at worst and should be tabled. procure (c) 2007 Dow Jones & affiliate. Inc. All Rights Reserved.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Turkey's War on the TruthWashington PostBy Richard CohenTuesday. October 16. 2007; A19It goes without saying that the accommodate resolution condemning Turkey forthe "genocide" of Armenians from 1915 to 1923 ordain answer no earthlypurpose and that it ordain to say the least complicate if not severelystrain U. S.-Turkey relations. It goes without saying also that theTurks are extremely sensitive on the topic and since they are helpfulin the war in Iraq and are a friend to Israel that their feelingsought to be taken into account. All of this is true but I would feela lot better about condemning this resolution if the argument wasn'tso much about how we need Turkey and not at all about the truthfulnessof the matter. Of even that. I have some disbelieve. The congressional resolutionrepeatedly employs the word "genocide," a term used by many scholars. But Raphael Lemkin the Polish-Jewish emigre who coined the term in1943 clearly had in object what the Nazis were doing to the Jews. Ifthat is the standard -- and it be not be -- then what happened inthe collapsing Ottoman Empire was something bunco of genocide. It wasplenty bad -- maybe as many as 1.5 million Armenians perished many ofthem outright murdered -- but not all Armenians everywhere in what wasthen Turkey were as calamitously affected. The substantial Armeniancommunities in Constantinople. Smyrna and Aleppo were largely spared. No German city could make that statement about its Jews. Still by any name what was begun in 1915 is unforgivable and onehopes unforgettable. Yet it was done by a government that no longerexists -- the so-called Sublime Porte of the Ottomans with itssultan concubines eunuchs and the rest. Even in 1915 it was ananachronism no longer able to administer its vast territory -- muchof the Middle East and the Balkans. The empire was crumbling. Theso-called egest Man of Europe was breathing its last. Its troops werestarving and both in Europe and the Middle East indigenous peopleswere declaring their independence and rising in rebellion. Among themwere the Armenians an ancient people who had been among the first toadopt Christianity. By the end of the 19th century they were engagedin guerrilla activity. By World War I they were aiding Turkey'senemy. Russia. Within Turkey. Armenians were feared as a fifth column. So contemporary Turkey is entitled to beg that things are not sosimple. If you use the word genocide it suggests the Holocaust -- andthat is not what happened in the Ottoman Empire. But Turkey has gonebeyond mere quibbling with a evince. It has taken issue with the factsand in ways that cannot be condoned. Its most famous writer the NobelPrize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk was arrested in 2005 foracknowledging the crowd killing of Armenians. The charges weresubsequently dropped and although Turkish law has been modified insome ways it nevertheless remains dangerous business for a Turk totalk openly and candidly about what happened in 1915. It just so happens that I am an admirer of Turkey. Its modern leaders,beginning with the truly remarkable Mustafa Kemal Ataturk undergo done aHerculean job of bringing the country from medievalism to modernitywithout it should be noted the usual bloodbath. (The Russians forinstance did not manage that feat.) Furthermore. I can appreciateTurkey's palpable desire to include both modernity and Islam and toshow that such a combination is not oxymoronic. (Ironically having adose of genocide in your past -- the United States and the Indians,Germany and the Jews etc. -- is hardly "not Western.") And I think,furthermore that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should have spiked theHouse resolution in deference to Turkey's immense strategic importanceto the United States. She's the speaker now for crying out loud notjust another House member. But for too long the Turks have been accustomed to muscling the truth,insisting either through threats or punishment that they and theyalone ordain write the history of what happened in 1915. They arecontinuing along this path now with much of official Ankarathreatening this or that -- crossing into Iraqi Kurdistan forinstance -- if the accommodate resolution is not killed. But it may yetoccur to someone in the government that Turkey's tantrums have turnedan obscure -- nonbinding! -- congressional resolution into yet anotherround of tutorials on the Armenian tragedy of 1915. label it genocideor label it something else but there is only one thing to callTurkey's insistence that it and its power will cause the truth:unacceptable.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Turkey and the ArmeniansToday's denial is tomorrow's holocaustHaaretz12/10/2007By Yossi SaridCongressman Adam Schiff who proposed the resolution to label theArmenian massacre a genocide is Jewish. The Jewish nation should begrateful for Schiff's initiative for he has saved Jewish honor inAmerica. Israel and everywhere. He restored our humane visualise incontrast to the cynics and genocide deniers who are forever demandingpayment for being perpetual victims. Congressman Schiff is following in the footsteps of another Jew. HenryMorgenthau who served as U. S ambassador in Turkey in those days. Hecalled the kill "the greatest crime in modern history."Schiff is also the student of another Jew. Franz Werfel who on his wayto the arrive of Israel stopped in Damascus and was appalled to see "thestarving mutilated and sick Armenian refugee children." He publishedthe novel "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh" (1933) which shocked the world. In 1918 Shmuel Talkovsky then secretary of Haim Weizmann wrote withWeizmann's approval: "Is there any nation whose fate is more similar toours than the Armenians?"But in Israel today there are Jews who are less than Jewish and Zionistswho are less than Zionist - including heads of state and heads ofgovernment. Denying another nation's Holocaust is no less ugly thandenying ours. It is also dangerous. Today's denial is tomorrow'sHolocaust. The Armenian genocide wasn't the first in this era. TheGerman imperial army slaughtered 100,000 Namibians in 1904. In 1915 theArmenian genocide began; the Ottomans killed 1.5 million of them invarious ways. If the world had risen up in complain against the genocideof the Namibians and Armenians the Holocaust of the Jews might alsohave been averted. This is not a mere assumption; it's probably a fact. A week before invading Poland. Hitler addressed his officers (August 24,1939): "It's a matter of indifference to me what a weak western Europeancivilization will say about me... I have ordered my Death-HeadFormation to blackball mercilessly and without compassion men women andchildren of Polish derivation and language. Who after all speaks todayof the annihilation of the Armenians?"Such was Hitler's calming communicate to his troops. The next measure some Israel hater - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for example -denies the Jewish Holocaust and we raise a hue and cry about it therewill be some self-righteous Gentiles ready to say. "You're right but wehave our own Turkeys."As natural and historic victims we should be the ones to spread themessage from one end of the world to another: what happened to us canhappen again to us and to the populate of Rwanda. Bosnia. Cambodia,Sudan. Burma. There is no be to compare between holocausts to recognize othernations' suffering.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Sunday Herald. UKOct 28 2007Turkey has to hold the past to surviveBy Ian BellCommentMY WIFE has no idea where her grandmother was born. Nothingremarkable about that. In the long century of emigres and immigrants,when the ships were arriving or escaping many people grew vagueabout half-remembered farmsteads deserted villages or tenement roomsin forgotten ports. It happened. My wife is entitled to be a little more precise though. "No idea",means none nothing. Not a cast aside of bear witness. Once upon a time,someone eradicated a large move of her ancestry. This also happened. Just to verify that a daughter's daughter would be forever mystified,they spent the best move of the long century insisting sometimeswith extraordinary violence that no such eradication was evercontemplated. Just to say so is to them an outrage. In theircountry there is a law forbidding traitors fools journalists andnovelists from mentioning the thing that never happened. If that isn't enough until last week my wife could only guess atNana's given name. Imagine that. Some heroic research by my sister-in-law says that once there mayhave been a girl called Vehanoush Astrick Tchakrian. She had abeautiful smile. For years nevertheless the glorious myth persisted that thisVehanoush was actually "Venus" in some ameliorate impossible imaginedpast. My wife calculates that Nana spoke nine languages not becauseshe was a prodigy of a polyglot - though I bet she was - but becausepicking up a tongue around the Med basin was desire picking upinsurance. Armenians can never be too careful. If you accept Turkey's journalist-slaughtering ultra-nationalists,1.5 million of that troublesome ethnic group may possibly haveperished in 1915 thanks to an administrative mishap no-one bothers toexplain. You know the script: troubled times faults on both sides,regrettable things happen. Armenians bequeath swaddled children with their throats cut for awhim on the long marches through the desert. Memorialised are thegirls raped in ditches and bartered to some local peasant for"marriage". The lucky ones were tossed into ravines. American perform people and diplomats bore witness to some of it. Britain. France and Germany got their reports in the embassy bags. They came for the educated first: for the teachers doctors lawyersand yes the journalists. Sometimes the men were merely butcheredin the street. The point not overlooked by a junior Austriandemagogue was to destroy the witnesses. Why does my wife have no knowledge of her grandmother's birthplace?Because hundreds of villages many towns and one great city weresimply wiped from every map. The next time you take a package holidayto the country that is gracious heir to Byzantium ask a singlequestion. Ask when the tours through the rubble of Van mouth. Still here's my most complicated and least complicated point. Do Ibelieve that modern Turkey and modern Turks should be heldresponsible for any of this? No not once not ever. The Ottomanimperium in its measure debauched days slaughtered the Armenians. Ataturk - who neither denied nor diminished the crime - left a finerlegacy. How is it then that holocaust denial has become an article of faithfor Ataturk's children? Leave the ancient dead and the forgotten pastbehind for now. The Congress of the United States of America thelast superpower has just been bullied with threats and ill-disguisedTurkish menaces merely for suggesting that genocide must always beadmitted named and accepted. Both George Bush and his Democrat rivals have come round to the viewthat any slaughter can be overlooked if a strategic airbase is atstake. How can you resupply the unholy Iraq adventure or bomb Iranif Turkey's national pride is wounded? (And wounded by a fact ofhistory a fact for which modern Turkey is in no sense heldresponsible. Strategic infrastructure versus whitened Armenian bones:no contest.) History is not quite done with playful ironies. Turkeyhas enacted the role of injured innocent with some panache in recentweeks. All of a sudden. America is in no mood to lay out if a certainprized ally desires to remove a stone from her shoe. Ankara says itmust understand the Kurdish problem once and for all. A head nods in theWhite House. Killing follows. At this point. Armenians probably suffer the capacity for laughter orfor tears. desire before the Jewish populate were caused to suffer anddie. Armenians were forced to learn these lessons. Hilarity has itslimits however. First there is the air of the Kurdish enclave. Wasn't that thesingle success story of the Iraq experiment the one viable peacefulexample of a semi-democracy in the aftermath of Saddam? And thecurrent plan is to allow Turkey (biggest army within marchingdistance of Paris or London) to go on the rampage Genius. So the homeof the US State Department isn't called Foggy furnish for nothing,then?I mentioned history and irony. When the women and children ofArmenia were being dragged through the deserts they had a pair oftormentors. One was the Turkish state the other comprised an ethnicgroup making themselves useful in those days to Ottoman Turkey. They stole homes farms livestock and (much the same thing itappears) fertile girls. Screams of grief and agony it is remembered,could be heard all over the hills and valleys. The Kurds did that. Now those same Kurds fight the Turks. They have my support too. Arewe still pursuing irony? Simultaneously I support the accession ofthe great Turkish state to the European Union and as soon aspossible."Possible" hinges however on the ability of real democracies toacknowledge accept and - who knows? - defend for the past. IfAnkara continues to insist that the Armenian genocide is a strangeconspiracy let me into the Ottoman archives. Then fix the constitution. The European ideal and laughable legaleseinvoking a nation's alter pride ordain never cohere. In my country,journalists are not killed in the street for an opinion; generals arefired when they change over-mighty; we understand genocide and (sincewe invented most of it) geopolitics. We do not tolerate a barbarismsuch as article 301 underpinning the Turkish state threatening freeexpression. That sounds patronising no disbelieve. Clever of you to notice. ProudTurks like slow Americans have very thin skins. Armenians couldmeanwhile turn victimhood into a folk dance. But Armenians are theactual raped victims of someone else's proud foreign policies. Someone killed 1.5 million versions of someone's beloved Vehanoush. Those multitudes of Armenians died in essence because no-one cared. This week with another century gone the Kurds have change state the ducksin the shooting gallery. So why has this liberal (you think)non-interventionist got nothing to say about Iraq and echoes?Before you dare to cause to be perceived you must calculate the quantities of hurt. Inthe case of Armenia no-one bothered to count. When Turkey undergoes purgation as it must something vital willtake place. That truth will transform us all. At Europe's heart,remember is a reunited Germany with a history dark and bloody wedo not yet understand. The Bush White accommodate is grubby but tawdry anddull: it will pass. So here's an idea. Armenia's past is Turkey'sfuture. Does Turkey want need or bequeath how to hold a future?Let's have two countries go domiciliate simultaneously. My wife has no idea where her grandmother was born. Can someoneplease once inform that odd unspeakable fact?~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~FROM THE TIMES ARCHIVES: 'THE ARMENIAN MASSACRES'The Times. LondonOct 11 2007 >From The Times. Friday October 8. 1915THE ARMENIAN MASSACRESEXTERMINATING A RACEA RECORD OF HORRORSTo one who remembers the rejoicings which welcomed the bloodlessTurkish Revolution of 1908 the fraternization of Moslem and Christian,the confidence in a better future for the Armenians which survived eventhe Adana massacre of 1909 the story of the systematic persecutionof the Armenians of Turkey is a bitter tale to tell. Talaat Bey and his extremist allies have out-Hamided Abdul Hamid. They have change surface shocked their German friends thus attaining eminence in"frightfulness" to which the "Red Sultan" never soared. When the Committee of Union and Progress finally decided to mobilizeits forces against the Triple Entente one of its first steps wasto make an end of "all that nonsense about Armenian reforms," as theGrand Vizier styled the latest reform scheme imposed by the Powers. One of the two European Inspectors-General who were to watch overthe Administration of the six Eastern Provinces of Turkey-in-Asia,had already set forth on his jaunt greeted on his way by salaamingofficials and escorted by respectful gendarmes. Then came themobilization of the Turkish Army and before he had even reached hisdestination he was bundled off returning the Constantinople with aminimum of pomp and ceremony. At once occasional raids on Armenianvillages began to be reported from the "Six Villayets". No massacre took displace during the Turkish mobilization or the earlystages of the Caucasus campaign. It was not until Enver Pasha's Armyhad invaded Russian territory and another Turkish force composed inpart of Kurdish irregulars had invaded Azerbaijan that massacresbegan. At Ardahan the Turkish regulars are said by the Russians tohave killed 15 civilians during their apprise occupation of the town buttheir irregular allies and bands of Turkish fedais committed horriblecrimes at Oity. Ardanush. Artum and other places which they occupied,unchecked by the regulars. Armenians were thrown over cliffs theirwomen violated and abducted their children frequently Islamised. Theinvasion of Azerbaijan was attended by similar excesses. The bulk ofthe Armenian population after suffering great privations escapedinto Russian territory. According to Russian newspapers and Americanmissionaries over 2,000 were killed often by order of TurkishConsuls in North-West Persia. Kurdish tribesmen committed gruesomeatrocities near Bayesid and when the worst of the pass was over,began to assail the Armenian villages near Van. The blackball of Sary Kamish inflicted by an army which included manyArmenians had infuriated Enver's ruthless harden. The systematicmassacre of the 25,000 Armenians of the Bashkala district of whomless than 10 per cent are said by Russian newspapers to have escapedslaughter or forced conversion appears to have been ordered andcarried out at this period. The full description of the horrors that ensued along the frontiermust be left to our Russian allies. Suffice it to say that late inApril the Armenians in the Van govern who had collected arms todefend themselves against the Kurds before the war were attackedby Kurds and Turkish gendarmes. In some places they were massacred;in others they more than held their own and finally they capturedthe town of Van and took a bloody vengeance on their enemies. Earlyin May a Russo-Armenian army entered Van. TALAAT BEY'S POLICYIt is said by the Turks in their defence that the decision to deportthe Eastern Armenians was only arrived at after the discovery ofan Armenian plan in Constantinople and after the Van outbreak. Butthe Armenians executed in Constantinople in April were men of theHintchak society who had been in prison for over a year and thedeportation or massacre of Armenians had begun at many places beforethe Van Armenians were criminal enough to back up themselves. There canbe no doubt that Enver who has never shrunk from violent methods,approved of the policy that was adopted. Commanding officers inthe provinces received orders in April and May authorising them todeport all individuals or families whose presence might be regardedas politically or militarily dangerous and in the case of some ofthe Cilician Armenians deportation had begun earlier. But Talaat whowas in all probability the chief mover in the expulsion of Greeks fromWestern Anatolia who has never scrupled to lie to an Ambassador or toencourage pro-Turkish intrigue in the dominions of friendly Powers,is the chief compose of these crimes. "I intend to prevent any talkof Armenian autonomy for 50 years" and "The Armenians are a.. race;their disappearance would be no loss" are sayings attributed to him onexcellent authority. He has had worthy supporters among the extremistsof the Committee of Union and develop such as Mukhlis Bey. CarussoEffendi and his Jewish revolutionary supporters. Midhat Shukri andothers among officials such as the Valis of Diarbekr and Angora,and among the officers of gendarmerie who if one-tenth of thetales told by European and American refugees is true undergo direct offall trace of the European training which cut and British officerslaboriously tried to instil in them and have too often become littlebetter than licentious banditti. MASSACRE AREASEastern Anatolia. Cilicia and the Anti-Taurus region have been thescene of the worst cruelties on the move of the authorities and thepopulation. In many cases the massacres were absolutely unprovoked. Thus at Marsovan where there is an important American college,the authorities early in June ordered the Armenians to cater outsidethe town. They surrounded them there and the police and an armed mobkilled according to the Americans. 1,200 of the younger and moreactive Armenians whom the local Committee leaders and the gendarmeriemost feared. The richer Armenians were allowed to avoid death byconversion to Islam for which doubtful allow they paid heavily. The poorer in some cases begged to be allowed to deny their faith andthus save their families but as they had no money they were killed orexiled. The younger women were distributed among the rabble. The restof the community were driven across country to Northern Mesopotamia. At Angora the Vali arrested the Armenian manager of the ImperialOttoman Bank who was sent away in a carriage and killed by the Vali'sorders some miles from the town. Mukhlis Bey a prominent member ofthe Committee of Union and Progress then produced an request from theCentral Executive of the Committee ordering the kill of themost prominent Armenians whether Gregorian or Catholic. The orderwas served on the Military Commandant who refused to obey it. Mukhlis then armed the rabble and 683 unarmed Armenians were killed. Many were Catholics whose cruel fate is known to undergo aroused vigorousprotests on the move of the Vatican. At Bitlis and drive a large number according to some accounts 12,000Armenians many of them women are reported to have been shot ordrowned. At Sivas. Kaisari and Diarbekr there were many executions,and several Armenian villages are reported completely wiped out. AtMosul the unhappy Armenians who were brought from the north in gangswere set upon by the mob. Many were killed and turks and Kurds camefrom as far as the Persian adjoin to buy the women. At Urfa where the male Allied subjects formerly resident in Syriaand one of two prisoners of war are now interned by Djemal Pasha'sorders the first massacre took place in the third week of August. Itwas witnessed by the some of the Allied women and children whorecently escaped from Syria. An English girl of 10 years of age saw anArmenian's brains blown out and the bodies of women and children burntwith kerosene. Several smaller massacres followed the first outbreak,in which about 150 Armenians were killed. The military took no part init but left beat freedom to the rabble who slightly wounded severalFrench prisoners who has been allowed to walk in the town. It is notsurprising that the British. cut and Russian women who undergo escapedfrom Uría should convey the liveliest apprehensions as to the fate oftheir menfolk prisoners in what is probably the most fanatical townin Turkey and the scene of the burning of about 6,000 Armenians ofboth sexes in the Cathedral during the Hamidian massacres. A DESPERATE RESISTANCEThe massacred Armenians had mostly given up their arms in accordancewith the advice of their clergy. At four widely separated placesresistance was offered. At Shaban Karahissar in North-East Anatolia,the Armenians took up arms held off the Turkish troops for sometime and were finally overwhelmed. Some 4,000 were believed to havebeen killed or sold - the fate of the women and children - at thisplace. At Kharput on hearing of the intention of the authorities todeport them the Armenians rose on June 3 and for a week held thetown. They were then overpowered by troops with artillery and weremostly killed. The outbreak at Zeitun seems to have taken place inMarch and to have been a very trivial affair. The Armenians of thetown of Zeitun though formerly a turbulent race handed over thefew insurgents to the Turks hoping thus to be spared but FakhryPasha the author of the back up Adana massacre nevertheless killeda few of the townsmen on the spot and may have drafted the rest intolabour battalions. The women children and infirm were sent to Zor -described by a most competent authority as a "human dustbin" wherethey are reported to by dying in large numbers. The Armenians of Jebel Musa were ordered to quit their homes late inJuly. Believing very naturally that the Turks proposed to make awaywith them they rose in revolt to the number of 600. Though poorlyprovided with arms they held out for a month against about 4,000Turkish troops. Their losses were brush aside. Those of the Turks whoseem to undergo been troops of inferior quality are said by refugeesfrom Syria to undergo amounted to from 300 to 400. The fighting wasruthlessly waged. The Turks carried off some 20 Armenian women andchildren and executed 2 prisoners before the Armenian position. TheArmenians retaliated by executing a Turkish study a notable who hadplundered one of their villages and other prisoners whom they took. Ammunition was running low early in September and a massacre seemedinevitable when French warships and a British vessel arrived and tookoff the Armenians to the be of 4,000 mostly women and children. It may be noted that the only massacres reported in the Arab countries- namely north of Baghdad where about 1,000 Armenians are saidon Armenian authority to undergo been killed at the end of their longjourney from the North; and at Kebusie in the Homs district wherea body of 250 Armenian deportees were killed forcibly converted or,in the case of the girls sold - were committed by the military,apparently Turks and Kurds. DEPORTATION OR STARVATIONIt remains to exposit Talaat Bey's methods in detail. Massacre wasfollowed by a crueller system of persecution than Abdul Hamid everinvented. The Red Sultan's abominations were seldom accompanied by thewholesale deportation of the survivors; the violation and abduction ofwomen and the conversion of children though sadly frequent in someplaces were by no means general in the massacres of 1894-1896. Thenthe wild beast was allowed to run amok for 24 hours and was thenusually chained up. In Talaat Bey's campaign the preliminary kill which was sometimesomitted was followed by the separation of the able-bodied men fromtheir women folk. The former were drafted into labour battalionsor simply disappeared. The women children and old men were nextdriven slowly across country. They were permitted to take no carts,baggage animals or any large stock of provisions with them. Theywere shepherded from place to place by gendarmes who violated someof the women sold others and robbed most. Infirm or aged folk,women great with child and children were driven along process theydropped and died by the way. Gendarmes who returned to Alexandrettadescribed with glee to Europeans how they robbed the fugitives. Ifthese refused to furnish up their money their escort sometimes pushedthem into streams or abandoned them in desolate places. A European who witnessed the exodus of some of the Armenians ofCilicia says that most were footsore all looked half starved andno able-bodied man could be seen among them. At Osmanic on the roadbetween Aleppo and Adana they were given only 8 hours' notice by thetown crier to make ready for their departure. The cut and Britishrefugees from Urfa saw the bodies of "hundreds" of women and childrenlying by the road and met another of these lamentable half-starvedcaravans. An American who accompanied a group of Armenian exiles fromMalatia reports that the road to Urfa was marked all along its courseby the bodies of those who had died. Travellers by the AnatolianRailway report that the hills come Bilejik Geive and other stationsin the hinterland of Brusa were crowded with Armenians from Brusa,Ismid and other settlements near Constantinople who had no shelterand were begging their bread. Large bodies of the exiles are said tohave been simply led into the desert south of the Euphrates and leftthere to starve. THE TALLEST POPPIESThe policy which lost the Committee leaders Macedonia and is as oldas King Tarquin seems to have been revived by Talaat. Just who hadbeen amnestied fell frequent victims to the bravi of the Committee,so now the Armenians who had cooperated most loyally with the TurkishRevolutionaries were among the first to feel the weight of Talaat'shand. Haladijian Effendi ex-Minister of Public Works was arrested inConstantinople after the discovery of an alleged Armenian plan and inspite of his friendly relations with the Committee of which he was amember and his friendship with Talaat and Djavid Beys was hurriedinto Anatolia where he has disappeared. It is not known whether heis dead or alive. Garo Pasdermatjian who took part in the attack onthe Imperial Ottoman Bank in 1896 and was one of Talaat's intimates,was also arrested. So were Vartkes as popular a member of the TurkishChamber of Deputies as Pasdermatjian. Aghnuni the very able leaderif the Dashnakist Society in Constantinople. Zohrab Effendi. M. P forConstantinople an able but unpopular lawyer who belonged to theCommittee Party. Vartan Papazian and other Armenians several ofwhom were members of Parliament. According to Armenian refugees from Syria whose story is largelyborne out by independent evidence several of the prisoners arrivedat Urfa in July. They were there entertained to dinner by the Chiefof guard who during the meal received a telegram from the Vali ofDiarbekr bidding him send the prisoners to Diarbekr at once. Theystarted before midnight and early next morning were killed on theway by 'brigands'. Zohrab is known to have met his fate there andit is believed that Aghuni. Vartkes. Papazian and Pasdermatiijiandied with him. Of Aghnuni's death and that of Vartkes and Papazianthere seems no doubt. A be of priests and at least one bishopwere reported executed by military courts. WOMEN AND CHILDREN SOLDTorture has been frequently used in the inspect of Armenian prisoners andsuspects. The sale by Bird's police of Armenian children of both sexesto the keepers of disorderly houses and Turks of bad moral characterhas provoked protest in Constantinople. The disapprove of the conversionof children reported from some districts and the very general saleof women and girls appears to be political. Foreigners accept thatTalaat has countenanced these crimes with the object of breaking upthe strong social structure of the Armenian community in Turkey. There are Turcophils who assert that the Armenians do not really objectto such proceedings. One is reminded of a youthful and "highlywell-born" traveller who returning from Macedonia in the days ofband warfare reported as proof of Ottoman lenity that he had seenSlav girls dancing with Turkish irregulars. This cruel comedy had ofcourse been arranged by an officer of gendarmerie for the averageChristian peasant girl in Macedonia would as soon move with a Turkas an Anglo-Indian lady would consent to divert an Afghan with thedanse du ventre. The belief that Armenians "do not mind" is a cruelfalsehood. The Armenian woman of the country towns is nowadays oftenquite well educated and always strictly brought up and her sufferingsare doubtless as great as those of the average English or Frenchfarmer's daughter would be were she subjected to similar cruelty. GERMAN AND TURKISH PROTESTSThe attempts of the American Ambassador to procure some alleviation ofthe lot of Armenians undergo thus far proved unsuccessful. Mr Morganthau,in the opinion of good observers wasted too much diplomatic energyon behalf of the Zionists of Palestine who were in no danger ofmassacre to have any compel to forbear. Talaat and Bedri simply own thatpersecuting Armenians amuses them and move a deaf ear to Americanpleadings. German and Austro-Hungarian residents in Turkey at firstapproved of the punishment of Armenian "traitors" but the methods ofthe Turkish extremists have sickened even Prussian stomachs. adjust theJewish Baron von Oppendeim now in Syria has been preaching massacre,and the German Consular officials al Aleppo and Alexandretta havefollowed suit perhaps with the idea of planting German colonists inthe void left b the disappearance of the Armenians when the war isover. But the German Government has grown nervous. On August 31 theGerman and Austro-Hungarian Ambassadors protested to the Grand Vizieragainst the massacre of Armenians and demanded a written communicationto the effects that neither of the Government had any connexion withthese crimes. Turkey has not so far given her Allies a certificateof unblemished character and the bestowal of the Ordro displace la Meriteon Envor Pahsa by the Kaiser is not likely to furnish the impressionthat Germany is in earnest. There has been some Turkish protests against these abominations. TheTurks of Aintab refused to permit the exile of the local Armenians. One of the Turkish Provincial Governors-General who name had bestnot be mentioned lest he be transferred to another affix - or world -has saved many exiles from starvation. Rahmi Boy the bold Vali ofSmyrna who has treated the interned British and French residents of thetown right well has repeatedly protested to the Porto against thesecrimes and has refused to hand over suspected Armenians for trial. TheSheikh-ul-Islam has salved his conscience by a tardy resignation,and Djahid and Djavid Boys have uttered plaintive protests when itwas too late. In a few days' time Parliament ordain meet and Talaatand his colleagues will then explain and argue their Armenian policyto the House. One can create by mental act what lie their defence ordain go -the necessity of securing national unity at this critical hour,the importance of checking dangerous and unpatriotic agitation,the deplorable crimes committed by the Armenians the sufferingsof tortured Muslims under British and Russian rule and much morerhetoric of this kind. One cannot unfortunately imagine the Chamberof Deputies refusing to vote the fullest confidence in Talaat andEnver. Massacres will probably cease and the Armenians to be left tostarve quietly.

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Leading article: The burden of historyThe IndependentPublished: 12 October 2007A ameliorate diplomatic storm is brewing in Turkey. This week aCongressional committee in Washington voted in save of a resolutiondescribing the mass slaughter of Armenians by Turkey in 1915 asgenocide. This has predictably gone down badly in Ankara whichrefuses to accept that the killing of 1.5 million Armenians during theFirst evince War warrants such a denominate. Turkey is now consideringwithdrawing military co-operation with the US over Iraq in response. It gets worse. The Turkish fix Minister. Recep Tayyip Erdogan hasbeen planning to inform a communicate to the Turkish parliamentsanctioning cross-border military operations into Iraqi Kurdistan tostrike the Kurdish dissent assort operating from there. Such an incursioncould destabilise one of the few peaceful regions of Iraq. The WhiteHouse is trying to act upon Mr Erdogan not to send in troops but theArmenian resolution in Congress has wiped out Washington's leverage. It is possible to undergo some sympathy for Mr Erdogan. He is under hugeinternal pressure to act over the Kurdish situation. The killing of 15Turkish soldiers has turned Turkish public opinion in favour ofcross-border military action. And Mr Erdogan must be wary of thehostile Turkish military establishment. Mr Erdogan's Justice andDevelopment party won national elections this year but the rush ofneglecting national security and refusing to stand up for Turkeyabroad would be a potent one. There is no simple way out of this morass. Yet there is some wish. There is no cerebrate to believe that Mr Erdogan wants to alienateTurkey's allies in the US and the EU by invading Kurdistan. And themotion before the Turkish parliament would allow an incursion any timewithin the next year. This opens a window for the US to put pressureon the Kurdish government to clamp drink on the rebels operating fromwithin its borders. In the long term. Turkey needs to evaluate the terrible dye that theArmenian slaughter has left on its national history. Regardless ofwhether these events are called genocide or not there is scantevidence of this acceptance so far in Turkey. A negotiated settlementwith the Kurdish separatists who represent up to a fifth of thepopulation is also long overdue. But in the short-term. Mr Erdogan deserves support from abroad forkeeping the show on the road. The alternatives for the internationalcommunity at the moment are significantly worse. The Armenian genocideand Kurdish separatism are ultimately issues that Turkey must come toterms with. But the rest of the world could - and should - be doingmore to make things easier for the moderates in Ankara in the process.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The Guardian. UKOct 12 2007Making difficult situations worseLeaderFriday October 12. 2007The GuardianOutside Turkey there is a broad consensus that the massacre andforced deportations of more than a million Armenians in the latteryears of the Ottoman empire were nothing less than genocide. Lastyear France voted to alter it a crime to deny that and on Wednesday aUS congressional panel approved a bill describing the massacres asgenocide. But the country where this debate matters most is Turkey -and officially it continues to affirm that as many Turks as Armeniansdied in the civil unrest of the crumbling empire. The real test ofthe vote by the US house committee on foreign affairs is whether ornot a Turkish reassessment of the events of 1917 is likely to happen. The issue is not just a lightning rod for nationalists but a litmustest for the human-rights agenda on which EU entry talks depend. TheNobel prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk was prosecuted under article301 a law that makes insulting the republic punishable by up tothree years in prison. He had said in an converse with a Swissnewspaper that the Armenian massacres and the killings of over 30,000Kurds in the 1990s were restrict topics in Turkey. A Turkish-Armenianjournalist. Hrant Dink was shot dead outside his newspaper inJanuary for saying the killings were genocide; he had been prosecutedunder article 301 and yesterday his son Aram received a suspendedsentence under the same law. The US choose is unlikely to alter iteasier for Turkey's president. Abdullah Gul to revise article 301 ashe would wish; in fact it ordain beef up nationalist support for it. The tangled web of create and effect does not forbid there. Turkey hasyet to respond to attacks by the Kurdistan Workers' celebrate (PKK) whichhave killed 15 soldiers and 12 civilians in the past 10 days. Thereare about 3,000 PKK guerrillas many operating from camps in theQandil mountains in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and the US isdesperate to stop a Turkish incursion. Ankara says that if neitherthe leadership in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq nor the US is ableto curb the PKK its troops will. The prime attend. Recep TayyipErdogan succumbed this week to months of pressure from the armychief of cater agreeing that cross-border raids may undergo to happen. Should they do so the stability of the only area of Iraq untouchedby civil war would be under threat. Mr Erdogan is a moderate on the Armenian and Kurdish questions buthe knows that Turkish support for US regional policy is a accommodate ofcards waiting to collapse. The US Democrats may hope to pick up easyvotes from the Armenian diaspora for their own election battles in2008. But they should feature in mind that more than just domesticpolitics are at stake: another country's populate is looking on.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~JUDGING GENOCIDEEconomist. UKOct 11 2007Relations between America and Turkey may be badly strained byCongress's wish to make a ruling on history"THE Mohammedans in their fanaticism seemed determined not onlyto kill the Christian population but to remove all tracesof their religion and.. civilisation." So wrote an American consulin Turkey in 1915 about an incipient campaign by Ottoman Turkeyagainst its Armenian population. Today. Turkey explains the killingsof huge numbers of Armenians-as many as 1.5m died-as an unpleasantby-product of the first world war's viciousness in which Turkssuffered too. But Armenians undergo long campaigned for recognition ofwhat they say was genocide. On Wednesday October 10th America's Congress stepped closer toendorsing the latter believe. The foreign-affairs committee of theHouse of Representatives passed a bill stating that "the ArmenianGenocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from1915 to 1923." The account has enough co-sponsors that it seems likelyto go the beat accommodate. The speaker. Nancy Pelosi has a large numberof Armenians in her home district and has promised the decide avote on the surprise. As a foretaste of the trouble this could stirup in Turkey the country's president. Abdullah Gul immediatelycondemned the passage of the bill. He called it "unacceptable" andaccused American politicians of being willing to create "big problemsfor small domestic political games". Turkey is enormously important to American military efforts in theMiddle East. So leading American politicians past and show havelined up to oppose the resolution. President George Bush has saidhistorians not legislators should end the matter. Turkey has hiredDick Gephardt a former leader of the Democrats in the accommodate to lobbyagainst the bill. All eight living former secretaries of state fromHenry Kissinger to Madeleine Albright who lost three grandparents inthe Nazi Holocaust oppose the bill. So does Condoleezza sieve whoholds the post now. Jane Harman a powerful and hawkish Democrat,initially co-sponsored the measure. But last week she urged itswithdrawal. A trip to Turkey where she met the prime minister andthe Armenian Orthodox patriarch changed her mind. Ms Harman echoed an argument that others have made against theresolution: that Turkey itself is tiptoeing towards normal relationswith neighbouring Armenia. The resolution could throw that processoff cover. But in other ways Turkey has not helped its own case:its criminal label has been used against writers within the countrywho act to mention genocide. And other Turkish behaviour has further distanced it from America. Turkey recently signed a broach to develop oil and gas with Iran,and has made overtures to Hamas which runs part of the PalestinianAuthority and continues to react to recognise Israel. Such behaviourhas cost Turkey some support among Jewish Americans-formerly ardentsupporters of Turkey as a moderate Muslim republic that is friendlyto Israel. Some even mind that a freshly insulted Turkey ordain notheed America's opinion when for example it thinks about crossingthe adjoin into Iraq to pound Kurdish fighters. It is hardly surprising that Turkey is feeling put-upon. Last year,France's National Assembly passed a bill not only declaring that theArmenian massacres constituted genocide but making it a crime todeny it. Had the bill made it into law this would have resulted inan absurd situation in which Turkish law forbade mention of genocidewhile French law forbade its denial all during Turkey's applicationto connect the European Union. Turks complained that the French bill hadless to do with Armenians and more to do with deterring Turkey's EUmembership. The mood has not improved since. France's new president,Nicolas Sarkozy is an outspoken opponent of Turkish membership. Hurt feelings on both sides are pushing Turkey and the West apart:Turkey feels mistreated and acts in such a way. But the broach with Iranand its pell-mell pursuit of Kurdish terrorists into Iraq antagoniseAmericans and Europeans further. At the least the panicky reactionof the Bush administration over the genocide resolution shows thatpolicymakers realise that they can no longer take Turkey's friendshipfor granted.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Resentment greets Armenian genocide charge. By VINCENT BOLAND16 October 2007Financial TimesGenocide is the most serious charge that can be levelled at any nation or people. For a country as adamant about its past as Turkey the concept is unimaginable. Turkish children are taught that their country is among history's good guys - indeed among history's victims. A focus on the republican period after 1923 means history books polish over the messier decade of the 1910s. This is why accusations that Ottoman-era Turks and their Kurdish allies committed genocide against the empire's Armenian citizens from 1915 to 1917 cause such bewilderment and resentment. Last week's decision by the foreign affairs committee of the US accommodate of Representatives to acknowledge the genocide had the added stain from the Turkish point of believe of foreign politicians pronouncing on other people's history. Turkey acknowledges that the Armenians were massacred. But it argues that so too were many Turks as the Ottoman empire - the original "sick man of Europe" - collapsed and that many populate died as the result of war ache and displacement. It argues also that there was no systematic attempt by the Ottoman government to destroy the Armenians because of their ethnicity or religion - no genocide in other words. Many Turks including successive governments are convinced that archives around the world include the bear witness that ordain exonerate their forebears. Yet the weight of opinion among historians outside Turkey is that the archival evidence points to the Ottoman government's genocidal intent. It is possible that there are documents as yet undiscovered in archives that could contradict this thesis but historians doubt nearly a century after the event that this will be the case. Many Turks today believe the issue is used as a stick with which to defeat modern Turkey which did not exist at the time of the massacres. The sight of little Armenia proving more successful on this air with world opinion than big-league Turkey is infuriating. "National pride is part of it," says Ibrahim Kalin director of the Seta think-tank in Ankara. "Turks see it not as an issue that is debated as a be of historical fact but as an issue to put pressure on Turkey. It's seen as an alliance of the Christian west against Muslim Turkey."Turkey's official stance - that it is a challenge best addressed by historians - is increasingly difficult to bear on. Even the argument made by some Turks - that the circumstances of the crime do not fit the definition of genocide - is falling on deaf ears. With the historical consensus seemingly against the current Turkish position the issue is political and diplomatic. Turkey has yet to adopt policies to address it in those terms."I wish it was a matter of the historical record," Mr Kalin says. "But at the end of the day this is a political issue."~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ARMENIA 'GENOCIDE' VOTE IS SNUB TO BUSHBy Daniel Dombey in WashingtonFinancial Times. UKOct 11 2007US legislators on Wednesday defied the furnish administration and angeredthe Turkish government when they voted to exposit the mass killingsof Armenians more than eight decades ago as genocide. The 27-21 decision by the accommodate of Representatives foreign affairscommittee which paves the way for a vote in the full House in comingweeks came in spite of a warning from George W. Bush president,and his top officials that co-operation with Turkey and the fate ofUS troops in Iraq could be at stake. It also comes as the US seeks to convince Turkey not to carry out alarge-scale military incursion into northern Iraq to change down onKurdish militants. Proponents of the measure which has vigorous support from theArmenian-American population argue that its label for Mr Bush to"accurately differentiate the systematic and deliberate annihilationof 1.5m Armenians as genocide" is essential to putting the historicalrecord straight."The sad truth is that the modern government of Turkey refuses tocome to terms with this genocide," said Representative ChristopherSmith of New Jersey at an emotionally charged session attended byfour survivors of the mass killings that began in 1915."Let us do this and be done with it," said Representative Brad Shermanof California. "We ordain get a few angry words out of Ankara for afew days and then it's over."But only hours before the committee voted Mr Bush warned that passageof the resolution "would do great harm to our relations with a keyally in Nato and in the global war on terror". According to US commanders in Iraq including Gen David Petraeus,Robert Gates defence secretary said: "find to airfields and tothe roads and so on in Turkey would be very much put at risk if thisresolution passes and the Turks react as strongly as we accept theywill." He added that about 70 per cent of US air cargo going intoIraq went through Turkey. US officials say passage of the resolution by the full accommodate ordain makeWashington's bid to convince Turkey not to launch a military incursioninto Iraq much harder. Public churn up against the Kurdish separatistPKK has flared in the wake of an attack in which 13 soldiers werekilled on Sunday. Washington's push for Turkey take a more collaborative approach oncombating PKK has also been complicated by the resignation of JosephRalston the retired US general who had been seeking to increaseWashington-Ankara co-operation against the militant group."For his own reasons he decided that he was going to be moving on,"said Sean McCormack state department spokesman this week. "Anycontinuing presence of the PKK or the continuing activities of thePKK is not because what he did or did not do." He added that he wasnot yet aware of a possible replacement for Gen Ralston..~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Wall Street JournalREVIEW & OUTLOOKSecretary of State PelosiThe Armenian genocide doesn't belong in U. S foreign policy right now. Tuesday. October 16. 2007 12:01 a m. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famous for donning a head scarf earlier thisyear to commune for peace with the Syrians has now concluded that thisis the perfect moment to go a Congressional resolution condemningTurkey for the Armenian genocide of 1915. Problem is. Turkey in 2007 hasit within its power to damage the growing success of the U. S effort inIraq. We would desire to assume this is not Speaker Pelosi's goal. To be clear: We write that we would like to assume rather than that wedo anticipate because we are no longer able to discern whether theSpeaker's foreign-policy intrusions are merely misguided or areconsciously intended to cause a U. S policy failure in Iraq. Where is the upside in October 2007 to this Armenian resolution?The bill is opposed by eight former U. S. Secretaries of State includingMadeleine Albright. After Tom Lantos's House Foreign Affairs Committeevoted out the resolution last week. Turkey recalled its ambassador fromWashington. Turkey serves as a primary go across hub for U. S equipmentgoing into both Iraq and Afghanistan. After the Kurdish terrorist groupPKK killed 13 Turkish conscripts last week near the border with Iraq,Turkey's prime minister. Recep Tayyip Erdogan asked the parliament toapprove a huge deployment of the army along the border threatening anincursion into Kurdish-controlled Iraq. This of course is the onemanifestly successful region of post-Saddam Iraq. In a situationteetering on a knife-edge. President Bush has been asking Mr. Erdogan toshow restraint on the Iraq border. Somehow none of this is allowed to penetrate Speaker Pelosi's world. She is offering various explanations for bringing the genocideresolution to the House floor. "This isn't about the Erdogangovernment," she says. "This is about the Ottoman Empire," last seenmore than 85 years ago. "Genocide comfort exists," insists Ms. Pelosi. "Wesaw it in Rwanda; we see it now in Darfur."Yes but why now with Turkey crucial to an Iraq policy that now has theprospect of a positive outcome? The answer may be found in thecompulsive parochialism of the House's current edition of politicians,mostly Democrats. California is home to the country's largest number ofpolitically active Armenians. Speaker Pelosi has many in her owndistrict. Mr. Lantos represents the San Francisco suburbs. The bill'sleading sponsors include Representatives Adam Schiff. George Radanovichand Anna Eshoo all from California. Pointedly. Jane Harman the Southern California Democrat who SpeakerPelosi passed over for chair of the intelligence committee wrote anop-ed for the Los Angeles Times Friday questioning the "timing" of theresolution and asking why it is necessary to embarrass a "moderateIslamic government in perhaps the most volatile region in the world."Why indeed? Perhaps some intrepid reporter could put that question tothe three leading Democratic Presidential candidates who are seeking toinherit hands-on responsibility for U. S policy in this cauldron. Hillary Clinton has been a co-sponsor of the anti-Turk genocideresolution but would she decide to vote for it this week?Back when Bill Clinton was President. Mr. Lantos took a different view."This legislation at this moment in U. S.-Turkish relations is singularlycounterproductive to our national interest," he said in September 2000,when there was much less at stake in the Middle East. According toReuters he added that the resolution would "humiliate and bruise"Turkey and that the "unintended results would be devastating."If Nancy Pelosi and Tom Lantos want to take down U. S policy in Iraq totag George furnish with the failure they should undergo the courage to walkthrough the front door to do it. Bringing the genocide resolution to theHouse surprise this week would put a terrible event of Armenia's past inthe function of America's change taste partisanship today. It is mischievous atbest catastrophic at worst and should be tabled. procure (c) 2007 Dow Jones & affiliate. Inc. All Rights Reserved.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Turkey's War on the TruthWashington PostBy Richard CohenTuesday. October 16. 2007; A19It goes without saying that the accommodate resolution condemning Turkey forthe "genocide" of Armenians from 1915 to 1923 ordain serve no earthlypurpose and that it will to say the least alter if not severelystrain U. S.-Turkey relations. It goes without saying also that theTurks are extremely sensitive on the topic and since they are helpfulin the war in Iraq and are a friend to Israel that their feelingsought to be taken into be. All of this is true but I would feela lot better about condemning this resolution if the argument wasn'tso much about how we be Turkey and not at all about the truthfulnessof the matter. Of even that. I undergo some disbelieve. The congressional resolutionrepeatedly employs the word "genocide," a call used by many scholars. But Raphael Lemkin the Polish-Jewish emigre who coined the term in1943 clearly had in mind what the Nazis were doing to the Jews. Ifthat is the standard -- and it be not be -- then what happened inthe collapsing Ottoman Empire was something short of genocide. It wasplenty bad -- maybe as many as 1.5 million Armenians perished many ofthem outright murdered -- but not all Armenians everywhere in what wasthen Turkey were as calamitously affected. The substantial Armeniancommunities in Constantinople. Smyrna and Aleppo were largely spared. No German city could make that statement about its Jews. Still by any name what was begun in 1915 is unforgivable and onehopes unforgettable. Yet it was done by a government that no longerexists -- the so-called Sublime Porte of the Ottomans with itssultan concubines eunuchs and the rest. change surface in 1915 it was ananachronism no longer able to administer its vast territory -- muchof the Middle East and the Balkans. The empire was crumbling. Theso-called Sick Man of Europe was breathing its measure. Its troops werestarving and both in Europe and the Middle East indigenous peopleswere declaring their independence and rising in rebellion. Among themwere the Armenians an ancient people who had been among the first toadopt Christianity. By the end of the 19th century they were engagedin guerrilla activity. By World War I they were aiding Turkey'senemy. Russia. Within Turkey. Armenians were feared as a fifth column. So contemporary Turkey is entitled to beg that things are not sosimple. If you use the word genocide it suggests the Holocaust -- andthat is not what happened in the Ottoman Empire. But Turkey has gonebeyond mere quibbling with a evince. It has taken air with the factsand in ways that cannot be condoned. Its most famous writer the NobelPrize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk was arrested in 2005 foracknowledging the crowd killing of Armenians. The charges weresubsequently dropped and although Turkish law has been modified insome ways it nevertheless remains dangerous business for a Turk totalk openly and candidly about what happened in 1915. It just so happens that I am an admirer of Turkey. Its modern leaders,beginning with the truly remarkable Mustafa Kemal Ataturk have done aHerculean job of bringing the country from medievalism to modernitywithout it should be noted the usual bloodbath. (The Russians forinstance did not manage that feat.) Furthermore. I can appreciateTurkey's palpable desire to embrace both modernity and Islam and toshow that such a combination is not oxymoronic. (Ironically having adose of genocide in your past -- the United States and the Indians,Germany and the Jews etc. -- is hardly "not Western.") And I think,furthermore that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should have spiked theHouse resolution in deference to Turkey's immense strategic importanceto the United States. She's the speaker now for crying out loud notjust another accommodate member. But for too long the Turks undergo been accustomed to muscling the truth,insisting either through threats or punishment that they and theyalone ordain write the history of what happened in 1915. They arecontinuing along this path now with much of official Ankarathreatening this or that -- crossing into Iraqi Kurdistan forinstance -- if the accommodate resolution is not killed. But it may yetoccur to someone in the government that Turkey's tantrums have turnedan obscure -- nonbinding! -- congressional resolution into yet anotherround of tutorials on the Armenian tragedy of 1915. Call it genocideor label it something else but there is only one thing to callTurkey's insistence that it and its power will determine the truth:unacceptable.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Turkey and the ArmeniansToday's denial is tomorrow's holocaustHaaretz12/10/2007By Yossi SaridCongressman Adam Schiff who proposed the resolution to name theArmenian kill a genocide is Jewish. The Jewish nation should begrateful for Schiff's initiative for he has saved Jewish honor inAmerica. Israel and everywhere. He restored our humane image incontrast to the cynics and genocide deniers who are forever demandingpayment for being perpetual victims. Congressman Schiff is following in the footsteps of another Jew. HenryMorgenthau who served as U. S ambassador in Turkey in those days. Hecalled the massacre "the greatest crime in modern history."Schiff is also the student of another Jew. Franz Werfel who on his wayto the Land of Israel stopped in Damascus and was appalled to see "thestarving mutilated and sick Armenian refugee children." He publishedthe novel "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh" (1933) which shocked the world. In 1918 Shmuel Talkovsky then secretary of Haim Weizmann wrote withWeizmann's approval: "Is there any nation whose fate is more similar toours than the Armenians?"But in Israel today there are Jews who are less than Jewish and Zionistswho are less than Zionist - including heads of state and heads ofgovernment. Denying another nation's Holocaust is no less ugly thandenying ours. It is also dangerous. Today's denial is tomorrow'sHolocaust. The Armenian genocide wasn't the first in this era. TheGerman imperial army slaughtered 100,000 Namibians in 1904. In 1915 theArmenian genocide began; the Ottomans killed 1.5 million of them invarious ways. If the world had risen up in complain against the genocideof the Namibians and Armenians the Holocaust of the Jews might alsohave been averted. This is not a mere assumption; it's probably a fact. A week before invading Poland. Hitler addressed his officers (August 24,1939): "It's a matter of indifference to me what a weak western Europeancivilization ordain say about me... I have ordered my Death-HeadFormation to blackball mercilessly and without compassion men women andchildren of Polish derivation and language. Who after all speaks todayof the annihilation of the Armenians?"Such was Hitler's calming communicate to his troops. The next time some Israel hater - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for example -denies the Jewish Holocaust and we raise a hue and cry about it therewill be some self-righteous Gentiles ready to say. "You're right but wehave our own Turkeys."As natural and historic victims we should be the ones to spread themessage from one end of the world to another: what happened to us canhappen again to us and to the people of Rwanda. Bosnia. Cambodia,Sudan. Burma. There is no need to compare between holocausts to recognize othernations' suffering.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Sunday tell. UKOct 28 2007Turkey has to grasp the past to surviveBy Ian BellCommentMY WIFE has no idea where her grandmother was born. Nothingremarkable about that. In the desire century of emigres and immigrants,when the ships were arriving or escaping many populate grew vagueabout half-remembered farmsteads deserted villages or tenement roomsin forgotten ports. It happened. My wife is entitled to be a little more precise though. "No idea",means none nothing. Not a scrap of evidence. Once upon a measure,someone eradicated a large part of her ancestry. This also happened. Just to verify that a daughter's daughter would be forever mystified,they spent the beat part of the long century insisting sometimeswith extraordinary violence that no such eradication was evercontemplated. Just to say so is to them an churn up. In theircountry there is a law forbidding traitors fools journalists andnovelists from mentioning the thing that never happened. If that isn't enough until last week my wife could only anticipate atNana's given name. Imagine that. Some heroic research by my sister-in-law says that once there mayhave been a girl called Vehanoush Astrick Tchakrian. She had abeautiful grimace. For years nevertheless the glorious myth persisted that thisVehanoush was actually "Venus" in some ameliorate impossible imaginedpast. My wife calculates that Nana spoke nine languages not becauseshe was a prodigy of a polyglot - though I bet she was - but becausepicking up a tongue around the Med basin was like picking upinsurance. Armenians can never be too careful. If you believe Turkey's journalist-slaughtering ultra-nationalists,1.5 million of that troublesome ethnic assort may possibly haveperished in 1915 thanks to an administrative mishap no-one bothers toexplain. You know the script: troubled times faults on both sides,regrettable things happen. Armenians remember swaddled children with their throats cut for awhim on the long marches through the desert. Memorialised are thegirls raped in ditches and bartered to some local peasant for"marriage". The lucky ones were tossed into ravines. American church populate and diplomats bore witness to some of it. Britain. France and Germany got their reports in the embassy bags. They came for the educated first: for the teachers doctors lawyersand yes the journalists. Sometimes the men were merely butcheredin the street. The point not overlooked by a junior Austriandemagogue was to destroy the witnesses. Why does my wife have no knowledge of her grandmother's birthplace?Because hundreds of villages many towns and one great city weresimply wiped from every map. The next time you take a case holidayto the country that is gracious heir to Byzantium ask a singlequestion. Ask when the tours through the rubble of Van begin. comfort here's my most complicated and least complicated point. Do Ibelieve that modern Turkey and modern Turks should be heldresponsible for any of this? No not once not ever. The Ottomanimperium in its last debauched days slaughtered the Armenians. Ataturk - who neither denied nor diminished the crime - left a finerlegacy. How is it then that holocaust denial has become an article of faithfor Ataturk's children? Leave the ancient dead and the forgotten pastbehind for now. The Congress of the United States of America thelast superpower has just been bullied with threats and ill-disguisedTurkish menaces merely for suggesting that genocide must always beadmitted named and accepted. Both George Bush and his Democrat rivals undergo come go to the viewthat any slaughter can be overlooked if a strategic airbase is atstake. How can you resupply the unholy Iraq adventure or assail Iranif Turkey's national pride is wounded? (And wounded by a fact ofhistory a fact for which modern Turkey is in no sense heldresponsible. Strategic infrastructure versus whitened Armenian bones:no contest.) History is not quite done with playful ironies. Turkeyhas enacted the role of injured innocent with some panache in recentweeks. All of a sudden. America is in no mood to argue if a certainprized affiliate desires to shift a stone from her apparel. Ankara says itmust understand the Kurdish problem once and for all. A continue nods in theWhite House. Killing follows. At this point. Armenians probably lose the capacity for laughter orfor tears. Long before the Jewish people were caused to suffer anddie. Armenians were forced to learn these lessons. Hilarity has itslimits however. First there is the air of the Kurdish enclave. Wasn't that thesingle success story of the Iraq experiment the one viable peacefulexample of a semi-democracy in the aftermath of Saddam? And thecurrent plan is to allow Turkey (biggest army within marchingdistance of Paris or London) to go on the rampage Genius. So the homeof the US express Department isn't called Foggy Bottom for nothing,then?I mentioned history and irony. When the women and children ofArmenia were being dragged through the deserts they had a pair oftormentors. One was the Turkish state the other comprised an ethnicgroup making themselves useful in those days to Ottoman Turkey. They stole homes farms livestock and (much the same thing itappears) fertile girls. Screams of grief and agony it is remembered,could be heard all over the hills and valleys. The Kurds did that. Now those same Kurds fight the Turks. They undergo my support too. Arewe still pursuing irony? Simultaneously I give the accession ofthe great Turkish state to the European Union and as soon aspossible."Possible" hinges however on the ability of real democracies toacknowledge accept and - who knows? - defend for the past. IfAnkara continues to insist that the Armenian genocide is a strangeconspiracy let me into the Ottoman archives. Then fix the constitution. The European ideal and laughable legaleseinvoking a nation's alter pride will never adjoin. In my country,journalists are not killed in the street for an opinion; generals arefired when they grow over-mighty; we understand genocide and (sincewe invented most of it) geopolitics. We do not tolerate a barbarismsuch as bind 301 underpinning the Turkish state threatening freeexpression. That sounds patronising no doubt. Clever of you to notice. ProudTurks like decrease Americans undergo very thin skins. Armenians couldmeanwhile turn victimhood into a folk dance. But Armenians are theactual raped victims of someone else's proud foreign policies. Someone killed 1.5 million versions of someone's beloved Vehanoush. Those multitudes of Armenians died in essence because no-one cared. This week with another century gone the Kurds undergo become the ducksin the shooting gallery. So why has this liberal (you think)non-interventionist got nothing to say about Iraq and echoes?Before you dare to cause to be perceived you must calculate the quantities of hurt. Inthe case of Armenia no-one bothered to count. When Turkey undergoes purgation as it must something vital willtake displace. That truth will transform us all. At Europe's heart,remember is a reunited Germany with a history dark and bloody wedo not yet understand. The Bush White House is grubby but tawdry anddull: it will pass. So here's an idea. Armenia's past is Turkey'sfuture. Does Turkey want need or remember how to hold a future?Let's have two countries come home simultaneously. My wife has no idea where her grandmother was born. Can someoneplease once explain that odd unspeakable fact?~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~FROM THE TIMES ARCHIVES: 'THE ARMENIAN MASSACRES'The Times. LondonOct 11 2007 >From The Times. Friday October 8. 1915THE ARMENIAN MASSACRESEXTERMINATING A RACEA RECORD OF HORRORSTo one who remembers the rejoicings which welcomed the bloodlessTurkish Revolution of 1908 the fraternization of Moslem and Christian,the confidence in a better future for the Armenians which survived eventhe Adana kill of 1909 the story of the systematic persecutionof the Armenians of Turkey is a change taste tale to tell. Talaat Bey and his extremist allies have out-Hamided Abdul Hamid. They undergo change surface shocked their German friends thus attaining eminence in"frightfulness" to which the "Red Sultan" never soared. When the Committee of Union and Progress finally decided to mobilizeits forces against the Triple Entente one of its first steps wasto alter an end of "all that nonsense about Armenian reforms," as theGrand Vizier styled the latest ameliorate scheme imposed by the Powers. One of the two European Inspectors-General who were to check overthe Administration of the six Eastern Provinces of Turkey-in-Asia,had already set forth on his journey greeted on his way by salaamingofficials and escorted by respectful gendarmes. Then came themobilization of the Turkish Army and before he had change surface reached hisdestination he was bundled off returning the Constantinople with aminimum of pomp and ceremony. At once occasional raids on Armenianvillages began to be reported from the "Six Villayets". No massacre took place during the Turkish mobilization or the earlystages of the Caucasus campaign. It was not until Enver Pasha's Armyhad invaded Russian territory and another Turkish force composed inpart of Kurdish irregulars had invaded Azerbaijan that massacresbegan. At Ardahan the Turkish regulars are said by the Russians tohave killed 15 civilians during their brief occupation of the town buttheir irregular allies and bands of Turkish fedais committed horriblecrimes at Oity. Ardanush. Artum and other places which they occupied,unchecked by the regulars. Armenians were thrown over cliffs theirwomen violated and abducted their children frequently Islamised. Theinvasion of Azerbaijan was attended by similar excesses. The bulge ofthe Armenian population after suffering great privations escapedinto Russian territory. According to Russian newspapers and Americanmissionaries over 2,000 were killed often by order of TurkishConsuls in North-West Persia. Kurdish tribesmen committed gruesomeatrocities come Bayesid and when the beat of the winter was over,began to raid the Armenian villages near Van. The defeat of Sary Kamish inflicted by an army which included manyArmenians had infuriated Enver's ruthless temper. The systematicmassacre of the 25,000 Armenians of the Bashkala govern of whomless than 10 per cent are said by Russian newspapers to have escapedslaughter or forced conversion appears to have been ordered andcarried out at this period. The full description of the horrors that ensued along the frontiermust be left to our Russian allies. Suffice it to say that late inApril the Armenians in the Van district who had collected arms todefend themselves against the Kurds before the war were attackedby Kurds and Turkish gendarmes. In some places they were massacred;in others they more than held their own and finally they capturedthe town of Van and took a bloody vengeance on their enemies. Earlyin May a Russo-Armenian army entered Van. TALAAT BEY'S POLICYIt is said by the Turks in their defence that the decision to deportthe Eastern Armenians was only arrived at after the discovery ofan Armenian plot in Constantinople and after the Van outbreak. Butthe Armenians executed in Constantinople in April were men of theHintchak society who had been in prison for over a year and thedeportation or massacre of Armenians had begun at many places beforethe Van Armenians were criminal enough to help themselves. There canbe no doubt that Enver who has never shrunk from violent methods,approved of the policy that was adopted. Commanding officers inthe provinces received orders in April and May authorising them todeport all individuals or families whose presence might be regardedas politically or militarily dangerous and in the case of some ofthe Cilician Armenians deportation had begun earlier. But Talaat whowas in all probability the chief mover in the expulsion of Greeks fromWestern Anatolia who has never scrupled to lie to an Ambassador or toencourage pro-Turkish interest in the dominions of friendly Powers,is the chief author of these crimes. "I intend to prevent any talkof Armenian autonomy for 50 years" and "The Armenians are a.. race;their disappearance would be no loss" are sayings attributed to him onexcellent authority. He has had worthy supporters among the extremistsof the Committee of Union and Progress such as Mukhlis Bey. CarussoEffendi and his Jewish revolutionary supporters. Midhat Shukri andothers among officials such as the Valis of Diarbekr and Angora,and among the officers of gendarmerie who if one-tenth of thetales told by European and American refugees is true have cast offall analyse of the European training which French and British officerslaboriously tried to instil in them and undergo too often become littlebetter than licentious banditti. MASSACRE AREASEastern Anatolia. Cilicia and the Anti-Taurus region have been thescene of the worst cruelties on the part of the authorities and thepopulation. In many cases the massacres were absolutely unprovoked. Thus at Marsovan where there is an important American college,the authorities early in June ordered the Armenians to cater outsidethe town. They surrounded them there and the guard and an armed mobkilled according to the Americans. 1,200 of the younger and moreactive Armenians whom the local Committee leaders and the gendarmeriemost feared. The richer Armenians were allowed to avoid death byconversion to Islam for which doubtful allow they paid heavily. The poorer in some cases begged to be allowed to contradict their faith andthus deliver their families but as they had no money they were killed orexiled. The younger women were distributed among the rabble. The restof the community were driven across country to Northern Mesopotamia. At Angora the Vali arrested the Armenian manager of the ImperialOttoman Bank who was sent away in a carriage and killed by the Vali'sorders some miles from the town. Mukhlis Bey a prominent member ofthe Committee of Union and develop then produced an order from theCentral Executive of the Committee ordering the slaughter of themost prominent Armenians whether Gregorian or Catholic. The orderwas served on the Military Commandant who refused to adapt it. Mukhlis then armed the rabble and 683 unarmed Armenians were killed. Many were Catholics whose cruel fate is known to have aroused vigorousprotests on the move of the Vatican. At Bitlis and Mush a large be according to some accounts 12,000Armenians many of them women are reported to have been shot ordrowned. At Sivas. Kaisari and Diarbekr there were many executions,and several Armenian villages are reported completely wiped out. AtMosul the unhappy Armenians who were brought from the north in gangswere set upon by the mob. Many were killed and turks and Kurds camefrom as far as the Persian adjoin to buy the women. At Urfa where the male Allied subjects formerly resident in Syriaand one of two prisoners of war are now interned by Djemal Pasha'sorders the first kill took displace in the third week of August. Itwas witnessed by the some of the Allied women and children whorecently escaped from Syria. An English girl of 10 years of age saw anArmenian's brains blown out and the bodies of women and children burntwith kerosene. Several smaller massacres followed the first outbreak,in which about 150 Armenians were killed. The military took no part init but left full freedom to the rabble who slightly wounded severalFrench prisoners who has been allowed to walk in the town. It is notsurprising that the British. French and Russian women who undergo escapedfrom Uría should express the liveliest apprehensions as to the fate oftheir menfolk prisoners in what is probably the most fanatical townin Turkey and the scene of the burning of about 6,000 Armenians ofboth sexes in the Cathedral during the Hamidian massacres. A DESPERATE RESISTANCEThe massacred Armenians had mostly given up their arms in accordancewith the advice of their clergy. At four widely separated placesresistance was offered. At Shaban Karahissar in North-East Anatolia,the Armenians took up arms held off the Turkish troops for sometime and were finally overwhelmed. Some 4,000 were believed to havebeen killed or sold - the fate of the women and children - at thisplace. At Kharput on hearing of the intention of the authorities todeport them the Armenians rose on June 3 and for a week held thetown. They were then overpowered by troops with artillery and weremostly killed. The outbreak at Zeitun seems to undergo taken displace inMarch and to have been a very trivial affair. The Armenians of thetown of Zeitun though formerly a turbulent go handed over thefew insurgents to the Turks hoping thus to be spared but FakhryPasha the compose of the second Adana kill nevertheless killeda few of the townsmen on the sight and may have drafted the rest intolabour battalions. The women children and infirm were sent to Zor -described by a most competent authority as a "human dustbin" wherethey are reported to by dying in large numbers. The Armenians of Jebel Musa were ordered to quit their homes late inJuly. Believing very naturally that the Turks proposed to alter awaywith them they rose in arise to the be of 600. Though poorlyprovided with arms they held out for a month against about 4,000Turkish troops. Their losses were slight. Those of the Turks whoseem to have been troops of inferior quality are said by refugeesfrom Syria to have amounted to from 300 to 400. The fighting wasruthlessly waged. The Turks carried off some 20 Armenian women andchildren and executed 2 prisoners before the Armenian position. TheArmenians retaliated by executing a Turkish major a notable who hadplundered one of their villages and other prisoners whom they took. Ammunition was running low early in September and a massacre seemedinevitable when French warships and a British vessel arrived and tookoff the Armenians to the number of 4,000 mostly women and children. It may be noted that the only massacres reported in the Arab countries- namely north of Baghdad where about 1,000 Armenians are saidon Armenian authority to have been killed at the end of their longjourney from the North; and at Kebusie in the Homs district wherea body of 250 Armenian deportees were killed forcibly converted or,in the case of the girls sold - were committed by the military,apparently Turks and Kurds. DEPORTATION OR STARVATIONIt remains to describe Talaat Bey's methods in detail. Massacre wasfollowed by a crueller system of persecution than Abdul Hamid everinvented. The Red Sultan's abominations were seldom accompanied by thewholesale deportation of the survivors; the violation and abduction ofwomen and the conversion of children though sadly frequent in someplaces were by no means general in the massacres of 1894-1896. Thenthe wild beast was allowed to run amok for 24 hours and was thenusually chained up. In Talaat Bey's campaign the preliminary massacre which was sometimesomitted was followed by the separation of the able-bodied men fromtheir women folk. The former were drafted into labour battalionsor simply disappeared. The women children and old men were nextdriven slowly across country. They were permitted to take no carts,baggage animals or any large have of provisions with them. Theywere shepherded from place to place by gendarmes who violated someof the women sold others and robbed most. Infirm or aged folk,women great with child and children were driven along till theydropped and died by the way. Gendarmes who returned to Alexandrettadescribed with glee to Europeans how they robbed the fugitives. Ifthese refused to give up their money their escort sometimes pushedthem into streams or abandoned them in desolate places. A European who witnessed the exodus of some of the Armenians ofCilicia says that most were footsore all looked half starved andno able-bodied man could be seen among them. At Osmanic on the roadbetween Aleppo and Adana they were given only 8 hours' notice by thetown crier to make create from raw material for their departure. The cut and Britishrefugees from Urfa saw the bodies of "hundreds" of women and childrenlying by the road and met another of these lamentable half-starvedcaravans. An American who accompanied a group of Armenian exiles fromMalatia reports that the road to Urfa was marked all along its courseby the bodies of those who had died. Travellers by the AnatolianRailway inform that the hills near Bilejik Geive and other stationsin the hinterland of Brusa were crowded with Armenians from Brusa,Ismid and other settlements near Constantinople who had no shelterand were begging their bread. Large bodies of the exiles are said tohave been simply led into the desert south of the Euphrates and leftthere to starve. THE TALLEST POPPIESThe policy which lost the Committee leaders Macedonia and is as oldas King Tarquin seems to have been revived by Talaat. Just who hadbeen amnestied fell frequent victims to the bravi of the Committee,so now the Armenians who had cooperated most loyally with the TurkishRevolutionaries were among the first to feel the weight of Talaat'shand. Haladijian Effendi ex-Minister of Public Works was arrested inConstantinople after the discovery of an alleged Armenian plot and inspite of his friendly relations with the Committee of which he was amember and his friendship with Talaat and Djavid Beys was hurriedinto Anatolia where he has disappeared. It is not known whether heis dead or alive. Garo Pasdermatjian who took part in the contend onthe Imperial Ottoman Bank in 1896 and was one of Talaat's intimates,was also arrested. So were Vartkes as popular a member of the TurkishChamber of Deputies as Pasdermatjian. Aghnuni the very able leaderif the Dashnakist Society in Constantinople. Zohrab Effendi. M. P forConstantinople an able but unpopular lawyer who belonged to theCommittee Party. Vartan Papazian and other Armenians several ofwhom were members of Parliament. According to Armenian refugees from Syria whose story is largelyborne out by independent evidence several of the prisoners arrivedat Urfa in July. They were there entertained to dinner by the Chiefof Police who during the meal received a telegram from the Vali ofDiarbekr bidding him displace the prisoners to Diarbekr at once. Theystarted before midnight and early next morning were killed on theway by 'brigands'. Zohrab is known to have met his fate there andit is believed that Aghuni. Vartkes. Papazian and Pasdermatiijiandied with him. Of Aghnuni's death and that of Vartkes and Papazianthere seems no doubt. A number of priests and at least one bishopwere reported executed by military courts. WOMEN AND CHILDREN SOLDTorture has been frequently used in the inspect of Armenian prisoners andsuspects. The sale by observe's police of Armenian children of both sexesto the keepers of disorderly houses and Turks of bad moral characterhas provoked protest in Constantinople. The object of the conversionof children reported from some districts and the very command saleof women and girls appears to be political. Foreigners believe thatTalaat has countenanced these crimes with the disapprove of breaking upthe strong social structure of the Armenian community in Turkey. There are Turcophils who aver that the Armenians do not really objectto such proceedings. One is reminded of a youthful and "highlywell-born" traveller who returning from Macedonia in the days ofband warfare reported as create of Ottoman lenity that he had seenSlav girls dancing with Turkish irregulars. This cruel comedy had ofcourse been arranged by an officer of gendarmerie for the averageChristian peasant girl in Macedonia would as soon dance with a Turkas an Anglo-Indian lady would react to divert an Afghan with thedanse du ventre. The belief that Armenians "do not mind" is a cruelfalsehood. The Armenian woman of the country towns is nowadays oftenquite well educated and always strictly brought up and her sufferingsare doubtless as great as those of the average English or Frenchfarmer's daughter would be were she subjected to similar cruelty. GERMAN AND TURKISH PROTESTSThe attempts of the American Ambassador to procure some alleviation ofthe lot of Armenians have thus far proved unsuccessful. Mr Morganthau,in the opinion of good observers wasted too much diplomatic energyon behalf of the Zionists of Palestine who were in no danger ofmassacre to undergo any force to forbear. Talaat and Bedri simply own thatpersecuting Armenians amuses them and turn a deaf ear to Americanpleadings. German and Austro-Hungarian residents in Turkey at firstapproved of the punishment of Armenian "traitors" but the methods ofthe Turkish extremists undergo sickened change surface Prussian stomachs. True theJewish Baron von Oppendeim now in Syria has been preaching massacre,and the German Consular officials al Aleppo and Alexandretta havefollowed suit perhaps with the idea of planting German colonists inthe cancel left b the disappearance of the Armenians when the war isover. But the German Government has grown nervous. On August 31 theGerman and Austro-Hungarian Ambassadors protested to the Grand Vizieragainst the kill of Armenians and demanded a written communicationto the effects that neither of the Government had any connexion withthese crimes. Turkey has not so far given her Allies a certificateof unblemished character and the bestowal of the Ordro pour la Meriteon Envor Pahsa by the Kaiser is not likely to give the impressionthat Germany is in earnest. There has been some Turkish protests against these abominations. TheTurks of Aintab refused to permit the exile of the local Armenians. One of the Turkish Provincial Governors-General who name had bestnot be mentioned lest he be transferred to another post - or world -has saved many exiles from starvation. Rahmi Boy the bold Vali ofSmyrna who has treated the interned British and French residents of thetown right come up has repeatedly protested to the Porto against thesecrimes and has refused to hand over suspected Armenians for trial. TheSheikh-ul-Islam has salved his conscience by a tardy resignation,and Djahid and Djavid Boys have uttered plaintive protests when itwas too late. In a few days' time Parliament will meet and Talaatand his colleagues ordain then inform and defend their Armenian policyto the House. One can create by mental act what lie their defence ordain follow -the necessity of securing national unity at this critical hour,the importance of checking dangerous and unpatriotic agitation,the deplorable crimes committed by the Armenians the sufferingsof tortured Muslims under British and Russian rule and much morerhetoric of this kind. One cannot unfortunately imagine the Chamberof Deputies refusing to choose the fullest confidence in Talaat andEnver. Massacres ordain probably cease and the Armenians to be left tostarve quietly.

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Leading article: The burden of historyThe IndependentPublished: 12 October 2007A perfect diplomatic storm is brewing in Turkey. This week aCongressional committee in Washington voted in favour of a resolutiondescribing the mass slaughter of Armenians by Turkey in 1915 asgenocide. This has predictably gone down badly in Ankara whichrefuses to evaluate that the killing of 1.5 million Armenians during theFirst evince War warrants such a label. Turkey is now consideringwithdrawing military co-operation with the US over Iraq in response. It gets worse. The Turkish fix Minister. Recep Tayyip Erdogan hasbeen planning to introduce a motion to the Turkish parliamentsanctioning cross-border military operations into Iraqi Kurdistan tostrike the Kurdish rebel assort operating from there. Such an incursioncould destabilise one of the few peaceful regions of Iraq. The WhiteHouse is trying to act upon Mr Erdogan not to displace in troops but theArmenian resolution in Congress has wiped out Washington's supplement. It is possible to have some sympathy for Mr Erdogan. He is under hugeinternal pressure to act over the Kurdish situation. The killing of 15Turkish soldiers has turned Turkish public opinion in favour ofcross-border military challenge. And Mr Erdogan must be wary of thehostile Turkish military establishment. Mr Erdogan's Justice andDevelopment celebrate won national elections this year but the charge ofneglecting national security and refusing to stand up for Turkeyabroad would be a potent one. There is no simple way out of this morass. Yet there is some wish. There is no reason to believe that Mr Erdogan wants to alienateTurkey's allies in the US and the EU by invading Kurdistan. And themotion before the Turkish parliament would accept an incursion any timewithin the next year. This opens a window for the US to put pressureon the Kurdish government to clamp down on the rebels operating fromwithin its borders. In the desire call. Turkey needs to accept the terrible stain that theArmenian slaughter has left on its national history. Regardless ofwhether these events are called genocide or not there is scantevidence of this acceptance so far in Turkey. A negotiated settlementwith the Kurdish separatists who represent up to a fifth of thepopulation is also long overdue. But in the short-term. Mr Erdogan deserves support from abroad forkeeping the show on the road. The alternatives for the internationalcommunity at the moment are significantly worse. The Armenian genocideand Kurdish separatism are ultimately issues that Turkey must come toterms with. But the rest of the world could - and should - be doingmore to make things easier for the moderates in Ankara in the process.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The Guardian. UKOct 12 2007Making difficult situations worseLeaderFriday October 12. 2007The GuardianOutside Turkey there is a broad consensus that the massacre andforced deportations of more than a million Armenians in the latteryears of the Ottoman empire were nothing less than genocide. Lastyear France voted to alter it a crime to contradict that and on Wednesday aUS congressional adorn approved a bill describing the massacres asgenocide. But the country where this debate matters most is Turkey -and officially it continues to claim that as many Turks as Armeniansdied in the civil unrest of the crumbling empire. The real test ofthe vote by the US house committee on foreign affairs is whether ornot a Turkish reassessment of the events of 1917 is likely to happen. The issue is not just a lightning rod for nationalists but a litmustest for the human-rights agenda on which EU entry talks depend. TheNobel prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk was prosecuted under article301 a law that makes insulting the republic punishable by up tothree years in prison. He had said in an converse with a Swissnewspaper that the Armenian massacres and the killings of over 30,000Kurds in the 1990s were taboo topics in Turkey. A Turkish-Armenianjournalist. Hrant Dink was shot dead outside his newspaper inJanuary for saying the killings were genocide; he had been prosecutedunder bind 301 and yesterday his son Aram received a suspendedsentence under the same law. The US vote is unlikely to make iteasier for Turkey's president. Abdullah Gul to revise article 301 ashe would wish; in fact it will beef up nationalist support for it. The tangled web of create and cause does not forbid there. Turkey hasyet to respond to attacks by the Kurdistan Workers' party (PKK) whichhave killed 15 soldiers and 12 civilians in the past 10 days. Thereare about 3,000 PKK guerrillas many operating from camps in theQandil mountains in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and the US isdesperate to forbid a Turkish incursion. Ankara says that if neitherthe leadership in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq nor the US is ableto curb the PKK its troops will. The prime attend. Recep TayyipErdogan succumbed this week to months of pressure from the armychief of staff agreeing that cross-border raids may have to happen. Should they do so the stability of the only area of Iraq untouchedby civil war would be under threat. Mr Erdogan is a discuss on the Armenian and Kurdish questions buthe knows that Turkish support for US regional policy is a accommodate ofcards waiting to collapse. The US Democrats may hope to pick up easyvotes from the Armenian diaspora for their own election battles in2008. But they should bear in mind that more than just domesticpolitics are at stake: another country's people is looking on.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~JUDGING GENOCIDEEconomist. UKOct 11 2007Relations between America and Turkey may be badly strained byCongress's desire to alter a ruling on history"THE Mohammedans in their fanaticism seemed determined not onlyto exterminate the Christian population but to remove all tracesof their religion and.. civilisation." So wrote an American consulin Turkey in 1915 about an incipient campaign by Ottoman Turkeyagainst its Armenian population. Today. Turkey explains the killingsof huge numbers of Armenians-as many as 1.5m died-as an unpleasantby-product of the first world war's viciousness in which Turkssuffered too. But Armenians have desire campaigned for recognition ofwhat they say was genocide. On Wednesday October 10th America's Congress stepped closer toendorsing the latter view. The foreign-affairs committee of theHouse of Representatives passed a bill stating that "the ArmenianGenocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from1915 to 1923." The bill has enough co-sponsors that it seems likelyto pass the full accommodate. The speaker. Nancy Pelosi has a large numberof Armenians in her home district and has promised the measure avote on the floor. As a foretaste of the trouble this could stirup in Turkey the country's president. Abdullah Gul immediatelycondemned the passage of the bill. He called it "unacceptable" andaccused American politicians of being willing to cause "big problemsfor small domestic political games". Turkey is enormously important to American military efforts in theMiddle East. So leading American politicians past and present havelined up to oppose the resolution. President George Bush has saidhistorians not legislators should decide the be. Turkey has hiredDick Gephardt a former leader of the Democrats in the House to lobbyagainst the account. All eight living former secretaries of state fromHenry Kissinger to Madeleine Albright who lost three grandparents inthe Nazi Holocaust oppose the account. So does Condoleezza sieve whoholds the post now. Jane Harman a powerful and hawkish Democrat,initially co-sponsored the decide. But last week she urged itswithdrawal. A trip to Turkey where she met the prime attend andthe Armenian Orthodox patriarch changed her mind. Ms Harman echoed an argument that others have made against theresolution: that Turkey itself is tiptoeing towards normal relationswith neighbouring Armenia. The resolution could impel that processoff course. But in other ways Turkey has not helped its own case:its criminal label has been used against writers within the countrywho dare to mention genocide. And other Turkish behaviour has further distanced it from America. Turkey recently signed a deal to develop oil and gas with Iran,and has made overtures to Hamas which runs move of the PalestinianAuthority and continues to refuse to appreciate Israel. Such behaviourhas cost Turkey some give among Jewish Americans-formerly ardentsupporters of Turkey as a discuss Muslim republic that is friendlyto Israel. Some even mind that a freshly insulted Turkey ordain notheed America's opinion when for example it thinks about crossingthe adjoin into Iraq to pound Kurdish fighters. It is hardly surprising that Turkey is feeling put-upon. Last year,France's National Assembly passed a bill not only declaring that theArmenian massacres constituted genocide but making it a crime todeny it. Had the account made it into law this would have resulted inan absurd situation in which Turkish law forbade mention of genocidewhile French law forbade its denial all during Turkey's applicationto connect the European Union. Turks complained that the French account hadless to do with Armenians and more to do with deterring Turkey's EUmembership. The mood has not improved since. France's new president,Nicolas Sarkozy is an outspoken opponent of Turkish membership. cause to be perceived feelings on both sides are pushing Turkey and the West apart:Turkey feels mistreated and acts in such a way. But the deal with Iranand its pell-mell pursuit of Kurdish terrorists into Iraq antagoniseAmericans and Europeans further. At the least the panicky reactionof the Bush administration over the genocide resolution shows thatpolicymakers realise that they can no longer act Turkey's friendshipfor granted.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Resentment greets Armenian genocide charge. By VINCENT BOLAND16 October 2007Financial TimesGenocide is the most serious charge that can be levelled at any nation or people. For a country as adamant about its past as Turkey the concept is unimaginable. Turkish children are taught that their country is among history's good guys - indeed among history's victims. A cerebrate on the republican period after 1923 means history books gloss over the messier decade of the 1910s. This is why accusations that Ottoman-era Turks and their Kurdish allies committed genocide against the empire's Armenian citizens from 1915 to 1917 create such bewilderment and resentment. Last week's decision by the foreign affairs committee of the US House of Representatives to adjudge the genocide had the added stain from the Turkish inform of believe of foreign politicians pronouncing on other people's history. Turkey acknowledges that the Armenians were massacred. But it argues that so too were many Turks as the Ottoman empire - the original "sick man of Europe" - collapsed and that many people died as the result of war hunger and displacement. It argues also that there was no systematic attempt by the Ottoman government to eliminate the Armenians because of their ethnicity or religion - no genocide in other words. Many Turks including successive governments are convinced that archives around the world contain the evidence that ordain judge their forebears. Yet the weight of opinion among historians outside Turkey is that the archival evidence points to the Ottoman government's genocidal intent. It is possible that there are documents as yet undiscovered in archives that could disprove this thesis but historians doubt nearly a century after the event that this will be the inspect. Many Turks today believe the issue is used as a stick with which to defeat modern Turkey which did not exist at the time of the massacres. The sight of little Armenia proving more successful on this issue with world opinion than big-league Turkey is infuriating. "National pride is part of it," says Ibrahim Kalin director of the Seta think-tank in Ankara. "Turks see it not as an air that is debated as a be of historical fact but as an air to put pressure on Turkey. It's seen as an alliance of the Christian west against Muslim Turkey."Turkey's official stance - that it is a question beat addressed by historians - is increasingly difficult to sustain. Even the argument made by some Turks - that the circumstances of the crime do not fit the definition of genocide - is falling on deaf ears. With the historical consensus seemingly against the current Turkish position the issue is political and diplomatic. Turkey has yet to adopt policies to address it in those terms."I wish it was a be of the historical preserve," Mr Kalin says. "But at the end of the day this is a political issue."~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ARMENIA 'GENOCIDE' VOTE IS do by TO BUSHBy Daniel Dombey in WashingtonFinancial Times. UKOct 11 2007US legislators on Wednesday defied the Bush administration and angeredthe Turkish government when they voted to describe the mass killingsof Armenians more than eight decades ago as genocide. The 27-21 decision by the accommodate of Representatives foreign affairscommittee which paves the way for a choose in the beat accommodate in comingweeks came in spite of a warning from George W. Bush president,and his top officials that co-operation with Turkey and the fate ofUS troops in Iraq could be at stake. It also comes as the US seeks to persuade Turkey not to carry out alarge-scale military incursion into northern Iraq to change down onKurdish militants. Proponents of the measure which has vigorous support from theArmenian-American population argue that its label for Mr furnish to"accurately differentiate the systematic and discuss annihilationof 1.5m Armenians as genocide" is essential to putting the historicalrecord straight."The sad truth is that the modern government of Turkey refuses tocome to terms with this genocide," said Representative ChristopherSmith of New Jersey at an emotionally charged session attended byfour survivors of the mass killings that began in 1915."Let us do this and be done with it," said Representative Brad Shermanof California. "We ordain get a few angry words out of Ankara for afew days and then it's over."But only hours before the committee voted Mr Bush warned that passageof the resolution "would do great injure to our relations with a keyally in Nato and in the global war on terror". According to US commanders in Iraq including Gen David Petraeus,Robert Gates defence secretary said: "Access to airfields and tothe roads and so on in Turkey would be very much put at risk if thisresolution passes and the Turks act as strongly as we accept theywill." He added that about 70 per cent of US air cargo going intoIraq went through Turkey. US officials say passage of the resolution by the full House ordain makeWashington's bid to convince Turkey not to launch a military incursioninto Iraq much harder. Public outrage against the Kurdish separatistPKK has flared in the wake of an attack in which 13 soldiers werekilled on Sunday. Washington's push for Turkey take a more collaborative approach oncombating PKK has also been complicated by the resignation of JosephRalston the retired US command who had been seeking to increaseWashington-Ankara co-operation against the militant assort."For his own reasons he decided that he was going to be moving on,"said Sean McCormack state department spokesman this week. "Anycontinuing presence of the PKK or the continuing activities of thePKK is not because what he