So Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan issued a statement on the eve of April 24th. You’ve read it by now. It’s being described as “historic,” and is. It is historically hollow. The ANCA statement described it as “denialism repackaged,” summing it up quite well as you’ll see from the paragraph-by-paragraph descriptions of the statement I give below.
The onslaught of obfuscation has begun. We shall have seen a hundred years worth of this balderdash compressed into one by the time April 24, 2015 rolls around.
But the headlines used by the media (see accompanying table) are more interesting. Most referred to “killings,” “massacre,” or “genocide” in their titles when reporting the news. None of these words appear in Erdogan’s statement. I got a chuckle out of this since it’s unavoidable: When reporting the “news” of the statement, the media has to give it some context. Thank you, Erdogan effendi, for providing us this publicity.
This may be one of the few times that the Turkish media reported on the story more accurately than the others, because they only mentioned “condolences” and “shared pain” in their titles—both terms that the Turkish PM used. One of the Turkish sources even showed a genocide-era deportation picture to accompany the news. It seemed to take a while for the U.S. media to pick up on the story, though that might have been because of time differences. The Boston Globe didn’t have anything about it even when I looked a second time (this is all as of April 23).
Also interesting is the choice of languages into which this statement was, unofficially, translated. (Although it seems strange that something is labeled “unofficial” when it appears on the prime minister’s website.) English, French, German, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and Armenian appear. Isn’t it interesting that these are the languages used where we have the strongest presence, the most advocacy? No Eastern European, African, or East Asian languages were included. It’s obvious why this was done—as a sop to the people and governments of those countries where our voice has been heard the loudest. I am surprised Farsi and Italian weren’t included. It is very interesting that both the Mesrobian and Soviet orthographies are used, billed respectively as “Western” and “Eastern” Armenian, and counted as two separate languages by the Turks! I see that as another manifestation of their divide-and-conquer polices, as itrelates to the three “types” of Armenians perceived by Turkish officials—the good (those living in Turkey), bad (the diaspora), and poor (those living in the Republic of Armenia).
Let’s move on to the blow by blow. You might want to have a copy of the statement handy to see what I refer to in my terse description of each paragraph.
Paragraph 1: repeats the theme of “it’s history” and, implicitly, too old to bother with.
Paragraph 2: trivializes the genocide by equating it to other events; also, a sop to Arabs and Kurds.
Paragraph 3: trivializes the genocide by equating it to other events.
Paragraph 4: trivializes the genocide by equating it to other events.
Paragraph 5: trivializes the genocide by equating it to other events.
Paragraph 6: trivializes the genocide by equating it to other events.
Paragraph 7: touts Turkey’s purported reforms.
Paragraph 8: whines about people allegedly abusing Turkey’s purported reforms.
Paragraph 9: repeats the theme of “it’s history” and, implicitly, too old to bother with.
Paragraph 10: touts Turkey’s purported reforms.
Paragraph 11: portrays Turkey as a victim.
Paragraph 12: trivializes the genocide by equating it to other events.
Paragraph 13: trivializes the genocide by equating it to other events.
Paragraph 14: plays to “why can’t we all just get along” sensibilities.
Paragraph 15: plays to “why can’t we all just get along” sensibilities.
Paragraph 16: re-proposes “historical commission”; implies current scholars are chopped liver.
Paragraph 17: touts the (pseudo-, post-cleansing-) “opening” of the Ottoman archives.
Paragraph 18: platitudes.
Paragraph 19: platitudes.
Paragraph 20: trivializes the genocide by equating it to other events.
You can see that there’s nothing substantively new in Erdogan’s statement. The only novelty is in the fact that the Turkish PM has felt compelled to issue such a statement, proof that pressure works and the 100th anniversary Turkish propaganda has commenced.
We should studiously ignore this statement and keep up the pressure. Let’s plug away at our adversary. Eventually, real progress will begin on the government level, as it has on the civil-society front in Turkey. I’m betting that’s going to take another generation.
Garen Yegparian
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So, what is the point of this article? Nobody denies armenians died back then. What you don’t want to see, because of your blinded-by-hatred eyes, is not only armenians but also Turks, Arabs and other nationalities died in great numbers. By the way do you guys know where the G-20 summit will be held in 2015?
{“ So, what is the point of this article? Nobody denies Armenians died back then.”}
(Ahmed // May 6, 2014 at 11:25 am // )
Denialist nomad turk Ahmed: Armenians didn’t, quote, ‘died back then’; descendants of your savage invadonomadic Turkic ancestors from Uyguristan committed Genocide against my indigenous Armenian ancestors.
Whether Arabs, or turks, or other nationalities died or were killed as a result of the war that Ottoman turkey chose to enter in 1914 is not our issue: Armenians had no say in your warmongering Ottoman turk ancestors’ decision to attack Russia in 1914, and then get crushed and dismantled by the Allies.
In typical savage invadonomad turk tradition, the losers took their impotent frustration on defenseless Armenian, Greek, Assyrian civilians, women, children, and babies.
btw, do you guys know that nobody gives a hoot where a G20 is held ?
btw, do you guys know that:
[Record number of zero scores on YGS shows educational failure] (TodaysZaman April 07, 2014, Monday/ 18:34:0)
{The results of the Transition to Higher Education Examination (YGS), which were published on March 29, showed nearly 900,000 students with a score of zero on the science portion of the exam and nearly 420,000 students with zero points on the math test of the exam; the overall exam results display the disastrous situation of the Turkish education system.}
Zero.
What that means, nomad, is that your G20 country has a huge cohort of scientifically illiterate youth.
Most of the modern manufactured products turkey exports are produced in factories designed and built by Europeans: European Christian creativity and investments.
50% of turkey’s GDP is exports to Europe.
turkish agricultural exports are produce that grows on the lands stolen from others: the original landowners having been murdered en mass by invadonomad turks.
Tell us again how well parts of turkey which are not next to Europe are doing ?
Tell us again which part of the G20 economy you can trace to invadonomad turks’ creativity.
If it weren’t for Christian Europe and the West, all of turkey would be a miserable, underdeveloped dump like the occupied Western Armenia, aka Eastern turkey.
Ahmed,
So, what is the point of an extremely uneducated and ignorant Turk, such as yourself, being on an Armenian site such as this one? Well, it’s rather obvious that you feel deeply threatened by the despicable crimes committed against the Armenian people by your Turkish criminal forefathers, which consist of genocide, the destruction of over two thousand Armenian churches, the theft of an enormous amount of properties and money, and of course, the theft of Western Armenia. Due to the blindness of you and so many other Turks, you all continue to remain ignorant to your forefathers’ extreme criminal history. This explains the reason why Turks, such as yourself, feel the need to come onto Armenian sites such as this one, and desperately deny the heinous crimes your criminal country has committed against the Armenian people.