WHO ARE ERDOGAN’S ANCSESORS?
Lragir.am
14/12/09
A noted French author said truly that, "We are all products of our
childhoods". In order to correctly understand any politician, or even
any man, it is necessary to understand where he or she comes from.
This is even more important after Erdogan stated, "My ancestors have
never committed genocide!".
Let us first turn to Erdogan’s forebears. Recep Tayyip Erdogan has
Kartvelian ancestry, more specifically, his ancestors were ethnic Laz.
He declared this himself on the 12th of August, 2004, during a visit
to Batumi. The grandfather of the current Prime Minister of Turkey was
likewise called Recep; he lived in Bagat, near Batumi, up to 1878,
and his father, in turn, was a local imam for many years. After
the war of 1877-78, when Batumi became part of the Russian Empire,
this Recep emigrated to the city of Rize,[1] where he was known as
"Bagatlı Recep". He died during the First World War, in 1916, while
fighting against Russian forces advancing towards Rize.
Although Recep Tayyip was born in Istanbul (on the 26th of February,
1954), he did, in fact, spend most of his childhood – up to the age
of thirteen – in Rize, the city of his ancestors. His father, Ahmed,
worked in the coast guard, while his mother, Tenzile, was a homemaker,
raising five children. In 1967, the Erdogan family moved to Istanbul
once again, where Recep graduated from a religious school – Ä°mam
Hatip Lisesi – in 1973. Even while at school, at the age of sixteen,
he began to deliver sermons. Perhaps Recep Tayyip would have turned
out to be an imam like his great-grandfather, if religion did not
gradually take up a greater role in Turkish politics.
Recep Erdogan’s wife, Emine Erdogan, is from the city of Siirt
(Sgherd in Armenian), ethnically Arab. They have four children.
And now, let us turn to the ancestors’ participation in the Armenian
Genocide.
Nobody is personally accusing the forbears of Erdogan for carrying
out the Armenian Genocide. Moreover, nobody is accusing the present
generation of the Turkish people for the Armenian Genocide either.
Nevertheless, although current Turks are not guilty of their ancestors’
crimes, they are yet responsible for them, just as today’s Germans,
while free of blame with regards to the crimes of the Nazis, bear
their responsibility and continue up to the present to silently
and patiently carry that heavy burden. And that responsibility is
manifested not only by the outright condemnation of the criminal act
itself, but also by the hundreds of billions in aid that have been
granted and that continue to be granted to Israel.
The current Republic of Turkey is not only the direct legal continuity
of the Ottoman Empire, but it continues to also maintain an umbilical
cord of political and ideological connections with those in power in
the empire’s last days, the Young Turks. It is a plain fact that all
the founders of the Republic of Turkey – including Mustafa Kemal –
were members of the Ittihad ve Terraki party ("Union and Progress")
which had orchestrated the Armenian Genocide. For that reason, many
specialists include the Young Turks in their chronologies of the
early years of the republic, from 1908-1950 (as "The Young Turk era
in Turkish history").
Accordingly, even if Erdogan’s forebears were, say, not directly
involved in the Armenian Genocide, indubitably however, Erdogan’s
political forebears most certainly perpetrated the first genocide of
the twentieth century.
And so, as long as the Turkish people do not condemn the Armenian
Genocide and continue to enjoy the fruits of this crime, they are
at the very least accomplice to the first genocide of the twentieth
century. Ultimately, criminals are not merely the ones who carry out
the crime, but also those on the side of the crime, and those who
acquire its spoils.
Ara Papian Head, "Modus Vivendi" Centre 12 December 2009