My article last week for Al-Monitor, “How I faced the Armenian Genocide” has triggered reactions in the Turkish media, especially after Prime Minister Erdogan – a day after the 
date of publication of my article – has sent a message of condolences to the victims of unprecedented Armenian Genocide. Differences have reached a level of inadequacy that even matter as the tragedy of 1915, which is supposed to unify, is greatly exceeded in its consequences.
Summary: The Turks should confront the Armenian Genocide awareness of the momentum created by Prime Minister Erdogan and seize the legacy of many Turkish officials who saved Armenians death.
Rasim Ozan Kutayali
Published April 30, 2014
A telling example is the reaction as Amberin Zaman correspondent had in Turkey The Economist and freelance Al-Monitor, for having shared my article in social media. Here’s what happened, according to his own words, in the daily Taraf “Rasim Ozan Kutahyali, which is known to be close to Prime Minister Erdogan, wrote an article for Al-Monitor, which I also contributes, in which he called genocide the events of 1915 and says that those who deny give him nausea. I shared his article on Twitter, later on April 22 with the words’ a good article. Many people were furious. According to them, I had ‘betrayed’ my profession praising someone who did not deserve it. In addition, they believed that it is Kutahyali who wrote this article at the request of Erdogan – to deceive foreigners “.
Thus, Zaman has been attacked for simply having enjoyed my article, which explicitly described the events of 1915 as genocide. Moreover, people who have taken part were not militants Turkish fascist group, but even those who ostensibly have on the events of 1915 an opinion sensible. According to them, I was not able – not part of their camp – to recognize the Armenian Genocide. Be close to Erdogan, such as Zaman said, was a great crime in their eyes.
My first article in which I recognized the genocide was published in Turkish media September 10, 2008. I was also among those who participated in the 2008 “We apologize to the Armenians.” In a debate on television, the same year, I had a heated exchange with a Turkish retired general who denied the genocide.
This does not preclude my detractors spread their black propaganda saying that my article was written on Erdogan instructions to deceive foreigners. In fact, a close Erdogan writer writing an article in which genocide is viewed face should satisfy people who urge the Turkish state to recognize that the events of 1915 were genocide.
Message Erdogan would also have been welcomed. But unfortunately, the Turks left and pseudo-liberals are more concerned with their personal obsessions against Erdogan posts by descendants of survivors of the Armenian Genocide. As I wrote in my previous article, they agree with everything except with Erdogan as future president of Turkey. The contrast is evident with the two most renowned Armenian liberal intellectuals – Etyen Mahcupyan and Markar Esayan – who themselves support Erdogan’s presidential election on August 10, just as I do myself.
Now, leaving aside the Turks left and see the messages sent by the Armenian diaspora to the Turkish people in an initiative Agos, the weekly bilingual Armenian-Turkish context.
Armenian filmmaker and intellectual Eric Nazarian, for example, sent the following message: “I would say the Turkish people in this day of remembrance [April 24] also belongs to you. Without your participation in this event without your acknowledgment, we can not heal together. Collective healing is possible? We must strive to seek it, for a meaningful dialogue, facing the past and the genocide that was committed, assessing the immediate and long-term this terrible tragedy. This day is also the day of Turkish Righteous and those they saved his life.
I am totally in agreement with Nazarian. To recover, the Turkish company also depends on the comparison with 1915. And Erdogan is the leader who can convince the Turks to live in harmony with the truth, after nine decades of black propaganda with the same mindset as that led to genocide. Political commentators agree: Erdogan is almost certain, likely govern Turkey, as President, during the coming decade.
The insistence with which Nazarian speaks Turkish Righteous is important. Indeed, a significant number of Turkish officials defied government orders Talat Pasha in 1915. I would like to briefly mention the names of some of them borrowed from the book of Turkish university Ayhan Aktar.
Order of the Young Turks to trigger the massacres, the Ankara Governor Hasan Mazhar Bey replied: “I’m governor, not a bandit. I do not obey illegal orders. ”
The governor of Konya Celal Bey saved the lives of tens of thousands of Armenians, disobeying the order of deportation. Former governor of Aleppo, Celal Bey knew deport these people in the Syrian deserts equivalent to their death. The strongest support for this honorable statesman came from sheikhs and teachers of the faith of Konya – resisting a deportation order which amounted to murder, in violation of both Islam and the humanity, the son of the Turkish nation have proven their high moral virtue.
Kutahya Governor Ali Faik Bey was another dignitary who refused the order of deportation. He instructed his subordinates so that they protect the Armenians who had reached Kutahya in a miserable state, deported from other cities. He drove the infamous chief of police of the city had begun to force the Armenians to convert to Islam, threatening them if they refused, to “join convoys of deportation.” A true symbol of nobility, Faik Ali Bey exclaimed in City Hall “Turks Kutahya have not participated and will never take part in the atrocities committed against the Armenians! “. This is because there were people like him that I feel honored to have Kutahya in my name.
The governor of Kastamonu Resit Pasha, the governor of Basra, Ferit Bey, the governor of Yozgat Cemal Bey, Deputy Governor of Lice Husseyin Nasimi Bey and the Assistant Deputy Governor of Batman Sabit Bey were part of the honorable high Officials we are proud to have had. Some of them also lost their lives. The mentality of the Young Turks has not spared, as they flocked to the deportations are continuing in full knowledge of the atrocities they represented.
So we ask the question: We see ourselves as the grandchildren of these noble men of Turkish state? Let us build their steles in the towns they served? Where we grandchildren cruel men who have made a conscious decision to kill? We will continue to praise the murderers? If we continue to shamelessly argue that “we did and we were right to do so”, we are the grandchildren of the latter. We have to decide who are the Turks that we consider real ancestors?
In almost all Turkish cities today, streets and boulevards named after a Young Turk leader. And the names of the noble Turkish statesmen who have heard the voice of their conscience and their humanity? One of them is it registered with a school, a hospital or a street? No one? These questions are designed to Erdogan. The man who will probably be president in 2015 – the centenary of the killings – it is expected to take more drastic measures.
Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article contained an incorrect citation of Eric Nazarian translation. The article has been updated with the correct version of the quote.
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/04/turkey-armenian-genocide-erdogan-condolence-legacy-liberals.html
Gilbert translation Béguian