FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE TURKISH AMBASSADOR
(Public Service Announcement)
Editorial, May 2013
On a cold night in late November 1914 police rounded up 100 Turkish
immigrants living in Brantford, Ontario (56 miles west of Toronto).
Most of the arrested were laborers in a local foundry. A few days later
the 100 men were shipped off to a concentration camp in Kapuskasing
(then called MacPherson), 520 miles north of Toronto. The Turkish
immigrants spent most of the First World War in the Canadian gulag
(average winter temperature -25C).
What was their crime?
They happened to be citizens of Ottoman Turkey, a country which was
at war with the British Empire. The Dominion of Canada considered
the Turks dangerous aliens.
Flipping the calendar 100 years forward… the long-forgotten story of
the 100 Turks came to light in recent years. Soon after, the Turkish
embassy in Canada, Ankara authorities, and the Turkish media got wind
of the occurrence. How did these men-mostly bachelors and thousands
of miles from their home-live in Canada’s sub-Arctic internment
camp? How were they treated? How many survived? The Turkish media
eagerly reported on the internments. There was much hand-wringing in
Ankara. A Turkish documentary was planned.
The Turkish Ambassador and his mignons began salivating at the
opportunity to hit the Canadian government and to demonstrate Canada’s
cruelty to Turkish immigrants. The ambassador and his bosses in Ankara
saw the long-shrouded incident as a slap at the face of Prime Minister
Stephen Harper who, in 2006, recognized the Genocide of Armenians.
What Canada did to these poor Turkish immigrants was no different
from what Turkey did to the Armenians, according to Turks. Turkish
“scholars” and canny propagandists concluded the internment episode
was God-sent: they could now promote a moral equivalency between the
internment of the 100 Turks in remote Kapuskasing and the deportation
of 500,000 Armenians by Turkey in 1915. Turkey would also hijack the
Genocide of Armenians’ centenary commemorations by displaying its
own victims. The Kapuskasing case would add unexpected sparkle to
Ankara’s global festival of denialist lies in 2015. We can’t wait
for the newsbreak.
But unfortunately for Turkey, there’s a tiny fly in the ointment.
Before Ankara starts spending vast sums to market the Kapuskasing
story, we would like to send a public service announcement to its
ambassador in Canada. Shortsighted Turkish authorities might think we
are raining on their parade, but all we are doing is help Turkey save
billions of liras as it foolishly engineers a full-court propaganda
campaign about the Kapuskasing 100.
Ahem. Here we go: the Kapuskasing Turks were … not Turks!
Not T-u-r-k-s. They were Alevis, Arabs, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Greeks,
Jews, Kurds…and Armenians. Their names say it all: Kevork, Elias,
George, Alex, John, Albert, Thomas, Kiro Vasileff, Maic Yanos, Nick
Yarowy, Kamil Rosa, Arakilian, Salaman, Marcus, Kuriakos, Kibicz,
Manchur… and those with Arab/Muslim names (Khalil, Rachim…are
Arabs, Kurds, and Alevis). They were members of ethnic and religious
minorities who had fled Turkish oppression for freedom in a cold
country thousands of miles away.
Indeed, the non-Armenians among the 100 “Turks” were close to the
Brantford Armenians and many were boarders in Armenian-owned houses.
Because they had Turkish citizenship, Canadian immigration officers
registered their identity as Turkish. For the same reason, to this day
many in South America refer to Middle Eastern minorities as ‘Turcos’.
The internment saga of the 100 immigrants is rich in multiple ironies:
members of minorities persecuted by Turkey were imprisoned for being
Turks; Turkey plans to exploit the imprisonment of people it chased
out of Ottoman Turkey. That’s gall.
But Turkey is an old hand at spouting brazen lies with a straight
face. Ankara has squadrons of “scholars” whose sole task is fiddling
with history, altering and creating turcophile facts: In 1915 Turkey
transported Armenian civilians to Syria for their own protection;
armed Armenian peasants were organizing to dismantle the Ottoman
Empire; Armenians are not native to Asia Minor-they came from the
Balkans. A few weeks ago Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu
capitalized on Ottoman casualties at Gallipoli, identifying them
as Turks. Suddenly Ottoman Arab, Kurd and Armenian soldiers became
Turkish. This year Turkey is building a 2.3-hectare (the size of 13
football fields) colossus called the Museum of Civilization which will
appropriate the 10,000-year civilizations of the Anatolian Plateau as
Turkic. And talking of chutzpah, let’s not forget Turkey’s financial
demands from Western insurance companies for slain-by-Turks Armenians
who had bought life insurance in the West prior to 1915.
Any day now Ankara “scholars” might reveal to the world that Noah’s
nick name was Grey Wolf… Noah was a Turkish patriarch! After that
they will studiously address the question as to why Noah planted
vine soon after disembarking from the Ark, when Muslims consider wine
“harram” (forbidden)?
Canada has established a $10 million endowment (Canadian First
World War Internment Recognition Fund) to study and publicize all
WWI internments. Because the big push for the endowment came from
Ukrainian-Canadians, most of the council members overseeing the
endowment are Ukrainian. But recently a Turkish-Canadian, from
the Anatolian Heritage Foundation, joined the council, thanks to
Ukrainian largesse. The move was probably a reprisal for Armenian
lack of support for a Ukrainian pet project. Shame on the petty
Ukrainian representatives who have embraced an organization which
denies the Genocide of Armenians. In light of the revelations about
the identity of the interned “Turkish immigrants” we wonder what will
be Turk Ercan Kilic’s function on the council.
From: A. Papazian
http://www.keghart.com/Editorial-ForBenefitTurkishAmbassador