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Gunaysu: Kurds Challenge Turkish Nation-State
http://news.google.com/news/search?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=armenia+OR+Armenian+OR+armenians+OR+karabakh&cf=all&scoring=n
Fri, Jan 21 2011
By: Ayse Gunaysu
On Dec. 20, 2010, Turkish members of parliament, including the
ultra-nationalist MHP, Islamist AKP, nationalist CHP, and others, were
listening to the tall woman addressing the session during the
budgetary discussions for the Ministry of Tourism and Culture. "Rafael
Lemkin says genocide is not only about the extermination of the
representatives of a nation but also annihilation of its cultural and
national values," she was saying. "Today, of the 913 Armenian
monuments remaining after 1923, 464 have been totally destroyed, 252
left to a state of dilapidation, and 197 in urgent need of
restoration. Many of the Armenian religious buildings are being used
as stables or storehouses, and many of the Armenian churches have been
turned into mosques. Armenians in 1915 were driven out of their own
homeland. Suffering, exile, and destitution all combined into Armenian
people's painful outcry." She went on to quote Armenian singer Aram
Tigran's words: "A storm blew away our nest, leaving us orphans,
exiled, longing for our nest even if it is made of stone." She
concluded: "Turkish governments' refusal of Aram Tigran's last wish to
be buried in Diyarbakir is proof that the punishment imposed on
Armenians does not end even after their death."
The speaker was Pervin Buldan, a member of the Kurdish Peace and
Democracy Party from Igdir, one of the places that suffered worst
during the Armenian Genocide. She is also the widow of Savas Buldan, a
Kurdish businessman, who was one of the victims of the infamous
unsolved murders of the 1990's. Savas Buldan's dead body was found on
the roadside in 1994 after being kidnapped by "unidentified" persons
shortly after then-Prime Minister Tansu Ciller declared that he knew
the identities of the Kurdish businessmen financially supporting the
PKK (Kurdish Workers' Party) and would do away with them. One year
later, a parliamentary commission prepared a report on these unsolved
murders, but was never published; the commission had explicitly stated
that the state's secret forces had been involved in the murders.
Ten days before Pervin Buldan's parliamentary speech, on Dec. 10 at a
workshop on the Kurdish Question organized by the Socialist Democracy
Party in Istanbul, Galip Enserioglu, the chairman of the Diyarbakir
Chamber of Industry and Commerce, was addressing the audience, telling
them that Armenians were massacred "at the hands of Kurds." "We,
Kurds, are now paying for our past sins," he stated. "The Ittihadists
had decided to found this nation-state and we, the Kurds, let alone
watching as bystanders what they did to Armenians and other
non-Muslims, we actively became their tool. Armenians were massacred
by our own hands."
Alliance against the common foe
These speeches were delivered at a time when a surge of national
indignation dominated the Turkish political scene in response to Kurds
declaring "democratic autonomy" and the start of a de facto "bilingual
life"--with Kurdish appearing in the written form in every aspect of
life, from price labels at traditional open-air marketsto the official
sphere, such as on signs at municipality buildings in Kurdish
provinces. During trials of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), the
alleged urban extension of the outlawed PKK, suspects, among them some
BDP mayors and chairpersons of local branches of the Human Rights
Association, had asked to be able to defend themselves in Kurdish, a
demand rejected by the court. When some of the defendants submitted
their defenses in Kurdish, the president of the court said the
suspects spoke in "an unknown language." In order to protest this, the
BDP started to hold its parliamentary group meetings partially in
Kurdish.
This move met with outrage equally vehement on both wings of power in
Turkey: the Turkish military and its hate figure AKP government,
revealing the fact that the two are allies against the Kurds, whether
they are engaged in an armed movement or in peaceful political
activity. The speaker of parliament, AKP Deputy Mehmet Ali Sahin,
recalled that to speak in another language in parliament was cause to
disband a political party, and urged public prosecutors to start legal
action against the BDP. Simultaneously the Turkish General Staff
issued a statement in which it condemned the BDP's attempt at a
bilingual life, stating that such debates were against the founding
philosophy of the Turkish Republic and therefore created "great
concern." The statement predictably included a sentence that, as
everyone in Turkey knows, meant threat of military intervention. "The
Turkish Armed Forces," it said, "have always and will continue to
stand for the protection of the united, secular nation state that is
indicated in the constitution."
The much-resented Democratic Autonomy is described by the Democratic
Society Congress (DTK)--an organization of Kurds comprising
intellectuals, representatives from civil society organizations,
politicians, and members of the BDP--as the organizational model going
from bottom to top, and encompassing village, neighborhood, district,
and provincial parliaments on the basis of confederations. At the top
of this organizational structure will be the DTK, which will send
representatives to the Turkish Parliament.
Now a few words about the KCK case: The first wave of arrests in April
2009 focused mostly on BDP (then DTP) activists. Subsequent operations
steadily climbed up the political hierarchy and began to encompass
former mayors and elected city council members. Finally, amid complete
international silence, the arrests peaked on Dec. 24, 2009, with the
arrests of elected mayors Hatip Dicle and Muharrem Erbey, chairman of
the Diyarbakir IHD branch. The 7,587-page indictment dealing with the
most senior suspects targeted in the KCK operations reveals that these
people were being persecuted for peaceful political activities. As
Emin Aktar, chairman of the Diyarbakir Bar Association, has pointed
out, no one is being accused of using weapons or bombs, only of
organizing civil protests; people's participation in funeral services
for fallen PKK guerrillas is also repeatedly presented as criminal.
Erbey's offenses include participation in a commission of legal
experts established under DTK auspices to study Turkey's constitution
and make proposals for its amendment. Significantly, despite every
legitimate reason, the court declined the repeated demands for release
of those defendants who have been in jail for more than a year without
any court ruling establishing their guilt.
This wave of arrests came after last year's Kurdish "opening" fiasco.
The government had first declared that they would take steps to bring
about a solution to the Kurdish Question. Right after, a group of
guerrillas left their arms and turned themselves into Turkish security
forces with enthusiastic mass demonstrations by the Kurds welcoming
them. The nationalist front in Turkey rose up in protest of this peace
initiative and the government immediately made a U-turn, arresting the
guerillas, and following with these mass arrests and the KCK case
targeting the peaceful Kurdish political movement.
Kurds: The first to recognize Armenian Genocide
It is no coincidence that it was the Kurds, the main, unyielding, and
massive opponent of the system in Turkey since the foundation of the
Republic, particularly for the last three decades of armed struggle,
who first publicly pronounced their recognition of the Armenian and
Assyrian Genocide of 1915-16, long before Turkish intellectuals.
Recep Marasli was the first. A Kurdish intellectual, writer, and
political activist, Marasli was one of the victims of the torture
house of Diyarbakir Prison. He was one of the defendants in in the
famous Rizgari-Ala Rizgari case trialed by the Diyarbakir Military
Court after the 1980 military coup (Rizgari was one of the major
Kurdish national movements in Turkey). Marasli was an inmate in the
Istanbul Alemdag Military Prison in 1982 when "Armenian
organizations," as he calls them, began a series of attacks on Turkish
diplomats. Racist hatred dominated the headlines of the newspapers,
and prisoners suspected to be of Armenian origin were particularly
subjected to even more barbaric tortures in Diyarbakir Prison.
Marasli, together with a friend, prepared a brochure about the
Armenian Genocide, challenging the official history and giving an
account of the crimes against humanity committed against the Ottoman
Armenians. The brochure was secretly circulated among the prisoners,
and later formed a part of Marasli's legal defense submitted to the
military court, The defense was published as a book by the Komal
Publishing House in Duisburg and Istanbul in 1986, and covered the
topic of the Armenian Genocide between pages 286 and 292. From 1982
on, every year until his release, on April 24 Marasli's small group
commemorated the genocide in various ways, depending on the
circumstances-sometimes putting a hand-made poster on the wall of the
ward, sometimes organizing a seminar, sometimes circulating a leaflet.
This is how he recalls his first acquaintance with the fate of the
Armenians in Turkey and his steps to raise awareness of it, in the
preface of his book on the Armenian Genocide published in Turkey in
2008.1 Since 1982, Marasli has devoted much of his time to learning
more about the Armenian Genocide and the above-mentioned book was the
result of his work of many years.
It seems that Turkish prisons played a great role in the awakening
amongst Kurds of the truth about Armenians. Naci Kutlay, another
well-known Kurdish writer and intellectual, refers to an even earlier
stage in Turkey's recent history-the military intervention in 1971,
when he and his Kurdish socialist comrades were tried at military
courts. He recalls that during the hearings, court records revealed
the Armenian origins of many of the Kurdish defendants, which was a
total surprise to many of their friends. This was when he was first
faced with the truth that Kurds had massacred Armenians, not only
because of government lies that made them believe the Armenians would
establish a state and persecute Kurds, and not only because of
religious hatred, but also because of their greed for Armenian
wealth.2
Naci Kutlay and Recep Marasli are not the only Kurdish dissidents who
have acknowledged the truth. For the past few decades, many Kurdish
intellectuals have publicly expressed their shame over the Kurds' role
in the genocide and have apologized in interviews published in various
magazines and newspapers. One of them is Orhan Miroglu, a Kurdish
intellectual and another victim of the Diyarbakir Prison who was shot
and seriously wounded during the assassination of the legendary
Kurdish writer, poet, and activist Musa Anter in Diyarbakir in 1992.
In an interview with a journalist from the daily Birgun, in response
to what he thought of the "Armenian Genocide allegations," Miroglu
said: "The Armenian Genocide is not an allegation. It is a fact even
acknowledged by the Turkish Republic's founding ideology of Kemalism
[in the past]. Even Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was quoted in General
Harbord's report on the Armenian Question to have said 'we guarantee
that no other Turkish atrocity will take place against Armenians.' The
CUP (Committee of Union and Progress) planned a genocide targeting
Armenians. Kurds were the accomplices of this genocide. Kurds should
apologize to Armenians for the genocide in the name of friendship and
peace. I, as a Kurdish intellectual, apologize to Armenians. In order
to come to terms with our past we have to apologize [to Armenians]."
Kurds on forefront of struggle for democratic Turkey
Now Kurds are struggling for their national identity, and also for a
more democratic Turkey, against a block of allied forces in defense of
the nation-state, i.e. the Turkish military, the nationalist front in
general, and the ruling AKP that had asked (and succeeded to some
extent) to get the votes of the left-wing, democratic, progressive
sections of the population, swearing that they stood for democracy and
human rights against the militaristic Kemalist establishment.
Today, Jan. 13, 2011, the KCK trial resumed in Diyarbakir and now I'm
listening on the TV to the news agencies' reports about the violent
clashes between demonstrators and security forces in the city, as well
as in other Kurdish provinces, such as Hakkari, Cizre, Nusaybin and
Batman, as thousands of people demand justice for the KCK defendants.
It's being reported that during the hearing the microphone was turned
off when the first defendant started to speak in Kurdish.
It is clear enough that no progress can take place in Turkey without
Kurds first gaining ground in their struggle for the recognition of
their rights and for democracy in Turkey. The future of Turkey depends
to a great extent on the success of the Kurdish political movement,
backed by dynamic masses rising for their rights, in making the
Turkish nation-state finally accept to abandon the old ways of ruling
and take a new road towards a future with greater justice for all.
As for the nature of the Kurdish reality in the past and in the
present, it should not be considered as a paradox that Kurds were at
the same time both perpetrators and saviors in 1915 (especially the
Alevi Kurds in Dersim) because there has never been a single uniform
Kurdish (or other) identity completely independent of individual, or
regional, or social, or cultural differences. Similarly it is not a
paradox that a group in a specific period in history acted as the
perpetrators of a crime against another group, but also became the
victim of their common oppressor. And thirdly it is not a paradox when
members of a group that had been the perpetrators at the time later
became the first to acknowledge the guilt and apologize--especially if
it has also suffered. It's just that one cannot put life and its
actors into ready-made compartments. That's why life is much more
complicated, much more contradictory, and holds much more hope for the
better despite the prevalence of injustice and suffering.
But it should not be unexpected that the same land--the homeland of
Armenians and Kurds --continues to bleed. Because it is the crime
scene. No good can grow in the soil of a crime scene until justice is
served. Only then can the dead, the Armenian and Assyrian victims of
the genocide who are denied a gravestone, be duly and respectfully
buried in the hearts of the living; can the dead's suffering spirits
be freed of their agony and be able to retreat to their eternal
peaceful sleep. Only then can the soil of the crime scene start to be
fertile again, for the Kurds and for us all, bearing fruit again and
feeding its children.
1. Recep Marasli, Ermeni Ulusal Demokratik Hareketi ve 1915
Soykırımı (The Armenian National Democratic Movement and 1915
Genocide), Peri Publishing House, Istanbul: 2008.
2. See http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jic4Agcy2egJ:www.radikal.com.tr/ek_haber.php%3Fek%3Dr2%26haberno%3D6710+K%C3%BCrtler+ve+Ermeniler&cd=1&hl=tr&ct=clnk&gl=tr.
From: A. Papazian
http://news.google.com/news/search?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=armenia+OR+Armenian+OR+armenians+OR+karabakh&cf=all&scoring=n
Fri, Jan 21 2011
By: Ayse Gunaysu
On Dec. 20, 2010, Turkish members of parliament, including the
ultra-nationalist MHP, Islamist AKP, nationalist CHP, and others, were
listening to the tall woman addressing the session during the
budgetary discussions for the Ministry of Tourism and Culture. "Rafael
Lemkin says genocide is not only about the extermination of the
representatives of a nation but also annihilation of its cultural and
national values," she was saying. "Today, of the 913 Armenian
monuments remaining after 1923, 464 have been totally destroyed, 252
left to a state of dilapidation, and 197 in urgent need of
restoration. Many of the Armenian religious buildings are being used
as stables or storehouses, and many of the Armenian churches have been
turned into mosques. Armenians in 1915 were driven out of their own
homeland. Suffering, exile, and destitution all combined into Armenian
people's painful outcry." She went on to quote Armenian singer Aram
Tigran's words: "A storm blew away our nest, leaving us orphans,
exiled, longing for our nest even if it is made of stone." She
concluded: "Turkish governments' refusal of Aram Tigran's last wish to
be buried in Diyarbakir is proof that the punishment imposed on
Armenians does not end even after their death."
The speaker was Pervin Buldan, a member of the Kurdish Peace and
Democracy Party from Igdir, one of the places that suffered worst
during the Armenian Genocide. She is also the widow of Savas Buldan, a
Kurdish businessman, who was one of the victims of the infamous
unsolved murders of the 1990's. Savas Buldan's dead body was found on
the roadside in 1994 after being kidnapped by "unidentified" persons
shortly after then-Prime Minister Tansu Ciller declared that he knew
the identities of the Kurdish businessmen financially supporting the
PKK (Kurdish Workers' Party) and would do away with them. One year
later, a parliamentary commission prepared a report on these unsolved
murders, but was never published; the commission had explicitly stated
that the state's secret forces had been involved in the murders.
Ten days before Pervin Buldan's parliamentary speech, on Dec. 10 at a
workshop on the Kurdish Question organized by the Socialist Democracy
Party in Istanbul, Galip Enserioglu, the chairman of the Diyarbakir
Chamber of Industry and Commerce, was addressing the audience, telling
them that Armenians were massacred "at the hands of Kurds." "We,
Kurds, are now paying for our past sins," he stated. "The Ittihadists
had decided to found this nation-state and we, the Kurds, let alone
watching as bystanders what they did to Armenians and other
non-Muslims, we actively became their tool. Armenians were massacred
by our own hands."
Alliance against the common foe
These speeches were delivered at a time when a surge of national
indignation dominated the Turkish political scene in response to Kurds
declaring "democratic autonomy" and the start of a de facto "bilingual
life"--with Kurdish appearing in the written form in every aspect of
life, from price labels at traditional open-air marketsto the official
sphere, such as on signs at municipality buildings in Kurdish
provinces. During trials of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), the
alleged urban extension of the outlawed PKK, suspects, among them some
BDP mayors and chairpersons of local branches of the Human Rights
Association, had asked to be able to defend themselves in Kurdish, a
demand rejected by the court. When some of the defendants submitted
their defenses in Kurdish, the president of the court said the
suspects spoke in "an unknown language." In order to protest this, the
BDP started to hold its parliamentary group meetings partially in
Kurdish.
This move met with outrage equally vehement on both wings of power in
Turkey: the Turkish military and its hate figure AKP government,
revealing the fact that the two are allies against the Kurds, whether
they are engaged in an armed movement or in peaceful political
activity. The speaker of parliament, AKP Deputy Mehmet Ali Sahin,
recalled that to speak in another language in parliament was cause to
disband a political party, and urged public prosecutors to start legal
action against the BDP. Simultaneously the Turkish General Staff
issued a statement in which it condemned the BDP's attempt at a
bilingual life, stating that such debates were against the founding
philosophy of the Turkish Republic and therefore created "great
concern." The statement predictably included a sentence that, as
everyone in Turkey knows, meant threat of military intervention. "The
Turkish Armed Forces," it said, "have always and will continue to
stand for the protection of the united, secular nation state that is
indicated in the constitution."
The much-resented Democratic Autonomy is described by the Democratic
Society Congress (DTK)--an organization of Kurds comprising
intellectuals, representatives from civil society organizations,
politicians, and members of the BDP--as the organizational model going
from bottom to top, and encompassing village, neighborhood, district,
and provincial parliaments on the basis of confederations. At the top
of this organizational structure will be the DTK, which will send
representatives to the Turkish Parliament.
Now a few words about the KCK case: The first wave of arrests in April
2009 focused mostly on BDP (then DTP) activists. Subsequent operations
steadily climbed up the political hierarchy and began to encompass
former mayors and elected city council members. Finally, amid complete
international silence, the arrests peaked on Dec. 24, 2009, with the
arrests of elected mayors Hatip Dicle and Muharrem Erbey, chairman of
the Diyarbakir IHD branch. The 7,587-page indictment dealing with the
most senior suspects targeted in the KCK operations reveals that these
people were being persecuted for peaceful political activities. As
Emin Aktar, chairman of the Diyarbakir Bar Association, has pointed
out, no one is being accused of using weapons or bombs, only of
organizing civil protests; people's participation in funeral services
for fallen PKK guerrillas is also repeatedly presented as criminal.
Erbey's offenses include participation in a commission of legal
experts established under DTK auspices to study Turkey's constitution
and make proposals for its amendment. Significantly, despite every
legitimate reason, the court declined the repeated demands for release
of those defendants who have been in jail for more than a year without
any court ruling establishing their guilt.
This wave of arrests came after last year's Kurdish "opening" fiasco.
The government had first declared that they would take steps to bring
about a solution to the Kurdish Question. Right after, a group of
guerrillas left their arms and turned themselves into Turkish security
forces with enthusiastic mass demonstrations by the Kurds welcoming
them. The nationalist front in Turkey rose up in protest of this peace
initiative and the government immediately made a U-turn, arresting the
guerillas, and following with these mass arrests and the KCK case
targeting the peaceful Kurdish political movement.
Kurds: The first to recognize Armenian Genocide
It is no coincidence that it was the Kurds, the main, unyielding, and
massive opponent of the system in Turkey since the foundation of the
Republic, particularly for the last three decades of armed struggle,
who first publicly pronounced their recognition of the Armenian and
Assyrian Genocide of 1915-16, long before Turkish intellectuals.
Recep Marasli was the first. A Kurdish intellectual, writer, and
political activist, Marasli was one of the victims of the torture
house of Diyarbakir Prison. He was one of the defendants in in the
famous Rizgari-Ala Rizgari case trialed by the Diyarbakir Military
Court after the 1980 military coup (Rizgari was one of the major
Kurdish national movements in Turkey). Marasli was an inmate in the
Istanbul Alemdag Military Prison in 1982 when "Armenian
organizations," as he calls them, began a series of attacks on Turkish
diplomats. Racist hatred dominated the headlines of the newspapers,
and prisoners suspected to be of Armenian origin were particularly
subjected to even more barbaric tortures in Diyarbakir Prison.
Marasli, together with a friend, prepared a brochure about the
Armenian Genocide, challenging the official history and giving an
account of the crimes against humanity committed against the Ottoman
Armenians. The brochure was secretly circulated among the prisoners,
and later formed a part of Marasli's legal defense submitted to the
military court, The defense was published as a book by the Komal
Publishing House in Duisburg and Istanbul in 1986, and covered the
topic of the Armenian Genocide between pages 286 and 292. From 1982
on, every year until his release, on April 24 Marasli's small group
commemorated the genocide in various ways, depending on the
circumstances-sometimes putting a hand-made poster on the wall of the
ward, sometimes organizing a seminar, sometimes circulating a leaflet.
This is how he recalls his first acquaintance with the fate of the
Armenians in Turkey and his steps to raise awareness of it, in the
preface of his book on the Armenian Genocide published in Turkey in
2008.1 Since 1982, Marasli has devoted much of his time to learning
more about the Armenian Genocide and the above-mentioned book was the
result of his work of many years.
It seems that Turkish prisons played a great role in the awakening
amongst Kurds of the truth about Armenians. Naci Kutlay, another
well-known Kurdish writer and intellectual, refers to an even earlier
stage in Turkey's recent history-the military intervention in 1971,
when he and his Kurdish socialist comrades were tried at military
courts. He recalls that during the hearings, court records revealed
the Armenian origins of many of the Kurdish defendants, which was a
total surprise to many of their friends. This was when he was first
faced with the truth that Kurds had massacred Armenians, not only
because of government lies that made them believe the Armenians would
establish a state and persecute Kurds, and not only because of
religious hatred, but also because of their greed for Armenian
wealth.2
Naci Kutlay and Recep Marasli are not the only Kurdish dissidents who
have acknowledged the truth. For the past few decades, many Kurdish
intellectuals have publicly expressed their shame over the Kurds' role
in the genocide and have apologized in interviews published in various
magazines and newspapers. One of them is Orhan Miroglu, a Kurdish
intellectual and another victim of the Diyarbakir Prison who was shot
and seriously wounded during the assassination of the legendary
Kurdish writer, poet, and activist Musa Anter in Diyarbakir in 1992.
In an interview with a journalist from the daily Birgun, in response
to what he thought of the "Armenian Genocide allegations," Miroglu
said: "The Armenian Genocide is not an allegation. It is a fact even
acknowledged by the Turkish Republic's founding ideology of Kemalism
[in the past]. Even Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was quoted in General
Harbord's report on the Armenian Question to have said 'we guarantee
that no other Turkish atrocity will take place against Armenians.' The
CUP (Committee of Union and Progress) planned a genocide targeting
Armenians. Kurds were the accomplices of this genocide. Kurds should
apologize to Armenians for the genocide in the name of friendship and
peace. I, as a Kurdish intellectual, apologize to Armenians. In order
to come to terms with our past we have to apologize [to Armenians]."
Kurds on forefront of struggle for democratic Turkey
Now Kurds are struggling for their national identity, and also for a
more democratic Turkey, against a block of allied forces in defense of
the nation-state, i.e. the Turkish military, the nationalist front in
general, and the ruling AKP that had asked (and succeeded to some
extent) to get the votes of the left-wing, democratic, progressive
sections of the population, swearing that they stood for democracy and
human rights against the militaristic Kemalist establishment.
Today, Jan. 13, 2011, the KCK trial resumed in Diyarbakir and now I'm
listening on the TV to the news agencies' reports about the violent
clashes between demonstrators and security forces in the city, as well
as in other Kurdish provinces, such as Hakkari, Cizre, Nusaybin and
Batman, as thousands of people demand justice for the KCK defendants.
It's being reported that during the hearing the microphone was turned
off when the first defendant started to speak in Kurdish.
It is clear enough that no progress can take place in Turkey without
Kurds first gaining ground in their struggle for the recognition of
their rights and for democracy in Turkey. The future of Turkey depends
to a great extent on the success of the Kurdish political movement,
backed by dynamic masses rising for their rights, in making the
Turkish nation-state finally accept to abandon the old ways of ruling
and take a new road towards a future with greater justice for all.
As for the nature of the Kurdish reality in the past and in the
present, it should not be considered as a paradox that Kurds were at
the same time both perpetrators and saviors in 1915 (especially the
Alevi Kurds in Dersim) because there has never been a single uniform
Kurdish (or other) identity completely independent of individual, or
regional, or social, or cultural differences. Similarly it is not a
paradox that a group in a specific period in history acted as the
perpetrators of a crime against another group, but also became the
victim of their common oppressor. And thirdly it is not a paradox when
members of a group that had been the perpetrators at the time later
became the first to acknowledge the guilt and apologize--especially if
it has also suffered. It's just that one cannot put life and its
actors into ready-made compartments. That's why life is much more
complicated, much more contradictory, and holds much more hope for the
better despite the prevalence of injustice and suffering.
But it should not be unexpected that the same land--the homeland of
Armenians and Kurds --continues to bleed. Because it is the crime
scene. No good can grow in the soil of a crime scene until justice is
served. Only then can the dead, the Armenian and Assyrian victims of
the genocide who are denied a gravestone, be duly and respectfully
buried in the hearts of the living; can the dead's suffering spirits
be freed of their agony and be able to retreat to their eternal
peaceful sleep. Only then can the soil of the crime scene start to be
fertile again, for the Kurds and for us all, bearing fruit again and
feeding its children.
1. Recep Marasli, Ermeni Ulusal Demokratik Hareketi ve 1915
Soykırımı (The Armenian National Democratic Movement and 1915
Genocide), Peri Publishing House, Istanbul: 2008.
2. See http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jic4Agcy2egJ:www.radikal.com.tr/ek_haber.php%3Fek%3Dr2%26haberno%3D6710+K%C3%BCrtler+ve+Ermeniler&cd=1&hl=tr&ct=clnk&gl=tr.
From: A. Papazian