Sunday’s Zaman: Turkey should face what happened in 1915 without any
foreign pressure

21.03.2010 19:55 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Thanks to a kind of strange Turkish exceptionalism,
military generals should speak every day so that people will see their
intellectual caliber and so the army’s meddling with politics will no
longer be tolerated, Ihsan Yilmaz, observer of Sunday’s Zaman, wrote
in an article he titled `Armenians and our speaking prime minister’.

The article goes on: `After seeing that our generals are also mere
mortals, the people will know they are not super-humans and that in
some exceptional cases, quite the contrary may also be true. In
addition to my abovementioned strange undemocratic offer, here is the
second one: Our prime minister should speak less, for the sake of our
democracy and for the well-being and prosperity of our country and
nation. All right, I loved `one minute,’ and I still do, but when it
comes to spontaneous reactions, our prime minister is very rarely that
lucky. I can list here several examples of how he inflicted himself
and democratic forces in society harm by his spontaneous and
definitely unnecessary reactions. That is why, knowing this weakness
of the prime minister, his opponents everywhere try to provoke him.’

`The last incident is his unfortunate – maybe misunderstood – remark
on illegal Armenians immigrants who have been working in Turkey
illegally, numbering up to 20,000 people. To date, the Turkish state
has turned a blind eye to their existence as a good gesture and sign
of goodwill. It is also known that Turkey has helped Armenia when they
had food shortages, etc. The prime minister warned Armenia last week
that Turkey may send these illegal workers back. Speaking to
journalists in Africa, President Abdullah Gul said the prime minister
was misunderstood and so on. Even this sufficiently shows that there
is something troubling in the remarks of the prime minister,’ it says.
`I have been thinking about the classic Turkish counterattack of
threatening the US with the closure of the US military base in
Incirlik, Turkey, as a reaction to the US congressmen’s annual threats
to pass a resolution to condemn Turkey because of what happened back
in 1915 that have never arrived at a conclusion. But I think if
politics pollutes everything it touches, if these canny American
politicians touch anything, they pollute it twice. No, I will not
mention the redskins, the forefathers of the American Indians! But,
the US politicians can start with the massacres in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Bush, neocons, etc., and then continue going back. When the buck stops
at 1915, they can question Turkey. But, saying this does not negate
the ultimate truth that Turkey has to face what happened in 1915. And
we should do this without any foreign pressure.’

In conclusion, the author remarked that instead of constantly
speaking, Turkey can simply declare that it is ready to give
everything back to their rightful and legal owners if they can produce
documents or the state is able to find the records in the archives.
Doing this, according to him, does not mean that Turkish politicians
accept the Armenian Genocide but `it would simply substantiate our
claims to morality, ethics and, above all, humanity.’