WASHINGTON, DC (Press Release) –As part of a Congressional Delegation to the Middle East and Asia focused on terrorism, homeland security and the war in Syria, Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) had separate meetings with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, President Abdullah Gul and other Turkish high government officials.
In his meeting with the Prime Minister, Schiff challenged the notion expressed by Erdogan in a recent interview that because there are Armenian survivors still living in Turkey, there could have been no genocide. This is the equivalent, Schiff argued, of saying that because some Jews in Europe escaped death, there was no Holocaust. Schiff also questioned whether it was possible to have the open discourse in Turkey about the events of 1915-1923 that Erdogan called for in his statement of April 23rd, if Turkish professors, historians, journalists and ordinary citizens still faced demotion, intimidation, potential prosecution or violence for expressing the conviction that the Armenian Genocide is a historic fact.
In his meeting with President Gul, Schiff said that he wanted to speak for the many tens of thousands of his constituents of Armenian descent who may never get the chance to address the President directly.
“You will not find one of my 80,000 Armenian constituents untouched by the Genocide,” he said. “Each of them has lost a parent or grandparent, their cousins, brothers or sisters, or their entire family. Their pain is real, their wounds are open, this is no distant relic of the past. To say, as you and the Prime Minister have, that yes, Armenians suffered but so too did Turks during World War I, is akin to saying that the Germans also suffered during World War II. It is true that many German civilians died, many noncombatants, but that does not negate the Holocaust any more than the fact that many Turks died could negate the Genocide. To propose, as you have, that a historic commission be established to ascertain the facts of the Genocide is not unlike suggesting that a commission needs to be established to determine whether the Holocaust took place.”
Schiff also raised the issue of Kessab, and his concern over the forced evacuation of the historic Armenian community there and the wellbeing of those residents who are now refugees in Turkey. He also urged Turkey to decouple the blockade of Armenia from resolution of the issues concerning Nagorno Karabagh, so that we can bring about an end to Armenia’s economic isolation and a normalization of trade relations.
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Preceding provided by Congressman Adam Schiff
All uneducated people, you have to listen both sides, only then you can judge about a nation. Did you listen both sides?
the Turkish archives have been sanitized but that matters not because the Turks have no access to foreign including US and soon to open to the public Vatican archives,
one Jewish eyewitness Sara Aronnson was so distressed of what she saw that she could no recover from the shock.
in spite of all that Armenia extends its hand to reconcile and normalize relations, but revenge runs deep in Turkish culture and they are only sorry that there were some survivors who remember.
Britishcptr;
Were you there in 1915 and prior to that when the first massacres broke out from Bloody Sultan Hamid (Hamidian Massacres) Well my grandparents came from Van and they were invaded by Turkish Gendarmes by order of the young Turk’s regime (3 pashas) who were later tried in absentee under war crimes and found guilty but fled to Europe and elsewhere like cowards. We know what their fate was now don’t we? Under operation nemesis justice was served and even Germany would not find Soghomon Tehrliian guilty of murder of a butcher.
My Grandparents witnessed German soldiers as allies with the Ottomans that is a known historical fact, and the original cables /communication exist ordering the extermination of Armenians to make room for the railway the “allies” wanted connecting the middle east to North Africa. This is WELL documented in history books throughout the world and by our US Ambassador to Constantiople at the time Henry Morganthau (you remember Constaniople don’t you? the Eastern Vatican city with the beautiful church St. Hagia Sofia that your ancestors shamelessly converted to a mosque and changed the name of the town to Istanbul) It’s pretty creepy to deny that your grand mosque was built by Christian hands as a church and converted.
The Ottomans were cowards, they removed the men from our villages and slaughtered them early on, then next came the intellectuals and business leaders like my great grandparents. All they had to deal with was women, children and elderly. Turkish Gendarmes came to OUR towns and villages OUR homes since way before 301 AD some 6 centuries before the arrival of the Ossoman Turkic Mongolian Tribes from Central Asia who raped, killed their way in as uncivilized barbarians. Assyrians, Pontic Greeks, Circasians, Lebanese Maronites, Kurds, Greeks were also slaughtered by the blood thirsty killers.
Extensive records also exist in the US Library of Congress among photos of orphans and widows but the first humanitarian effort of the USA “American Near East Relief” voted in by US CONGRESS with Nestle food giant to specifically educated, feed, cloth and care for 130,000 Armenian orphans. Over 200 Orphanages were built by the American Near East Relief and countless books photos exist by non-Armenians throughout Europe and the grandchildren of the missionaries that came from Switzerland, Norway, America, France and beyond, to save “the Starving Armenians”
No records exist about some 500K+ Turks that supposedly died, no one started hearing about this “story” until about 20 years ago as Turkey’s defense propaganda. Here is the facts, your Ottoman Empire left its bloody path into eastern Europe to the gates of Vienna where the brave Austrians fought off the Ottomans. Even your muslim brothers in the middle east were slaughtered because they were not “turkified enough” and into northern Africa the Ottoman ugly Caliphate spread. Today Europe doesn’t want you, even your muslim middle east brothers don’t trust you, and your only trading partner Israel has cooled their relations. The only buddies you have is your russified Turkic Persian retarded little brother Azerbaijan and the terrorists of Pakistan that purchase weapons from Turkey to create Jihad. Erdogan has embraced the Muslim brotherhood and facilitated the invasion of Syria, Libya and Eygypt by foreigners as ordered by your master NATO and exiled Imam Fethullah Gulen (CIA Gladio B)
Face it you don’t own Turkey, NATO and Western powers do.
Lastly it is interesting your screen name has British in it.
My grandfather was recruited by a British officer by the name of T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) that rounded up the Arab tribes to fight the dirty spread of Ottomanism. You really should read his books or perhaps the movie “Lawrence of Arabia” it shows the destruction the Ottomans wrecked on everyone.
It you can’t own up to your history without lame excuses of “wa wa” those Armenians were trouble makers and they deserved to die every woman, child, infant to remove the Armenian culture from what we know today as Republic of Turkey (est 1923) Your past is stained with darkness as America’s is for the deliberate genocide of our indigent people. At least we admit it in our history books and have made restitution to the Native Americans.
Lift the dark stain off your shoulders and maybe the world will respect Turkey instead of having contempt and distrust. Lastly I wanted to remind you that many people are now coming forward in Turkey to bravely talk about the Armenian genocide and some like famous Attorney Fethiye Cetin are sharing with the world they had Armenian roots via an Armenian orphan married into the family.
These people still speak about the Armenian Genocide: Nobel Prize Winner Orphan Pamuk, Turkish Scholar Taner Akcam and MORE despite being threatened with jail, fined or worse killed like Turkish Armenian Hrant Dink.
You shame your history for not embracing what the world knows and 23 countries have officially recognized as well as 40 states in America.
Be honest and come clean so we can all move forward. Stand tall and make the world respect you instead of scorn.
Dear Adam Schiff,
You are of course no historian and probably have no qualifications on History of Anatolia circa 1915.. when you talk about this subject, you do need a hefty dose of unbiased historical facts; not folklore.. Turks will also tell you a lot of folklore about the Armenian atrocities. Apart from Warsaw uprising the unfortunate Jews had not attacked the German Wehrmacht but the Armenians murdered in cold blood 536,000 Turkish civilians (when their menfolk had gone to war), committed grand treachery by siding with invading Russians against their own Government (then Ottoman), Armenians even had the audacity to fight with the Germans during the WW2 by joining SS Waffen (about 4000 Armenian volunteers) and the Wehrmacht (about 12,000 volunteers) .. Currently Armenia and Russia are great pals even allying themselves with Iran as Armenia and Iran provide a convenient corridor for the Russians in case they decide to move down to Gulf.. This is, for sure, not in the best interest of USA, Turkey or NATO!
We think you do need a short, sharp history lessons before siding with anyone!
Britishcptr I’m not sure what history books you’ve read, but please do us all a favor and don’t pass yourself off as a historian! I don’t know of an Armenian who was not impacted by the 1915 Armenian Genocide committed by the barbaric Turks, including myself. You have some nerve with your ignorant self to chime in with your idiotic letter to Adam Schiff. The genocide was a deliberate and a systematic act carried out by the government of Turkey to wipe out Armenians from their ancestral lands of thousands of years. They will be brought to justice sooner or later as a nation and that time is nearing. I wish there was a way to zap you back in time so you can witness the horror our people underwent so you can choke on your insensitive words…. The terror and suffering was so bad I can’t even wish it on you. …
Abraham Foxman and his Anti-Defamation League, who openly deny the Armenia genocide to appease Turkey, says that the Armenian genocide was a result “consequence of World War I that led to tantamount genocide.”
To understand what Foxman’s ADL is saying, think of applying the same description to the Holocaust during War War II. Consequence is opposite of intent. To say that, there was no intention, means that it was not genocide, which contravenes the 1948 UN convention and definition of genocide, which requires the element of intent.
You will see that ADL’s Abraham Foxman and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad actually have something in common. Both are genocide deniers.
As Rabbi Hillel said, “If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?”
Jurist Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent and Holocaust survivor, coined the word “genocide” and first applied it to describe the barbarity that befell the Armenians at the hands of the Turkish State.
Dr. Lemkin explained that the Turks committed genocide with the full intent to annihilate. Lemkin explained, “I became interested in genocide because it happened so many times, first to the Armenians, then after the Armenians, Hitler took action.” – CBS News Interview 1949