Senate Foreign Relations Committee Adopts Armenian Genocide Resolution

Chairman Menendez spearheads successful campaign for truth over strong opposition from White House; Turkish Government

WASHINGTON, DC—For the first time in nearly a quarter century, a U.S. Senate committee today adopted an Armenian Genocide Resolution, calling upon the Senate to commemorate this crime and encouraging the President to ensure that America’s foreign policy reflects and reinforces the lessons, documented in the U.S. record, of the still-unpunished genocide, reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

“Today’s vote affirms America’s commitment to truth, deals a serious setback to Turkey’s campaign of genocide denial, and sends a clear message to President Obama that he must end his Administration’s complicity in Ankara’s cover-up of this crime,” said Aram Hamparian, Executive Director of the ANCA.  “We thank Chairman Menendez for his powerful leadership and express our thanks to each of the Senators who cast their votes for this human rights measure.”

With a vote of 12 to 5, the Committee voted to condemn and commemorate the Armenian Genocide.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-NJ) spearheaded the effort to have this influential foreign policy panel speak

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-NJ
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-NJ)

clearly regarding the Ottoman Turkish Government’s centrally planned and systematically carried out campaign of genocide from 1915-1923, which resulted in the deaths of over 1.5 million men, women and children.

Senator Menendez announced the vote at the Armenian Genocide Observance on Capitol Hill yesterday evening, where he told his colleagues and attendees, “To me, to all men and women of good will, I would think there is a simple statement—genocide is genocide, and you cannot call it anything else but that and you need to have a recognition of that. Next year when we mark a century—a hundred years ago that the Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turkey, it seems to me that with most of the survivors gone—but with a few left—it is incredibly important for us to lead globally at this time.”

For more information regarding the historic vote, visit the ANCA Facebook page at http://www.anca.org/Facebook or the ANCA website at www.anca.org

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Guest Contributor

Guest contributions to the Armenian Weekly are informative articles or press releases written and submitted by members of the community.

46 Comments

  1. Thank you for your integrity, leadership and your dedication to the truth, Senator Menendez!

  2. A bunch of politicians come together and take a decision on a historical issue which they have no idea of.

    So, what ?

  3. Many thanks to Senator Menendez and colleagues in Foreign Relations Committee for integrity and dedication to the truth!

  4. As the son of a survivor of the Armenian Genocide of 1915.. my thanks to Senator Menendez for adopting a Resolution to the US Senate and also the President for the first time, to bring recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Let see what happens!!

  5. Being 3rd generation Armenian, I remember the horrific stories told to me by my grandfather if the Genocide. I am so pleased that a Turkish decendent acknowledges what his “people” did to my ancesters.

    FINALLY be recognized by the Turks, and that they are acknowledging

  6. Being 3rd generation Armenian I remember the horrific stories my grandfather told when I was a child. It pained him greatly that the Turks denied their responsibility of the Genocide. Finally, after all these years, a Turkish decendant admits what his ancestors did to the Armenians. My deceased relatives can now rest in peace. Please President Obama, heed this man’s statements.

  7. Thank you Senator Menedez and other Senators who have sponsored this bill. The time for recognition of the Armenian Genocide is NOW!

  8. Mr Obama,Pay attention , and pay attention well, —enough of dancing around the word of Genocide.
    on this April 24 you better pronounce the word GENOCIDE clearly instead of METZ YEGHERN.! ! !

  9. Dear President Obama

    Pave the way forward. Recognize the Armenian Genocide ahead of the 100th Anniversary.
    Repudiate the CIA, the NSA and the Turkish Government. Leave office on the right side of history.

    Thank you Senator Mendez and your fellowship
    B. Bunt

  10. To all Armenians: If there is going to be Turkish-Armenian normalization. We have to settle this via the Lausanne Treaty and I hope you guys be fair to your neighbor to the west. If there is any further claims, this will ruin the normalization process. Also, I believe in opening borders and returning religious properties to the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul. Religious freedoms should be the basis of preserving the Lausanne Treaty. If more is asked, this will harm the Reconciliation Process.

    • No – every single stolen Armenian property needs to be returned if there are survivors, and Turkey needs to act like a responsible, adult civilization and apologize to Armenians and to the world for their crime against humanity. Theft is a crime, murder is a crime…when it is done on the scale of millions…it is a monstrous crime. No amount of denial can sweep it under the rug, because the world saw and recorded what happened as it happened. So, Turkey cannot hide. If you want ‘normalization’, act normal. Remember, we lived under the Turkish thumb for 900 years…and served every sultan well. You cannot restore the millions of souls destroyed, but at the very least, you owe us what you took from us illegally.

  11. M-r Menendes is great person,the same is
    sutable for the senators who supported
    the Armenian Genocide performed in 1915

  12. M-r Menendes and m-r Royse are great persons,
    the same is suitable for the senators who
    supported the suggestions for the Armenian
    Genocide.

  13. One-sided and unfair manipulations -which ignores turkish thesis on civil war in WW1- make no sense at all..Another christianbrotherhood attempt to provoke turcophobia and islamophobia..

    • {“ which ignores turkish thesis on civil war in WW1”}

      The so-called ‘Turkish thesis’ is nothing more than a failed attempt to of Denial of the Armenian Genocide.
      Are you that disconnected from reality ?

      Were unarmed, defenseless Armenian civilians also participants of the alleged civil-war ?
      Were Armenian children and babies ‘civil war’ combatants ?
      Were pregnant Armenian women who were cut open while alive also participants in the alleged civil war, you denialist shill ?

      As to the alleged ‘Christian brotherhood’: if it weren’t for Christian West very generously and benevolently helping the Islamic county of Turkey, all of Turkey would be a backwards, underdeveloped dump like Eastern Turkey, our occupied Western Armenia which your nomadic ancestors invaded, looted and denuded.
      Turkey is being militarily protected by Christian NATO and is being massively economically uplifted by Christian EU.
      Turkey owes at least 50% of its standard of living to Christian West, mainly EU.

      Innate, uncontrollable, savage nomadic Turkic Christianophobia and Armenophobia even compelled genocidal Turks to organize an invasion of Armenian populated Kessab, and ethnically cleanse it. Christianophobe Turkic IslamoFascists desecrated Armenian churches to show their ‘tolerance’ to other religions, naturally.

      Denialist nomad Turk Bennu: you and your kind are illegally occupying and living on Christian lands. Go home to Uyguristan, the land of your nomadic ancestors, and build an Islamic Turkic paradise there: see if you can do it without leaching off of Christians or the help of Christians.

      Another denialist Anti-Christian, Anti-Armenian IslamoFascist shill.

  14. 100 years after President Wilson pleaded the Armenian Genocide case to the American people and our government has been a long wait; but well worth it to see this resolution made by the US Senate. Senator Menendez will be raised up in Armenian history for leading the charge. Denialists take heed, survivors, the eyewitnesses, may be gone, but their reports remain, and university history departments all over the world now have documentation of the Armenian Genocide.

  15. A major victory for our cause. Now we have to wait and see what our spineless Predident is going to do, and whether the resolution S-Res410 will make it to the Senate floor.
    The vote in the senate is revealing and it clearly shows that the Republican caucus is still heavily influnced by the Turkish Lobby.
    It is unclear whether it is because they are ignorant, or because they are receiving too much money from the Turkish lobby.
    10 Democrats voted yes.
    2 Republicans votes yes.
    It is noteworthy that McCain and Rubio voted yes.
    5 Republicans voted no. These five republicans should not get a single Armenian-American vote in the next elections.
    Paul Rand did not vote. Obviously he did not want to show his true colors.
    Vart Adjemian

  16. Es usted todo un cabllero Senador Menendez.Nuestro pueblo jamas olvidara su ayuda a nuestra causa Sagrada.Muchissimas gracias!
    You are a total gentleman,Senator Menendez.Our people will never forget your help to our sacred Cause.Thanks a lot .

  17. To Avery,
    Armen Garo, one of the Armenian leaders of 1915 wrote in his book “Why Armenia Should Be Free” Boston, Hairenik Press, 1918 that 150,000 armed Armenian fighters joined the Russian army in its invasion of Anatolia with the onset of World War I which lasted from 1914 to 1918. While rha able bodied Turkısh men were defending the borders of the Ottoman Empireö the Armenian inhabitants aided and abetted these armed Armenian fighters. Especially after the Tsarist Russia dissolved in 1917, these Armenian bandits mercilessly maimed and desecrated Turkish women and children.
    Any war sounds like a genocide if the dead of only one side are counted.

  18. Vart Adjemian,
    You wrote: “they are receiving too much money from the Turkish lobby”.
    In the same line of thought should the Turks assume the politicians who voted in favor were in the pockets of Armenian lobby. OR could one assume they were brainwashed Christians OR needed votes from California?

    • Turks can assume whatever they want.
      There is no ‘pockets of Armenian’ lobby: All our efforts are grass-roots, and largely volunteer.
      We do donate to our favourite politicians’ campaigns. But we don’t have money for lobbyists: our spare cash goes to re-build RoA and NKR (the latter having been largely destroyed by invading Turkic nomads about 20 years. Again).

      US citizen voters of Armenian descent demanding accountability from their elected representatives in US Congress: that is the process.
      We help them win and keep their Congressional seats based on certain promises they make during their campaigns, and we ask that they keep their promises. Does not always work with politicians, of course, but that’s how it’s done in these United States.

      And the largest mass of brainwashed people must be those Turks and Turkish people who deny the Armenian Genocide.

  19. Maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel. I hope it passes. Time to treat Turkey like the 1980s National Party ruled South Africa. No more diplomacy. Enough is enough.

  20. Who wants to bet his house or car that Obama will use the “g” word in 2015? If you are so sure.
    Also, this Menendez guy is using the armenians. You guys have no idea. He knows full well the resolution will not make it further. some naive armenians are cheering. By the way, he was invited to a dinner by a Turkish NGO in USA. So you know.

    • Hey Ahmet, what do you plan to bet with? Your pet camel, or your bag of hashish?

  21. I will be the happiest person when this cursed resolution passes the US Congress. Then we can wait for the Eskimo parliament to pass it too maybe! It would be best for all and the cause of peace to have this behind us. All would see that World will not come to an end and facts and history is not remade by a bunch of politicians lifting their hands this or that way.

    • Murat,
      Before pointing your finger to Eskimos, look into your face on the mirror, then ask yourself “why Turkish governments in the last 99 years implemented penal code 301 on top of Turkish Allah’s book”

      I am sure if you are part of Turkish intellectuals, then you will find your answer, truth about Christian Genocide of Osmani Khalifat.

  22. To Jannaan:
    (Jannaan // April 11, 2014 at 9:35 pm // )

    I understand you are at a disadvantage, because you had the misfortune of obtaining your education, if you can call it that, from the mis-Education system of Turkey. And I also understand you may have increased the level of your miseducation by attending advanced courses at the Turkish Hysterical Society, the Halaçoğlu School of Advanced Denialist Studies.

    I will try my best to present how things happened in the real Universe we all live in vs the Denialverse, where millions of Turks and Turkish people exist, happily oblivious to reality.

    1. Your ancestors’ homelands are in Central and East Asia, in the region where many of your direct ancestors live today, e.g. Uyguristan.
    2. Around 1000 AD, your nomadic, barbaric, warrior ancestors, who had left their homelands, arrived at the outer edges of Asia Minor.
    3. At the time Seljuk Turks showed up, there were rich, highly cultured, sedentary civilizations in Asia Minor: Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, others.
    4. Armenian Highlands, the ancestral homeland of indigenous Armenians was also invaded by nomadic Seljuk Turks.
    5. Takeaway #1: Turks and their descendants are foreigners in Asia Minor; Invaders; unwelcome, uninvited guests. We understand today there are millions of peaceful, friendly, nice Turks and Turkish people who would make good neighbors. But don’t give us any lip about ‘invasions’, ‘bandits’, ‘maiming’, etc. Every vice so listed was initiated by your nomadic Turkic ancestors – the original invaders.
    6. Fast forward to 1895. There is no WW1. There are no Russians. Sultan Hamid massacres up to 300,000 Armenian civilians.
    7. 1909: There is no WW1. Adana massacre: Turks massacre up to 30,000 Armenian civilians.
    8. 1938: There is no WW1. Dersim massacre. Turks massacre up to 90,000 Kurds. An unknown number of converted Armenians were also in the mix.
    9. Takeaway #2: Nationalist, pre-Fascist, pre-Nazi genocidal Turks need no reason to massacre civilians; if they can, they will.

    Finally: here is something one of your ethnic kin recently wrote about Turks.
    See how it fits with your Denialitis addled mental image of so-called ‘Armenian bandits’.

    [The Insufferable Shame of Being a Turk ] (Turk/Laz poet Serkan Engin)
    http://paperboatsofpoetry.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-insufferable-shame-of-being-turk.html
    { Turks and Kurds have killed their own neighbours, raped their little girls, burned alive little children and women….}
    { From the beginning of their history, Turks were trouble makers to all those near them. Turks have lived by grabbing the neighbouring lands, killing many people, raping their women, making their children slaves,…}

    Have a nice day, brainwashed denialist Turk Jannaan.
    See you again soon.

    • Serkan Engin is a Radical Communist. He worships Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, and all Communist Heros. He is Laz and was born in Rize city (a certain PM of Turkey is of the same ethnicity and from the same city). He is gaining a reputation as a Radical Leftists. I am not saying I hate all Leftists (there are ones who are at least having the courage to defend Turkey like Dogu Perincek and not sell out his own country).

      Another thing is, you are wrong about Todays Turks Avery. Today’s Turks are mostly Turkified Balkans Peoples (many people immigrated from the Balkans), Turkified Kavkazians (immigrants from the Caucasus) (PM Erdogan is a Georgian as well as former PM Mesut Yilmaz), as well as Turkified Anatolians (President Turgut Ozal was Kurdish). Actual Turkic component is small (5-10%) (take FM Davutoglu, he is an ethnic Tatar).

    • Also, the leader of Turkey’s opposition (which I pray for his victory) is an Alevi from Dersim city.

    • @ Rifat. There is no inconsistency in Avery’s post, but you contradict yourself with each of the two paragraphs you wrote. It seems, you Turks now are going through an identity crisis, because you don’t know how to define a ‘Turk’. Fist you say the poet is Laz, and insinuate that he does not count as a ‘Turk’ – next you say Turks are Turkified Balkan people. But by your first theory, then ‘Turks’ in Turkey must not be ‘real’ Turks, right?

      And besides, the poet in question admits he is half Laz half Turk, and is ashamed of the ‘Turk’ part and rejects it – although, is there a “pure” Turk in existence?

      And when we suggest your real homeland being someplace in Central Asia, the genetic part is merely one aspect of it, because culture is important has a lot to do with it. Turks today cannot claim “Anatolian culture” after having wiped out the people who have original and legitimate claim to both Anatolian culture and lands. That’s why being a Genocide denier first and foremost delegitimizes a Turk to all things Anatolian.

  23. My grandparents were survivors of the 1915 genocide by Turkey.
    I applaud the work of the Foreign Relations Comm., but with the world situation as it is today,
    I see little hope of anything further being done, sadly.
    The horrors of Death Marches, starvation, torture and the hanging of my great grandfather because he was an influential man in the community…..Turkey can deny and make their lame excuses till eternity.
    They committed Genocide. Period. They need to admit it and move forward if they have any hope for redemption in
    The worlds eyes.

  24. Folks, don’t be surprised by the reaction shown towards this resolution by some of the brainwashed, illiterate and racist Turks who make remarks on this site. They show their dissatisfaction and disapproval not because they are not guilty of systematic mass extermination and genocide of 1,500,000 innocent Armenian men women and children and confiscation of their ancestral homeland, but they do so because they are beginning to realize that, slowly but surely, the noose around their genocidal necks is tightening and the balance of justice is beginning to tilt in favor of the Armenian Cause.

    They are unhappy not because someone is conspiring against them, as they are constantly told by their two-faced lying pan-Turkic and anti-Armenian leaders, but because they are no longer able to carry on with their lies and denials and they feel they are finally being discovered and exposed much like a murderer who is eventually caught, charged and convicted for first degree murder after decades of evading the authorities, all the while thinking he could get away with his crime only if he could outsmart the officials long enough until the murder and his victim are long forgotten not realizing that there is no statute of limitation on crime of murder.

    These are common reactions from generations of Turks who have been subjected to institutional racism towards the Armenians and the seeds of hatred and suspicion of all indigenous non-Muslims have long been planted in them as a form of defense to protect their ill-gotten wealth acquired through wiping out their victims whose lands they illegally occupy today. It is because of such deliberate and institutional brainwashing that they begin to get irritated and discredit by their nonsense, such as needing Armenian votes and such, anyone who tries to speak on behalf of the victims and give voice to their plight. They are the product of the actions of their successive fascist governments and criminal leaders who have been labeling and attacking the victims of their murderous acts in attempts to cover up their criminal past and falsely exonerate themselves.

    I guarantee over 90% of these brainwashed people don’t even know their own true history but only the garbage they have been fed by their blood-thirsty and fascist leaders, a bunch of wolves in sheep’s clothing. Their new racist leaders are no different from their former ones and the only thing that sets them apart is that they disguise their rotten character under the European style suits and ties unlike their former fez-wearing nomadic leaders dressed in robes.

    They are paranoid as hell not because they feel they are being wrongly convicted but because they fear the map of the illegal and fascist Turkey will never look the same again in the near future when Western Armenia is freed from Turkish occupation, returned to its true and indigenous Armenian owners and reunited with Armenia!

  25. After 99 years the USA that pretend freedom and justice and helpo for the oppressed should be ashamed to have spent so long time before recognizing such a crime against Humanity and for having been accomplice of denial and silence for all these years. The same thing is valid for Israel.

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