By Harut Sassounian
Turkish investigative journalist Uzay Bulut published on the Gatestone Institute’s website an article titled, “Turkish Textbooks: Turning History on Its Head.”
Bulut wrote: “Turkish government authorities have targeted their own indigenous peoples of Anatolia, namely the Pontic Greeks and Armenians. In the twentieth century, Ottoman Turkey largely exterminated these peoples through a genocide.”
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Bulut explained: “The government of Turkey, however, refers to the genocide as the ‘unfounded claims’ of Greeks and Armenians. The titles in the Turkish history textbooks were previously called the ‘Pontus Issue’ and the ‘Armenian Question.’ They are now changed to the ‘Unfounded Pontus Claims’ and the ‘Unfounded Armenian Claims.'”
Turkey also denies that Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks are indigenous peoples of the land where Turks settled centuries later, occupied the land and exterminated those already living there.
“Muslim Turks from Central Asia arrived in the Armenian highlands and Anatolia, which was the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire at the time, only during the 11th century. Through military invasions, Muslim Turks seized the towns and cities where indigenous Christians had lived for centuries. Ottoman Turks finally invaded Constantinople (today’s Istanbul) in the fifteenth century, bringing the destruction of the Byzantine Empire. After that, abuses against Christian religious and cultural heritage became widespread,” Bulut wrote.
The sad part is that young Turkish schoolchildren, who have no idea about the real history of their country, are brainwashed with falsehoods about their country’s origin, and fed hatred about the remnants of the minorities. Consequently, these children become adults parroting the lies taught to them in their schools by denying that the Ottoman government committed genocide against indigenous Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks. These Turkish children have no fault for not knowing the true history of their country nor the facts about the genocide committed against the minorities. They are fed the lies that the minorities lived happily in the Ottoman Empire for centuries until European powers instigated them to rebel against their government. On the contrary, minorities living in the Ottoman Empire were always oppressed, enslaved, attacked, robbed, kidnapped, raped, and massacred, culminating in the genocide of 1915. These minorities were not even considered to be second class citizens. They had no rights whatsoever and were at the mercy of their brutal rulers. Bulut correctly described the education of the Turkish schoolchildren as “misinformation, willful distortion, and historic revisionism.”
This is not just a dispute between Armenians and Turks. The Turkish government knows better than anyone that the accusations of genocide are factual, since the Ottoman archives in its possession reveal the truth, even after being selectively cleansed of any incriminating evidence.
In 2007, the International Association of Genocide Scholars issued a resolution, which said, in part: “It is the conviction of the International Association of Genocide Scholars that the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923 constituted a genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks.”
According to Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, President of Genocide Watch, denial is the last stage of genocide: “Denial is a continuation of a genocide because it is a continuing attempt to destroy the victim group psychologically and culturally, to deny its members even the memory of the murders of their relatives.”
More importantly, I suggest that the proud citizens of Turkey listen carefully to the truthful admission of the founder of the modern Republic of Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, who told the Los Angeles Examiner newspaper in an interview published on August 1, 1926: “These leftovers from the former Young Turk Party, who should have been made to account for the lives of millions of our Christian subjects who were ruthlessly driven en masse from their homes and massacred.” I hope no Turkish citizen would be foolish enough to call Ataturk a liar, otherwise they will be jailed immediately if they live in Turkey and if they are currently outside the country, they will be promptly arrested upon returning home.
The Turkish government, at long last, should face the truth and teach the innocent Turkish students the tragic facts of history about the massacres and genocide for which neither today’s young generation nor the current Turkish government were responsible for since they did not even exist during these murders. All nations have dark stains in their history, but instead of hiding them, they come clean and face their true history, including both the tragic and glorious episodes. Only then nations can overcome their shadowy pasts and move forward. Look at the example of Germany which accepted its guilt for the Holocaust and made amends. Otherwise, future generations of Turks will grow up trying to deny and lie about their ignominious past and will always have a guilty conscience for something they played no part in. However, their lies and denials make them accomplices of these crimes after the fact.