Can Turkey Learn Tolerance?

[bell-the-cat]

Re: Can Turkey Learn Tolerance?

A particularly nasty article about Kars and its connections to Armenia by Norman Stone.

http://www.cornucopia.net/magazine/a...harsh-reality/

One wonders if there is a secret handbook they consult.

Like the "Kars occupied one of the essential strategic places, connecting Anatolia with the Caucasus, and invaders – Urartian, Armenian, Byzantine, Ottoman – had to have it." bit. I've seen the identical line a number of times before. One of the most ridiculous was in the form of a statement that Ani is not an Armenian city but an Urartian one since Urartians were there first and the Armenians are just invaders (that was in the Global Herritage Fund's secret report on Ani - one of its staff members almost got dismissed for giving me a mere glance at it. I wish I had paid more attention to its contents than that mere glance - it is still a secret, unreleased report. It is full of lies and propaganda so they could get permission from Turkey to take control of Ani - which they wanted so that they could get access to millions of dollars of funds from European and Japanese foundations They got the control - but not the money since the global recession started).

And of course, they never call the current lot of Turks "invaders" - everyone is an "invader" except the actual invader!

[Haykakan]

Re: Can Turkey Learn Tolerance?

TURKISH MEDIA FINDS ATTEMPTS TO CONCEAL NATIONALITY OF ARMENIAN ARCHITECT SINAN DISGRACEFUL

14:57, 10 April, 2013

YEREVAN, APRIL 10, ARMENPRESS. Turkish website marksist.org touched
upon the issue of nationality of prominent Armenian medieval architect
of the Ottoman Empire Sinan and stated that nobody tells anything
about the Armenian identity of the famous architect, of whom both
the Ottomans and the Turks were proud about.

As reports "Armenpress" the website stated that the chief architect
of the medieval period of the Ottoman Empire Sinan was born in an
Armenian family in a small town called Agırnas near the city of
Kayseri in Anatolia. At the age of 22 Sinan was conscripted into
Ottoman service as a son of Christian. He is the first Armenian,
upon whom the title of Pasha was bestowed.

Among other things the Turkish website stated: "Nobody was worried
about Sinan's Armenian origin in the Ottoman Empire. But after the
establishment of the Republic of Turkey the Turkish "scientists",
who suffer the complex of inferiority, opened his tomb to discover
whether he was a Turk or not."

Sinân Ã~Bgâ was the chief Ottoman architect (Turkish: "Mimar")
and civil engineer for sultans Suleiman the Magnificent, Selim II,
and Murad III. He was responsible for the construction of more than
three hundred major structures and other more modest projects, such
as his Islamic primary schools. His apprentices would later design
the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul, Stari Most in Mostar and help
design the Taj Mahal in the Mughal Empire.

The son of a stonemason, he received a technical education and
became a military engineer. He rose rapidly through the ranks to
become first an officer and finally a Janissary commander, with the
honorific title of aga. He refined his architectural and engineering
skills while on campaign with the Janissaries, becoming expert
at constructing fortifications of all kinds, as well as military
infrastructure projects, such as roads, bridges and aqueducts. At
about the age of fifty, he was appointed as chief royal architect,
applying the technical skills he had acquired in the army to the
"creation of fine religious buildings" and civic structures of all
kinds. He remained in post for almost fifty years.

His masterpiece is the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne, although his most
famous work is the Suleiman Mosque in Istanbul. He headed an extensive
governmental department and trained many assistants who, in turn,
distinguished themselves, including Sedefkar Mehmed Agha, architect of
the Sultan Ahmed Mosque. He is considered the greatest architect of
the classical period of Ottoman architecture, and has been compared
to Michelangelo, his contemporary in the West. Michelangelo and his
plans for St. Peter's Basilica in Rome were well known in Istanbul,
since Leonardo da Vinci and he had been invited, in 1502 and 1505
respectively, by the Sublime Porte to submit plans for a bridge
spanning the Golden Horn.

[TomServo]

Re: Can Turkey Learn Tolerance?

Yes, Armenpress, I am sure Marksist.org is truly representative of the Turkish media.

[Haykakan]

Re: Can Turkey Learn Tolerance?

Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
April 27 2013


World press on an Islamic apology to Armenians (April 27, 2013)
27 April 2013 - 3:27pm


"On April 24, the day that Armenians all around the world remember
their Great Catastrophe - or their ethnic cleansing from Anatolia in
1915 - a very interesting piece appeared in Turkish daily Star. Its
writer was Hakan Albayrak, a committed Muslim, even an `Islamist,' and
a veteran of the Gaza Flotilla of 2010. And his headline was simple
and blunt enough: `We have to apologize to the Armenians.' - the
article by Mustafa Akyol published by the Hurriyet Gaily News begins.

According to the author, "we cannot make excuses for the violent
murders of thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of
Armenians by Muslims. We should not see this as excusable. It would
not be fair for the umma [faith community] of the Prophet of Mercy
[Muhammad]".

"The roots of this gap lie in the different paradigms that these two
largest camps in Turkish politics refer to: The Kemalists are the
sentinels of Turkish nationalism, a secular ideology, which was also
the driving force behind the ethnic cleansing of Ottoman Armenians in
1915. The Islamic conservatives, on the other hand, believe in the
older paradigm that had allowed the Armenians to co-exist with Turks
and Kurds for centuries, in line with Islam's respect for `the People
of the Book.' Their very Islamism, in other words, is what makes them
more compassionate to Armenians" the article reads.

"Of course, not every Islamic figure is as bold and progressive on
this issue as Hakan Albayrak. Yet still, his piece, and the support it
has gathered among the conservatives, is a notable sign for the
future. It signals that Turkey's progress on the `Armenian issue,'
just like in the `Kurdish issue,' will be spearheaded by Islamic minds
more than secular ones." the author concludes.
.

http://vestnikkavkaza.net/world-press-review/politics/39754.html

[TomServo]

Re: Can Turkey Learn Tolerance?

A particularly nasty article about Kars and its connections to Armenia by Norman Stone.

http://www.cornucopia.net/magazine/a...harsh-reality/

I only recently came across this article from The Guardian, which discusses Stone's tantrum after the (retired) British Ottomanist Colin Imber gave one of his texts a negative review.

Stone actually dismissed the review based on Imber's low sales ranking. Gawd.

I know Imber has also been unkind to Justin McCarthy's revisionist effluvia. It's nice that there are actually scholars of Ottoman history who don't feel like they have to tow the Turkish line. And it's really cool that Imber was defended by Earthsea author Ursula K. Le Guin!

[bell-the-cat]

Re: Can Turkey Learn Tolerance?

"Bearing Witness to the Lost History of an Armenian Family" - Exhibition in Istanbul.

http://www.todayszaman.com/news-316611-an-exhibition-about-a-family-forced-to-leave-their-home.html

An exhibition about a family forced to leave their home
26 May 2013 /RUMEYSA KIGER, İSTANBUL

Armen T. Marsoobian is a professor of philosophy at Southern Connecticut State University in the US and teaches several courses including American philosophy, aesthetics, moral philosophy and genocide issues.

He is also a descendant of an Armenian family who lived in Anatolia for generations but were forced to leave their home and properties or be killed.

İstanbul's Tophane neighborhood is currently home to an archival exhibition featuring the family history of Marsoobian's relatives between 1872 and 1923. Titled “Bearing Witness to the Lost History of an Armenian Family: Through the Lens of the Dildilian Brothers,” the show consists of the records and photographs of the members of the Dildilian family who documented their lives in Sivas, Merzifon and Samsun and the surrounding areas of Anatolia in a period that was full of suffering for Armenians.

Marsoobian's uncles, Humayag and Ara Dildilian, tried to write down the family's story but they died before finishing it, and all the documents, letters and memoirs passed down Armen; it took him 20 years before assembling them into this exhibition.

From shoemaking to photography
Tsolag Dildilian's father, Krikor, was well known for the shoes he made that were “as light as a butterfly” in Sivas, and many prominent figures including Governor Memduh Mehmet Pasha, who later became the minister of the interior, bought his shoes. Tsolag, however, did not want to continue with his father's profession since he was passionate about photography. Photographer Mikael Natourian from İstanbul joined Tsolag in Sivas to open a photography studio, and the two men took turns to visit villages and towns to take photographs.

Moving to Anatolia College in Merzifon
When the studio's fame reached the American Anatolia College in Merzifon, they were asked to photograph students and staff. After a while, Tsolag was asked to be the school's official photographer and moved to Merzifon with his family. This was a time the Armenian communities were suffering from constant massacres in the region, but the family was protected due to their association with the school. Tsolag also took shots of people, places, events and rural landscapes in Merzifon, some of which were turned into postcards. Tsolag's brother, Aram, who had an amputated leg, assisted him.

World War I and 1915
In 1914, there was no graduation ceremony at the school because after the war broke out, eight Armenian and Greek members of the faculty were drafted and the number of the students was halved. A year later, many Anatolian Armenians were killed and their villages plundered. Armenian soldiers in the army were disarmed and then forced to help with road construction and transportation before being massacred, or just left to starve or freeze. Also in İstanbul, the intellectual and political Armenian elite were arrested and then shot. After a while, the deportation of Armenians from Anatolia began. Males were separated and killed, and the women and children were led towards the Syrian desert. Throughout their journey, women were raped and abducted to become maids, or died due to starvation or disease, their bodies dumped on roadsides and in rivers.

The Dildilian brothers were saved because state officials used them to take photographs of prominent figures and events in Sivas and Merzifon. One day, a military officer warned Tsolag about the danger for his family and that same day they went to the municipality and converted to Islam in front of the mufti.

Founding the Orphanage
After World War 1, Aram went to Samsun and was horrified by the sights he saw: homeless orphans all around the city. He began to take pictures of them and wrote numerous letters to people he knew to build an orphanage for them. There were about 2,500 orphans in Merzifon at the time. The brothers photographed them and helped to organize a school for them.

Leaving home
In 1921 the school was shut down amid the massacres of Greeks and Armenians in Merzifon. Aram got the assurance of the Near East Relief officials to transport all the orphans to Greece. The Dildilians also decided to leave their homeland on the same ship.

The exhibition features information taken from Tsolag and Aram Dildilian's and their niece Maritsa Der Medaksian's journals, photographs of family members that the brothers took in Sivas, Merzifon, Samsun, Konya and Amasya over the years, along with memoirs of the Anatolia College faculty and photo archives of the school.

“Bearing Witness to the Lost History of an Armenian Family” will run until June 8 at the Depo in İstanbul's Tophane neighborhood. For more information, visit www.depoistanbul.net.

[Haykakan]

Re: Can Turkey Learn Tolerance?

ERDOGAN AND HIS ARMENIAN PROBLEM

Hurriyet, Turkey
June 6 2013

GERARD J. LIBARIDIAN

When the AKP and Erdogan came to power in Turkey in 2002, there
were reasons to think that they would correct the state policies
for dealing with history, particularly regarding the treatment of
Armenians by the Ottoman government during the First World War.

Since their political philosophy is derived mainly from religious
concepts rather than secular statism and nationalism, Erdogan and
the AKP could have denounced those policies outright. In fact they
could have pointed out that it was extreme statist and nationalist
ideology, rather than Islam, that was responsible. He could have saved
that dimension of Ottoman legacy that was tolerant by rejecting the
extremist policies of the wartime Committee of Union and Progress
(CUP) government as inimical to Islamic values; and if CUP policies
can best be characterized as genocide, so be it.

When Erdogan came to power, he was much more open in his treatment
of the Armenian issue; he wanted to leave history to historians. This
was an opening, since the Turkish state had always dictated historical
narratives down to every schoolbook.

The two protocols signed by Turkey and Armenia in October 2009 that
aimed at the normalization of relations between the two countries
had an indirect but clear reference to a joint study of the genocide
issue. It appeared that Erdogan, with support from Gul, wished to
move forward.

Even more significantly, in 2011, Erdogan apologized for the massacre
of civilian Kurdish subjects in 1938 and 1939 in Dersim/Tunceli. The
idea and gesture of an apology itself are more important than the
details. No Turkish leader had ever apologized for an atrocious policy
or crime that the Ottoman or Turkish state had ever committed against
its own subjects. Additionally, Erdogan or Davutoglu have used the
term genocide for situations that are far less sinister than what
happened to Armenians in 1915.

Hence, instead of denying genocide, Erdogan could have opted for
another method: The genocide of the Armenian people was committed
by the CUP in power. And in committing that crime, the CUP was not
acting as a Muslim government but rather as primarily a power-hungry
clique that had taken over the government illegally in the name of a
particular vision and used religion only to help make their policies
work and "seem" sanctioned by the dominant religion, Islam. This is
a perfectly legitimate political argument as well as a historically
valid one.

Prime Minister Erdogan could have made that argument and resolved an
extremely thorny issue; he would have gained international respect
both from governments and from civil societies in a large number
of countries it relates to. But that is not what has happened, not
yet anyway.

By declaring that Muslims, by definition, could not commit genocide -
as was the case regarding Sudan and Darfur - Erdogan might have thought
he was saving Islam. In fact, by exempting authors of genocide who
happen to be Muslims from that charge, Erdogan is making critical
discussion, and historical analysis, irrelevant; and in doing so,
he is creating more problems for the religion he is trying to save.

However, this is not first time that blinders have covered the eyes
of a Turkish leader - no matter how liberal or reformist. The Armenian
issue is, indeed, the blind spot of Turkish leaders' vision.

When CUP came to power in 1908, it had two options. The first was
dealing with the social and economic issues raised by Armenians. The
second option was to see the Armenian Question as a foreign plot,
therefore, subject to justifiable repression. The Young Turks started
with the first and ended up opting for the second. The result was
what happened in 1915.

When Erdogan came to power, he too had options: he could have seen the
Armenian issue as a matter integral to Ottoman and Turkish history,
a revision of which history being necessary to better pursue the
democratization of the country; or, to continue the state policies
on this issue as if it is a foreign-inspired conspiracy fueled by
imperialists' designs to break up Turkey.

Erdogan gave signals opting for the first; the question is, has he,
too, ended up with the second option?

* Gerard J. Libaridian is a historian who served as senior advisor
to the first president of independent Armenia, between 1991 and 1997.

This article is an abbreviated version of the original article
published in Turkish Policy Quarterly (TPQ).

June/06/2013

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/erdogan-and-his-armenian-problem.aspx?pageID=238&nID=48286&NewsCatID=396

[Hayayrun]

Re: Can Turkey Learn Tolerance?

Thank you Hayayrun.
I am agreeing with you 100%.
I hope you understand that I was being facetious when I said an Armenian's word is no good.
My post that you quoted was and is 100% in agreement with what you said.
I feel many on this forum need to hear the words you spoke to get an --- honest --- and accurate understanding of the preponderance of those who call themselves turks.
Thanks for your input.
Sincerely Artashes.

Dear Artashes,

I am in fact positive surprised and also happy, because I got 100% support and agreement from you.
God bless you
Thank you

Sincerely Hayayrun from Munic

[Eddo211]

Re: Can Turkey Learn Tolerance?

Artashes is still in hibernation mode in Alaska and probably he is out hunting and beyond any communication range, let alone internet.....he will contact us once he returns to base.

There is an Armenian in every part of the planet and the cosmos, like an ambassador.....Artashes is our representative in Alaska.

[TomServo]

Re: Can Turkey Learn Tolerance?

Did you guys know Abdullah Öcalan is Armenian? Azeri Wikipedia says so: http://az.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_%C3%96calan

It's like, sourced and everything.