{"id":15051,"date":"2009-10-01T21:31:30","date_gmt":"2009-10-01T19:31:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=15051"},"modified":"2023-04-06T15:42:15","modified_gmt":"2023-04-06T12:42:15","slug":"armenian-americans-divided-over-thaw-with-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2009\/10\/01\/armenian-americans-divided-over-thaw-with-turkey\/","title":{"rendered":"Armenian Americans Divided Over Thaw With Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"Armenia — Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian meets with the leadership of the Armenian Assembly of America in New York.<\/div>\n
01.10.2009<\/div>\n
Emil Danielyan<\/div>\n

The leading Armenian organizations in the United States expressed conflicting views on Armenia\u2019s dramatic rapprochement with Turkey as President Serzh Sarkisian started on Thursday a week-long intercontinental visit aimed at addressing Diaspora concerns about the U.S.-backed process.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sarkisian will spend the next few days touring major Armenian communities in France, the United States, Lebanon and Russia and discussing his conciliatory policy on Turkey with their prominent members. \u201cI am not going in order to convince them, I am
\ngoing to listen to them and tell them what I think,\u201d he told the presidential Public Council on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

According to a statement issued by his office, Sarkisian will first meet in Paris on Friday with leaders of Armenian community leaders from France and other European nations. He will then proceed to New York for similar discussions with representatives of the larger and more influential Armenian-American community. Among invited to the meeting are leaders of a U.S. chapter of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), one of the most vocal critics of the Turkish-Armenian agreements announced on August 31.<\/p>\n

In a statement issued on Wednesday, Dashnaktsutyun\u2019s Central Committee in the eastern United States said it has accepted the invitation. \u201cBut, let us be clear: We will attend this meeting because we do not want to forgo an opportunity to voice our strong and uncompromising opposition to these dangerous protocols,\u201d it said. \u201cWe will do so directly and forthrightly, letting the president know that the protocols he defends actually betray the national rights of the entire Armenian Nation: Armenia, the Armenian Diaspora, and Nagorno-Karabakh.\u201d<\/p>\n

The statement said Sarkisian\u2019s charm offensive is \u201cnot only late but lacking in political and moral sincerity\u201d as both Yerevan and Ankara have made clear that they will sign the two fence-mending protocols without any changes whatever the outcome of the ongoing debates in both countries. It also reiterated Dashnaktsutyun\u2019s arguments against a deal which the nationalist party says will make it harder for the Diaspora to gain greater international recognition of the Armenian genocide. \u201cThe protocols will satisfy the articulated aims of today\u2019s Turkish government to silence the enduring and still unanswered \u2018Armenian Question,\u2019\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n

The Dashnaktsutyun-controlled Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) is one of the two main Armenian groups that have for decades been lobbying the U.S. Congress to pass a formal genocide resolution. The other, more moderate group, the Armenian Assembly of America, has been far more supportive of the thaw in Armenia\u2019s relations with its historical foe.<\/p>\n

The Assembly joined on Thursday the Diaspora\u2019s largest charity, the Armenian General Benevolent Union, as well as two U.S. dioceses of the Armenian Apostolic Church in issuing a statement that welcomed Sarkisian\u2019s policy and the controversial agreements in particular. \u201cThe protocols announced on August 31st represent a marked change from the past,\u201d they said. \u201cTurkey has now publicly committed to establish normal relations without preconditions, and the process has yielded remarkable progress.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe path ahead will not be easy and will undoubtedly involve new twists and turns along the way. That makes it all the more important to understand that this is not the time to advance other agendas at the expense of Armenia’s future,\u201d the statement added in a thinly veiled attack on Dashnaktsutyun. \u201cAt this critical moment, we believe that the President of Armenia deserves our support.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Dashnaktsutyun statement deplored such views, claiming that they are not shared by the majority of an estimated one million Americans of Armenian descent. \u201cWe consider it likely that — for whatever reason — this minority will continue to maintain that unjustified position,\u201d it said.<\/p><\/div>\n

https:\/\/www.azatutyun.am\/a\/1841372.html<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Armenia — Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian meets with the leadership of the Armenian Assembly of America in New York. 01.10.2009 Emil Danielyan The leading Armenian organizations in the United States expressed conflicting views on Armenia\u2019s dramatic rapprochement with Turkey as President Serzh Sarkisian started on Thursday a week-long intercontinental visit aimed at addressing Diaspora concerns […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":783702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,7,34],"tags":[2129],"class_list":["post-15051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-armenia","category-armenian-question","category-usa","tag-turkey-and-armenia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15051","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=15051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}