Virtually zero coverage in most western media, most likely due to Turkey being an ally of the US and co and categorically denies it.

-PB

The Victorian Labor Party recognised it as a genocide recently. The Australian Greens recognise it too. Nothing I can see from the Libs.



Didn't you quote two major Australian media outlets in this thread?



That's a very good point.

Edited by paladisious: 26/4/2015 04:03:37 AM

and what of Australia's denial? you dont think that is also reprehensible?

where's the media coverage? you dont think thats deliberate?

and what has Australia as a nation learned? anything? anything at all?

we're always first in to any new war the US wants us to help out with

Nobody's expecting Turkey to flagellate themselves, but the way they've avoided morally owning what they did like how Germany and Japan have done is reprehensible.

Disagree that it has that much to do with ANZAC Day, I doubt the western Allies were thinking all that much about it tbh, and certainly wasn't the motivation for the Gallipoli campaign, and even given that the political reasons we went to war in 1914 aren't relevant to why we commemorate the day.

Edited by paladisious: 25/4/2015 11:32:46 PM

It is notable that the NSW Coalition Government went against the grain of timidity, and suffered the displeasure of the Turkish Government and a not insignificant number of voters of Turkish background. In 2013 it passed a unanimous motion to officially recognise the Armenian genocide, following a visit to Armenia by a multi-party parliamentary delegation. A message came through the Turkish Consul General that NSW MPs would ‘not be welcome in Turkey’ for the 2015 Gallipoli remembrance.

It’s not clear what ensued, but the NSW Government’s Treasurer Gladys Berejiklian was in the Armenian capital Yerevan on Friday to attend at service marking the centenary of the genocide. Berejiklian is the granddaughter of Armenian genocide victims. Despite a significant Armenian population here, the Federal Government had said it would not send an official representative to the ceremony in Yerevan.

It’s hard to underestimate the importance of the small but difficult steps of these politicians in the NSW Parliament to go out on a limb to recognise the Armenian Genocide, and not to blur or conceal the truth, as the Federal Government has done. As Pope Francis reminded the faithful at St Peter’s Basilica, 'concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it’.

ROBERT FISK

Monday 19 January 2015
[size=8]The Gallipoli centenary is a shameful attempt to hide the Armenian Holocaust[/size]

As world leaders plan to commemorate the First World War battle for Gallipoli, another horrific anniversary risks being overlooked

When world leaders, including Prince Charles and the Australian and New Zealand prime ministers, gather at Gallipoli to commemorate the First World War battle at the invitation of the Turkish government in April, the ghosts of one and half million slaughtered Christian Armenians will march with them.

For in an unprecedented act of diplomatic folly, Turkey is planning to use the 100th anniversary of the Allied attempt to invade Turkey in 1915 to smother memory of its own mass killing of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire, the 20th century’s first semi-industrial holocaust. The Turks have already sent invitations to 102 nations to attend the Gallipoli anniversary on 24th April — on the very day when Armenia always honours its own genocide victims at the hands of Ottoman Turkey.

READ MORE: A HISTORY OF WW1: THE TURKISH HOLOCAUST BEGINS
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A HOLOCAUST AND A HOLOCAUST
THE 1915 ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: FINDING A FIT TESTAMENT TO A TIMELESS CRIME

In an initiative which he must have known would be rejected, Turkish President Recep Erdogan even invited the Armenian President, Serge Sarkissian, to attend the Gallipoli anniversary after himself receiving an earlier request from President Sarkissian to attend ceremonies marking the Armenian genocide on the same day.

This is not just diplomatic mischief. The Turks are well aware that the Allied landings at Gallipoli began on 25th April – the day after Armenians mark the start of their genocide, which was ordered by the Turkish government of the time – and that Australia and New Zealand mark Anzac Day on the 25th. Only two years ago, then-president Abdullah Gul of Turkey marked the 98th anniversary of the Great War battle on 18th March 2013 — the day on which the British naval bombardment of the Dardanelles Peninsular began on the instructions of British First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. At the time, no-one in Turkey suggested that Gallipoli – Canakkale in Turkish — should be remembered on 24th April.

The Turks, of course, are fearful that 1915 should be remembered as the anniversary of their country’s frightful crimes against humanity committed during the Armenian extermination, in which tens of thousands of men were executed with guns and knives, their womenfolk raped and then starved with their children on death marches into what was then Mesopotamia. The irony of history has now bequeathed these very same killing fields to the victorious forces of the ‘genocidal’ Islamist ISIS army, which has even destroyed the Armenian church commemorating the genocide in the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zour. Armenians chose 24th April to remember their genocide victims because this was the day on which Turkish police rounded up the first Armenian academics, lawyers, doctors, teachers and journalists in Constantinople.

Like Germany’s right wing and revisionist historians who deny the Jewish Holocaust, Turkey has always refused to accept the Ottoman Turkish Empire’s responsibility for the greatest crime against humanity of the 1914-18 war, a bloodletting which at the time upset even Turkey’s German allies. Armenia’s own 1915 Holocaust – which lasted into 1917 — has been acknowledged by hundreds of international scholars, including many Jewish and Israeli historians, and has since been recognized by many European states. Only Tony Blair’s government tried to diminish the suffering of the Armenians when it refused to regard the outrages as an act of genocide and tried to exclude survivors from commemorating their dead during Holocaust ceremonies in London. Turkey’s claim – that the Armenians were unfortunate victims of the social upheavals of the war – has long been discredited.

Several brave Turkish scholars – denounced for their honesty by their fellow countrymen – have researched Ottoman documents and proved that instructions were sent out from Constantinople (now Istanbul) to regional officials to destroy their Armenian communities. Professor Ayhan Aktar of Istanbul Bilgi University, for example, has written extensively about the courage of Armenians who themselves fought in uniform for Turkey at Gallipoli, and has publicised the life of Captain Sarkis Torossian, an Armenian officer who was decorated by the Ottoman state for his bravery but whose parents and sister were done to death in the genocide. Professor Aktar was condemned by Turkish army officers and some academics who claimed that Armenians did not even fight on the Turkish side. Turkish generals officially denied – against every proof to the contrary, including Torossian’s photograph in Ottoman uniform — that the Armenian soldier existed.

Ottoman soldiers posing in front of Armenians they had hanged in public in Alep in 1915 Ottoman soldiers posing in front of Armenians they had hanged in public in Alep in 1915

But now Turkey has changed its story. Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu recently acknowledged that other ethnic groups – including many Arabs as well as Armenians – also fought at Gallipoli. “We [Turks and Armenians] fought together at Gallipoli,” he said. “That’s why we have extended the invitation to President Sarkissian as well.” The Armenian president’s reply to Erdogan’s invitation even mentioned Captain Torossian – although he sadly claimed that the soldier was also killed in the genocide when he in fact died in New York in 1954 after writing his memoirs – and reminded the Turkish president that “peace and friendship must first be hinged on the courage to confront one’s own past, historical justice and universal memory… Each of us has a duty to transmit the real story to future generations and prevent the repetition of crimes… and prepare the ground for rapprochement and future cooperation between peoples, especially neighbouring peoples.”

Armenians hold their commemorations on April 24th – when nothing happened at Gallipoli – because this was the day on which the Armenian intellectuals were rounded up and jailed in the basement of Constantinople’s police headquarters prior to their deportation and — in some cases — execution. These were the first ‘martyrs’ of the Armenian genocide. By another cruel twist of history, the place of their incarceration is now the Museum of Islamic Arts – a tourist location to which Prince Charles and other dignitaries will presumably not be taken on 24th April. These killings marked the start of the Armenian people’s persecution and exile to the four corners of the earth.

Professor Aktar’s contribution – along with that of historian Taner Akcam in the US — to the truth of Turkish-Armenian history is almost unique. They alone, through their academic research and under enormous political pressure to remain silent, forced thousands of Turks to debate the terrible events of 1915. Many Turks have since discovered Armenian grandmothers who were ‘Islamised’ or seized by Turkish militiamen or soldiers when they were young women. Aktar also points out that other Armenian soldiers – a First Lieutenant Surmenian, whose own memoirs were published in Beirut 13 years after Torossian’s death – fought in the Turkish army.

An image from 1915. Turkey deported two thirds of the Armenian population; many were either killed or died of starvation during the journey An image from 1915. Turkey deported two thirds of the Armenian population; many were either killed or died of starvation during the journey

He has little time, however, for either the Turkish government or Armenian president Sarkissian. “If you want to honour the Armenian officers and soldiers who… died for the fatherland (Turkey) in 1915, then you should invite the Armenian patriarch of Istanbul,” Aktar told me. “Why do (they) invite President Sarkissian? His ancestors were probably fighting in the Russian Imperial Army in 1915. He is from Karabagh [Armenian-held territory that is part of Turkish Azerbaijan] as far as I know! This is a show of an ‘indecent proposal’ towards President Sarkissian… it is rather insulting!”

Many Armenians might share the same view. For several months, Sarkissian was prepared to sign a treaty with Turkey to open the Armenian-Turkish frontier in return for a mere formal investigation by scholars of the genocide. Then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton supported him, along with sundry politicians and some Western journalists based in Turkey. But the Armenian diaspora responded in fury, asking how Jews would feel if friendship with Germany was contingent upon an enquiry to discover if the Jewish Holocaust had ever occurred. In the First World War, American and European newspapers gave massive publicity to the savagery visited upon the Armenians, and the British Foreign Office published a ‘black book’ on the crimes against Armenians of the Turkish army. The very word ‘genocide’ was coined about the Armenian holocaust by Raphael Lemkin, an American lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent. Israelis use the word ‘Shoah’ – ‘Holocaust’ — when they refer to the suffering of the Armenians.

The Turkish hero of Gallipoli, of course, was Lieutenant Colonel Mustapha Kemal – later Ataturk, founder of the modern Turkish state – and his own 19th Division at Gallipoli was known as the ‘Aleppo Division’ because of the number of Arabs serving in it. Ataturk did not participate in the mass killings of Armenians in 1915, but some of his associates were implicated – which still casts a shadow over the history of the Turkish state. The bloody Allied defeat at Gallipoli was to cast a shadow over the rest of Winston Churchill’s career, a fact well known to the tens of thousands of Australians and New Zealanders who plan to come to the old battlefield this April. How much they will know about an even more horrific anniversary on April 24th is another matter.

[size=8]Armenians mark 100 years since massacre (Genocide)[/size]
Date
April 24, 2015 - 9:31PM

Yerevan, Armenia: Armenians have marked the centenary of the massacre of up to 1.5 million of their kin by Ottoman forces, while France is calling on Turkey to recognise the 1915 slaughter as genocide.

[size=8]At an emotional ceremony in the capital Yerevan, French President Francois Hollande called on Turkey to use "other words", referring to Ankara's refusal to recognise as genocide the Ottoman Empire's massacre of Armenians.

"Important words have already been said in Turkey, but others are still expected, so that shared grief can become shared destiny," Mr Hollande told an audience that included Russian President Vladimir Putin, the leaders of Cyprus and Serbia and delegations from some 60 countries.[/size]

The year 1915 is formed with candles during a memorial march by Armenians in front of the Brandenburg Gate after an Ecumenical service marking the 100th anniversary of the mass killings of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces, at the cathedral in Berlin.
The year 1915 is formed with candles during a memorial march by Armenians in front of the Brandenburg Gate after an Ecumenical service marking the 100th anniversary of the mass killings of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces, at the cathedral in Berlin. Photo: FABRIZIO BENSCH
The Kremlin strongman for his part said Russia was standing shoulder to shoulder with ex-Soviet Armenia.

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"There is no and cannot be justification for mass murder of people," Mr Putin said to a standing ovation from the audience at a memorial complex atop a hill in the Armenian capital.

Mr Putin appeared to use the ceremony to refer to the Ukraine conflict, which pitted Russia against the West, pointing to the rise of "radical nationalists" and Russophobia.

Armenia's President, Serzh Sarkisian, thanked leaders and dignitaries for attending the commemorations.

"I am grateful to all those who are here to once again confirm your commitment to human values, to say that nothing is forgotten, that after 100 years we remember," he said.

Earlier in the day, he laid a wreath at a hilltop memorial commemorating the victims.

Under a leaden sky shedding rain, foreign diplomats followed, each holding a yellow rose to put into the wreath laid at the foot of a monumental 44-metre needle, symbolising the nation's rebirth.

Later on Friday, hundreds of thousands will join a procession to the genocide memorial - Armenia's most visited landmark - carrying candles and flowers to lay at the eternal flame.

From New York to Paris to Beirut, members of the massive Armenian diaspora that came into existence as a result of the slaughter that went on until 1917 were also to commemorate the sombre anniversary.

The patchy list of foreign dignitaries attending commemorations in Yerevan highlights the lack of international consensus over Armenia's bid to get the massacres recognised internationally as a genocide.

More than 20 nations, including France and Russia, have so far recognised the genocide, a definition supported by numerous historians.

German President Joachim Gauck was expected to draw an angry reaction from Turkey after he condemned on Thursday the massacres as genocide for the first time, speaking at a Berlin religious service.

Mr Gauck said that the then German empire - the Ottoman Turkey's ally in WWI - bore "shared responsibility, possibly shared guilt for the genocide".

Ankara on Wednesday recalled its ambassador to Vienna in response to Austrian lawmakers' decision to condemn the massacre as "genocide".

Turkey has said up to 500,000 people were killed, but mostly due to war and starvation, and rejects the use of the term "genocide".

US President Barack Obama on Thursday would only go so far as to describe the World War I massacre as "terrible carnage".

Commemorations expected to draw millions in Yerevan, Paris, Los Angeles and beyond will come a day after a canonisation service that made saints of the the 1.5 million Armenians that historians believe to have perished.

The ceremony outside Armenia's main cathedral, Echmiadzin, close to Yerevan, ended at 7.15pm local time, or 19.15 according to the 24-hour clock, to symbolise the year when the massacres started during World War I.

"During the dire years of the genocide of the Armenians, millions of our people were uprooted and massacred in a premeditated manner, passed through fire and sword, tasted the bitter fruits of torture and sorrow," Catholicos of All Armenians, Karekin II, said at the ceremony.

AFP