WHAT IS TURKEY’S FINAL ANSWER?
NEWS | MARCH 26, 2015 12:36 PM
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By Raffi Bedrosyan
Turkey has announced that the annual commemoration of the Gallipoli
Dardanelles battles of World War One, which were traditionally held on
March 18, will now be held on April 24 this year. President Erdogan
has invited over 120 world leaders, including President Sargsyan of
Armenia, to attend the Gallipoli ceremonies. The reason for the date
change is apparent to all Armenians.
There is a term in Turkish, Sark kurnazligi, meaning Oriental slyness.
The term is used to define someone who resorts to cunning to deceive
someone, but both the deceiver and the deceived person know that there
is trickery involved, and more cynically, the deceiver does not care
if the deceived person is aware of the deceit.
Already a few state leaders have announced that they will attend,
including “Turkey’s little brother” Azerbaijan, some African and
Muslim states, and notably, the Queen and Prince Charles.
It is worthwhile to remind to these people, and all the
English-speaking world, another Turkish scheme involving trickery of
dates which happened eight years ago.
The Holy Cross Church and monastery complex on Akhtamar Island in Lake
Van in Eastern Turkey was in ruins since 1915, and in fact, was being
willfully destroyed by the Turkish Army in the 1950s. Only interference
by famous Kurdish author Yashar Kemal (whose hidden Armenian roots
were revealed recently) had prevented the complete destruction of
the last remaining church and the Turkish government had decided
in the 2000’s to restore the church as a museum. The restoration
was completed in early 2007 and the government announced the date
of the opening of the museum to be April 24, 2007. The Istanbul
Armenian Patriarch of the time, Archbishop Mesrob Mutafyan forcefully
protested that by choosing this date the government was attempting to
create political gains using the Armenians’ pain, and that he would
refuse to attend the opening ceremony if this insensitive decision
was not revised. The government appeared to appease the patriarch,
but continuing to employ tactics of Oriental slyness, announced that
the date would now be April 11, 2007. The government was fully aware
that April 11 was also equally significant and unacceptable to the
Armenians, as this is the same date as April 24 in the old calendar
in effect at 1915. In fact, in 1919, the famous Armenian journalist
and himself a survivor of the 1915 massacres, Teotig had compiled
a list and biographies of 761 Armenian intellectuals arrested and
subsequently murdered, in a booklet called Houshartsan (Memorial) to
April 11. The first April 24 commemoration had taken place in 1919,
with the opening of a memorial sculpture called “April 11 Houshartsan,”
in the Istanbul Armenian Cemetery in Taksim, since then expropriated
and converted in the 1930s to become the famous Taksim Square, the
scene of recent protests against the government. All these facts,
known to both the Armenians in Turkey and the Turkish government,
were revealed in an editorial in the Agos newspaper questioning
the wisdom of using these dated for the Akhtamar opening, using the
headline: ‘Are you sure? Is this your final answer?’. The headline was
copied after the often-repeated question heard on the then popular TV
quiz show, “Who wants to be a millionaire?'” The date of that Agos
editorial? January 19, 2007… the day Hrant Dink was shot in front
of the Agos newspaper offices.
The Akhtamar Museum was opened on March 29, 2007. Patriarch Mutafyan
reluctantly attended, and shortly thereafter, he became incapacitated
with a still unexplained debilitating mental disease and he still
lives in a vegetative state. In the meantime, eight years after Hrant
Dink’s murder, the real perpetrators and conspirators of the murder
are still not caught nor tried.
Therefore, it is now appropriate to again ask the Turkish government
who sent the Gallipoli invitations for April 24, 2015, and any state
leaders who choose to ignore the real significance of this date:
“Are you sure? Is this your final answer?”
(Raffi Bedrosyan is a civil engineer and concert pianist, living
in Toronto, Canada. He has donated concert and CD proceedings to
infrastructure projects in Armenia and Karabagh, in which he has also
participated as an engineer. He helped organize the reconstruction of
the Surp Giragos Diyarbakir/Dikranagerd Church and the first Armenian
reclaim of church properties in Anatolia after 1915. He gave the
first piano concert in the Surp Giragos Church since 1915.)