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AKP May Abuse 1915 Reactions To Have Turkey Drift Further Away From West

25.04.2015 15:24

Turkey is the worst performing country in terms of Internet freedoms according to a report by Twitter.Many journalists have lost their jobs because they have dared to question the government. Several of them are now in prison because of their journalistic activities. Many more like me have been oppressed.

Turkey is the worst performing country in terms of Internet freedoms according to a report by Twitter.

Many journalists have lost their jobs because they have dared to question the government. Several of them are now in prison because of their journalistic activities. Many more like me have been oppressed with lawsuits opened by Justice and Development Party (AKP) figures. In June, Turkey may have the last (partially) free and fair elections. The judiciary has recently come under the control of the AKP to a great extent, now including the Constitutional Court. The AKP does not promise democracy but a semi-dictatorial “presidential” system. In trying to explain why this system is needed, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan last week mentioned how the Supreme Court of Administration has been slowing down his government! The guy is not shy about continuing to imply that he hates the separation of powers.

In such a context, the international community's reactions regarding 1915 may unintentionally help the AKP have drift Turkey further away from the West, and hence democracy. This piece is not an attempt to silence the international community on the abhorrent atrocities that were committed against thousands of innocent Armenian civilians in 1915, far from it. Nevertheless, if the international community's intention is to get Turkey to empathically and justly accept what happened in the past, their unbalanced political interference in the matter may backfire and make Turkey more isolated. The AKP that keeps talking about leaving the EU and NATO, and joining the Shanghai Cooperation Agreement will have a golden opportunity to totally annihilate democracy in Turkey.

Regular readers of this column know what I think on the 1915 issue. I do not deny what happened to hundreds of thousands of innocent Armenians and I want everybody in Turkey to come to terms with our agonizing past. But for the readers who have not read what I think on this issue, let me summarize what I wrote here last week.

“This year is the centennial anniversary of the disappearance of Armenians from Anatolia. We must do whatever we can to pay our respects to their memory and offer our unconditional apology for what happened to them in terms of museums, films, artwork, etc.

“The Young Turks -- the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) in the Ottoman era and the Kemalists in the Republican period -- had oppressed several sections of society with their nationalist homogenizing policies to create the perfect nation composed of perfect citizens, Homo LASTus: laicist, Atatürkist, Sunni and Turkish.

“The socially Darwinist and staunchly nationalist Young Turks mentality allowed them in 1915 to get rid of the over half-century-old Armenian question of establishing an independent state in the eastern provinces of Anatolia once and for all. They had used the terrible conditions of World War I and brutal attacks of some Armenian gangs on Muslim villagers as a pretext to ethnically cleanse Anatolia of non-Muslims. It is not clear if the Young Turks wanted all Armenians dead, but it was obvious that they did not -- and maybe could not -- take sufficient precautions to protect the migrating Armenians, who would very obviously have come under attack by Turkish and Kurdish gangs because of the previous clashes.

“Anatolia was forcefully ‘cleansed' of Armenians by the CUP. And many Kurds and Turks benefited from their departure. Even during the period of World War I, thousands of innocent lives could have been saved, but the secularist, nationalist Young Turks and their civilian Kurdish-Turkish co-perpetrators did not prefer to do so, while many Ottoman officials and Muslim civilians helped many Armenians to survive.

“It is agonizing enough that a “millet” (a people or society) that lived in Anatolia for thousands of years and was protected by Islamic Seljuk and Ottoman rulers for hundreds of years became extinct because of the decisions of the secularist, nationalist Young Turks. Why should practicing Muslims defend their sins?

“Turkey must come to terms with the terrible reality of 1915 and issue an apology for at least the failure to protect Armenians. These Armenians' children must be invited back and given Turkish passports. Their confiscated or “sold” properties must be returned.

“On the other hand, using the term ‘genocide' retrospectively to describe what happened to Armenian Ottoman citizens in 1915 complicates the matter further and does not help Turks and Kurds face their country's history. A second major hurdle is the insistence on limiting the issue to legal discussions. The issue is much more complicated and, rather than thinking in terms of legal ramifications, we must focus on the historical, humanitarian, political and social aspects of the issue. Third, foreign powers such as Russia, the British Empire and France were negatively and abusively influential in the emergence of the Armenian question, and their insistence on interfering with the matter makes Turks understandably more defensive.

“Free debate will help both sides to empathically understand each other's position. If we can open up a debate, the public will be more informed about what really happened, not only in 1915 but also before and after.”

On the other hand, I would like to remind the readers what I wrote just after the Pope's use of the term genocide: “The pope has presented the Justice and Development Party (AKP) with a golden opportunity. You should not be surprised if the Erdoğan-Davutoğlu pair go on to inflame the recent hot debate on the tragic deaths of about 800,000 Armenian civilians because of the brutal acts of CUP officials and their civilian co-perpetrators… One of their ulterior motives is to mobilize their voters before the elections once again on the basis of their national and religious emotions.”

Since the Gezi Park protests, the AKP has been explaining away their anti-democratic acts by referring to the international dark forces that want to topple the leader of the Muslim world: the AKP government. The US, EU, Jewish lobby, Crusaders, etc. have been constantly mentioned by either the AKP or their staunch supporters to mobilize the voters at the expense of democracy and Turkey's relations with the West.

One does not have to be a genius to know that as Turkey drifts away from the West, it will no longer be a democratic country. There are some powerful signs that the AKP and military generals have struck a deal to establish a Kemalo-Islamist system. The Western countries' political decisions on the 1915 issue will only help them to continue their business, which has been a bloody one if you remember what happened during the last one hundred years. In 1913, the CUP -- composed of politicians, medical doctors, engineers and military officers -- toppled the democratically elected government after killing the war minister, took the Ottoman Empire into World War I and started ethnically cleansing Anatolia after 1915, which continued into the 1950s until only a few non-Muslims remained in Istanbul. The new Kemalo-Islamist composition is the reincarnated spirit of 1913 that believe they have their own top-down nation building project. This new project will be faster if Turkey is criticized by Western countries.

In such an environment, let alone getting Turkey to accept what happened in 1915, people like me who try to get the Turkish and Kurdish people to understand what happened will not even be allowed to speak! (İHSAN YILMAZ/Today's Zaman)



 
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