North Shore Sunday, MA
April 29 2006

The Turks talk back
By Barbara Taormina/ Staff Writer
Friday, April 28, 2006

When it comes to Armenia , Turkey has always told a different story.

Many Turks believe that the current push to have the world
recognize the Armenian genocide is an attempt to force Turkey to pay
reparations and to annex the eastern part of the country to
present-day Armenia.

According to Turkish literature, the estimate of 1.5 million
Armenian deaths is exaggerated. Instead the Turks claim 700,000
Armenians were killed or died of starvation and disease during World
War I in eastern Anatolia.

But Turkish histories also point out that more than 2 million
Turks and Muslims died during the same time frame. And they say many
were massacred by the Armenians, while others died during the war
fighting Armenians and Russians.

Demir Delen, a Turkish writer who now lives in Canada, has been
trying for years to counter the claim of an Armenian genocide.
According to Delen, Armenian revolutionaries joined forces with the
Russians in an attempt to take advantage of a chaotic political
situation during the final years of the Ottoman Empire.

Delan says the attempt to relocate the Armenians was an attempt
to create some order and stability inside Turkey.

Like other Turks writing about the early 20th century history,
Delen claims many of the sources and documents supporting the claim
of an Armenian genocide are fake.

“Armenians, in their attempts to convince the world opinion about
the existence of a genocide perpetrated against them during the First
World War, resort to forgeries and falsifications,” he writes.

“It is ironic that Armenians accuse anyone who opposes their
allegations of a so-called genocide by exposing the historical facts,
as ‘rewriting history,'” says Delen. “Yet Armenians are rewriting
history more than 80 years later, in parliaments of western countries
and in the legislatures of several states and provinces in the U.S.
and Canada where they have a considerable population, by lobbying,
donating to election campaigns and influencing politicians.”