American Chronicle
April 5 2009

The Banality Of Ineptitude (Greece – Australia – Turkey)

Australian Macedonian Advisory Council April 05, 2009 "Our strength
lies in our intensive attacks and our barbarity¦ After all, who
today remembers the genocide of the Armenians?" Adolf Hitler

I defy the Liberal Senator Alan Ferguson to look Chris Mingos in the
eye and tell him that his mother did not see the women of her village,
one by one, through themselves into a well in a futile and tragic
attempt to evade their slaughter by Turkish irregulars. I would like
Ferguson to tell Chris Mingos that crimes so unspeakable that she
could only cry when she would think of them, were not visited upon his
mother. I would like him to look me in the face and tell me that my
grandfather did not witness the slaughter of children at
Akbuköy in Aydin. I dare him to look my father-in-law in the
face and tell him that his father did not flee the Hakkari mountains
as a result of the continuous slaughter of its native Assyrian
population. I challenge him to tell me that my grandfather, Chris
Mingos´ mother and the rest of the survivors of the genocide of
the Christian peoples of Anatolia is to use his own words an attempt
to: "try to re-write history," or that they form part of a larger
corpus: "with the Armenians, with the Pontian Greeks and with a range
of other people who currently are trying to put today’s moral judgment
on events that took place 100 years ago." Note how the
genocide-denying Senator refers to the Assyrian victims as "other
peoples." It is apparent that he is extremely well informed.

The denial of genocide, or attempts to minimise, make light of or in
any way trivialise incidences of racial tension and/or conflict are
not elements that one would expect to see in mature western
democracies. In many European countries, denial of crimes of genocide
is seen as a punishable offence because to doubt the slaughter of
innocent people, murdered solely because of their ethnic, religious or
political affiliations is seen as tantamount to condoning the crime as
well.

Senator Ferguson did not have to commit genocide-denial in Federal
Parliament on 18 March 2009. He was merely "moved to speak," on "the
40th anniversary of the formal Agreement between the Government of the
Common – wealth of Australia and the Government of the Repub –
lic of Turkey concerning the Residence and Employ – ment of
Turkish Citizens in Australia." His stated aim was: "to celebrate and
commend the achievements of the Turk – ish community here in the
Commonwealth of Australia that has been created as a result of this
agreement in the 40 years since its implementation."

However, he did not. Instead, he admitted that the Turkish ambassador
visited him complaining about "a speech that was made by the
Hon. Michael Atkinson, the Attorney-General, Minister for Justice and
Minister for Multicultural Af – fairs in the Labor government in
South Australia. I had not thought that I would be surprised by
anything that the South Australian Attorney-General said in relation
to the Turkish community, particularly as most state parliaments do
not have a role in foreign affairs in the same way that the federal
parliament does." This is where Ferguson makes a mistake and betrays
his primary motivation. The Hon. Michael Atkinson´s speech had
nothing to do with the Turkish community. In it, he made reference to:
"The nationalist Turks led by Mustafa Kemal’s forces and their
frenzied followers began to persecute [Pontian Greeks] through
beatings, murder, forced marches and labour, theft of their properties
and livelihood, rape, torture and deportations." One can understand
why the Turkish ambassador, a person who Ferguson admits to being his
"personal friend," may be enraged. Despite Ferguson´s
commendation of: "the Republic of Turkey’s commitment to democracy, to
the rule of law, and-particularly in the region in which it lives-to
secularism, which is some – thing that is quite unique in that
part of the world," the Turkish ambassador represents a country that
until recently denied the existence of and persecuted its Kurdish
minority, unlawfully expropriates land from Christian ecclesiastical
foundations, bullies its smaller neighbours with spurious land and sea
claims and threats of military intervention, invades and occupies
other countries, and imprisons and threatens people who share
different views about the its official version of its past and
society. In 2005, in ´secular, democratic, rule of law
Turkey´, a new penal code was introduced, including an Article
301, which states:
"A person who, being a Turk, explicitly insults the Republic or
Turkish Grand National Assembly, shall be punishable by
imprisonment of between six months to three years." Orhan Pamuk,
Turkey´s Nobel Prize winning author, was retroactively
charged with violating this law in the interview he had given
four months earlier. In October, after the prosecution had begun,
Pamuk reiterated his views in a speech given during an award
ceremony in Germany: "I repeat, I said loud and clear that one
million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in Turkey."
AltuÄ? Taner Akçam, a leading Turkish academic who
uses Ottoman documents to prove that the Armenian genocide took
place, fears for his life and is often in hiding. Furthermore,
Lebanon, Israel, Cyprus, Armenia and Georgia are all states in
Turkey´s immediate periphery that are even more secular
and certainly more democratic. But it is far beyond us to provide
Ferguson with lessons in geography.

It is arguable that Ferguson knows nothing of this. I doubt that his
Turkish mate would have told him, when he appears to have incited him
to use the anniversary to take a cheap swipe on behalf of Turkey at
genocide victim´s expense. Instead, on the 18th, he launched
into a mellifluous, histrionic and irrelevant attempt to use
Gallipoli, a Greek town that was ethnically cleansed by the Ottomans
in order for it to be fortified to resist an Allied attack on
Constantinople, "as a guest of the Turkish government," in order to
justify his genocide denial. Ferguson in particular, expresses much
emotion at the fact that the commander of the forces that mowed down
the ANZAC troops, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, asked the mothers of the
fallen Anzac soldiers to wipe away their tears as he would look after
their son´s corpses for them. Ferguson is obviously oblivious
to modern scholarship which posits that the genocide of the Christians
of Anatolia was probably linked to the Gallipoli landings. Professor
Robert Manne states: "The two events not only coincided in territory
and in time, but there is quite a lot of evidence that the genocide
was pushed on because of the Dardanelle campaign of the Anglo-French
forces in which the Australians were involved. So despite the fact
that the things happened at the same time and in the same place more
or less, and they were even kind of connected with a causal
link¦when the Dardanelles were first bombed by the Anglo-French in
March 1915, that was the final moment of reckoning, and that the
Turkish regime, which was run by two or three Young Turks were the
dominant figures, they set upon and decided on asystematic
extermination of the Armenians, saying that at this moment of crisis,
where Constantinople might fall, we can’t afford to have a subversive
minority within our country."

The causal link between the two events is further cemented when one
considers that just twenty days after the Gallipoli landing, on 14 May
1914, Talaat Pasha, a member of the ruling Young Turk triumvirate
ordered the forcible evacuation of all Greek settlements on the
Dardenelles as far as Kyssos and the re-settlement of the region with
Muslim refugees from the Balkans: "For political reasons it is
urgently necessary that the Greek inhabitants of the coast of Asia
Minor are forced to abandon their villages¦ If they refuse to
move¦ please give oral instructions to Muslim brothers how to force
the Greeks to remove themselves ´voluntarily´ by any means possible.
In that case, don´t forget to obtain confirmations from them
that they are abandoning their homes of their own free will." And what
about the thousands of Greek troops and support staff who assisted and
nursed Australian soldiers on the island of Lemnos and elsewhere?
Apparently their contribution is too humanitarian in nature to satisfy
Ferguson´s idolatry of "noble" enemies.

Ferguson in his ineptitude makes another historical blunder. He states
that at the time of the genocide, Turkey was "fighting for its
survival against an invasion from Greece." Rubbish. There is enough
evidence to show that the genocide was directed against ALL the native
Christian peoples of Anatolia and that it commenced long before Greece
was requested to police the sanjak of Smyrna by the Allies in
1919. Further the Greek army never set foot in Pontos. The defenceless
Pontians were slaughtered just for interfering with the Young
Turk´s and their successor´s conception of a uni-racial
state.

Ferguson must be a very brave man to so blatantly and artlessly
exhibit his ignorance of the period in question. He is also brave for
his frank revelation of the manner in which he views the place of
historical events pertaining to Australian ethnic minorities. Of
Michael Atkinson´s spirited speech he states: "It was obviously
made in the context of being at a Greek function where it was suitable
for him to make these remarks." The inference here appears to be
obvious, is it legitimate and suitable for an Australian politician to
curry favour with target ethnic minorities by pandering to their own
view of history in order to gain their vote? Is this how Ferguson sees
multiculturalism? And in his ridiculous, offensive and thoroughly
sickening to victims and descendants of the victims, denial of the
Christian genocide, is he merely adhering to what appears to be his
own jaded view of the use of ethnic groups in his electorate? Further
more, does his distorted and inept view of this event reflect Liberal
Party policy?

Playing ethnic politics is a dirty game that threatens to shatter
social harmony quite a good deal more easily than referring to or
interperting historical events. The fact of the matter is that in
Australia, communities of diverse backgrounds have proven that they
can co-exist peacefully in fruitful collaboration and ties of
friendship because of our joint commitment to multicultural
Australia. No cynical, irresponsible or misguided attempt to score
points or votes off the backs of any arbitrarily chosen ethnic group
should ever be permitted to bear the bitter fruit of discord.

It is meet that Greek consular officials greet this clumsy attempt by
the Turkish diplomatic corps and their misguided friends to taunt and
humiliate genocide victims and their families with the silence of
contempt that they deserve. We however, should not be so silent. We do
not hate Turkey. Many thousands of members of the Greek community
derive their descent from the geographical area covered by its
borders. We cannot hate our place of origin though we may despise and
deplore crimes about humanity and coarse, brutal, thoroughly stupid
attempts to cover these up and denigration of their victims. Ferguson
should, assuming that he wants to, be advised of the folly of exposing
his schematic view of history and appearing to be the pawn of a
culpable state.

Perhaps Ferguson, whose name and nefarious deed in Parliament on the
18th of March should never be forgotten by all those who seek justice,
tolerance, social cohesion and re-conciliation, condemns himself with
his own words, when he says: "¦those of us to – day find it
very difficult to pass judgment–we should not be passing judgment
when we do not know the full facts." To him then, these words of
Gideon Hausner: "No one can demand that you be neutral toward the
crime of genocide. If there is a judge in the whole world who can be
neutral toward this crime, that judge is not fit to sit in judgment."
Shame¦.

By Dean Kalimniou
info@macedonian.com.au
anchronicle.com/articles/view/97288