Patriotic Turkey

"We are cognizant of the sorrowful events experienced in the past by the Armenian community and that I sincerely share  your pain."
"[The Pope is] a politician, not a man of religion. I warn him not to repeat the same mistake [April 12 service describing the 'first genocide of the 20th Century']."
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

"30,000 Kurds have been killed here, and a million Armenians. And almost nobody dares to mention that. So I do."
"What happened to the Ottoman Armenians in 1915 was a major thing that was hidden from the Turkish nation. But we have to be able to talk about the past."
Orhan Pamuk, Turkish Nobel Laureate in literature

"They [Turkish authorities who wrote deportation orders condemning Armenians to death] understood this well, and in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact."
Henry Morgenthau, U.S. ambassador to Ottoman Empire memoirs, 1915

Armenians around the world, like here in Jerusalem, insist the killings were genocide

Warning was also meted out by President Erdogan to the European Parliament for using the forbidden nomenclature of "genocide" in a resolution. It is a word that reflects European racism, charged Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. The Pope used his high office in his part of one of many plots against Turkey and targeting the ruling AKP party, he insisted. Turkey will not overlook this offence against its honour.

As for Orhan Pamuk's treasonous statements, for his troubles he was charged under the Turkish Penal Code, and stood to be punished with three years of imprisonment for the crime of insulting the Republic. Under international pressure and condemnation, the charges were set aside. Even while the Turkish nationalist lawyer who brought the original charge claimed that there should be punishment "for insulting Turkey and Turkishness."

Turkey holds that its atrocities committed against Armenians in 1915-17 did not constitute genocide. There was no crime of intent committed. Those Armenians who died were the victims of chaotic times and spontaneous outbreaks of violence that no one could defend against. Famine and disease, banditry and the fog of war all contributed to the death of one and a half million Armenians. It had nothing whatever to do with Turkey.

When the Ottoman Empire began to fall apart, two million Armenians lived in what was to become Turkey. They were manufacturers and merchants whose successes the poor peasants and soldiers deplored with envy. Like Idi Amin exiling Ugandan Asians who were hugely successful entrepreneurs, the Armenians were endangered, never realizing the extent and depth of the danger. The success of Turkey in its campaign against the Armenians inspired Nazi Germany to commit the Holocaust.

Germany was an ally of Turkey and during the First World War they fought in tandem, and German soldiers were posted in Turkey to experience first-hand Turkish implementation of the world's first genocide; later to become generals during the Second World War, and conjuring up their memories of how to rid a country of its unwanted population. Turkey targeted Armenians because it feared they were a threat during the war, supporting Russia. Germany targeted Jews because they were Jews, to be annihilated in even greater numbers by a well-oiled and precise methodology.

Turkey aspired to ensure that its geography would be Turkish, unmarred by the presence of non-Turks. Germany aspired to make the German Aryan ideal the international symbol of the super-man. The Turkish government of the day confiscated Armenian property and increased Turkish control of all commerce while hundreds of thousands of Armenians were forced to emigrate, many dying of starvation through forced marches. Nazi Germany confiscated Jewish property, victimized the Jews through slander and violence, then rounded them up for mass murder.

^{Francois Hollande at the ceremony in Yerevan}

Absolutely wrong, insists Turkey; for one thing the number of dead has been wildly inflated. Those who died were victims of unrest, of civil war. As dignitaries were brought together at the Tsitsernakaberd memorial complex in the capital of Armenia, French President Francois Hollande spoke of the French commitment to remember. Vladimir Putin placed a yellow rose within a wreath resembling a forget-me-not, the floral symbol of the commemoration.

"We feel a big pain today, historic pain but at the same time we feel a big historic strength", said Nadezhda Antonyan, a teacher from Yerevan. "We should not only survive but we must live, be strong and build our statehood", he said. And President Putin warned of the dangers of nationalism without even breaking into a guffaw. He warned of "Russophobia". In response, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan spat out: "They should look at their own past first ... the cruelties, the massacres, the genocides they have committed against their own people."


^{Putin visits the Tsitsernakaberd Armenian Genocide memorial complex}

Armenian President Serge Sarkisian expressed the hope that the worldwide movement to finally recognize the massacre of Armenians as genocide will help "dispel the darkness of one hundred years of denial". Which more or less challenged Turkey's recall of its ambassadors to Vienna and the Vatican after Austria and Pope Francis spoke of the slaughter of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire Turks as genocide.