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THE MEANING OF CONDOLENCES TO ARMENIAN GRANDCHILDREN
Cihan News Agency (CNA)
April 25, 2014 Friday
ISTANBUL (CIHAN)- The statement issued by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan offering condolences to the grandchildren of Ottoman Armenians
will serve to open a new page in Turkish-Armenian relations only one
year ahead of the centennial of the events of 1915.
He has achieved yet another first.
It was a first when he apologized for Dersim [the massacre of Tunceli
residents in the 1930s] under Parliament's roof.
Similarly, it was a first when he, in a speech in Diyarbakir,
acknowledged the existence of the Kurdish question, and the resolve
he displayed to find a settlement was also a first.
In the Kurdish question, the policies of denial that the state had
traditionally maintained gave way to policies of acceptance and
recognition.
The settlement process is, essentially, nothing but a policy of
ending denial.
Turkey has been incorrectly depicted recently in a way that it does
not deserve.
There were even attempts to create the image that the prime minister
and the country should stand trial before the International Court of
Justice in The Hague. Some of the West's best-known writers have even
accused Turkey of staging massacres and chemical attacks that were
committed by Bashar al-Assad, without producing any solid evidence.
It is in exactly these circumstances that the prime minister, referring
to the historical conditions of 1915, reminds us of the grief these
conditions caused the peoples that lived inside the Ottoman Empire
and offers his condolences to the surviving grandchildren of the
Armenians that had to experience that suffering.
Those who act on their prejudices immediately tried to dismiss this
historic statement and portray it as a statement that the current
situation had made obligatory.
However, it is obvious that the West is not in a position to force
Turkey to make such a statement. The West is no more preoccupied
today with the Armenian question and the agony Armenians experienced
at the start of the last century than it was yesterday.
The Armenian diaspora, in its enclaves from the US to the EU, was
never able to reach the political and intellectual power of the
Jewish diaspora.
Turkey is trying to put the Armenian question onto the right track,
just as it did in the case of the Kurdish question -- an issue that
it had to deal with during the republican era and one that exhausted
all its resources -- by pursuing a national policy, and its message
is pointing toward a new historic milestone.
The nationalists' rush to denounce the statement and the wrong
diagnosis of the main opposition Republican People's Party's (CHP) --
suggesting that the prime minister's message was "putting a historical
problem into the field of politics -- are not enough to hide the truth.
Cihan News Agency (CNA)
April 25, 2014 Friday
ISTANBUL (CIHAN)- The statement issued by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan offering condolences to the grandchildren of Ottoman Armenians
will serve to open a new page in Turkish-Armenian relations only one
year ahead of the centennial of the events of 1915.
He has achieved yet another first.
It was a first when he apologized for Dersim [the massacre of Tunceli
residents in the 1930s] under Parliament's roof.
Similarly, it was a first when he, in a speech in Diyarbakir,
acknowledged the existence of the Kurdish question, and the resolve
he displayed to find a settlement was also a first.
In the Kurdish question, the policies of denial that the state had
traditionally maintained gave way to policies of acceptance and
recognition.
The settlement process is, essentially, nothing but a policy of
ending denial.
Turkey has been incorrectly depicted recently in a way that it does
not deserve.
There were even attempts to create the image that the prime minister
and the country should stand trial before the International Court of
Justice in The Hague. Some of the West's best-known writers have even
accused Turkey of staging massacres and chemical attacks that were
committed by Bashar al-Assad, without producing any solid evidence.
It is in exactly these circumstances that the prime minister, referring
to the historical conditions of 1915, reminds us of the grief these
conditions caused the peoples that lived inside the Ottoman Empire
and offers his condolences to the surviving grandchildren of the
Armenians that had to experience that suffering.
Those who act on their prejudices immediately tried to dismiss this
historic statement and portray it as a statement that the current
situation had made obligatory.
However, it is obvious that the West is not in a position to force
Turkey to make such a statement. The West is no more preoccupied
today with the Armenian question and the agony Armenians experienced
at the start of the last century than it was yesterday.
The Armenian diaspora, in its enclaves from the US to the EU, was
never able to reach the political and intellectual power of the
Jewish diaspora.
Turkey is trying to put the Armenian question onto the right track,
just as it did in the case of the Kurdish question -- an issue that
it had to deal with during the republican era and one that exhausted
all its resources -- by pursuing a national policy, and its message
is pointing toward a new historic milestone.
The nationalists' rush to denounce the statement and the wrong
diagnosis of the main opposition Republican People's Party's (CHP) --
suggesting that the prime minister's message was "putting a historical
problem into the field of politics -- are not enough to hide the truth.