San Antonio Express, TX
Oct 12 2007
Solving the genocides of today more useful than looking back
Mansour El-Kikhia:
Web Posted: 10/11/2007 07:00 PM CDT
San Antonio Express-News
I am intrigued by this week’s vote in the Foreign Affairs Committee
of the House of Representatives. The committee voted 27-21 to
classify the death of Armenians under Turkish occupation at the
beginning of the previous century as genocide.
President Bush warned that Turkey would not be pleased by the vote
and might be so offended that it would suspend all American traffic
to northern Iraq. However, Bush’s major fear is a Turkish invasion of
Kurdish-controlled areas of Iraq in search of Kurdistan Workers Party
terrorists who have been conducting operations in Turkey and
withdrawing to Kurdish Iraq.
I first learned of the Armenian version of events and the claims of
genocide many years ago when I lived in Lebanon with its sizable
Armenian minority. I was even more surprised to find so many
Armenians learning and speaking Turkish as though they were keeping
the memory alive.
While I sympathize with the Armenians, I also feel sorry for the
Turks, who were severed from their history and culture in the early
1920s by the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. In the
minds of many Turks, pre-Ataturk Turkey did not exist and they
certainly don’t want to be held accountable for it.
The Turks will not take responsibility for events not in their memory
banks and, as expected, many young Turks will respond with hostility
to the United States, Armenia and Armenians in and outside Turkey.
I am not surprised at the perseverance of Armenians to rectify what
they perceive as an injustice committed by the Turks, but I am a
little surprised at the congressional pandering. What do the
Armenians and Congress hope to achieve by this action, short of
alienating a U.S. ally at a time when America needs every one it can
get?
Additionally, if Congress wants to play this role, it also needs to
pass a slew of resolutions classifying other historical atrocities as
genocide. The first can be in support of the other 3.9 million people
who died in the ovens of Nazi Germany but whom we rarely hear about;
these included Gypsies, Poles, Czechs, Germans and other people of
occupied lands.
Italy needs to be held accountable for the death of 1.8 million
Libyans in concentration camps from 1926-1933. France has to be held
accountable for the murder of more than 1 million Algerians from
1954-1962. How about a resolution slamming Stalin-era Russia for what
it did to the Chechnyans and other occupied peoples? Or maybe a
resolution faulting the Japanese for what they did to China or Korea?
I hate to say this, but few areas of the world did not suffer at
human hands, and the time has come to stop holding the children
responsible for the sins of parents. Only then will humanity be able
to start fresh.
Does anyone think that Turkish future policies toward Armenians will
not be influenced by this vote? Germans resent being reminded every
day how awful their parents, their grandparents and their culture
have been, and might still be, for the atrocities committed by Nazi
thugs. What is preventing closer relations between Asian countries
except ancient hostilities and claims of genocide?
I suppose age modifies one’s view of the world and provides a point
of reference. However, I do know that the massacres and genocides we
experienced during the past decade or two have their roots in history
because one group or another blames the children for the sins of the
parents or grandparents. In these we can include Bosnia, Rwanda,
Liberia, Ivory Coast and a host of others.
A wise Japanese once said, why worry about your beard if your head is
going to be cut off? The time has come to solve the current
genocides, such as the one in Darfur and potential ones in Palestine,
Western China, Tibet and the former Soviet Republics of Kazakhstan
and Chechnya, rather than dwell on the past, which certainly has not
proven to be a lesson for the future.
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