Views differ on Turk-Armenian atrocities

[Azat]

I read Jennifer Valoppi's May 6 Focus column, Armenian survivors' terror, valor won't be forgotten, with sadness and astonishment. The Turkish view is ignored, and we are shown as barbarians. We have evidence that an Armenian genocide didn't take place. Sadder still is that a substantial amount of the Turkish population was slaughtered in the eastern cities of Turkey. Pictures of the city of Van show that it was demolished. Why should Turks do that in their own city?

Additionally, during the Armenian attack on Turks, many were slaughtered, and a lot of Turks fled their homes, leaving everything behind. This exodus made a mark on our history and language. The year Turks were slaughtered by Armenians is called ``kac kac'' -- ``run run,'' as Turks ran away from the slaughter.

 

People used this specific year as a reference point. There was a time when someone might have asked people of our grandparents' generation: ``How old were you during `kac kac'?''

 

 

ERDOGAN KOC

Istanbul, Turkey

 

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I know the other side of the story. My own relatives also suffered heavily at the time. My father, who as a regional commander in Maras, saw Armeninan Tashnak bands burn alive Turkish women and children in a mosque.

 

What happened in 1915 wasn't premeditated genocide, but an armed struggle incited by Armenian extremists collaborating with Russians who were invading Turkey.

 

However, I would rather have these tragic events relegated to history, lest they continue to incite more hatred among Armenians and Turks. I went to school with many Armenian friends who were like true brothers to me, and one of them, Arto, said to me just before he passed away: ``Altemur, my dear brother, let us not let these fools (extremists) come in between us.'' I cherish his memory.

 

 

ALTEMUR KILI

Coral Springs

 

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Jennifer Valoppi never mentioned the casualties of four Muslim Turks dying for every Armenian killed in that civil war.

 

The ``genocide'' she refers to never was labeled as such either by the League of Nations nor the current United Nations. Sixty-nine historians, scholars and other experts on this issue, representing top American universities and colleges signed a statement addressed to the U.S. Congress saying, ``Much remains to be discovered before historians will be able to sort out precise responsibility between warring and innocent, and to identify the causes for the events that resulted in the death and removal of large numbers of eastern Anatolian population, Christian and Muslim alike.''

 

Valoppi should be asked if the blood of her Armenian ancestors was more valuable than the blood of the innocent Muslim Ottoman Turks, who also lost their precious lives.

 

 

MAHMUT ESAT OZAN

Miami Lakes

 

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While Valoppi's column made good reading, it didn't accurately chronicle what happened in the spring of 1915. Between 1890 and 1920, bands of Armenian rebels, in collaboration with Russians were invading Anatolia in an effort to overthrow the Ottoman Empire.

 

To protect its sovereignty, the Ottoman Empire was forced to relocate Armenians beginning in May of 1915. During this struggle, which spanned almost 30 years, millions of lives were lost, both Armenian and Turkish alike. Like Valoppi, Turkish people can recount similar atrocities perpetrated at the hands of Armenians.

 

It has been more than 80 years and several generations since these atrocities took place. The time has come for Turkish and Armenian people to join in peace and harmony, and make sure that our children and grandchildren don't bear witness to atrocities in the future.

 

 

LARRY GERMI

Miami

 

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Valoppi's well-written piece revived my own childhood memories. Every Tuesday and Thursday, I brought canned goods to my elementary school, P.S. 100 in Brooklyn, N.Y., which collected food for the ``starving Armenians,'' victims of Turkish persecution. (Some poor Armenians ate my Boston baked beans for years.)

 

Also, when I didn't eat all the vegetables on my plate, my mother would admonish me about the Armenians, and I had to finish every scrap.

 

The lesson we learned was that ``starving Armenians'' became the symbol for persecuted people everywhere, and that we, as Jews, who at that time had suffered the same persecution in Eastern Europe, had to be concerned for and aid all persecuted people, irrespective of race or religion.

 

 

ARTHUR J. LEVIN

Coral Gables

 

http://www.miami.com/herald/content/opinio...docs/106751.htm

 

 

Here is the original article

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Armenian survivors' terror, valor won't be forgotten

BY JENNIFER VALOPPI

 

In the spring of 1915, 86 years ago, an event took place that would change the face of the world and my family. It was the first genocide of the 20th Century. Two million Armenians were killed in a massacre the Turkish government denies to this day.

 

My grandparents, Yephrem and Lucy Sarkisian, were among the survivors. They came to this country in search of freedom and simple human kindness, and they were grateful to it until their dying days.

 

Yephrem passed away some years ago in his 90s. At his funeral, I learned he came to this country before the genocide, but returned to fight when word of the atrocities spread.

 

When I was a child, he told daring, almost unbelievable stories of how he and some brave young men fought against the Muslim Turks for their freedom as Christian Armenians. A small group of them had been captured, he would tell us in whispered tones and broken English.

 

``We were stripped of our clothes and promised we wouldn't be harmed, as long as we cooperated,'' he told us.

 

My grandfather and a few others didn't believe them and escaped. Yephrem hid in the woods and watched as their captors decapitated the remaining men. With a tear in his eye, he recounted seeing one man still screaming as his head fell from his body and rolled along in the dirt.

 

My grandfather hid in the mountains for a year, as near as he could tell, eating mostly berries and waiting for a chance to rejoin the fight. He eventually met my grandmother, Lucy, in a refugee camp. He was 18; she was 13. They married and together began a journey to the United States.

 

At her young age, Lucy knew nothing about men, but much about the cruelties of life. She grew up on a farm at the base of Mount Ararat. Her family raised black sheep.

 

She would smile when she spoke to us of playing with her brothers and sisters and the large tortoises indigenous to the area. They rode the creatures up the sides of the mountain, she said, like men on their horses.

 

Without warning, life suddenly changed for the carefree child when the genocide began. With watery eyes, but never sobbing, she would tell her grandchildren how she saw pregnant women jump off a bridge and drown themselves, as the Turks rode into town with their long curved swords. The Turks would stack Armenian fetuses on the swords, holding them high in the air as a badge of honor while riding in full fury.

 

In fear, Lucy's family decided it was safest to split up. My grandmother was taken, along with her 6-month-old sister, to a neighboring farm. It was the home of Kurdish friends. The Kurds were exempt from Ottoman Turkish Leader Talaat *****'s ethnic cleansing.

 

The neighbors agreed to hide Lucy in their barn. They would sneak food to her when they could. Lucy meticulously chewed and fed the meager food to the baby, in the hopes her sister could absorb some nutrition. She couldn't. One morning when Lucy awoke, the baby was stiff. She folded the baby's arms across her tiny chest. Lucy took off her slip, ripped it and wrapped it around the baby. Under cover of darkness she dug a hole with her bare hands, said a prayer and buried the child.

 

Today, I sometimes think those were frightening stories to tell a small child. But when I was young, I thought they were courageous, sad, even romantic. I was awed at the strength of the human spirit, and I was grateful I grew up in this country, not Turkey.

 

I remember telling my grandmother I could never have lived through all that. She said, ``Of course you could. You'd be surprised at what you can do when you have to.''

 

In the weeks before my grandmother's death, I chronicled much of her life. It had been happy and innocent once. She understood pain and suffering, and accepted it as a part of life. She had unwavering faith, believed in putting others first and bore no grudges against anyone, except the Turkish government for refusing to admit what it had done.

 

A German medic working in Turkey secretly chronicled the genocide of two million Armenians. Armin Wegner's photos document the atrocities. When Hitler began his campaign against the Jews, Wegner wrote to Hitler and asked him to leave the Jews alone.

 

Hitler is said to have replied, ``Who remembers the Armenians now?''

 

Jennifer Valoppi is a news anchor at WTVJ-NBC 6.

http://www.miami.com/herald/content/opinio...docs/081502.htm

 

[ May 13, 2001: Message edited by: Azat ]