TURKEY'S CRIMINAL PAST

[Yervant1]

TURKEY'S CRIMINAL PAST

 

Sarajevo Portal

March 18 2010

Bosnia and Herzegovina

 

The United States is responsible for many crimes against the native

populous, the Native American people. Genocide was committed in the

name of a "civilized" and "Christian" world. Native Americans were thus

expelled from their land and were relocated many times, they were also

conned and forced into selling their land, and were eventually killed

off; a small population remains from what were once millions. The

barbaric treatment of the Natives amounted to forced relocations such

as the Trail of Tears, and the racist program enacted by the American

government "Kill the Indian Save the Man" whose aim was to culturally

destroy the Natives by kidnapping their children and sending them to

boarding schools, where they would learn to become culturally White.

 

The American government has since admitted to its genocidal role. They

have passed numerous bills, especially during the Bill Clinton

Administration, which funded the revitalization of Native languages

and financial aid in all forms of economic life to Native Americans.

 

The government is even planning a formal apology known as the "Native

American Apology Resolution" which seeks to formally have the U.S.

 

Government apologize for its crimes against the Native people.

 

Nazi Germany was a nation like no other. It sought to rule Europe under

its racist policies against Jews and non-Europeans. Germany, under

the supreme command of chancellor Adolf Hitler, catapulted Europe,

and then the world, into a devastating World War. Millions died. The

damage was unprecedented and country after country fell to the Nazi

War Machine. Genocidal programs, legalized in the name of "pure

blood", ended the lives of millions upon millions. Yes, this indeed

was genocide at its finest, and much like the genocide of the Native

Americans, Jews and others saw their numbers fall. Even Europeans

who were against the Nazi regime perished, along with their families,

in a raging - racial war that wiped out over 60 million people.

 

Today, Germany has moved away from its past. It has sought to right

its wrongs by paying reparations to every nation Nazism had affected.

 

Today there is even a certain percent that is deducted from every

Euro in Germany, as reparation to the holocaust, which goes directly

to Israel. Paintings, gold, and other valuable items looted during

the Adolf Hitler era have mostly been returned. Memorials have been

dedicated in the name of victims, and Jews in Germany are even exempt

from having to serve in the military. Of course, the reparations can

never bring back those who perished, but the fact that Germany has

acknowledged its past is a major step toward regaining respect that

Germany lost because of Adolf Hitler. Today Germany is a major player

in humanitarian aid around the world, and donates more money than

any other European country to other, less fortunate nations. Indeed,

we must commend Germany for its attempts to erase the burden of their

past and to be remembered as a positive nation.

 

England, like the two nations mentioned above, was not always a

"freedom loving" country. Instead, it had colonies, slavery, and

a ruthless military that conducted genocide after genocide, took

territory after territory in the name of England and the Queen. The

aboriginals in Australia suffered a fate similar to the Jews in Nazi

Germany, or the Native's in the U.S., and England even expanded

its greedy empirical hands towards Asia - prompting an Opium war

that caused tragic losses. But England also expanded towards Africa

and participated in savage diamond trades that left thousands upon

thousands of native-Africans dead.

 

Today, England has given up most of its colonies. It has acknowledged,

for the most part, its bloody past filled with oppressing smaller

nations and the theft of valuables. England could do better, however.

 

In having acknowledged its role as an aggressor, it has not stepped

up, like Germany for example, in paying reparations to the victims.

 

But acknowledging is better than ignoring, which brings us to the

fourth, most uncaring perpetrator of terror in history - the Ottoman

Empire.

 

Modern Turkey is no doubt the successor of the Ottoman Empire. Much

like the Federal Republic of Germany is to Nazi Germany, or modern

England to colonial England, so too is Turkey to the Ottoman Empire.

 

The problem stems from Turkey's brutal past, which has never been

acknowledged by the Turks, and crimes perpetuated by the Ottoman

Empire continues to be rejected by the modern country. The genocide

of Armenians, for example, is something in stark similarity to

the holocaust committed by Adolf Hitler's regime, and the Ottoman

Empire's culturecide inflicted on those in Bosnia is similar to the

United States program, known as "Save the Indian, Kill the Man." The

Ottomans, likewise, kidnapped Bosnian children and sent them to

Turkey for re-education and Islamization, in order for them to become

Janissaries - or infantry units of the Empire loyal to the sultan.

 

Turkey, the successor of the brutal regime, has never made attempts

to repay the people of Bosnia or Armenia, its victims, or for that

matter to issue an apology, since the Turks adamantly reject that

this has ever happened. Similarly, Turkey has never stepped up to pay

Bosnia and Herzegovina reparations for having occupied the country

and its populous, and having destroyed the local customs and culture

of the people by replacing it with Turkish culture, under a brutal

dictatorship enforced through blackmailing.

 

Armenia and Bosnia have suffered the most under the Ottoman Empire,

but others deserve reparations as well: the entire Balkan region -

from Greece to Serbia, both which were victims in their own right.

 

Serbs paid through sacrifices, sending their men to fight the Turks in

hopes of gaining freedom from the tyrannical, religious Empire. The

Serbs lost numerous battles and uprisings, but all in the name of

freedom. Sadly, Turks have never made an apology to either country,

but have instead suggested that the Ottoman Empire be reintroduced

in those regions (how outrageous). This was not condemned by the

world, but it is similar to if Germany stated that Nazism should be

reintroduced. I am positive that the world would not let so much as a

blink go by before pounding on the table and reprimanding the Germans.

 

The Turks have gone long enough without a confrontation, and I think

that it is time that the Armenians, Bosnians, Serbs and Greeks stand

up to the bullies and that they demand an apology on an international

platform. Perhaps monetary reparations should be forced out of them

if they refuse to pay on their own, since their tyrannical past is

still affecting the people of the Balkans to this very day. Turkey's

EU negotiation talks should be immediately halted until they come to

terms with their genocidal, tyrannical past.

 

http://www.sarajevo.net/content/216-Turkeys-Criminal-Past