The genocide of truth
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Tarih
2008
Yazarlar
Dergi Başlığı
Dergi ISSN
Cilt Başlığı
Yayıncı
İstanbul Ticaret Üniversitesi
Erişim Hakkı
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Özet
In the closing decades of the Ottoman Empire, the Armenian upheaval culminated in tragedy. The Armenians, formerly identified as a loyal and privileged community, undertook sporadic acts of insurgency at a time when the Ottoman state was confronted with diverse internal problems in addition to conflicts with major European powers. The Christian world, incited by their missionaries in the Ottoman lands, took advantage of unrest there to spur Armenian nationalists into insurrection against Muslim Turks. Russians, longtime adversaries of the Ottomans, effectively mobilized militant Armenians to armed rebellion in eastern Anatolia. The Ottoman ruling establishment felt betrayed by an erstwhile trusted and loyal minority. It was a convulsive period when World War I was raging. The faltering Ottoman government erred in seeking a solution: It ordered the relocation of masses of Armenians. Large numbers of those deportees of all ages perished during the long march. What had been thought of as a practical way out of preventing civil war turned into a massive tragedy! Contrary to subsequent allegations decades of research have failed to substantiate such charges no order had been issued for extermination, no planned genocide occurred. As for the losses of life during the unfortunate deportation, the Ottomans of the time and the Turks of later decades bemoaned the tragic consequences. Today most Turks of goodwill feel deep sorrow. They feel chagrined that tens of thousands of people had fallen victim to the ill effects of nationalism, sedition, and foreign provocation – and a mismanaged relocation attempt. This bitter harvest of history dating from the final Ottoman era, later became transmogrified into a smear campaign against the Turkish Republic and her citizens. Starting out as sustained propaganda it spearheaded such terrorist acts in many world capitals as assassinations of Turkish diplomats, and culminated in a series of anti-Turkish resolutions passed by numerous national parliaments. Large segments of the Turkish people, believe that the Armenian tragedy that erupted when the Ottoman State neared its end had resulted from uprisings. Similar disasters would probably have taken place in other major states (for example, France, Germany, England or USA) if they were threatened by secessionist minorities instigated into action by outside powers in the course of a world war. Interestingly, in its first forty years the Turkish Republic experienced no recrimination from the Armenian diaspora or from western governments or parliaments. A new strategy, devised mainly for rekindling Armenian national consciousness and religious allegiance, was introduced in the mid 1960s with the assassination of Turkey’s Consul General in San Francisco. For two decades thereafter, as many Turkish diplomats was killed by the terrorist organization ASALA, a relentless propaganda campaign made flagrant accusations against Turkey in order to strengthen the waning Armenian national awareness and to augment church-attendance. By the 1960s, numerous Armenian churches in Manhattan had such sparse attendance that some of them had to close! Some ten years later, all of them reopened - and even a major Cathedral (St Vartan’s Cathedral) was constructed. The diaspora’s campaign against Turkey ranks as one of the most effective propaganda wars waged in modern times. It persuaded many nations and communities that the Ottoman government perpetrated genocide and that the successor state, the Republic of Turkey, must be held accountable even ninety or a hundred years later.
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The genocide of truth
