UniLang

IpseDixit wrote:What do you think about that? And did you know about this news?

IpseDixit wrote:What do you think about that? And did you know about this news?

IpseDixit wrote:they've implied that the Pope favors the Armenians only because of their religion.

And did you know about this news?

Levike wrote:I don't understand why it's so important for the Turkish government to recognise it.

vijayjohn wrote:

Levike wrote:I don't understand why it's so important for the Turkish government to recognise it.

Gee, I dunno. Why is it so important for European governments to recognize the Holocaust?

Mr de Waal reluctantly concludes that the killings do come under the United Nations Convention on Genocide. He believes the “G-word” (this last term was coined by a Turkish diplomat) has become “both legalistic and over-emotional”. It obstructs “the understanding of the historical rights and wrongs…as much as it illuminates them”. But according to Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor killed in 2007 by a young ultranationalist, Turkey’s main problem is not whether it should deny or acknowledge that what happened amounted to genocide, but what its people comprehend. That is true, but only up to a point. Turkey has recently begun making conciliatory gestures to the Armenians. That would never have happened had the world, and especially America’s Congress, not held the possible charge of “genocide” over it.

Levike wrote:Same thing.
Why would it be important for the governments of today to recognise atrocities that happened a very long time ago?

IpseDixit wrote:

Levike wrote:Same thing.
Why would it be important for the governments of today to recognise atrocities that happened a very long time ago?

A very long time ago? 1945 is a very long time ago?

Levike wrote:

IpseDixit wrote:

Levike wrote:Same thing.
Why would it be important for the governments of today to recognise atrocities that happened a very long time ago?

A very long time ago? 1945 is a very long time ago?

It's a totally new generation now.

Why would anyone expect a "sorry" from me if I don't have anything to do with it.

In the same way why would anyone expect today's Turks to say "sorry" for something that happened 100 years ago.

"The Kurds back then eagerly followed the order to expel and kill," he says. My grandfather was a part of it. He was a perpetrator. My mother told me about -- the stories were terrible. But also a historic reality. Then, when we Kurds were persecuted and killed ourselves and were declared outlaws, my mother said it was our punishment, that it was divine retribution for what we had done to the Armenians. It got me thinking."

Demirbas says the Turkish government has difficulty recognizing its multicultural past. The doctrine of the founding of the Turkish nation, after all, says it is one nation with one language. He says President Recep Tayyip Erdogan refers frequently to that line, even more so now that he has failed to create a Sunni Islamist axis of power that might have stretched from Libya to Egypt and Syria, with Turkey in the leadership role. Demirbas says that's why Erdogan has now retreated into the kind of nationalism that denies what happened to the Armenians was genocide. But he says the anniversary will need to be commemorated somehow, be it with a ceremony or something else, and he's trying to come up with an idea. He says the unspoken knowledge of the guilt is always present and that it poisons society from within.

Like an infection? the journalist asks.

"Like demons," he says.

vijayjohn wrote:

IpseDixit wrote:they've implied that the Pope favors the Armenians only because of their religion.

I dunno about the pope, but I have no doubt that lots of people in countries with a Christian majority do (and also that they ignore the Greek and Assyrian genocides because those are not as well-known).

Marah wrote:

vijayjohn wrote:

IpseDixit wrote:they've implied that the Pope favors the Armenians only because of their religion.

I dunno about the pope, but I have no doubt that lots of people in countries with a Christian majority do (and also that they ignore the Greek and Assyrian genocides because those are not as well-known).

Why is the Amernian genocide so well-known while these other two aren't?

Most Turks’ denial was learned in school and reinforced by various media emphasizing the treachery of those Armenians who backed the invading Russians, foreign powers’ manipulation of Ottoman minorities, conspiracy, possible loss of territory to “Greater Armenia,” greed for reparations and the dozens of murdered Turkish diplomats killed by the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia. Many simply cannot accept that their forefathers may have committed such a crime — a position that becomes more unyielding the more that shaming Turkey becomes the goal and the more that the Turkish government plays this up. Less appreciated is the chance here for empathy. Hrant Dink, a Armenian-Turkish journalist assassinated in 2007, once said, “To the Armenians I say, Try to see some honor in the Turks’ position. They say, ‘No, there was no genocide, because genocide is a goddamned thing that my ancestors never could have done.’ And to the Turks I say, Dwell for a moment on what the Armenians are saying and ask yourself why they insist so much.”