TURKEY'S "BONDO" APPROACH

[khodja]

Unscrupulous auto body practitioners use a product named Bondo to repair autos damaged in accidents. After a quick paint job the auto appears repaired. The practioner can save themselves a lot of expense in this manner. However the auto is not truly repaired, as it would be if the job was done correctly. Given the recent press release of th Institute for Armenian Research, does the Turkish government really believe that they can "Bondo" the events of 1915-23? Millions of dollars were confiscated from the Armenians and ended up in the banks of Europe under accounts of Young Turk leaders. Thousands of acres of property were confiscated.

 

Territorial disputes are another matter and should be discussed by the Armenian and Turkish governments.

 

Unfortunately the civilians masacred can not be brought back to life. Yes, the majority would have been gone by now. But what of the children and grandchildren they never had?

 

Irregardless of any disagreement of the sequence of events, the first step has to be restitution of Armenian assets to their survivors and progeny. This is not reparation but restitution. The Young Turk government blanketly confiscated the assets of Armenians, Anatolian Greeks and Assyrians irrespective of their activity. Their assets were targeted solely for their identity.

[aurguplu]

khodja,

 

these are the problems you will run into:

 

1. the majority of armenian assets of value (especially land) were, to the best of my knowledge, not distributed across anatolia but concentrated in istanbul. these lands are now the property of turkish business magnates. even if you can persuade the turkish government in the distant future, your most formidable enemy will be these business magnates. i am sure a map of istanbul will show you what i am talking about.

 

you can find the relevant people/organisations listed with TÜSİAD.

 

regards,

[khodja]

Ali,

 

Thank you for confirming what I already knew. Yes, the majority of assets of the Amira were concentrated in Istambul (Constantinople,) but not all the assets were concentrated there. As for these Turkish business magnates, how did they come upon these assets? Who were their grandparents? It all goes back to geneological studies. I am sure that some of these Turkish business magnates are just recently converted Armenians. What the Triumvirate offered my family members was offered to other Armenains as well. They were told that if the renounced their religion and the few remnants of their cultural identity that they would be given some of the assets of the other Amiras who would not renounce their Christianity. There is so much to this ugly chapter in Turkish history. I can see why the Turkish government approaches it so gingerly. Even the words of Ataturk about what transpired have been expunged from the Turkish consciousness.

[aurguplu]

khodja,

 

there is at least one business family known to be of armenian origin:

 

süren (fuat süren and his son faruk)

 

they own the transtürk holding (currently in bad shape) and a number of other companies, i don't know much about them, but all their companies have had some serious trouble in the past. the son, at least, is very strogngly affiliated to galatasaray (the soccer team) and was frequently accused of neglecting family business in favour of the team.

 

fuat süren's former secretary's daughter was an analyst of mine until the crisis.

 

now three major families, koç, sabancı and eczacıbaşı: koç is a turk from ankara, he started making his money there and ten came to istanbul. sabancı's father was a cotton-piker in adana, he made it rich there and came to istanbul. eczacıbaşı was a son of a pharmacist, who studied in germany and made a huge business out of the health sector.

 

i would take a closer look at sabancı if i were you (also, check out all businessmen affiliated to the mhp, a number of mhp guys are rumoured to be ex-or-crypto-armenians).

 

good luck,

[khodja]

If the American example is indicative of what transpires in Turkey among the wealthy (secrecy of negative publicity), we can assume that many other Turkish industrialists are of Armenian origins. As for the other examples you give, what was the process wherupon the Armenian assets eventually resided in their hands? Who were the middlemen who held these properties in the interim period and eventually sold them to their present owners? And whose fortunes today are based upon the funds confiscated from Armenian bank accounts? I suspect that it was not only Turks who received this windfall but also Germans and other Europeans.

[khodja]

Ali,

 

If the differences between Armenians and Turks are to be sorted out, both sides must be totally truthful. I appreciate you efforts to ascertain the truth as to what transpired. But as I have stated before, mythology is not truth. As long as both peoples hold on to these myths, there will not be much progress, progress which would be beneficial to both sides in the long term.

[aurguplu]

khodja,

 

i agree with you 100%. as i have stated in past postings, the currently prevailing attitude of "what? genocide? never heard of it. what are you talking about?" is on its way out (this was the main refrain when i was young). it has currently given way to "the unfortunate events of 1915 cannot be classified as genocide", but even the turkish version of the events clearly fall within the genocide category. the only ecape route of denialists is the fact that there is no reliable documentary evidence that shows that the triumvirate actually issued the orders (the evidence from other documents, such as testimonies, eyewitness accounts, etc are compelling, but not conclusive evidence). now since we know that the jewish holocaust occurred, and that there is not a single piece of paper ordering the killing of the jews with hitler's signature on it, that last escape route of the denialists is also closed, a fact that turks will realise when they read some european history.

 

people like me are working over here to expose their countrymen to the less palatable truths of their past, and we find ourselves in a situation that could be best described by the turkish idiom "to be able to please neither moses nor jesus". i for one expect the armenians to understand two things:

 

1) their version of the events is not the only truth, we also have things to say,

 

2) we have an already extremely difficult job to tackle, and if they are not going o help, they can at least not be an impediment. so far the armenians have by and large been uncooperative towards the few turks who want to change things, as can be seen from the attitude of the majority of diaspora armenians to the TARC. i understand their fears that this is yet another move by the turkish govt to bury the genocide issue, bt they also have torealise that attitudes are changing even in government circles. as i have stated repeatedly, they cannot take such a drastic step without first forming adequate public support for it, and this will not happen unless and until enough turks are exposed to the truth. they are pursuing this very cleverly, i think: first, they are removing the barriers to truth in front of us, and this has already started to bear fruit: the number of turks who think that what happened was a genocide is increasing.

 

patience is vital.

[aurguplu]

khodja,

 

after the independence war and the ensuing population exchanges with greece, the population structure of anatolia changed out of all recognition. the government at the time was a populist, if i may say so, socialist one, and one of the first things they did was some sort of land reform. land was redistributed among peasants, and as in so many such cases, many rather murky characters appropriated a lot of land, not only belonging to the armenians, but also greeks, and surprise surprise, to many turks. this is a still unsettled issue in turkey where court battles are still going on regarding this issue. if the success of ethnic turks in these battles is anything to go by, it will take at least a century for any armenian to get a penny for the lands his family owned.

 

another problem is that the plots have been re-drawn and built upon. some have been appropriated by the state. i doubt the triumvirate guys have been able to carry off the wealth they usurped, becuase most union and progress families are in pretty bad shape today (a new state means new people).

 

i would very much doubt that the majority of the people who live on former armenian property have had anything to do with the genocide, there were quite a few converted armenians who made a lot of money out of it though. i had explored this in a very early posting of mine, almost a year ago, i am sure mj would remember.

 

the govt has one final thing to worry about, and that is these crypto-ex-armenians. this is a potentially very explosive issue in turkey. as stated before, these are the people who will resist any thaw in turkish-armenian relations because they have vested interests in the current situation.

 

hope this will help.

 

take care,

[khodja]

Ali,

 

The exercise of ideas in this forum is helping to dispel some misconceptions that many Armenians harbor about the present Turkish state. I would hope that the TARC members are conducting a similar catharsis among members. You have been a great help with breaking down some of the misconceptions.

[khodja]

Ali,

 

I think that research into the power and the source of income of these crypto-ex-Armenians in Turkey would be very enlightening. Why is it that they have a vested interest in keeping the present staus quo of antagonism? What secrets are they sitting on?

[aurguplu]

khodja,

i am very happy to hear that, honoured in fact. of course since i don't know the people i have been communicating with beyond their names or nicknames they use in the forum, i myself cannot judge whether my postings have reached any "influential ears". also, i can of course not pretend to be speaking on behalf of anyone other than myself. but so far, especially re the changing attitude of the turkish state, my perceptions were based on my family's past political experience, and y own little political contacts and my diagnoses which were helped by my knowledge of history. now a caveat about my knowledge of history: i have studied it at university, but we put greater stress on the formative period of the ottoman empire than that of the turkish republic, and my knowledge of the latter does leave a lot to be desired. also, after my studies, i came back to turkey with the aspiration to become an academic here, and it was not meant to be, and i ended up in the business world. i still do my reading, and keep my acuireed skills intact, though, in the hope that i will be able to use them sometime in the future when i have managed to pile up some cash to finance my studies.

as for the armenian perception of the turkish state, of course all is not roses and the turkish state is currently undergoing some transformation and there is a lot of bad side by side with some good. it is like the mehter march (if you know what i am talking about two steps forward, one step backward.

but i think on the armenian issue a point has been reached where the genocide is on the way to becoming an open secret. by the time this process is complete, formal recognition will come very easily (i hope).

i hope to be able to contribute more to this. if i were able to do much more than contributing to the forum (and to some political circles in turkey of which i am a member), but at the moment we are going through a serious financial crisis which restricts my moves. when we ge out of it, i hope to be more active in this.

thanks for the encouragement, anyway.

cheers,

[aurguplu]

khodja,

i thought the answer would be pretty obvious: these guys made their money out of the genocide. they either betrayed the armenians, or turned tail just before/during/immediately after the genocide and became instant muslims and were thus able to participate in the looting of the wealth of those who died. we had very little in the way of financial and economic infrastructure at the beginning of the republic, and since most armenians and greeks were gone, and an entire generation of educated, young turks was lost to the war, we had a very serious shortage of qualified manpower (the population of anatolia had fallen from something like 17 million just before the war to just above 12 million immediately after the war), and the founding fathers were not exactly spoilt for choice when it came to recruiting people (one should keep this in mind also when contemplating the use ataturk made of former ittihat and chete members in the independence war and then in the early days of the republic).

now back to the ex-crypto-guys: a formal recognition of the genocide on the part of the turkish govt would bring up the reparation issue. i think that since it would be impractical to proceed on a physical return of stolen property basis for reasons i hda outlined earlier, the solution would be one mighty bill shoved under the nose of the government, which would then pass it onto the people concerned (if it would be acting in the name of justice, which you may doubt as i do is too much to expect from a government). if, on the other hand, it makes the common people foot the bill of the crimes of a select few (o.k., the populace also participated, but they had no idea of hte grand design, and in many cases, they actively protected the armenians and paid for it, too), this would create widespread resentment amongst the common people who are just about making a living, and will make a joke of the notion of justice. this obviously will not contribute a bit to the improvement of relations between the two nations.

so the issue is a financial one. also, forthe formal recognition of the genocide, archives of the last years of the ottoman empire and the first years of the republic will have to be opened, and due to thestructure of the archives, it will not only be the armenian beans spilled: the ethnicity of many of he prominent people, the secrt alliances between the different factions of our society, the secret agreements between turkey and britain re the end of the ottoman empire, many things about the independence war, relations with lenin, etc, all is gonna come out. we will have to entirely re-write the history of the period and step on many tails.

i'll go on, gotta dash now.

cheers,

[khodja]

Ali,

Thank you. I see that the issues are much larger than the issue of the crypto ex-Armenians.

 

Yes, human nature. I am more enlightened. Just to put this all in perspective, my father's cousin, the only adult male to have lived though that era, went to Europe and commandeered all the overseas holdings of his grandfather, father and uncles leaving his two aunts and underage cousins penniless. He never married but had numerous women. When he died years later the other branch of the family in Europe never contacted us in America and therefore received his vast estate. So I have no doubt that much of the confiscated wealth of the Armenians went to these crypto-ex-Armenians.

[aurguplu]

that cousin of your father's was no different from some cousins of my mother's. if you know turkish, here is a proverb you may enjoy: "akrabanın akrabaya ettiğini akrep etmez" (a scorpion would not do what a relative would do to another relative).

as for these crypto-ex-armenians, here is another proverb: "ak koyun kara koyun geçitten çıkınca belli olur" (you can tell the white sheep from the black when both get out of the passage). the armenian genocide was a test for the people concerned, turks, armenians and europeans, and the character of individuals came out. it is in times of distress that you can tell strong character from the weak. these crypto-ex guys were obviously of weak character, as were these guys who ate up all the family's money without a though of their starving relatives who were the rightful inheritors of the wealth.

what gain can mitigate the loss of character? so in this sense i think that relative of yours has lost far more than the rest of your family.

cheers,