"...the so-called Armenian genocide and so-called massacre of Kurdish people...."
What a load of tosh! (now there's an English word you don’t hear much any more!),
those massacres are a matter of historical fact!
Every bit as much as the German genocide of Jews, Poles, Russian & Gypsy;
the Japanse in China, Rwanda, Serbia, or the rape of Nanking.
To deny history like that is mere nationalism, and it not worthy of any scholar...
Or do you think the large Armenian Christian minority all went on a holiday perhaps...??
The history - both written and pictorial of those massacres still exists today, and is horrifying in its barbarity.
While the absolute numbers were far exceeded later by the Germans, Japanese and Communists,
the fact still remains that some 800,000 to 1,500,000 people were massacred- upto some 80% of the then Armenian population.
Its interesting to compare that the later holocaust (of Jewish, Polish
& Slavic people) which while far larger, killed less
proportionately of these populations...(some 30 to 40% from memory).
Those who do not confront their history are condemned to repeat it....is often quoted in history...
Obviously not only Turkey committed such acts in the past -
I’m partly Australian - and aside from the issues about English people
colonizing Australia and taking their land - we undoubtedly murdered or
imprisoned large numbers of Aboriginal Australians in the 1800s -
certainly in the many 10,000s - but we'll never know truly how many as
they were never counted in those days.
I’m also partly English - and English hands are certainly not without blood (especially in the middle-east - even today..),
including massacres in India, the middle-east and Africa during its bloody colonial past,
but thankfully not on a genocidal scale.
Please leave nationalism out of this discourse - its Turkey that’s having the bad reputation today for not confronting its past;
many international bodies have demanded it, heck they've been sued in Americia for it!
Its the prosecution of a Turkish writer who dared to speak the truth
that only shows Turkey in a bad and dishonorable light today.
The growing peace with the Kurds is a positive step and we all aplaud
Turkey for making the difficult peace (as England has eventually done
in Nortern Ireland), but please build on
this, acknowledge your own failings in the Armenian past, apologize
(and perhaps make some ammends) and move on...
As an example of a country that hasn’t - look at Japan's still
poisonous
relations with China (and most of Asia, and even many older Australians
still) for not doing admitting their own (far larger
scale) massacres in China - some 10,000,0000+ by all accounts.
Regards,
Mark
UK