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  • ANKARA: Killing Another Armenian

    KILLING ANOTHER ARMENIAN

    Today's Zaman
    http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-19279 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
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