Have you heard of the Akhtamar church issue with Turkey

[egeli]

The implication being that everything good that happened had everything to do with Ataturk and Kemalism, and everything bad that happened has nothing at all to do with it? That is a problem when using an ideology to understand events.

Hardly... authoritarian Kemalism has only two principles, national unity and state secularism (laicism). Democracy and civil rights have all been sacrificed, and will continue to be sacrificed, for the sake of these two principles. For example, when MIT ( Turkish Intelligence Agency) bombed Ataturk's home in Salonika, they rationalized that this horrendous act was a perfect way to expell the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Greeks from Istanbul. This false flag operation pinned the blame on Greeks for bombing Ataturk's home. All the government had to do was give a reason to hordes of conservative Anatolian Turks to attack the gavur Greeks.

This is a bit of a digression, but i see many parallels between the 1955 pogrom against Istanbul Christians and the assassination of Hrant Dink. In both cases, fanatic elements within the Turkish government shipped impressionable conservative Anatolians to Istanbul to do their dirty work. Istanbul Turks would have never done it.

[egeli]

I wrote a long reply to the above, but when posting it I got a "database error" mesage and my post was lost!
I don't feel like rewriting it just now, but one thing I said was that egeli is making some interesting and intelligent thoughts here and in some of the other posts, and much of subsequent criticism of him/her is unjustified.

Thank you for your tolerance bell-the-cat! Being a proud Turkish citizen should not automatically make me anti-Armenian. I was a lurker to this forum for a long time and have been impressed by the relative civility (atleast most of the time) of the debates. Seriously, there is no other forum on the internet where there can fruitful debate of the Armenian genocide and Armenian-Turkish relations.

[egeli]

Back to the original topic of the thread, Turkification does not necessarily mean loss of indigenous Anatolian culture. When the Hagia Sophia was Turkified to Ayasofya, the Byzantine History of the Hagia Sophia was not erased. If anything, its (kemalist) nationalization helped resurface the Ayasofya's byzantine history by turning it from a mosque to a museum, as it rightfully should be.

In the perfect world, it should be Turkish-Armenians who decide whether Akhtamar be changed to Akdamar. I am willing to bet they would prefer Akdamar. Having the name Akhtamar would encourage Turks to see Armenians and Armenian culture as foreign and threatening to Turkey. If Turkish-Armenians are to have any hopes of complete peaceful living in Turkey, they have to be viewed as Turks. As i argued before in previous posts, being seen as Turkish does not mean erasing their Armenian heritage. There are millions of Turkified Kurds, and it is not taboo for them to reveal their Kurdish ancestory if they are loyal Turkish citizens. Everyone knows that Ibrahim Tatlises (popular singer in Turkey) is half Kurdish, half Arab. Yet ever since he announced that he was proud to be called a Turk, he has become one of the most popular singers in Turkey.

The main obstacle preventing Armenians from being viewed as Turks is not their ethnicty (Tayyip Erdogan is a Georgian muslim!) but their Christian religion. Turkish-Armenians have every right to keep their religion.

There has to be a mentality change in Turkey if it is to become a truly democratic, liberal, and secular country.

[bell-the-cat]

Here is something related to the original topic.
Turkish leaflet about the 2007 "restoration" of an Armenian church in Edremit (Artemid) near Van.

Not heard of it? Maybe because Turkey is intentionally being quiet about it.

Armenian diaspora organisations periodically go on about neglect of Armenian monuments in Turkey (while never actually suggesting anything practical to alleviate the situation). To this accusation Turkey now replies "Aghtamar". To which Armenian diaspora organisations reply "just a one-off" (rather than the proper reply which would involve a condemnation of the destructive nature of that "restoration" - but that is not sound-bite friendly). To which Turkey can additionally now reply "Edremit", and those Armenian diaspora organisations will just appear silly and ill informed.

BTW, The word Armenian doesn't appear anywhere in the booklet. A translation of the text into English would be useful.

[bell-the-cat]

Front of the booklet:

[bell-the-cat]

Back of the booklet:

[Alexandros]

Here is something related to the original topic.
Turkish leaflet about the 2007 "restoration" of an Armenian church in Edremit (Artemid) near Van.

Not heard of it? Maybe because Turkey is intentionally being quiet about it.

Armenian diaspora organisations periodically go on about neglect of Armenian monuments in Turkey (while never actually suggesting anything practical to alleviate the situation). To this accusation Turkey now replies "Aghtamar". To which Armenian diaspora organisations reply "just a one-off" (rather than the proper reply which would involve a condemnation of the destructive nature of that "restoration" - but that is not sound-bite friendly). To which Turkey can additionally now reply "Edremit", and those Armenian diaspora organisations will just appear silly and ill informed.

BTW, The word Armenian doesn't appear anywhere in the booklet. A translation of the text into English would be useful.

When the Turkish government launched a website about the Armenian city of Ani - now on Turkish territory - the word “Armenian” is absent from the entire content of http://www.ani.gov.tr/, except for some bibliography sources.


More at this link:

http://www.armeniangenocide.com/showpost.php?p=30584&postcount=371

[Sako]

Your kidding me, damn.

[bell-the-cat]

When the Turkish government launched a website about the Armenian city of Ani - now on Turkish territory - the word “Armenian” is absent from the entire content of http://www.ani.gov.tr/, except for some bibliography sources.


More at this link:

http://www.armeniangenocide.com/show...&postcount=371

In the website. Armenians are called "Bagratli"!
The bibliography is mostly copied from www.virtualani.org/booklist.htm, which is why you see the word "Armenian" there.

From reading some Turkish news reports and based on the limits of my very bad Turkish, the Turkish website has been created as a response to VirtualAni.org (the news reports don't mention it by name but just mention online information, but since there is no other website about Ani they must mean VirtualAni.

[hipeter924]

Well I have heard worse reading comments on U Tube videos, some person claimed that the Turks were always in modern day Turkey. Wrong! Persians there before the Turks. I am sure the people who write these sorts of sites are just as stupid and racist as the people claiming the Persians didn't exist. So now they deny not only the genocide, but also that the Persians existed. *sigh When will it end.