PanARMENIAN.Net

Ankara plays rather a safe game in the issue of the Armenian Genocide
Turkey has never acknowledged an exact number of deportees or deaths.

Karine Ter-Sahakyan

10.03.2009 GMT+04:00

A month before the 94th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide in the
Ottoman Empire The New York Times published an interesting article by
Sabrina Tavernise. According to a long-hidden document that belonged
to the Interior Minister of the Ottoman Empire, 972.000 Ottoman
Armenians disappeared from official population records from 1915
through 1916. The numbers are published by Murat Bardakci, the Turkish
author and columnist, in a book that is a collection of documents and
records that once belonged to Mehmed Talat, known as Talat Pasha, the
primary architect of the Armenian deportations.

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ But since its publication in a book in January, the
number had gone virtually unmentioned. Newspapers hardly wrote about
it. Television shows did not discuss it. `The silence can mean only
one thing,’ said Bardakci, `My numbers are too high for ordinary
people. Maybe people aren’t ready to talk about it yet.’ For
generations, most Turks knew nothing of the details of the Armenian
Genocide of 1915 to 1918. `Turkey locked the ugliest parts of its past
out of sight, Soviet-style, keeping any mention of the events out of
schoolbooks and official narratives in an aggressive campaign of
forgetting,’ the author of article says.

Not once Turkey has appeared hostage in the clutches of her own wiles
with regard to whether `to use the word `genocide’ when addressing the
events of 1915′. The whole world was called up for assistance,
including the Jewish lobby and the Israeli Government. In effect,
Ankara played and still plays rather a safe game in the issue of the
Armenian Genocide: Israel will never bear the fact that there has ever
been another genocide in the world besides Holocaust, «thanks
to» which the Israeli state was established. Swelling the
Catastrophe of the European Jews into an event of universal scale, for
60 years Israel has been successfully waging a war against the Arabic
tightening encirclement, and, first of all, against Palestine. This
position of Israel matched Turkey most of all, as Ankara realized that
sooner or later she would have to recognize the `events of 1915′ as
genocide. However, the system collapsed during the operation
«Cast Lead». As we wrote, Prime-Minister Erdogan
accused Israel of `committing genocide against the Palestinians’ and
got a respective answer: `Turks ought not to speak of genocide¦’ It
should be noted, that for the Jews Holocaust is the sole national idea
for the sake of which the whole nation works. Unfortunately, this
cannot be applied to Armenians. Only two or three Diaspora
organizations are seriously engaged in the works of Genocide
recognition on an international scale. And the fact that they do it is
worthy of respect. The Government contents itself with declarative
statements and tries to promote relations with Turkey with the sacred
phrase `We are ready to normalize relations without any
precondition’. However, in reality, it means that Armenia shuts her
eyes to the blockade, gives consent to the support provided to
Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh issue and overlooks the Armenian
Genocide.

Turkey has never acknowledged a specific number of Armenian deportees
or deaths. And in this respect the pessimism of the US Armenian
community is more than justified. The latter has been doing its best
to achieve the US Congress adoption of resolution on recognition of
the Armenian Genocide. `A disturbing development is an invitation
issued by Armenian officials to Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ali Babacan
to attend the Black Sea Economic Conference (BSEC) on April 16-17,
just days before the 94th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide,’ in
his weekly column writes Editor of The California Courier Arthur
Sassounian. In his opinion, while Ankara officials are ‘bombarding’
Washington with such fake messages, the Armenian side should not stay
astonishingly silent, giving credence to Turkish misrepresentations
which are intended to undermine the prospects of any U.S. declaration
on the Armenian Genocide. `It is hard to believe that the Armenian
Government should invite to Yerevan the Turkish Foreign Minister, a
supporter of Genocide denial, who does not intend to visit the
Memorial of the Armenian Genocide, lay a wreath and offer an apology
to the Armenian people,’ emphasized Sassounian.