Where Is Ali Suat?

[Yervant1]

Several year's ago this Turkish citizen used to post a lot on the topic of Genocide. At that time his prediction was that, Turkey will start the preparation of it's people to an eventual recognition of Genocide. He also said that Turkey will accept Genocide today if Armenians would give up heavy monetary compensation and forget about land claims.

Since then some countries such as France, Canada and Poland to name a few, accepted the Genocide. More than ever Turkish scholars and professors are now talking openly about the topic under the guise of free speach.

I'm wondering if the activities are genuine or predetermined and it's taking it's course. Once the Turkish puplic is prepared, will Turkey accept it?

One other thing, the Turkish scholars in diaspora do they truly believe in what they are saying that Genocide is a reality or are they befriending Armenians in order to prepare Armenians to a concession on land claims.

Do you think the West is on it as well, since so many countries accepted Genocide as of late?

Your opinions please!

[ED]

I think none of the major players in the world (including Russia) is interested or its there national interest to have a greater Armenia, what we must realise now days! insthed of demanding monetary compansation and land from Turkey; consintrate on bringing ROA to a point where she can dictate her terms, for this and most importantly is economy, stibility and social order within ROA, lands are not handed over, if and when (by miracle) Armenians realise this, only then we would be able to get our lands back.

 

That is my openion

[Arpa]

Where is Ali?

I have asked that question many times, in public as well.

Even though at times I would entertain the notion that he was a “plant/an agent of some sort” , so to speak, to elicit comments. Yet my gut feeling was that he was sincere, perhaps even a ”closet Armenian”. I have tried to locate him, to se if he posts in other fora, no success. Another gut feeling of mine is that he was “silenced”. I had indirectly asked him if hewas not concerned that the state apparatus may be monitoring his posts.

Ali was optimistic about recognition, but of course the matter of territories was out of question, as in “what is lost to the sword can only be retaken by the sword”. However, recognition, reparation aside Armenia does need some territory, most importantly unencumbered access to the world, instead of relying and being at the mercy on the territories of “unfriendly, blockading and capricious neighbors.

Edited February 24, 2006 by Arpa

[Yervant1]

Where is Ali?

I have asked that question many times, in public as well.

Even though at times I would entertain the notion that he was a “plant/an agent of some sort” , so to speak, to elicit comments. Yet my gut feeling was that he was sincere, perhaps even was a ”closet Armenian”. I have tried to locate him, to se if posts in other for a, no success. Another gut feeling of mine is that he was “silenced”. I had indirectly asked him if he concerned that the state apparatus may be monitoring his posts.

Ali was optimistic about recognition, but of course the matter of territories was out of question, as in “what is lost to the sword can only be retaken by the sword”. However, recognition, reparation aside Armenian does need some territory, most importantly unencumbered access to the world, instead of relying and being at the mercy on the territories of “unfriendly and capricious neighbors.

Arpa I also remember him saying that he was from a well known aristocratic family with high connections. This what he said when asked about not being afraid of the government. I think he was an agent for the army, because he was daring and unfearful. Also he had this arrogance in his tone when someone feels untouchable.

In my opinion he was testing the waters with Armenian reality.

[Yervant1]

I think none of the major players in the world (including Russia) is interested or its there national interest to have a greater Armenia, what we must realise now days! insthed of demanding monetary compansation and land from Turkey; consintrate on bringing ROA to a point where she can dictate her terms, for this and most importantly is economy, stibility and social order within ROA, lands are not handed over, if and when (by miracle) Armenians realise this, only then we would be able to get our lands back.

 

That is my openion

Edward, I think major players might not want a strong Armenia, but I think they need a stable Armenia for business purposes. Inorder to acheive they must give something to both sides on the Genocide issue.

Turkey gets 1-no compensation, 2-no land claims.

Armenia gets 1-Empty Genocide Recognition.

I don't get this heavy Genocide activity, because they (West) want to help us. I think the West ignored us in the past, now that we're a free country they can't ignore us anymore, that's the political process. But in the meantime they need a peaceful region because of oil so they decided to settle the Armenian issue without giving us what's right. Again Turkey wins by giving us an empty Genocide recognition and move on. This what the West want and that's what Turkey will ever agree.

[Arpa]

Tell me I am dreaming.

Did I see "aurguplu", aka Ali Suat perusing the forum?

How are you Ali?

We miss you.

You had us worried that your body was rotting in some "Midnight Express" rat hole for "making love" with "Pis Ermenis".

Our fervent hope is that some day you may decide to amend your name to "Alishan".

Edited March 28, 2006 by Arpa

[Yervant1]

Tell me I am dreaming.

Arpa wake up you're dreaming.

[vava]

I'm curioius Yervant, how do you know Ali?

[Yervant1]

I'm curioius Yervant, how do you know Ali?

I used to read Hyeforum but only some threads later in 2003 couldn't read at all. After 2004 I started to read again never wanting to join the forum but one day Arpa got me so angry I said I'll join and teach this fool a lesson but he replied my first post so I forgave him and his sins.

 

Note: I just made up the Arpa story.

[Yervant1]

Tell me I am dreaming.

Did I see "aurguplu", aka Ali Suat perusing the forum?

How are you Ali?

We miss you.

You had us worried that your body was rotting in some "Midnight Express" rat hole for "making love" with "Pis Ermenis".

Our fervent hope is that some day you may decide to amend your name to "Alishan".

Arpa shad shnorhagal em vor indzi Alin ge gardzes. Pnav midkes tchantsav ourge ur megen ays panere kretsir payts yerp Vavan harts erav te incbes yes Alin kidem ayn aden kitsa.

 

Fervent or Yervant very clever, shad aveli lav bidi ellar yete oughagi harstneyik isk Alishan gerna alin ella shan gam shan zavag payts Yervante ge mna Yervant.

 

Yes bidi sbasem vor vomank inds esen neroghoutiuon.

[Aubépine]

There was a Prime Minister of Turkey in the 1960s named Ali Suat Hayri Ürgüplü. That they are sharing three out of four names can't be a coincidence. Strange that his name would crop up here. I know that the son of that Prime Minister lived in one of the posh avenues in Brussels. They were quite introverted as was the rest of the family.

[DominO123]

There was a Prime Minister of Turkey in the 1960s named Ali Suat Hayri Ürgüplü. That they are sharing three out of four names can't be a coincidence. Strange that his name would crop up here. I know that the son of that Prime Minister lived in one of the posh avenues in Brussels. They were quite introverted as was the rest of the family.

 

Tell us more.

[DominO123]

I used to read Hyeforum but only some threads later in 2003 couldn't read at all. After 2004 I started to read again never wanting to join the forum but one day Arpa got me so angry I said I'll join and teach this fool a lesson but he replied my first post so I forgave him and his sins.

 

Note: I just made up the Arpa story.

 

I hate that avatar of yours, but I forgive you.

[Aubépine]

Tell us more.

 

The younger Ali Suat Ürgüplü, the one that is mentioned here, is probably the direct descendant of the last Ottoman Emperor Mehmet VI. Vahideddin. His mother was the great-grandaughter of the the Sultan. Both his parents were married more than once so I don't know the exact details. But I know some more about the family. Those who understand Turkish can also tell from his surname.

[Yervant1]

I hate that avatar of yours, but I forgive you.

Oh thank you I feel much better already.

[Arpa]

Arpa shad shnorhagal em vor indzi Alin ge gardzes. Pnav midkes tchantsav ourge ur megen ays panere kretsir payts yerp Vavan harts erav te incbes yes Alin kidem ayn aden kitsa.

 

Fervent or Yervant very clever, shad aveli lav bidi ellar yete oughagi harstneyik isk Alishan gerna alin ella shan gam shan zavag payts Yervante ge mna Yervant.

 

Yes bidi sbasem vor vomank inds esen neroghoutiuon.

No, Yervant I am serious. I was not dreaming neither was I hallucinating. I did see his name and when I clicked "on line users" it said he was e-mailing. Did he e-mail anyone here?

Unless, of course someone has hijacked his screen name and password.

Voch, voch Yervant qez Ali-n chem kartser. Wasn,t the Capital of Armenian named after you, i.e Yerevan(t)? :)

[Yervant1]

No, Yervant I am serious. I was not dreaming neither was I hallucinating. I did see his name and when I clicked "on line users" it said he was e-mailing. Did he e-mail anyone here?

Unless, of course someone has hijacked his screen name and password.

Voch, voch Yervant qez Ali-n chem kartser. Wasn,t the Capital of Armenian named after you, i.e Yerevan(t)? :)

Yes he did e-mail me, he said they have very active imagination and they think you are me and I said who am I? he said you are Arnold (remember the movie I forgot the title) then I said if I'm Arnold who's Yervant he said never mind and vanished in thin air.

[Aubépine]

Tell us more.

 

Whenever we passed by their house is always another story about them was told. It became some sort of an urban legend among the Turks, the diplomatic corps and military personnel in Brussels.

 

One of the sons was an invalid and the other was away in a boarding school, I forgot which European country.

Edited March 29, 2006 by Edward

[Aubépine]

Apparently he is in Germany right now...

[Garo]

Ali asked me to reset his password a few days ago so you may see him posting here again.

[Arpa]

Ali asked me to reset his password a few days ago so you may see him posting here again.

Yervant. I love you.

As you can see I was not hallucinating

I will not be surprised, when one of these days Ali would come out of the proverbial "closet" and confess that his grand-mothre/father was Armenian. That will explain his fascination with Armenian cultiure, and the very fact that he is even here.

Please, please.

Let us welcome him back.

He may be one of the very few" Turks" who speaks from logic. Who, with whom I have concurred that; "What is lost to the sword can only be reagained by the sword."

A so called Turk that was engaged to marty a Christian woman from Alexandretta (read Kililkia) that, in spite of our cheers was never consummated.

Hey Ali, are you married yet!?

Edited March 31, 2006 by Arpa

[aurguplu]

Hi

 

I have recently requested the update on my password from the moderators to reply to a message I had received from a forum member. Until then, I had been away from the forum for a good four years as far as I can remember, only visiting every now and then, especially to see the reactions to any developments that might affect Turkish-Armenian relations. There have been a good few of those over the intervening years (as I had predicted when I was posting here) and the reactions of the forum as a whole has been disappointing to say the least, IMHO.

 

I see that wild speculation has been going on about my identity, my motives for visiting the forum, ranging from me being an Ottoman-closet Armenian-confused Turk-agent/spy of the Turkish Army to God knows what (I haven’t read all the posts, these are just a few that I picked up from – as far as I can see – recent ones) as well as the causes and circumstances of my “disappearance”, and it would be in order to clear these points before I proceed.

 

I do not recall having been asked to reveal my identity to post at the forum, nor have I been informed of anyone else’s having been asked to do so, I am not asking for anyone’s identity beyond what they choose to reveal in the forum, and I expect to be treated in the same fashion. Suffice it to say based on some recent posts I have read about this particular matter that some people think they know more than they actually do, confuse at least two distinct people (they are not the only ones to do that), and obviously have been relying more on prejudices and “urban legends” than factual, verifiable information. I am particularly disappointed to see Armenians of all people doing that as they are the ones to have suffered and to continue to suffer so directly and so severely from these two evils fabricated against them in Turkey. As for my identity, I am prepared to reveal not less, and not more, than the following:

 

Sorry to disappoint you Arpa, but I am not an Armenian, closet or otherwise. Do I have partial Armenian ancestry? Not to my knowledge, it is not impossible, but frankly speaking I do not care. Like most Turkish families, especially those that have had some standing in the Ottoman Empire and/or The Republic, mine is a very mixed bag, with individuals from most corners of the Ottoman Empire from Serbia to the Caucasus to the Crimea. This is nothing special in a society that traditionally divided people along religious and cultural rather than racial lines and that has been contracting incessantly since 1774 (Küçük Kaynardji): contraction meant that people from all former provinces of the Empire still loyal to the state (almost exclusively Muslims) moved to areas still under imperial control, and as the Empire shrunk, an ever decreasing area supported an ever more ethnically diverse population that mixed freely when the religion was the same (unlike “civilised” USA or Europe where intermarriage between white and non-white Christians is still far from being socially acceptable). I know for a fact that I have Serbian, Greek, Albanian, Ukrainian, Russian, Georgian, Circassian, Abkhazian, Crimean Tatar, Italian, and Kurdish blood. These I know because some female members of our families (I am now talking about all the four grandparents’ families) had been recorded, and others persisted in family memories, information about them being handed down as oral history. Turks trace descent paternally, and all males are naturally Turks, having been born of Turkish fathers. There are several thousand such families surviving, not necessarily all in Turkey (some have remained in the former provinces of the Empire, others migrated to four corners of the Earth). To excite some forum members even further, there was at least one (and possibly a few more) Greek lady who chose not to convert to Islam after he married one of my great-great-grandfathers, but whose son (and hence one of my great-grandfathers) grew up to be quite a mullah and did things that broke his mother’s heart (and a cross). All this I find very interesting, I may even write a novel or something about it later in life, but I have, sorry for being so dead boring, no identity problems/crises/pangs of conscience whatsoever to keep you excited. I am just a Turk. I do not even have the saving grace of being proud or ashamed of being Turkish. It’s just a fact of life as far as I am concerned. I am a Turk, no more, no less, and you are well advised to live with this fact just as easily and happily as I am doing. You cannot easily get more boring and simple than that, I guess. So much for my ancestry.

 

I have been to school both in Turkey and in Europe, and studied mostly in Europe (England). I have a BA in Oriental Studies (Islamic World) and speak two (Turkish and Arabic) of the three (Turkish, Arabic and Persian) relevant languages. Except for a brief stint as an academician after my return to Turkey in 1990, which had ended in disillusionment, I spent most of my time in the professional world, but kept my academic and intellectual interests alive. At the time I had started posting I was making plans to return to academics. These plans have meanwhile materialised and I am now finishing a PhD at a University in Germany. At the time I was posting I was also engaged to a Turkish Christian lady (a Christian Arab originally from Antioch) which however has not been consummated in marriage for private reasons (not religious differences, sorry to disappoint yet again).

 

In brief, I am basically a Muslim/Sunni/Hanefi Turk (like about three quarters of all ethnic Turks in Anatolia, i.e. nothing special) and happen to belong to an upper-class family (like a few thousand other families, i.e. maybe something special but nothing unique) with a decent education and – may I say – a modest degree of competence in Turkish-Armenian matters. I also happen to see the Armenian Question as a serious problem that Turks as well as the Armenians have a vested interest in solving for their own good. This last point appears to escape, or have escaped until recently, most of my fellow Turks, who have a habit of resorting to an ostrich-like attitude in the face of problems that they deem beyond their immediate powers to solve, and if there is anything special about me, it is that I have never had this attitude.

 

Three other points about me, that might be relatively rare about Turks discussing this issue are 1) I am prepared to listen to the other side rather than impose my opinions on it, 2) I do my best to base my arguments on accurate, verifiable, and whenever possible, publicly available information and a chain of logic, and 3) I do not resort to insults, personal attacks, foul language or demagoguery to advance a point or to defend a position which has proved itself to be untenable over discussions. I think I have been able to stick to all of these points quite faithfully when I was posting here, and I should certainly appreciate hearing anything to the contrary from any forum member who read my posts.

 

I am not a lover of Armenians, nor am I a hater of them. I am a Turkish patriot (patriot rather than nationalist, I can elaborate upon demand), but of the variety who believes in “live and let live” rather than the one who believes in “kill or you die” (there are few of us, and many of them). Also, being a student of history, I am interested in things Armenian, partly intrinsically, as I hold the Armenian culture to be a very interesting one, and partly as a part of both Anatolian and Turkish histories, since the Armenians have played an important role in both.

 

I also happen to think that freedom from hatred is one of the fundamental human rights. I should not be obliged to hate you, and you should not be obliged to hate me, over something that had happened half a century before we both were born.

 

As to the reasons for my being, or rather having once been, to the forum, was to 1) find out what the Armenians were all about from the Armenians themselves as opposed to the Turkish sources we have in Turkey whom we all know to be so very reliable on anything, especially the Armenians; 2) find out if there were any individuals out there with whom it was possible to agree on a set of basic principles & a code of conduct to start a dialogue that might eventually contribute positively to a normalisation of relations between the two peoples if not the states (I have a low opinion of the conciliatory capacities of both states). In both respects I must say I had been disappointed. More on this further below.

 

My leaving the forum was – as I had posted in the relevant thread then – the result of my getting disgusted at the behaviour of some individuals (especially, but not only, Martin, posting as MJ) and not that of some secret military operation on the part of the Turkish Army as I gather has been the essence of some wild speculation here. Those of you who had been to the forum at that time will remember, others please check further below for details.

 

It is I gather high time to reveal some “secrets” about the Turkish Army to render any further speculation unnecessary: The part of my military service after novice training took place at the Turkish Land Forces Command in the capacity of a translator and intelligence officer. The first thing all conscripts learnt was – to use a Turkish phrase – how many hairs we had in our arses. None of us had known that until then, but the Army knew. The Army knew absolutely everything about us that was there to know (including, as I had found out, some information about myself that I never knew). I was then both exposed to and conducted myself under orders some low-to-not-so-low-level intelligence work, and quickly realised that there was no way, at least not on this third planet of ours circling the Sun, to hide anything from the Army that it wanted to know. These fellows have eyes and ears in places you cannot imagine, and most of these eyes and ears don’t even know that they are working for the Army (the least suspicion-raising spy is the one who doesn’t know that he is being used as a spy). So by 2000, when, if I remember correctly, I had first joined the forum, I had done so in full confidence that the Army had probably already gathered more information about the forum and its members than the moderators themselves, and if that forum was still functioning it was only because they didn’t bother to bust it (some of the best computer hackers on earth are, incidentally, Turkish youths). The Army is doing this on so many platforms with such vast resources that I wonder at times how they get to cope with all the info they get. This may horrify some of you, but I should not be surprised if it were revealed one day that some people posting here with Armenian identities are in reality Turkish officers, trained in Armenian, working on the orders of some department of the Army that the Prime Minister doesn’t know exists (too much information is bad for a Prime Minister’s health), or just for their amusement. So I had nothing to worry about. People may wonder how, but those of you who have had any experience with combat training would know that fear is one of the first things to disappear in people in sustained combat. You just get used to it. Besides, I do not hold the Army to be my enemy, and I have no reason to think that the Army holds me to be an enemy/traitor, too (if there were one, I would have known about it by now).

 

Now the “more on this further below”:

 

When I had joined the forum I had made clear that I subscribed to the definition of the Armenian massacres of 1915-6 as genocide, so people did not have to “educate” me about that and the first exchanges of posts were sincere, at least that had been my impression. Various threads were exploring the issue of land reparations (where if I remember correctly I did not post anything), where Martin (MJ) was countering – or should I say telling off – people who made wild plans about conquering the whole of Anatolia etc. His arguments sounded quite reasonable and altogether I had had a positive opinion of him, even though I had found, on several occasions, his thinly-veiled insults (not always directed against me) and dismissive style a bit arrogant, with a touch of a “holier-than-thou” attitude in it. But on the whole the relationship was civilised enough for me to keep posting.

 

Then there came a Turk who wanted to establish friendship with the Armenians and to discuss whether it was a genocide or not. He got the answers he got from the Armenian members of the forum, and I posted a reply in which I dwelt upon the undeniability of the fact of genocide in the face of the evidence and the moral obligation of the Turks to admit to it and relieve the torment of the victim to some extent at least by accepting that what happened to them was what it was. This appears to have touched MJ, and he posted a reply praising my approach. So far all was fine.

 

Soon after that, however, he posted an entry where he invited me to discuss the “land issue”. I was shocked, not so much at the proposal itself, this place being an Armenian forum, but at the person who put it forth: this was the person who was disparaging at other threads those Armenians who had made land claims part of their agenda with sound arguments, usually a cool head, and very occasionally a language that I as a well-bred Turk would think twice before using. The essence of his argument appeared to be “You seem to be a civilised guy, we are in agreement about the fact of the genocide, so that’s out of the way, now let’s get down to business and sort out what lands we get back and what lands you get to keep.”. His (and not only his, as I discovered later) attitude was “Civilised is the Turk who agrees to cede part of Anatolia to Armenians. Barbarian is the Turk who holds that he has the same right to Anatolia as all conquering nations have to their current lands, like the Americans, for instance.”. Of living together in peace on the same soil, needless to say, there was not a word to read.

 

So I was a barbarian for holding on to what was mine. Over time the conversation deteriorated significantly in quality, MJ resorting to personal attacks (he had a habit of doing that at the time, and not only with the Turks). His ire reached a climax with the declaration that “genocide recognition is meaningless without land reparations”, at which point I was compelled to remind him of his on postings in other threads precisely to the opposite effect. This also went on for a while, and then (I think there had been a brief pause when I was not visiting the forum) MJ somehow turned around and started to disparage me for having claimed that he had ever posted anything to the effect of claiming land. At this point I did something I should have done a good deal earlier and posted our discussion about it, having copied and pasted it from the thread where it had been running, with the heading “let me refresh your memory” (MJ had claimed not to remember about any such posting). To this MJ gave the shortest and most timid reply I ever read of him in the forum: “Yes, Ali. And I stand by what I wrote.” No explanation, no elaboration, no addressing the glaring contradiction in his past and present postings, and – how could one dare expect it from MJ, anyway – not even a hint of an apology for a style of conduct that had no moral basis whatsoever. This disgusted me.

 

What disgusted me even more was the attitude of the crowd that was until then mostly just watching the whole thing unfurl. They started coming to the fore and I felt I was being hunted down. It was as if one predator wounds a prey and then a whole pack of them arrives at the scene to have a share of the kill (it felt like Jurassic Park). There was not one word of criticism for MJ’s attitude (I wonder whether some people present had even actually noticed the logical contradiction and moral bankruptcy of MJ’s – and their – position). All this was going at a relatively high pace (just like a hunt should) and I also had some other problems aside (some health issues, the marriage plans not working, working on a salary truncated to 18% of its former self – early in 2001 we had had the greatest financial crisis the country had had since the end of the Second World War – and frankly speaking I got quite disillusioned with the sort of experiences I was getting at the forum. After all, there were plenty of right-wing Turkish forums where I could get some really low-level crass intellectual(!) output on the Armenian issue (or most any other issue) should I so desire. I hadn’t, and I decided to leave the forum before the disillusionment got even deeper. This hasn’t turned into an attitude against the Armenians themselves or the Armenian Question, however, as I was careful to inform the forum members in my “farewell” post if it may be called that, and turned to other pursuits.

I was, as stated above, checking the forum for the reactions of the Armenian community to the quite momentous developments that have been happening on this front since I left the forum, and found the recations (in many cases lack of them) quite disappointing, which reinforced my conviction that I had done the right thing by leaving the forum. About two months ago I got a message from a forum member and discovered while trying to reply that my password had been reset, so I asked the moderators to reset it, and here I am.

 

I should like to read the comments of forum members on the above before posting further.

 

Yours,

 

Ali (and not Alishan, sorry)

[phantom22]

Ali,

 

Welcome back. I do not have time to reply at present, but can inform you , as a wayward Armenian who embraces the "Eastern " religions that MJ's negative karma has boomeranged to bite him as he is in serious financial straights at present. His personal financial circumstances have gone into a nosedive.

 

 

Hi

 

I have recently requested the update on my password from the moderators to reply to a message I had received from a forum member. Until then, I had been away from the forum for a good four years as far as I can remember, only visiting every now and then, especially to see the reactions to any developments that might affect Turkish-Armenian relations. There have been a good few of those over the intervening years (as I had predicted when I was posting here) and the reactions of the forum as a whole has been disappointing to say the least, IMHO.

 

I see that wild speculation has been going on about my identity, my motives for visiting the forum, ranging from me being an Ottoman-closet Armenian-confused Turk-agent/spy of the Turkish Army to God knows what (I haven’t read all the posts, these are just a few that I picked up from – as far as I can see – recent ones) as well as the causes and circumstances of my “disappearance”, and it would be in order to clear these points before I proceed.

 

I do not recall having been asked to reveal my identity to post at the forum, nor have I been informed of anyone else’s having been asked to do so, I am not asking for anyone’s identity beyond what they choose to reveal in the forum, and I expect to be treated in the same fashion. Suffice it to say based on some recent posts I have read about this particular matter that some people think they know more than they actually do, confuse at least two distinct people (they are not the only ones to do that), and obviously have been relying more on prejudices and “urban legends” than factual, verifiable information. I am particularly disappointed to see Armenians of all people doing that as they are the ones to have suffered and to continue to suffer so directly and so severely from these two evils fabricated against them in Turkey. As for my identity, I am prepared to reveal not less, and not more, than the following:

 

Sorry to disappoint you Arpa, but I am not an Armenian, closet or otherwise. Do I have partial Armenian ancestry? Not to my knowledge, it is not impossible, but frankly speaking I do not care. Like most Turkish families, especially those that have had some standing in the Ottoman Empire and/or The Republic, mine is a very mixed bag, with individuals from most corners of the Ottoman Empire from Serbia to the Caucasus to the Crimea. This is nothing special in a society that traditionally divided people along religious and cultural rather than racial lines and that has been contracting incessantly since 1774 (Küçük Kaynardji): contraction meant that people from all former provinces of the Empire still loyal to the state (almost exclusively Muslims) moved to areas still under imperial control, and as the Empire shrunk, an ever decreasing area supported an ever more ethnically diverse population that mixed freely when the religion was the same (unlike “civilised” USA or Europe where intermarriage between white and non-white Christians is still far from being socially acceptable). I know for a fact that I have Serbian, Greek, Albanian, Ukrainian, Russian, Georgian, Circassian, Abkhazian, Crimean Tatar, Italian, and Kurdish blood. These I know because some female members of our families (I am now talking about all the four grandparents’ families) had been recorded, and others persisted in family memories, information about them being handed down as oral history. Turks trace descent paternally, and all males are naturally Turks, having been born of Turkish fathers. There are several thousand such families surviving, not necessarily all in Turkey (some have remained in the former provinces of the Empire, others migrated to four corners of the Earth). To excite some forum members even further, there was at least one (and possibly a few more) Greek lady who chose not to convert to Islam after he married one of my great-great-grandfathers, but whose son (and hence one of my great-grandfathers) grew up to be quite a mullah and did things that broke his mother’s heart (and a cross). All this I find very interesting, I may even write a novel or something about it later in life, but I have, sorry for being so dead boring, no identity problems/crises/pangs of conscience whatsoever to keep you excited. I am just a Turk. I do not even have the saving grace of being proud or ashamed of being Turkish. It’s just a fact of life as far as I am concerned. I am a Turk, no more, no less, and you are well advised to live with this fact just as easily and happily as I am doing. You cannot easily get more boring and simple than that, I guess. So much for my ancestry.

 

I have been to school both in Turkey and in Europe, and studied mostly in Europe (England). I have a BA in Oriental Studies (Islamic World) and speak two (Turkish and Arabic) of the three (Turkish, Arabic and Persian) relevant languages. Except for a brief stint as an academician after my return to Turkey in 1990, which had ended in disillusionment, I spent most of my time in the professional world, but kept my academic and intellectual interests alive. At the time I had started posting I was making plans to return to academics. These plans have meanwhile materialised and I am now finishing a PhD at a University in Germany. At the time I was posting I was also engaged to a Turkish Christian lady (a Christian Arab originally from Antioch) which however has not been consummated in marriage for private reasons (not religious differences, sorry to disappoint yet again).

 

In brief, I am basically a Muslim/Sunni/Hanefi Turk (like about three quarters of all ethnic Turks in Anatolia, i.e. nothing special) and happen to belong to an upper-class family (like a few thousand other families, i.e. maybe something special but nothing unique) with a decent education and – may I say – a modest degree of competence in Turkish-Armenian matters. I also happen to see the Armenian Question as a serious problem that Turks as well as the Armenians have a vested interest in solving for their own good. This last point appears to escape, or have escaped until recently, most of my fellow Turks, who have a habit of resorting to an ostrich-like attitude in the face of problems that they deem beyond their immediate powers to solve, and if there is anything special about me, it is that I have never had this attitude.

 

Three other points about me, that might be relatively rare about Turks discussing this issue are 1) I am prepared to listen to the other side rather than impose my opinions on it, 2) I do my best to base my arguments on accurate, verifiable, and whenever possible, publicly available information and a chain of logic, and 3) I do not resort to insults, personal attacks, foul language or demagoguery to advance a point or to defend a position which has proved itself to be untenable over discussions. I think I have been able to stick to all of these points quite faithfully when I was posting here, and I should certainly appreciate hearing anything to the contrary from any forum member who read my posts.

 

I am not a lover of Armenians, nor am I a hater of them. I am a Turkish patriot (patriot rather than nationalist, I can elaborate upon demand), but of the variety who believes in “live and let live” rather than the one who believes in “kill or you die” (there are few of us, and many of them). Also, being a student of history, I am interested in things Armenian, partly intrinsically, as I hold the Armenian culture to be a very interesting one, and partly as a part of both Anatolian and Turkish histories, since the Armenians have played an important role in both.

 

I also happen to think that freedom from hatred is one of the fundamental human rights. I should not be obliged to hate you, and you should not be obliged to hate me, over something that had happened half a century before we both were born.

 

As to the reasons for my being, or rather having once been, to the forum, was to 1) find out what the Armenians were all about from the Armenians themselves as opposed to the Turkish sources we have in Turkey whom we all know to be so very reliable on anything, especially the Armenians; 2) find out if there were any individuals out there with whom it was possible to agree on a set of basic principles & a code of conduct to start a dialogue that might eventually contribute positively to a normalisation of relations between the two peoples if not the states (I have a low opinion of the conciliatory capacities of both states). In both respects I must say I had been disappointed. More on this further below.

 

My leaving the forum was – as I had posted in the relevant thread then – the result of my getting disgusted at the behaviour of some individuals (especially, but not only, Martin, posting as MJ) and not that of some secret military operation on the part of the Turkish Army as I gather has been the essence of some wild speculation here. Those of you who had been to the forum at that time will remember, others please check further below for details.

 

It is I gather high time to reveal some “secrets” about the Turkish Army to render any further speculation unnecessary: The part of my military service after novice training took place at the Turkish Land Forces Command in the capacity of a translator and intelligence officer. The first thing all conscripts learnt was – to use a Turkish phrase – how many hairs we had in our arses. None of us had known that until then, but the Army knew. The Army knew absolutely everything about us that was there to know (including, as I had found out, some information about myself that I never knew). I was then both exposed to and conducted myself under orders some low-to-not-so-low-level intelligence work, and quickly realised that there was no way, at least not on this third planet of ours circling the Sun, to hide anything from the Army that it wanted to know. These fellows have eyes and ears in places you cannot imagine, and most of these eyes and ears don’t even know that they are working for the Army (the least suspicion-raising spy is the one who doesn’t know that he is being used as a spy). So by 2000, when, if I remember correctly, I had first joined the forum, I had done so in full confidence that the Army had probably already gathered more information about the forum and its members than the moderators themselves, and if that forum was still functioning it was only because they didn’t bother to bust it (some of the best computer hackers on earth are, incidentally, Turkish youths). The Army is doing this on so many platforms with such vast resources that I wonder at times how they get to cope with all the info they get. This may horrify some of you, but I should not be surprised if it were revealed one day that some people posting here with Armenian identities are in reality Turkish officers, trained in Armenian, working on the orders of some department of the Army that the Prime Minister doesn’t know exists (too much information is bad for a Prime Minister’s health), or just for their amusement. So I had nothing to worry about. People may wonder how, but those of you who have had any experience with combat training would know that fear is one of the first things to disappear in people in sustained combat. You just get used to it. Besides, I do not hold the Army to be my enemy, and I have no reason to think that the Army holds me to be an enemy/traitor, too (if there were one, I would have known about it by now).

 

Now the “more on this further below”:

 

When I had joined the forum I had made clear that I subscribed to the definition of the Armenian massacres of 1915-6 as genocide, so people did not have to “educate” me about that and the first exchanges of posts were sincere, at least that had been my impression. Various threads were exploring the issue of land reparations (where if I remember correctly I did not post anything), where Martin (MJ) was countering – or should I say telling off – people who made wild plans about conquering the whole of Anatolia etc. His arguments sounded quite reasonable and altogether I had had a positive opinion of him, even though I had found, on several occasions, his thinly-veiled insults (not always directed against me) and dismissive style a bit arrogant, with a touch of a “holier-than-thou” attitude in it. But on the whole the relationship was civilised enough for me to keep posting.

 

Then there came a Turk who wanted to establish friendship with the Armenians and to discuss whether it was a genocide or not. He got the answers he got from the Armenian members of the forum, and I posted a reply in which I dwelt upon the undeniability of the fact of genocide in the face of the evidence and the moral obligation of the Turks to admit to it and relieve the torment of the victim to some extent at least by accepting that what happened to them was what it was. This appears to have touched MJ, and he posted a reply praising my approach. So far all was fine.

 

Soon after that, however, he posted an entry where he invited me to discuss the “land issue”. I was shocked, not so much at the proposal itself, this place being an Armenian forum, but at the person who put it forth: this was the person who was disparaging at other threads those Armenians who had made land claims part of their agenda with sound arguments, usually a cool head, and very occasionally a language that I as a well-bred Turk would think twice before using. The essence of his argument appeared to be “You seem to be a civilised guy, we are in agreement about the fact of the genocide, so that’s out of the way, now let’s get down to business and sort out what lands we get back and what lands you get to keep.”. His (and not only his, as I discovered later) attitude was “Civilised is the Turk who agrees to cede part of Anatolia to Armenians. Barbarian is the Turk who holds that he has the same right to Anatolia as all conquering nations have to their current lands, like the Americans, for instance.”. Of living together in peace on the same soil, needless to say, there was not a word to read.

 

So I was a barbarian for holding on to what was mine. Over time the conversation deteriorated significantly in quality, MJ resorting to personal attacks (he had a habit of doing that at the time, and not only with the Turks). His ire reached a climax with the declaration that “genocide recognition is meaningless without land reparations”, at which point I was compelled to remind him of his on postings in other threads precisely to the opposite effect. This also went on for a while, and then (I think there had been a brief pause when I was not visiting the forum) MJ somehow turned around and started to disparage me for having claimed that he had ever posted anything to the effect of claiming land. At this point I did something I should have done a good deal earlier and posted our discussion about it, having copied and pasted it from the thread where it had been running, with the heading “let me refresh your memory” (MJ had claimed not to remember about any such posting). To this MJ gave the shortest and most timid reply I ever read of him in the forum: “Yes, Ali. And I stand by what I wrote.” No explanation, no elaboration, no addressing the glaring contradiction in his past and present postings, and – how could one dare expect it from MJ, anyway – not even a hint of an apology for a style of conduct that had no moral basis whatsoever. This disgusted me.

 

What disgusted me even more was the attitude of the crowd that was until then mostly just watching the whole thing unfurl. They started coming to the fore and I felt I was being hunted down. It was as if one predator wounds a prey and then a whole pack of them arrives at the scene to have a share of the kill (it felt like Jurassic Park). There was not one word of criticism for MJ’s attitude (I wonder whether some people present had even actually noticed the logical contradiction and moral bankruptcy of MJ’s – and their – position). All this was going at a relatively high pace (just like a hunt should) and I also had some other problems aside (some health issues, the marriage plans not working, working on a salary truncated to 18% of its former self – early in 2001 we had had the greatest financial crisis the country had had since the end of the Second World War – and frankly speaking I got quite disillusioned with the sort of experiences I was getting at the forum. After all, there were plenty of right-wing Turkish forums where I could get some really low-level crass intellectual(!) output on the Armenian issue (or most any other issue) should I so desire. I hadn’t, and I decided to leave the forum before the disillusionment got even deeper. This hasn’t turned into an attitude against the Armenians themselves or the Armenian Question, however, as I was careful to inform the forum members in my “farewell” post if it may be called that, and turned to other pursuits.

I was, as stated above, checking the forum for the reactions of the Armenian community to the quite momentous developments that have been happening on this front since I left the forum, and found the recations (in many cases lack of them) quite disappointing, which reinforced my conviction that I had done the right thing by leaving the forum. About two months ago I got a message from a forum member and discovered while trying to reply that my password had been reset, so I asked the moderators to reset it, and here I am.

 

I should like to read the comments of forum members on the above before posting further.

 

Yours,

 

Ali (and not Alishan, sorry)

[Azat]

Ali,

 

Welcome back. I do not have time to reply at present, but can inform you , as a wayward Armenian who embraces the "Eastern " religions that MJ's negative karma has boomeranged to bite him as he is in serious financial straights at present. His personal financial circumstances have gone into a nosedive.

WOW. who knew that you were MJs personal financial planner. Stick to the topic and things you know and not into the business of others.

[MosJan]

phantom22 : you souled not discus personal information - specially wan the person in question is no longer a member in our forum

 

MOvses