Turkish Forum

Author: Harut Sassounian

  • Pashinyan Falsely Claims Former Leaders Recognized Artsakh as Part of Azerbaijan

    Pashinyan Falsely Claims Former Leaders Recognized Artsakh as Part of Azerbaijan

    The Ambassador of France to Armenia, Olivier Decottignies, who had been taking strong pro-Armenian positions, surprised everyone last week by falsely telling Armenia’s Public Radio that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan was not the first Armenian leader to recognize that Artsakh belonged to Azerbaijan.

    Decottignies added: “Armenia has accepted, recognized that Nagorno Karabagh is part of Azerbaijan ever since the adoption of the Alma Ata Declaration [in 1991] because Nagorno Karabagh was a region of Soviet Azerbaijan. Therefore, those who claim that Nagorno Karabagh was recognized as part of Azerbaijan in 2022 in Prague are lying, because Nagorno Karabagh has been recognized by Armenia as part of Azerbaijan since the Alma Ata Declaration.”

    This is an undiplomatic and false statement from the representative of a country friendly with Armenia. Why would the French Ambassador make such a wrong claim? There may be three reasons:

    1) To absolve French President Emmanuel Macron of blame for mediating along with then President of the European Council Charles Michel talks in Prague on October 6, 2022, with Pashinyan and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, where Pashinyan recognized the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, accepting that Artsakh is part of Azerbaijan based on the Alma Ata Declaration of 1991.

    2) To justify and support Pashinyan’s teetering rule against his domestic opponents after handing over Artsakh to Azerbaijan.

    3) To improve the damaged Azerbaijan-France relations.

    The statement issued after the quadrilateral 2022 Prague meeting confirmed that Armenia and Azerbaijan, according to the Alma Ata 1991 Declaration, “recognize each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty,” meaning that Artsakh belongs to Azerbaijan. Subsequently, Pashinyan explicitly and falsely claimed multiple times that based on the Alma Ata Declaration Artsakh is part of Azerbaijan.

    By making such a statement, Pashinyan’s intent was to shift the blame onto Armenia’s former leaders for giving away Artsakh to Azerbaijan in 1991, long before he came to power in 2018.

    There are several errors in the statements of the French Ambassador and Pashinyan:

    — The Alma Ata Declaration of December 21, 1991, did not include any reference to Artsakh. It stated that the 11 former Soviet Republics, including Armenia and Azerbaijan, “recognize and respect each other’s territorial integrity and the inviolability of the existing borders.”

    — Pres. Levon Ter Petrosyan, on his way back from Alma Ata in 1991 told Soviet Television that when the Declaration is ratified by the Supreme Council of Armenia, a reservation would be added regarding the status of Nagorno-Karabakh’s autonomy “so that we can obtain solid guarantees for the existence of Nagorno-Karabakh as an autonomous entity.”

    — On February 18, 1992, the Supreme Council of the Republic of Armenia ratified the December 8, 1991 Minsk Agreement on the Creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which was the precursor to the Alma Ata Declaration. Given the fact that Artsakh had held a referendum on Dec. 10, 1991, declaring the establishment of the Republic of Nagorno Karabagh, the Supreme Council of Armenia added the following reservation which applied to Artsakh: All former autonomous entities of the USSR, which had previously held a referendum declaring their independence, can join the CIS.

    — The Supreme Council of Armenia reaffirmed its position on Artsakh in a Decision on July 8, 1992, stating that it considers unacceptable any document that mentions the Republic of Nagorno Karabagh as part of Azerbaijan.

    — On April 15, 1994, the President of Armenia refused to sign the “Declaration on the Preservation of Sovereignty, Territorial integrity, and Inviolability of Borders of the Participant States of the Commonwealth of Independent States,” out of concern that Azerbaijan would use that document against Artsakh.

    — The Preamble of the 1995 Constitution of Armenia contains a reference to the Declaration of Independence, which in turn refers to the 1989 joint decision of the Soviet Armenia’s Supreme Council and the Artsakh National Council on the “Reunification of the Armenian SSR Supreme Council and the Mountainous Region of Karabagh.”

    — Finally, during the 1996 OSCE Lisbon Summit, the Armenian government vetoed a resolution which would have given the highest degree of self-government to Nagorno Karabagh within Azerbaijan.

    After all the above references to the separate status of Artsakh from Azerbaijan, how can Pashinyan claim that the former leaders of Armenia had given Artsakh to Azerbaijan? If that were the case:

    — Why did Azerbaijan not occupy Artsakh from 1991 to 2020?

    — Why did Azerbaijan launch a major war in 2020 to conquer Artsakh, losing thousands of soldiers?

    — Why did Armenian soldiers battle Azerbaijani troops after 1991?

    — Why did the Armenian government for decades, including during Pashinyan’s rule, station soldiers of the Armenian Army in Artsakh?

    — Why did the Armenian government contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to Artsakh’s budget, if Artsakh was part of Azerbaijan?

    — Why did the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell state in the European Parliament in 2023 that “Armenia has recognized Nagorno Karabagh as an integral part of Azerbaijan, and Nikol Pashinyan is the first Armenian leader to make such a statement?”

    — Why did Pashinyan stand in front of the people of Artsakh in Stepanakert on August 5, 2019 and declare: “Artsakh is Armenia, period,” if Artsakh had been given to Azerbaijan?

    — Why did the Minsk Group of mediators, co-headed by France, Russia and the United States, tried for decades to find a solution to the status of Artsakh, if it was recognized by Armenia to be part of Azerbaijan since 1991?

    The answer to all of these questions is that Armenia’s former leaders did not hand over Artsakh to Azerbaijan. Pashinyan was the first Armenian leader to recognize Artsakh as part of Azerbaijan.

  • Armenian Parliament Speaker Prefers That All Artsakh Armenians were Killed

    Armenian Parliament Speaker Prefers That All Artsakh Armenians were Killed

    Top Armenian government officials have crossed all red lines. After giving away Artsakh, they are now endangering the existence of the Armenian Republic. This alarming development is the fault of the entire leadership of the ruling Civil Contract Party, starting from Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and ending with his Ministers, the Speaker and majority of the National Assembly.

    Pashinyan’s agreement to turn over the Republic of Artsakh to Azerbaijan was illegal because he has no jurisdiction over Artsakh. Knowing that, the Prime Minister did not ask for the approval of either the National Assembly or the Constitutional Court before signing the declaration of capitulation. Prior to the 2020 War, Pashinyan himself admitted that he was the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia and had nothing to do with Artsakh, while loudly proclaiming, “Artsakh is Armenia. Period.” This is one of his scores of contradictory statements.

    Most governmental leaders around the world resign immediately after suffering such a devastating loss in war. They acknowledge their failure and yield their seat to someone else who can salvage whatever is left. Pashinyan, a psychologically crushed man, cannot properly rule the country and restore the damage that he himself has brought about.

    Pashinyan is stubbornly clinging to power, thus increasing the damage and losses. He has not used the word Artsakh once since the 2020 war. He never mentions Artsakh Armenians’ right of return. He has not lifted a finger to secure the release of Artsakh’s leaders who are being tried in Baku. He claims that Artsakh Armenians are not citizens of Armenia, even though they possess passports of the Republic of Armenia.

    Meanwhile, the Speaker of the National Assembly, Alen Simonyan, who is just as incompetent as the Prime Minister, once again, gave insane answers to a simple question from an Artsakh journalist, last week. The question was: “When will I return to Artsakh?” Simonyan replied: “When it is safe, when we sign a peace treaty. You got out of there, because it was not safe, even though it was possible to stay and fight till the end with the weapons that Armenia had left. You should have fought, Armenia fought.” This is the usual tactic of Pashinyan’s clan. Put the blame for their own failures on everyone else.

    To make matters worse, when the journalist asked Simonyan why he avoids using the name Artsakh, he gave a complete nonsensical denialist answer: “I am a politician, and I oppose any foreign citizen calling one of my cities by a Turkish or Azerbaijani name. I must uphold a politician’s ethics.” He is shamefully comparing saying Artsakh to a Turk or Azeri calling an Armenian city by a Turkish name!

    Only a defeatist high-ranking official would talk like that. He knows very well that Artsakh Armenians fought as much as they could, killing 205 Azeri soldiers and wounding 1004 others within 24-hours on Sept. 19, 2023, but were unable to continue resisting a well-armed enemy which was many times more powerful than them. They had no choice, but to leave. If they had stayed any longer, they would have been all slaughtered by the Azeri troops. Maybe that’s the outcome that Simonyan would have preferred.

    There is plenty of evidence of Azeri soldiers’ brutal behavior during previous battles when they videotaped the cutting off of the head of an elderly civilian man. In another gruesome criminal act, which the Azeri soldiers “proudly” videotaped, they tortured, mutilated, raped and killed Anush Apetyan, a female Armenian soldier, during an attack in September 2022, after cutting off her legs, putting her cut off finger in her mouth, and poking out her eye and replacing it with a stone! These are shocking war crimes!

    Simonyan’s anti-Artsakh comments generated immediate outrage throughout Armenia and the Diaspora. Several major Armenian and Artsakh organizations issued statements lambasting him.

    Instead of lecturing Artsakh Armenians about staying and fighting, Simonyan should look at the self-defeating behavior of his own government which did not lift a finger to come to the rescue of fellow Armenians in Artsakh — the constitutional obligation of the Armenian government. On the contrary, on Sept. 21, 2023 just as Armenia’s Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan was addressing the emergency UN Security Council meeting in New York about Azerbaijan’s huge attack on Artsakh, Prime Minister Pashinyan embarrassed his own Foreign Minister in front of the whole world by announcing in a live address in Yerevan: “At this moment, our assessment is that there is no direct threat to the civilian population of Nagorno-Karabakh.” Thus, Pashinyan gave a great excuse to Azerbaijan to cover up its massive crime and undermined the claim of international lawyers that Artsakh Armenians were subjected to ethnic cleansing and genocide.

  • Pashinyan Rejects Committing The Crime of Armenian Genocide Denial

    Pashinyan Rejects Committing The Crime of Armenian Genocide Denial

    Ever since Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s disgraceful attempt to raise unnecessary questions about the facts of the Armenian Genocide to a group of Swiss-Armenians in Zurich last month, he and his blind followers have been making excuses for his deplorable remarks.

    Pashinyan casually told the Swiss-Armenian group: “We need to also return to the history of the Armenian Genocide. We need to understand what happened and why?” It is shocking that 110 years after the Armenian Genocide, the Prime Minister of Armenia pretends not to know “what happened and why.” I don’t think it is because of his lack of knowledge. He knows exactly what he is saying and why.

    He continued with more fabricated questions: “How is it that in 1939 there was no agenda for the Armenian Genocide? And how is it that in 1950 the Armenian Genocide agenda appeared? And how did we perceive it, through whom did we perceive it?” Pashinyan must be told that long before 1950 and 1939, all the way back in 1921, the Catholicos of All Armenians Kevork V Surenyants designated April 24 as the Day of Remembrance for the victims of ‘Meds Yeghern.”

    Pashinyan has made similar questionable statements in the past. To confuse the public, he regularly denies his earlier statements and claims that he was misunderstood. One thing is sure, Azeris and Turks were elated that the Prime Minister of Armenia agrees with them on “questioning the genocide.”

    Justifiably, Pashinyan was condemned by prominent Armenians and organizations all over the world. He was harshly criticized by Catholicoi Karekin II and Aram I, various historians and experts on the Armenian Genocide, the Lemkin Institute, and Armenian organizations in Switzerland, Belgium and Armenia.

    Given the fact that Pashinyan has denigrated all sacred symbols of the Armenian nation from Mt. Ararat to Armenia’s coat of arms, and has repeatedly claimed that commemorations of the Armenian Genocide were prompted by external forces, meaning the Soviet Union, he has come very close to denying the facts of the Armenian Genocide which is a crime in Armenia punishable by 2-5 years of imprisonment.

    Pashinyan’s statement, as to why the Armenian Genocide was not on the agenda in 1939 and that it appeared on the agenda only in 1950, has a very simple explanation. There is no need for conspiracy theories. After the demise of Stalin’s dictatorial regime, which punished manifestations of nationalism with imprisonment, exile and even execution, the repressive environment began to soften gradually which allowed the construction of the Sardarabad and Armenian Genocide Memorials in Soviet Armenia.

    In the meantime, both prior to 1939 and after 1950, Armenians in the Diaspora commemorated the Armenian Genocide, asking for its recognition and the return of occupied Western Armenia from Turkey. Memoranda and petitions were presented to the United Nations and major powers in the late 1940’s. Tens of thousands of Armenians marched in various Middle Eastern, European and American cities demanding their historical rights.

    On August 20, 2009, Pashinyan wrote in his “Prison Diary: the mechanics of genocide” and reposted on his Facebook page last week: “Traditional Armenian thinking equates the concept of ‘genocide’ with the hostile actions of the outside world, ‘the Turk,’ meaning, the enemy. The new Armenian thinking tries to perceive the phenomenon through self-realization, tries to perceive the internal causes of the phenomenon, which are hidden behind the genocided people’s thinking, meaning, our own thinking.” Strangely, Pashinyan shifts the blame for the genocide from the perpetrators to the victims.

    There are two key documents that I would like to bring to Pashinyan’s attention:

    1) The law adopted by the Supreme Council of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic on Nov. 22, 1988: We “condemn the 1915 Genocide of the Armenians in Ottoman Turkey as a grave crime against humanity, and declare April 24 as a day of remembrance for the Armenian victims.”

    2) Article 136 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia: “Public denial, justification, propaganda or belittling the danger of Genocide or Crimes against Humanity:

    a) Public denial, justification, propaganda or belittling the danger of Genocide or Crimes against Humanity, where those have been committed on the basis of racial background, skin color, national or ethnic origin or religious background, for the purpose of provoking hatred, discrimination or violence against a person or a group of persons — shall be punished by a fine in the amount of twenty-fold to forty-fold, or public works for a term of one hundred fifty hours to two hundred fifty hours, or by restriction of liberty for a maximum term of three years, or by short-term imprisonment for a term of one to two months, or by imprisonment for a maximum term of four years.

    b) The act provided for in part (a) of this Article, which has been committed:

    i) through publicly exhibited artworks, mass media or using information or communication technologies;

    ii) by use of official or service authority or influence conditioned thereby — shall be punished by imprisonment for a term of two to five years.

    Regrettably, Pashinyan’s statements parallel the denialist strategy of the Turkish government. Turks raise similar questions to cast doubt on the veracity of the Armenian Genocide.

    Because Armenia’s judicial system is currently under Pashinyan’s control, no judge will dare to find him guilty. But when he is no longer in power, an independent judge will punish him for violating the law on genocide denial.

  • Erdogan is Said to be the Descendant Of a Greek Pro-Armenian Anarchist

    Erdogan is Said to be the Descendant Of a Greek Pro-Armenian Anarchist

    Over the years, many articles have appeared in the Turkish press claiming that various high-ranking Turkish officials are of Armenian or Kurdish origin.

    These officials have often vehemently denied the claim, but sometimes have ignored it in order to avoid drawing more attention to it. For example, several years ago, when it was claimed that Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan is of Armenian origin, he simply replied: “I regret that they are calling me Armenian.” Given the prevalent racism in Turkey, calling someone an Armenian is considered an insult.

    Former Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz was reported to be of Armenian origin, as well as Devlet Bahceli, the Chairman of the MHP (Nationalist Movement Party), a radical ultra-nationalist party. I recently found a YouTube video in which Isa Ilyasoglu, who served in Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT), claimed that Bahceli is of Armenian origin on his mother’s side. Ilyasoglu reported that during the genocide, a 16-year-old Armenian girl was kidnapped and raped by the Governor of Adana. That girl later became the grandmother of Bahceli who, contrary to what is indicated on his I.D. card, is not from Osmaniye, but from Halfeti, a town in the region of Urfa. As a child his family moved to the town of Bahce in Adana, where he acquired his last name, Bahceli.

    It is widely acknowledged that a large percentage of today’s Turks are descendants of Armenians, Greeks or Kurds, many of whom were Islamized and Turkified, particularly during the 1915 Genocide, when young Armenian children were abducted and adopted by Turkish families. Most of these children were too young to remember their ethnic origin. The Turkified and Islamized Armenians are often referred to as “Hidden Armenians.”

    However, over the years, many Turks have come forward stating that they have just discovered their Armenian origin. Some of them have even asked to be baptized in the Armenian Church and reconvert to Christianity.

    In 2018, The Turkish Government unexpectedly launched a website that revealed the ancestry of all Turkish citizens. Within days, millions of Turks rushed to find out their ethnic origin. As a result, the website crashed and shortly thereafter, it was shut down. Subsequently, the website was reinstated with “enhanced privacy measures.” There were several reports of Muslim Turks being shocked upon finding out that they had Armenian blood. One report claimed that an anti-Armenian Turkish fanatic, upon finding out that he was of Armenian origin, committed suicide.

    There is also a large group of Armenians in Turkey, known as Hemshens, who live in the Black Sea region. They were forcefully Islamized. Some of them have retained their Armenian traditions and native Armenian language which has a distinct dialect.

    In the YouTube video I recently found, the Turkish intelligence officer Ilyasoglu made sensational revelations about Turkish President Erdogan’s ethnic origin. I am not sure how true his report is, but given Ilyasoglu’s intelligence background, I could not ignore his claim.

    Ilyasoglu lived in England from 1995 to 1996 and moved to Germany in 2000. In 2005, he ran for the Turkish Parliament, but later withdrew his candidacy. He is currently the Chairman of the Resurrection Party which has the slogan, “one government, one nation, one flag and one religion – Turk.” He now lives in Germany. It is widely known that the Turkish government has many intelligence officers in Germany to spy on millions of Turks who live there, particularly Kurds and Erdogan’s political opponents.

    Erdogan’s I.D. card shows that he was born in Rize which is in the Greek Pontus region of Turkey. Ilyasoglu said in his video that “Erdogan’s father was a Greek man from Pontus. His mother was a Spanish Jew who came to Pontus via Georgia.” Ilyasoglu added: “If Erdogan dares, let him dispute it.”

    “The brother of one of Tayyip (Erdogan’s] grandparents was a Greek priest who, on the coast of the Black Sea, tried to establish the Pontus Greek Republic after the Russian-Turkish war.

    “His grandfather and his brother, who was a priest, were arrested, tried by the ‘Giresun Independence Court,’ sentenced to death in Giresun and hanged.” Ilyasoglu explained that he is from Giresun: “This is written in the memoirs of Judge Ali Kilic.”

    “In fact, Erdogan’s maternal great-grandfather, Tayyoub, was an anarchist, who after entering Turkish villages and committing murders, engaged in looting. Then, during the 1922 Marash Armenian rebellion, with his group, he sided with the Armenians, attacked Turkish soldiers and was killed in the Taurus Mountains.” Ilyasoglu added: “Let Tayyip Erdogan look for his maternal great-grandfather’s remains in the Taurus Mountains. In other words, his mother’s grandfather has no grave.”

    The above cited video is dated October 28, 2023. There are no reports in the Turkish media that Ilyasoglu was criticized or prosecuted for his sensational revelations about Erdogan, even though he has visited Turkey several times. Since the Turkish media is under the total control of Erdogan, no Turkish newspaper would dare to publish anything that may be upsetting to the President. It is not known why the Turkish government has not prosecuted Ilyasoglu for claiming that Erdogan’s forefathers are Greek. The reason could mean either that Ilyasoglu is telling the truth about Erdogan’s ancestry or that the President is reluctant to draw more attention to the claims in the video.

    According to a Turkish proverb, “a spoiled wine becomes bitter vinegar.” This can mean that some Islamized and Turkified Armenians become fervent enemies of Armenians. This is similar to the expression, “more Catholic than the Pope.”

  • Pashinyan Again Makes Anti-Armenia And Anti-Diaspora Statements

    Pashinyan Again Makes Anti-Armenia And Anti-Diaspora Statements

    The biggest tragedy of Armenians worldwide is that Armenia is ruled by a Prime Minister who is not only incompetent, but also anti-Armenian.

    During his interview with Armenia’s Public TV last Saturday, Nikol Pashinyan repeated once again his nonsense about the difference between ‘Real Armenia’ and ‘Historic Armenia.” He even claimed that ‘Historic Armenia’ is the enemy of today’s ‘Real Armenia.’ Just because wars and invasions have shifted Armenia’s boundaries over the centuries, it does not mean that there is no such thing as ‘Historic Armenia.’ Don’t be surprised if one day Pashinyan claims that Armenia has only existed since 2018 when he came to power!

    What Pashinyan is trying to do is deprive Armenians of the right to even dream of restoring ‘Historic Armenia,’ someday in the future. He naively thinks that by announcing that Armenia does not have any territorial demands from its neighboring countries, he will be able to convince Azerbaijan to sign a meaningless peace treaty with Armenia. The fact is that Pres. Aliyev has zero interest in signing a peace treaty. On the contrary, he repeatedly threatens to attack Armenia. He describes the Republic of Armenia as ‘Western Azerbaijan,’ demanding the settlement of 300,000 Azerbaijanis in Armenia.

    Rather than saying that we have no demands from anyone, Pashinyan should just keep his mouth shut. He should neither say we have demands nor say that we do not have demands. The reason is that Armenia is currently weak and cannot confront militarily its much stronger enemies — Azerbaijan and Turkey. However, it is wrong to declare that we do not have any territorial demands because that would give up Armenians’ right to regain someday their lost territories. To keep that dream alive, Armenia does not need to have a powerful army. It just needs to preserve its historic memory and transmit it to future generations until the day when, due to unexpected circumstances, the opportunity arises to recover what Armenians had lost. If they do not keep the dream alive, even when such an opportunity comes up, Armenians will not be able to take advantage of it because they have voluntarily given up that right.

    The best example is what the Jews were able to accomplish after losing their homeland 2,000 years ago. By preserving their dream of “Next Year in Jerusalem” and transmitting it to future generations, they were able to take advantage of the opportunity created in the 20th century to return to their historic homeland.

    In his interview on Public TV, Pashinyan stated that no one will sell weapons to Armenia if we keep mentioning Ararat as being our mountain. This is totally false. Saying Ararat or Arakads has nothing to do with acquiring weapons. It has everything to do with knowing how to run a country and a military, and having the funds to pay for the needed weapons. If saying Ararat would have deprived Armenia of obtaining weapons, how did Armenia acquire, before Pashinyan, billions of dollars of weapons which were regrettably captured by Azerbaijan during the 2020 war and are now displayed in Baku?

    When Pashinyan was asked about the appropriateness of his riding a bicycle or making an omelet on Facebook, while the country is on the edge of war, he replied: “all the institutions of our country are working even when I am riding a bicycle.”

    Pashinyan also excused his constant concessions to Azerbaijan by explaining that he does not want to respond to Azerbaijan’s escalatory rhetoric which is aimed at provoking new hostilities. He does not seem to understand that making concessions to the enemy does not deter war. On the contrary, it increases Aliyev’s appetite to demand more concessions.

    When asked about a Diasporan Armenian’s dream to return someday to his ancestral homeland, Pashinyan nonchalantly and insultingly said: “He lives in Australia, wants to return to the birthplace of his grandfathers, let him return. What does that have to do with the Republic of Armenia?” He continued: “Our compatriot lives in Australia, wants to return to the homeland of his grandfathers, which could be anywhere in the world, including Mush, Ardahan, Sis, but for that we should make our soldiers a target? Is that what we want? In other words, we want missiles to fall on our military units at any moment because there are people in Canberra who want to return to the birthplace of their grandfathers, which is Adana. Is this logical?”

    In response to a question as to why he has done nothing to secure the release of the Armenian hostages in Baku, Pashinyan replied: “There are superpowers today that have citizens in the same situation in different countries and they are unable to bring them back for years.”

    During his meeting with a group of Swiss-Armenians in Zurich las week, Pashinyan raised unnecessary questions about the basic facts of the Armenian Genocide: “We need to also return to the history of the Armenian Genocide. We need to understand what happened and why?” Pashinyan is probably the only Armenian in the world who does not know what happened in 1915. He then continued with a nonsense question: “How is it that in 1939 there was no agenda for the Armenian Genocide? And how is that in 1950 the Armenian Genocide agenda appeared?” Pashinyan does not even know that the term genocide did not exist in 1939. It was coined in the 1940’s by Raphael Lemkin. Until then Armenians referred to the mass murders of 1915 as massacres.

    As soon as a new patriotic leader comes to power in Armenia, he should announce that every one of Pashinyan’s orders, laws, statements and agreements are null and void.

  • Lobbyist for Genocide Denialist Turkey Should Donate Earnings to Armenians

    Lobbyist for Genocide Denialist Turkey Should Donate Earnings to Armenians

    Former Cong. Bob Livingston published a commentary in the Wall Street Journal last week asking outgoing U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to apologize for investigating the Livingston Group, a lobbying firm that was paid millions of dollars by the Government of Turkey to deny the Armenian Genocide and block its acknowledgment by the U.S. Congress.

    Livingston accused Garland of being “a tool in the Democratic Party’s strategy of misusing the Justice Department to visit injustice on innocent people with differing political views.” Livingston was a Republican congressman from 1977 to 1999. He was slated to become the Speaker of the House, but resigned after the revelation of his extramarital affair. Subsequently, he formed and headed the Livingston Group for 25 years.

    Livingston wrote in his commentary that “in 2022 two FBI agents came to my home in New Orleans and questioned me [for 2.5 hours] about incidents involving our representation of an international client in 2018.” The FBI agents presented “a search warrant for all my company’s records related to their questions.” The next day, the FBI informed him that he was “the target of felony charges.”

    Livingston claimed that in December 2023 an FBI agent interviewed one of his employees who “was scared to death. He went to bed on Dec. 31, 2023, and didn’t wake up the next day.” Livingston wrote that “every day and night for 20 months, I lived with the possibility that the hammer could drop at any moment. Everything I worked for would be tarnished. My firm would collapse, my employees would lose their jobs, all of us would be ruined in the press, and I could go to prison.”

    Livingston claimed that he and his firm were “innocent of all charges…. We spent incredible amounts of money on legal counsel, more than three times what we earned by representing the client at issue. Our attorneys prepared an 88-page brief rebutting all charges. They succeeded in backing prosecutors down, but I am convinced the department’s actions were political and malicious, targeting me as a lobbyist who has supported Donald Trump and been critical of President Biden…. The statute of limitations expired on our case in November, and prosecutors have said they are no longer interested in pursuing charges.”

    Rather than being satisfied that the charges against him and his firm were dropped, Livingston went on to claim that “members of the Trump administration and Mr. Trump himself have been hounded and arrested. They’ve had their lives ruined for minor white-collar infractions. Mr. Trump has prevailed over attempts to destroy him, but others have been less fortunate.” Livingston conveniently forgot that Trump was convicted of sexual abuse and 34 felonies, becoming the first U.S. President who is a convicted criminal.

    In order to put Livingston’s complaint in context, let us learn a little more about this man and see who should apologize to whom.

    The New York Times, in an article published on October 17, 2007, titled: “Turkey’s Man in the Lobbies of Capitol Hill,” provided a partial list of Livingston firm’s sinister activities on behalf of genocide denialist Turkey for millions of dollars.

    The Times described Livingston as “the main lobbyist for Turkey in blocking Congressional efforts to pass an Armenian genocide resolution. After succeeding twice before [in 2000 and 2004] — and collecting more than $12 million in fees for his firm, the Livingston Group — he is pushing once again for his client…. He escorted Turkish dignitaries to Capitol Hill to warn that the resolution threatened to destroy a strong Iraq war alliance.”

    “A surge of defections by [House] members who backed the resolution showed that Mr. Livingston’s high-powered effort was gaining momentum,” the Times reported. “Mr. Livingston has showered money on House and Senate members, the National Republican Congressional Committee and other political causes. He and his firm gave more than $200,000 in campaign donations in the last election cycle, records show.… The issue has pitted Turkey’s money and high-placed connections against a persistent and emotional campaign by Armenian-American citizens’ groups,” the Times wrote.

    To leave no stone unturned, the Turkish government had also recruited the “former Cong. Stephen J. Solarz whose firm got $165,000 this summer lobbying for Turkey under an arrangement with Mr. Livingston.” Furthermore, Turkey hired “another prominent lobbyist, Richard A. Gephardt, of Missouri, the former House majority leader and a Democrat” who had co-sponsored the Genocide Resolution while he was a House member. His firm, DLA Piper, signed a year-long lobbying contract with Turkey for $1.2 million. Just in the 12 months beginning in August 2005, Turkey spent $3.2 million on lobbyists and public relations firms.

    The Livingston group also lobbied for Azerbaijan, Congo and the Cayman Islands. “More than a quarter of the firm’s income, which has totaled more than $71 million, has come from foreign clients, records show,” the Times article revealed.

    Rather than asking Attorney General Garland to apologize, Livingston is the one who should apologize to the global Armenian community for spreading and profiting from his heinous lies denying the Armenian Genocide. Livingston should donate to Armenian-American organizations all $12 million his firm earned from Turkey to right the wrongs he and his firm committed.