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TURKEY: GENOCIDE A LA CARTE
by Burak Bekdil
April 16, 2015 at 4:00 am
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5570/turkey-genocide
Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu accused the Holy See of
ignoring the pain suffered by Muslims and Turks. Cavusoglu did not
say why Muslims and Turks tend to ignore the pain suffered by other
faiths and other nations.
Such political controversies as the Pope's speech always offer golden
opportunities to Turkish officials who would not miss exploiting
them in order to look pretty to an Islamist government and hope for
a brighter career.
It seems as if Turkey's ruling politicians are in a race to look less
and less convincing to an already suspicious international audience.
How they defended their ancestors' sins a century ago earned them
new points in the race, and made them look even more odd than before.
The tragic events of 1915-1920 that killed 1.5 million Ottoman
Armenians have been recognized as genocide by a total of 22 countries
in the world, 44 states in the United States, two states in Australia,
three in Brazil, four regions and three cities in Spain, two in Syria,
five provinces in Bulgaria, one in Colombia, one regional parliament
in the Netherlands, one regional parliament in Italy and one in Iran.
The Catholic city-state, the Vatican, is among the countries that
have recognized the genocide. But a papal speech on April 12 at a
commemorative Mass, calling the mass killing of Armenians the "first
genocide of the 20th century," deeply annoyed some very important
men in Ankara. Their defense line was beyond the traditional official
Turkish language based on outright denial: it featured generous doses
of banality and hypocrisy.
Pope Francis speaks at a Mass commemorating the centenary of the
Armenian genocide, on April 12, 2015. (Image source: Vatican video
screenshot)
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu accused the Holy See of ignoring
the pain suffered by Muslims and Turks. But Cavusoglu did not say why
Muslims and Turks tend to ignore the pain suffered by other faiths
and nations. In 2009, then Prime Minister (now President) Recep Tayyip
Erdogan accused China of committing genocide against the ethnic Turkic
Uighurs in China, after fewer than 100 of them lost their lives during
clashes with Chinese security forces. The same year, Erdogan said
that he went to Darfur in Sudan and did not see genocide there. Only a
few months earlier, Erdogan's Islamist friend, Sudan's President Omar
al-Bashir, had become the first sitting president to be indicted by the
International Criminal Court for genocide and crimes against humanity
that caused the death of 400,000 people in Darfur in 2005. "A Muslim
would never commit genocide," Erdogan said, explaining why the man
with an arrest warrant for his crimes, al-Bashir, was innocent.
A more creative, jaw-dropping explanation for why Pope Francis may
have uttered the word that deeply irritates many Turks came from
Volkan Bozkir, a former ambassador and Turkish minister for the
European Union. Bozkir said he must remind that the Pope is "in fact
a citizen of Argentina." Most journalists listening to his speech
silently wondered: So what.
Bozkir further explained: "As you know, Argentina is a country that
embraced the Nazi leaders and torturers ... The Pope must have had
a sensitivity for his own Argentinian citizenship."
According to this theory, Pope Francis, like every other citizen of
Argentina, is responsible for the acts of Nazi fugitives who fled
to his country. And the Nazi collaborator in the Pope (like every
other Argentinian!) forced him to label the mass killings of Armenians
"genocide." That is not even meant to be funny. It reveals the mindset
of the people who rule Turkey.
According to Professor Mehmet Gormez, Turkey's top Muslim cleric, Pope
Francis's statement was totally "unfounded." That could be Gormez's
own opinion, and everyone has the liberty to take him seriously or
not. But Professor Gormez also claimed that there have never been
missionary ambitions or colonialism in the history of Turkey [the
successor state to the Ottoman Empire]. That is only laughable to
anyone with an elementary knowledge of history. For one, Gormez should
explain why millions of Turks every day celebrate the "conquest of
[Christian] Istanbul" by Muslim Ottomans.
Such political controversies as the Pope's speech always offer golden
opportunities to Turkish officials who would not miss exploiting
them in order to look pretty to an Islamist government and hope
for a brighter career. They usually would make a weird statement,
make sure it gets published, and lots of public attention, so that
the very important men in Ankara could privately or publicly hail
them. Turkey is never short of (centrally-appointed, not elected)
governors with eccentric opinions. The Pope's speech lavishly enabled
someone serving in one of Turkey's most remote and poorest corners
to prove his loyalty to the Islamists in Ankara.
In a public speech, the governor of Turkey's easternmost province,
Kars, invited Pope Francis to -- convert! The governor kindly invited
the leader of the Catholic world to a Muslim mass in his city and said:
"May God grant him the right path [to Islam]."
This author has no idea if the Pope would take that opportunity and
convert to Islam. But it is certain that Turkey's Islamists have
brought a playful new dimension to their country's culture of denial.
Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hurriyet
Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
by Burak Bekdil
April 16, 2015 at 4:00 am
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5570/turkey-genocide
Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu accused the Holy See of
ignoring the pain suffered by Muslims and Turks. Cavusoglu did not
say why Muslims and Turks tend to ignore the pain suffered by other
faiths and other nations.
Such political controversies as the Pope's speech always offer golden
opportunities to Turkish officials who would not miss exploiting
them in order to look pretty to an Islamist government and hope for
a brighter career.
It seems as if Turkey's ruling politicians are in a race to look less
and less convincing to an already suspicious international audience.
How they defended their ancestors' sins a century ago earned them
new points in the race, and made them look even more odd than before.
The tragic events of 1915-1920 that killed 1.5 million Ottoman
Armenians have been recognized as genocide by a total of 22 countries
in the world, 44 states in the United States, two states in Australia,
three in Brazil, four regions and three cities in Spain, two in Syria,
five provinces in Bulgaria, one in Colombia, one regional parliament
in the Netherlands, one regional parliament in Italy and one in Iran.
The Catholic city-state, the Vatican, is among the countries that
have recognized the genocide. But a papal speech on April 12 at a
commemorative Mass, calling the mass killing of Armenians the "first
genocide of the 20th century," deeply annoyed some very important
men in Ankara. Their defense line was beyond the traditional official
Turkish language based on outright denial: it featured generous doses
of banality and hypocrisy.
Pope Francis speaks at a Mass commemorating the centenary of the
Armenian genocide, on April 12, 2015. (Image source: Vatican video
screenshot)
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu accused the Holy See of ignoring
the pain suffered by Muslims and Turks. But Cavusoglu did not say why
Muslims and Turks tend to ignore the pain suffered by other faiths
and nations. In 2009, then Prime Minister (now President) Recep Tayyip
Erdogan accused China of committing genocide against the ethnic Turkic
Uighurs in China, after fewer than 100 of them lost their lives during
clashes with Chinese security forces. The same year, Erdogan said
that he went to Darfur in Sudan and did not see genocide there. Only a
few months earlier, Erdogan's Islamist friend, Sudan's President Omar
al-Bashir, had become the first sitting president to be indicted by the
International Criminal Court for genocide and crimes against humanity
that caused the death of 400,000 people in Darfur in 2005. "A Muslim
would never commit genocide," Erdogan said, explaining why the man
with an arrest warrant for his crimes, al-Bashir, was innocent.
A more creative, jaw-dropping explanation for why Pope Francis may
have uttered the word that deeply irritates many Turks came from
Volkan Bozkir, a former ambassador and Turkish minister for the
European Union. Bozkir said he must remind that the Pope is "in fact
a citizen of Argentina." Most journalists listening to his speech
silently wondered: So what.
Bozkir further explained: "As you know, Argentina is a country that
embraced the Nazi leaders and torturers ... The Pope must have had
a sensitivity for his own Argentinian citizenship."
According to this theory, Pope Francis, like every other citizen of
Argentina, is responsible for the acts of Nazi fugitives who fled
to his country. And the Nazi collaborator in the Pope (like every
other Argentinian!) forced him to label the mass killings of Armenians
"genocide." That is not even meant to be funny. It reveals the mindset
of the people who rule Turkey.
According to Professor Mehmet Gormez, Turkey's top Muslim cleric, Pope
Francis's statement was totally "unfounded." That could be Gormez's
own opinion, and everyone has the liberty to take him seriously or
not. But Professor Gormez also claimed that there have never been
missionary ambitions or colonialism in the history of Turkey [the
successor state to the Ottoman Empire]. That is only laughable to
anyone with an elementary knowledge of history. For one, Gormez should
explain why millions of Turks every day celebrate the "conquest of
[Christian] Istanbul" by Muslim Ottomans.
Such political controversies as the Pope's speech always offer golden
opportunities to Turkish officials who would not miss exploiting
them in order to look pretty to an Islamist government and hope
for a brighter career. They usually would make a weird statement,
make sure it gets published, and lots of public attention, so that
the very important men in Ankara could privately or publicly hail
them. Turkey is never short of (centrally-appointed, not elected)
governors with eccentric opinions. The Pope's speech lavishly enabled
someone serving in one of Turkey's most remote and poorest corners
to prove his loyalty to the Islamists in Ankara.
In a public speech, the governor of Turkey's easternmost province,
Kars, invited Pope Francis to -- convert! The governor kindly invited
the leader of the Catholic world to a Muslim mass in his city and said:
"May God grant him the right path [to Islam]."
This author has no idea if the Pope would take that opportunity and
convert to Islam. But it is certain that Turkey's Islamists have
brought a playful new dimension to their country's culture of denial.
Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hurriyet
Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress