Commentary: President Gul Is Begging for Sympathy

will be no reciprocal recognition. Indeed Armenians seem to be “heartless” people, devoid of

“human conscience.” How can they not understand how much Turks have suffered fighting an imperial war against an equally powerful empire to maintain the Ottoman rule of slavery? Further, how can they not understand how much the Turkish gendarmes, Teshkileti Mahsusa forces, the army and the irregulars have suffered in murdering one-and-a-half million individuals. Their suffering was further aggravated by the fact that under the rules of frugality, they had to save bullets and resort to more primitive methods to slaughter children, women and the elderly.

Now we can understand why we cannot expect any sympathy from the Turkish official quarters, as long as we observe history in such a “heartless” manner!

While the Turkish president is pleading for sympathy from the Armenians, his government has mobilized massive forces to deny the Genocide. In addition to the millions spent in lobbying foreign governments, Turkey has undertaken the huge task of “educating” its youth on this very sensitive issue.

Realizing that a mountain of scholarly works is piling up in world historiography on the question of the Armenian Genocide, the Turkish government has undertaken a frontal attack by organizing so-called scholarly seminars. Indeed symposia were held in April in two universities with the participation of 75 historians, including some hired guns from the US, Norway, France, Russia, Tajikestan, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Iran. The first symposium took place at Karatekin University of Changere. We are not sure if the venue was selected intentionally or unintentionally, because Changere happens to be the place where the Turks crushed with rocks the skull of writer and Ottoman Parliament member Krikor Zohrab.

The initiative was undertaken by an organization called The Society of Future Academicians.

In that august gathering, Prof. Galib Chagh made one of the most childish denialist arguments that: “the law of deportations precludes the use of the term ‘genocide’ because that law protected the properties of the deported Armenians.” Never mind that after the Genocide, Talaat Pasha appealed to the foreign banks and insurance companies as the inheritor of those “protected properties.”

Another symposium too place at Ataturk University of Erzerum under the title, “First International conference on Turkish Armenian Relations and the Great Powers.”

Prof. Halouk Selvi from the University of Sakaria has devised an earth-shaking argument about the Genocide. He has stated that “instead of appealing to the courts, Armenians have been appealing to different parliaments because they don’t possess any document that a genocide was perpetrated.”

To add insult to injury, the honorable scholar has further stated that the American missionaries had bad-mouthed the Turks, pleading for the suffering Armenians in Anatolia, because they needed to raise money for their own causes.

We are not sure how much these arguments impressed the participants and aspiring young Turkish scholars, but the dean of Turkish journalists, Ali Birand, head of CNN-Turk, does not seem to be impressed at all. In his April 24 commentary, he made scathing remarks about Turkey’s denialist historiography. He stated that against the barrage of criticisms and scholarly works: “Turkey, as it has done before, will react harshly. It will utter threats, but they will remain ineffective. Do you know why? It is because the Armenians have gotten a significant part of the world to accept their claims of Genocide.”

Then he cites one example and refers to a 1,000-page book compiled by German writer and journalist Wolfgang Gust, published in English, German, Spanish and Portuguese and recently published in Turkey by Belge Publishing House, “in extremely comprehensible and beautiful Turkish.”

Birand continues: “Without going into detail, if you read the book and look at the documents, if you are a person who is introduced to the subject through this book, then there is no way that you would not believe in the Genocide and justify the Armenians.”

His telling conclusion: “Let us not deceive each other; if you can give correct answers to these questions, then you will be able to clarify some very key facts for us. “I know you will remain silent.”

President Gul’s verbal gymnastics and then the “scholarly” charades staged at those universities amount to nothing. Perhaps the most honorable position would indeed be to keep silence.