WebIndia, India
Oct 2 2005

Genocide? Turkey’s last Armenian village unmoved
Vakifli Turkey | October 02, 2005 9:31:51 AM IST

The European Parliament might want Turkey to recognise a 1915
massacre of Armenians as genocide, but the people of the last
remaining Armenian village in the country have other things on their
minds — oranges.

Of all the towns and villages once inhabited by Armenians across
eastern Turkey under the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire, only the
picturesque village of Vakifli remains, nestled in the foothills of
the Musa Mountains overlooking the eastern corner of the
Mediterranean Sea and within sight of the Syrian border.

For the influential Armenian diaspora, Musa Mountain is a source of
pride as one of the few places where Christian Armenians resisted
deportations that killed many thousands.

The European Parliament this week became the latest international
body to call on Turkey to recognise the killings as genocide; a
political slap in the face for Ankara which is due to start European
Union membership talks yesterday.

”Of course it saddens us when the European Parliament makes such a
decision,” said Vakifli village headman Berc Kartun ”Isn’t it over
yet? … Ninety years have passed and as an Armenian, I think it
should be over and done with.” Smoking and playing cards in the
plain, white-walled tea-house surrounded by lush orange groves
stretching down to the shores of the Mediterranean, other villagers
said they were sick of foreigners harping on about genocide.

”Are there any citizens of Turkey who think that way, any Armenians
here who think that way?” asked 72-year-old Musa Emekliyan. ”What I
am worried about it is what will happen to my oranges, will they sell
this year.”

RAIN NOT RESOLUTIONS

Turkey sees an international campaign led by the Armenian diaspora to
blacken its name behind the claims of genocide.

Turkish nationalists also fear the EU’s calls for minority rights are
a repeat of Western meddling that ended in war and the break-up of
the Ottoman Empire.

With Russian forces advancing across the eastern frontier, in 1915
Istanbul’s Ottoman rulers ordered local Armenians to be sent to Syria
and Lebanon, fearing they might side with the Russians. Many were
killed or died from deprivation.