ALEXANDER MINASYAN: ARMY EDUCATION SHOULD BE GIVEN SERIOUS ATTENTION

PanARMENIAN.Net
28.01.2010 16:04 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Armenia must have a strong Army, as due to its
geopolitical situation the country will always be under Pan- Turkism
threat, the former head of Military Institute at RA Defence Ministry
Alexander Minasyan said.

As he told a news conference in Yerevan, serious attention should be
given to army education and forming of pro- government mentality of
future Armenian soldiers.

Pan-Turkism is a political movement started more than 100 years ago
aiming to unite the various Turkic peoples into a modern political
state.

In the research literature, the term "Pan-Turkism" is used to
describe the idea of political, cultural and ethnic unity of all
Turkic-speaking people. Turanism is a closely related movement but
a more general term than Turkism, since Turkism applies only to the
Turkic peoples. However, researchers and politicians engaged in the
field of Turkic ideology have used these terms interchangeably in a
multitude of sources and literature. The term "Turkism" started to
be used with a prefix "Pan" (from Greek pan = all), for a "Panturkism".

While the various Turkic peoples often share historical, cultural
and linguistic roots, the rising of a pan-Turkic political movement
is a phenomenon only of the 19th and 20th century [7] and can be
seen in parallel with European developments like Pan-Slavism and
Pan-Germanism or with Middle-Eastern Pan-Iranism. Proponents use the
latter most often as a point of comparison as the concept of "Turkic"
is not a true racial or ethnic description but more of a linguistic
and cultural distinction. This is to differentiate it from the term
"Turkish" which is more of an ethnic/racial term for the citizens
and denizens primarily residing in Turkey. Pan-Turkic ideas and
"re-unification" movements have been popular since the collapse of
the Soviet Union in Central Asian and other Turkic countries.

Pan-Turkism is and has always been a movement viewed with suspicion
by many, often perceived as nothing else but a new form of Turkish
imperial ambition. Some view the movement as racist and chauvinistic,
particularly when considering the associated racial and historical
teachings. Specifically, the young Turks who carried pan-Turkist
ideologies as their guiding principle are accused of the Armenian
Genocide, Greek genocide and Assyrian Genocide.