Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

OTTAWA: Politicians must not allow 'homelandism'

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • OTTAWA: Politicians must not allow 'homelandism'

    Ottawa Citizen, Canada
    January 24, 2008 Thursday
    Final Edition



    Politicians must not allow 'homelandism'

    Ozay Mehmet, The Ottawa Citizen

    Canada is an amazing democracy, but it is deficient in one major way.
    It lacks a national ministry of education.

    Our education system is Balkanized with separate provincial
    educational jurisdictions, each having its own standards and
    curricula. This is partly historical and partly religious, reflecting
    the power sharing that existed in 1867 when the Canadian
    Confederation was established.

    As a result, local activists and ethnic lobbies are sometimes able to
    impose their own versions of history on the silent majority. That
    explains why now the Toronto and District School Board has fallen
    into the hands of Armenian lobbies, hell bent on rewriting history
    from an Armenian perspective.

    In recent years, genocide studies have become very popular, and
    Armenian nationalists have joined the bandwagon. Using the fake
    Hitler quote ("Who still remembers the Armenian massacres?") and
    other documents such as the notorious forged Andonian telegrams,
    these Armenian activists have been having a field day at the expense
    of Turkish-Ottoman history.

    So now, the Turkish Canadian community of Toronto is up in arms. They
    came by the hundreds to a Toronto school board meeting on Jan. 16 to
    voice their anger. The trustees were caught unaware. "We never
    expected so many to show up" said one official. The meeting had to be
    moved to an auditorium in order to accommodate everyone.

    What happened in Toronto is a repetition of what took place at the
    Ottawa school board 18 years ago. At that time, thanks to the
    opposition of the Turkish Canadians in our national capital, the
    Armenian module was rejected.

    It is hoped the same thing will happen in Toronto. But unfortunately
    that would not solve the problem, as Canadian schools may yet turn
    into ethnic battlegrounds unless a sane method is discovered to
    contain "homelandism," politicians pandering to ethnic lobbies
    pursuing nationalist ideologies imported from some homeland overseas,
    sometimes resorting to terrorism in pursuit of national causes.
    Opportunistic politicians are ready to ignore these dangers for the
    sake of a few votes.

    Ozay Mehmet, Ottawa
    Professor emeritus,
    Carleton University
Working...
X