WISHFUL THINKING… AFFORDABLE

Armenia and Armenian ideologists have experienced yet another disappointment. US President Barack Obama, who promised in his election campaign to have the so-called Armenian genocide recognized, did not pronounce the word "genocide" in his traditional address. As was the case last year, he only referred to a "massacre", thus confirming willy-nilly that he can't risk US strategic interests no matter what obligations he may have assumed before Armenians. However, it appears that both the wolves have eaten much and the sheep have not been touched!

First, Ankara is pleased that Obama has not sacrificed the alliance with Turkey for Armenians' trumped-up claims. "The statement by the US president has been made within the frames of our sensitivity," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said.

Secondly, Armenians have found comfort in the word "massacre", which, in their view, is a much broader and succinct concept.

At the same time, by not using the word "genocide, Obama provoked yet another outburst of emotion in Armenia, a country flaring with hatred for its neighbors, which has exposed Armenians' true attitude towards America and Barack Obama personally. This is how Armenian bloggers "thank" Obama on the site of a well-known Armenian news agency: "What should we expect from the grandson of a Kenyan shepherd? Brothers and sisters, we have no peers on the battlefield, but we have always lost when we hoped for and believed in anyone besides ourselves. Has history taught us nothing at all? Barack seems to have deceived us too. He has become president with our help, but then, as was the case with his predecessors, successfully dumped us." Here is another example: "I can't understand Armenians. America will never recognize the genocide. It is not in its interests. There are no friends in politics, there are interests. Do you think they will spoil their own relations with the Turkic world for Armenians? Of course not. They know Armenians' weaknesses and are using them to blackmail Turkey. America couldn't care less about Armenians. Russia used Dashnaks in World War One and then left them to their fate and established a small state on Azerbaijani land. The biggest present from Russia to Armenians is the hatred for the neighbors."

Infuriated Armenians disclose the essence of the issue themselves, confirming that the genocide issue is just a means of political pressure on Turkey. It is for this reason that Armenia and its benefactors are opposed to the establishment of an independent international commission made up of authoritative historians. Opponents of such a commission have serious reservations due to the inevitability of a scrupulous examination of the issue. 

First, full access to all archive materials will expose Dashnak atrocities and provocations on the part of their benefactors, which will not play into their hands. Therefore, the repeated suggestions of Turkey regarding a complete mutual access are being rebuffed by Dashnaktsutyun whose archives are behind seven seals in the USA. But Ankara must also work with Russia, Great Britain, France and USA towards opening of the archives, so that justice could be re-established. These documents contain evidence of the Dashnaks simultaneously killing Armenians and Turkish soldiers and then portraying the former as victims and the latter as a result of retribution by the Armenians.

Secondly, the myth of the killing of 1.5 million Armenians will thus be exposed. According to authoritative sources, there was a maximum of 1.3 million Armenians living in the Ottoman empire before World War One. The initial statements by Armenians that around 300,000 people were killed subsequently transformed into 1.5 million people. According to the then American mission, those developments led to the killing of a maximum of 500,000 Armenians, most of whom died during mass resettlement to southern provinces of the Ottoman empire. On the other hand, what size of a military contingent (with the armament of the time) should have been engaged by the Ottoman empire to exterminate so many people? In other words, there can be no talk of a deliberate killing of Armenians, not to mention the killing in such numbers.

But why do the Armenians insist on the killing of 1.5 million people, sometimes bringing this figure to 2 million? An interesting theory has been proposed by a well-known Azerbaijani political analyst and the head of a department on international relations of Baku Slavic University, Oqtay Aliyev: "According to different estimates, the number of Armenians living in the whole world at the time ranged between 2.5 and 3 million people. Today, while claiming that more than half of the world's Armenians were killed, Armenians are trying to prove that the goal of the Ottoman Empire was to exterminate the whole nation, which is the shortest way to the recognition of the Armenian genocide by the world." As an expert in ethnic cleansing facts in modern history, Oqtay Aliyev is drawing his attention to another interesting aspect. "To dot all the i's and cross the t's in this issue, Armenians should first of all produce mass graves of victims of those developments. They should be located in the southeastern part of modern Turkey and on the territory of Syria. But even that is not enough. Only after the remains have been identified will it be possible to pass a complete and fair decision on the issue. Thank God, modern technologies are capable of coping with such a task with the maximum degree of accuracy. As an example we can refer to the mass grave in Azerbaijan's Quba District (it has been proven that this is a burial site of victims of a massacre unleashed by the Dashnaks in 1918) and on the territory of former Yugoslavia. The stubborn reluctance of the Armenians to recognize these graphic examples proves again that Armenians are afraid of being exposed. Moreover, identification can reveal completely the opposite, i.e. it will be proved that most of the remains belong to other ethnicities killed by the Dashnaks."

Besides, for complete clarity the issue must be considered by an international court. And although the prosecutor of the Hague international tribunal, L. Moreno-Okampo, told the Armenian justice minister that the court may discuss the "Armenian genocide" issue, this is hardly in the interests of Armenians.

First, for the verdict to be passed Armenia's empty statements or engaged parliamentarians from different countries will not be enough. There must be specific evidence, which, as we have said, is just not there.

Second, the convention on the prevention of the genocidal crime and punishment for it, which received international legal status in December 1948, does not envisage its retroactive application. On the other hand, only signatory states may be held liable under the convention, while Ottoman Turkey could not have been as such. This has repeatedly been stated by well-known and authoritative lawyers from many countries, including the USA.

Third, before this can happen, the European Court of Human Rights is to consider accusations leveled against Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, the organizer of genocide in the Azerbaijani town of Xocali, following Ankara's demands. It would be appropriate to recall a recent statement by a member of the British House of Lords, Lord Maginis: "It would not be appropriate to discuss in detail what happened a century ago. It would be better to resolve the Upper Qarabag conflict, which is also a problem, instead of looking back to what happened in the Ottoman Empire a hundred years ago. There are no grounds or justifications for both parties, but I believe that attempts of the Armenians and Russians have provoked a conflict, which led to the killing of a large number of people who were in difficult conditions."

Fourth, Turkey may file a claim with the international court against countries (especially such as Sweden, which cooperated with Germany during World War Two) which have recognized the "Armenian genocide", accuse them of prejudice and attempts to usurp the prerogative of this international organization.  

Considering all these circumstances, Armenia is dodging the historical and legal investigation into the developments of a hundred years ago by persistently trying to secure a political assessment of the "Armenian genocide" myth, most notably on the part of the USA. The goal is quite simple. Recognition by Washington would serve as a signal for other countries overtly or covertly supporting the Armenians. Provocative voices supporting the Armenians can be heard already now - even from countries opposed to the USA. 

A Viktor Konoplev, in an article "Has Russia recognized Armenian genocide?" posted on the web-site of pro-Armenian news agency Regnum, showered criticism on Russian authorities. "On 14 April 1995, the Russian State Duma unanimously approved a statement on the 'Condemnation of the Armenian genocide in 1915-1920'. After fifteen years, one wants to return to this document because the correct words stated in it have remained on paper because Russia has not taken substantive and practical steps over this period to implement the statement."

It is worthy of note that in his lengthy article V. Konoplev provides a whole list of "genocidal" acts committed by Azerbaijanis and Turks in the ADR, in Kemal's Turkey and in independent Azerbaijan in 1980-1990s. Such odious statements provide an explicit answer to the question "Why do Armenians insist on a genocide in 1915-1923?". This is the only way of terrorizing modern Turkey, which is the successor of Kemal's Turkey, and Azerbaijan. Otherwise, there will be no-one to hold responsible. 

On the other hand, why should the present generations be held accountable for what allegedly happened a century ago?

An answer to this question can be found in another article on the web-site of the same Regnum news agency, headlined "Why do Russia and the Russians always owe something to someone?" (authors Y. Zhurba and D. Klenskiy, members of the board of "Klenskiy's list" non-profit organization). While acknowledging Stalin's horrendous repressions, authors explain most of his actions by the requirements of time. "History develops on the basis of a sum of facts, which determine the overall development direction. Napoleon, Hitler, Lenin and Stalin were carriers and implementers of an idea, but they are the objective choice of history. The same Napoleons and Hitlers live among us today. However, the circumstances and the course of history today have made these people unclaimed by contemporary history. Informed rights champions should also acknowledge the personality factor. This may be a dictator sacrificing other people's lives, in this case his fellow countrymen, but he does it not out of a whim but in an effort to resolve issues of existential nature." 

Authors provide other examples from history: "If we move on to historical personalities, it will be difficult to understand why US presidents F. Roosevelt and H. Truman are not seen by our and Russian rights champions as 'devil incarnates'. The former, following a treacherous attack on Pearl Harbor, interned all Japanese living on the US Pacific coast (of which 62 per cent had US citizenship) and put 110,000 of them into American camps. The latter, without any military need whatsoever, dropped two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki with their populations! Why doesn't anyone in the West call the leader of English bourgeois revolution O. Cromwell an evildoer? Wasn't it him who triggered the great settlement of Europeans to North America which ended in the genocide of the Indians who lived there? And what about Napoleon? He was considered a monster not only by the whole feudal Europe, including Russia, but also future Decemberists. It is known that the French emperor's invasive wars and the universal introduction of the famous Legal Code of Napoleon has had exclusively progressive consequences - feudal Europe got on a bourgeois development track."

And didn't the ottoman Empire experience equally difficult times, having also encountered Armenian treachery at home? After that it had to secure itself by resettling Armenians to areas deep inside the country. This is what a former adviser to ex-US president Ronald Reagan, lawyer Bruce Fein, said in this regard: "If Armenians are so sure of their own statements, then why aren't they applying to the international court? They are not doing that because the subsequent investigation will have to disclose archives and the examination will reveal that Armenians had betrayed the Ottoman Empire to become independent, were killing Muslim Turks and committing acts of terror."

Another aspect is that the developments in Bosnia were recognized as a crime against humanity, but no-one has blamed Serbia as a state and only individual leaders of the country were convicted.

Experts believe that the issue of "Armenian genocide" recognition has become an obsession for the Armenians and their benefactors. And there is nothing for Turkey to worry about. The world's leading states cannot always ignore the historical reality, at least because of their own geopolitical interests.

Even the enviable activity of Armenia proper in this issue represents a carefully thought-out strategy intended to distract the international community's attention from the Upper Qarabag war and soften the principled stance of Ankara.

And it would certainly be appropriate for US President Obama, the mercantile US congressmen and all of Armenia's yes-men to thoroughly study the work of a former American judge, a lawyer from Arkansas, Samuel Weems, "Armenia: secrets of a 'Christian' terrorist state". The book's wrapper says "This book must be read by every Christian and every American taxpayer!" Weems indicates that he knows at least one good reason why the whole Muslim world hates America: "A tiny state of Armenia, using its tribesmen scattered around the world, has been making effort for many years to set the Christian world against Islam and Muslims. It is truly tragic that there is a small group of Americans of Armenian descent promoting a campaign of hatred for Turkey, a country which has been America's long and trusted ally. This small gang compels our legislature to pass completely meaningless resolutions, accusing Turkey of the so-called genocide of 1915." The book provides numerous facts discovered in the archives of different countries and proving that Americans of Armenian origin spread the false stories about genocide only to receive money from both Turks and Christian Americans to reward their 150-year-old "ancient" motherland. Weems asks his countrymen: "Who do you trust more - American witnesses who saw with their eyes Armenians living the Ottoman Empire safe and sound, or the Armenians saying that 1.5 million of them had been killed by the Ottoman government? This book is based on historical evidence, including Armenian sources. American Christians have the opportunity to decide who is telling the truth and who makes up fables exclusively for their own selfish interests. Armenians are using their church to pursue a policy of terrorism. They have implemented a policy of genocide against the Muslims of Qarabag. The present-day totally corrupt Armenia respects those who fought on the side of Hitler. The Armenian lobby in America is trying to undermine the friendship between Washington and Baku, while well-paid Armenian agents do everything in their power to form US public opinion."

This book is a wonderful answer to Armenian benefactors who, using historical gibberish as an instrument of political blackmail, have themselves turned into a tool in the hands of ideologists of the so-called "Great Armenia".