Barely more than a 100 years ago, Turkey executed what is considered by historians the first major genocide of the 20th century: the murder of hundreds of thousands of Armenians – perhaps as many as 1,500,000 – and the driving of hundreds of thousands of other Armenians into the desert, where many perished either at the hands of Turkish zealots or by starvation in the desert.
This week, as winter approaches, hundreds of thousands of Syrian and Turkish Kurds have already been driven from their homes by Turkey, with the approval of the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, into some of the very same deserts that became the grave sites of so many Armenians barely a century ago.
“I am afraid, my friends, that the ugly chapters of genocides and the deep-rooted history of persecution in the Middle East will last longer if we ignore the facts,” activist Widad Akreyi has written. “If we keep silent, we will probably witness another genocide at a future date, and the price we may pay for neglecting our duty to act may prove to be too high.”
That future date is upon us.
Today, in spite of agreement on a negotiated “pause” – falsely described as a “cease-fire” by Trump and Vice President Mike Pence and contradicted by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – attacks from Turkish and Turkish-backed militias on Syrian Kurds, American allies whom Trump has abandoned, continue.
A negotiated “pause,” which was implemented without consultation or approval from the Kurds.
It appears that Russian forces have occupied positions previously held by American forces, that Kurds are so desperate that they seeking protection from Syrian President Bashar Hafez al-Assad, he who is responsible for the killing of more than 500,000 Syrians in an eight-year-long civil war, and that Iranian aid to the Syrian regime continues unabated.
Reports continue to appear that American forces, shamed and humiliated by their commander in chief’s servile capitulation to Erdogan, had to blow up their own ammunition depots and vital assets as they rapidly withdrew in the face of the Turkish advance against America’s staunchest allies in the Middle East – the Kurds.
Trump, through negotiations led by Pence and Secretary of Sate Mike Pompeo, not only agreed to let Turkey ethnically cleanse all Kurds from their own lands in Syria – Kurds who lost over 11,000 fighters as they fought alongside Americans in our battle against ISIS – but also agreed not to sanction them for doing so.
“What we have done to the Kurds will stand as a bloodstain in the annals of American history,” Sen. Mitt Romney charged.
“This is a big win for Iran and Assad,” Sen. Lindsey Graham said. “A big win for ISIS.”
A bigger win for Vladimir Putin – a green light for despots everywhere.
It didn’t have to come to this.
Servile in his capitulation to dictators, monarchs and autocrats, from Helsinki to Singapore, Riyadh to Ankara, Trump has routinely ignored the oppressed and dispossessed while embracing their oppressors.
Since Jan. 20, 2017, as I write, Donald Trump – for 1,001 days and nights – has attacked, lied, deceived, blasphemed and abused the Constitution of the United States.
Unlike Scheherazade in her One Thousand and One Nights, Trump has not “a thousand books of histories relating to antique races and departed rulers … (not) … perused the works of the poets and knew them by heart … (not) studied philosophy and the sciences, arts and accomplishments …(and not) pleasant and polite, wise and witty, well read and well bred.” (Richard Burton translation)
Since Jan. 20, 2017, the Republican Party – together with its conservative, libertarian and evangelical cohorts – has collaborated with a ruler who knows no books, no history – a ruler not pleasant and polite, wise and witty, well read and well bred.
They have collaborated and empowered an anti-democratic, ignorant, racist, narcissistic, kleptocrat to shred the shared vision of our Founding Fathers in great part to fulfill their own greed and delusions while ignoring the apparent fact that Trump lacked the character, temperament, experience and vision to lead this country.
Thus, while I am appreciative of their support of the Kurds I am not moved by the too-little, too-late sentiments of sycophants like Graham, Romney, Mitch McConnell and others decrying Trump’s support of Erdogan.
For 1,001 days, those sycophants enabled Trump and his ignorance, and the Kurds are paying the price for their greed, avarice and fear.
Successive Turkish governments, including that of Erdogan, have refused to acknowledge or take responsibility for the genocide and crimes against humanity they perpetrated against the Armenian people a century ago.
Today, as we witness the unfolding of genocide and ethnic cleansing in those very same lands, it comes as no surprise to me that Donald Trump, Turkey’s enabler, shows no awareness, no regrets, no remorse, over the forces of evil he has unleashed.
In 2015, when the lifeless body of 3-year-old Alan Kurdi – a Syrian Kurdish boy who, with his father, was trying to escape al-Assad’s butchery – washed up on the shores of the Mediterranean the world reacted, rightly, in revulsion.
In 2019, when President Trump called his capitulation to President Erdogan (whom he will soon welcome in the White House) a “Great Day for Civilization,” I reacted with revulsion.
Such a “civilization” is not anything I want to be part of.
(Robert Azzi, a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter, can be reached at [email protected]. His columns are archived at .)
https://www.concordmonitor.com/Turkey-Armenians-Kurds-29483229