Turkey Recalls US Ambassador

[geetrue]

Does this mean war?

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Internatio...ory?id=3717813

I hope Turkey doesn't have any aircraft carriers steaming for Hawaii

[The Avon Lady]

Shame on Bush.

[CB..]

"This resolution is not the right response to these historic mass killings," Bush told reporters at the White House.

what he forgot was the additional "AT THIS TIME"

if Turkey had have refused Bush the right to use their airspace...who knows what the right time would have been then..

[SUBMAN1]

Something tells me we are going to see Turkish tanks in Northern Iraq soon.

-S

[The Avon Lady]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

Something tells me we are going to see Turkish tanks in Northern Iraq soon.

They're here!

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by The Avon Lady

They're here!

Not quite, but recalling an ambassidor is a strong signal. He is not coming back as they claim, and they probably plan to attack certain Kurdish factions I would guess.

Thanks Pelosi. That's a real class act on foriegn policy (sacasim). Can she have better timing? Is she doing this on purpose? Who the hell elected her? Kalifornian's - I forgot.

-S

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

Not quite, but recalling an ambassidor is a strong signal.

How could Germany make Turkey doing this to us, too?

Congrats for that vote, America. Genocide remains genocide, no matter what strategic interests one has. And if Turkey hates to be reminded of shadows in its past - who outside Turkey gives a penny for that? They simply have not to demand other sovereign nations to be obedient to Turkey's will.

The ties between Turkey and the US are loosening since longer. Even when ignoring my personal scepticism for Turkey, I would recommend America to replace the strategic options Turkey means for them by alternatives, in America's best own interest. The sooner, the better, for nobody must want to depend on Turkey. It will come to that segregation anyway in the not far away future. The only question is wether one wastes time and later needs to change course in a hurry, or if one has enough time to control course and pace of this needed adaptation process.

[August]

While they're at it the US Congress ought to pass a bill denouncing Italy for the things Roman legions did in Gaul.

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by August

While they're at it the US Congress ought to pass a bill denouncing Italy for the things Roman legions did in Gaul.

Pretty much my sentiments right there. Let the past, especially many generations ago, but just that - the past. Something that happened 100 years ago with its persecutors long since dead has little semblance on todays politics other than to tick someone off. This is just Pelosi's attempt to screw with Bush's foriegn policy. Tick an ally off in Iraq, so that it is that much harder for Bush not to pull out. That is what she is up to.

-S

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by August

While they're at it the US Congress ought to pass a bill denouncing Italy for the things Roman legions did in Gaul.

when Germany still is linked to the Third Reich and the Holocaust, and the genocide of the Hereros in today's Namibia (short before first WW), and Japan still is linked to the brutality of their occupation of China, and the second WW, and Britain still is remineded of certain acts of comparing brutality during the colonial age, just to mention three examples, then it is only fair deal that Turkey is expected to face it's dark spots in history as well. Even more so when considering that Armenians are still opressed today, are discriminated, and as a people still are massively handicapped as a result from those atrocities and removals.

The comparison of Rome and the Gauls I refuse to buy for that reason. america has strategic and military interests in Turkey, and that is the only reason the WH tries to fight against that justified classification of the Armenian killings as genocide.

for comparable reasons, in the UN many massmurderings happening that would fulfill the criteria of the anti-genocide convention of the UN from 1948 are refused to be called genocide, becasue the charta makes it obilgatory that the international community has to take appropriate reaction to intervene in genocides being carried out. Since many are not willing to engage in a given example of genocide, or have interests they give higher priorities than a genocide happening, they refuse to call a genocide as "genocide".

Which means that all Western nations clearly make a difference between genocides they condemn - and genocides that they accept.

Oh yeah, our moral example is so shining and clear.

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by Skybird

when Germany still is linked to the Third Reich and the Holocaust, and the genocide of the Hereros in today's Namibia (short before first WW), and Japan still is linked to the brutality of their occupation of China, and the second WW, and Britain still is remineded of cerrtain acts of comaring brutality during the colinial age, just to mention three examples, then it is only fair deal that Turkey is expected to face it's dark spots in history as well. Even more so when considering that Armenians are still opressed today, are discriminated, and as a people still are massively handicapped as a result from those atrocities and removals.

The comparison of Rome and the Gauls I refuse to buy for that reason. america has strategic and military interests in Turkey, and that is the only reason the WH tries to fight against that justified classification of the Armenian killings as genocide.

for comparable reasons, in the UN many massmurderings happening that would fulfill the criteria of the anti-genocide convention of the UN from 1948 are refused to be called genocide, becasue the charta makes it obilgatory that the international community has to take appropriate reaction to intervene in genocides taking out. Since many are not willing to engage in a given example of genicide, or have interests they give higher priorities than a genocide happening, they refuse to call a genocide as "genocide".

Which means that all Wetsern nations clearly make a difference between genocides they condemn - and genocides that they accept.

Oh yeah, our moral example is so shining and clear.

Has no bearing on todays world other than to remain in the history books. Did we pas a law calling the Nazi concentration camps genocide? Not that I remember, but I can definitly say that we did nothing in Japans occupation of China. These things are way more relevant since the perpetraitors could still well be alive. Screwing with something so far in the past where anyone alive at the time is already dead is just stupid.

-S

[Huskalar]

This is what Turkey is doing with their past today:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7040171.stm

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by Huskalar

This is what Turkey is doing with their past today:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7040171.stm

Turkey is right by the way - it was war. Still is war as seen today. I don't agree with the accusations. Just because they happened to be of a particular ethinicity - so what?

I guess it should be called Genocide for America to target Germans in WWII. We killed millions of them. Not 100,000.

-S

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

Screwing with something so far in the past where anyone alive at the time is already dead is just stupid.

Far away past? Germany would not have been integrated into NATO and the European community if it would have tried to defend parts of it's Nazi past, and wouldn't have totally accepted responsibility for the Holocaust. the relations between china and japan are stuill stressed becasue Japan's inability to accept unconditional responsibility for the war crimes and atrocities in China. but turkey, that some in Europe want to see in the EU and that Washington wants to allow US bases on it's soil and flight transfer rights for US fighterplanes should be an exception, forgiven and fogotten?

Again, bush only resists this declaration so bitterly because he wants his fighters being accepted to fly in turkish airspace, and build a logistical chain for Iraq.

And Subman, if your country never thought about considering the processing of human bodies in KZs to be genocide, as you said, - then this is your problem, but not a reasonable argument. It took the US Senate 37 years to ratify the international anti-genocide convention (finally, in 1986).

The Armenian Genocide (Armenian: Հայոց Ցեղասպանութիւն ("Hayoc' c'ejaspanut'iwn"), Turkish: Ermeni Soykırımı) — also known as the Armenian Holocaust, Great Calamity (Մեծ Եղեռն "Mec Ejer'n" ) or the Armenian Massacre — was the forcible deportation and massacre[1] of hundreds of thousands to over 1.5 million Armenians during the government of the Young Turks from 1915 to 1917 in the Ottoman Empire.[2]
It is widely acknowledged to have been one of the first modern, systematic genocides,[3][4] as many Western sources point to the sheer scale of the death toll as evidence for a systematic, organized plan to eliminate the Armenians.[5] The event is also said to be the second-most studied case of genocide.[6] To date twenty-two countries have officially recognized it as genocide. The government of the Republic of Turkey rejects the characterization of the events as genocide.[7]

(...)

Planning
In November 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers. İsmail Enver, now the Minister of War, launched a unsuccessful military campaign against Russian forces in the Caucasus in hopes of capturing the city of Baku. His forces were routed at the Battle of Sarikamis, and many more of his men froze to death in the retreat.



Returning to Istanbul, Enver largely blamed the Armenians living in the region for actively siding with the Russians.[20] By 1914, Ottoman authorities had already begun a propaganda drive to present Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire as a threat to the country's security. An Ottoman naval officer in the War Office described the planning:

In order to justify this enormous crime the requisite propaganda material was thoroughly prepared in Istanbul. [It included such statements as] "the Armenians are in league with the enemy. They will launch an uprising in Istanbul, kill off the Ittihadist leaders and will succeed in opening the straits [of the Dardanelles]."[21]

On the night of 24 April 1915, the Ottoman government rounded up and imprisoned an estimated 250 Armenian intellectuals

Legislation, May 29




Further information: Tehcir Law In May 1915, Mehmed Talat Pasha requested that the cabinet and grand vizier legalize the deportations of the Armenians of Anatolia. On 29 May 1915, the CUP Central Committee passed the Temporary Law of Deportation (Tehcir Law), giving the Ottoman government and military authorization to deport anyone it "sensed" as a threat to national security.[23] Several months later, the Temporary Law of Expropriation and Confiscation was passed, stating that all property, including land, livestock, and homes belonging to Armenians, was to be confiscated by the authorities. Ottoman parliamentary representative Ahmed Riza protested the legislation:

It is unlawful to designate the Armenian assets as “abandoned goods” for the Armenians, the proprietors, did not abandon their properties voluntarily; they were forcibly, compulsorily removed from their domiciles and exiled. Now the government through its efforts is selling their goods… If we are a constitutional regime functioning in accordance with constitutional law we can’t do this. This is atrocious. Grab my arm, eject me from my village, then sell my goods and properties, such a thing can never be permissible. Neither the conscience of the Ottomans nor the law can allow it.[24]

The confiscation of Armenian property and the slaughter of Armenians that ensued upon the law's enactment outraged much of the western world. While the Ottoman Empire's wartime allies offered little protest, a wealth of German and Austrian historical documents has since come to attest to the witnesses' horror at the killings and mass starvation of Armenians.[25][26][27] In the United States, the New York Times reported almost daily on the mass murder of the Armenian people, describing the process as "systematic", "authorized" and "organized by the government." Theodore Roosevelt would later characterize this as "the greatest crime of the war."[28]

The Special Organization (Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa)

Main articles: Teskilati Mahsusa and Special Organization (Ottoman Empire)
While there was an official 'special organization' founded in December 1911 by the Ottoman government, a second organization that participated in what led to the destruction of the Ottoman Armenian community was founded by the lttihad ve Terraki.[31] This organization adopted its name in 1913 and functioned like a special forces outfit.[32]
Later in 1914, the Ottoman government influenced the direction the special organization was to take by releasing criminals from central prisons to be the central elements of this newly formed special organization.[33] According to the Mazhar commissions attached to the tribunal as soon as November 1914, 124 criminals were released from Pimian prison. Many other releases followed; in Ankara a few months later, 49 criminals were released from its central prison.[citation needed] Little by little from the end of 1914 to the beginning of 1915, hundreds, then thousands of prisoners were freed to form the members of this organization. Later, they were charged to escort the convoys of Armenian deportees.[34] Vehib, commander of the Ottoman Third Army, called those members of the special organization, the “butchers of the human species.” [35]

Process and camps of deportation

The Armenians were marched out to the Syrian town of Deir ez-Zor and the surrounding desert. A good deal of evidence suggests that the Ottoman government did not provide any facilities or supplies to sustain the Armenians during their deportation, nor when they arrived.[36] By August 1915, the New York Times reported that "the roads and the Euphrates are strewn with corpses of exiles, and those who survive are doomed to certain death. It is a plan to exterminate the whole Armenian people."[37]



Ottoman troops escorting the Armenians not only allowed others to rob, kill and rape the Armenians, but often participated in these activities themselves.[36] Deprived of their belongings and marched into the desert, hundreds of thousands of Armenians perished.

Naturally, the death rate from starvation and sickness is very high and is increased by the brutal treatment of the authorities, whose bearing toward the exiles as they are being driven back and forth over the desert is not unlike that of slave drivers. With few exceptions no shelter of any kind is provided and the people coming from a cold climate are left under the scorching desert sun without food and water. Temporary relief can only be obtained by the few able to pay officials.[36]

It is believed that 25 concentration camps existed, major under the command of Şükrü Kaya, one of the right hands of Talat Pasha.[38] The majority of the camps were situated near modern Iraqi and Syrian frontiers, and some were only temporary transit camps.[38] Others, such as Radjo, Katma, and Azaz, are said to have been used only temporarily, for mass graves; these sites were vacated by Fall 1915.[38] Some authors also maintain that the camps Lale, Tefridje, Dipsi, Del-El, and Ra's al-'Ain were built specifically for those who had a life expectancy of a few days.[38]
Though nearly all the camps, including the primary sites, were open air, the remainder of the mass killing in minor camps was not limited to direct killings, but also to mass burning,[39] poisoning[40] and drowning.[41]

(...)




The Armenian Genocide is often speculated to have influenced Adolf Hitler, owing to his various references to the Ottoman killings of Armenians.[72] The extent of Hitler's knowledge of the Armenian Genocide is unclear, though he did refer to their destruction several times.[73] The most notable quote attributed to Hitler on the Armenians is excerpted from an August 1939 military conference, prior to the invasion of Poland:

I have issued the command -- and I’ll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad -- that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formation in readiness -- for the present only in the East -- with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space [Lebensraum] which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?[74]

There are numerous accounts of Hitler speaking in regards to the Armenians, with at least two similar versions of the 1939 speech coming from the German High Command archives. In 1931, for example, two years prior to his ascension as Germany's leader, Hitler noted in an interview that "everywhere people are awaiting a new world order. We intend to introduce a great resettlement policy… remember the extermination of the Armenians."[75] In 1943, during the height of his attempts to exterminate the Jews in Europe, Hitler demanded of Hungarian regent Admiral Miklós Horthy that he deport the Jews from the country: "Nations which did not get rid of the Jews perished. One of the most famous examples of this was the downfall of a people who were so proud--the Persians, who now lead a pitiful existence as Armenians."[76]

more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide

[Huskalar]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

Turkey is right by the way - it was war. Still is war as seen today. I don't agree with the accusations. Just because they happened to be of a particular ethinicity - so what?

I guess it should be called Genocide for America to target Germans in WWII. We killed millions of them. Not 100,000.

-S

I just think that Turkey's reaction is way out of proportion. Like is has been often before when it comes to this subject. I don't know if what happened then should be called genocide, but I certainly do not approve of the way Turkey is trying to rewrite their history on this subject.