{"id":11431,"date":"2009-04-21T21:38:59","date_gmt":"2009-04-21T18:38:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=11431"},"modified":"2014-01-01T20:56:18","modified_gmt":"2014-01-01T18:56:18","slug":"think-tanks-report-on-armenia-you-get-what-you-pay-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2009\/04\/21\/think-tanks-report-on-armenia-you-get-what-you-pay-for\/","title":{"rendered":"Think Tank\u2019s Report on Armenia: You Get What You Pay For"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Harut Sassounian<\/span><\/div>\n
Publisher, The California Courier<\/span><\/div>\n

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Several pro-establishment Washington think tanks, such as the Center for Strategic & International Studies, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Brookings Institution, Heritage Foundation, Council on Foreign Relations, and American Enterprise Institute, have recently published special reports that seek to influence U.S. policy-makers in favor of Turkey.<\/span><\/div>\n

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The latest such biased report, titled: “Turkey and Armenia: Opening Minds, Opening Borders,” was issued on April 14, by the International Crisis Group. Serving on the ICG\u2019s Board of Trustees are: Morton Abramovitz, former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey; Richard Armitage, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State and member of the Honorary Council of Advisors of U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce; Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. National Security Advisor to the President and member of the Honorary Council of Advisors of U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce; Guler Sabanci, Chairperson of Sabanci Holding, Turkey; and Stephen Solarz, former U.S. Congressman and lobbyist for Turkey. Listed among the ICG\u2019s senior advisors are: Ersin Arioglu, a member of the Turkish Parliament, and Shimon Peres, the President of Israel. Not surprisingly, the Foreign Ministry of Turkey is a major donor to the ICG. Not a single Armenian serves on ICG\u2019s board or on any of its advisory bodies.<\/span><\/div>\n

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The group\u2019s 40-page report makes outrageous suggestions that are extremely detrimental to Armenia\u2019s interests. Here is what the ICG recommends that the Armenian government do:<\/span><\/div>\n
— Establish bilateral commissions with Turkey, which would include a historical commission on the Armenian Genocide.<\/span><\/div>\n
— Prepare the public opinion for reconciliation with Turkey.<\/span><\/div>\n
— “Avoid statements or international actions relating to genocide recognition that could inflame Turkish public opinion against the current [reconciliation] process.”<\/span><\/div>\n
— “Start withdrawals from Armenian-occupied territories in Azerbaijan; and pursue peace with Azerbaijan in full consciousness that only in this way can normalizations with Turkey be consolidated.<\/span><\/div>\n
— “Make clear that Armenia has no territorial claim on Turkey by explicitly recognizing its territorial integrity within the borders laid out in the 1921 Treaty of Kars.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
— \u201cEncourage universities and institutes to pursue more research on matters relating to the events of 1915, preferably with the engagement of Turkish and third-party scholars; modernize history books and remove all prejudice from them; and organize the cataloguing of known Armenian archives pertaining to the events in and around 1915 wherever they may be located.”<\/span><\/div>\n

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The Executive Summary of the Report starts its first line by trying to perpetuate the false impression that \u201cTurkey and Armenia are close to settling [their] dispute.\u201d Everyone, except the \u201cexperts\u201d who drafted this report, knows full well that the negotiations between Armenia and Turkey have collapsed and that the problem between the two countries is not a \u201cdispute,\u201d but committing Genocide!<\/span><\/div>\n

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The Executive Summary makes the surprising statement that the views of Armenians and Turks on the Genocide are \u201cconverging,\u201d supposedly \u201cshowing that the deep traumas can be healed.\u201d Continuing to present fantasy as reality, the undisclosed authors of the report state: \u201cThe advance in bilateral relations demonstrates that a desire for reconciliation can overcome old enmities and closed borders. Given the heritage and culture shared by Armenians and Turks [!], there is every reason to hope that normalization of relations between the two countries can be achieved and sustained.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n

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One of the most outrageous comments made in the report is the one claiming that \u201chardline\u201d Diaspora representatives \u201chave softened\u201d their stance, dropping their \u201cdemands that Turkey surrender territory in its north east, where Armenians were a substantial minority before 1915.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
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The report welcomes Pres. Obama\u2019s \u201cprudent middle course,\u201d despite the fact that he \u201crepeatedly promised on the campaign trail to formally recognize\u201d the Armenian Genocide. Leaving no stone unturned in favoring Turkey, the ICG also suggests that the U.S. House of Representatives abandon the pending resolution on the Armenian Genocide.<\/span><\/div>\n

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Finally, the ICP urges that the United States, Russia and the European Union \u201cavoid legislation, statements and actions that might inflame public opinion on either side and so could upset the momentum towards Turkey-Armenia normalization and reconciliation.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n

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This report is full of faulty analysis and one-sided judgments. The sinister role played by think tanks such as the ICG should be exposed to the public at large and their reports discredited.<\/span><\/div>\n

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The document published by ICG reads more like the terms of capitulation imposed by a conquering army over a demolished nation than a professional report drafted by impartial wise men. Clearly, those who paid for it, dictated its content!<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Harut Sassounian Publisher, The California Courier Several pro-establishment Washington think tanks, such as the Center for Strategic & International Studies, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Brookings Institution, Heritage Foundation, Council on Foreign Relations, and American Enterprise Institute, have recently published special reports that seek to influence U.S. policy-makers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":774848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-armenian-question"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}