My grandsons and their parents leave shortly for a two-year sojourn in Armenia. Directly to the south of Armenia is Turkey. I have never been to Turkey. My impression of that place is shaped by my memories of two films: "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Midnight Express." In both films, the protagonists were sexually abused by Turks. Of course, the most famous example of Turkish behavior is supplied by the Armenian National Institute:
It is estimated that one and a half million Armenians perished between 1915 and 1923. There were an estimated two million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire on the eve of W.W.I. Well over a million were deported in 1915. Hundreds of thousands were butchered outright. Many others died of starvation, exhaustion, and epidemics which ravaged the concentration camps. Among the Armenians living along the periphery of the Ottoman Empire many at first escaped the fate of their countrymen in the central provinces of Turkey. Tens of thousands in the east fled to the Russian border to lead a precarious existence as refugees. The majority of the Armenians in Constantinople, the capital city, were spared deportation. In 1918, however, the Young Turk regime took the war into the Caucasus, where approximately 1,800,000 Armenians lived under Russian dominion. Ottoman forces advancing through East Armenia and Azerbaijan here too engaged in systematic massacres. The expulsions and massacres carried by the Nationalist Turks between 1920 and 1922 added tens of thousands of more victims. By 1923 the entire landmass of Asia Minor and historic West Armenia had been expunged of its Armenian population. The destruction of the Armenian communities in this part of the world was total.
Right now, I feel like a character in Herman Wouk's The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. Those fine WWII novels had members of the Henry family caught up in the maelstrom of WWII in Europe. I will be here in Geezerville and my grandsons and their folks will be next door to Turkey. Now, there are not only wackos who deny the Holocaust ever occurred (like Pat Buchanan), but Turkey has its own wackos who deny the Armenian Genocide ever occurred. If this is (fair & balanced) dread, so be it.
[x BakuToday.net]
Turkey vows to fight Armenian genocide campaign
Turkey said on Monday it would fight mounting international pressure to recognize as genocide the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, urging public agencies and civic groups to launch an "all-out effort" against the damaging allegations.
"It has become inevitable for all state institutions and NGOs, for everybody to (work to) disprove those baseless allegations all over the world," the government spokesman, Justice Minister Cemil Cicek, said after a cabinet meeting.
"There was no genocide. An all-out effort is needed to expose the lies of those who say it happened," he said.
The cabainet discussed what strategy Turkey should pursue to counter the Armenian allegations that up to 1.5 million of their kinsmen were killed in what was a genocide between 1915 and 1917 and decided to set up, if necessary, a special agency to coordinate such efforts, Cicek said.
Armenians across the world marked Sunday the 90th anniversary of the beginning of the massacres, which have already been recognized as genocide by a number of countries.
Ankara argues that 300,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in what was civil strife during World War I when the Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia and sided with Russian troops invading the crumbling Ottoman Empire.
Ankara fears that the genocide allegations could fuel anti-Turkish sentiment in the international public opinion and cloud its image at a time when it is vying for membership in the European Union.
Some EU politicans are pressing Turkey to address the genocide claims in what Ankara sees as politically-motivated campaign to impede its EU membership bid.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan sent a letter to Armenian President Robert Kocharian, calling for the creation of a joint commission of historians to study the genocide allegations as a first step towards normalizing ties between the two estranged neighbors.
Ankara has not yet received a formal response to the proposal, Cicek said.
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