On the Turks’ lack of remorse and defiance about past atrocities

By Rauf Naqishbendi:

New York Times headline, December 1915

New York Times headline, December 1915

Earlier this year, thousands of savage Turks coming from European countries thronged into the streets of Paris protesting a bill before the French Parliament which acknowledges the Armenian genocide and makes denial of such subject to state penalty. French President Sarkosky should be credited for his courage and resolution to stand tall for human rights. Last October, in Yerevan, Sarkozy gave Turkey an ultimatum, insisting it should face its history and concede that the killing of 1.5 million Armenians was genocide; if not, he has promised to initiate legislation in France to hold genocide-deniers accountable for their alleged offenses. The Turks, who are poisoned by bitterness and bound by inequity toward others, are defiant. They are shamelessly proud of what they have done and are ferociously fighting their past and present atrocities, which in the eyes of the world are considered an abomination.

Since the post-First World War collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Turks have denied the genocide they committed against 1.5 defenseless Armenians. They committed this barbarously, shamelessly, and publicly, without any reservation. It all began after the Ottoman Empire lost the war. In the wake of their desolation and broken flimsy pride, the Turks found their scapegoats: people of the Christian faith. Consequently, in a concerted mission, the people and the government committed a mass slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians and others from the Christian faith. It was a broad genocide against people of Christian faith, including Armenians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians. They did it with impunity as the world was aloof towards the lives and fates of these defenseless souls.

This was a tragic episode in human history as the Turks’ Jihad consumed the object of their hatred. There wasn’t a singular group or political organization amongst the Turks advocating their defense to these innocent Christians, for the Turks as a nation and their government as the authority were in unison in their cruel genocide mission to eradicate every person of Christian faith. They killed Armenians and any other person of Christian faith they came in contact with. Some were able to escape the situation but not without excruciating suffering. Overall, all the Armenians’ property was confiscated, and even those few who escaped, remaining in hiding, still lost everything and had to live with hidden identities. This is the reality of the shameful Turkish practice. In the aftermath they attempted to hide their dirt and were reluctant to offer any remorse for their wrongdoing.

The question that remains for those who are not familiar with the Turkish cruel mentality is why the Turks have chosen people of Christian faith as their scapegoats? The simple answer is that they were not Turks or did not hold the Turk’s brand of Islam. The fact is that the Turks do not tolerate differences and are willing to liquidate any group of people that doesn’t resemble themselves. This daunting intolerance is well documented in the Turkish constitution, which declares that every citizen of Turkey is Turkish. This constitutional proclamation robs and denies all non-Turkish citizens from their naturally born mothers. Just to cite, 25 percent of Turkey’s total population are Kurds. Their identity is constitutionally denied, and their subsistence is negated.

This problem with the Turks has not been with people of Christian faith alone. Consider the Kurds who have been subjected to the Turkish genocide, which hasn’t been as rapid as that of the Armenians. It has been gradual but has been almost a century long, and it continues on.

The centuries-long history of Turkish barbarism is long and protracted. Nations who have interacted with the Turks all have grievances and expressions of their bitter experiences with the Turks originating from the Turks’ lack of tolerance toward differences. Consider the Kurds, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Bulgarians, Serbs, and Greeks; they all had regrettable and unforgivable stories of atrocities at the hands of the Turks.

Christian genocide at the hands of Turks is deplorable, but what is more deplorable is the silence of the world that allowed these beasts of earth to get away with such an abomination against lives of others covering every heavenly testament. It is abominable for the world superpowers to act as an evil empire and allow these kinds of atrocities. It should be realized that the Turks’ inhumanity didn’t start with the Armenians, but it commenced long before that. Moreover, the Turks’ genocide didn’t end with the Armenians, for they commenced genocide against the Kurds soon after what they did to the Armenians, and that genocide is still at work and fashioned with the monetary, military, and political support of the United States of America, thereby endorsing human rights abuses by the Turks against the defenseless Kurdish minority in Turkey.

President Obama oratorically pronounced himself to be different from his predecessors. Turkish genocide is at work upon the Kurds, yet American unconditional support to Turkey persists. How much longer will America back the hideous Turkish government? It is an utter mockery for the Obama administration to exert its power to depose dictators like Syria’s Assad while keeping Turkey in the circle of its staunch friends. U.S. politicians keep referring to Turkey as a sectarian government where the strict Islamic fundamentalists are in power, but they insist Turkey is a democratic country where the army generals are in control. Ironically, the time when America most needed the Turks’ help was during the Iraq invasion, and the Turks proved their perfidiousness.

Let us hope the French parliament will pass Mr. Sarkozy’s bill and that it will blow up in the face of the Turkish chauvinists and their unfounded pride. In the meanwhile, arrogant Turks who are fixated on the Ottoman Empire need to learn that it wasn’t the Turks’ empire alone, but rather an empire of all Muslim nations. Regardless, it ended just about a century ago, and the Turks must acknowledge that that their evil empire is a relic of the past and that their foolish pride will not bring it back to life.

Rauf Naqishbendi is a contributing columnist for Kurdistantribune.com, Kurdishaspect.com,  American Chronicle, Kurdishmedia.com(2003-2011), ekurd.net, ikjknews.com  and has written Op/Ed pages for the Los Angeles Times. His memoirs entitled “The Garden Of The Poets”, recently published. It reads as a novel depicting his experience and the subsequent 1988 bombing of his hometown with chemical and biological weapons by Saddam Hussein.  It is the story of his people´s suffering, and a sneak preview of their culture and history.  Rauf Naqishbendi is a software engineer in the San Francisco Bay Area.

ISBN: 978-1-4626-0187-5 (get The (Zoftcover) ($7.95)

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Comments are welcome at rxa12@yahoo.com

One Response to On the Turks’ lack of remorse and defiance about past atrocities
  1. […] On the Turks’ lack of remorse and defiance about past atrocities 26 February 2012 / Kurdistan Tribune Earlier this year, thousands of savage Turks coming from […]

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