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1. Why has not anybody sued Turkey yet if the recognition is not required for reparations?

   • All in a good time Ahmet. You can bet your bottom dollar that this will happen. Your wish and specially our wish will come true.

2. It is very disturbing that the pope Francis recent visit to Turkey no reference to the Armenian Genocide. Especially since the Armenian Catholic Church is still a big player with the Armenian community. No pick up or reference by the Armenian Weekly or ANCA.

3. Thanks for this fascinating piece!

4. A promising interview and article. The reading of the full report itself is a must for all activists of the Armenian Genocide and others. About time Armenians (and the Republic of Armenia first and foremost) moved on from the tired old and stale ‘recognition’ trap to practical steps for eliminating (at least some of) the CONSEQUENCES

5. Our family & myself are interested in the confiscated homes & land of the Boyajians in Dikrenegard (Diyerbekir) .

6. Genocide perpetrators never admit their guilt, Pol Pot of Cambodia never accepted his commiting Genocide, it is the world that condemns an act of Genocide, criminals never accept their crime.

7. An interesting interview. Hopefully this will not merely be an academic exercise but will lay the foundation for a concrete plan of action.
   Questions/ comments:
   1- Where can we have access or obtain the AGRSG report?
   2- It is wishful thinking that this report, or any other report will change the attitude of the Turkish Government or influence the Turkish populace’s thinking about the Genocide or reparations.
   Recently there has been some Turkish voices raised , but this is a small minority that will have a hard time to offset the Turkish Government’s “machine” of propaganda based on falsehoods and lies.
   3- The legal process is highly complicated and costly. What are the specific legal steps to be taken, in what jurisdiction, what court of justice?
   4- Who leads the legal effort? In my opinion without the involvement of the Government of RoA not much can be accomplished.
   Vart Adjemian

8. My post is not there.Not been moderated or what.Or too hot for you to publish. Anyways my conviction is that these conferences are for those who are beating around the bush or just filling in pages of unimportant,mainly repeated issues with no real objective to pursue.

   • Your post has probably gone the way of all posts that are seen to go against the editorial line – left in the limbo of “awaiting moderation” for ever. As for this report, why would anyone waste their time working on it? Group reparations (as opposed to individual reparations for specific losses) are as likely to happen as America returning California to Mexico.

9. I UNDERSTAND we have a 500 strong BAR Association in L.A.Am certain a few are important In´l attorneys.These good people,plus some important historians of ours ,such s Prof. Richard G. Hovhannisian ,Vahagn Dadrian etc., can get together and and prepare a CLAIM to be lodged at the ICJ at the Hague and the UN and similar.
   Instead of looking for ¨¨odar¨ people to help us.
   My personal view is to lodge the claim foremost for B L O O D
   M O N Y .Similar to what the Jews did from Democratic Germany heir to Nazi Germany and received cash.Other issues like land ,property, arable lands churches, monasteries, work shops etc., can wait and it is actually not of a few but of a hundred thousand businesses and homes,plus other ¨riches¨.Tha can wait until such time when the Kurdish issue becomes really ready to explode.That is when (in my opinion)our brethren from RA can settle the issue of territotires with the Kurds ,rather than great Turkey.
   Parev Hasgcoghin

10. Well done! I support the cause, both with some financial publishing assistance and with a pledge with my three friends in Yerevan to repatriate any land that can be acquired.

11. “if land in the eastern areas of today’s Turkey is returned to Armenians, what will the status of its current inhabitants be? What about other groups who might also have claims to parts of the territory, such as Assyrians and Kurds?”
    —–

    This is indeed an issue (the first part) which is probably one of the most difficult to address in the reparations process. But I would put forth some questions here, the main being that, considering the history of Turkey of the past century, why should Armenia be responsible for those Turkish citizens considering themselves ‘Turkish’ at all in the first place? And shouldn’t the reparations process include as a given that the same way Turkey brought in all the Turks (from places like Greece) after murdering Armenians, it is itself required to rearrange them in the same manner?

    Examples: after WWI, the Hatay province which had a sizable number of Armenians and was naturally part of Syria’s territory or Armenian Cilicia, was illegally swindled by Turkey with the help of none other than dear old France. In so doing, France wanted to see that “enough Turks were living there”. Then promptly, the Genocide perpetrators brought in Turks, savage-natured ones of course, armed with anything they could find including, rocks, sticks, knives, swords, etc and who proceeded to attack and drive out what Armenians and Syrians there were. Naturally next came the “democratic votes” which showed that the “inhabitants of Hatay province wanted to join Turkey”, and of course, pompous France agreed, even as they knew exactly what had transpired. That is one reason today, Kessab is only half of what it was historically, and is hard to defend from Turkish aggression, because its borders are not natural.

    Next, in the “we can move our people like cattle in order to steal and occupy lands” program which Turkey has become an expert in, comes “north Cyprus”. And here, dear old England didn’t want to be left out from Turkey’s dirty history and wanted to prove to France that it can also help Turkey steal other peoples lands. Since Cyprus did not have enough so-called “Turkish Cypriots” compared to Greeks to justify a land-grab after an illegal invasion (aided by the UK), Turkey then brought in thousands of Turks from main land Turkey, to show the world how “those bad Cypriot Greeks were oppressing the native Cypriot Turks before Turkey had to invade and save them”.

    So again I would ask, why can’t the Turkish government do the same thing in reverse and move all the Turks out of Armenia the same way it brought them in right after committing Genocide against Armenians?

    For the second part, the Assyrians and Kurds that would claim lands. I can see that they had properties and would want them back, but in the absence of an Assyrian nation as well as Kurdish, why would they make such claims? And why would they claim a homeland from Armenia which was not theirs historically and leave their real historic lands unclaimed, which happens to be parts of Iraq and the southeast of Turkey touching Iraq? In fact, what is stopping them from siding with Armenia and agreeing to Armenian claims if they know and accept real history? Once Armenia’s justice get implemented, it would be a lot easier for them to do the same thing next.

12. “those bad Cypriot Greeks were oppressing the native Cypriot Turks before Turkey had to invade and save them”.
    ______

    “Had Turkey not intervened I would not only have proclaimed Enosis but I would have annihilated the Turks in Cyprus” – Nikos Sampson, appointed President of Cyprus after the Greek Junta overthrew a democratically elected government, to Eleftherotipia newspaper on February 26, 1981

    I feel sorry for Greek Cypriots. I really do. They paid the price of the Greek Junta’s fantasy of Enosis, and when Turkey invaded those cowards barely put up a fight and fled Cyprus back to Greece, leaving Greek Cypriots to ultimately pay the price for something I do believe they would have done themselves. Their homeland was torn, whole cities became ghost towns by virtue of being in the buffer zone. They didn’t deserve that. At least the Junta leaders got what they deserved- to die in prison.

    • correction: “for something I do NOT believe..”

13. Hagop D
    You seem to know well the history of the Hatay(Kilikia) and it old habitants the Armenians.Most of us who study( i do only for the 120 years old of ours)Khorentasi I will read when bed ridden..
    Question is ,addressed to you,you think most other people are not aware of it being occupied by great Turkey.Their Govt. is bent on keeping whatevewer is left from Ottoman days ,to them and keep .However,there are some small very small signs that their adamant stance is by and by being punctured? shall we say and the paper tiger is exposing its weaknesses…
    But again it is up to us as well to begin direct talks withe Kurds in the fist place(at their Parliament in exile,Brussles.Then come to some sort of an agreement with them as to what can be done to fist shake the tight grip on the occupied lands and then proceed with the whole project of dis-Turkification so to say.A veery tough procewss to say the lest.Best would be to wait a bit more to see what the superpowers are thinking to do w/ Isis like newly sprung up trouble makers …then indeed as above described.Assyrians can best keep in line with the Armeno Kurdish cooperation.

14. RVDV,
    That quote by Nikos Sampson, are you sure it is reliable? It doesn’t seem like it to me, but at any rate, Turkey used a pretext to invade Cyprus, just like they tried to do so with Syria but got caught, so now after decades, what is it still doing there in Cyprus if its mission was to “protect Turks” and why did it bring in thousands of Turks from mainland Turkey if the mission was simply for the safety of the Cypriot Turks? Makes no sense.

    Gayzag,
    Well that was told to me by somebody who’s family is from the region, and I have no reason to doubt it. They also say that in certain places in Hatay, the de-facto language there is still Arabic, and even that Turkish is not even usually heard in many places, so as the Syrians call the region, Sanjak. The Kessabtsis from there call it “Svedia” I believe.

    My suspicion, you see how Turkey passionately wants Syria destroyed? There are several reasons of course, but probably this dispute is also one of them with the illegal referendum they did with France. Today, once Syria is divided, the issue will be put to rest, and for Turkey, that is either giving Hatay to the Alawites and confiscating Syria’s other ‘Sunni’ regions, or keeping Hatay with the newly formed Syria without a territorial dispute.

15. We are busy with a production about the genocide of Aremenians, the first Christian Nation on earth. We are looking for more funding to take this production to the nations this year, TV and film, bringing the message of The blood that speaks louder than we think.

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