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Turkish Liberals Should Back Erdogan's Message To Armenians

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  • Turkish Liberals Should Back Erdogan's Message To Armenians

    TURKISH LIBERALS SHOULD BACK ERDOGAN'S MESSAGE TO ARMENIANS

    Al-Monitor
    April 30 2014

    Author: Rasim Ozan Kutahyali
    Posted April 30, 2014

    My piece last week for Al-Monitor, "How I faced the Armenian genocide,"
    sparked reactions in the Turkish media, especially after Prime
    Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan -- a day after my article was published
    -- issued an unprecedented condolence message to the victims of the
    Armenian genocide. Turkey's polarization has reached such an insane
    level that even an issue like the 1915 tragedy, which is supposed to
    unify, is easily overrun under its weight.

    A telling example is the reactions faced by Amberin Zaman, Turkey
    correspondent for The Economist and fellow Al-Monitor contributor,
    for sharing my article on social media. Here is what happened, in
    her own words, from the Turkish daily Taraf: "Rasim Ozan Kutahyali,
    who is known to be close to Prime Minister Erdogan, penned an article
    for Al-Monitor, where I also contribute, in which he called the 1915
    events genocide and said that those who deny it make him nauseous. I
    shared his article on Twitter late on April 22 with the note 'A good
    piece.' Many people were infuriated. In their view, I had 'betrayed'
    my profession by 'polishing up' someone who did not deserve it.

    Moreover, they believed Kutahyali had written the piece on Erdogan's
    orders -- to dupe foreigners."

    So, Zaman came under attack for simply liking my article, which
    explicitly termed the 1915 events as genocide. Moreover, the people
    who attacked her were not some group of Turkish fascists but the very
    quarters who, ostensibly, are sensible over the 1915 events. In their
    view, I -- as someone who does not belong to their political camp --
    was not capable of acknowledging the Armenian genocide. Being close
    to Erdogan, as Zaman describes me, was a big crime in their eyes.

    My first article acknowledging the genocide was published by the
    Turkish media on Sept. 10, 2008. I was also among activists who
    took part in the 2008 "We apologize to the Armenians" campaign. In
    a television debate the same year, I had a fierce argument with a
    retired Turkish general who denied the genocide.

    Yet my detractors spread black propaganda that I wrote my article on
    Erdogan's instructions to dupe foreigners. In fact, a writer close to
    Erdogan penning an article that faces up to the genocide is something
    that should please people who urge the Turkish state to recognize
    the 1915 events as genocide.

    Erdogan's condolence message, too, should have been welcomed. But
    unfortunately, Turkey's leftists and pseudo-liberals are more concerned
    with their personal obsessions against Erdogan than the wishes of
    the descendants of the Armenian genocide survivors. As I wrote in my
    previous article, they are fine with anyone but Erdogan as Turkey's
    next president. In contrast, Turkey's two most renowned liberal
    Armenian intellectuals, Etyen Mahcupyan and Markar Esayan, openly
    support Erdogan in the Aug. 10 presidential elections, just as I do.

    Now, let's leave aside Turkey's leftists and move on to the letters
    from the Armenian diaspora to the Turkish people, sent as part of a
    campaign by the bilingual Armenian-Turkish weekly Agos.

    Armenian filmmaker and intellectual Eric Nazarian, for instance, sends
    the following message: "I'd like to tell Turkish society that this day
    of remembrance [April 24] is yours, too. Our collective recovery will
    be impossible as long as you refuse to join us and acknowledge this
    day. Is our collective recovery possible? Through meaningful dialogue,
    through acknowledgement of the short- and long-term consequences of
    the terrible tragedy and facing up to the past and the genocide? This
    day belongs also to the memory of righteous Turks and the lives
    they saved."

    I fully agree with Nazarian. Turkish society's recovery, too, depends
    on facing up to 1915. And Erdogan is the chief figure who can convince
    Turks to come to terms with the truth after nine decades of black
    propaganda by the same mindset that committed the genocide. His
    popularity is obvious. Political pundits agree that Erdogan will
    almost certainly govern Turkey in the next decade as president.

    Nazarian's emphasis on lives saved by righteous Turks is also
    important. Indeed, a significant number of Turkish officials defied the
    orders of the Talat Pasha government in 1915. Let me briefly mention
    some of them, borrowing from the book of Turkish academic Ayhan Aktar.

    Following the Young Turks' order for the massacres, Ankara Gov. Hasan
    Mazhar Bey replied, "I'm a governor, not a bandit. I cannot obey
    unlawful orders."

    Konya Gov. Celal Bey saved the lives of tens of thousands of Armenians,
    defying the decision for their deportation. A former governor of
    Aleppo, Celal Bey, knew that deporting those people to the Syrian
    deserts was tantamount to murder. The biggest support to this honorable
    statesman came from Konya's sheikhs and religious scholars -- those
    sons of the Turkish nation who displayed strong morals and virtue
    by resisting a deportation order that amounted to murder and flouted
    both Islam and humanity.

    Kutahya Gov. Faik Ali Bey was another dignified man who refused
    to follow the deportation order. He instructed his subordinates to
    protect the Armenians who had managed to reach Kutahya in a miserable
    state after being deported from other cities. He dismissed the city's
    infamous police chief who was pressing the Armenians to convert
    to Islam to let them stay in Kutahya or else "join the deportation
    convoys." A true symbol of nobleness, Ali Faik Bey shouted in the
    city's town hall, "The Turks in Kutahya have not and will never take
    part in the atrocities against the Armenians!" It is because of people
    like him that I feel honored to have Kutahya in my surname.

    Kastamonu Gov. Resit Pasha, Basra Gov. Ferit Bey, Yozgat Gov. Cemal
    Bey, Lice Sub-Gov. Huseyin Nesimi Bey and Batman Deputy Sub-Gov. Sabit
    Bey were all among those honorable statesmen we are proud to have had.

    Some of them lost their lives, too. The Young Turk mentality did not
    spare them either, just as it pressed ahead with the deportations
    knowing perfectly well they amounted to an atrocity.

    So, let's ask ourselves this question: Do we see ourselves as the
    grandchildren of those noble Turkish statesmen? Are we going to
    erect monuments of them in the cities they served? Or are we the
    grandchildren of the wicked men who made a conscious decision to kill?

    Do we keep lauding the murderers? If we continue to shamelessly insist
    that "we did it and we were right to do so," that would make us the
    grandchildren of the second group. So, we have to make up our mind:
    Who are the Turks we see as true ancestors?

    In almost every Turkish city today, streets and boulevards are named
    after Young Turk leaders. And what about the names of the noble
    Turkish statesmen who listened to the voice of their conscience and
    humanity? Are any of them inscribed on a school, hospital or street?

    Not even one? These questions go to Erdogan. As the man likely to
    be Turkey's president in 2015 -- the centenary of the massacres --
    he is now expected to take even more momentous steps.

    http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/04/turkey-armenian-genocide-erdogan-condolence-legacy-liberals.html

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