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lunes, 16 de mayo de 2016

"Narratives": Ambassadors of Armenia and Turkey in Argentina Discuss Over a Book about Armenian Genocide

16.5.16
The Ambassadors of Armenia Alexan Harutyunyan and Turkey Taner Karakas in Argentina discussed in Perfil, after the newspaper published an excerpt from the book "Young Turks" by historian John Sahakl Kirakosyan.

The excerpt from the book that caused the Turkish reaction was published by Perfil on Sunday March 13 and recounted the context and discrimination suffered by the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in the years before the Genocide.

The Turkish Ambassador Taner Karakas, in a letter to the newspaper on May 7 entitled "Narratives of Armenia", repeated the new political line inaugurated by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on April 24, 2014 when he sent condolences to the Armenians: they no longuer deny the deaths of Armenians during that period, but Armenians themselves are blamed for causing them, they claim that Armenians do not to recognize the deaths of the other Ottoman citizens and they reject the term genocide to describe what happened, although it was a legal concept created by Raphael Lemkin specifically based on what happened to the Armenians.

"Turkey does not deny the difficulties which have affected many Ottoman Armenians during this period. However, it is firmly opposed to the exploitation of these difficulties by creating a selectively hierarchy of suffering," said Karakas in his letter. "From the second half of the nineteenth century, the support given by some influential Armenian groups and organizations to the policies of the northern neighbor destined to weaken and divide the Ottoman Empire was considered a major safety concerns. The actions and revolts of these separatist groups and armed attacks in areas with Ottoman Muslim population predominantly intensified the threat. During World War I, Armenians radical groups did not hesitate to join forces with the invaders armies to create an Armenian country," added the Turkish Ambassador, blaming the victims for their own deaths.

"People should also remember that a number of Turkish diplomats were killed after 1971 by Armenian terrorist organizations who staged the Armenian narrative as "genocide" propaganda," he concluded, calling for a "fair memory" that recognizes the speeches of Armenia and Turkey.

Armenian Ambassador Alexan Haroutunian replied harshly in a letter published on May 14 and entitled "Not 'Narrative': Argentina Law": "What surprised me most was not the denial, which is his illness, but the invocations to freedom of expression by the Ambassador of a country where talking of freedom of expression is the same as talking about the rights of Jews in Nazi Germany."

"The issue is not the 'narratives of Armenia', as you say, but the law of the country where you are accredited as Ambassador," continued Haroutunian. "Argentina has recognized the Armenian Genocide by the three branches of government: the Executive, Legislative and Judicial powers. You are talking against Argentinean law."

"The precision and historical rigor of Kirakosyan after years of research and testing on the barbaric genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire during the rule of the Young Turks, is just one point of view (sic) that, oh, coincides with other publications in Argentinean media," said Lala Toutonian, the writer and journalist who wrote the review in Perfil, in an open letter in Diario Armenia. "This blessed land welcomed the Armenian refugees arriving by boat from Greece generally, without speaking a word in Spanish, from the first day they fled and survived," added Toutonian. "When a lobbyist Turkish say what they have been saying from the time of the charge of their barbarism, that Genocide is narrative, it equally offends Argentines and Armenians."

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