TURKISH PM APOLOGIZES FOR DERSIM SLAUGHTERS

[Yervant1]

You know what's next Mr. Erdogan, be brave and honest now!

 

 

 

TURKISH PM APOLOGIZES FOR DERSIM SLAUGHTERS

 

news.am

Nov 23 2011

Armenia

 

ANKARA. - Turkish PM, head of the ruling Justice and Development

party Recep Tayyip Erdogan made a statement on Dersim slaughters.

 

"Turkish PM stated that Dersim slaughters in 1937-1938 were planned and

perpetrated step by step. An operation was carried out, the reasons

of which were prepared beforehand. Some people try to legalize the

viewpoint that a rebellion was suppressed in Dersim. The Dersim

events are one of the painful and tragic pages of our history,"

Erdogan stated, Today's Zaman reports.

 

According to the PM, current ruling party is not the one to apologize

and face it. The author of the bloody events is the Republican People's

Party (CHP), MPs and the party leader from Dersim. Erdogan showed a

document stating that a total of 13,806 people were killed in between

1936 and 1939 in Dersim.

 

"If there should be an apology on behalf of the state I can do it

and I am apologizing," PM stated.

 

Turkish authorities suppressed the Dersim rebellions by annihilating

thousands of villages.

 

Various sources claim that about 100,000 people were killed in the

slaughters. Armenians who escaped from the 1915 Genocide and sheltered

in Dersim villages, underwent double genocide in 1938.

[Yervant1]

ERDOGAN OFFERS HALF-HEARTED APOLOGY FOR DERSIM MASSACRES

 

ASBAREZ

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

 

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan

 

Erdogan also said one of the main obstacles to Turkey's becoming

"one of the world's most powerful states is that it can't face up to

its past, history, taboos and fears."

ANKARA (Combined Sources)-Turkey's prime minister apologized Wednesday

for the first time for the killings of nearly 14,000 people in a

bombing and strafing campaign to crush a Kurdish rebellion in the

1930s, reported the Associated Press.

 

The apology by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was no big change

of heart but a political tactic to tarnish the reputation of the

opposition party, which was in power at that time. Still, comes at

a tense time for relations between Turkey and its minority Kurds,

and it sparked calls for Turkey to face another dark chapter of its

history-the Armenian Genocide.

 

Erdogan on Wednesday offered his apology for the killings of 13,806

people in the southeastern town of Dersim - now known as Tunceli -

between 1936 and 1939. The apology came after a war of words between

Erdogan and the leader of the main opposition party.

 

According to Hurriyet Daily News, Erdogan showed documents dated

August 1939, which stated the operations had killed more than 13,000

people between 1936 and 1939.

 

Erdogan further defined the Dersim killings as "the most tragic

incident of our near past."

 

An opposition lawmaker, Huseyin Aygun, from the Republican People's

Party said a dozen of his relatives were killed in Dersim and added

that details about the suppression of the rebellion needed to become

known, added the AP.

 

Erdogan's apology appeared aimed at embarrassing opposition party

leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, whose party was in power at the time of

the rebellion. Kilicdaroglu's family is also rooted in Tunceli.

 

"Am I going to apologize or are you?" Erdogan asked Kilicdaroglu in a

televised speech. "If there is need for an apology on behalf of the

state, if there is such a practice in the books, I would apologize

and I am apologizing."

 

Some ruling party lawmakers called for a probe into the Dersim

slayings, where troops of Turkey's newly founded republic brutally

crushed Kurdish clans that rejected central authority.

 

"Instead of looking for a culprit, we must chose to face history,"

government legislator Mustafa Elitas said.

 

Mustafa Armagan, a historian and researcher, told state-run TRT

television on Wednesday that the military's campaign in Dersim was

followed by forced migrations and massacres as well as policies

of assimilation.

 

The prime minister also said one of the main obstacles to Turkey's

becoming "one of the world's most powerful states is that it can't

face up to its past, history, taboos and fears."

 

Turkey is also under pressure to acknowledge other dark pages in its

history, including the Armenian Genocide a special wealth tax imposed

on Jews in the 1940s and attacks on its Greek minority in 1955.

 

Despite the calls for search for truth over the Dersim incidents,

Erdogan's government has said it would only halt its current military

drive if the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK disarm.

 

However, the government has left the door open for future talks.

 

Turkey has long realized that it can't end the Kurdish rebel war

through military measures alone, and the government has granted more

cultural rights to the Kurdish minority such as broadcasts in the

once-banned Kurdish language on state television.

 

But the rebels and Kurdish activists insist on autonomy and Kurdish

education in schools, which Turkey fears could divide the country

along ethnic lines.

[Arpa]

CAVEAT EMPTOR- Buyer beware!!

Apology-mapology. Yerkou para/luma chi arzhi.

It is like moshe promsing Mahmoud Palestinian independence, but ???

Talk is cheap. Did he even acknowledge that kurdish is a distinct ethnos and language? Did he promise a free and independent kurdistan?

Here erbokhan sings his theme song-confession- “ The Great Pretender”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtXnUEW_OXw&feature=related

And here he sings- Yes Madame Europe! “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”

There may be some who believe his “cry wolf” and “crocodile tears“,.

Talk is cheap, where ‘s the beef/shish kebab?

Apologies of the kind and two cents may get you a bus ticket to Antalya.

What’s next? Apologize to the Armenians for those “events” when three ragtag Armenian freedom fighters slaughtered three million furks and other muslims?

We remember when that master liar did this, that made some of us jump with joy;

 

http://hyeforum.com/index.php?showtopic=16556&pid=207789&st=0entry207789

Nothing new. This is an old game going all the way to the days of hamid with the so called “reforms/constitution” , and we fell for it time after time.

To repeat an old Arabic adage- When the wolf (lion) bares its fangs, it does not mean it is smiling.

 

----

http://www.animalshirts.net/wolfshirts/wolfshirtMJ37.jpg

 

http://www.animalshirts.net/wolfshirts/wolfshirtMJ37.jpg

Speaking of “neo-ottomanism”;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanzimat

 

In Armenia, the Armenian National Constitution (Turkish: "Nizâmnâme-i Millet-i Ermeniyân") of 1863 was approved by the Ottoman government. The "Code of Regulations" consisted of 150 articles drafted by the Armenian intelligentsia and defined the powers of the Armenian Patriarch under the Ottoman Millet System and the newly formed "Armenian National Assembly

Edited November 25, 2011 by Arpa

[Yervant1]

ARMENIANS EXPRESS HOPE OVER APOLOGY

 

Hurriyet Daily News

Nov 24 2011

Turkey

 

Sept. 6-7, 1955 events resulted in pogroms throughout Istanbul against

the minorities.

 

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoðan's apology on behalf of the Turkish

state on Nov. 24 over the killings in Dersim in 1938 has created a

stir among Armenians both in Turkey and abroad.

 

"It looks as if Erdoðan is ready to discuss official history in

Turkey. I hope he presents this attitude for the Armenian genocide

as well. Recognizing the genocide would gain Turkey prestige and

make it possible for her to face up to its history," Ara Sarafyan,

director of the London-based Gomidas Institute, told the Hurriyet

Daily News yesterday.

 

Sarafyan said they were ready for a commission of historians to tackle

the issue, but he called for the disclosure of Turkey's confidential

archives as well.

 

Hayk Demoyan, the director of the Genocide Museum-Institute in Yerevan,

also said the prime minister was indirectly referring to what Armenians

claim is a genocide.

 

"The Young Turks committed genocide against the Armenians in 1915. The

Kemalists, who shared the same mindset with the Young Turks, then

subjected the remaining Armenian survivors in Dersim to genocide. As

such, Dersim was the follow up to the genocide," Demoyan told the

Daily News via a phone interview yesterday.

 

Dersim, which is in eastern Turkey, was renamed Tunceli in the 1930s.

 

Demoyan said they were ready for a commission of historians to work

on the issue but expressed skepticism that Turkey could reciprocate

the move.

 

"We are ready to take part in the commission. But are you ready

to disclose the secret archives of the [Turkish] General Staff and

speak of the genocide in an objective manner? How are your academics

supposed to discuss this problem freely when there is a threat hanging

over your country's intellectuals, such as Article 301 [of the Turkish

Penal Code]? Turkey has a problem about confronting its past," Demoyan

said in reference to an infamous legal article that has been used to

criminalize "insults to Turkishness."

 

But Mihalis Vasiliadis, the chief editor of the Istanbul-based daily

Greek newspaper Apoyevmatini, said the prime minister's speech was

a political maneuver.

 

"So, will he also apologize for the events of Sept. 6-7, 1955, as

in the many painful events that occurred throughout the history of

the Republic? I highly doubt that," Vasiliadis told the Daily News

in reference to pogroms against members of the country's minority

communities.

 

"I cried during the prime minister's speech. I believe in him. His

attitude will lead all the way to a facing off with the events of 1915;

the state will apologize to us," Arev Cebeci, a Turkish-Armenian who

ran as a deputy candidate nominee for the opposition CHP during the

last elections, told the Daily News.

 

But Cebeci, whose deputyship bid received much criticism from

Istanbul's Armenian community, said CHP leader Kemal Kýlýcdaroðlu's

statements regarding the issue did not befit a left-wing party.

 

Cebeci also told the Daily News that he had decided to resign from

his active duties in the CHP Assembly.

 

"The prime minister's mental map is identical to that of the Armenian

diaspora. Erdoðan will soon recognize the Armenian genocide, too,"

Kýlýcdaroðlu had said in connection with the ongoing public spat over

the Dersim killings.

 

The prime minister's response, in turn, was no less furious: "You dare

to put me in the same place with the Armenian diaspora? Shame on you.

 

I defy anyone who places Turkish Prime Minister Erdoðan in the

same spot as the Armenian diaspora. Know your place," Erdoðan told

Kýlýcdaroðlu.

 

In the late 1930s, the military launched an operation to suppress

tribes in Dersim, whose population was largely made up of Alevi Kurds.

 

Thousands were killed while many survivors were sent into internal

exile.

[Yervant1]

REGARDING DERSIM: WHAT ABOUT 1915?

by ORHAN KEMAL CENGÄ°Z

 

Today's Zaman

http://www.todayszaman.com/columnist-263841-regarding-dersim-what-about-1915.html

Nov 24 2011

Turkey

 

There is a question I have heard countless times from Westerners and

other foreign diplomats visiting Turkey: "Why is it so difficult for

Turks to discuss the Armenian situation?"

 

Some would query in a more sophisticated manner: "All nation states

have histories marked with a variety of wrongdoings; why are the Turks

still unable to talk about this topic, despite all the time that has

passed?" And really, why is it that we are unable to talk about this?

 

This is a question about which I have spent much time thinking.

 

America, France, England, the Netherlands and other countries all

carried out their "massacres," not only in the lands they occupied,

but at other locations as well. As for us, we killed our neighbors.

 

For those people who came to North America, the Native Americans

seemed very "primitive" and alien people. To the British, Indians were

a people who lived all the way over on the other side of the world.

 

But for us, the Armenians were our next door neighbors. I believe it

is for this that the massacre of the Armenians has left much deeper

scars on our society than the massacres carried out by the Europeans

and Americans.

 

Another factor that prevents us from discussing this issue is the

fact that "modern Turkey" and the "Turkish identity" are founded upon

a sort of "exclusiveness." Those who founded Turkey actually defined

Turks as those who were not the non-Muslims. And there are even more

painful factors, some of which have been pointed out by Taner Akcam and

other writers. Some of those who played active roles in the massacres

of the Armenians were also part of the founding cadres of the Turkish

Republic. Thus, facing up to the past also means that we may lose our

founding "heroes," and have them turned into a series of "murderers"

to be embarrassed about instead.

 

It is now clear that we in Turkey have constructed an identity on

top of this whole denial mechanism. Looking at this situation from

this perspective, many things suddenly become clear.

 

The Canakkale War was a very painful time in history for Turkey. It

was a war that saw us bury tens of thousands of the nation's youth.

 

Despite the pain that Turkey experienced at this time, we can tolerate

monuments to the Anzacs (New Zealand or Australian soldiers who

tried to invade Turkish lands) that stand on our soil, as well as

the descendents of these soldiers who come to Turkey every year to

have "sunrise services" in commemoration of the Anzacs. So why is

it that while we manage to pull this all off successfully, we are

unable to shed a single tear for our Armenian neighbors, or build a

single monument in their memory? When people face up to their pasts,

and reckon with what has happened, they contribute to the evolution

of their societies. But when we deny what has happened, mistakes from

the past become greater than just those mistakes, they actually turn

into a part of the society's identity.

 

These days, the Turkish agenda is dominated by another missed

opportunity for us to face up to the past. There is an open debate

in the Turkish press at this point over documents that indicate that

Ataturk and his military comrades gave the orders for the massacres

in Dersim themselves. We may be talking about the Dersim massacre

for some time to come. This is because the ruling party thinks that

a certain political path in this country is responsible for Dersim,

and that the "mud" that surrounds it will never splatter onto them. But

this same government does not wish to discuss the events of 1915. They

are unable to approach 1915 in the same manner. When the truth of the

matter is that in fact Dersim is nothing other than a repetition of the

same sort of "problem solving" mentality that we saw at work in 1915.

 

At the time when the Dersim massacre took place, the Republican

People's Party (CHP) was in power. If the CHP is actually able to

face up to Dersim, there will be more to come. There is the "Ä°zmir

fire," the "Ä°zmir assassination," the "Ä°stiklal Courts," and many

other events which our official history retellings have managed to

skew. Of course, because the CHP was the "state founding" party its

list of events to face up to is the longest. But as the people begin to

face up to the past in Turkey, no doubt there are factions of society

and political parties, which will encounter embarrassing and painful

incidents from the past. The "ulkuculer" or "idealist" factions have

never faced up to any of the many massacres that mark their pasts.

 

Devout Muslims have never been able to face the fact that they

were used by the deep state as forceps when it came to events such

as the Sivas massacres, the killing of Alevis, and so on. The left

refuses to look at its violence-filled past. And we in this country

continue to live amongst unburied bodies and mourning periods that

were never held. Will these debates, sparked by the Dersim topic,

be a turning point for Turkey? Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan

has apologized for the Dersim massacre, and this is of course a very

important development, but can we really speak of a genuine facing

up to the past if we never touch on what happened in 1915, and simply

cherry pick certain events from our history to focus on?