Hamparian: The Protocols: Turkey’s Fourth Line of Defense

The protocols are the most recent obstacle in our century-long quest for truth, justice, and security for the Armenian nation. For, let there be no mistake, Turkey’s denial of the truth of the Armenian Genocide represents, at its heart, the obstruction of both the justice that is deserved and the long-term security that is required by all Armenians.

For us, as Armenian Americans, the protocols represent our last hurdle to U.S. recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

These accords are Turkey’s desperate last stand to block its international isolation as a denier of this universally acknowledged atrocity.

More broadly, the fact that Turkey has needed to resort to the protocols marks the beginning of the end of Ankara’s failed attempts to consolidate the fruits of its crime, its merciless drive to cement in place the dominance it so brutally imposed during the genocide.

The battle over the protocols is also the end of the beginning of the Armenian struggle to restore the core elements of viability stolen from us through genocide; to roll back the injustices visited upon our nation and, in so doing, secure a safe and enduring future for the Armenian nation.

Winning this battle—defeating the protocols—as we must and will, will mark a major step forward in this long quest.

Placing the protocols in the context of this longstanding struggle helps us to better understand the reasons behind Turkey’s creation of these accords and its ongoing reliance on them to advance its denial agenda. We can do this by looking back on just how far we have traveled on the path toward the realization of the Armenian Cause:

· Forty-two U.S. States, 12 NATO allies, and the European Parliament have recognized the Armenian Genocide.

· All the top leaders of the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government are on record recognizing the Armenian Genocide, and are coming under increasing moral and political pressure to honor their pledges to deliver official U.S. recognition of this crime.

· Despite decades of Turkish government-funded academic onslaughts, a rock-solid consensus has emerged among genocide scholars and the academic community about the urgent need for Turkey to abandon its denial campaign.

· The New York Times, Associated Press, and many other major media outlets have, despite millions spent by Turkey on public relations, adopted the practice of accurately reporting the Armenian Genocide.

· Public school systems and universities throughout America are teaching the Armenian Genocide, and a broad-based coalition of human rights, ethnic, and faith-based groups have taken a stand against Turkey’s denials.

· At the civil society level, the American people and the nations of Europe have accepted the fact of the Armenian Genocide, even if all their leaders are not yet ready to reflect this consensus in their governmental decision-making. The process of aligning the official policies of these countries with the views and values held by their populations takes time, but is moving forward at a steady pace.

It’s clear that the very viability of Turkey’s denial strategy is today rightfully under attack from all sides. Its foundations are failing. The wall of lies it has built has started to crumble.

Most of Turkey’s allies, much like those of South Africa in the 1980’s, are running for cover. A small handful, such as Sudan’s genocidal regime, have embraced Turkey, bound, as they are, by a common thread of death and denial.

Ankara is today cornered and alone, having run up against a determined Armenian nation and isolating itself by pursuing an ultimately untenable campaign to impose upon the international community a morally offensive and profoundly anti-Armenian policy of genocide denial.

Our progress in this struggle—the Hai Tahd (Armenian Cause) movement—has been marked by our ability to force three major retreats by Turkey over the past several decades.

We have, as a nation, overtaken Ankara’s first three lines of defense: silence, lies, and threats. We face today its fourth: the protocols.

How did we reach this point?

· We overcame Turkey’s silence, its first line of defense—a strategy that worked for the better part of the first five decades after the genocide—through a rebirth, in 1965, of activism and protests.

· We overcame Turkey’s lies, its second line of defense, by fostering, through independent historical research and honest intellectual inquiry during the 1970’s and 1980’s, the growth of an academic consensus that has fatally undermined, in any serious setting, Ankara’s ability to rewrite the history of the Armenian Genocide.

· We then overcame Turkey’s threats, its third line of defense, in part through our own growing political power over the past two decades, but also as a result of Ankara’s loss of the leverage over U.S. decision-makers due to its increasingly independent policies on Israel, Iran, and the region. Together, these factors have combined to diminish Turkey’s ability to simply bank on a strategy of strategic blackmail to block U.S. recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

As these lines of defense have collapsed, Turkey has fallen back to a fourth line of defense: the protocols.

Instead of remaining silent, outright lying, or leveling threats, Ankara is today forced to make the shaky case that an American moral stand—along the lines of President Obama’s repeated pledges—would somehow harm Turkey-Armenia relations.

It’s their same strategy of denial, but using a different and desperate tactic.

This is their last stand, one that they are taking directly in response to the progress of our long struggle for truth, justice, and security.

Viewed in this light, the protocols are not a sign of Armenian weakness, but rather proof of our growing political strength. They are not a marker of Turkish success, but instead a symbol of their three successive failures to bury the Armenian Cause.

As Armenians, rather than focusing on our frustration with the weakness displayed by the Armenian government and its diaspora allies, we should move forward aggressively, inspired by the knowledge that it has been our willpower and activism that has driven Turkey’s back against the wall, that has forced Ankara into three major retreats. We will, in the end, overcome these protocols and breach Turkey’s last line of defense against the truth, justice, and security owed to the Armenian nation.

Now is the moment for all Armenian Americans to work as a team in pressing our advantage and breaking down the last barriers to U.S. recognition—by both the U.S. Congress and President Obama.

With developments moving so quickly, it’s vital that you join with us today on the front lines of this great struggle for the honor, the security, and the future of the Armenian nation.

Here’s how.

If haven’t already written your U.S. legislators, please send your letters today. If you’ve already written, follow up with a phone call. If you’ve already called, urge friends and relatives to get involved, and then get in touch with your local ANCA chapter to learn how you can do more (email anca@anca.org for contact information).

Get wired into the Armenian Cause by taking these quick and easy steps:

Become a member of YouTube’s ANCA Grassroots channel

Aram Hamparian

Aram Hamparian

Aram Hamparian is the Executive Director of the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

7 Comments

  1. Hey Aram,

    Judging from your piece, it’s quite obvious whom the real desperate ones are (and it’s not Turkey!). That tightness that all of you are feeling is the closing in of truth against the 100 year old walls of dashnak lies and propaganda! Can you hear it creaking as chunks are starting to fall? The protocol’s historical commission will be the wrecking ball which finally brings those walls tumbling down! 

  2. Friendly advice to “robert”:
    Why don’t you retire where that most infamous high priest of Turkish Denialsm has been disposed of for a couple of years now – yes Yusuf Halagoglou the head of “Turkish Historical Society” or “Turkiya Tarikhi Jamiaeti” – translation, Wholly Discredited (now almost fully bankrupt and insolvent!) Turkish Lie Factory for Fabrication, Production and Worldwide Export of Fables and Lies about Turkish History in general and the Armenian Genocide in particular!
    As most people even inside Turkey know this state institution for production of state ideology and state ordered history (costing millions of dollars)  had to be protected from its very inception by infamous 301 and other punitive laws forbidding free and independent inquiry of academic as well as journalistic nature into Turkish history in general and Armenian Genocide in particular.
    There are signs (as Halagoglou’s dispatch for example shows) that the walls of this fortress of lies are beginning to crack and collapse. And well done to Aram Hamparian for a masterpiece, tracing the progress of this Turkish collapse from its genesis to its present crumbling state.
    No let up until Turkish ultra-nationalist racist ideology of Turkism with all its rotten components, just like its counterparts in Nazi Germany and South African, namely Nazism and Apartheid ideologies and regimes, is disposed of for good in the dustbin of history.
    That day is very near! Amen!

  3. What this turk wrote here amounts to nothing but Garbage.
    These are the grandchildren of the killers of freedom loving peoples.
    Ferhat

  4. Only myths need such elaborate protection.  As nationalist as Halacoglu was, and no point denying it, I do not recall anything he stated being proven false.  He did not fabricate stuff, those were not “his” truths.  On the other hand, one can point to every aspect of the Armenian genocide myth and find distortions, fabrications and blatant lies.  That is the truth.

    I have observed over the years how the Armenian discourse over this issue changed and adapted as more light was shed over the historical facts and figures and more non-Armenian academics delved into the archives and looked at some real facts for a change.  Undfortunately one can not fight myths with facts.

  5. Hey Murat, 
    It seems you have some real problem in observing “change over the years”, as you put it. Otherwise how could you have failed seeing the fact that so many governments and parliaments, scholars, academic institutions  including the EP, the Paris People’s Tribunal, International Association of Genocide scholars, etc. etc, even growing number of Turkish intellectuals, have acknowledged, or are acknowledging, the fact of the Armenian Genocide?
    It doesn’t surprise me then that the shameful fabrications of a defunct and deposed historian like Halacoglu should be read by you as  truth.

  6. Hye robert and murat, two prime examples of the Turks who have been educated in the Turkish leaderships’ lies.  The Turkish history books lie to the students, the turkish history books lie to their own citizens, even lie to themselves in creating/discarding their own history..  
    Turkey shows a brazen leadership which is hiding the truths of their decayed,
    decaying and decitful government… all this shall  bring down this convoluted Turkish government.
    Too, Turkey has yet to join all the civilized nations of the world.  Turkey makes/breaks alliances like the are toothpicks… Turkey acts as mediator for other nations – imagine – a nation unable to retain
    alliances dares to offer to mediate other civilized nations!  And for this robert and murat give their allegiance instead of seeking to replace such leaders.  Turkey will only join the civilized nations of the world when the current liars, their leaderships, are removed/replaced as was the Nazis of Germany
    after WWII… 
    Today I read of a 15year old Kurdish girl, in the wrong place at the wrong time, did/did not toss
    pebbles (supposedly) at some police as she was on her way to visit family.  She has been punished excessively and is in a vile Turkish jail… 15 YEARS OF AGE, A GIRL, A KURD….  Shades of  the movie
    MIDNIGHT EXPRESS!
     What manner of  judges – would place a 15 year old girl, a Kurd in a Turkish jail for tossing pebbles?
    This can only happen in a Turkey whose forbears were from the Asian mountains – and never joined the civilized nations of the world – despite all their efforts to ‘glitter’ as a democracy…  These judges shall know their actions are beyond intelligent and reasonable laws – which do not exist in Turkey.
    This epitomizes the nature of the Turks – as they dealt with all the nations whom they eliminated or
    worse, kidnapped, raped and destroyed.  The turk is the turk is the turk….
    murat and robert you shall find those want to change your leaderships – else you too shall be as the
    judges who jailed the 15 year old Kurdish girl to the hellish jails of Turkey.
    Manooshag

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