The Rev. Bassam Michael Madany details Turkey's continued shameful refusal to acknowledge the Armenian genocide:
The first well-documented genocide in modern times took place in the Ottoman Empire.Turkey, as a successor state, persists in refusing to acknowledge that genocide almost one hundred years after it had taken place. Not only that, but it pressures world bodies to refrain from admitting those horrible events that took the lives of one and a half million Armenians in 1915.
In mid June, I noticed an item about this subject in a French language web site. The following is my English summary of the report, “The German Parliament and the Armenian Genocide.”
Turkey has criticized a German resolution that almost recognized the Armenian genocide during the First World War, describing it as “irresponsible” and manifesting a “narrow spirit.” The Turkish Foreign Minister commented, “The German Parliament has adopted a resolution regarding the events of 1915 that we deplore and strongly reject.” Should this resolution be adopted by Germany, he added, “it will sow chaos in our relations.”
This condemnation of Turkey took place when the Bundestag voted Thursday [June 16] on a historic resolution affirming that the government led by the Young Turks [Party] had almost destroyed the totality of the Armenian people; and [the resolution] regrets the German responsibility in this extermination. This motion, as submitted by all the parliamentarian groups, was unanimously adopted. Furthermore, it pointed to the fact that it is still impossible to conduct a discussion of this extermination in Turkey today. Various terms were used in this resolution to describe the genocide, such as “mass murder,” “extermination,” “destruction,” “deportation-displacement,” and finally, the very word “genocide.”
After reading that report in the French web site, I reflected on the fact that the Armenian genocide of 1915 was to become the first in a series of unimaginable horrors that took place in the 20th Century. I thought the crimes of Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, and Pol Pot. Those horrific events are all acknowledged now in Russia, Germany, and Cambodia. The books of Alexander Solzhenitsyn tell of the tortures and deaths that occurred in the Gulags of the USSR. Museums dedicated to those who perished in the Holocaust exist in Jerusalem, Washington, and elsewhere. The movie “The Killing Fields” chronicles the savagery of the Khmer Rouge. So why does Turkey continue to deny a historical fact witnessed by many, including some American missionaries?
As a child, I met survivors of the Genocide and their children. From them, I learned the Turkish words “sefer berlik.” Literally, these words translate into “travels or wandering in the wilderness.” Actually, they refer to the enforced deportation, and subsequent elimination of millions of Armenians. It is high time that Western political leaders, on both sides of the Atlantic, insist that if Turkey is to be counted as a truly democratic nation, it may no longer deny the Armenian Genocide. A confession of such a national sin is long overdue.
Recently the Turkish government, most often using its secularists or quasi-secularists or "reform-minded Muslims" as the front, has decided it may need America after all. Hence the free trips, the propaganda, and all the rest of it; one presumes the rug-buying frolics and detours are paid for by the Important Personages themselves. For Turkey now has nowhere else to go. It will not be admitted into Europe, as some dimly, and others clearly, sense. For that result, for the new (and well-justified) fear of islamization, the Turks can thank, above all, not the innate hostility of a supposedly "Christian" Europe, for if anything Europe has been guilty of the reverse -- of utter innocence about Islam, and a desire to appease Muslims in extraordinary ways -- but rather the Arabs, whose own behavior has been, in and out of Europe, all over the world, intolerable.
How maddening it must be even for the "Islamist" Turks -- i.e., those who are attempting to undo the constraints that Kemalism placed on Islam's political and social influence -- to realize that they will not achieve their aim of having their Islamic cake and eating it too on tables set with European linen, and European china, and themselves to be found all over dining-rooms throughout Europe.
The Arabs always saw themselves, and see themselves still, as Uruba, the Arab Nation, the Arabs in whose language the Qur'an was dicated, the language of Muhammad and His Companions, the language in which that Qur'an must be read if it is to be fully authentic. Islam has always been the vehicle for Arab imperialism, the most successful imperialism in the history of the world, that convinces those subject to it that they should be glad to take Arab names, false Arab lineages, think of themselves as Arabs and forget their own non-Arab cultures and languages and whatever might remain of those pre-Islamic identities.
And now their behavior, their violence, their hate and hysteria, will keep Turkey, and the Turks, out of Europe. And if those Turks do not want to be left alone, or forced to embrace the Arabs they are so quick to tell foreigners they "despise" (that is the word that comes after the indignant insistence that "we are not Arabs" to a foreigner who might be suspected of suspecting otherwise).
An anti-Arab fury should be cultivated, for the alternative is to turn even more on the West, and of course on America. But if the secularists in Turkey, the ones who would like to bring Islam into disrepute but would prefer not to do so in the manner in which that is taking place in Iran among the educated and the morally aware -- that is, through a quarter-century of the hideous Islamic Republic -- then they have the heaven-sent development of European resentment based on Arab behavior, Arab "Islam." The Turks created an alternative myth, the myth of Turkish nationalism being backdated to include as part of the "Turkish nation" those who created Byzantium, and even those who inhabited Anatolia, as far back as the Hittites, have been depicted as ancestors of "the Turks." And the cult of Ataturk has, to some extent, replaced the Muslim cult of Muhammad-worship (for Muhammad, and not Allah, is the true center of Islam).
But the Turks at the very least must realize that the mixture as before will not do. They are required, now, by Western society, to own up to the Armenian genocide. Still others, such as the historian Speros Vryonis, would wish that owning-up to extend to such more recent episodes as the attacks on the Greek community in Istanbul in September 1955. The past is coming back to haunt Turkey -- and will stay there, a far-from-friendly ghost, until they begin to talk, to apologize.
And when they apologize, or when they talk, they can do one thing in their own favor: they can blame the frenzy of Islam. It was not "Turks" that massacred Armenians but Muslim Turks, maddened by Islam, and in at least the 1894-96 massacres, Muslim Kurds as well. It was a Muslim massacre of Christians. It was not something specific to the Turks.
And in admitting that, and in further stating that the kind of Islam (the full-bodied kind) that was then accepted is exactly what, for the past 80 years, the Turks have attempted to stamp out. And then the secularist Turks can use this narrative, this slightly-exculpatory narrative that blames Islamic attitudes and tenets (rightly, of course) not only to satisfy demands in Europe and America, but also to use the very act of that semi-exculpation to score heavily against the sly Erdogans of domestic political Islamism.
Two birds, one stone.
When I lived in central Turkey two years ago I visited abandoned Armenian churches. Some were in small towns, and one particularly beautiful church was in the city of Kayseri. In my ignorance, I had no idea of the facts behind this abandonment, but it seemed very strange to me that such substantial buildings which must have served thriving communities could be just left, empty and stark. I asked my Turkish friend, "Why did the Armenians leave?" The answer was along the lines of: "They went back to their home country." A circular answer.
I'm ashamed now that I knew so little. I did have some idea about the genocide but in my mind it was all mixed up with the complicated events of World War I. My questions about the genocide usually brought denials and assertions that the Armenians had died of natural causes - starvation and cold, for example, not actual slaughter!
Further reading though showed me that there had been many cases of actual slaughter, including one horrific case of thousands of Armenian women and children being killed near Yozgat, a place I happened to visit before I knew this fact. Apparently they were herded into fields outside the town and killed with shovels, in order to save bullets.
On a recent trip to Turkey, knowing that one does not easily bring up this subject there, I didn't. But I was present when an unsuspecting British tourist did. He was quickly told that the Armenians had killed many Turks too - millions of Turks.
It's time for Turkey to stop this altering of historical fact. Time to confess and enter the modern age.
I am asking an important question. Like the denial of the Armenian Genocide, when will the Japanese stop denying their atrocities during the Second World War? I hope that someday soon the world can force Japan to admit to its war crimes, teach students about the war in its schools, destroy all of the shrines dedicated to murders, and pay compensation to its neighbors.
By denying their crimes, the Japanese are emboldening Turkey's denial of the Armenian Genocide and those who deny the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity.
If Japan acknowledges its past, that will be a wonderful tribut to the lat Iris Chang, author of THE RAPE OF NANKING: THE FORGOTTEN HOLOCAUST OF WORLD WAR II.
If Turkey's denial of the Armenian Genocide denies them access to Europe, may their transparent lies be unending.
Christian-
There were war crimes trials in Japan, but, at the time, the world public found the German atrocities so much more systematically mesmerizing than the less journalistically-accessible (more reporters knew German, French, etc., and could get to Europe with less trouble) Japanese carnage, which was equally horrific and inhuman and savage.
In a sense, the two A-Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were felt to have been a kind of communal punishment for their wartime mass-murders, human experimentation, forced labor deaths, etc.- so the impulse to expose their monstrosities wasn't as intense or 'theatrically compelling' as Nuremberg.
(Plus, the attitude toward the "Japs" by Westerners was: "Well, they aren't quite 'human', so what do you expect?" -while the Germans looked just like most Americans (Brits, Aussies, etc.), so their behavior was disorientingly disturbing ("Hell, they just LOOK like us, how could they be so insanely demonic!?").
The book "Ghost Soldiers", about the last days of P.O.W.'s among the collapsing Japanese Imperial Army is worth a read.
Back in the mid '80's, I went to a an exhibition friendly, by myself, at Giants Stadium. The game was between Barca (with Maradona) and Napoli (where Maradona would play next). I sat down in my seat, next to an older gentlemen with a typical thick bushy mustache. We got to talking, and he told me he was Armenian. I mentioned the Armenian massacre at the hands of the Turks, of how it seemed forgotten so many years later. He became quiet; he seemed flooded with memories. We began talking about football [what a stretch, huh?]. I will never forget his simple words of love for the game (which I, too, believe): "When you come to a match, for 2 hours, nothing else in the world matters. There is no pain, no sorrow, no war. It all stops." When he left his seat briefly at halftime, a mother, attending the game with her husband and 2 children, was sitting on the other side of me and said, "It's nice to see a man with his grandfather at a game." I said, "Lady, I've never met the man before in my life." She replied, somewhat taken aback, "Oh. I saw you talking with him in such earnest." I told her, "Lady, the man loves football, as I do. We have that in common, and that's enough." Just as we two, a young Yank and an old Armenian, had in common the knowledge of a genocide he lived through and which the world has largely relegated to irrelevancy.
Sobering story, Jen. "They went back to their home country" is, however, a perfectly acceptable answer, as, to muslims, the "home country" of Christians and others is the grave. To muslims, there is no right for Christians to inhabit muslim nations, no matter their history, or more accurately to inhabit any nations at all.
But this is standard behaviour, no? When evils are done in the name of islam, it's really nationalism, no matter that they come from sharia, or that an imam dictates them. Of course, conversely, all evils against muslims are, to their eyes, religious in nature. This is the only way in which such events can be viewed to a muslim.
I say only 'sobering' above, as I am no longer shocked by anything muslims or islam or islamicists or whatever they or we or anyone chooses to call it or them or those. Islam is about death. It has always been about death. It is about repression, and always has been about that, too. It is about fascism, for it was founded as a religious fascist ideology by a fascist. It's connection to the 'Judeo-Christian' line is tenuous at best; non-existent at present.
The most amusing thing is that islamicists somehow feel that they can bow Britain by bombings. Good God. Have they no sense of history at all?
No islam.
Know peace.
Geoff
Lets not forget that hundreds of thousands of Greeks were killed along with Armenians. Greeks primarily along the Anatolian coast. It's always about more land for Muhammedans. The Jihadist imperative. What Hitler called lebensraum.
dennisw: Yes, many Greeks too were killed. Their churches are still standing - lonely testaments to what hatred in action can achieve. But it's not only churches which were abandoned, houses too, with beautiful Greek architecture (I was getting better at identifying them), and whole towns as well. They don't stand as ghost towns -- they are occupied by modern Turks. But the churches remain empty - under government protection I believe, to be preserved as historical sites.
Geoff: I agree that the Islamists underestimate the Brits. (I'm one myself, Scots-Canadian actually, with an English father, an RAF Flight Lieutenant in WWII). Bombing London will only intensify British resolve. Despite what Blair may be saying and doing, the common people know the truth of this situation. We didn't suffer through the Wars only to give up our way of life in the face of a few bombings.
Let's not forget the "Bulgarian horrors" at the hands of the Turks as well!
Let's not forget the "Bulgarian horrors" at the hands of the Turks as well!