Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News

Ankara must be held Accountable!
by Zinda Magazine - www.zindamagazine.com
Posted: Wednesday, December 13, 2000 07:45 pm CST

For 85 years Assyrians and Armenians have known a historical fact that no modern Turk wishes to be reminded of, that the government of Turkey perpetrated the first genocide of the Twentieth Century by killing over one and half million Assyrians, Armenians, and Greek citizens of that country. Since then the Armenians have worked tirelessly to bring world's attention to the tragedies commencing in 1915 and continuing until 1923. Only in the past few years have the Assyrians in Diaspora been able to effectively organize themselves and demonstrate their solidarity with other victimized Christian groups from Turkey. Modern Turkey remains a multifaceted country and currently 53% of its exports go to current Member States of the European Union and it is the sixth largest importer of EU products. In the past few months the recognition of its minorities' basic cultural, linguistic and religious rights has become an important determinant of this country's future- particularly its admission to the European Union.

On the eve of 1915 the present-day Turkey was known as the Ottoman Empire. The reign of its Sultan stretched through much of what we call the Middle East, except for Persia (Iran) and Egypt. As in today, the decision-makers were the European and American politicians. In those days, there were no Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Isreal, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, or Lebanon. These artificial state-systems were the British and French inventions in the early 1920's and late 1940's. The European "designers" used religion and tribalism as the basis of their political schemes and drew the frontiers of these puppet-nations accordingly. When the Ottoman swords systematically decimated the Assyrians and Armenians between 1915 and 1923 two factors were of no importance to the map-makers in Paris and London. These were oil and the Christians. Today, Europe begs to differ.

In 1913 France, Britain, and Germany signed agreements to construct the Berlin-to-Baghdad Railway, while secretly dividing the Ottoman Empire into three spheres of influence. The Russians disliked this plan and opposed any economic assistance to the "sick man of the East." Not long after, the First World War erupted in Europe and the tables turned. In 1914, the Germans declared war on France, the British declared war on Germany; and in turn Russia and Britain declared war on the Ottoman Empire. By then the Germans had already allied themselves with the Sultan in Turkey and the Prime Minister in Persia. On 12 November 1914, the Turkish Sultan hands over a decree of holy war to his army and navy, signed by his ministers, demanding their participation in the Jihad against the Christians. The Russian troops began crossing the Turkish border, but were stopped by Sultan's troops.

Between January and August 1915 Turkish troops were sent to Azerbaijan in northwestern Iran, being reinforced along the way by Kurdish tribesmen. They moved through the Urmie region and reached as far as Tabriz. Russian army retreated and many Assyrian villages were pillaged and destroyed. For five months the Turks and Kurds controlled the city of Urmie. In May 1915 the Russians re-occupied this ancient Assyrian city. Fearing that the Christian populations in Turkey would ally themselves with the Russians, during the winter of 1915 the Ottomans ordered the evacuation of the entire Christian population from eastern Turkey. The Russians were unable to help the Ottoman Christians and moreover in 1917, after the Bolshevik Revolution, they retreated their forced from Azerbaijan. By 1918, nearly two million Christians in the Ottoman Empire and Azerbaijan were killed and hundreds of thousands uprooted from their ancestral lands in eastern Turkey's Hakkari and Persia's Azerbaijan.

In August 1920, two years after the end of WWI, a treaty was signed at Sevres, near Paris. The whole of Ottoman Empire was carved into small, indigestible portions and handed to the war victors. According to this treaty Armenia was organized as a Christian republic; much of Ottoman Empire in Europe was given to Greece; Palestine and Bet-Nahrain (Mesopotamia) became British Mandates; and Syria became a French Mandate. In essence, of the three victimized Christian populations in the Ottoman Empire, the Assyrians were the only one that received no war reparations. The Sevres Treaty was accepted by the Sultan. Shortly after, a group of Turkish nationalists from Ankara, led by Mustapha Kemal (later Attaturk), attacked the republic of Armenia and conquered most of the territory in Europe that was given to Greece. In November 1922, they deposed the Sultan and proclaimed Turkey a republic. The Ottomans who had dominated the Middle East for 500 years were now trying to become European. The Allied Powers (French, British, and Russians) welcomed the Kemalist National Assembly's entry as a European partner and consented to a revision of the Sevres Treaty and met in Lausanne in Switzerland to concede to the new Turkish aggression.

The Lausanne Conference opened on November 20, 1923. Among the attendees was General Agha Petros, Commander-in-Chief of the Assyrian forces, who presented the claims of the Assyrians to autonomy in Bet-Nahrain. The Assyrian General asserted that his nation had "lost proportionally more people, money, properties than any other of the belligerent nations."

In a letter to the Allied Powers Agha Petros writes: "We greatly fear the consequences of a British withdrawal from Mesopotamia. Being scattered among our war enemies, A British withdrawal would probably be followed by a massacre of all Christians. Therefore, we ask that the territory or our ancestors be granted to us officially, and our boundaries be recongised as "a Christian autonomous state under a British Mandate." The land that Assyrians were claiming at Lausanne lied "between the Rivers Tigris and Zab, and Mount Zinjar on the North side of Mosul."

The British were careful not to undermine the significance of the oil reserves in northern Bet-Nahrain, particularly in the Mosul area. The Americans argued that the British were asking for too much of world's oil supplies at Lausanne. The delegation from London denied this and emphasized the future defense of Iraq. The Turks on the other hand were willing to give up the oil reserves to Americans in exchange for Mosul. Such sentiments are feared by the government in Baghdad today as Turkey continues its aggression across the Iraqi-Turkish border.

The Treaty was finally signed on July 24, 1923; the Turks agreed to giving up the Arab lands, but retained all of the territory they had conquered in Anatolia and Europe. A million Greeks were expelled from Turkey and 350,000 Turks left Greece for their homeland. Agha Petros returned home empty-handed.

Finally in 1924, the Mosul Commission decided against the wishes of Attaturk and Mosul stayed with Iraq. Turkey assembled its armies on the Iraqi-Turkish border and began advancing toward Mosul. Two thousand Assyrian Levies were dispatched to protect Mosul. Thanks to the chivalry of the Assyrian troops the Mosul Wilayat was saved from the Turkish aggression and safely kept within the Iraqi territories. Yet this act of courage was neither rewarded nor recognized by the European powers.

In November 1925 the League of Nations handed the Hakkari region to Turkey. The Mosul area was kept within the Iraqi territory and was to be used as an "Assyrian enclave" with autonomous status for Assyrians. Suddenly, eight months later, Britain signed another agreement with Turkey and introduced new "settlement plans" for Assyrians. The "Brussels Line" was drawn in 1928 which prevented the Assyrians living in northern Iraq to return to their ancestral homes in Hakkari. Therefore, the Assyrian homeland was divided into two regions and the cultural and political rights of the Assyrian people guaranteed by the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 were never recognized.

On 13 December 1999 the European Council met in Helsinki and granted Turkey the status of candidate country for accession to the European Union. In order to be admitted Turkey has to abide by the Copenhagen Criteria set forth by the European Council, in which the protection of its minorities rights are outlined and demanded.

In October 2000 the U.S. House of Representatives canceled a vote on non-binding Resolution 596, which would have recognized the massacres of 1915-1923 when House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois) canceled the resolution vote. The vote was prematurely pulled because of intense lobbying of the Turkish Government. President Clinton argued that the passage of this resolution would severely jeopardize United States-Turkey relations. Turkey had warned that adoption of the resolution would damage the US ability to use Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey for patrolling the "no-fly zone" over northern Iraq. Turkey had also threatened to cancel a $4.5 billion deal to buy U.S. attack helicopters.

On November 3 Congresswoman Anna Eshoo spoke to the U.S. Congress on the cancellation of the historic resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide and the 1915-23 massacres. She said that "in 1915, 1.5 million women, children, and men were killed and the Ottoman Empire forcibly deported 500,000 Armenians during an 8-year reign of brutal repression. Armenians were deprived of their homes, their dignity, and ultimately their lives. Yet America, the greatest democracy and land of freedom, has not made an official statement regarding the Armenian Genocide. I am dismayed and angered by this hypocrisy and I will not rest until this resolution passes the Congress...As the only Member of Congress of Armenian and Assyrian descent, I am very proud of my heritage. I sat at the knees of my grandparents and elders as they told their stories of hardship and suffering endured by so many at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. That is how I came to this understanding and this knowledge and why I bring this story to the House of Representatives."

Across the Atlantic, ironically Turkey had less influence on its neighbors in Europe. On November 8, the French Senate voted 164 to 40 for France's public recognition of the "Armenian Genocide of 1915".

On November 10, Pope John Paul II issued a joint statement with the Armenian Catholicos Karekin II, which mentioned the following: "The Armenian Genocide has been a prelude to the horrors which followed: the two world wars, innumerable regional conflicts and deliberately organized campaigns of extermination that have ended the lives of millions of believers." Turkey immediately responded by initiating a set of policies to improve relations with Vatican. A street in Istanbul was named after Pope John Paul II and ecumenical dialogue began with Patriarch Bartholomew I, Patriarch of Constantinople. The Pope responded favorably by giving the Orthodox Patriarch a Roman church in Istanbul. Turkey had briefly won the battle.

On November 15, the European Parliament passed a Resolution calling on Turkey to recognize the Armenian Genocide. Two days later the European Parliament concluded a new resolution in which it urged the Turkish government to "genuinely redirect its policy with a view to improving the human rights situation of all its citizens, including those belonging to groups whose roots go back deep into the country's past, by putting an end to the political, social and cultural discrimination which they suffer."

At Zinda press time the 1915 Genocide has been recognized by Argentina, Belgium, Canada, the Council of Europe, Cyprus, the European Parliament, France, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, Lebanon, Russia, the United Nations and Uruguay. The United States remains indifferent to the largest act of atrocity committed against Christians in the 20th Century.

The suffering of the Assyrians, Armenians, and the Pontic Greek populations in the Ottoman Empire and in today's Turkey must not be forgotten. Assyrians in particular are the indigenous inhabitants of Anatolia. Whereas a little over a hundred years ago hundreds of thousands of Assyrians lived in eastern Turkey, today only a few thousand families inhabit the areas of Tur-Abdin in southeast Turkey. Unless the cultural, political and religious rights of the Assyrian (Syriac-speaking) communities of southeastern Turkey are recognized, beginning with the recognition of the 1915-23 massacres in which two-third of the Assyrian population was annihilated by the Turkish armies, then the remaining families will be forced to leave their ancestral homeland. Tur-Abdin or "Mountains of the Gods" is the birthplace of Eastern Christianity, encompassing the Urhai (Edessa), Mardin, and Nsibin territories.

The debate on the 1915 Genocide issue must continue on all fronts, from Yerevan to Washington. The government in Turkey is once again in the limelight as the trials against the Assyrian priest, Yusuf Abkulut, are scheduled to commence later this month. If convicted he may face death penalty and become the latest martyr of the battle which began 85 years ago. Ankara must be held accountable to its obligations under universal human rights norms by first releasing Fr. Abkulut and then openly recognizing the rights of its Assyrian and Armenian citizens. The recognition of the 1915 Genocide will be the beginning of a healing process resulting in full political and economic cooperation between the governments of Turkey and Armenia and an encouragement toward the return of the Assyrian people to their ancestral lands in Turkey.

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