Armenian genocide

The Los Angeles Times reports that the Obama administration “is hesitating on a promised presidential declaration that Armenians were the victims of genocide in the early 20th century, fearful of alienating Turkey when U.S. officials badly want its help.”

The L. A. Times, in “Obama wavers on pledge to declare Armenian genocide,” says Obama and “other top administration officials” were to officially designate the 1915 killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks as genocide.

But the administration also has been soliciting Ankara’s help on Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and other security issues amid Turkish warnings that an official U.S. statement would imperil Turkey’s assistance.

Administration officials are considering postponing a presidential statement, citing progress toward a thaw in relations between Turkey and neighboring Armenia. Further signs of warming — such as talk of reopening border crossings — would strengthen arguments that a U.S. statement could imperil the progress. Continue reading →

A very timely story yesterday in the Wall Street Journal by Andrew Higgins about a land dispute between Syriac Orthodox monastery Mor Gabriel and Turkish authorities. Also yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, during a stop in Ankara, announced that President Obama will be visiting Turkey “in a month or so.” She said this toward the end of her public remarks:

I reiterate the Obama Administration’s support for Turkey’s membership in the European Union. The United States believes it will strengthen Turkey, Europe, and our transatlantic partnership. The United States continues to support the UN-sponsored talks now taking place to achieve a settlement of the Cyprus conflict based on reunification of the island as a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation. We talked about Turkey’s democracy, its multiethnic heritage, and in that context, I raised the importance that we place on reopening the Halki Seminary and efforts to reach out to all of Turkey’s communities.

For the Journal story about Mor Gabriel, Higgins interviewed Bishop Timotheus Samuel Aktas, abbot of the ancient monstery, who claims that the surrounding villagers and local government officials simply want the Christian community to “go away.”

Here’s a snippet from “Defending the Faith — Battle Over a Christian Monastery Tests Turkey’s Tolerance of Minorities” [registration required]:

A big obstacle is Turkey’s continuing tensions with its ethnic minorities, notably the Kurds, who account for more than 15% of the population and are battling for greater autonomy. Also fraught, but more under the radar, is the situation confronting members of the Syriac Orthodox Church, one of the world’s oldest and most beleaguered Christian communities. The group’s fate is now seen as a test of Turkey’s ability to accommodate groups at odds with “Turkishness,” a legal concept of national identity that has at times been used to suppress minority groups. Continue reading →

In “Turkey Shocked by Chain Smoking, Raki-Swilling Atatürk,” Spiegel Online reporter Daniel Steinvorth reports on the controversy over a new film released to mark the 70th anniversary of the death of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

… Turkish Defense Minister Vecdi Gönül showed that the seven-decade anniversary can also be celebrated in another way — one perhaps more to the liking of the Kemalist Thought Association. At a ceremony at the Turkish embassy in Brussels, he gave a lecture on the difficult formation of the Turkish State and the expulsion of Greeks and Armenians, a fact which Gönül described as a “very important step.” At the end of the day, he said, modern Turkey would not be as we know it, “if Greeks still lived on the Aegean and Armenians still lived in different parts of Turkey today.”

In other words: the historical expulsion, deportation and extermination of the two population groups, as the thinking goes, are to be welcomed.

Between 1.5 and 2 million Anatolian Greeks were forced to leave their home in the process of the population changes. In return, half a million Greek Muslims came to Turkey. In 1955 another 100,000 Greeks left their home city of Istanbul following anti-Greek pogroms in a chapter of Turkish history which the once multicultural metropolis prefers to keep quiet about.

Later in the week, Gönül would correct himself, saying that Turkish minority groups, like the Armenians and the Greeks, enrich the country.

Still, Turkey’s official writing of history reveals a deep reluctance to tackle the “disappearance” of the Armenians. While Armenian sources say 1.5 million Armenians died in massacres and death marches during World War I, Turkey speaks of deaths on both sides, claiming there were 300,000 Armenian victims at the very most.

Turkish politics professor Baskin Oran was well aware how strong Gönül’s words sound beyond Turkish borders. “Because the Armenians and Greeks from Anatolia were sent away, industrialization was been delayed by at least 50 years,” he said.