If it were possible to clone prominent Turkish commentator Orhan Kemal Cengiz and make multiple copies of his kind heart and righteous conscience, the Turkish government would then be able to come to grips with Armenian demands from Turkey in a humane and just manner.
Cengiz visited Germany recently with a group of Turkish journalists and human rights activists at the invitation of the European Academy of Berlin with the financial support of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Turkish visitors participated in a conference titled, “Difficult Heritage of the Past,” on how today’s Germans face crimes committed by Nazis.
After returning to Turkey, Cengiz wrote two poignant articles published in Today’s Zaman: “Can Germany be a model for Turkey in confrontation with past atrocities?” and “Turkey and Germany’s past atrocities.”
Cengiz confesses that before his visit, he thought that “Germans were forced to look at their troubled past by external powers who had them on their knees after World War II.” He wonders whether Germany could serve as a model for other countries in facing their past voluntarily. To his surprise, he discovered that even though Germans had begun confronting their past after a devastating defeat, they were determined to create a new country “based on an endless process of remembering, commemorating, and confronting the past.”
The righteous Turkish writer was “extremely impressed and touched” after seeing a brick wall in a Berlin kindergarten: Every year, teachers would ask students to identify themselves with Jews who once lived in the neighborhood before being killed by the Nazis. The students would then write the Jewish names on bricks and put them on top of each other, forming a wall. It became clear to him that “remembering has become a part of daily life in Germany.”
Cengiz hopes that someday Turkish “children would do a similar thing. I imagined children in Istanbul building a wall by writing on bricks the names of Armenian intellectuals who were taken from their homes on April 24, 1915 and never came back again.” He is convinced that “confronting the past is a clear state policy here in Germany. Museums, exhibitions, and the school curriculum all show how the state apparatus invested in this endeavor. So little by little I started to realize that Turkey can significantly benefit from the German experience on this difficult terrain of confrontation with the past.”
In his second article, Cengiz boldly describes the 19th and 20th centuries as “centuries of genocide,” which included the Armenian Genocide. He explains that contrary to the mass crimes committed by other nations, the ones perpetrated by Germans and Turks were against “neighbors with whom they had lived side-by-side for centuries. I think this alone is the most distinctive element of the German and Turkish example. … When you kill your neighbors, it creates a black hole, a gap in your national identity.”
In seeking to emulate the German experience, Cengiz hopes that he will see memorials erected in Turkey about “Armenian massacres, pogroms targeting Jews and Greeks, massacres targeting Alevis and others. When Turkey starts to remember and commemorate past atrocities, the Topography of Terror Museum, which is built on a former Nazi headquarters, the Jewish Museum of Berlin, and others might be good examples to follow. … Turkey has a lot to learn from Germany in coming to terms with past atrocities.”
While Turkey’s acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide is long overdue, the actual process of reconciliation could begin by removing the names of the Turkish masterminds of the Armenian Genocide from schools, streets, and public squares throughout Turkey. The Turkish government should also dismantle the shameful mausoleum of Talat Pasha in Istanbul and replace it with a monument dedicated to the Armenian Genocide. It should also pay billions of dollars in compensation to descendants of Armenian victims, similar to German payments to Jews. Most importantly, Turkey should return to Armenians the occupied territories of Western Armenia!
Germany too, as Turkey’s close ally in World War I, has an obligation to Armenians—to acknowledge its role in the Armenian Genocide. It should apologize and make amends to the Armenian people. Only then would Germans fully deserve the praise heaped on them by Orhan Cengiz for honestly facing their past.
While Turkey’s genocidal precedent served as a model for Nazi Germany in committing the Holocaust, it is now Germany’s turn to become a role model to Turkey for reconciling with its genocidal past.
Harut Sassounian
The German legislature has never formally acknowledged the Armenian genocide as “genocide.”
This is a fact.
Many people think otherwise, but if you read the text of the German resolution you will see that it is a fact.
While the word genocide does not appear in the text of the German Parliament’s actual resolution, genocide is included in the background documentation attached to the resolution.
It is the text of a parliamentary resolution that matters not the background information attached to it.
Bundestag’s resolution 15/5689 of June 15, 2005 reads as follows:
“The German Bundestag honors and commemorates the victims of violence, murder and expulsion among the Armenian people before and during the First World War. The Bundestag deplores the deeds of the Young Turkish government in the Ottoman Empire which have resulted in the almost total annihilation of the Armenians in Anatolia. It also deplores the inglorious role played by the German Reich which, in spite of a wealth of information on the organized expulsion and annihilation of Armenians, has made no attempt to intervene and stop these atrocities.”
Even if we consider that the background information attached to the resolution is as important as the resolution itself, the word ‘genocide’ is used there just once and in the following fashion. Reasons of motions, attached to the resolution, does not state that Germany acknowledges the Armenian Genocide. It states that “numerous independent historians, parliaments and international organizations qualified the deportation and extermination of Armenians as genocide.”
This is far from unambiguously acknowledging the genocide.
This is true. Bundestag failed to use the term ‘genocide’ in its 2005 resolution although some aspects of the legal definition of genocide are contained in it. Germany was the primary instigator of the Armenian genocide and the least she can do is to include the term ‘genocide’ in her parliamentary resolution.
Germany by all means can serve as a model for Turkey. Germany’s admission of guilt over the Holocaust, by no means weakened Germany. In fact it made the world admire Germany, because it showed what a strong country Germany is, by admitting to this past wrong. The same would be for Turkey as well. In the city of Kars, was a statue of two outreach hands pointing to the Republic of Armenia, as though asking Armenia for forgiveness. But the citizens of Kars wanted it taken down, because so many Turks moved into Armenians’ homes, after they were forced out.
Dear Tim Upham, your interpretation of the Kars monument is interesting but, I think, fundamentally incorrect. I suggest you read a detailed treatment of that ill conceived monument here on the AW website by Ayda Erbal, http://armenianweekly.com/2012/05/18/erbal-a-tale-of-two-monuments/
I wonder if Erdogan did not order the monument demolished, because before World War I, Kars was a quarter Armenian, and was home to the 10th century Armenian Church of the Holy Apostles, which in 1998 was converted into a mosque.
There are street names, and even mosques dedicated to Talat pasha. The name of the President of Northern Cyprus is Mehmet Ali Talat. But there is NO “mausoleum” for Talat Pasha. With all due respect, Mr. Sassounian, this is a lie. You know it. I know it. Everybody knows it. Does it mean he’s not revered by Turkish nationalists? No- does it mean he is not respected by many in Turkey- no. But there is no “mausoleum” for him. Talat’s Pasha’s remains, as well as Enver Pasha’s remains are in a memorial cemetery called the “Monument of Liberty.” It was built in 1911, before the genocide, before Talat pasha was murdered. You make a strong case as always, you don’t need falsifications.
there is a Talat Pasha Boulevard on one of the most important avenues in both Izmir and Ankara.(v) There is also the Talat Pasha Street in Bahcelievler/Istanbul. There is no need to even bring up the Talat Pasha Committee, but the tomb of Talat Pasha, whose remains were brought to Turkey in 1943 with Hitler’s permission, is on the Hürriyet-i Ebediyye (Eternal Liberty) hill, next to the Martyrs of Liberty.
http://www.keghart.com/node/492
Places Named After Mass Murderers
Talat: a boulevard in Ankara, four avenues in Istanbul, a highway in Edirne, three municipal districts, four primary schools. Enver: three avenues in Istanbul, two in Izmir, three in occupied Cyprus, primary schools in Izmir, Mugla, Elazig. Cemal Azmi, responsible for the deaths of thousands in Trabzon: a primary school in that city. Resit Bey, the butcher of Diyarbekir: a boulevard in Ankara. Mehmet Kemal Bey (a governor), hanged for his atrocities: thoroughfares in Istanbul and Izmir, statues in Adana and Izmir, National Hero Memorial gravestone in Istanbul.
Rvdv, Talat’s remains were returned to Turkey where he is honored with streets and mosques and mockingly buried at your “monument of liberty”, that’s the point the writer was making. Talat Pasha was not murdered, your own Turkish republic had already sentenced him to death in absentia, Mr Tehlerian, a young man who crawled out from under a pile of his slaughtered family during the genocide with an axe wound to his head was simply carrying out the death sentence issued from your Govt. That’s part of the reason he was set free in Germany. Why Talat and the others were sentenced to death is unclear to me but I believe it was for incompetence and corruption as he sold-off your armies supplies and left them to starve and die in the Anatolian snow. I’ve read the accounts of their demise and it isn’t pretty. We (armenians) never killed those soldiers,where, without their stolen supplies, they dropped like flies by the 10’s of thousands from exposure,starvation and disease, yet you (turkey) honor Talat like a hero when he was actually a traitor to your country and an enemy of the State (he nearly caused the entire loss of your country). So Turkey not only denies its genocide against the Armenians, it blames the death of its own soldiers on the victims too, (covering up Talat’s other crimes of causing their deaths). That’s really twisted.
You will not find any Adolph Hitler streets,churches or parks in Germany.
To the person hiding behind the acronym RVDV, it is very rude of you to accuse me of “falsifications” just because I referred to the burial place of Talaat, one of the masterminds of the Armenian Genocide, as a “mausoleum.” You call it a “memorial cemetery,” and a “Monument of Liberty. In Turkish, it is called “Hurriyet-i Ebediye Tepesi” (Eternal Liberty Hill). This monument is situated on the highest hill (430 ft. above sea level), in Shishli, Istanbul. It is in the shape of a massive cannon tilted toward the sky!!
Regardless of what you may want to call it — memorial, cemetery, pantheon, monument, etc., it is shameful to glorify and revere a criminal and a genocidaire with such a monument. What Turkey has done with Talat’s remains is the equivalent of Germans burying Hitler in a memorial cemetery under a huge monument in the center of Berlin!
“it is shameful to glorify and revere a criminal and a genocidaire with such a monument.”
It certainly is. The fact that Talat and Enver pasha are buried there, in my opinion, is a spit in the face those individuals whose memories were honored when that monument was built. It was built for those soldiers who died while defending their themselves, their Sultan, and their nation from an uprising- I believe after the Tanzimat reforms in 1939. While, as I said in my post, in many circles, these men are revered, respected, and glorified in Turkey.
I apologize if I came across as being rude, it was not my intent. But how else can one refer to something that isn’t true? This… misinformation about a mausoleum has been repeated over and over again. To me, a mausoleum in someone’s honor is the biggest respect you can pay to them. For that reason, in this instance, terminology is important.
Ok, but really you are splitting hairs. Photos of both Talaat and Enver’s memorials–fine, not mausoleums–can be seen here http://travelmind-idilka.blogspot.com/2011/11/raid-of-sublime-porte-and-my-moment-of.html
In support of Dave’s comments, I would add that those who read Taner Akcam’s two recent, superbly researched books (“A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility” , 2006, and “The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire”, 2012) will learn that the Germans were no friends of the Armenians and helped exacerbate the Armenian Genocide. The archival material studied by Prof. Akcam is irrefutable.
Dave, you are absolutely right. Till today the genocide has not been acknowledged
by the German Government. This is hardly understandable. The Germans actually
never regarded the Turks as their friends. In the first World War they needed the
Turks to start a second front line against Russia. If the Germans regarded the
Turks as friends they had the duty to ask them to finally solve this old problem of the genocide. And the Germans themselves should have acknowledged the
genocide for a long time already as they were impassive in 1915.
How can Germany acknowledge one genocide and not the other in which it had
been involved, too ?
I agree Mr OKC is a brave and righteous Turk, although in one of his articles, very uncharacteristically, he used the phrase “The so-called Armenian genocide…” [1915 and terrorists on mountains]. Not sure if he wrote it that way or TodaysZaman editors changed it to “so-called” from his original.
Nevertheless, if there is a successful Turk cloning program, my vote would be to clone Ms. Ayse Gunaysu.
I think Mr. OKC’s prominence protects him to a certain degree.
Ms. Ayse Gunaysu lives in Turkey and has no protection of fame or prominence. I think she is unbelievably brave.
And her articles @AW put Mr OKC’s articles to shame on the scale of righteousness, although clearly Mr. OKC writing for TZ has certain limitations.
Finally, her talk at the ANCA grassroots at Universal last year was simply breathtaking: you could hear a pin drop. People were transfixed.
Her articles @AW never even hinted at the difficult journey she took and personal sacrifices she made to arrive at her stand on the AG and human rights for Kurds and other oppressed minorities in Turkey.
“While Turkey’s acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide is long overdue, the actual process of reconciliation could begin by removing the names of the …………. Most importantly, Turkey should return to Armenians the occupied territories of Western Armenia!”
Begin with giving territories to Western Armenia? How should it end then? Giving our lives to Western Armenia? This might be in parallel of waiting and hoping for a war, revolt, natural disaster or nuclear catastrophe in Turkey,
I don’t entirely understand this request. Does it mean that Turkey should return the lands (houses, farms, etc) to their previous owners, or give a portion of the country to Armenia, or to a new country called Wester Armenia?
“Giving our lives to Western Armenia?”
nobody is asking you Turks to give your lives.
we are asking that the wealth and property that was confiscated and looted from exterminated Armenians be returned to Armenians.
And what do you suppose happened to 2 million Armenians ? Did they, quote, ‘gave’ their lives ? Nope: your genocidal ancestors violently took it from them.
So what do you suppose we Armenians should do: just forget about it and move on ?
And regarding territory: look up the Wilsonian Arbitral Award.
Explore what the word ‘Arbitral’ means legally.
You might be able to figure how it should end then.
A 1920 document? I think it’s too old to be relevant for the current situation.
A 1923 document (Lausanne) is also too old to be relevant for the current situation, if you only take dates into consideration. There’s no USSR, and Armenia has emerged as a sovereign nation-state. Not to say that Armenia never signed the 1923 document. However, in the 1920 document (Sevres) there is one major attachment: the Arbitrary Award granting Armenia territories beyond its modern-day boundaries — the territories that have been emptied of Armenians in the most savage ways and stolen from Armenians for the modern-day Republic of Turkey.
ar•bi•trar•y – Based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.
It is not ‘Arbitrary Award’: it is ‘Arbitral Award’. A result of Arbitration that parties agreed to and agreed for it to be binding on the parties, before entering the arbitration process.
[An arbitral award or arbitration award refers to a decision made by an arbitration tribunal in an arbitration proceeding. An arbitral award is analogous to a judgment in a court of law.]
An arbitral award is analogous to a Judgment in a Court of Law.
nice retort with 1923, John.
it is amazing how everything illogical in the normal Universe the rest of us exist in, is quite normal and logical in the alternative Denialverse a large number of Turks and Turkophiles live in.
Well the case of Lausanne is a little bit different since it is signed in 1923 based on the conditions of 1923.
The Wilsonian Arbitral Award is a 1920 document considering the situation (demographics, countries, etc) of 1920 but you want to apply it now.
Yes, Lausanne is signed in 1923 based on the conditions of 1923 in which there was no Republic of Armenia as a signatory and as a sovereign state, as well as no mentioning in the text of the document that the conditions of 1923 override the conditions of 1920. There also no longer exist some of the countries that signed the document. But in the Sevres, regardless of signatories, there’s one major document: the Wilsonian Arbitral Award (thanks, Avery for noticing my mechanical error). It wasn’t annulled by any superseding legal document. Like Avery said, an arbitral award is analogous to a judgment in a court of law and is thus not subject to limitations of time or place.
If you so cherish one document over the other, the 1923 document obliged Turkey to respect its Christian minorities and treat well their churches, monasteries, properties and graves. How many Christian minorities are there in modern Turkey? Have you ever seen the remains of the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian churches and other places that were “fortunate” not to be completely destroyed? How do you think the Turks complied to the requirements of a treaty that you so cherish?
what a waste of time and money sucessive turkish governments have used to deny the truth of the Armenian genocide ,covering up the truth by teaching their youth the lie that turkey never committed genocide against Armenians,Greeks and other christians, and worst honoring the murderers! it is time that THE HONORABLE TURKISH PEOPLE THAT VERY WELL KNOW THE TRUTH THEIR COUNTRY TO COME TO TERMS WITH THE FIRST GENOCIDE OF THE CENTURY, COME ON TURKS IT IS TIME TO HEAL THE ARMENIAN FESTERING WOUNDS!!! THE WHOLE WORLD WOULD APPLAUD YOU. TURKEY CAN NEVER COVER UP THE HORRIBLE GENOCIDAL TRUTH.
The best German acknowledgement to the genocide was from Hitler himself: ” Who today remembers the annihilation of the Armenians”?
Avery, above, is correct in offering a note of caution regarding Orhan Kemal Cengiz. This is not to demean Cengiz or what he wrote, and no doubt he is learning as he goes along, but one would do well to read a number of his earlier columns such as one in which not so enlightened views are expressed. There’s an unfortunate tendency in Armenian circles to overreact any time a Turk writes or says anything that can be construed as gesturing towards some acknowledgement–witness the unfortunate overreaction to the “apology” campaign of some four years ago. Then there is the matter of the term “righteous Turk” which also needs rethinking. It’s obviously derived from the “righteous among nations” term used by Jews for gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews from death. With all due respect to Cengiz and others to whom this excessive term “righteous Turks” has been applied, there is a rather large difference between acknowledging basic facts of history and risking one’s life. Avery is quite right that someone like Ayse Gunaysu–if only there were more like her–is a rare bird and Cengiz has a long way to go before he can be mentioned in the same sentence as her.
Firstly I´d like to be very cautious in my suggestions,as not to hurt anyone´s feelings,even Turks here por supposedly turks.Whatever,say any other nationality.
I am surprised that even now after so many great Turkey or Ottoman turkey Betrayal of poor loyal Armenians,some think they can follow the Germans.
Germany a Model to cunning Ottoman Turkey heirs?
A countryman of ours in B-Aires Prof. Ohanian in his book entitled ¨..
¨¨Turquia Estado Genocido¨¨,Turkey the Genocide State¨ and in it as in any other book in relation with the Genocide of the armenians accounts the different events that togetherwith the culmination of these ended up in Evicion,slaughter and near complete destruction of Armenian Habitat in western Armenia.
Some(this is the main point I wish to make) do not realize-unfotunately-that even prof.Taner Ackcam,Gunaysu and/or other such,yes even Orhan Pamuk,though ¨´rightous Truks´as some put it..will never denounce their being TURKS.And quite naturally(thin a bit cold bloodedly,like the Brits shall we say) they will deep in their minds ,hearts and thoghts be TURKS..
They will not wish to give up what they have conquistado,conquered.I know this first hand since ,not only I have read what a famousn or important Turkish general uttered when the Angry Armenian Young were performing ¨¨CORRECTIONAL ACTS OF VIOLENCE¨¨AGAINST …OLY TURKISH DIPLOMATS NOT PLAIN NATIONALS…he then some 30 years ago or so said to the press and this was published in Paris´s Haratch armenian Turkey.
¨¨Armenians want Land? come and get it¨ author General Kenan Evren.
After those 30 and some yrs I am a t a conference organzied and by armeniasn for Prof. Richard G. Hovhanissian who was narrating his recent trip to Western armenia -some 7 yrs ago-invited by Turkish woman historian (colleague sort of9 and he went with his wife Vartiter a stout armenian lady too. And there again when I ,tried to explain , after a heated debate ,no not with prof. Hovanissiaan -he was just listening to the debate,after he showed silently relics he had collected from churches cemetries near a half oz. armenian villages and towns,thus showing armenian HAD LIVED THERE!!
That is when the debate began and one Turkish ex-officer said ¨ well…
We have lived side by side ,like brother and sister for centuries,we ought to go back and live like that again¨´,then after I had explained to the whole public that .¨¨Few people here know that naother nation has had the same fate as we Armenians,living under foreign occupation for over 6 centuriees and that in europe, namely the N.African Khaliphates.But they left architectural marvfel s in Spain, did not destory churches monasteries centuries old in Spain and did no MASS SLAUGHTER THE SPANIARDS.In fighting indeed,as in any war.But then the spanish Pricess united the Princes got them well aarmed and drove the conquerors oUT.
When a the cocktail that followed I joined a group where this ex officer was,told him ¨¨you ar right you know,we should become like brothers and sisters, indeed,why not,but after we have settled some accounts-H went away muttering setlle accts settle accts..Went outside and then young Armenian kids came to me saying that man had asked thme to tell me ..
COME AND GET IT ,if you can¨¨ see what I mean after an elapsse of more than 30 yrs so much happening in the world adn their mentality does not budge.Thjey still think the Ermenis are swecond class and if they want their land ,they should come a nd get it.
Now let me tell you what I have written here several times over.land will not be given to us asi por asi,jsut like that.I wear a T-shirt (Americdan of course) now and then I wear it,that on my breast it says FREEDOM IS NOT FREE and the u.S. Eagle on it …
We fought for it and got at Sardarabad the larger armenian of some 60,000 sq., miles which later after Kars 1920 battle-rather surrender by us was reduced to the 30,000. But indeed we should aspire for all of ,or near all of western armenia.But no one ain´t gomna give it to us.We msut wait the moment the oppertune moment for it.My view is ,more than anythinbg else the 18 millionb kurdes uprising and Turkey becoming aware they cannot throw them, all to black sea,or send them to Syrian desserts.
What we can do is CLAIM FOR B L O O D M O N E Y.
Our 500 strong memvber BAR aSSoc. must prepare the File ,then Lodge it with appropriate instances. NOW THAT IS SOMETHING WE CAN DO LEGALLY AND MOST LIKELY SUCCEED.WE DO HAVE PROOFS!!!!
Let’s talk about the Germans. This article glofies them. But what is interesting is that the kind of bigory that had led Germans to gas Jewish children is the same kind of hatred that is building among modern Germans …. against Turks (what an irony, in relation to this article saying perhaps Germany can be a model to Turks in terms of racial relations).
To Germans, the Turks of today may soon become the Jews of 1930-40s. So don’t be too rash to congratulate the Germans. After talking to Germans about “We have too many Turks in our country,” I feel astonished how they fail to see the hypocrasy in their position in regards to regretting what happened to the Jewsih. It seem that it in the German blood to hate “The Other”.
Kerim, this is inflammatory!
This isn’t about a genetic predisposition to hate ‘the other’ but about a common human response to a perceived threat to one’s traditions and livelihood. Resentment and mistrust toward ‘the newcomer’ can be found in any group of humans who feel this perceived threat.
Why don’t you criticize the government of Turkey for its failure to grow its economy fast enough to prevent its citizens from looking to Germany /Europe for employment and livelihood. Wouldn’t most Turks prefer to find work in Turkey?
Don’t promote hatred.
Boyajian, I am promoting hatred?!! Does saying that X hates Y make one a hater? Your accusation does not make sense. I do not hate Germans, but am pointing out that there seems to be a pattern in how they treat the “Other” in their midst. It seems you have not talked to many Germanss — the fact is, they hate Turks! And they blames them for a lot of their social problems. Does this not sound familiar coming from Germans? Do you not know that they blamed the Jews for a lot of things back in you know when? They are so blinded by their hatred of Turks that they do not even see the hypocrasy in their guilt over the Jewish genocide.
You say I dont criticize Turkish government. Well, I personnaly believe the Armenian genocide took place. But, if I were the Turkish government, i would never acknowledge this. You kow why? Because Genocide recognition is not your ultimate goal really. The real goal, aspiration is land (which has not belonged to you for at least a 1000 years!). It would be stupid (and against their national security interests) to concede such a point. You say that Germans did that. Yes, they did. But, fact this fact: Germans had no choice! They were defeated in the war, and were essentially forced to change their views/ways/ Turkey faces no such lack of choice. Aks yourself this: would ANY rational government concede something that would cost them BILLIONS of dollars and even open a path to territorial claims? What country on Earth would do that, unless they had ti (like Germany).
Racism in any society is deplorable, but Germans have some solid complaints against their Turkish residents, the chief being a refusal by some or many to acculturate to the German way of doing things. There are also well-founded resentments against Turks and Kurds, and likely a few Armenians, based on misusing the welfare state’s generosity.
I am not endorsing, condoning or trying to explain racism or violence by German fascists or their brethren, only to recount what German frustrations are as voiced by liberal and tolerant types.
Some Turks and Kurds also insist on bringing primitive and backwards ways of doing things, most especially extreme sexism and violence against their own women.
Germans, Aussies and other western nations have every right to insist that immigrants, including ours, acculturate, learn the language, and work.
Kerim, I have talked to both Germans and Austrians about the animosity toward Turks. It exists, but it doesn’t reflect a blood determinant to hate ‘the other.’ Jda, has put it well. Tensions exist because of real sociological conflicts created by misuse of the welfare system and failure to acculturate to the civil standards of the host country. Yes your thinking is skewed and you promote hatred.
Further, your comment about Armenians wanting back land that hasn’t belonged to them for over 1000 years is based on faulty logic. For more than three thousand years Armenians called those lands home regardless of who the rulers were—which changed numerous times throughout history. Who the emperor, sultan or king happened to be is irrelevant. The land belonged to those who lived on it, owned property on it, grew crops on it, tended sheep on it, built houses and churches and businesses on it, wrote songs and books about it, worshiped on it and created art drawn from the soil, rock, flora and fauna found there. Armenians were dispossessed of this land less than one hundred years ago. Its smells, sights and sounds are built into our DNA—a DNA that does not hate you, but hates the horrible crime committed by your ancestors and the denial of that crime by your present society. Do you get it? You are more racist than you realize. You admit to the crime, but deny the right to justice for those who have been violently dispossessed of life and property. This is despicable.
Avery is right. Cengiz, while professing enlightened convictions about the “dark pages” of Turkish history and urging Turkey to face them, methodically avoids characterizing 1915 as genocide. He prefers to refer to “the massacres”. He belongs to the “call it anything you want but genocide” school of Turkish liberalism, which is, nevertheless, a denialist school. One can attribute this to the notorious article 301 (or whatever it is now; it keeps changing), but the fact is that other Turkish columnists have used the g-word and gotten away with it. If one is interested in featuring righteous Turks, Ragip Zarakolu and Taner Akçam are worthier thinkers to spend one’s time on.
Here is a quotation from Cengiz’s “Bloody Turk” of September 2009, just to give an idea of the calibre of his thought. Of course, he is a relatively young man and might have had a
“Damascus Road” experience recently. But I doubt it.
“In the midst of all this madness, Hrant Dink was a safe haven of reason, wisdom and compassion. He had a deep understanding of Turkey and the trauma we have been suffering for so long. He was killed because he was the hope in the face of this madness. He could have been killed by an Armenian racist. But instead, he was killed by Turkish racists, of course, under the guidance of the deep state. Dink was a bloody Turk for Armenian racists and an Armenian traitor for racist Turks. He was a dangerous figure for all who wanted to continue this vicious circle of hatred. During his funeral, we chanted, “We all are Hrant Dink.” We all need to be Dink if we wish to contribute to reconciliation. I bow respectfully before his memory.”
I will point out, in regard to the 3rd sentence above, that Dink was not killed because he represented hope, but because he would not forsake using the word genocide to characterize the annihilation of Armenian national life in Turkey.
Let’s face facts….the Jews were not even the original inhabitants of Germany, as the Armenians were of Anatolia/Asia Minor. They arrived there rather late in history, yet Germany, brought to its heels by Nazi insanity and Western firepower, learned to repent its genocide in a way Turkey never had to. Sadly, Turkey insists on glorifying the CUP architects of mass murder, who by the way, were responsible for waging wars that killed tens of thousands of Turks, in addition to launching a genocidal campaign to rid Turkey of its indigenous Armenians. Kill the people, steal the land and all their possessions was a plan that could only be devised by truly evil madmen. Worse, they stole the only homeland the Armenians ever knew, which makes their crime much worse than the Holocaust. So, why Turks won’t blame and disavow their own criminal leaders defies comprehension. They didn’t help Turkey…they crippled it for a very long time, much as the Nazis did to Germany. So, one must ask, why defend that?
Nationalists tend to create myths and often rely on the brute force of lies to boost their legitimacy. Along with them, revisionist Turks like to blame the Armenians for their own demise as well as the loss of many Turks, but that’s a major national myth that’s false to its core. Armenians didn’t destroy the Ottoman empire, the CUP did. While there were a small minority of Armenian rebels who advocated freedom from oppression and autonomy, there was no Armenian army at all and certainly nothing that could match the firepower of the imperial Ottoman army. Armenians were as Ottoman as most Turks, perhaps even more so. They were the loyal millet, who not only worked to build and support the empire, but had been part of it from the very beginning.
For Turkey to go down the same road as Germany will require a huge dose of honest self-analysis, coupled with a process that avoids shame yet allows them to say the word genocide, while also vowing to never again commit genocide. Moreover, it must come from within and cannot be forced from outside. Can it be done? Good question. Though, if it can, Turkish self-esteem will be the beneficiary, as well as the lives of all minorities still living in Turkey. One can only hope that the collective guilt associated with the past will move Turks to re-examine their 20th C. history with a new sense of responsibility, to themselves and to those millions of innocent people their ancestors destroyed.
Karekin, Germans did not LEARN to repent their ways. They were forced to! They were crushed in a war. Unless you do the same to Turks, do not expect them to raise a white flag.
What about the simple decency to admit the truth? I would hope to think that there are many decent folks in Turkey. Do you recognize the Armenian Genocide, Kerim?
Kerim:
Like Germans, Turks also were crushed miserably in a war. Yet, unlike Germans, Turks continue to make themselves a laughingstock in the eyes of the civilized world by denying the truth about the genocide they committed against the Armenians. It is not about raising a white flag, are you Turks at all capable of getting it?! It’s about having the courage to admit the guilt and cleanse your nation of heinous sins!
It goes without saying that Germans repented not only because they were crushed in a war. When their Chancellor kneeled before a Jewish ghetto monument, Federal Republic of Germany was one of the richest and mightiest state in the world. Yet, Germans brought into light their civilizational traits as a great nation that contributed heavily into the mankind in many ways and in many spheres. They repented because they were civilizationally much more advanced and mature than the Turks!
Germany can never be a model for Turkey, since they admited to their crimes right after the WW. How can Turks deny thier crimes which predated the Jewish holocost and at the same time be in the same cathegory.
Not even relevant, because in the case of Germans their hands are clean and soles as well. Turks have explainations to do regarding not only the event of genocide, but all the post genocide history they have accumulated and continue to add on to it.
The only thing Turks can do is quick positive action to reduce the sentence.
Boyajian
There is no Turkish influx to Germany or Europe at the moment. The Turkish people in Germany have been living there for the last 50 years and most of them made Germany home so Some of them come back to Turkey to built a life or have a sunny retirement days but it is unlikely that most of them will come back to Turkey one day no matter how the turkey’s economy is good or bad
Krekin,
And other dear compatriots of mine on this Forum.
Kerim, has in a few words summed up ,why
Germany cannot be adopt as a model, or Turkey to be persuaded to adopt the German Model.
Like he writes Germany was crushed(CRUSHED…NOT EVEN A MORE HONURABLE ,CIVIL WORD,like defeated..)You see Kerim likes harsh tough words….
The only way Turks would understand things is that way, i.e., being Crushed being banged on their heads by superior powers or Economic sanctions that will oblige and hurt them real bad, to admit to genocide etc.,. Like the allies she now has from the French to GB to USA,even supposedly Russia-which dose good business with them..I don’t see that to happen not for the forse eable future
Thence ,best for us is to get strong,not think of LAND..
I wrote before , the land will not pull the disappearing act.It is there,well occupied by k u r d s and they cannot be dislodged that easily…18 milions or so
We must wait until such time as when the Kurdish issue is well ripened, so to say..
On the other hand we can indeed CLAIM B L O O D M O N E Y . Like someone in the thread or another confirmed that the US paid $ 3.5 billion to Native Americans as reparations and for their victims.
Few have understood tht we are up against a people that are and have been for centuries trained to do and say what they CARRY ON NOW as well.
Even worse they have sophisticated their other cunning abilities such as
chantage, falsification, complete changes of stance politcally from side to another ,so on so forth.
But one thing I am certain of is that they must have run out of all aforementioned…lately.Just see how EU does nt agree to let them in to the club, arabs do not wish that they chaperon them, Iran???
Wait and see what happens if great Turkey as much as tries to press Iran.Latest news has it that some Tried to enter Iran from the other side i.e. Eastern ran,the Afgans…quite a few were killed by Iarnian olice??? was it on the Int,L news I forget, but to that end…
Iran not s easy to handle…
Jda says: “Racism in any society is deplorable, but Germans have some solid complaints against their Turkish residents, the chief being a refusal by some or many to acculturate to the German way of doing things.”
You know, coming from someone else, I would have had sympathy for this reasoning, but you know … Turks could have said the same thing about Armenians in 1915! ‘Well, they are not acting like Turks. We have a solid reason to hate them!” Jda, I suspect that you hate Turks to such an extent that you feel eager to justify those who hate them too. I may disagree with you abotu a lot of things, but I can understand why you would hate Turks. Armenians, yes, have a legitimate cause to hate Turks, but Germans? They have no such reason to hate them. Otherwise, all nations are justified to hate immigrants … including Americans hating Armenians living in the US, or Turks, or Azeris. It would be a good idea for you to try to be consistent in your positions. If you hate racisim, hate it in all of its instances.
“Turks could have said the same thing about Armenians in 1915! ‘Well, they are not acting like Turks. We have a solid reason to hate them!”
Armenians were not guests or immigrants in the Ottoman empire. Armenians were masters of their own ancestral lands invaded and colonized by the Turks. Do you see the difference?
Acting like others and get acculturated are two different things. No nation can act like other nation, but it certainly can acculturate. Armenians acculturated in the Ottoman empire to the maximum extent possible: they knew the language even better than some Turks, they constructed mosques for the Turks, they complied to all the humiliations of a millet forced on them by the Turks. What else did Turks want them to do? Why is it that no other nation where Armenians live and acculturate raises the requirement to “act as” the natives, but Turks do? Maybe there’s something wrong with the nation of Turks and their treatment of others, especially native Christians? Why do Turks’ fellow-Muslim nations—Persians and Arabs—hold Armenians in high regard, and Turks don’t? After all, Armenians don’t “act as” Iranians or Arabs.
Kerim, your major flaw is your subterfuge from admitting the fact that xenophobia, Turks-above-all mentality, envy for others’ industriousness, and greed for gain at the expense of others’ hard work—coupled with extreme barbarity and rigor—were the Turks’ driving force for the mass annihilation of the Armenians. Please do not try to invent a wheel. There’s just no justification for wiping out a whole nation. Before you, hundreds if not thousands of more professional people: diplomats, consuls, missionaries, charity workers, military officers, intelligence officers, historians, genocide scholars, international lawyers, demographers, Nobel laureates and others have already admitted: what was done to the Armenians in 1915-1923 was a deliberate, state-sponsored mass annihilation of a particular ethnic, national, and religious group. Throughout their 4000+ year long history Armenians never “acted as” the Persians or the Romans or the Medians or the Assyrians or the Byzantine Greeks or the Arabs. Yet Armenians were never mass exterminated as a nation by any of those regional powers. Only Turks did this to the Armenians. And they will pay the price!
Boyajian, you take my words to literally when I say it seems to be part of German blood to hate The Other. I dont mean literally that there is a chemical compound circulating in their blood or a gene in their DNA. Simply put, there seems to be a pattern … First, it was the Jews, and not it is the Turks and sometimes even the Poles.
Let’s be frank. Germans have a complex of superiority. They do not want to admit it, but it is there. Another case in point … all the stereotypes of dirty Greeks who are too lazy to work. But … if you really think about it, if there is any nation that should carry the most shame on their shoulders, it is Germans … for what they did to the Jews. No amount of expensive reliable cars or other engineering gadgets they built can ever offset that crime. If one is to generalize on national merit (and it is a big IF that I do not agree with), then they are an inferrior “race” rather than superior. No superior race is capable of doing such a horrible thing as they have done. I know you feel the same way towards Turks, and that is fine.
“But … if you really think about it, if there is any nation that should carry the most shame on their shoulders, it is Germans … for what they did to the Jews. ”
Pot calling the kettle black!
No Kerim, it is not Germany that should carry the most shame, it is Turkey, for Turkey gave Germany the blueprint for genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass murder, racial annihilation, discrimination. Of course, this wasn’t true for all of Ottoman history, until Abdul Hamid II went beserk and murdered hundreds of thousands of Armenian citizens of Turkey, as a precursor to the CUP leaders from Salonika deciding to eradicate an entire millet – on land they had inhabited for at least 4000 years! So, while the Germans surpass Turkey in terms of numbers, Turkey surpasses all in terms of percentages: fully 75% of all Turkish Armenians were obliterated by the targeted, racist policies of the CUP….again, on their own historical, ancestral land. Nothing in history comes close to this story. And guess what, Kerim – Turks know full well that for 1000 years, it was the minorities, such as the Armenians, who did all the work in the empire, while ‘Turks’ (an boiled down amalgam of cross breeding with indigenous locals over the centuries) ran the government and the army of conquest. Everything Turks had was possible only because the ancient, native minorities had deep roots and massive civilizations in place when they got there. It’s not just an accident that Sinan was an Armenian or that all architects and builders in Turkey were Armenians or Greeks. It was not an accident that most ‘Ottoman’ music owes a deep gratitude to the much older Byzantine and Armenian musical tradition that preceded them. It is not an accident that the cymbals used by the janisseries were invented by Avedis Zildjian or that Limondjian created the musical foundation for classical Turkish music, or that an Armenian gave Ataturk the name, Ataturk or that a Armenians brought the printing press, photography and other advanced technologies to Turkey. Never forget Kerim….Armenians served their Turkish lords very well for a thousand years and they were repaid with a genocide that stole their land and took their lives. You are the representative an ingrateful people….much, much worse than the Germans…who have not only apologized but have continued to act in a civilized way towards those they exterminated. When will Turkey learn? When will Turkey apologize? Or, is it just waiting for an excuse or opportunity to do the same thing again to another large, hardworking, non-Turkish minority living all over Turkey?
Well said Karekin. I would add that, more than providing the blueprint for ethnic cleansing, the fact that Turkey as the successor state of the Ottoman Empire was allowed to benefit from the Armenian Genocide, this opened the door for the Germans to commit the Jewish Holocaust.
Kerim, I don’t like the inferior-superior dichotomy you posit. This thinking is at the root of man’s inhumanity to man. We are all human beings and deserve freedom and self-determination equally.
I can’t say whether it is an inferiority or superiority complex that caused the CUP to commit genocide and Turks to avoid responsibility (the case can be made for either one), but if Ottoman/Turkish society AND culture had embraced equal rights and protection for all under the law, regardless of ‘millet’ status’, would genocide have occurred?
If Azeris recognized that Nagorno-Karabakhtsi Armenians had the right to self-governance, would the pogroms in Sumgait, Kirovabad, and Baku have occurred? Would the war have been inevitable? Would we be grieving over a tragedy in Khojali?
If mutual respect existed between Armenians and Azeris, would an Azeri axe-murderer have been elevated to hero status for hacking an Armenian soldier to death in his sleep?
If Turkey recognized its cultural debt to the industriousness and creativity of the indigenous inhabitants of Asia Minor, would ancient mountains, rivers and towns be deprived their true names? Would forceably-abandoned churches be used for target practice and sheepfolds or turned into museums that intentionally deprive them of their spiritual significance? Would monuments be erected to the memory of the architects of genocide and streets and schools bear their names? Would ‘hidden-Armenians’ exist? Would certain –oghlus become –yans again? Would Hrant Dink’s blood have been spilled on the streets of Istanbul? Would a seventeen year-old-boy have to face prison for being the foot soldier of Turkish Nazis?
If Turkey could accept its greedy and violent past along with its knee-jerk admiration for its imperial glory days, would it be a more balanced society? Would there be a PKK today? Would Cypress be divided? Would Turkish diplomats have been assassinated by Armenian fedayees? Would Article 301 ever have existed? Would Turkey be in the EU? Would Turks and Armenians transcend generations of animosity and mistrust to establish mutually beneficial relations? Would governments need to ponder genocide resolutions? Would 1.5 million innocent souls and their descendants finally see justice?
Neither of above two commenting on the German(race) and comparing them to Turks is correct.They have not lived amongst Germans or learnt -studied about them more accurately and deeply,in order to comment on them that way…
Any people on earth has the right to soverignity to independence and above all to COMPETE AND PROGRESS more than o t h e r s …
You have not been able to s e e that.
Example? why do the International art and or music people(specialists) organize international competitions?
To see which fare etter of course.So there is(exists) that c a m p ..
Hence if Germany is more advanced in a few other fields let it be accepted as ingenious in the field,whatever…
Armenians do have that ability too, i.e. arts, music etc.,more than neighbours.
As to racism…….You know purdy little about another race that is not straightfoward(near simple in that sense) as to display its achievements as do the Germans.That race has been the Imperialist one that for centuries ruled the Empire from that big island to overseas to India and further away…they never show their dislike of others(I speak of majority and indeed some few are good too.
As to Genes…I do not have much knowledge about that ,but I can tell you even if Turkls have inherited some (through marriages) from Greeks Armenians and others some of these Genes…those genes do not interfere in their Mental abilities as to above mentionmed fields .Their gnes if really that matters ,has not been so developed as to produce important FEATS,at all.Just one Orhan Pamuk…..
Whereas we know their might is in fighting and desstrotying quite well!!!
Germans HAVE ACCEPTED MEEKLY WHAT THEY DID .From Adenahaur to Willy Brandt and now they ar e the most advanfced in ECONOMY IN EUROPE after undergoing TOTAL DETRUCTION DURING WWII (millions of tons of bombs.)And they do enjoy when they go to Greece andor Spain,basking themselves in the sun ,drinking wine and beer and praise the hosts.
All Nations ought to be considered equal.Yes even great turkey people..becasue they are by and by to come to grips and acept REALITIES
I am sorry but you cannot say Turks are worse than Nazis. You just cannot. One option is to say, they are both bad. But if you are going to compare as you do, then that means there is some kind of criteria to do that by, and if that is the case, 99.999% of people would say Nazis were worse. E.g., judge by casualty count, war destruction, economic impact, etc, etc. Can you give me one criteria by which Turks are worse than Nazis? Note: you being an Armenian is not a valid criteria, nor are anectodal stories or hearsay of extreme individual atrocities. If anything, the Armenian case involved a territorial dimension, while Jews never claimed that a large part of Germany had been a historical Jewish land for thousands of years, as you Armenians still do to this day. It is very legitimate to argue that the Armenians genocide was a war atrocity (given the territorial claims). So if anything, if you go the route of comparing yourself to the plight of Jews, they have had much worse than you.
To me, any human tragedy is a tragedy – one is not worse or better than other. It is you who are trying to compare Germany and Turkey, and if you do that, then 99.99% of the world population would disagree with you.
I am sorry but it is hard to take you seriously when you make such outlandish claims. And, what is ironic is that the more someone like me (an open minded Azeri/Turkish who accepts the Armenian Genocide) listens to such outlandish claims, the more suspicious one gets that maybe the whole thing itself is an exaggeration and perhaps those events were no genocide at all, but rather what we have is a vindictive ethnicity trying to get back at a sworn enemy that they had very badly lost a revolt.
“If anything, the Armenian case involved a territorial dimension, while Jews never claimed that a large part of Germany had been a historical Jewish land for thousands of years, as you Armenians still do to this day.”
This must be the cleverest argument I have heard in my life.
First of all, no territorial claim, as you like to put it, can diminish the extent of the crime of the Armenian Genocide.
Secondly, Jews don’t claim such a thing, of course, because Germany is not historical Jewish land. I am surprised you are not aware of this. Armenians have all the right to claim so because a sizeable part of today’s Turkey IS Armenian historical land. I am surprised you don’t know this either. Generations of Armenians lived on those lands for millenia and were exterminated or thrown away from their ancestral homes in the most brutal ways known to humanity.
I have a question for you. Armenians as an ethnic group have a history that goes back for several thousand years and this is not a claim. I wonder, in your Turkish/Azeri minds, where did Armenians live for thousands of years? In the air? Azeris claim that Armenians are not native in the Caucasus and Turks claim that Armenians are not native in Western Armenia. So enlighten me please where did Armenians live all that time?
Kerim:
I think—and this is my personal opinion—that one criterion for the argument that Ottoman Turks were worse than the Nazis lays in the realm of the methods Turks employed at mass murdering innocent human beings. Blood freezes in veins when one reads the witness accounts of the contemporaries—Armenian and non-Armenian alike; the accounts that you stigmatized as “anecdotal”. If you don’t believe the Armenians as invalid criteria, read what non-Armenians wrote about indiscernible tortures, mutilations, rapes, drownings, and other forms of murder—all committed by the Turks. I think hardly can such barbarous methods match the atrocities by the Nazis.
Jews never claimed that a large part of Germany had been a historical Jewish land for thousands of years because it had never been a historical Jewish land for thousands of years. Yes, Armenians still do so to this day because everywhere in the ancient historical chronicles—Persian, Greek, Roman, Arab, European, etc.—Armenians figure in the lands that only for about 100 years—after genocide and forced deportations—have become Turkish. Those lands were traditionally inhabited by the Armenians, it is our ancestral homeland and everyone knows that. Even the Turks. In the Ottoman empire six provinces inhabited by the Armenians were called the “Armenian Vilayets”.
It is laughable to argue that the Armenian genocide was a “war atrocity given the territorial claims”. Armenians were not at war with the Turks. Armenians were citizens of the same state, just as the Turks were, only as colonized millet. Most of the Armenians who were mass slaughtered or deported to die of starvation were far from any war zone. The war was between Turkey as a Central Power and the Allied Powers. Being mistreated, oppressed, and heavily taxed, Armenians demanded equal rights. After the Hamidian massacres, yes, there started a movement by a couple of revolutionary groups towards national independence (not territorial claims), as it was in almost every part of the Ottoman Empire. Every nation that’s been oppressed by the Turks rose: Greeks, Serbs, Montenegrins, Romanians, Albanians, Bulgarians, even Turks’ fellow-Muslim Arabs. Armenians were not an exception. Independence, if achieved, would involve the ancestral Armenian lands not the lands of others. Revolt? What revolt? Give me one example when Armenians staged a nation-wide, organized, armed-to-the-teeth and tidily-mobilized revolt that would threaten the foundations of the Ottoman empire?
To you, a human tragedy imaybe a tragedy because I guess it is very convenient for the Turks to call the deliberate annihilation of a nation “tragedy”. No, it was more than that. In regard to the Jews and the Armenians it was genocide—in the hands of the Nazis and the Turks respectively.
P.S. If you’re an open-minded Azeri Turk who accepts the Armenian Genocide, you wouldn’t call the witness accounts of the Turkish savagery “anecdotal”. Again, if the accounts of the Armenians are an invalid case, familiarize yourself what non-Armenians, even those noble Turks, Kurds, and Arabs, described in their memoirs. How do you feel yourself as a Turk?
{“Like Germans, Turks also were crushed miserably in a war. “}
Nvair:
that is only partially true: the Ottoman Empire was indeed crushed by the Allies.
However, Mustafa Kemal and his nationalists were not: France and Britain, tired of war, called it quits. Ottomans were more or less ejected from Europe, and that’s all Europeans cared about.
Unfortunately, before the Wilsonian Arbitral Award could be implemented, things went wrong for us.
Germans, having successfully injected V.I. Lenin and the virus of Bolshevism into Orthodox Christian Russia, did not benefit from their stratagem.
Mutafa Kemal, and modern Turkey did, to the detriment of Armenians, Kurds, and the rest of victims of Turk fascism.
Having said that, it is a bogus comparison that Turks keep advancing about Germany paying Jews because they were defeated: German people, German government have demonstrated time and again that they despise the Nazis and despise what they did to them, the German nation.
Many posters have already brought up Chancellor Brandt: nobody forced him to kneel. It was a genuine act of remorse and contrition. A mark of a highly civilized ethnos. And Germany continues massively supporting the Jewish state of Israel: diplomatically, economically, and militarily. Nobody is forcing Germany to do it.
And regarding the Neo-Nazi murders of innocent Turks in Germany:
[Germany’s Merkel asks for forgiveness for neo-Nazi killings]
http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action?newsId=272251
Denialist, Fascist leaders of today’s Turkey, on the other hand, openly declare that Armenia was created on, quote, Turkish land.
(I re-checked the maps just to be sure: RoA is nowhere near Uyguristan)
And finally: I invite Turks who keep bringing up Germans to please compare how the Nazis exterminated millions of Jews, Slavs, etc vs. how your savage ancestors exterminated Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks.
Then maybe you can convince yourselves that Germans, even at their most vile, most savage, stood heads and shoulders above your ancestors and the ethnos of your ancestors.
Has anyone noticed that Turks never seem to be able to denounce, disavow or even criticize the CUP triumverate? They continually defend Talaat, Enver and Cemal. It’s hard to believe any modern German defending Hitler, but these Turks, who claim to be modern, liberal, advanced and even European (very doubtful), can’t seem to criticize mass murderers, who were monsters on every level. Why? Where is the introspection? Where is the self-analysis? How can anyone defend their actions? They murdered a nation on its own land! They disposed of 25% of the population of Anatolia! How can anyone defend this? If you do defend it, you’re as mad as the perpetrators and need serious psychoanalysis, because it is all indefensible.
“disposed of” ?
as in garbage ?
exterminated, murdered, wiped out, burned to death, starved to death, babies smashed on boulders, their heads bashed in with rocks, pregnant women cut open while alive, human beings butchered while alive,…. – definitely Not disposed of.
Ataturk called Enver Pasha a criminal and a murderer. Somehow, that didn’t make the Turkish history books.
Because, most probably, in their psyche there’s this fear or psychological discomfort, rather, that if they denounce the CUP crimes it would be tantamount to admitting the guilt for their whole nation. This is a trait of an immature nation. Mature nations (Germans, etc.) would tend to admit the guilt in order to get over it and invigorate. Turks still have a long way to go to mature. After all, they exist only for a thousand years and their origins and practices are mostly nomadic, expansionist, and rapacious.
My whole point about not giving too much credit to Germans for being contrite about the Jewish Genocide is that it was not that one morning they woke up and recognized their error. They were crushed in a war, the whole social, political structure changed. Can you imagine them continuing to EXPLICITLY believe what they have believed about the Jews? Could any political party advocating denial ever have been allowed by the Western victors any role in the new Germany? Of course not!
My second point about not congratulating Germans too much … Their current hatred of Turks. Yesterday it was the Jews, today Turks, Poles, etc.
And also, imagine this … John Doe kills 100 children in a school, and then 2 months later he repents. Do you really think that we should treat John as if none of that has happened? A person does not change overnight. A nation that is capable of such a crime as a holocaust should not be treated as if that nation is not capable of such a thing. German reputation will (and should) forever be tainted by what they did to the Jews.
You might say the same about Turks. And it is true. And yes, how a nation handles that stain (and Germany has done ok, if not for the current hatred of Turkish immigrants) does mitigate that stain, but can never erase it. That is why when I see people (especially in Eastern Europe) giving too much respect to Germans or having inferiority complex towards them, I cringe. I would never wish that I were German, as many Eastern Europeans seem to want.
Before you, like Boyajian, call me hypocrite … note that I am not a Turk. I am an Azeri. And there IS a big difference. A Mexican and Columbian both speak the same language are Catholic, but they are not the same nation.
And to my Turkish friends reading this post, yes, you should come clean. At the end of the day, it does not matter what you call these crimes of 1915. BUT … if recognizing it as Genocide is what the victims’ descendants demand as part of your contrition, then you must concede that point as part of trying to make it as right as possible (although, like the German case, it will never be erased altogether). And it would be good for Azeris too. We have been paying a very high price for your crimes. In the Armenian mind, they conflate us two (especially given that they cannot do anything to you and re-direct the hatred to us in actions).
And yes, I am not a big fan of Turkish-Azeri alliance. If anything, it has harmed us. During the 1990s war in Karabak, Turkey mislead Azerbaijan by their empty talk of brotherhood, and made us overestimate their would-be assistance. Had we known none was coming, we would have negotiated a truce much earlier than we did, and not lose as much territory as we did. We kept fighting a losing battle, and Turkish help never came. This is what I heard Ter-Petrossian (the Armenian president at the time) mention this recently, and I think he is right. Turkey hurt Azerbaijan. And thanks to the 2009 re-approachment attempts with Armenia, we now know the true value of Turkish friendship. We ended up paying Turkey with our oil to stop the re-approachment … oil, and not brotherhood.
Sorry for the long post … I should get a life