{"id":52776,"date":"2012-04-18T15:45:07","date_gmt":"2012-04-18T12:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=52776"},"modified":"2022-11-27T17:07:23","modified_gmt":"2022-11-27T14:07:23","slug":"two-faces-of-turkey-veneer-of-gentility-masking-ruthlessness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2012\/04\/18\/two-faces-of-turkey-veneer-of-gentility-masking-ruthlessness\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Faces of Turkey: Veneer of Gentility Masking Ruthlessness"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When Turkey\u2019s Foreign Minister met secretly with a group of Armenians in Washington last month, he wooed them with his sly smile and sugar-coated words. This was the fake facade of traditional Turkish diplomacy. <\/span><\/div>\n

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Last week, Turkey\u2019s UN Ambassador in New York revealed the nasty and aggressive face of his government. Upon learning that a symposium on the Armenian Genocide was going to be held at the UN on April 12, Turkey\u2019s Permanent Representative filed a protest with the Secretary General\u2019s office, trying to disrupt the event. <\/span><\/div>\n

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Organized by the Association for Trauma Outreach & Prevention (ATOP), the event was titled: \u201cToward Preventing Genocide, Nations Acknowledging their Dark History: Psychosocial, Economic and Cultural Perspectives.\u201d Following screening of Dr. J. Michael Hagopian\u2019s documentary, \u201cThe River Ran Red,\u201d the attendees heard addresses from filmmaker Carla Garapedian, Dr. Dennis Papazian, Prof. Ervin Staub, and Garen Nazarian, Armenia\u2019s UN Ambassador. <\/span><\/div>\n

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Encouraged by Turkey\u2019s 2007 success in obstructing a reference to the Armenian Genocide in a UN exhibit on Rwanda, the Turkish Ambassador tried to force the UN to cancel last week\u2019s Armenian Genocide symposium. Fortunately, Armenia\u2019s UN Mission, official sponsor of the event, stood its ground and the symposium took place as planned, albeit with some minor disturbances. <\/span><\/div>\n

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At the start of the event, two Turkish diplomats entered the meeting room without an invitation, and repeatedly attempted to disrupt the proceedings. They kept on shouting, accusing the speakers of defaming Turkey, and refused to comply with the organizer\u2019s request to submit all comments and questions in writing. As the commotion continued, UN security officers were called in, and the two undiplomatic Turkish diplomats left the hall, inanely shouting: \u201cwe are the security, we own the security, and we pay for the security!\u201d <\/span><\/div>\n

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In his introductory remarks, Amb. Nazarian observed that \u201c97 years ago, a state-devised plan unleashed a crime whose magnitude and consequences were unparalleled not only in the history of the Armenian nation but also in the history of the world. The plan of extermination of the Armenians was implemented by the Ottoman Empire\u2019s state machine through all its structures and carried out with exact instructions.\u201d <\/span><\/div>\n

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Prof. Papazian\u2019s remarks were titled: \u201cSovereignty, Nationalism, Racism vs. Humanism and Intellectual Freedom: The Causes and Cures of Genocide.\u201d He expressed his discontent \u201cthat the Armenian Genocide is not recognized by the present day Turkish government as a crime committed by its predecessor government under the dictatorship of the Committee for Union and Progress\u201d; \u201cthat the people of Turkey are denied free access to accurate sources because of Article 301 of the Turkish Criminal Code which makes it a crime to insult Turkishness\u201d; and \u201cthat such [Ottoman] collections as the confiscated properties archives and the military archives are not open to inspection by objective scholars.\u201d <\/span><\/div>\n

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Prof. Staub spoke about \u201cOvercoming Evil: Preventing Genocide and Creating Peaceful Societies.\u201d He stated that \u201cacknowledgement by perpetrators, bystanders, and the world in general of a group’s suffering has great value for both healing and reconciliation.\u201d However, \u201cperpetrators rarely, and only with great difficulty, acknowledge their acts and show regret,\u201d because of \u201ctheir profound devaluation of the victims, their ideology, and their unacknowledged shame.\u201d <\/span><\/div>\n

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Carla Garapedian explored the \u201cEconomic Consequences of Acknowledging the Genocide.\u201d She related that J. Michael Hagopian had recorded the testimonies of genocide survivors so that their voices would be heard someday at an international tribunal deciding what restitution Turkey would have to pay to heirs of the victims. <\/span><\/div>\n

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Not counting the value of the properties, lands and other assets confiscated from Armenian victims of the genocide perpetrated by the Turkish government, Garapedian assessed as $15 billion the restitution value of the 1.5 million Armenians who had perished. Her estimate is based on Germany\u2019s $60 billion restitution payment for the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust since 1952. Garapedian concluded by suggesting that no state should profit from violating the law and unjustly enrich itself, asserting that a criminal state should not be allowed to keep the fruits of its crime. <\/span><\/div>\n

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This week, Dr. Ani Kalayjian, President of ATOP, sent a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon complaining about the \u201cdisruptive, unprofessional, and arrogant behavior\u201d of the two Turkish diplomats. She wondered how the UN could bring peace to the world, when it cannot establish order at an event held at its own headquarters!<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0       \u00a0   When Turkey\u2019s Foreign Minister met secretly with a group of Armenians in Washington last month, he wooed them with his sly smile and sugar-coated words. This was the fake facade of traditional Turkish diplomacy.   \u00a0   Last week, Turkey\u2019s UN Ambassador in New York revealed the nasty and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4101,"featured_media":774085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3488],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-harut-sassounian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52776","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\/4101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}