ceyhun

quote:Originally posted by naira: TRose, do you know any turkish website dedicated to the genocide issue? In Turkish or in English? All I met where sites spreading weirdly defamatory information and hatrid. Are there any sites who discuss or even deny it (genocide) argumented way, without siding Young Turks or fabricating facts of that period of Turkish history? I remember being told, early months of last year, that Turkey's and Turks' coming to terms with the Armenian genocide was important for our democracy. I had laughed (then). But now I think it is right. It will be symbolic and of course an end in itself - but it will be beneficial in our overall development TRose, I agree. From the Genocide Recognition Turkey will get only benefits (talking about intellectuals, government and the society). It will clean its image of a "repressive" country, which is built not only on the events of 1915, but there are also post-genocide evolution. Military power, Rights of women and political opposition. Huge investment in the army, permanent economic instability, the problem of Kurds, Gays, social and medical care. Many of this issues are raised by the European Union along with the reviewing of its imperial past. As it appears to be the question of the Recognition of Armenian genocide, followed by excuses to the victimes of that tragedy, can just improve the image of Turkish nation and bring more stability in the economy, stimulate the freedom of speech and improve the social rights which are opressed today by the militaries backed government. The Recognition will allow to Turkey to break down finally the powerful Military lobby, which still keeps the tough hand on Turkey's reforms and future developement. If there are many Turks who might be interested in a constructive dialogue with Armenians, I think the best thing to do is to develop and create some common information exchange places where by mutual efforts some understanding of the issues will be established. (Online forums are one of those places). It's been a month I have created with some of my friends a forum where we try to keep the "cool" on the information distribution by trying to denounce the defamatory information from both sides (armenian and turkish). We want to develop a place where only the Genocide Recognition and Turkey-Armenia-Caucasus related issues will be discussed. If you have interesting information regarding Armenian issues in Turkey I welcome you to post them there as well. http://www.armenianforums.com ------------------- There are websites which recognizes the genocide built by the Turks. One is http://members.aol.com/xsoysal/index.html/...l/homepage.html There are forums where Armenians and Turks talk about it http://www.network54.com/forum/4359 There is also a Turkish-Armenian Communication Forum. You can reach that one from the network54.com address above. I agree with your ideas that there must be a place where Armenians and Turks should talk to each other.

There wasn't any Turkic expansionism if we don't count the empires that Turks built before they embraced Islam. So Circassian's claim that Turkic expansian has always contained inclusiveness is not accurate. Neither did the Ottomans or Selcuks hold a Turkic identity. Then where is the Turkic expansionsim that Circassian is talking about? That non-muslims held top positions in the Ottoman administration is not the same thing as the assimilation of others' languages and identities by the Turkish Republic so that it is ironic that it is the Circassian who gets confused here not me (I mean the proverb of sapla samani karistirmak. Christians were converted to Ottoman identity which was multi -nationalistic. Forcing people to quit speaking their own language and speak Turkish is assimilation of a language. People in Turkey were stripped off and a new, alien identity which did not exist was imposed. I call rape what you call inclusiveness.

I thank all who posted wellcome messages to me. Circassion says modern definition of "Turk" includes all people of Turkey regardless of their religions and ethnicities. When did this modern definition start? With the coming of Ataturk and Kemalism? If so, then why did Ataturk start the programme of "Vatandas Turkce konus" (citizen, speak Turkish)? You are half Circassian, ironically there were Circassian villages in the Central Anatolia whose inhabitants were speaking Circassian. Now almost none is speaking Circassian. So, is assimilation of languages by Turkish what you call inclusiveness of Turkishness?