NATIONALISTS REACT TO INTELLECTUALS’ COURAGEOUS APOLOGY

Today’s Zaman
Dec 6 2008
Turkey

Turkey’s nationalists have been incensed about a group of Turkish
intellectuals who recently apologized publicly for the "great disaster
Ottoman Armenians suffered in 1915" in a country where even discussing
Armenian claims of genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire can
be cause for arrest.

The reaction to a petition initiated by a group of intellectuals, led
by popular professors Baskın Oran and Ahmet İnsel and journalists
Ali Bayramoglu and Cengiz Aktar, personally apologizing for the forced
deportation of Armenians from their homes in the Turkish heartland
in 1915, has shown yet again how courageous one must be to publicly
announce his or her unorthodox opinions in Turkey, particularly if
those opinions contradict the official ideology.

In a phone interview with Today’s Zaman, Nationalist Movement Party
(MHP) deputy for Erzurum Zeki Ertugay accused the signatories of being
in "a state of hysteria." He stressed that it was not Armenians who
suffered at the hand of Ottoman Turks, but Turks who were assaulted
by Armenians. "Erzurum suffered most from that cruelty.

Every house has memories of people butchered by Armenians. I regard
apologizing to the Armenians as an insult to the Turkish nation. People
who call themselves intellectuals have not even been enlightened about
their own history. A stain of shame like genocide has never taken place
in the history of the Turkish nation. If there is somebody who needs to
apologize, it is the Armenians and the Western states that provoked the
Armenians against the Turks by promising them a state of their own."

Behic Celik, a MHP deputy from Mersin, was equally enraged. "It is
impossible to refer to these people as intellectuals. The so-called
intellectuals trying to apologize to Armenians do not know the
past. They don’t know history. There has never been any genocide in
the history of the Turkish nation. Apologizing even for the deportation
is not acceptable, because deportations have been carried out by many
nations, not just Turkey. The US relocated Native Americans, Russia
deported the Kazaks and the Crimean Tatars. Their intellectuals never
apologized to anybody."

Ultranationalist media outlets and pundits were also furious. The
Yeni Cag (New Age) daily referred to the petition as a "campaign to
smear Turkey." Yusuf Halacoglu, a well-known ultranationalist who
formerly headed the Turkish Historical Society (TTK), said the real
target here was connected to Turkey’s new foreign policy initiative,
started in early September with President Abdullah Gul and Foreign
Minister Ali Babacan visiting Yerevan for a soccer match between the
national teams of Turkey and Armenia. "The aim here is to foment public
opinion to be able to take that earlier initiative to the next level,"
Halacoglu said.

He said only 22,000 people died before 1915, the year of the forced
deportation. "Will they apologize for those, too? Or will the Armenians
announce with whom they cooperated when the Ottoman Empire was fighting
world powers? Are they going to publicly announce how many Armenians
were part of the French and Russian armies at the time? Armenians, as
people who cooperated with the enemy in their own countries, have lost
this war. This is the state of affairs as it stands today," he said.

Historian Cemalettin TaÅ~_kıran was quoted in nationalist newspapers
as saying, "This is the biggest betrayal that could be shown to
our forefathers." TaÅ~_kıran said the campaign was set up to hurt
the unity of the Turkish nation and to prepare the way for Turkey’s
eventual recognition of Armenian claims of genocide.

The intellectuals’ group is calling on other people to sign
the petition posted online, which reads as follows: "I cannot
conscientiously accept the indifference to the great disaster that
Ottoman Armenians suffered in 1915, and its denial. I reject this
injustice and, acting of my own will, I share the feelings and pains
of my Armenian brothers and sisters, and I apologize to them."

The organizers of the campaign have underlined that first they will
collect signatures from intellectuals and they will then open a secure
Web site to collect signatures.

The Armenian population that was in Turkey before the establishment
of Turkish Republic was forced to emigrate in 1915, and, according
to some, the conditions of this expulsion are the basis of Armenian
claims of genocide.

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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress