EU enlargement
Time to talk to Turkey
Leader
Friday September 30, 2005
The Guardian
Turkey has already waited more than 40 years to join the European
mainstream, but there are still a few more tense days left before there can
be certainty that its ambition will eventually be realised.
The hope is that last-minute hitches will be resolved by EU foreign
ministers on Sunday, allowing the accession talks to begin the following
day, as promised. Since the rules require such big decisions to be agreed by
all 25 member states, Austria alone has been able to block this one,
demanding that instead of negotiating full membership like every other
country seeking to join the club, Turkey should be offered only a “special
partnership”. Ankara rejects such an approach as discriminatory. So, to
their credit, does everyone else, including the governments of France, the
Netherlands and Germany, despite the strong anti-Turkish feeling that played
a big role in the paralysing rejection of the EU constitution this summer.
Austrian opposition to Turkish membership is a toxic blend of historical
prejudice and contemporary fear, of Ottoman janissaries at the gates of
Vienna, of Habsburg nostalgia, and Muslim gastarbeiter flooding in from
deepest Anatolia. Wolfgang Schüssel, the conservative chancellor, does not
say openly that the EU is a Christian club, but has signalled that he will
only back the talks if there is a parallel launch of accession negotiations
with neighbouring – and Catholic – Croatia. That process has rightly been on
hold because of Zagreb’s failure to cooperate with the UN war crimes
tribunal. If as expected, prosecutors report cooperation has improved, then
it can resume.
Next Monday should be a big day, but even a positive result is unlikely to
end rancour over double standards. Turkey, once plagued by military coups,
torture and hyper-inflation, has met the EU’s criteria for membership –
democracy, the rule of law, human rights, protection of minorities, a market
economy and the capacity to manage competition. Even if implementation of
new laws has been patchy in Kurdish areas the very prospect of EU membership
has been a powerful spur to unprecedented reform. More will take place and
the country will become richer in the 10 or more years it will take to
complete the negotiations. Outstanding issues over Cyprus should not block
them. It is to be hoped too that calls on Turkey to recognise the Armenian
genocide of 1915 will at least promote a more mature attitude to the
country’s past. But Turkey’s secular Muslim democracy has demonstrated that
it is ready to join a tolerant, multicultural Europe. Let the final deal be
done and the talks commence.
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Daily Herald
September 28, 2005
Kane County edition
Band urges Hastert to identify genocide
By Gala M. Pierce
Daily Herald Staff Writer
System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian kept a promise
Tuesday he made to his 97-year-old grandfather, who as
a child saw his infant brother thrown on an animal’s
horns during the Armenian Genocide – ask the Speaker
of the House to help the world remember.
The Beirut, Lebanon, native did so by leading a rally
in front of U.S. Rep. Dennis Hastert’s Batavia office,
urging the Plano Republican to hold a vote on pending
legislation that would recognize Turkey’s killing of
1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1923 as
genocide.
`This is not just a political event for us; it’s a
personal event,’ Tankian said to the crowd of more
than 125 people. `We’re a small percentage of our
original people, and that’s a profound thing.’
The band, which organized the rally along with several
Armenian-American groups, is no stranger to mixing
politics with its music. The Los Angeles quartet’s
songs regularly hit on topics like genocide and petty
criminals doubling prison populations.
The House International Relations Committee approved
two resolutions Sept. 15 that would recognize the
Armenian Genocide.
According to historians, as the Ottoman Empire began
to crumble in Turkey, the Armenians became more
isolated as the only major Christian minority in an
area dominated by Turks. Calls for Armenian
independence were met with violence.
`We’re not just trying to recognize a crime that was
committed 90 years ago but also trying to end the
cycle of genocide that’s taking place today,’ said
Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian
National Committee of America.
The groups contend that despite his previous public
support for the measure in 2000, Hastert twice has
prevented the Armenian Genocide legislation from
coming to a full vote.
`At that time there was a personal request from the
White House to not call that resolution to a House
vote because of the diplomatic concerns of what it
would mean in the Middle East,’ Hastert spokesman Brad
Hahn said.
Hahn said he appreciated how peaceful and civil the
rally went. At this time, Hastert neither is
preventing the resolutions to come to the full House
nor is he leading the charge in an effort to do so.
The Turkish government, which has not acknowledged the
genocide itself, remains an ally to the United States,
protesters said.
Members of the crowd hoped Hastert was listening
although he wasn’t physically in the Batavia office.
Nairee Hagopian, 33, of Hoffman Estates, said only
four people in her family survived the horrific
events. Her grandfather and great-grandmother were
thrown at the bottom of a firepit with about 50 others
in 1915 in Zeitoun, Turkey. Most perished when the
blaze was lit. `Luckily, because they were at the
bottom, they lived,’ Hagopian said of her relatives.
Riley MacDonald, a senior at Batavia High School,
ditched class to show her support for the cause.
`It shocks me that it would ever be a question,’ she
said of acknowledging the genocide.
Drummer John Dolmayan, the other member of the
multi-platinum quartet who appeared in the rally, also
lost family members in the tragedy. His grandfather,
who suffered from emphysema, was shot and killed in
1915. He was discovered hiding in a tree by a Turk
soldier after he coughed, which gave himself away.
`We don’t blame the Turkish people today for what
happened at that time, but we think it’s a shame they
don’t even know their own history,’ Dolmayan said. He
said it’s the band’s only rally on their tour, and
they plan to stay in the Chicago area all week until
their concert Friday at the Allstate Arena.

Armenpress
KOCHARIAN, EU REPRESENTATIVE DISCUSS ENP, KARABAKH AND CONSTITUTION
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS: President Robert Kocharian and Heikki
Talvitie, a special representative of the UE to the South Caucasus,
discussed today issues related to preparation of a plan of actions, stemming
from Armenia’s inclusion into European Neighborhood Program (ENP).
Kocharian press office said the two men also discussed the latest
developments in the Karabakh conflict resolution process and referred also
to regional problems, as well as to the process of constitutional
amendments. Kocharian and Talvitie were reported to emphasize the
constitutional reform, describing it as ‘a new opportunity for Armenia to
advance and strengthen democracy.”

Armenpress
OSKANIAN SOUNDS OPTIMISTIC ABOUT KARABAKH RESOLUTION PROSPECTS
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS: Armenian foreign minister Vartan
Oskanian echoed today president Robert Kocharian, who sounded cautiously
optimistic on Tuesday about prospects for the resolution of the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Speaking to a joint news conference in Yerevan with Heikki Talvitie, EU’s
special representative for the South Caucasus, Oskanian said there was a
positive shift in the negotiating process, but warned that both sides would
have to exercise efforts to catch the rare chance to register further
progress. According to Oskanian, this prospect is likely to come after
parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan. Oskanian described Talvitie’s
impression from a visit to Baku earlier this week ‘interesting,’ underlining
there was ‘a momentum’ for the conflict resolution. Oskanian also said the
date and venue of his next meeting with Azeri counterpart, Elmar Mamedyarov
was not clear yet.
Talvitie added that the EU was interested in establishing stability in
this region and that all sides should work to achieve it. Asked to comment
on a yesterday European parliament resolution reiterating that Turkey must
recognize the Armenian genocide before the start of EU accession talks,
Talvitie said: “if accession talks begin Armenia-Turkey relations will be on
their agenda. This will give an opportunity to regulate their sensitive
relations.”
Oskanian in turn urged EU to keep this issue high on its agenda, saying
the more EU discusses it the more it will contribute to normalization of
Armenian-Turkish relations. Referring to constitutional reform process in
Armenia Talvitie said the EU supports the process “as it would be a
significant step forward in terms of making the basic law of the country
more democratic.”

Armenpress
CRIME RATE IN CIS UP 12 PERCENT
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS; CIS Executive Secretary Vladimir
Rushailo said today in Yerevan crime rate in CIS member countries went up 12
percent in the first six months of the year from a year ago, arguing also
that effective fighting against crime was possible only given cooperation of
police forces in these countries with appropriate bodies of the UN.
Rushailo was addressing a regular conference of the Council of CIS
Interior Ministers that has brought together the ministers from Armenia,
Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan,
Ukraine, Uzbekistan and even Azerbaijan. The conference’s agenda is
dominated by issues on fighting corruption and illegal migration. Rushailo
called also for setting up a task force that would develop proposals on how
to best crack down on organized crime and to block roads for export of
heroine manufactured in Afghanistan to reach the CIS.
In early June a UN narcotic and crime agency signed an agreement with CIS
executive committee, calling for reinforcing border check points across the
CIS and equipping police forces with modern labs. Rushailo complained that
out of 16 agreements on fighting crime, terrorism and illicit narcotics
sale, signed by CIS members, only 2 were enacted by September, 2005 and
called on CIS interior ministers to step up the process of their enactment.

Armenpress
INDIA NAMES NEW AMBASSADOR TO ARMENIA
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS: The outgoing ambassador of India to
Armenia, Deepak Vohra, told Armenpress that Ms. Rina Pandei was picked to
replace him.
He said Rina Pandei, who served as India’s consul general in Istanbul,
Turkey, will arrive in Armenia on October 15. Vohra’s diplomatic tenure in
Armenia expired in August, but in connection with India’s vice-president
Bharion Singh Shehavat’s visit to Armenia in the first days of October he
was instructed to stay here.

TVNZ, New Zealand
Sept 30 2005
Austria blocks EU Turkey agreement

Sep 30, 2005
Austria blocked European Union agreement on Thursday on a mandate to
start entry negotiations with Turkey next week, forcing EU foreign
ministers to call an emergency meeting for the eve of the talks to
seek a deal.

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said it was possible
negotiations might not start on Monday as scheduled, although intense
efforts were continuing to solve what he called serious problems.

A 24-1 deadlock at a meeting of EU ambassadors means the vast, poor,
overwhelmingly Muslim candidate country will be kept on tenterhooks
until hours before Gul is due to fly to Luxembourg to open the talks.

Diplomats said Austria stuck to its demand that Turkey be offered an
explicit alternative to full membership if it failed to meet the
criteria for membership or if the EU was unable to absorb it –
something Ankara vehemently rejects.

Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel also insisted in newspaper interviews
that the EU open talks immediately with Croatia, Austria’s historic
ally and Roman Catholic neighbour.

Those negotiations were due to have started in March but have been
frozen because of Zagreb’s failure so far to satisfy a UN war crimes
tribunal of its cooperation.

“We are facing serious problems with the start of negotiations. We
are in intense negotiations,” Gul told a hastily arranged news
conference in Ankara.

Asked if there was a possibility that talks would not begin, Gul
said: “Undoubtedly there is but there are intense efforts … We
still have time to solve the problems.”

He said he would not go to Luxembourg until there was clarity on the
negotiating mandate.

A spokesman for EU president Britain said foreign ministers would
meet on Turkey on Sunday evening. He rejected any linkage with
Croatia’s candidacy, which he said would only be discussed on Monday.

Democracy

Austria demanded substantial changes that Britain had told the envoys
would require a political decision to go back on EU leaders’
unanimous agreement last December that the objective of the talks was
accession, diplomats said.

Schuessel, whose conservative Austrian People’s Party is battling to
avert defeat in regional elections in the province of Styria on
Sunday, said European politicians should learn from the failed EU
constitution votes in France and the Netherlands.

“Democracy means you have to listen to the demos,” he told the
International Herald Tribune.

His comments reflected strong public opposition in western Europe to
admitting Turkey, which opinion polls show 80% of his own electorate
opposes. Austria holds two other regional elections later in the
month after Sunday’s poll.

Gul did not comment directly on a non-binding European Parliament
resolution on Thursday that sought to pose new conditions unpalatable
to Ankara, including recognition of the 1915 killing of Armenians as
genocide.

But he said there were conditions Turkey could never accept and
members of the bloc were well aware of this.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan earlier said it was up to the
EU to demonstrate its good faith, underlining the strategic benefits
to Europe of embracing his country.

“If the EU is not a Christian club, this has to be proven,” the state
Anatolian news agency quoted Erdogan as saying.

“What do you gain by adding 99% Muslim Turkey to the EU? You gain a
bridge between the EU and the 1.5 billion-strong Islamic world. An
alliance of civilisations will start.”

Austria takes over the EU presidency from Britain in January and its
stance could jeopardise its relations with the United States, which
strongly backs Turkey’s accession process.

Schuessel accused European governments of applying double standards
to Turkey and another EU candidate, Croatia.

“If we trust Turkey to make further progress, we should trust Croatia
too … It is in Europe’s best interest to start negotiations with
Croatia immediately,” he told the Financial Times. “It is not fair to
leave Croatia in an eternal waiting room.”

Other EU countries say the start of talks with the former Yugoslav
republic depends on chief UN war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte
certifying that it is cooperating fully with her office in the hunt
for fugitive ex-general Ante Gotovina.

Kane County Chronicle
September 28, 2005
Rock band leads rally at Hastert’s office
By ERIC SCHELKOPF
[email protected]
BATAVIA – Batavia High School senior Julie Allen is
not a big fan of the rock band System of a Down.
But Allen said she appreciates that the band takes a
stand on social issues. That is why she attended a
rally Tuesday in front of U.S. House Speaker Dennis
Hastert’s district office.
System of a Down lead singer Serj Tankian and drummer
John Dolmayan urged Hastert to call for a vote on the
pending Armenian genocide legislation, which would
recognize that Turkey murdered 1.5 million Armenians
between 1915 and 1923.
“I think it is awesome what they are doing,” Allen
said.
Allen said she is concerned about the 1994 genocide in
Rwanda and recent genocide in Darfur, Sudan.
“I am concerned that genocide keeps reoccurring,”
Allen said.
The Armenian National Committee of America, Axis of
Justice and the Armenian Youth Federation also
sponsored the rally.
System of a Down’s four band members are of Armenian
descent. Tankian’s 97-year-old grandfather survived
the Armenian genocide.
“This is not just political, it is personal. If my
grandfather hadn’t survived, I wouldn’t be here,”
Takian said to crowd of about 125 people. “I really
believe there are a lot of good people in Congress who
are going to do the right thing.”
The rally was peaceful and no one was arrested.
“Everything has gone great,” Batavia Police Cmdr. Greg
Thrun said.
Tankian and Dolmayan gave Batavia police a letter
addressed to Hastert, who in turn gave the letter to
Hastert’s staff. The speaker was in Washington, D.C.,
on Tuesday presiding over Congress.
Hastert in October 2000 withdrew the Armenian Genocide
resolution from consideration shortly before it was to
reach the House floor.
“President Clinton asked the speaker not to bring the
resolution to the floor,” Hastert spokesman Brad Hahn
said. “He was concerned about how it would affect the
situation in the Middle East and how it would affect
diplomatic relations.”
The House’s International Relations Committee on Sept.
15 approved two resolutions that denounced the deaths
of Armenians early last century as genocide.
However, the State Department said in a letter to
committee members that the “resolutions could
undermine efforts to rebuild a partnership between the
United States and Turkey in pursuit of America’s broad
national security interests in the eastern
Mediterranean, Caucasus, Central Asia and the Middle
East.”
“Discussion is going on. No vote is scheduled.
(Hastert) is taking a step back and letting the will
of the House work its way through the process,” Hahn
said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

MTV.COM News
System Singer Visits Congressman’s Office To Push Genocide Bill
09.28.2005
Band, meanwhile, is about to shoot a video for ‘Hypnotize.’
Singer Serj Tankian had some personal business to attend to this week
before System of a Down could shoot their next video. Personal and,
well, global.
Before the band left for the second leg of its fall tour with the Mars
Volta (see “System Of A Down/ Mars Volta Tour Dates Announced”),
Tankian promised his 97-year-old grandfather he would do his best to
convince Congressman Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois) to bring the Armenian
Genocide Resolution to a vote, an issue long close to System of a Down
(see “System Of A Down Make The Political Personal At Souls
2005”). And he did just that Tuesday outside the Speaker of the
House’s Batavia, Illinois, office.
Tankian joined members of the Armenian National Committee of America,
the Armenian Youth Federation and his own Axis of Justice organization
in a rally and then read a heartfelt letter he delivered to Hastert’s
office in support of the pending legislation, which would officially
recognize Turkey’s slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and
1923.
With the resolution, which overwhelmingly passed the bipartisan
International Relations Committee, Hastert can either bring it to the
House of Representatives for a vote or let it expire.
“It’s all in his hands, he’s the man,” Tankian said of Hastert, who
spoke in support of recognizing the genocide on the House floor in
1994. “The thing is that a similar resolution was going around in 2000
as well and he was the speaker of the House then, but at the time
[President Bill] Clinton had written a letter asking him not to bring
it up to vote, citing concerns that had to do with Turkey. In 2004 he
also had the opportunity to bring another resolution to vote on …
and that didn’t happen either.
“I’m sure that there’s a lot of lobbying going on from the Bush
administration, from the military-industrial complex that sells a lot
of weapons to Turkey, and a whole host of corporate lobbyist firms
that don’t want this thing to pass, but the truth has to come out, and
more so in a democracy than anywhere else,” he continued. “So we’re
fighting the good fight.”
Hastert was not at his office Tuesday and was unavailable for comment
Wednesday (September 28).

Assyrian International News Agency
Sept 29 2005
Turkey After The Armenian Genocide Conference
(AINA) — After efforts of deterrence by the executive in May and
obstruction of the 4th Istanbul Administrative Court on September
23rd, the conference entitled, ‘Ottoman Armenians in the Final Period
of the Empire: Scientific Responsibility and Problems of Democracy’
has been successfully completed on the 25th of September. The venue
of the event had to be changed from one university to the other and a
three-day conference had to be telescoped to two days. The
participants and audience had to pass through a barrier of slandering
nationalist protestors throwing eggs and tomatoes. Yet two and half
institutions deserve credit for standing behind academic autonomy,
freedom of expression and culture of deliberation. The first is the
government who spoke through the Prime Minister. His resolve dwarfed
the initial resistance of the Minister of Justice who called the
initiative “treason” and “back stabbing the nation” in May. The
second is the university as an institution who defended the rights
and liberties that make it a center and advocate of freedom. The
third institution is the media; of course some of it, which is
conscious of the fact that, this conference was not all about the
Armenian issue that needs to be discussed impartially but it is
rather a matter of democracy.
The speakers, or better deliberators, were all Turkish scholars
serving at domestic or foreign universities to avoid prejudice
against ill-willed foreigners. Among a sundry of topics some like,
‘An Identity Squeezed Between the Past and the Present’, ‘Examples of
Forgetting and Remembrance in Turkish Literature: Different Breaking
Points of Silence’, ‘The Armenian Issue and Demographic Engineering’,
‘Scenes of Conscience through a Bitter History’, ‘From Heranush to
Seher: A Story of “Salvation”‘, ‘Mother Fatma, the Child of
Deportation’ and ‘Thinking About the Stories of the Survivors of
Deportation’, suggest that the issues were not limited to just
historiography and document rattling. That has been taking place for
a long time. Both the Armenian and Turkish nationalists and ‘official
historians’ have unfortunately narrowed down the discussion of this
important matter to the acceptance or denial of “genocide”. This
radical stance has not only impoverished scholarship but has
politicized the matter forcing individuals to take sides. In this
ado, unfortunately the human side of the matter, the suffering of
real human beings, no matter who they were, has been neglected.
Indeed what we ought to start discussing is the human condition at
the turn of the last century.
A multicultural society existed with different ethnic, linguistic and
confessional groups. They were torn apart, their age-old relations
were severed, an economy was shattered, the lives of ALL were changed
irreversibly and forever. The majority of them had little to do with
the fate they were forced to live through if they had not lost their
lives in the chaos of World War One years.
I will not go on into the arguments of “clashing nationalisms”,
“securing the eastern-front where a war was waged with occupying
Russian armies” or simply, “revenge of the Turks over the Armenians
where a part of the Armenians took up arms and tried to carve out an
independent Armenia by exterminating Turks in eastern Turkey”. All of
these are parts of the wider truth. But the truth is larger than that
and larger than the lives of individuals or groups that were caught
up in the turmoil of the decade between 1910-1920. Turks were
recruited to go to the Libyan (or Tripoli) campaign in 1911 to be
followed by the Balkan War next year that ended up by loosing all of
the East European lands of the Empire in 1913. In the next year WW1
broke up that ended with the dissolution of three major empires of
the time, the Ottoman being one. During that fateful decade, Ottomans
lost 2 million soldiers. No one knows how many civilians perished
during hostilities and following forced migration, by hunger and
famine. But a rough estimate is that five million Turks or Muslims
identifying themselves as Ottoman had to migrate into present Turkey
and remaining territories. They left behind dead family members,
their property and a life that had taken root on European soil in the
past centuries.
They were frustrated, impoverished, uprooted and bitter. However,
they had come to a friendly land where they were welcome and the
government of the day compensated their loss to a certain degree.
That is why they chose to forget. Did they forgive? Obviously not.
Historical evidence shows that the ruling cadre in the last Ottoman
decade was the government of the Committee of Union and Progress,
better known as the Young Turks. The leading group, including the
dictating triumvirate, Talat, Enver and Cemal Pashas of the Young
Turks were basically of Balkan stock. When they moved the
headquarters of their semi-secret organization from Selonica to
Istanbul in 1912, they brought their feelings of loss, betrayal (by
the non-Muslim peoples of the empire who had attained their
independence through painful struggles for national liberation by
fighting against Ottoman officers and officials who were mainly
members of the Union and Progress.
We all know what “never again” means. These new rulers of the Ottoman
terrain promised the remaining lands not become a second “Macedonia”
as they called the bulk of the Balkans. They made a conscious effort
to prevent a second catastrophe by adopting the method of demographic
engineering. There were two aspects of this engineering: 1) Removal
of the Christians; 2) Mixing of the non-Turkish Muslims. The first
method was territorial; the second was demographic engineering. The
Bulgarians living in Edirne and in Thrace (European part of Turkey)
was sent to Bulgaria or exchanged with Turks who felt victimized and
wanted to go to Turkey. Deterring Greeks from remaining in Western
and Black Sea regions was realized without overt exertion of force
but with a convincing determination. The policy was to cleanse the
Aegean littoral off Greeks 50 kilometers into the heartland. This
policy reached its peak point by population exchanges with Greece in
1924.
Territorial mopping concerning the Armenians was put into effect with
the official policy of deportation. It was an announced and
acknowledged government policy of the time. However, territorial
sterility was not only directed to these largest Ottoman peoples, it
encompassed all Christian peoples, large or small including the more
peaceful Assyrians in the southeast. How could the vengeful and
wrathful Young Turks could know that by scaring off the peaceful
Christians they would allow the Kurds to have sole control of
southeast Anatolia and the ‘later Turks’ would have to put up with
the unruly behavior of the more favored Muslims?
As regards the non-Turkish Muslims, the ratio of one-to-ten or 10%
was observed when they were moved from places where they were more
crowded into wider Turkish communities where they would be a
controllable minority. This plan was put into effect and the
Armenians faced the harshest fate of all because there was no
receiving state willing to compensate for their loss like the
Bulgarians and the Greeks. From the day when Armenian deportation has
started the event is no more a political matter born out of the
exigencies and vagaries of the day and its power struggles. It is a
human condition, which imposes on all of us, on all human beings, the
responsibility to understand and to reconcile with.
The present Turkish government bears no responsibility to what the
adventurous Young Turks who led the Ottoman State into demise had
done to the peoples whom they ruled over. They did not only deport
Christian subjects, they sent armies totaling two million recruited
from among Muslims to three continents and watched them perish in
pursuit of their ambitious scheme of creating a Turanian Empire out
of Turkic peoples. They depleted the Turkish stock of the motherland
too. The conference drew attention to these (other) angles of the
last decades of the empire during which the Armenian disaster took
place. It was not particular to the Armenians. It was a human tragedy
staged by an adventurous cadre who valued their imperial design more
than human life, without distinguishing between that of their own or
others. Their Machiavellian political methods justified the means
they used for their exalted end that never succeeded but consumed the
lives of millions as well as their own.
What befalls on us is to acknowledge what happened to the Ottoman
peoples of the time and why? No nation or nationality, no adherent of
any creed can claim that those fateful years are the mark of history
that denotes only their losses and grief. This is a shared calamity
that we all lived through and bare responsibility for, some much
less, some much more. Those days are left behind, not to be forgotten
though. We must remember what has taken place; what ambitions,
policies or impossible dreams have led to such large scale suffering
then, so that we do not commit the same mistakes again. However, our
primary duty is to understand what role our forbearers played and
what we can do to ease the pain of those who still suffer today
because they feel that their wounds are psychologically bleeding.
We need a little empathy just like the former Minister of Health, Mr.
Cevdet Aykan has said in the “Memories and Witnesses” section of the
conference said: “In 1915, Tokat was a part of the Sivas Province.
According to the 1908 Sivas Population Registrar, there were 240
Muslims, 24,000 Armenians, and 14,000 Greeks in the province. The
population of Tokat at the same time was 28,000. Of this number 8,600
were Armenian and they were all living peacefully together. When the
news of deportation reached Tokat and Sivas, the Turkish and Armenian
community leaders got together and sought for a solution. The
Armenian merchants and artisans transferred their property to their
neighbors and trusted their spouses and daughters to Turkish families
with mock weddings. Those who were sent away never came back”. Mr.
Aykan has told this story as a witness and added the most honorable
statement: “I am telling these to pay back my moral debt to my
Armenian citizens”.
This sentence tells all. Now, both the Armenians and Turks must get
together not to accuse each other for the injustices of the past and
how much suffering their great parents have inflicted on the other.
Humanistic stories can be produced just s much as inhuman ones like
officers committing suicide not to carry unjust orders or neighbors
hiding forbidden citizens forsaking their own lives. No, what we
ought to discuss is how we can heel the wounds that is no body’s
monopoly. If we do not want to carry the burden of history we must
unload our feelings and expectations by cleansing our thoughts and
souls from vengeance and hatred and wish for dialogue, which we can
hopefully turn into an agenda for peaceful coexistence and mutual
history building. Can we do it? Restless minds and souls only produce
hatred and violence. Let us leave the souls of our grand parents
alone to rest in peace. They have suffered enough and they do not
want to be awakened to fight another war just because we want them on
our side.
By Dogu Ergil