TURKISH WRITER 'RISKING LIFE AND FREEDOM' TO SPEAK UP ON GENOC

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TURKISH WRITER 'RISKING LIFE AND FREEDOM' TO SPEAK UP ON GENOCIDE

Friday, October 24th, 2014
asbarez.com/128202/turkish-writer-'risking-life-and-freedom'-to-speak-up-on-genocide/

Turkish journalists visit the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute in
Yerevan. Oct. 23, 2014.

ISTANBUL, Armenpress--Turkish writer Serkan Engin considers it
an obligation to speak up about the Armenian, Greek and Assyrian
genocides in Ottoman Turkey.

"This is an ethical duty for me as an honest and honorable
intellectual," Ergin has said in an interview with Armenpress. "This
is my debt and obligation to humanity. I want to talk about all these
genocides perpetrated my Turk ancestors, because in Turkey you must
declare the truth loudly, against the lies of the so-called official
history.

"I'm the child who shouts 'The Emperor is naked.' I'm devoting myself
to the truth at the cost of my life and freedom, because I want to
create and increase awareness about these atrocities, so that similar
crimes against humanity won't be perpetrated again.

"I refuse to be 'proud of' my ancestors who raped little girls, burned
children alive, enslaved women and brutally slaughtered millions of
innocent people," the Laz-Turkish poet told Armenpress.

"I refuse to shout 'How happy is he, who says I'm a Turk' every
morning in school playgrounds. I reject the education system which
tells our children a racist motto like 'One Turk is equal to the
whole world.' I don't want to see any fascist youth in my country,
or in any other country.

"We have to tell our kids that all people of the world are equal to
each other, whatever their ethnicity, language, belief or gender. I
want an education system in Turkey which reveals the importance of art,
philosophy, and science."

Serkan Engin is against all types of "heroic tales" because, he says,
politicians, generals and arms industry corporations use heroic tales
for their own benefit, so that they can send poor young men to war
zones to kill each other.

"I'm an anti-militarist and proud of this. My heart and my pen are my
only weapons. I stand behind all the oppressed people in the world,
as an internationalist socialist poet and author, and my mission is to
be the voice of them. I'm a little child in an adult's body who wants
to love the whole world with childish pureness," the writer stressed.

On Thursday, a number of Turkish journalists visited Yerevan and
made a trip to the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute (AGMI). They
were in Armenia for the "Media Bus Tour" project, organized by the
Eurasia Partnership Foundation.

The journalists visited the temporary exhibition hall of the museum and
were acquainted with an exhibition dedicated to the centennial of WWI.

After that, they had a meeting and active discussion with Hayk
Demoyan, the Director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute and the
Secretary of State Commission on coordination of the events dedicated
to the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

http://asbarez.com/128202/turkish-writer-%E2%80%98risking-life-and-freedom%E2%80%99-to-speak-up-on-genocide/