WASHINGTON (AP)—The Obama Administration is urging Congress to hold off on a resolution declaring the Ottoman-era killing of Armenians as genocide.
The House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee was scheduled to vote on the resolution Thursday, and appeared likely to endorse it.
But White House spokesman Mike Hammer said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had spoken with the committee’s chairman, Democratic Rep. Howard Berman, on Wednesday and indicated that such a vote would jeopardize reconciliation talks between Turkey and Armenia.
The move breaks a campaign promise by Obama to brand the killings genocide.
Turkey, a NATO ally with a pivotal role for U.S. interests in the Middle East and Afghanistan, has warned the resolution could jeopardize U.S-Turkish cooperation and set back negotiations aimed at opening the border between Turkey and Armenia.
Obama has no balls. He’s strictly a one-term president for sure.
Joseph, trust me, Obama has “balls” – but his “balls” are owned by those who appointed him president.
Think about it for a moment…
I don’t know if it’s sad or funny, but every time American politicians pats us on the head before getting into office, we think – THIS IS IT!
What is bothering me is that we cannot make arab and muslim countries accept Israel, that they are intolerant to a religious minority in their presense, whether Jewish or Christian. Turkey and Iran were the only countries to accept Israel. With the Shah gone, that leaves Turkey. No one can guarantee that Turkey will continue to keep ties with Israel, although I read once in the past they broke off ties completely and relations were worse. With more and more Christians leaving the Middle East, I wonder what future does any tiny fish (Jewish or Christian) have in the bigger pond; I am sure it is troubling Israel.
Also troubling, I must agree with some of your analysts, is the inability of Turkey and Azerbaijan to accept your Armenian lands as yours and not as occupied territory. I read about the Armenian history in these NK lands, what the soviets did to weaken revolt by changing national boundaries and deporting people to the far ends of the soviet union to break up tribes, and saw what you have done to rebuild the historical monuments and bring tourism there. To me, this region belongs to Armenia and is not occupied land. Many in the Middle East don’t accept Israel and consider the whole Israel as “occupied land”; so I think the Jewish and Armenian nationalists are fighting the same fight. We can “blackmail” Turkey with the Armenian genocide recognition every year, but will that force the larger muslim nations into becoming more tolerant people accepting of Jewish and Christian minorities in their presence. No one wants another genocide, whether of Jews or Christians in the Middle East. These people have suffered too much due to muslim intolerance.
So Obama’s charisma may be good for America, Israel and the world because his mixed background is an example of tolerance and fights racism. However, it is nations’ clinging to racial ideology that is hindering any progress to peace and reconciliation in the Middle East. If people would give up their racial ideology, I am sure more progress would be made towards peace, solving the Israel-Palestinian problem and the NK problem.
I can’t guarantee to you that will happen though. One can always hope for the best.
Mr. Obama is making even a graver mistake than Mr. Bush did in 2003.
I’m sure he is terrified, Mr. Jeshmaridian.. I mean really, do you people actually believe what you write? To even call it a “mistake” bluntly suggests you have no understanding of our true political value in the US…
Genocide denial, please don’t ever attempt to speak for us Christians again. Before the apartheid state of Israel was founded by Zionists, Christians and Muslims in the Middle East were doing very well. We Armenians have had a long history in Arab lands and Persia. We know these people very well, like we know your ethnic kin. The biggest problem we Armenians have in Jerusalem today is Jews, not Palestinians. Preach to brain-dead Evangelicals.
Sireli, hargeli, hiyanali, Admin: What’s wrong with Hebrewtales? I came up with it and I happen to like it… Why can’t I use it?
Life was not that rosy according to my textbook on the Middle East. Although a rich bourgeoisie did enjoy a good life in Jerusalem (Ottoman time), the outside foreign “cultural” influences began to be resented by the muslims (beginning of the Islamists) who also did not at all like Woman’s Liberation. Also, the Great Depression and rising arab nationalism transformed the old Palestine and Ottoman Empire and ravaged the bourgeoisie.
Avetis, I did take a course on the Middle East. The current rise in islamists in muslim countries is due to the breakdown of the social contract with the poor, where the economies are getting too poor to pay for social welfare; therefore the poor are given and take money from the islamists. There is trouble in Egypt, Turkey, etc. Islamists would be communists; they are interchangeable.
According to my post above, muslims in the 1920’s (maybe more of the poor) did not like foreign influences and woman’s liberation; this was long before there was even an Israel in the neighborhood. Personally, I cannot stand Iran where women are stoned and homosexuals hanged. To me this is morally wrong, in addition to how they are maltreating the opposition. But they are a patriarchy and this is acceptable to them, but wrong to us. I don’t approve of the same prejudice in Jews.
But you are living in a dream world, Avetis, if you think the rich bourgeoisie life was shared by all and that many were not jealous or didn’t approve who were poor or preferred their own culture.
These may be some of the reasons Israel is not welcome to the neighborhood.
Your text book on the Middle East is a Hebrewtale. The Middle East was on the verge of a widespread secular/nationalistic revolution between the times of the first and second world wars. For the exploitation of oil wealth in the region and for securing the illegal existence of the Zionist state – Western/Jewish organized assassinations and coups radicalized the Middle East. Islamic fundamentalism is the creation of Western and Israeli intelligence services – much like the so-called Al Qaeda and the Taliban… Nonetheless, until their lands were forcibly occupied by Zionist colonists, Palestinians were never Islamic fundamentalists. Until the Zionist state began subverting Lebanon, there never were Islamic fundamentalists in Lebanon. Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iran, Iraq… they never had Islamic fundamentalists – until your kin decided to settle there and wreak havoc. If you want to see the real problem in the Middle East – then take a close look at yourself in the mirror. Like I said your tales, your agendas don’t work with us Armenians.
I suggest you put down your “textbook” and relearn history. This RT interview is a good start:
“We are a normal people living in an abnormal region… When my grandparents came from Russia 150 years ago, they came with a [Torah] in one hand and a rifle in another, and his hand was extended to the Arabs who lived here. Some did make business with him, others who fought him had to meet the wrath of his rifle. And that’s how you live in the Middle East.”
Dr. Raanan Gissin, former senior political adviser to Areil Sharon
CrossTalk: Norman Finkelstein vs. Israel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLB8DfhnJD0
Avetis soos mena aper! We can’t show we are this educated! We have to play the role of uneducated village people who need that helping hand from the mighty hand. Then we can play the game, till then Karabagh all the way! Genocide yes you did it! lol!
Before zionists, who ruled Lebanon ( it was the French colonials and imperialists) Who else was there in the Middle East that were colonials and imperialists (it was Russia, Turkey, England). Who were treated as favorites by the French (the Jews and Christians). Who resented this (the muslim arabs). What countries rose up as nationalists and in what year? Did the arab and turkish nationalists replace the Jews and Christians and force them out?
Avestis and co.. You said you are bolsheviks? Are you also rewriting history with our Turkish posters here. Yes, let’s leave it to the historians. I have a collection of books I have read and am reading. All you do is blame the Jews for all your problems. Guess you learned that in Russia.
Robert College in Turkey was the center of the bourgeoisie. All the books I am reading re: Robert College tell how the missionaries grew to hate Russia imperialists who they blamed for all the massacres perpetrated against Christians in Bulgaria, etc. I guess that was part of the start of our the hate affair btw Russia and USA.
“Robert College in Turkey was the center of the bourgeoisie. All the books I am reading re: Robert College tell how the missionaries grew to hate Russia imperialists who they blamed for all the massacres perpetrated against Christians in Bulgaria, etc. I guess that was part of the start of our the hate affair btw Russia and USA.”
A little tid bit and some education: Robert College was a school for mainly Christians in the capital of an Islamic Empire. Accross the hill, there was the Arnavutkoy College for Girls, which was actualy only for Armenian girls. No muslims welcome. Missionaries mission was the conversion of Armenians in short. Same with all other American missions sprinkled throughout Anatolia at the time. Imagine these barbarian Turks allowing all this Christian hanky-panky in their midst. There were more Armenian and missionary schools throughout Anatolia at some point than all Ottoman state schools combined. To top it off, these schools were the breeding grounds for the anti-Turkish nationalistic movements. Many of the Bulgarian and Armenian leaders of the rebellions against the Ottomans were graduates of these schools.
As I said, thse Turks were really mean and intolerant people it seems!
ps – What hate affair with Russian bear, which Armenians to this day carry happily on their meager shoulders!
Missionaries came to convert the muslims to christianity; but the muslims would not convert (they would be cut off from their families, etc.), so they turned their attention to teaching the christians in the Ottoman Empire. Muslim students were welcome. ” We have had relatively few Turkish students, only one who has graduated, as it has been the policy of the Sultan to forbid Turkish students attending any but govt. schools. Notwithstanding this prohibition, we now have (1907) more than 20 Turks in the College, and its reputation among enlightened Turks in quite as high as with other nationalities.” “50 years in Constantinople and Recollections of Robert College,” by George Washburn.
Also, the College had a few Hebrews all through its history, which was way ahead of its time, since many American Universities did not let Jews in at the time. Robert College was more tolerant.
In another book , “A History of Robert College,” by John Freely, I have pictures of Turkish students at Robert College, including a group of Turkish girls training to be teachers (7 girls)(covered in black btw); and 5 covered Turkish girls in 1918; and a picture of Hasan Halet Iskpmar, B.S. 1916, MS 1922, first Turkish graduate of the Engineering School. Then in 1924-25, there are about 150 Turkish students; and many other interesting pictures of Turkish teachers and students.
The book has a picture of Armenian students at Robert College in 1914 and a picture of a group of Armenian girls in national costume at Robert College in 1914. I believe this is the year before the genocide; the president said they took my friends and colleagues (maybe some or all of these students?) and killed them and the president said they were not rebelling against the Ottoman Empire and that Turks’ denying it would not do any good because everyone knew what happened and the truth. Yet, here it is so many years later and Turkey is still denying it.
Halide Edib was the most famous graduate of American School for girls. She was influential in the fight for Turkish nationalism, CUP, and rights for women.
Famous graduates include Orhan Pamuk, Bulent Ecevit, and our protocol man Ahmet Davutoglu.
What Obama is doing is putting pressure on Turkey to open up the border so that Armenia will close its border with Iran when it comes to sanctions. Iran is now capable of selling arms to Armenia so as to even the balance with Azerbadeljan. Armenia has uranium that Iran desperately needs because it doesn’t have enough to build the BOMB. These are the issues that the US is considering.
What the US wants is the border opened up with Turkey and closed up with Iran. Turkey, however, has a lot of trade with Iran with energy pipelines. Turkey does not want the border with Iran closed. That has really irked the US. The other thing that has irked the US was the refusal of Turkey to send combat troops to Afghanistan and the refusal to allow an exit rout from Irag for the US troops. The refusal during the invasion of Iraq cost a lot of American lives and the US will not forget it. The other issue that the US has with Turkey is the souring relationship with Isreal. Although Obama and Clinton at the last minute urged to hold off on the resolution, they knew it was going to pass.
Thus, if Turkey doesn’t change its delusional attitude about its place in this world, you will see the resolution debated on the house floor.
On a different note, if it is not debated, you will see Dany Tarkanian win the senate seat that is occupied by Hary Ried currently. That would be a death blow to Obama’s odasity of hope for health care and his other policy changes.
It is hard to imagine how the decendants of that great humanitarian, Ghengis Khan, who later converted to that peaceful religion called Islam, who then sided with that peaceful country called Germany, could have turned into genocidal maniacs that would decapitate heads in order to instil fear on the population.
Is that kind of barbarism still practiced in the world?
On a related note, Halide Edip and husband Adnan, a medical doctor, worked in numerous humanitarian projects and saved countless lives during WWI. Interestingly, and I am sure not many know this, Halide Edip worked in what is now Syria for a while, tending to war orphans, mostly Armenians children set up in orphanges she persoanlly organized, and get this, supported by Cemal Pasa, who was the commander of the 4th Army in the area. He has also mentioned in his diaries the difficulty of having have to tend to civilian needs while fighting a war at the same time. He bitterly complains about the lack of food, famine and disease made much worse by the Allied blockade of all Ottoman ports and ships carrying food, even those of Red Cross, not being allowed to help the masses of mostly Armenian refugees piling in Syria and Lebanon at the time.
To Murat: I get it now, you can blame it on the blockade for the Armenian Genocide. You can blame it on anyone else other than the Turkish government and its decrees.
And, of course, Kemal Attaturk loved orphans. That notion I do believe. He loved them as just like Micheal Jackson (especially young boys). As a matter of fact, Kemal Attaturk has a lot of things in common with Micheal Jackson.
As usual, the most ignorant is the one shouting the loudest from tree tops…
Hey Murat,
is this the humanitarian orphanage you are talking about?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/living-proof-of-the-armenian-genocide-1918367.html
Try to read it through (it was very hard for me) and let me know afterwards how proud you are. It doesn’t get any more “humanitarian” than this. Does it? Your shamelessness has no limits. Or, perhaps, this is considered humanitarian by the great Turkish standards.
Murat: I hope you are not calling me ignorant. The only persons that are ignorant are those who refuse to look at the truth of their grandparents’ conduct and the fact that they were genocidal maniacs that delved into Ghengis Khan’s ancestorial inclinations with regards to the unarmed citizens.
Those who refuse to look at the truth, in medical terms, are called dellusional or insane. I think to this day Turkey is the sick man of Europe. I don’t even classify them as Europeans. They are Asians (Chineese). I’m sure that will even be contested by Turks as fabricated. They will probably espouse that they srang from the ground.
On another note, Murat, it is also true that Kemal Attaturk was a bisexual pedophile who had a penchant for little boys and sometimes little girls or prostitutes. He apparently died of syphollis. I’m sure that the Turks will also try to put a spin on that as well and call him a great humanitarian like they are attempting with Ghengis Khan.
From Wikipedia: She was a donmeh. She seems to have been full of conflicts in herself between the east and west.
“In 1916-1917, Halide Edip acted as Ottoman inspector for schools in Damascus, Beirut, and Mount Lebanon. The students at these schools included hundreds of Armenian, Arab, Kurdish, and Turkish orphans. According to a teacher who worked briefly under her, Halide Edip “was at the head of an orphanage of 1,000 children in the mountains. These were mostly Armenian children. She said, ‘Their names are changed (to Moslem names) but they are children; they don’t know what religion means. Now, they must be fed and clothed and kept safe.’ She didn’t say what would be afterwards.” According to Halide Edip, these children were given Muslim names under orders from Cemal Pasha. She records a 1916 conversation thus:
Halide Edip’s account of her inspectorship emphasizes her humanitarian efforts and her struggles to come to terms with the violence of the situation. The account of one acquaintance, however, accuses her of “calmly planning with [Cemal Pasha] forms of human tortures for Armenian mothers and young women” and taking on “the task of making Turks of their orphaned children.” A U.S. High Commissioner refers to her as a “chauvinist” and someone who is “trying to rehabilitate Turkey.””
More on Halide Edip (against massacres) “In Beirut I taught one month under Halide Hanourn, a leading Moslem woman who was at the head of a government school. She spoke very freely in condemnation of her government’s Armenian policy. She had been brought up in Constantinople and from a child was conversant with government affairs.Because of her advanced ideas she had fled into Egypt a little before the revolution in 1908. She had returned after visiting England and Europe. She was a loyal Turk. At one time she said, “No one can love his country more than I, yet no one can criticize it more severely.”She said, “Nothing can remove the stain of these massacres from my nation.” When I asked her if the leaders had wanted it to go on with such brutality, she said, “Some of them did and still do. It is not finished yet.” (That was last May.) But she added, “Some did not. But they were not so practical and did not have executive power. Besides it was put up to us in this way. We are at war. Enemies are on every side. If we appear divided all will be lost. It is our nation or the Armenians.”She was at the head of an orphanage of 1,000 children in the mountains. These were mostlyArmenian children. She said, “Their names are changed (to Moslem names) but they are children; theydon’t know what religion means. Now, they must be fed and clothed and kept safe.” She didn’t say whatwould be afterwards.” Statement of Harriet Fischer of Wheaton, Illinois (Gomidas Institute documents)
Donmeh hid their Jewishness to avoid persecution. I know they are the ones who saved Jews in times of trouble like the Inquisition, so I thought they were more likely to save Armenians than massacre them, having more sympathy for their plight. The story about Halide Edip backs up my thoughts; this is contrary to the conspiracy theory blaming the Jews for the massacres.
It should also be known that the Halide Edip encouraged converting Armenian orphans to Islam and sending them to live with Muslim families. My grandfather was briefly one of those orphans but was luckily rescued by the church and sent to live with relatives in Rhode Island.
As it turns out, I have submitted verifable information and facts, as expected the responses are tinged with racial overtones and slurs, seems so improtant to an Armenian mind.
What kind of genocide is thsi that sets up orphanages for the soon to be genocided?
And as expected, the ignorant and clueless still shout from the tree tops, just to make sure we all appreciate the deep chasm they have between their ears….
Murat:
it seems that you enjoy so much insulting others, and the one shouting from tree tops most loudly is you. By repeatedly caling everybody “ignorant” you demonstrate how desparate you are in your efforts to deny history. Facts speak for themselves and they are not in your favor. The entire world knows the truth. I can understand the shame and embarrassment that you may be feeling but I recommend that you get over it.
Did you open the link to the article by Robert Fisk about that I provided and read the article about the orphanage that you keep talking about? The misery and horror that these poor children had to go through? Maybe you did but you pretend that you didn’t. Here it is for you again. Unlike you, others see it as proof of the genocide.
Robert Fisk: Living proof of the Armenian genocide
The US wants to deny that Turkey’s slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 was genocide. But the evidence is there, in a hilltop orphanage near Beirut
It’s only a small grave, a rectangle of cheap concrete marking it out, blessed by a flourish of wild yellow lilies. Inside are the powdered bones and skulls and bits of femur of up to 300 children, Armenian orphans of the great 1915 genocide who died of cholera and starvation as the Turkish authorities tried to “Turkify” them in a converted Catholic college high above Beirut. But for once, it is the almost unknown story of the surviving 1,200 children – between three and 15 years old – who lived in the crowded dormitory of this ironically beautiful cut-stone school that proves that the Turks did indeed commit genocide against the Armenians in 1915.
Barack Obama and his pliant Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton – who are now campaigning so pitifully to prevent the US Congress acknowledging that the Ottoman Turkish massacre of 1.5 million Armenians was a genocide – should come here to this Lebanese hilltop village and hang their heads in shame. For this is a tragic, appalling tale of brutality against small and defenceless children whose families had already been murdered by Turkish forces at the height of the First World War, some of whom were to recall how they were forced to grind up and eat the skeletons of their dead fellow child orphans in order to survive starvation.
Jemal Pasha, one of the architects of the 1915 genocide, and – alas – Turkey’s first feminist, Halide Edip Adivar, helped to run this orphanage of terror in which Armenian children were systematically deprived of their Armenian identity and given new Turkish names, forced to become Muslims and beaten savagely if they were heard to speak Armenian. The Antoura Lazarist college priests have recorded how its original Lazarist teachers were expelled by the Turks and how Jemal Pasha presented himself at the front door with his German bodyguard after a muezzin began calling for Muslim prayers once the statue of the Virgin Mary had been taken from the belfry.
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Hitherto, the argument that Armenians suffered a genocide has rested on the deliberate nature of the slaughter. But Article II of the 1951 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide specifically states that the definition of genocide – “to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” – includes “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”. This is exactly what the Turks did in Lebanon. Photographs still exist of hundreds of near-naked Armenian children performing physical exercises in the college grounds. One even shows Jemal Pasha standing on the steps in 1916, next to the young and beautiful Halide Adivar who – after some reluctance – agreed to run the orphanage.
Before he died in 1989, Karnig Panian – who was six years old when he arrived at Antoura in 1916 – recorded in Armenian how his own name was changed and how he was given a number, 551, as his identity. “At every sunset in the presence of over 1,000 orphans, when the Turkish flag was lowered, ‘Long Live General Pasha!’ was recited. That was the first part of the ceremony. Then it was time for punishment for the wrongdoers of the day. They beat us with the falakha [a rod used to beat the soles of the feet], and the top-rank punishment was for speaking Armenian.”
Panian described how, after cruel treatment or through physical weakness, many children died. They were buried behind the old college chapel. “At night, the jackals and wild dogs would dig them up and throw their bones here and there … at night, kids would run out to the nearby forest to get apples or any fruits they could find – and their feet would hit bones. They would take these bones back to their rooms and secretly grind them to make soup, or mix them with grain so they could eat them as there was not enough food at the orphanage. They were eating the bones of their dead friends.”
Using college records, Emile Joppin, the head priest at the Lazarite Antoura college, wrote in the school’s magazine in 1947 that “the Armenian orphans were Islamicised, circumcised and given new Arab or Turkish names. Their new names always kept the initials of the names in which they were baptised. Thus Haroutioun Nadjarian was given the name Hamed Nazih, Boghos Merdanian became Bekir Mohamed, to Sarkis Safarian was given the name Safouad Sulieman.”
Lebanese-born Armenian-American electrical engineer Missak Kelechian researches Armenian history as a hobby and hunted down a privately printed and very rare 1918 report by an American Red Cross officer, Major Stephen Trowbridge, who arrived at the Antoura college after its liberation by British and French troops and who spoke to the surviving orphans. His much earlier account entirely supports that of Father Joppin’s 1949 research.
“Every vestige, and as far as possible every memory, of the children’s Armenian or Kurdish origin was to be done away with. Turkish names were assigned and the children were compelled to undergo the rites prescribed by Islamic law and tradition … Not a word of Armenian or Kurdish was allowed. The teachers and overseers were carefully trained to impress Turkish ideas and customs upon the lives of the children and to catechize [sic] them regularly on … the prestige of the Turkish race.”
Halide Adivar, later to be lauded by The New York Times as “the Turkish Joan of Arc” – a description that Armenians obviously questioned – was born in Constantinople in 1884 and attended an American college in the Ottoman capital. She was twice married and wrote nine novels – even Trowbridge was to admit that she was “a lady of remarkable literary ability” – and served as a woman officer in Mustafa Ataturk’s Turkish army of liberation after the First World War. She later lived in both Britain and France.
And it was Kelechian yet again who found Adivar’s long-forgotten and self-serving memoirs, published in New York in 1926, in which she recalls how Jemal Pasha, commander of the Turkish 4th Army in Damascus, toured Antoura orphanage with her. “I said: ‘You have been as good to Armenians as it is possible to be in these hard days. Why do you allow Armenian children to be called by Moslim [sic] names? It looks like turning the Armenians into Moslims, and history some day will revenge it on the coming generation of Turks.’ ‘You are an idealist,’ he answered gravely and like all idealists lack a sense of reality … This is a Moslem orphanage and only Moslem orphans are allowed.'” According to Adivar, Jemal Pasha said that he “cannot bear to see them die in the streets” and promised they would go “back to their people” after the war.
Adivar says she told the general that: “I will never have anything to do with such an orphanage” but claims that Jemal Pasha replied: “You will if you see them in misery and suffering, you will go to them and not think for a moment about their names and religion.” Which is exactly what she did.
Later in the war, however, Adivar spoke to Talaat Pasha, the architect of the 20th century’s first holocaust, and recalled how he almost lost his temper when discussing the Armenian “deportations” (as she put it), saying: “Look here, Halide … I have a heart as good as yours, and it keeps me awake at night to think of the human suffering. But that is a personal thing, and I am here on this earth to think of my people and not of my sensibilities … There was an equal number of Turks and Moslems massacred during the [1912] Balkan war, yet the world kept a criminal silence. I have the conviction that as long as a nation does the best for its own interests, and succeeds, the world admires it and thinks it moral. I am ready to die for what I have done, and I know that I shall die for it.”
The suffering of which Talaat Pasha spoke so chillingly was all too evident to Trowbridge when he himself met the orphans of Antoura. Many had seen their parents murdered and their sisters raped. Levon, who came from Malgara, was driven from his home with his sisters aged 12 and 14. The girls were taken by Kurds – allied to the Turks – as “concubines” and the boy was tortured and starved, Trowbridge records. He was eventually forced by his captors into the Antoura orphanage.
Ten-year-old Takhouhi – her name means “queen” in Armenian and she was from a rich background – from Rodosto on the Sea of Marmara was put with her family on a freight train to Konia. Two of her two brothers died in the truck, both parents caught typhus – they died in the arms of Takhouhi and her oldest brother in Aleppo – and she was eventually taken from him by a Turkish officer, given the Muslim name of Muzeyyan and ended up in Antoura. When Trowbridge suggested that he would try to find someone in Rodosto and return her family’s property to her, he said she replied: “I don’t want any of those things if I cannot find my brother again.” Her brother was later reported to have died in Damascus.
Trowbridge records many other tragedies from the children he found at Antoura, commenting acidly that Halide “and Djemal [sic] Pasha delighted in having their photographs taken on the steps of the orphanage … posing as the leaders of Ottoman modernism. Did they realise what the outside world would think of those photographs?” According to Trowbridge’s account, only 669 of the children finally survived, 456 of them Armenian, 184 of them Kurds, along with 29 Syrians. Talaat Pasha did indeed die for his sins. He was assassinated by an Armenian in Berlin in 1922 – his body was later returned to Turkey on the express orders of Adolf Hitler. Jemal Pasha was murdered in the Turkish town of Tiflis. Halide Edip Adivar lived in England until 1939 when she returned to Turkey, became a professor of English literature, was elected to the Turkish parliament and died in 1964 at the age of 80.
It was only in 1993 that the bones of the children were discovered, when the Lazarite Fathers dug the foundations for new classrooms. What was left of the remains were moved respectfully to the little cemetery where the college’s priests lie buried and put in a single, deep grave. Kelechian helped me over a 5ft wall to look at this place of sadness, shaded by tall trees. Neither name-plate nor headstone marks their mass grave.
Murat,
Sorry, for how it came out in the middle but if scroll all the way down you will see the article in normal script. I hope you are happy.
Why bother with Murat? He is just an ADL or Turkish proxy. All the records on the Armenian Genocide are in the library of congress, in the US archives, and well known throughout the world. Turks are on a last ditch effort to eek out some sort of bargain to get into the EU so they can start the occupations and invasions as their ancestor Ghegis Khan did in the past. The EU is not going to allow that. Why should Germany wash its hands before it gets into the EU without Turkey doing the same?
The US and some of the Jewish lobbies are ticked off by the statements and treatment by the Turks of Isreal. They sent a little message to the Mongolians that they are the boss and control congress, 60 Minutes, Charlie Rose, CNN, etc…and especially Fox News.
Gin,
Firstly, I am not being insulting, maybe too sarcastic. My response was to the bigots who spew hate and ethnic and racial slurs, and it is interesting but not surprising that you ignored all insults in these pages but found offense in my rather mild remarks in comparison. I have not insulted anyone more than they insulted themselves.
Secondly, I am still not getting your point. You just re-iterated the points I made. I did not even make any claims actually, just inserted a related historical tid bit. At the same time pointed out the contrast between the genocidal and blood-drinking Turk image usually peddled by likes of you in these forums and the orphanages set up by this blood-thirsty monster Cemal Pasha who was supposed to be killing all these Armenians. It turns out to be the opposite and you just provided more details. I will not shed much tears on the fact that they failed to groom these kids as good Armenians, as I you may agree, there were much wors fates than that.
In any case, if Cemal Pasa was not cowardly murdered by Armenian assasins later, maybe he would have or could have answered for his sins in a court of law.
By the way Tiflis was not a Turkish city. Halide Edip Adivar had to exile herself abroad until after Ataturk’s death becasue she did not agree with some his policies and style. Same with her husband.
Copying and pasting is not same as being informed in my opinion.