KILLING ANOTHER ARMENIAN
Today’s Zaman
5-109-centerkilling-another-armenian-bribyibr-orha n-kemalcengizcenter.html
Nov 13 2009
Turkey
I was originally only planning to write an entertaining story,
but then I came across a piece of news in Today’s Zaman. I said to
myself Turkey is like a family that has a psychopathic father who
does extremely disturbing things whenever the children feel happy —
all just to kill their happiness. Why I use this metaphor in which I
portray psychopaths as the father figure and myself as a child needs
to be analyzed separately.
Let’s turn to this "disturbing story." As you read in yesterday’s
issue of Today’s Zaman, Taraf columnist Sevan NiÅ~_anyan, a Turkish
citizen and an ethnic Armenian, published in his column "letters from
readers" sent to him in reaction to one of his previous columns in
which he rewrote Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s "Address to Turkish Youth."
He changed Ataturk’s sentence "Your first duty is to preserve and to
defend Turkish independence and the Turkish Republic forever" into
"Your first duty is to be a human being." He made other changes of this
type to the original address. In reaction to his creative column, he
received more than 400 e-mails from readers, threatening to kill him,
swearing at him using extremely strong language, insulting him and so
on. He quoted a dozen of these messages as examples to give readers
a taste of the remaining messages. When you read these messages,
the most "decent ones," already quoted in yesterday’s Today’s Zaman,
clearly show that all attacks target his Armenian ethnicity. The
messages are written in the purest form of racist mentality, which
makes references to the killing of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant
Dink, to history and so on.
Reading these messages reminded me of something. In the summer of 2008,
I attended a course on genocide in Toronto. A dinner was held for
participants on the last night of the course. There were also people
from the Zoryan Institute, which organized this course. An Armenian
gentleman who was told I was from Turkey wanted to talk to me and sat
right across from me at the table. His Turkish was perfect. He then
told me his story. His family was originally from Van, a city by the
biggest lake of the same name in southeast Anatolia. His grandfather
was a wealthy man in Van.
There was a Kurdish clan leader in Van who used to invite rich and
prominent Armenians to his home every year for a special dinner. That
particular year, the Kurdish tribe leader, as usual, invited wealthy
Armenians to his home for dinner again. During the dinner this Armenian
gentleman’s father was playing games with children in the yard of the
house. Something unusual happened: The children were told to go to
their homes and were also told that their fathers were going to join
them later on. Later on, they learned that no Armenian who attended
this dinner left alive; they were all killed that night. The year was
1915. This Kurdish tribe leader most probably became a very rich man
after taking the possessions of the Armenians he killed.
Following this, the family formed a new life in Ä°stanbul, and this
gentleman received quite a good education there. When the time for
military conscription came, he had to make a choice: He was either
going to join the military or he was going to go abroad like many of
his Armenian friends living in Turkey did. He chose to join the army,
believing that a good life awaited him in Turkey after completing
military service.
Since he had already completed his graduate degree at the time, he
joined the military under the rank of second lieutenant. Apparently,
for many racist Turks, having an ethnic Armenian commander over them
was a very big insult. As soon as he stepped into the compound, they
started to hassle him. Every night a group of soldiers spoke of killing
him in front of the door to his room. There was no night he did not
hear conversations about how he was going to be killed. As soon as
he completed his military service, he sought asylum in Canada and has
been living there ever since. What a trauma for him and what a loss for
Turkey. He is a smart guy who received one of the best educations in
Turkey. Turkey indeed lost a great individual, a man who was determined
to live in this country despite everything. What a big loss for Turkey.
NiÅ~_anyan is one of this country’s brightest minds, and we are very
luck he did not leave Turkey. I am sure, like every other Armenian
living in Turkey, that he must have endured all kinds of racist
attacks of all types and forms during his life. But he did not leave
Turkey; he continues to live here and continues to contribute to the
democratization of this country.
Returning to the very beginning of this article, I used a metaphor
in which I portrayed psychopaths attacking NiÅ~_anyan as father
figures because I instinctively know that the deep state always has
a hand in these kinds of organized attacks. In Turkey, these kinds of
things happen in a much more organized way than people generally tend
to think. When I read about this hatemongering campaign targeting
NiÅ~_anyan, I could only think of JÄ°TEM as the conspirator behind
the scenes. JÄ°TEM is the illegal unit of the gendarmerie responsible
for many unsolved murders in southeast Turkey. I also believe they
were the real perpetrators of the Dink assassination and the 2007
Malatya massacre.
If a country does not confront its past, it is doomed to repeat it.
Unless we fully confront what happened to Armenians in 1915, we
will not be able to get rid of these fascist elements in the state
structure — nor will we be able to change this racist mentality.
Ergenekon and similar gangs should be handled with the utmost care, and
these cases should go wherever they can lead us. Finally, to prevent
a second Dink case, threats and other messages targeting NiÅ~_anyan
should be taken very seriously. To investigate these threats and to
find the real perpetrators behind them is the utmost moral and legal
obligation of this government. We should all keep a close eye on the
steps taken.
From: Baghdasarian