Ottawa Citizen, Canada
January 24, 2008 Thursday
Final Edition
Politicians must not allow ‘homelandism’
Ozay Mehmet, The Ottawa Citizen
Canada is an amazing democracy, but it is deficient in one major way.
It lacks a national ministry of education.
Our education system is Balkanized with separate provincial
educational jurisdictions, each having its own standards and
curricula. This is partly historical and partly religious, reflecting
the power sharing that existed in 1867 when the Canadian
Confederation was established.
As a result, local activists and ethnic lobbies are sometimes able to
impose their own versions of history on the silent majority. That
explains why now the Toronto and District School Board has fallen
into the hands of Armenian lobbies, hell bent on rewriting history
from an Armenian perspective.
In recent years, genocide studies have become very popular, and
Armenian nationalists have joined the bandwagon. Using the fake
Hitler quote ("Who still remembers the Armenian massacres?") and
other documents such as the notorious forged Andonian telegrams,
these Armenian activists have been having a field day at the expense
of Turkish-Ottoman history.
So now, the Turkish Canadian community of Toronto is up in arms. They
came by the hundreds to a Toronto school board meeting on Jan. 16 to
voice their anger. The trustees were caught unaware. "We never
expected so many to show up" said one official. The meeting had to be
moved to an auditorium in order to accommodate everyone.
What happened in Toronto is a repetition of what took place at the
Ottawa school board 18 years ago. At that time, thanks to the
opposition of the Turkish Canadians in our national capital, the
Armenian module was rejected.
It is hoped the same thing will happen in Toronto. But unfortunately
that would not solve the problem, as Canadian schools may yet turn
into ethnic battlegrounds unless a sane method is discovered to
contain "homelandism," politicians pandering to ethnic lobbies
pursuing nationalist ideologies imported from some homeland overseas,
sometimes resorting to terrorism in pursuit of national causes.
Opportunistic politicians are ready to ignore these dangers for the
sake of a few votes.
Ozay Mehmet, Ottawa
Professor emeritus,
Carleton University