Unpublished Writings - 4 / Is it the truth?

There is a trend of naming the events of 1915 a “genocide”, blaming the Ottomans of a genocidal policy against the Armenians living within the empire. Without any evidence of it, accepting everything what the Armenians claim, which is actually a shared British-French claim, became a habit especially in media and politics.

In an article of Gamal Nkrumah (Remaking history, Al-Ahram Weekly, 14-20 May 2009), opinions of Armenian diplomats are reflected with some comments. When some opinions are given as if they were real facts, opposite arguments should also accompany at the same level, but not just pass of in saying that those opinions are denied . Otherwise, truth cannot be known.

If the Ottoman Empire had applied genocidal policy to Armenians, they could not have survived. There are a lot of examples in history, e.g. the Indians of especially South America and may be of North America. Is there any nation which disappeared while being subject to the Ottoman Empire?

The case is simple. The British Empire spread all the lies even before World War I to speed up the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. When Armenians started to kill Turks in Eastern Anatolia, backed up especially by Britain and France, the empire forced them to migrate after a law enacted as a result of war conditions. Not only Ottomans, many other countries enacted such laws. Defining a tragedy as “genocide” needs some evidence as proof.

History proves the opposite. All staff thought to be responsible for the deaths during migration were punished by the empire, many of them sentenced to death. All the lists of migrated and returned Armenians were kept, which can be found in the US archives. Anyone familiar with the issue would notice that Armenians refuse all Turkish offers of doing research in the archives. Who can be afraid of archives other than who is afraid of the truth?

I still hope that one day, sensible Armenians will see that nothing based on lies can bring happiness, and will together with Turks, remember the victims of the tragedies during the war, both Turks and Armenians.

For Al-Ahram Weekly, May 20^th, 2009