With impeachment dominating everything from news headlines to dinner conversations to the halls of Congress, America’s most vital international relationships are easily lost in the shuffle.
It starts with Ukraine, the foreign country at the center of the scandal. The impeachment proceedings place U.S. ties with Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky — a man elected by the Ukrainian people to help solve the country’s deadly conflict with Russia and to deliver what some call a “revolution of dignity” — in a perilous position.
The much-discussed <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/official-readout-president-trump-s-july-25-phone-call-with-ukraine-s-volodymyr-zelensky/4b228f51-17e7-45bc-b16c-3b2643f3fbe0/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/official-readout-president-trump-s-july-25-phone-call-with-ukraine-s-volodymyr-zelensky/4b228f51-17e7-45bc-b16c-3b2643f3fbe0/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1579801320101000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFeiE-OAXVQlo6ZbKlHaqiHwHpBOQ">call</a> between President Donald Trump and Zelensky has become famous not for the world leaders’ conversation on a diplomatic roadmap featuring defense and energy collaboration, but rather on the alleged quid pro quo that sparked the impeachment inquiry.
For Ukraine, the allegations are harmful, at best, and disastrous, at worst. The young post-Soviet state depends on a $400 million annual aid package from the U.S. in order to defend itself against Russia, which in 2014 annexed Crimea in defiance of international law. Yet at this time, when Ukraine remains highly vulnerable to Russian intervention, Kiev’s allies in Washington are engulfed by the continued fallout of the Trump-Zelensky call.
In fact, American support for Ukraine is part of a longer-term strategy. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the U.S. has supplied foreign aid to Ukraine in hopes of fostering pro-Western political and military ties — and it has worked. When Russia annexed Crimea, the U.S. swiftly sanctioned Russia and increased its military backing of Ukraine.
Now, American assistance to Ukraine has transformed into a political football. Trump initially withheld military aid funds, for example, ahead of his call with Zelensky — though they have long since been delivered. Ultimately, any threat to these bilateral relations could simultaneously erode Ukraine’s independence and undercut Washington’s strategic objectives in its ongoing rivalry with Moscow. On the latter issue, one of the most vital aspects of American-Ukrainian diplomatic relations is energy independence. Ukraine and another U.S. ally in the region, Azerbaijan, are studying the possible expansion of the Azerbaijani-led Southern Gas Corridor initiative, which bypasses Russia and promises to diversify the gas supplies available to Europe.
“Ukraine supports the implementation of the Southern Gas Corridor project,” <a href="https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/ukrayina-ta-azerbajdzhan-aktivizuyut-spivpracyu-u-sferi-mizh-58929" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/ukrayina-ta-azerbajdzhan-aktivizuyut-spivpracyu-u-sferi-mizh-58929&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1579801320101000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGLAmXztou5dUS8jcg0c0MdmQfL7w">Zelensky told the press</a> following a meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Baku last month. “We have agreed to consider its expansion. This is an important factor in the diversification of the gas supply to European consumers.”
America’s strategic ties in the region also bring to light the moral compass of U.S. foreign policy. In particular, it is incumbent upon the U.S. to be consistent in its treatment of post-Soviet separatist conflicts, as well as to respect the territorial integrity of all post-Soviet states and regions. This priority spans from Ukraine to Azerbaijan and from Crimea to Nagorno-Karabakh, the territory which is the source of the decades-long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Armenia carries out an ongoing, illegal occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven other adjacent regions of Azerbaijan — in violation of several U.N. resolutions as well as the <a href="https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/eur/rt/snec/c7560.htm" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/eur/rt/snec/c7560.htm&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1579801320101000&amp;usg=AFQjCNF0tsytOIeYg8_8enkV7h2pxJ5V2A">U.S. State Department policy</a> that “supports the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.”
At the same time, some of the most vocal congressional advocates for impeachment over the Ukraine allegations — Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Jackie Speier (D-CA), Frank Pallone (D-NJ), and Brad Sherman (D-CA) — are <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/miller-impeachment-focused-house-democrats-should-clean-their-own-house" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.dailywire.com/news/miller-impeachment-focused-house-democrats-should-clean-their-own-house&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1579801320101000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFB5b7y0glonStMlfNCnQCaG1laPA">among Capitol Hill’s leading backers of the Armenian occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh</a>.
Ukraine and Azerbaijan have also consistently supported one another on the issues of restoring sovereignty and territorial integrity within internationally recognized borders.
“Our relations withstood the tests of time,” Zelensky <a href="https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/ukrayina-ta-azerbajdzhan-demonstruyut-blizki-poziciyi-z-baga-58921" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/ukrayina-ta-azerbajdzhan-demonstruyut-blizki-poziciyi-z-baga-58921&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1579801320101000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGzkKbiPeneZTVepBme61R-N2CoYA">said in a separate statement</a> to the media last month. “We have always helped one another in difficult moments, very difficult moments of modern history. So, Azerbaijan has been, is and will be a reliable friend for Ukraine, and I am sure that it will be a strategic partner.”
Russia and Armenia — the respective occupiers of internationally recognized Ukrainian and Azerbaijani territories — also have their own foundational strategic relationships. Yet they maintain those alliances with a number of adversaries of the U.S. and rogue states, such as Iran, Nicaragua, Sudan, Syria, and Venezuela.
As a world power, America has a responsibility to stand up not only for its own strategic interests, but also for the broad principles of sovereignty and respect for nations&#8217; internationally recognized lands. All-consuming episodes likes impeachment, however, threaten to disrupt the balance and direction of U.S. policy. Rather than succumbing to its domestic polarization, America must prioritize the strategic relationships that will outlive the Trump era.
&nbsp;
<a href="https://www.jpost.com/Author/Maayan-Jaffe-Hoffman">Maayan Hoffman</a> is news editor and head of online content and strategy at The Jerusalem Post. She has been an American-Israeli international journalist for more than two decades.

U.S. President Trump At The World Economic Forum (WEF)

HOFFMAN: Impeachment Threatens America’s Strategy Toward Post-Soviet States

Armenians

Donald Trump

Foreign Policy

Impeachment

Russia

Soviet Union

Ukraine

Led by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the contingent of impeachment investigators in Congress continue to garner headlines over the probe into the administration’s alleged corruption and solicitation of foreign interference. But perhaps Schiff and his colleagues should first clean their own house.
Flying well under the radar of the ongoing impeachment frenzy was the news that the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund (Armenia Fund) recently <a href="https://jam-news.net/armenian-telethon-charity-drive-raises-record-low-of-10-mln-in-wake-of-scandal/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://jam-news.net/armenian-telethon-charity-drive-raises-record-low-of-10-mln-in-wake-of-scandal/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679908000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGlD5vfR-IDCz23fHUhqSeeshriIA">raised a record-low $10 million</a> during its annual telethon a year after the <a href="http://asbarez.com/173346/hayastan-all-armenian-funds-director-arrested-for-embezzlement/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://asbarez.com/173346/hayastan-all-armenian-funds-director-arrested-for-embezzlement/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679908000&amp;usg=AFQjCNE5YZflNFXABHuRX2xu6X2sx5KBqg">arrest of its director, Ara Vardanyan</a>, on charges of embezzlement and misuse of funds. The same telethon raised <a href="http://asbarez.com/59644/more-than-35-million-raised-in-armenia-fund-telethon/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://asbarez.com/59644/more-than-35-million-raised-in-armenia-fund-telethon/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679908000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHrKnz6j7yda4c6GcS9lQ7TdYB8xA">$11.1 million in 2018</a>, <a href="https://www.panorama.am/en/news/2017/11/24/Hayastan-All-Armenian-Fund-Telethon/1869753" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.panorama.am/en/news/2017/11/24/Hayastan-All-Armenian-Fund-Telethon/1869753&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679908000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHOo-uCNY5W9n6RVj_NMVuvHy7fyA">$12.5 million in 2017</a>, <a href="https://anca.org/15-4-million-raised-in-2016-armenia-fund-telethon/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://anca.org/15-4-million-raised-in-2016-armenia-fund-telethon/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679908000&amp;usg=AFQjCNE1nKOxEp82Nts1lmAfW5DAMJesig">$15.4 million in 2016</a>, and <a href="http://asbarez.com/59644/more-than-35-million-raised-in-armenia-fund-telethon/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://asbarez.com/59644/more-than-35-million-raised-in-armenia-fund-telethon/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679908000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHrKnz6j7yda4c6GcS9lQ7TdYB8xA">$35 million back in 2008</a>. Notice a pattern?
The declining fund’s supporters and telethon guests over the years include House Democrats like Reps. Schiff, Jackie Speier (CA), Frank Pallone (NJ), Tulsi Gabbard (HI), and Brad Sherman (CA), among others. All are highly vocal in the impeachment conversation. (Gabbard initially <a href="https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/463071-tulsi-gabbard-transcript-doesnt-show-compelling-case-for-impeachment" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/463071-tulsi-gabbard-transcript-doesnt-show-compelling-case-for-impeachment&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679908000&amp;usg=AFQjCNH2g24aMJKHWedSqJxKvVSAJiOgow">expressed hesitation</a> about impeachment, but later <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/27/politics/tulsi-gabbard-supports-impeachment-inquiry/index.html" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/27/politics/tulsi-gabbard-supports-impeachment-inquiry/index.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679908000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGp59HfUaFoH4UKNDNpIxiIk0THww">changed course</a>.) Yet their backing of the Armenia Fund could have the makings of its own foreign interference scandal.
The problems begin with the Armenia Fund’s history. Established by Armenian presidential decree in 1992 and setting up shop in Los Angeles in 1994, the fund <a href="https://www.armeniafund.org/about/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.armeniafund.org/about/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679908000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEfMe6iHKUw3HfDXiygRoD12ry4QQ">calls itself</a> a “humanitarian organization serving the needs of the Republic of Armenia and the Artsakh Republic” that carries out a mission “to connect the people of Armenia with the worldwide Armenian Diaspora to create a better homeland for the Armenian nation.” The term “Artsakh” refers to Nagorno-Karabakh, the Azerbaijani territory that <a href="https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/eur/rls/or/13508.htm" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/eur/rls/or/13508.htm&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679908000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFbqZ84LfvVWeWyAkHCN792lAeAkQ">several U.N. resolutions</a> describe as being occupied by Armenia. Meanwhile, calling Nagorno-Karabakh a “republic” contradicts U.S. State Department policy, which <a href="https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/eur/rls/fs/103560.htm" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/eur/rls/fs/103560.htm&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679908000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGHPqwrxdaXEoEnt2-EIbu1dG8f-Q">doesn’t recognize Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent country</a> and holds that the territory’s future status “is a matter of negotiation between the parties.”
For its congressional advocates, the Armenia Fund poses a unique dilemma: How can Democrats on the one hand target President Trump’s associates in the impeachment process over their alleged activities as unregistered foreign agents, but on the other hand ignore that a foreign government-established fund <a href="http://usa.mfa.am/en/hayastan-fund/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://usa.mfa.am/en/hayastan-fund/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679909000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHqTbrYeBB6YiK2yCYhHN2nSQB9Nw">whose board president is Armenia’s own president</a> also remains unregistered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act?
While the Armenia Fund spotlights its work on infrastructure projects such as “schools, roads, hospitals, and community centers,” it is far from the innocuous “humanitarian” group it purports to be. The fund’s affiliates include the Armenian Assembly of America and the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), two political lobbies that campaign in Congress for greater American funding of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. At their core, the Armenian lobbies’ activities serve to drive Armenia and Azerbaijan further away from peace, including through the ANCA’s <a href="https://anca.org/press-release/anca-reaffirms-support-for-osce-minsk-group-rejects-madrid-principles-as-a-flawed-plan-for-lasting-peace/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://anca.org/press-release/anca-reaffirms-support-for-osce-minsk-group-rejects-madrid-principles-as-a-flawed-plan-for-lasting-peace/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679909000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHQHrA6LXLqjnWalhRhV-Mpov6dTg">rejection of the Madrid Principles</a>.
The July 2018 arrest of Armenia Fund leader Vardanyan exposed the corruption at an organization that was already deceiving the public as a political front group. The fund’s declining fundraising mirrors the broader <a href="https://spectator.org/the-rise-of-a-state-and-the-decline-of-another-2/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://spectator.org/the-rise-of-a-state-and-the-decline-of-another-2/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679909000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFaKPIW_o4YdTggYKKOHvqMLVZn0w">decline of Armenia</a>, arguably the least independent of the post-Soviet states. Armenia has a <a href="http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/armenia-population/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/armenia-population/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679909000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGKrHikgU9z4OvVLT4SHlsX8yiT6Q">declining population</a> that exhibits what a Gallup poll has recorded as the <a href="https://eurasianet.org/why-is-armenia-angry" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://eurasianet.org/why-is-armenia-angry&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679909000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFfDv3Us37j4AJRb2yGcC-BXIlY1w">world’s greatest prevalence of anger</a>. That anger results from Armenia’s floundering, inflation-plagued economy and a so-called “Velvet Revolution” that has <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/mar/26/beyond-armenias-velvet-revolution/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/mar/26/beyond-armenias-velvet-revolution/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679909000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHLhBBOuqO-WWRzBKGNkvob9x_kAA">failed to deliver on Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s promises of sweeping changes</a>. Namely, Pashinyan has overseen the persistence of both <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2018/04/09/armenia-isolated-backwater-dump-because-of-russia/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dailycaller.com/2018/04/09/armenia-isolated-backwater-dump-because-of-russia/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679909000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGAjH-Ry-kPw2OGWEvrmG22Ze_B9w">Moscow’s well-documented influence over Yerevan</a> and Armenia’s intransigence in the peace process with Azerbaijan.
Can Armenia turn around its economic malaise and extract itself from Russia’s orbit? Progress will likely be elusive as long as Armenia remains transfixed by its decades-long conflict with Azerbaijan. For the Armenian people, depending on the financial support of controversy-ridden outside groups such as the Armenia Fund will only breed more corruption and disappointment, while relying on the advocacy of the ANCA will continue to damage prospects for peace.
Simultaneously, House Democrats have done the Armenian people no favors by supporting the Armenia Fund and ANCA. Now, as they lead the charge on impeachment, it’s only fair to call out their hypocrisy. How can they stand against alleged presidential corruption when for years they backed an Armenian Diaspora telethon which has been exposed for its corruption? (During those same years, Armenia’s consul general in Los Angeles <a href="http://en.thegreatermiddleeast.com/2017/12/the-diplomatic-elephant-in-the-room-armenias-russian-oligarch-consul-general/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://en.thegreatermiddleeast.com/2017/12/the-diplomatic-elephant-in-the-room-armenias-russian-oligarch-consul-general/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679909000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFxUWlQMxtuGU18Ug0gGhZzWJ1bYA">was a Russian citizen and notorious oligarch</a>.) And how can they claim to be advocates for peace when they amplify the ANCA’s talking points, which are antithetical to peace?
It should come as no surprise to see such doublespeak coming from politicians like Schiff, the <a href="https://spectator.org/the-congressman-who-cried-wolf/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://spectator.org/the-congressman-who-cried-wolf/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679909000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEVzKvM6KnCTaJyhkFVp_vk7OCOsA">face of the impeachment probe</a> who is <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/schiff-hired-former-nsc-colleague-of-alleged-whistleblower-eric-ciaramella-the-day-after-trumps-ukraine-call" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/schiff-hired-former-nsc-colleague-of-alleged-whistleblower-eric-ciaramella-the-day-after-trumps-ukraine-call&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679909000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEZTUuJwmrCh8ZorwhbrO2isb3FKw">entangled in his own Ukraine scandal</a>; Gabbard, the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/miller-tulsi-gabbard-pro-assad-candidate-2020-paul-miller" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.dailywire.com/news/miller-tulsi-gabbard-pro-assad-candidate-2020-paul-miller&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679909000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEKFLv6IYiEfgbwow7G6rOKesN8qw">notoriously pro-Assad presidential candidate</a>; and Pallone, who in October landed in Nagorno-Karabakh on the Armenian government’s own military helicopter to <a href="https://armenianweekly.com/2019/10/01/pallone-i-am-here-because-i-want-to-make-it-clear-that-artsakh-is-a-state-a-democratic-nation/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://armenianweekly.com/2019/10/01/pallone-i-am-here-because-i-want-to-make-it-clear-that-artsakh-is-a-state-a-democratic-nation/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679909000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFHGR-iPgvwf0epI7oPBu-5s4_xdA">urge the end of security assistance to a U.S. ally, Azerbaijan</a>.
Until they distance themselves from the Armenian-American fundraising and lobbying apparatus, these lawmakers have virtually no credibility as voices in the debate on foreign influence and impeachment.
&nbsp;
Paul Miller is president and executive director of the news and public policy group <a href="https://salomoncenter.org/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://salomoncenter.org/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679909000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGpdyXx56KnSUcPnrupcOqwyJFL5Q">Haym Salomon Center</a>. Follow him on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/pauliespoint" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/pauliespoint&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576604679909000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGvssir9fRSC1FevwmmoZR6XEqk-Q">@pauliespoint</a>.

Adam Schiff and House Democrats

MILLER: Impeachment-Focused House Democrats Should Clean Their Own House

Adam Schiff

Democratic Party

State Department

U.S. House of Representatives

United Nations

A top ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met far-left Democrat Ilhan Omar (MN) last month and donated a large sum of money to her campaign, a revelation that comes one day after Omar refused to sanction Turkey for their actions in northern Syria and refused to recognize the Armenian Genocide, which was committed by Turkey.
Halil Mutlu, who is the co-chairman of the Turkish American Steering Committee (TSAC), donated $1,500 last month to Omar&#8217;s campaign.
&#8220;Founded in 2015, TASC has orchestrated a public relations push to cast doubt on whether the Ottoman empire committed genocide against Armenians more than a century ago,&#8221; The Daily Caller News Foundation&#8217;s (DCNF) Chuck Ross reported. TSAC is &#8220;a U.S.-based nonprofit that has for years waged public relations campaigns in support of Turkish government policies and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan &#8230; [and] maintains close ties to Erdogan, routinely hosting the Turkish president during his visits to the U.S., including on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly last month.&#8221;
The DCNF added that Mutlu, who is reportedly Erdogan’s cousin from Connecticut, made the $1,500 contribution to Omar’s campaign on at the end of last month and was featured in a photograph with her.
On Tuesday, Omar was one of the only members of Congress that did not vote to recognize the Armenian Genocide and was the only Democrat member of Congress to vote against sanctioning Turkey for their actions in northern Syria.
Omar released a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/omar-refuses-to-recognize-armenian-genocide-gives-bizarre-statement-refuses-to-sanction-turkey-for-actions-in-syria">statement</a> on why she did not vote for the resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide:
<blockquote>I also believe accountability for human rights violations—especially ethnic cleansing and genocide—is paramount. But accountability and recognition of genocide should not be used as cudgel in a political fight. It should be done based on academic consensus outside the push and pull of geopolitics. A true acknowledgement of historical crimes against humanity must include both the heinous genocides of the 20th century, along with earlier mass slaughters like the transatlantic slave trade and Native American genocide, which took the lives of hundreds of millions of indigenous people in this country. For this reason, I voted ‘present’ on final passage of H.Res. 296, the resolution Affirming the United States record on the Armenian Genocide.</blockquote>
Aram Hamparian, the executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, told the DCNF regarding Omar&#8217;s statement: &#8220;Essentially, this is a Turkish talking point that she’s throwing out. She is lining up to carry Turkey’s water on this.&#8221;
Omar was widely slammed across the political spectrum, including from her supporters on the far-left.
A man named Hrag Vartanian, who describes himself as a vocal defender of Omar’s, said that her refusal to recognize the Armenian Genocide was the final straw for him.
“I’ve been a vocal supporter of @IlhanMN but no more. There was absolutely no reason for her to not vote on something that is solid historical fact and use the typical [word] salad of denialists,” he wrote. “I once saw her as a human rights defender. The other present or no votes I care less about, because I never supported them, but this really hurt.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
The other present or no votes I care less about, because I never supported them, but this really hurt.
— Hrag (@hragv) <a href="https://twitter.com/hragv/status/1189311836337950720?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 29, 2019</a></blockquote>
&#8220;Omar — who likes to portray herself as a champion of human rights — has <a href="https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1187082215634722816">repeatedly condemned</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Ilhan/status/1187023303283789829">using sanctions</a> against Iran, Turkey, and Venezuela because she claims that sanctions hurt innocent people, yet, Omar has repeatedly called for using sanctions against Israel,&#8221; The Daily Wire reported on Tuesday. &#8220;Omar is an <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/the-anti-semitic-bds-movement-advocates-illegal-discrimination/">avid supporter</a> of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement which is designed to destroy the state of Israel.&#8221;

Ilhan Omar

Top Ally Of Turkish President Erdogan Donated To Omar’s Campaign Last Month

Turkey

Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN) voted &#8220;present&#8221; on Monday during a House vote recognizing the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire by the Young Turk government during World War I.
Lawmakers overwhelmingly passed the resolution titled, &#8220;Affirming the United States record on the Armenian Genocide,&#8221; which officially recognized and condemned the genocide which resulted in the Young Turks murdering 1.5 million Armenians from 1915 to 1923.
Omar, who was one of only three lawmakers to vote &#8220;present,&#8221; released a statement on why she did not vote for the resolution:
<blockquote>I also believe accountability for human rights violations—especially ethnic cleansing and genocide—is paramount. But accountability and recognition of genocide should not be used as cudgel in a political fight. It should be done based on academic consensus outside the push and pull of geopolitics. A true acknowledgement of historical crimes against humanity must include both the heinous genocides of the 20th century, along with earlier mass slaughters like the transatlantic slave trade and Native American genocide, which took the lives of hundreds of millions of indigenous people in this country. For this reason, I voted ‘present’ on final passage of H.Res. 296, the resolution Affirming the United States record on the Armenian Genocide.</blockquote>
The House also overwhelmingly passed the &#8220;Protect Against Conflict by Turkey Act,&#8221; which sanctioned Turkey for its actions in northern Syria. Omar was the only Democrat to vote against it.
Omar — who likes to portray herself as a champion of human rights — has <a href="https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1187082215634722816">repeatedly condemned</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Ilhan/status/1187023303283789829">using sanctions</a> against Iran, Turkey, and Venezuela because she claims that sanctions hurt innocent people, yet, Omar has repeatedly called for using sanctions against Israel.
Omar is an <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/the-anti-semitic-bds-movement-advocates-illegal-discrimination/">avid supporter</a> of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement which is designed to destroy the state of Israel.
Omar&#8217;s refusal to recognize the Armenian Genocide earned predictable outrage from the political Right, but also surprisingly drew intense criticism from the far-left, including some of her biggest supporters.
Emma Vigeland, who works for The Young Turks — a company that was allegedly named after the people who committed the genocide — <a href="https://twitter.com/EmmaVigeland/status/1189311496725159936">said</a> that Omar&#8217;s explanation was a &#8220;bad answer.&#8221;
A man named Hrag Vartanian, who describes himself as a vocal defender of Omar&#8217;s, said that her refusal to recognize the Armenian Genocide was the final straw for him.
&#8220;I&#8217;ve been a vocal supporter of @IlhanMN but no more. There was absolutely no reason for her to not vote on something that is solid historical fact and use the typical [word] salad of denialists,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;I once saw her as a human rights defender. The other present or no votes I care less about, because I never supported them, but this really hurt.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
The other present or no votes I care less about, because I never supported them, but this really hurt.
— Hrag (@hragv) <a href="https://twitter.com/hragv/status/1189311836337950720?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 29, 2019</a></blockquote>
Basketball player Enes Kanter wrote on Twitter: &#8220;What an absolute disappointment and shame that the only democrat who did NOT support the Turkish bill aiming to stop the killing of innocent people is @IlhanMN who seems like on #DictatorErdogan ‘s payroll working for his interests, but not for the American people and democracy!&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
What an absolute disappointment and shame that the only democrat who did NOT support the Turkish bill aiming to stop the killing of innocent people is <a href="https://twitter.com/IlhanMN?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@IlhanMN</a> who seems like on <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DictatorErdogan?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#DictatorErdogan</a> ‘s payroll working for his interests, but not for the American people and democracy!
— Enes Kanter (@EnesKanter) <a href="https://twitter.com/EnesKanter/status/1189341327365984256?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 30, 2019</a></blockquote>
Minnesota State Democrat Representative Mari Manoogian tweeted: &#8220;I am deeply disappointed and, frankly, disgusted by this statement issued by @IlhanMN today regarding H.Res. 296. The whataboutism is from the textbook of denial that the Turkish government has engaged in for more than a century. Totally unacceptable.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
I am deeply disappointed and, frankly, disgusted by this statement issued by <a href="https://twitter.com/IlhanMN?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@IlhanMN</a> today regarding H.Res. 296.
The whataboutism is from the textbook of denial that the Turkish government has engaged in for more than a century. Totally unacceptable. <a href="https://t.co/1EVLPmfX2v">https://t.co/1EVLPmfX2v</a>
— Mari Manoogian (@MariManoogian) <a href="https://twitter.com/MariManoogian/status/1189337158747934726?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 30, 2019</a></blockquote>
Investigative reporter Jordan Schachtel referenced one of his reports from earlier this year that highlighted a private meeting that Omar held with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, writing: &#8220;Ilhan Omar’s failure to vote for the Armenian Genocide recognition resolution has everything to do with her respect for Erdogan and his regime’s close ties with her native Somalia.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Ilhan Omar’s failure to vote for the Armenian Genocide recognition resolution has everything to do with her respect for Erdogan and his regime’s close ties with her native Somalia. See my article from March to make sense of it: <a href="https://t.co/aWBOifNukZ">https://t.co/aWBOifNukZ</a>
— Jordan Schachtel (@JordanSchachtel) <a href="https://twitter.com/JordanSchachtel/status/1189331435653599233?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 30, 2019</a></blockquote>

Omar Refuses To Recognize Armenian Genocide, Gives Bizarre Statement; Refuses To Sanction Turkey For Actions In Syria

As former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani finds himself <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/465168-giuliani-associates-who-aided-ukraine-investigation-arrested-on">squarely engulfed</a> in the Ukraine scandal and impeachment inquiry surrounding President Donald Trump, one piece of the puzzle simply does not seem to fit.
If anything is a given about contemporary Republican Party foreign policy, it is a hawkish stance on Iran. That unified front is led by a president who pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 nuclear deal and continues to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/world/middleeast/trump-sanctions-iran.html">impose new sanctions against Tehran</a>. Giuliani, too, talks tough towards the Iranians — most recently <a href="https://en.radiofarda.com/a/giuliani-says-i-am-for-regime-change-in-iran/30182912.html">backing regime change and declaring “down with the tyrants in Iran”</a> when he spoke at a rally outside U.N. headquarters in September.
Yet Giuliani was on the cusp of making a paid appearance at the Armenian-hosted conference of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), a gathering held October 1st–2nd amid the <a href="https://en.mehrnews.com/news/150676/Iran-to-join-Eurasian-Economic-Union-EAEU-from-October">formalization of Iran’s future membership</a> in that Russian-led trade alliance that consists of five former Soviet republics. Although Giuliani <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/giuliani-set-to-make-paid-appearance-next-week-at-kremlin-backed-conference/2019/09/27/a15ab242-e133-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html?outputType=amp">ultimately cancelled his 2019 EAEU appearance</a>, he <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/giuliani-headlines-conference-promoting-russia-organized-2018-10">attended the same conference last year</a> and is <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/democratic-senators-renew-questions-about-rudy-giuliani-s-apparent-work-n1058686">coming under rising scrutiny</a> for his <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-rudy-giuliani-mystery-trips-to-russia-armenia-and-ukraine?utm_content=bufferf7573&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=buffer">mysterious overseas travel — including to Armenia</a>.
Created to counter the influence of the European Union, the EAEU’s anti-Western approach is particularly apparent through its embrace of Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. After the Moscow-based EAEU <a href="https://eurasianet.org/armenia-hopes-to-benefit-from-new-iran-eurasian-union-free-trade-deal">reached a free trade deal with the Iranians last year</a>, EAEU member Armenia this past April signed a <a href="http://www.iran-daily.com/News/251511.html">memorandum of understanding on customs cooperation</a> with Iran in which the two countries agreed to exchange information on the value of goods and vehicles transported through their shared border. In other words, commerce between Tehran and Yerevan flows without restrictions.
On a broader strategic level, both the free trade and customs deals were envisioned as pillars of a bridge linking Iran, the EAEU, and the EU. The final pillar will be cemented on October 27th, when Iran formally joins the EAEU and gains the ability to have its goods “exported to [Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia] with almost zero tariffs,” according to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Simultaneously, Iran is prepared to increase the natural gas its supplies to Armenia, Rouhani <a href="https://en.radiofarda.com/amp/iranian-president-again-offers-closer-ties-to-armenia/30193900.html?__twitter_impression=true">said at the EAEU conference</a>.
It should come as no surprise that the rapid growth of EAEU-Iran ties is spearheaded by Armenia, the only EAEU member which shares a border with Iran. Armenia is also the only EAEU state which maintains a “Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement” with the EU, meaning that the warm economic ties between Tehran and Yerevan could have a domino effect throughout Europe.
Further, Armenia has a long and ongoing history of offering Iran an escape route from international sanctions. Reuters <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-sanctions-armenia/exclusive-iran-looks-to-armenia-to-skirt-bank-sanctions-idUSBRE87K05420120821">has reported</a> that Armenian banks help the Iranian regime “obfuscate payments to and from foreign clients and deceive Western intelligence agencies trying to prevent it from expanding its nuclear and missile programs.” In August, the U.S. <a href="https://mirrorspectator.com/2019/08/15/us-sanctions-two-armenian-firms/">levied sanctions</a> on two Armenian companies over their business ties with Iran. And upon meeting with Rouhani at the EAEU gathering, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan affirmed that despite U.S. sanctions, Armenia’s “relations with Iran must be beyond geopolitical influences.”
All of which brings us to the recent EAEU conference, where Giuliani was set to participate in a panel led by Sergey Glazyev, a longtime adviser to Russian President Vladimiar Putin who has been subjected to U.S. sanctions since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Giuliani had been the only American scheduled to speak at the gathering.
How did this former Republican presidential candidate make his way onto an anti-Western conference’s agenda this year, while actually attending the same summit last year? <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-rudy-giuliani-mystery-trips-to-russia-armenia-and-ukraine?utm_content=bufferf7573&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=buffer">According to ProPublica</a>, Giuliani’s 2018 EAEU appearance was funded by Ara Abramyan, chair of the Union of Russian Armenians and president of the World Armenian Congress.
Abramyan also sits on the advisory board of TriGlobal Strategic Ventures, which has been organizing trips to Russia and Ukraine since 2004 for the ex-mayor’s Giuliani Partners, and has been described by The New York Times as “a company that provides image consulting to Russian oligarchs and clients with deep Kremlin ties.”
Before he cancelled his 2019 EAEU appearance, Giuliani had quipped in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/giuliani-set-to-make-paid-appearance-next-week-at-kremlin-backed-conference/2019/09/27/a15ab242-e133-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html?outputType=amp">comments to The Washington Post</a> that he would “try to not knowingly talk to a Russian until this is all over.” Yet it is no laughing matter. By opening the door to free trade, the EAEU has set in motion a slippery slope that may lead Iranian businesses directly to the EU. It is a nightmare scenario in which anti-West meets West, and shockingly, one of its enablers is a high-profile Republican who is presumably aligned with his peers when it comes to cracking down on Iranian aggression.
That is why despite his eventual pullout from the EAEU conference, the question remains: Why would Giuliani even consider attending?
&nbsp;
<a href="http://jessebogner.com/">Jesse Bogner</a> is an author and journalist. His memoir and social critique, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Egotist-Memoir-Jesse-Bogner-ebook/dp/B0174UNI66/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1452620828&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=the+egotist">The Egotist</a>, has been translated into five languages. His work has been featured in The Daily Caller, MSN, and The Huffington Post.

Rudy Giuliani

BOGNER: The Curious Case Of Rudy Giuliani, Iran, and Armenia

Europe

Iran

Vladimir Putin

Flattened site.

KHACHATRIAN: Uncovering Azerbaijan’s Covert Campaign Of Cultural Cleansing Against Armenia

As the United States continues to avoid the word &#8220;genocide&#8221; when recognizing the Armenian genocide, France marked its first &#8220;national day of commemoration of the Armenian genocide&#8221; on Wednesday, according to <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20190424-france-holds-first-armenia-genocide-remembrance-day">France 24</a>.
Though France has recognized the Armenian genocide since 2001, President Macron announced in February of this year that the country would commemorate the horrific historical event as a way to &#8220;look history in the face.&#8221;
The Armenian genocide happened under the Islamic Ottoman Empire (now Turkey) in 1915, with an estimated death toll of <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/armenian-genocide">1.5 million people</a>, most of whom were Christian. Turkey has refused to accept responsibility for the genocide, alleging that the figures are overblown or stemmed from civil conflicts as a result of World War I. The government also routinely heckles nations or leaders that recognize the genocide for what it is: genocide. Just this year, when Macron announced the day of commemoration, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounced him as a &#8220;political novice&#8221; while accusing him of hypocrisy.
&#8220;If we look at those trying to give lessons on human rights or democracy to Turkey on the Armenian question and the fight against terrorism, we see that they all have a bloody past,&#8221; Erdogan said.
When Pope Francis <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32272604">referred</a> to the 1915 mass killings as a genocide in 2015, the Turkish government said the Holy Father was not living in &#8220;historical reality.&#8221;
&#8220;The Pope&#8217;s statement, which is far from the legal and historical reality, cannot be accepted,&#8221; Turkey&#8217;s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu tweeted at the time. &#8220;Religious authorities are not the places to incite resentment and hatred with baseless allegations.&#8221;
The commemorations in France were led by French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe on Wednesday, who laid flowers at the Monument for the Armenian Genocide situated on the northern bank of the river Seine.
&#8220;France intends to contribute to the recognition of the Armenian genocide as a crime against humanity, against civilization,&#8221; said Philippe. &#8220;It will not be impressed by any lies, by any pressure, what we are looking for is historical accuracy and reconciliation.&#8221;
This year, as Armenians across the world commemorated the genocide, Erdogan even said that deporting Armenians was the &#8220;right&#8221; thing to do at the time, referring to them as &#8220;Armenian gangs&#8221; that massacred Muslim people, according to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-24/erdogan-says-deporting-armenians-was-appropriate-at-the-time">Bloomberg</a>.
&#8220;The relocation of the Armenian gangs and their supporters, who massacred the Muslim people, including women and children, in eastern Anatolia, was the most reasonable action that could be taken in such a period,&#8221; Erdogan said in a Twitter post in English. &#8220;We see that those who attempt to lecture us on human rights over the Armenian issue themselves have a bloody past.&#8221;
Unfortunately, the White House has, once again, stopped short of recognizing the Armenian genocide this year by calling it &#8220;one of the worst mass atrocities of the 20th century.&#8221;
&#8220;Today, we commemorate the Meds Yeghern and honor the memory of those who suffered in one of the worst mass atrocities of the 20th century,&#8221; the White House said in a <a href="https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article229622634.html">lengthy statement</a>. &#8220;Beginning in 1915, one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in the final years of the Ottoman Empire.&#8221;
Every President since Ronald Reagan in 1981 has used this type of language in reference to the Armenian genocide.

France Marks First National Commemoration Of Armenian Genocide As White House Refuses To Use The Word

Islam

The Trump administration&#8217;s desire to maintain at least cordial relations with the Russian Federation is noble, but President Donald Trump may be putting too much stock in his ability to build a strong and lasting personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Mr. Putin&#8217;s actions and assertions, domestically and internationally, reflect Russia&#8217;s proclivities toward irredentism and neo-imperialism geared to expanding its sphere of influence. 
Moscow recently announced that it would use its proxy, Armenia, as a key constituent in reconstruction plans for Bashar al-Assad&#8217;s Syria. Armenia&#8217;s nearly insolvent economy is dependent on Moscow. In return, Armenia backs Moscow on the world stage, including voting against the sovereignty of U.S. ally Ukraine at the recent UN General Assembly. 
Russian oligarchs own significant portions of Armenia&#8217;s industry, relegating Armenia to a chiefly agrarian economy on a family farm scale. Indeed, Armenia suffers year-to-year population declines, as inhabitants search elsewhere for livelihood.
Why use its troublesome proxy in such an enormous undertaking? Western authorities express concern that Russia will use Armenia to conceal illegal weapons transfers. Armenia&#8217;s complicity will also make it easier for Russia to hide ill-gotten financial gains associated with the reconstruction of Syria. 
Even more disturbing is the Kremlin&#8217;s recent interest in Azerbaijan, a U.S. strategic partner. Situated on the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan is rich in gas and oil and human capital and has been decidedly pro-Western since its independence during the fall of the Soviet Union. It would be a great loss for the U.S. and the West should Azerbaijan fall into Moscow&#8217;s orbit.
Azerbaijan has taken a leadership role and funded virtually every large-scale energy infrastructure project in the Caspian Basin during the last 25 years. The answer to the European Union&#8217;s energy security concerns runs through Baku, bypassing an often belligerent and double-dealing Russia and a bellicose and dangerous Iran. 
The first such project, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, transports oil from the Caspian Sea directly to Mediterranean and Western markets. In such a tumultuous region, it was completed with the enthusiastic backing of the Bush (senior) and Clinton administrations. Azerbaijan has since become perhaps the most important and strategic nation in the region.
Israel, too, has found in Azerbaijan a close partner in numerous realms, including telecommunications, culture, industrial agriculture, military technology and hardware and counter-terror intelligence and operations. Indeed, a large and prosperous Jewish community resides in Azerbaijan, where Jews have lived for centuries in peace, as equal citizens, alongside their Muslim countrymen. 
Azerbaijan represents a large and lucrative market for Israel. The depth of the ties between them is not known, although high-level delegations regularly travel from Jerusalem to Baku and vice versa, the most recent of which was a visit by Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman. 
A mere three years ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was treated to a grand State reception by Azerbaijan&#8217;s very popular president, Ilham Aliyev, who has likened the relationship between Israel and Azerbaijan to an iceberg because &#8220;nine-tenths of it is below the surface.&#8221; Experts believe that in terms of depth and breadth, Israel&#8217;s relationship with Azerbaijan has few rivals among other Muslim-majority states. 
Azerbaijan is sought by the West not simply for its oil and gas. As a matter of current social policy and traditional foreign policy, relations with Muslim-majority countries are integral to maintaining the post-war world order. Azerbaijan is a valuable ally because of its domestic stability, responsible actions on the world stage, and for maintaining a business climate modeled on the West, complete with enforceable sanctity of contract, independent courts, etc. 
The point?
The United States has a dreadful and appalling penchant for allowing important nations to fall off of its foreign affairs radar screen and notwithstanding National Security Advisor John Bolton&#8217;s current visit to the region. Given Azerbaijan&#8217;s strategic location at a crossroads of nations, cultures and societies, coupled with its oil and gas and its willingness to invest in the security of the West, it is imperative for the U.S., the Europeans and the Israelis that Azerbaijan not be swayed from the West. 
Of the many blunders of the post-Soviet age, a tragic and utterly avoidable one would be to lose Azerbaijan to Russia&#8217;s sphere of influence.
Paul Miller is president and executive director of the news and public policy group Haym Salomon Center. Follow him on twitter @pauliespoint.

MILLER: Russia’s Always-Veiled Agenda: The U.S. And Israel

Israel

On May 23, the Israeli Knesset <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Knesset-approves-motion-on-recognizing-Armenian-Genocide-558191">approved a motion on the recognition of the Armenian Genocide</a>. The motion&#8217;s architect, Tamar Zandberg, chairwoman from the Meretz party, argued, &#8220;This is our moral and historic obligation &#8230; some things are above politics.&#8221;
The Knesset postponed an official debate on the Armenian Genocide recognition until unanimous support can be coalesced among MPs to avoid the much-deserved humiliation that would result from a <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-knesset-postpones-debate-on-armenian-genocide-over-lack-of-majority-1.6136415">failure</a> of the Israeli government to collect a majority (let alone unanimous) agreement on acknowledging the Ottoman Empire extermination of 1.5 million Armenians.
On June 4, President Netanyahu once again <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-netanyahu-postpones-debate-on-recognizing-armenian-genocide-1.6138758">postponed</a> the debate over three bills that recognize the Armenian Genocide until after the Turkish elections so as to not aid Erdogan during his re-election campaign. Besides the Israeli MP&#8217;s pushing for the recognition of this heinous crime against humanity, Jews have historically been some of the staunchest Armenian allies.
One of the most important Jewish allies of the Armenian people in the 20th century was Raphael Lemkin. Aside from <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007050">coining</a> the term genocide, Lemkin lobbied the U.N. to successfully adopt &#8220;The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.&#8221; The convention defined &#8220;genocide&#8221; in legal terms. The concept was meant to allow legal protection of groups. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moByGLA7FDc">Lemkin often said</a> that the genocide of the Armenians was the catalyst for his crusade. It was his belief that had the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide been punished, then the Holocaust would not have taken place.
Lemkin was overwhelmed at the prospect of a race being destroyed with the resources available to a modern and relatively progressive government.
The Young Turk Revolution had deposed the last sultan of the Ottoman Empire in 1908, ushering in an era of political and military reform. It was the political arm of the &#8220;reformists&#8221; &#8212; Committee of Union and Progress &#8212; that would ultimately implement the Armenian Genocide. The Young Turks enjoyed the membership of many <a href="https://archive.org/details/GreyWolf-MustafaKemal--AnIntimateStudyOfADictatorByH.c.Armstrong">future founders</a> of the Republic of Turkey including Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
In 1933, Austrian-Bohemian Jew, Franz Werfel, wrote his epic novel, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. The book showcased the horrors of the genocide while shedding light on a pocket of Armenian resistance who took refuge atop Musa Dagh in what is now Turkey. Werfel&#8217;s novel became a PR disaster for the Republic of Turkey and Mustafa Kemal personally. Due to pressure by the Turkish government, the book was banned in the Third Reich. It remained banned in Turkey until 1997.
Werfel was denounced by the Nazis as a propagandist. The Nazis also <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=jp2mZr7BoGsC&amp;pg=PT413&amp;lpg=PT413&amp;dq=America%E2%80%99s+Armenian+Jews+for+promoting+in+the+U.S.A.+the+sale+of+Werfel%27s+book&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=BW3vYZY9Oh&amp;sig=LGJL0K5EI0gur9PUwth-_yBVdvI&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwiTper66cnbAhUnxYMKHXZZCx0Q6AEIKTAA">condemned</a> America&#8217;s Armenian Jews for promoting the book in the U.S. because Werfel used the book as a tool to <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-the-armenian-genocide-shaped-the-holocaust">warn Germany</a> about Hitler.
MGM secured the film rights to bring the book to the silver screen and cast Clark Gable as the lead. In response, Turkey&#8217;s ambassador threatened a boycott of MGM and a cessation of all Jewish commercial ties in Turkey. MGM eventually gave in.
The list of Jewish allies in the modern day is long, however, it is noteworthy to touch upon those fighting to ensure a second genocide of the Armenians does not take place. Yair Auron, an Israeli historian, scholar, and associate director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem, <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-there-was-no-genocide-at-khojaly-1.5425728">wrote an article in Haaretz</a> lambasting the Israeli government&#8217;s validation of the Turk-Azeri concoction known as the &#8220;Khojaly massacre.&#8221; The alleged killing of 613 civilians (casualty count is unknown and only claimed by Azerbaijani authorities) amid the Nagoro-Karabakh war is exclusively recognized and commemorated by Turks and Azerbaijanis &#8212; who themselves deny the historically documented genocide of 1.5 million Armenians. In an attempt to offset Armenian Genocide recognition worldwide, Azerbaijan pays for articles bashing Armenia and attempts to pass non-binding resolutions in recognition of the alleged crime in order to compete.
Auron also criticized Israeli President Reuven Rivlin&#8217;s 2015 speech to the U.N. General Assembly on International Holocaust Remembrance Day where, while not referring to the events as genocide, his remarks gave sustenance to the Azeri-Turk narrative falsely framing themselves as victims of Armenian aggression.
In a <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-dont-sell-arms-to-the-azeris-1.5319906">2014 column</a>, Yair Auron again scolded Israel&#8217;s tepid ties to Azerbaijan. The focus of his furor was Israeli weapon sales to the nation bent on a second genocide of the Armenian people. He wrote, &#8220;The sale of weapons to a government committing genocide is like the sale of weapons to Nazi Germany during World War II.&#8221;
A <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/30/israel-freezes-export-of-suicide-drone-to-azerbaijan-after-allegation-of-abuse-azerbaijan-armenia/">2017 incident</a> vindicated Auron&#8217;s claims. While selling a suicide drone to Azerbaijan, the Aeronautics Defense Systems was reportedly asked to perform a live demonstration on an Armenian position. After the two Israelis refused to comply with the Azeris request, senior officials from the arms firm hijacked the deal and attempted to perform the live demonstration themselves. Lacking the necessary training to use the drone, they missed the target, wounding two officers. The Israeli Defense Ministry opened an investigation into the incident, while freezing the export of the drone to Azerbaijan.
&#8220;Who, after all, speaks today of the Armenians?&#8221; This infamous line was used by Hitler to rally Wehrmacht officers before his devastation of Poland. As it turns out, the Jewish people whom Hitler set out to destroy, would never forgot the Armenian people.
Recognition of the Armenian Genocide by Israel would be a new chapter of closure for Jews all over the world, because if it was not for the unpunished genocide of the Armenians, the Holocaust might not have taken place.
If Turkey&#8217;s deranged president can muster the gall to accuse Israel of <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-21/u-s-and-israel-should-recognize-the-armenian-genocide">genocide</a> (genocide!) for <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-official-50-of-the-people-killed-in-gaza-riots-were-members/">killing 60 terrorist invaders</a> at their border, then surely the Israeli Knesset can acknowledge Turkey&#8217;s actual perpetration of the very crime they deny.
Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/harry1t6">Harry Khachatrian</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/MovsesT">Movses Ter-Oganesyan</a> on Twitter.
Movses Ter-Oganesyan is a fellow at the Eurasian Research and Analysis Institute. His area of expertise encompasses the wider Caucasus as well as American foreign policy.

Remembering Jewish Allies As Israel Inches Closer To Official Recognition Of The Armenian Genocide

This article was co-written with Movses Ter-Oganesyan.
Late last month, Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43868433">officially resigned</a> amid reams of anti-government protests across the nation.
The impetus behind the non-violent demonstrations was a deliberate power grab by Sargsyan.
The leader of the protests against the government, MP Nikol Pashinyan, is set to be elected Prime Minister <a>on May 8.</a>
With the end of his second (and final) term as president in sight, Sargsyan <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/07/armenia-vote-disputed-referendum-president-powers">held a referendum</a> in December 2015 proposing a constitutional amendment to adopt the idea of a parliamentary republic &#8212; meaning constituents would vote for MPs to represent their respective regions and the MPs themselves elect the prime minister, the most powerful position in the country. The parliamentary system would effectively eliminate the previously existing term limit on the head of state. Sargsyan, however, assured Armenians that under the new system he would honor his term limit and not seek re-election.
In March 2018, as Armenians went to the polls, Sargsyan&#8217;s Republican Party (HHK) won majority seats in parliament. Soon after, reneging on his promise to retire from high office, Sargsyan was elected prime minister by the HHK members of parliament.
There were early fears that Sargsyan would appoint a figurehead PM and rule the country from the position of president, much like the Russian musical chairs between Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev in 2008. However, Sargsyan&#8217;s move was out of Turkish president Recep Erdogan&#8217;s playbook; Erdogan held a similar referendum in April 2017. Erdogan switched Turkey&#8217;s system of governance from a parliamentary republic to a presidential one in order to remain head of state.
In a riveting rebuke to Sargsyan&#8217;s attempts at consolidating power, large-scale protests shut down the nation&#8217;s capital, Yerevan. The leader of the anti-corruption movement is MP and head of the Civil Contract Party, Nikol Pashinyan. As the mastermind behind the grassroots movement, Pashinyan is the only person who&#8217;s put forth his candidacy for the prime minister&#8217;s position. With chants of &#8220;Nikol, Prime Minister!&#8221; bellowing over the capitol and crowds referring to him as &#8220;peoples&#8217; choice,&#8221; Pashinyan has the unanimous approval of almost the entire nation.
On April 23, in a stunning victory for the Armenian people, Sargsyan capitulated to the protesters&#8217; demands, saying, &#8220;I was wrong, while Nikol Pashinyan was right&#8221; as he stepped down from office. The day was of huge symbolic importance to Armenians as it came one day before Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, April 24. Armenians did not want to protest on that national day of mourning, and to everyone&#8217;s astonishment, it became a day of political rebirth one day before the anniversary of the darkest chapter in the nation&#8217;s history.
Sargsyan&#8217;s ouster became one of the handful of times in history that a sitting head of state resigned due to peaceful protest with no dissidents harmed or hurt by government police (take notes, world). Protesters would even gather to clean the capitol before commencing the protests, which consisted in large part of BBQing and dancing in the street.
Subsequent to the premier&#8217;s resignation, Pashinyan turned his sights to dismantling the ruling HHK party. The protests &#8212; dubbed the &#8220;Velvet Revolution&#8221;&#8212; grew in scope, seeking to rid the country of the corrupt politicians who use the nation&#8217;s political institutions to enrich themselves. Like much of the post-Soviet space, Armenia is plagued by oligarchs who consolidated vast amounts of wealth during the privatization that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. It&#8217;s no mystery why Russia&#8217;s president Vladimir Putin favors the status quo across Armenia&#8217;s political landscape. His ability to exert influence on the ostensibly sovereign post-Soviet Armenia takes Putin back to his real aspiration, the revival of the halcyon days of the vast Soviet empire.
Refusing to accept their government&#8217;s corrupt condition, the protests changed course once again, now pressuring MPs into electing Pashinyan as the prime minister. Yerevan, the country&#8217;s capital, drew an estimated crowd of 150,000 people. This is staggering when considering Armenia&#8217;s population consists of less than three million people. With all roads in and out of the capital blocked, airport staff preceded to shut down Zvartnots Airport.
Regardless of all this, on May 1, when the MPs convened to vote for the next prime minister, Pashinyan <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43958196">fell eight votes short</a> of the required 53 for a majority. A second vote is scheduled to be held seven days after the first (<a>May 8</a>); failure to elect a prime minister for the second time will result in the dissolution of parliament. However, on May 2, HHK officially announced that <a>on May 8</a> it will support whichever candidate garners one-third of the parliament&#8217;s votes.
This unprecedented turn of events has not been lost on Armenia&#8217;s dictatorial arch-foe, Azerbaijan. As early as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zI0m6eJTB4">April 22</a>, Azerbaijan moved heavy <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RljNhQQQfOE">military hardware and manpower</a> to the line of contact which separates the de facto Armenian province of Artsakh. Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh Republic) has been under Armenian control since 1994 and has been striving for international recognition of its self-determination from Azerbaijan. While Azerbaijan scouts for an opportunity to take advantage of the political turmoil in Armenia, there is anxiety about a similar revolution taking hold in the country. Some analysts believe that President Aliyev of Azerbaijan may move for a localized offensive similar to the one Azerbaijan launched in April 2016 to take pressure off its <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2017/07/07/with-azerbaijans-economy-in-a-tailspin-will-the-caucasus-see-another-war/#69d515816a6e">internal issues</a>.
The now near certain but previously unthinkable election of Nikol Pashinyan, a politician beholden to no foreign governments or special interests, as prime minister shines a bright light into Armenia&#8217;s future; for the first time in decades there is hope that Armenia, the world&#8217;s first Christian nation, will gain greater independence from post-Soviet Russia with the hope of removing its own post-Soviet vestiges. This is with the hope that Pashinyan will in fact &#8220;drain the swamp&#8221; &#8212; and of course: Make Armenia Great Again.
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This article was co-written with <a href="https://twitter.com/movsest?lang=en">Movses Ter-Oganesyan</a>. Movses is a fellow at the Eurasian Research and Analysis Institute. His area of expertise encompasses the wider Caucasus as well as American Foreign Policy.

Armenia’s Velvet Revolution

Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day commemorates the one-and-a-half-million Armenians who died at the hands of the Ottoman government during and around the time of the First World War. Despite the clear historical record, many countries continue to deny that it ever took place &#8212; most notably Turkey, which perpetrated the atrocity. Just about everybody else misremembers it, and a look around the world in 2018 attests to George Santayana&#8217;s observation, &#8220;Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.&#8221;
The Armenian Genocide was not primarily a genocide. Indeed it was a genocide &#8212; Ottoman Turks targeted and massacred over a million Armenians &#8212; but genocide was not its defining feature. &#8220;Genocide&#8221; comes from the Greek word &#8220;genos,&#8221; from which we derive &#8220;genetic.&#8221; It entails race and ethnicity. Genocide is the killing of a race. The Ottoman Turks did not target Armenians primarily for their ethnicity but rather for their Christian faith. In the early fourth century Armenia became the first country in the world to adopt Christianity as its state religion. At the time of the Armenian genocide, the Muslim Ottomans also slaughtered some 750,000 Greek Christians; 300,000 Assyrian Christians; and 250,000 Maronite Christians. Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians do not share a common ethnicity. The Ottomans slaughtered them because they worshipped the same God.
Henry Morgethau, the U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916, sounded the alarm on the widespread murder, enslavement, and starvation as part of a &#8220;scheme to annihilate the Armenian, Greek, and Syrian Christians of Turkey.&#8221; Genes are a biological fact; religions are sets of ideas, and ideas don&#8217;t pass from generation to generation in the bloodstream. A man cannot change his biology, but he can change his mind. Muslim Ottomans did not slaughter Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians for the colors of their skin or the cuts of their jib. They massacred millions for the sake of one idea for the perceived offense of another.
According to a 2018 study by the Catholic organization Aid To The Church In Need, Christian persecution around the world and particularly in the Middle East is worse now &#8220;than at any time in history.&#8221; The report explains, &#8220;Not only are Christians more persecuted than any other faith group, but ever-increasing numbers are experiencing the very worst forms of persecution&#8221; in countries like Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, and, you guessed it, Turkey.
Cowards in the West conflate race and religion because all men are created equal but all ideas are not. Those who suspect certain ideas are better than others fear being smeared as &#8220;Islamophobic&#8221; &#8212; that is, harboring an &#8220;irrational fear&#8221; of Islam. The Ottoman Turks did not irrationally slaughter two-and-a-half million Christians; contemporary Turks, among others, do not irrationally persecute Christians in 2018. They did and continue to do it for a reason, which still we obscure. On Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, even a century later, denial abounds.

The Armenian Genocide Wasn’t Primarily A ‘Genocide’

Catholic Church

Catholicism

Christianity

Ottoman Empire

Radical Islam

This month, Donald Trump officially did something none of his predecessors (since 1995) had mustered the moral courage to do (despite posturing for two consecutive terms that they would). Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel; he did it less than one year into his presidency.
Taking the fight to the floor of the United Nations General Assembly, Trump&#8217;s appointed ambassador, Nikki Haley, stunningly scolded the outpouring of opposition: &#8220;Today, buried in diplomatic jargon, some presume to tell America where to put our embassy. The United States has a sovereign right to determine where and whether we establish an embassy.&#8221;
Trump&#8217;s persistence on recognizing Jerusalem as Israel&#8217;s capital is a clear change of course in America&#8217;s foreign policy; it&#8217;s a message that America&#8217;s policies won&#8217;t be written by the fancies of fascists.
Moving forward, similarly high on the queue when it comes to long overdue matters from the office of the presidency, is the official recognition of the Armenian Genocide.
Between 1920 and 2017, there have been a grand total of 30 official statements issued by sitting U.S. presidents regarding the Armenian Genocide (One from Woodrow Wilson, one from Carter, one from Reagan, one from Bush, seven from Clinton, eight from W. Bush, ten from Obama, and one from Donald Trump).
Previous administrations all alluded to the Ottoman Empire&#8217;s systemic extermination of 1.5 million Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian Christians under the fog of the First World War, with tepid statements, avoiding the use of the term &#8220;genocide.&#8221; Prior to taking office, Obama even said: &#8220;As president, I will recognize the Armenian Genocide.&#8221; He never did.
Despite past abject failures from American presidents to recognize the Ottoman government&#8217;s atrocities, the verity of the horrid happenings known as the Armenian Genocide are well known and documented by historians, journalists, and survivors alike.
It&#8217;s been recognized by a plurality of civilized nations, and 48 states in America, yet the world willingly allows the Ottoman regime&#8217;s atrocities to go unanswered, all to appease the Turkish fundamentalist government.
The only reason recognition of the historic truth is mired in controversy is that the rest of the world has somehow decided that to preserve a nominal alliance with Turkey, the nation&#8217;s crimes can freely go unanswered.
Proponents of prolonging the United States&#8217; denial of Turkey&#8217;s acts of genocide argue that deviation from past administrations will undoubtedly have long-lasting implications for our foreign affairs relationship with the autocratic state. But so what? Trump&#8217;s recognition of one historic truth &#8212; Jerusalem&#8217;s standing as Israel&#8217;s capital &#8212; already left Turkey&#8217;s President Erdogan fuming.
Speaking in Ankara, Erdogan <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-israel-erdogan/u-s-is-a-partner-in-bloodshed-with-jerusalem-move-erdogan-says-idUSKBN1E50X7">said</a>, &#8220;With their decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel&#8217;s capital, the United States has become a partner in this bloodshed.&#8221;
Later, speaking with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, Erdogan <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/erdogan-says-he-is-working-to-halt-judaization-of-jerusalem/">highlighted the need</a> to &#8220;Halt the Judaization of Jerusalem.&#8221; And speaking at a party convention, Erdogan reportedly <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2017/12/major-world-leader-threatens-to-wipe-out-jews/">alluded</a> to a prophecy hailing the annihilation of the Jews: &#8220;Those who think they own Jerusalem better know that tomorrow they won&#8217;t be able to hide behind trees.&#8221;
Should then every policy decision enacted by the American president be prescient to a praetorian despot? Appeasement of Erdogan&#8217;s exigencies would suggest Ronald Reagan ought to have never called for Gorbachev to &#8220;tear down the wall&#8221;; Trump should never have recognized rudimentary historic reality regarding the Jewish capital of Jerusalem, and Trump (or any president) should never recognize the first genocide of the twentieth century.
Trump&#8217;s campaign was centered on one message: &#8220;America first.&#8221; To wit, no external force or lobby of opinion would write America&#8217;s policies for her. &#8220;America first&#8221; doesn&#8217;t mean &#8220;America first but insofar as Turk autocrats or the United Nations General Assembly is okay with it&#8221;; it means abiding by what is morally right. Trump has the opportunity to enshrine his legacy as the most morally uncompromising president in over a century with the foreign policy acumen to boot. But to do it, he has to stick to his message: America first.
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After Jerusalem, Donald Trump Should Recognize The Armenian Genocide

Jerusalem

With &#8220;The Promise,&#8221; filmmaker Terry George, known for his 2004 Oscar-nominated &#8220;Hotel Rwanda,&#8221; set out to tell the story of 20th century&#8217;s first genocide.
Following the timeline of events that led to the Ottoman Empire&#8217;s perpetration of genocide against the Armenian population in 1915, the plot is centered around a love triangle between an Armenian student named Mikael Boghosian (played by Oscar Isaac), an Armenian from Paris named Ana Khesarian (played by Charlotte Le Bon) and an American reporter named Chris Myers (played superbly by Christian Bale).
Leaving his small Armenian village in the Ottoman Empire, Boghosian travels to the Turkish capital Constantinople to study medicine. 
The film depicts Turkish-Armenian relations at a high point (&#8220;high&#8221; is meant in the vaguest sense). Many Turks still held venomously racist views towards Armenians, but they went to the same universities, lived in the same cities and shopped in the same markets (when walking through the market, a Turk exclaimed to him, &#8220;that Armenian pig will rip you off.&#8221;)
Shortly after, as the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War, Turkish aggression against the Armenian population became a mainstay of government policy. This film portrayed this accurately, as the blueprints for Adolf Hitler&#8217;s Third Reich soon spread to every village in the Ottoman Empire. 
Turkish officers began rounding up Armenian intellectuals and businesspersons, executing them on a whim. Boghosian was yanked out of medical school, and sent to a labor camp where he was effectively starved, and made to work while awaiting execution. 
Miraculously, Boghosian escaped. Following his harrowing journey back to his home village in an attempt to save his family, the film vividly portrays the horrors of the Armenian genocide. From cargo trains packed full of prisoners, to their coerced death march through the desert where they were executed. 
When US Ambassador Morgenthau (played by James Cromwell) confronts a high ranking Turkish officer about the Ottoman Empire&#8217;s rampant aggression against the Armenians, he scoffed in obfuscating Turkey&#8217;s genocidal ambitions, describing it as a &#8220;relocation&#8221; of the Armenian people.
When Ottoman officers arrested Associated Press reporter Chris Myers, they threatened to charge him with espionage, casting the entirety of his reporting on Turkey&#8217;s treatment of Armenians as brazen fabrications and falsehoods, denying his eye-witness accounts of Turkish military-men casually executing Armenians on a lark. 
Prior to the film&#8217;s release, Turkish deniers of the Ottoman Empire&#8217;s genocide took to the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) in spades, spamming the site with paltry one-star reviews in efforts to sink anticipation around the film. (I&#8217;m not sure you&#8217;d need a better reason to see a movie than the fact that it enrages hordes of backwards, genocide-denying Islamists.) 
In the end, &#8220;The Promise&#8221; is about Armenian Genocide&#8217;s history and timeline; the love triangle tying the film&#8217;s protagonists is secondary. And this is where the film shines. Director Terry George accurately displays the unimaginable horrors of genocide on the big screen.

 
As the credits roll, and the dimmed lights slowly illuminate the theatre, you&#8217;re left with one lingering, melancholy thought. That how such unspeakable crimes &#8211; a deliberate attempt to exterminate an entire population &#8212; can go on palpably denied by its perpetrators, and ignored by the rest of the world. &#8220;The Promise&#8221; is an overall great film that you won&#8217;t soon forget. Go watch it (take your friends and family too!), don&#8217;t let the memory of the Armenian genocide or its victims die.
<img alt height="531" src="https://dw-wp-dev.imgix.net/2019/09/oscar_isaac_charlotte_le_bon_christian_bale_the_promise_film_1.jpg" width="780" />
NEW YORK, NY &#8211; APRIL 18: Oscar Isaac, Charlotte Le Bon and Christian Bale attend the New York Screening of &#8216;The Promise&#8217; at The Paris Theatre on April 18, 2017 in New York City.

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oscar_isaac_charlotte_le_bon_christian_bale_the_promise_film_1

The Promise: A Powerful, Memorable Film

On this date in 1915, hundreds of Armenian intellectuals &#8211; Christians, for the most part &#8211; were forcibly deported from the Turkish capital of Constantinople. The number soon escalated into the thousands, and most were eventually murdered.
So kicked off the Armenian Genocide, the persecution of Christian Armenians by the Muslim Young Turks, who wanted to cleanse the country of the troublesome non-coreligionists in preparation for the new Turkey in the aftermath of the collapse of the Ottoman regime, and supposedly in order to ensure against the possibility of the Armenians siding against the Central Powers in World War I. By the time the genocide was over &#8211; and it lasted from 1915 to 1923 &#8211; hundreds of thousands of Armenians had been killed, with top-range estimates putting the total number at 1.5 million. Massive atrocities, from forced death marches to placing women and children aboard ships and then deliberately sinking them, were carried out by Turkish government-backed forces. As CNN reports:
<blockquote>
While the death toll is in dispute, photographs from the era document some mass killings. Some show Ottoman soldiers posing with severed heads, others with them standing amid skulls in the dirt. The victims are reported to have died in mass burnings and by drowning, torture, gas, poison, disease and starvation. Children were reported to have been loaded into boats, taken out to sea and thrown overboard. Rape, too, was frequently reported.
</blockquote>
The current Islamist dictator of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/erdogan-threatens-germany-over-armenian-genocide-2016-6">threatened</a> multiple foreign countries for daring to consider the use of the term &#8220;Armenian Genocide.&#8221; <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/mar/18/turkey-threatens-expel-armenians-genocide">In 2010</a>, Erdogan openly warned that he could throw 100,000 Armenian immigrants out of Turkey. He stated, &#8220;There are currently 170,000 Armenians living in our country. Only 70,000 of them are Turkish citizens, but we are tolerating the remaining 100,000. If necessary, I may have to tell these 100,000 to go back to their country because they are not my citizens. I don&#8217;t have to keep them in my country.&#8221;
While the Armenian Genocide was occurring, the world turned a blind eye. A young German corporal, however, did not. In 1939, he was dictator of Germany, and he told Nazi officers in August 1939 to &#8220;kill without mercy&#8221; in Poland, adding, &#8220;who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?&#8221; As <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/23/obama-armenia-and-what-hitler-learned-about-genocide-denial.html">Rabbi Shmuley Boteach</a> points out:
<blockquote>
Hitler&#8217;s confidants learned from Turkey&#8217;s genocidal playbook. As Hitler strategized his rise to power in the early 1920s, his lead political advisor was Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, a young German Consular office in Erzurum during WWI, a region of Ottoman Turkey densely populated with Armenians&#8230; Turkey&#8217;s ethnic cleansing in WWI was well known and admired by Nazi ideologues. In 1923, journalist Hans Trobst wrote in the Nazi newspaper Heimatland, &#8220;these bloodsuckers and parasites, Greeks and Armenians, had been eradicated by the Turks.&#8221; This chilling praise of genocide foretold atrocities to come.
</blockquote>
Whether it is ISIS targeting for destruction Christians all over the Middle East, the Iranian terror regime threatening the Jews with annihilation, or Bashar Assad threatening all those who oppose him with brutal murder, the legacy of the Armenian genocide is alive and well. If the world never had the courage to face that legacy, it&#8217;s no wonder the world seems doomed to repeat its indifference in the face of mass murder generation after generation.

102 Years Later, The World Still Fails To Come To Grips With The Legacy Of The Armenian Genocide

In his initial 2008 run for office presidential candidate Barack Obama said this to the Armenian community: &#8220;Two years ago, I criticized the secretary of state for the firing of U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, John Evans, after he properly used the term &#8216;genocide&#8217; to describe Turkey&#8217;s slaughter of thousands of Armenians starting in 1915. &#8230; As president I will recognize the Armenian Genocide.&#8221;
In a transcript posted on his own website (it&#8217;s <a href="https://www.barackobama.com/2008/01/19/barack_obama_on_the_importance.php/">now deleted</a> and only viewable on the <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20080228005208/https:/www.barackobama.com/2008/01/19/barack_obama_on_the_importance.php">internet archives</a>) Obama states:
Genocide, sadly, persists to this day, and threatens our common security and common humanity. Tragically, we are witnessing in Sudan many of the same brutal tactics &#8211; displacement, starvation, and mass slaughter &#8211; that were used by the Ottoman authorities against defenseless Armenians back in 1915 &#8230; America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian Genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides. I intend to be that President.
This was Obama&#8217;s great paean to morality and human rights back in 2008 &#8211; Prior to him officially taking office.
Before I break down why this is one of the biggest letdowns of the Obama legacy (yes, bigger than Obamacare), here&#8217;s a quick history lesson.
As of 301 A.D., Armenia became the first Christian nation in history. For centuries, the country flourished and grew. Things took a turn for the worse roughly around the 15th century, when Armenia was absorbed by the Islamic Ottoman Empire.
As the Ottoman empire crumbled through the 1800&#8217;s, Armenians grew weary living as second-class citizens under the Islamic regime. As they pushed for independence, the Ottoman Turks objected violently. In the mid-1890&#8217;s, the Sultan unleashed an armada, massacring some 300,000 Armenians in what would be called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamidian_massacres">Hamidian massacres</a>.
Years later, during the early 20th century, Ottoman reformers known as the Young Turks ousted the Sultan. Eventually, a trio of Islamists from the Young Turks, known as the Pashas, seized power. Perceiving the resilient Christian Armenian population as a threat, they set out to exterminate them. On April 24, 1915, 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders were rounded up and shipped off to be executed. Through the First World War, the Ottoman Turks carried out what became the first genocide of the 20th century, wiping out 75 percent of the Armenian population &#8211; a million and a half human beings.
Being masked by the scope and scale of the First World War, the unspeakable Ottoman atrocity was not instantly known to the rest of the world.
The phrase &#8220;Armenian genocide&#8221; did not even appear in the New York Times until 2004. (The New York Times taking 89 years to accurately report something is actually better than their usual record.)
With the history lesson out of the way, let us get back to our nominal leader of the free world.
Obama&#8217;s first major opportunity to actually fulfill his promise to the Armenians came on March 5, 2010. The House Foreign Affairs Committee voted 23-22 on a resolution that officially recognized the genocidal mass extermination of 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.
Generally, this sort of action would suggest the wheels are in motion. Alas, news reports indicated that the Obama administration buried the resolution. 
<a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/05/nation/la-na-armenian-genocide5-2010mar05">Reported by the Los Angeles Times</a>: &#8220;Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressing concern it could &#8216;impede progress on normalization of relations&#8217; between Turkey and Armenia, according to an administration spokesman.&#8221;
Through the next four years, Barack Obama would go on to issue annual meaningless, milquetoast statements &#8211; <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/04/23/statement-president-armenian-remembrance-day">2011</a>, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/04/24/statement-president-armenian-remembrance-day">2012</a>, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/04/24/statement-president-armenian-remembrance-day">2013</a>, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/04/24/statement-president-armenian-remembrance-day">2014</a> &#8211; all of which omitted the word &#8220;genocide&#8221;.
April 2015, was the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Barrack Obama not only decidedly doubled down on his continued denial of the Ottoman atrocities, but somehow mustered the temerity to spend the week opening a Turkish-American Culture and Civilization Center with Turkey&#8217;s fundamentalist Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan.
Last December in fact, <a href="http://www.atimes.com/article/turkey-takes-chinas-mantle-top-jailer-journalists/">Asia Times reported</a> that under Erdogan, Turkey surpassed China to become the world&#8217;s top jailer of journalists. As I&#8217;ll detail below, Obama&#8217;s pathetic appeasement of Turkey&#8217;s pitiless Prime Minister, notorious for jailing journalists, satirists and really anyone he dislikes on a lark, is no one-off. Kowtowing to despots is practically his policy platform.
Let us briefly recap the Obama foreign policy.
Barack Obama <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000001860451/obama-to-romney-cold-war-is-over.html">laughed, sneering at Republicans</a> for even suggesting that Russia was a geopolitical foe in 2012. He then effectively did nothing when Vladimir Putin had <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/08/15/obama-not-trump-has-built-up-russian-strongman-putin.html">Russian forces invade Ukraine</a>, annexing Crimea in 2014. Finally, Obama cried and blamed the Russians when his legacy and policies were rejected wholesale by the American people in the 2016 election.
Obama drew a red line in Syria and promised there would be consequences should Bashar Al Assad militarily engage dissidents with weapons of mass destruction. Al Assad responded, &#8220;I&#8217;ll call your red line, and raise you a blood-red ocean!&#8221; As he butchered civilians, unleashing chemical weapons on the masses, killing hundreds of thousands. Obama <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/11264/we-are-now-complicit-genocide-syrian-army-russia-joshua-yasmeh">did nothing</a>.
In December of 2014, Obama <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/12/17/statement-president-cuba-policy-changes">promise</a>d to &#8220;only visit Cuba if liberty and freedom had increased on the island.&#8221; He proceeded to completely ignore that and pay Communist dictator Raul Castro a visit as he literally rounded up political dissidents and jailed them, humiliating America on the world stage.
On the theocratic Iranian regime &#8211; the world&#8217;s leading state sponsors of terrorism &#8211; Obama signed over a hundred-fifty-billion-dollars a year in sanctions relief, lifted arms and missile embargoes, all while <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/04/06/obama-claims-tying-iran-deal-to-recognition-israel-would-be-fundamental.html">admitting</a> that the deal would only delay&#8217;s Iran&#8217;s path to a nuclear weapon, not block it. Topping off this diplomatic debauchery, the <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/12249/obamas-final-gift-uranium-headed-iran-hank-berrien">Obama administration recently approved</a> shipment of nearly 130 tons of natural uranium to Tehran.
This is Barack Obama&#8217;s legacy: empowering brutal autocrats and their oppressive regimes around the world while abandoning allies and moral principles. Despite his preening of hope, change and whatever else the focus groups came up with, Obama brazenly broke his promise to recognize the Armenian Genocide &#8211; which, unlike Obama&#8217;s legacy, isn&#8217;t going to be forgotten. 
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