Turkey on tenterhooks for Biden’s decision on Armenian genocide recognition

A picture released by the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute dated 1915 purportedly shows soldiers standing over skulls of victims from the Armenian village of Sheyxalan in the Mush valley, on the Caucasus front during the First World War. (STR/AGMI/AFP)
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Updated 27 March 2021
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Turkey on tenterhooks for Biden’s decision on Armenian genocide recognition

  • Acknowledgment of 1915-1923 mass killing of Christian Armenians by Ottoman Turks would be the first by a US president
  • Decision would be a setback for Turkish President Erdogan at a time of continuing friction in US-Turkey relations

DUBAI: The Biden administration is considering acknowledging the genocide of ethnic Armenians by the Ottoman Empire, Ian Bremmer of GZero Media has reported in the lead-up to Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, April 24.

In the event, Joe Biden would become the first US president to recognize the systematic killing of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians from 1915 onwards in modern-day Turkey as a “genocide,” a step already taken by the Senate and the House of Representatives in 2019.




The atrocities started with the arrest of Armenian intellectuals in Constantinople in 1915 and continued with a centralized program of deportations, murder, pillage and rape until 1923. (AFP/Getty Images/File Photo)

The adoption of that measure by the two US chambers of Congress came at a time when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s military intervention in northern Syria had strained already tense relations between his government and the US political establishment. This time around, in addition to continuing friction in US-Turkish relations, some 38 senators have sent a letter urging the president to recognize the genocide.

The atrocities started with the arrest of Armenian intellectuals in Constantinople in 1915 and continued with a centralized program of deportations, murder, pillage and rape until 1923. Ordinary Armenians were then driven from their homes and sent on death marches through the Mesopotamian desert without food or water.

Ottoman death squads massacred Armenians, with only 388,000 left in the empire by 1923 from 2 million in 1914. (Turkey estimates the total number of deaths to be 300,000.)

Many Armenians were deported to Syria and the Iraqi city of Mosul. Today descendants of the survivors are scattered across the world, with large diasporas in Russia, the US, France, Argentina and Lebanon.

Turkey admits that many Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were killed in clashes with Ottoman forces during the First World War, but disputes the figures and denies that the killings were systematically orchestrated and constitute a genocide.

Getting access to vital Ottoman sources is a daunting challenge, while the language barrier makes access to Armenian sources hard for Ottomanists and comparativists alike.

Consequently, some scholars argue, Armenians have often been depicted as passive victims of violence, ignoring their active resistance during the genocide.

“This misrepresentation is due to a combination of political realities, methodological challenges, and the inaccessibility of crucial primary sources. The Turkish state’s denial of the Armenian genocide was a major hurdle,” Khatchig Mouradian, a lecturer in Columbia University’s Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies, told the website Columbia News in a recent interview.

In a new book, Mouradian has challenged depictions of Armenians as passive victims of violence and mere objects of Western humanitarianism. “The Resistance Network” is a history of an underground network of humanitarians, missionaries and diplomats in Ottoman Syria who helped to save the lives of thousands during the Armenian genocide.

“I weave together the stories of hundreds of survivors and resisters as they pushed back against the genocidal machine in Aleppo, Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor, and in concentration camps stretching along the lower Euphrates,” Mouradian said. “In doing so, I place survivor accounts in conversation with — and sometimes in rebellion against — the scholarship and accepted wisdom on mass violence, humanitarianism and resistance.”

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE IN NUMBERS

* 2m Armenians living in Turkey in 1914, when genocide started.

* 1.5m Highest estimate of deaths, by massacre, starvation or exhaustion.

* 3,000 Years since Armenians made their home in the Caucasus.

* 30 Countries whose parliaments have recognized the genocide.

He said the Armenian case demonstrates how much is suppressed from the narrative when the actions and words of the targeted groups are relegated to the margins.

When historians use the term “Seferberlik” — the Ottoman word for “mobilization” — it is often assumed they are discussing the Armenian genocide. But it is also used to refer to another smaller but significant episode of mass displacement that occurred around the same time in what is today Saudi Arabia.

“Seferberlik: A century on from the Ottoman crime in Madinah” — by Saudi author Mohammad Al-Saeed — tells the story of the deportation of the holy city’s population by Ottoman General Fakhri Pasha.




Joe Biden looks set to become the first US president to recognize the systematic killing of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians from 1915 onwards. (Getty Images via AFP)

History books tell of Fakhri Pasha’s “heroic defense” of the city in the 1918 Siege of Madinah, fending off repeated attacks by the British-backed Arab fighters of Hussein bin Ali, the Sharif of Makkah. However, the books prefer to gloss over what happened in 1915, prior to the siege, when Fakhri Pasha forced Madinah’s population onto trains and sent them north into present-day Syria, Turkey, the Balkans and the Caucasus.

“The Seferberlik crime was an attempt to transform Madinah into a military outpost,” Al-Saeed told Arab News in a recent interview. “The Turks tried to separate the city from its Arab surroundings and annex it to the Ottoman Empire to justify ruling what remained of the Arab world.”

He said history should not forget what happened in Madinah, particularly since the few historical sources that documented the events are in the Ottoman, English and French archives.

READ MORE

Arab News Spotlight: Why the Armenian Genocide won’t be forgotten. Click here to read the full article.

“Moreover, the sources of information are very limited and the grandchildren of those who were in Madinah at the time do not have many documents. A lot of the city’s inhabitants were displaced. Many of them did not return,” Al-Saeed said.

Speaking to Arab News in 2019 on the Armenians’ displacement experience, Joseph Kechichian, senior fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh, said: “My own paternal grandmother was among the victims. Imagine how growing up without a grandmother — and in my orphaned father’s case, a mother — affects you.

“We never kissed her hand, not even once. She was always missed, and we spoke about her all the time. My late father had teary eyes each and every time he thought of his mother.”

Every Armenian family has similar stories, said Kechichian. “We pray for the souls of those lost, and we beseech the Almighty to grant them eternal rest,” he added.




Armenian orphans being deported from Turkey in around 1920. (Shutterstock/File Photo)

According to genocide scholars, denial is the final stage of genocide. Levon Avedanian, coordinator of the Armenian National Committee of Lebanon (ANCL) and professor at Haigazian University in Beirut, said that for Armenians, the denial of the Armenian genocide by Turkey is a continuation of the genocidal policies.

“In that sense, recognition by Turkey and by members of the international community is an essential step on the long path of restoring justice, which would inevitably include, in addition to recognition, reparations and restitution,” he said.

As a Democratic presidential candidate, Biden tweeted on April 24 last year: “If elected, I pledge to support a resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide and will make universal human rights a top priority.”

In his “quick take” of March 22 on the possibility of Biden making good on his campaign promise next month, GZero’s Bremmer summed up the situation this way: “A lot of things going wrong for Turkey right now. They just pulled their country out of the Istanbul Conventions, European agreement that meant to protect women. And (Erdogan) also just sacked his new central bank governor. … The economy is not doing well. … he’s cracking down on the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party, the HDP. … But the big news, is that Erdogan is about to face another diplomatic challenge.”


Hamas says Israeli strikes in Yemen ‘dangerous development’

Updated 50 min 7 sec ago
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Hamas says Israeli strikes in Yemen ‘dangerous development’

GAZA: Palestinian militant group Hamas said Thursday that Israel’s strikes in Yemen after the Houthi rebels fired a missile at the country were a “dangerous development.”
“We regard this escalation as a dangerous development and an extension of the aggression against our Palestinian people, Syria and the Arab region,” Hamas said in a statement as Israel struck ports and energy infrastructure in Yemen after intercepting a missile attack by the Houthis.


Separated for decades, Assad’s fall spurs hope for families split by Golan Heights buffer zone

Updated 19 December 2024
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Separated for decades, Assad’s fall spurs hope for families split by Golan Heights buffer zone

  • Golan Heights is a rocky plateau that Israel seized from Syria in 1967 and annexed in 1981
  • US is the only country to recognize Israel’s control; the rest of the world considers the Golan Heights occupied Syrian territory

MAJDAL SHAMS, Golan Heights: The four sisters gathered by the side of the road, craning their necks to peer far beyond the razor wire-reinforced fence snaking across the mountain. One took off her jacket and waved it slowly above her head.
In the distance, a tiny white speck waved frantically from the hillside.
“We can see you!” Soha Safadi exclaimed excitedly on her cellphone. She paused briefly to wipe away tears that had begun to flow. “Can you see us too?”
The tiny speck on the hill was Soha’s sister, Sawsan. Separated by war and occupation, they hadn’t seen each other in person for 22 years.
The six Safadi sisters belong to the Druze community, one of the Middle East’s most insular religious minorities. Its population is spread across Syria, Lebanon, Israel and the Golan Heights, a rocky plateau that Israel seized from Syria in 1967 and annexed in 1981. The US is the only country to recognize Israel’s control; the rest of the world considers the Golan Heights occupied Syrian territory.
Israel’s seizure of the Golan Heights split families apart.
Five of the six Safadi sisters and their parents live in Majdal Shams, a Druze town next to the buffer zone created between the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights and Syria. But the sixth, 49-year-old Sawsan, married a man from Jaramana, a town on the outskirts of the Syrian capital, Damascus, 27 years ago and has lived in Syria ever since. They have land in the buffer zone, where they grow olives and apples and also maintain a small house.
With very few visits allowed to relatives over the years, a nearby hill was dubbed “Shouting Hill,” where families would gather on either side of the fence and use loudspeakers to speak to each other.
The practice declined as the Internet made video calls widely accessible, while the Syrian war that began in 2011 made it difficult for those on the Syrian side to reach the buffer zone.
But since the Dec. 8 fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime, families like the Safadis, are starting to revive the practice. They cling to hope, however faint, that regime change will herald a loosening of restrictions between the Israeli-controlled area and Syria that have kept them from their loved ones for so long.
“It was something a bit different. You see her in person. It feels like you could be there in two minutes by car,” Soha Safadi, 51, said Wednesday after seeing the speck that was her sister on the hill. “This is much better, much better.”
Since Assad’s fall, the sisters have been coming to the fence every day to see Sawsan. They make arrangements by phone for a specific time, and then make a video call while also trying to catch a glimpse of each other across the hill.
“She was very tiny, but I could see her,” Soha Safadi said. “There were a lot of mixed feelings — sadness, joy and hope. And God willing, God willing, soon, soon, we will see her” in person.
After Assad fell, the Israeli military pushed through the buffer zone and into Syria proper. It has captured Mount Hermon, Syria’s tallest mountain, known as Jabal Al-Sheikh in Arabic, on the slopes of which lies Majdal Shams. The buffer zone is now a hive of military and construction activity, and Sawsan can’t come close to the fence.
While it is far too early to say whether years of hostile relations between the two countries will improve, the changes in Syria have sparked hope for divided families that maybe, just maybe, they might be able to meet again.
“This thing gave us a hope … that we can see each other. That all the people in the same situation can meet their families,” said another sister, 53-year-old Amira Safadi.
Yet seeing Sawsan across the hill, just a short walk away, is also incredibly painful for the sisters.
They wept as they waved, and cried even more when their sister put their nephew, 24-year-old Karam, on the phone. They have only met him once, during a family reunion in Jordan. He was 2 years old.
“It hurts, it hurts, it hurts in the heart,” Amira Safadi said. “It’s so close and far at the same time. It is like she is here and we cannot reach her, we cannot hug her.”


Israel’s deprivation of water in Gaza is act of genocide – Human Rights Watch

Updated 19 December 2024
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Israel’s deprivation of water in Gaza is act of genocide – Human Rights Watch

  • ‘What we have found is that the Israeli government is intentionally killing Palestinians in Gaza by denying them the water that they need to survive’
  • Israel’s campaign has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, displaced most of the 2.3 million population and reduced much of the coastal enclave to ruins

THE HAGUE: Human Rights Watch said on Thursday that Israel has killed thousands of Palestinians in Gaza by denying them clean water which it says legally amounts to acts of genocide and extermination.
“This policy, inflicted as part of a mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, means Israeli authorities have committed the crime against humanity of extermination, which is ongoing. This policy also amounts to an ‘act of genocide’ under the Genocide Convention of 1948,” Human Rights Watch said in its report.
Israel has repeatedly rejected any accusation of genocide, saying it has respected international law and has a right to defend itself after the cross-border Hamas-led attack from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023 that precipitated the war.
Although the report described the deprivation of water as an act of genocide, it noted that proving the crime of genocide against Israeli officials would also require establishing their intent. It cited statements by some senior Israeli officials which it said suggested they “wish to destroy Palestinians” which means the deprivation of water “may amount to the crime of genocide.”
“What we have found is that the Israeli government is intentionally killing Palestinians in Gaza by denying them the water that they need to survive,” Lama Fakih, Human Rights Watch Middle East director told a press conference.
Human Rights Watch is the second major rights group in a month to use the word genocide to describe the actions of Israel in Gaza, after Amnesty International issued a report that concluded Israel was committing genocide.
Both reports came just weeks after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense chief for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. They deny the allegations.
The 1948 Genocide Convention, enacted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, defines the crime of genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
The 184-page Human Rights Watch report said the Israeli government stopped water being piped into Gaza and cut off electricity and restricted fuel which meant Gaza’s own water and sanitation facilities could not be used.
As a result, Palestinians in Gaza had access to only a few liters of water a day in many areas, far below the 15-liter-threshold for survival, the group said. Israel launched its air and ground war in Gaza after Hamas-led fighters attacked Israeli communities across the border 14 months ago, killing 1,200 people and taking over 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s campaign has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, displaced most of the 2.3 million population and reduced much of the coastal enclave to ruins.


Israel hits ports, energy sites in Yemen after missile intercepted

Updated 39 min 42 sec ago
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Israel hits ports, energy sites in Yemen after missile intercepted

  • Raids ‘targeted two central power plants’ in Yemen’s capital Sanaa
  • The Houthi militants have said they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians

JERUSALEM: Israel said Thursday it struck ports and energy infrastructure it alleges are used by Houthi militants, after intercepting a missile fired by the group.

Israel’s military said it “conducted precise strikes on Houthi military targets in Yemen — including ports and energy infrastructure in Sanaa, which the Houthis have been using in ways that effectively contributed to their military actions.”

The announcement came shortly after Israel said it had intercepted a missile fired from Yemen.

Al-Masira, a media channel belonging to the Houthis, said a series of “aggressive raids” were launched in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa and the port city of Hodeidah.

It reported raids that “targeted two central power plants” in Yemen’s capital Sanaa, while in Hodeidah it said “the enemy launched four aggressive raids targeting the port... and two raids targeting” an oil facility.

The strikes were the second time this week that Israel’s military has intercepted a missile from Yemen.

On Monday, the Houthis claimed a missile launch they said was aimed at “a military target of the Israeli enemy in the occupied area of Yaffa” — a reference to Israel’s Tel Aviv area.

Also Monday, an Israeli navy missile boat intercepted a drone in the Mediterranean after it was launched from Yemen, the military said.

The Houthi militants have said they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians and pledged Monday to continue operations “until the aggression on Gaza stops and the siege is lifted.”

On December 9, a drone claimed by Houthis exploded on the top floor of a residential building in the central Israel city of Yavne, causing no casualties.

In July, a Houthi drone attack in Tel Aviv killed an Israeli civilian, prompting retaliatory strikes on the Yemeni port of Hodeidah.

The Houthis have also regularly targeted shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, leading to retaliatory strikes on Houthi targets by United States and sometimes British forces.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said the group had become a “global threat,” pointing to Iran’s support for the militants.

“We will continue to act against anyone, anyone in the Middle East, that threatens the state of Israel,” he said.


Israeli army says intercepted missile fired from Yemen

Updated 19 December 2024
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Israeli army says intercepted missile fired from Yemen

JERUSALEM: The Israeli army said sirens sounded across central Israel as it intercepted a missile fired from Yemen on Thursday.
The Israeli Air Force “intercepted one missile that was launched from Yemen before it crossed into Israeli territory,” said a statement from the army, adding that there could be “falling debris from the interception.”