Principles of resolution of Armenian-Turkish Knot

[aurguplu]

mj,

 

i agree partly with what you say concerning the linking of the two issues in turkey. as for the armenian attitude, you are better able to judge.

 

i do agree that turkey has ben using the sevres treaty and anything that smacks of it as a scarecrow to hold the nation together and impose an authoritarian regime, in fact many politicians (and soldiers) owe a significant portion of their careers to it, but that does not mean that such claims don't exist and should at least not be watched very closely by turkey.

 

turkey is fully aware of the fact that armenia itself is in no position to pose a serious threat to turkey, but it is also equally aware of its own bad press, especially in the west, which is christian (the christian-muslim dimension of this issue can never be ignored or diminished). the sevres treaty, jointly prepared and enforced upon us by most of our present-day allies, showed us crystal clear that even though we may be a bit paranoid, we do really have enemies who would love to throw us "bag and baggage" out of europe, to quote a british statesman of the period.

 

we see anatolia as the only piece of land that we have been able to hold onto after over three centuries of territorial shrinkage, with disastrous consequences that culminated in the armenian genocide, as i had shown in berktay's exposé a few months ago. and we will hae none of the claims on it. this is not fascism, nor paranoia, it is a very normal reaction to imagined and/or real threats against one's territorial integrity.

 

we have suffered at least one such attempt in the recent past, namely the 70-year long kurdish insurgence, which, though now severely damaged, is by no means dead. so we know that a not negligible proportion of the west has still not fully accepted anatolia's territorial integrity as a fact that one has to come to terms with. we have every reason to believe that is not yet the case.

 

this has turned into a "no pasaran" kind of posting, which is not really my style, but i have seen so many conspiracy theories recently that it had to come out. no offence intended to those who respect my nation's territorial integrity, of whatever nation.

 

regards,

[MJ]

Dear Ali,

 

I have a flight in few hours, and canot address the issues raised by you in the previous material. Will be back in few days, and will try to give my feedback.

[aurguplu]

dear thorny,

 

you know what they say about common sense: it just isn't common.

 

regards,

[ThornyRose]

Gladstone(s) - am I correct?



A bit lost here with the Halil Berktay éxpose, I am - remind me a bit?

[ThornyRose]

Have a nice trip, MJ! I hope you like flying, because, boy, I sure don't! (Yuck! Just thinking about it makes me go )

[MJ]

I don't know if it is ironic or tragic, all the flights throughout the US are grounded due to the terrorist acts committed today in New York and Washington. Seems like a concerted effort to use the civilian air fleet to inflic demage to the American symbolic constructions. The World Trade Center is in flames, the tope 40 flors of one of the two buildings has collapsed, there is similar explosion near the Pentago building, and so one.

 

Now, talk about the anti-missile defense ...

[ThornyRose]

Seven spots in all, I think.
And you were going to...?

[MJ]

This time towards the Research Triangle.

 

Another large commercial plane has crashed 80 miles south of Pitsburg.

 

All the airplanes that are in the eir are being gounded at the nearest airports.

[ThornyRose]

Anybody claimed responsibility yet? Not as far as I know...

[MJ]

Not yet. Maybe no one even will explicitly claim it ever...

[ThornyRose]

Or, as it happened here a few times, more than one group might claim responsibility. :-

[MJ]

Thank you for the tips, Ali.

[aurguplu]

dear mj (and everyone out there),

 

tips from someone who is from a terrorist-ridden country (i understand this maniac is attacking the whole of the u.s. and not just one specific place):

 

1. avoid public transport.

2. avoid large malls

3. avoid cinemas, theatres etc. all public places

4. avoid large congregations.

5. if you can, have stuff delivered home rather than buying it at the shop.

6. if you have gas pipes serving your house, have the tap turned off (they will attack gas delivery to blow up places).

7. if you have used tapwater to drink up to now, switch to bottled water.

8. have food & medical supplies at home and check their expiry dates.

9. on the eve of such attacks, looting may occur. be prepared.

 

remember: these guys are not specifically after you. they are trying to terrorise by killing large numbers of civilians to show that your system cannot protect you. that's why they are attacking public places.

 

stay alive & let us know!

 

take care,

[edward demian]

Cilicia was traded for another piece of land with the Bizantines long before the turks came on the scene. The measuring stick in international law as to apriori right between two different populations viing for the same territory is :1000 years. The Armenians can prove 1000 years of uninterupted posession of any teritory they lived in, and more specifically in Cilicia.

You claim to have the strongest military, most numerous population etc.

We have heard that argument before. Many times.

We have heard that from the Hittites, the Babilonians, the Assyrians, the Medians, the Persians, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Mongols, the Russians and now the turks.

Everyone of these huge empires were strong in their own right and became that way through their own prowess and efforts.

Turkey has gotten strong through the charity of the western world. You are the Hare- Khrishnas of the middle east. Chant Communism and the coins kept dropping in your outstretched palm. The reason you want to join the EU is for the welfare benefits. The game is over. Oh, you may get a few more miles out of the Secular Muslim power card, but that game is over. And don't kid us about you being a Democracy. Your turkey is a secular fascist government.Ask any turk or Kurd.

Muslim fanaticism is knocking at your door, and the enemy is you. All we have to do is wait and the lands and everything else will fall in our hands. It will be given to us by those who will trust us more than you.

History and time are our our friends and allies.

[aurguplu]

i am sincerely very much worried for the armenian nation in case such lunatics as edward demian can make it to decision-making posts in their society and lead their nation to yet anothr disaster.

[ThornyRose]

Such a romantic you are... And probably had too much to drink as well!

[khodja]

Aurguplu,

 

I have read your reply to me. I was attempting to address some Armenians whose view of the situation is unbelievably unrealistic. From my perspective a land swap could bring Mount Ararat and a land bridge to the Black Sea into Armenian territory. Your points are well taken, but it would be realistic for Armenians to contemplate an eventual return of portions of Kars and Ardahan provinces. It is within the realm of reason. To consider Cilicia as potential Armenian territory one would have to be in dreamland. As for your other statement I remind you that you government is working to fight the completion of contracts made with Armenian policyholders by American insurance companies. When your government uses all it's diplomatic power too involve itself in private contractual matters between American citizens and Armerican companies, how can you claim that any Armenian will be treated fairly in Turkish courts concerning individual property rights.

 

Both my grandfathers were exterminated by the Triumvirate. Both my parents were exterminated by arch-conservative Americans strongly supported by arch-conservative powerful Armenian-Americans. I have as much contempt for those of my own people who justify the actions of the American right as I have for those of your people who justify the actions of the Young Turks.

[aurguplu]

"I have read your reply to me. I was attempting to address some Armenians whose view of the situation is unbelievably unrealistic. From my perspective a land swap could bring Mount Ararat and a land bridge to the Black Sea into Armenian territory. Your points are well taken, but it would be realistic for Armenians to contemplate an eventual return of portions of Kars and Ardahan provinces. It is within the realm of reason. To consider Cilicia as potential Armenian territory one would have to be in dreamland. As for your other statement I remind you that you government is working to fight the completion of contracts made with Armenian policyholders by American insurance companies. When your government uses all it's diplomatic power too involve itself in private contractual matters between American citizens and Armerican companies, how can you claim that any Armenian will be treated fairly in Turkish courts concerning individual property rights.

 

Both my grandfathers were exterminated by the Triumvirate. Both my parents were exterminated by arch-conservative Americans strongly supported by arch-conservative powerful Armenian-Americans. I have as much contempt for those of my own people who justify the actions of the American right as I have for those of your people who justify the actions of the Young Turks."

 

khodja,

 

when i had first joined this forum, accepting the genocide, i had stated - numerous times - that the main concern of our people was land claims. when i said this, numerous armenians posted replies saying that this was total nonsense, that it was a pretext turkey was using to evade recongnition of genocide, that the only thing most realistic armenians wanted was the recognition of the genocide, that reparations, opening of the borders, and turkey giving up supporting azerbaijan in the nagorno-karabagh conflict, that a tiny group of people with such claims were not at all representatives of the armenian nation as a whole, etc. when i had stated - and shown - the numerous statements, some made very recently by members of the current armenian government, i received no convincing reply (the same attitude when a turk visiting this forum posted the full text of the leter of boghos noubar to the occupying forces during world war one in response to claims that the CUP committed the genocide of "peaceful, law-abiding, loyal citizen sof the ottoman empire" because of an "imagined threat of separatist armenian action", or, in other versions, "for no reason at all". that posting was not answered.) from forum participants.

 

as i have stated i don't know how many times, i am a conscientous turk - like a growing number of others - who deplore the genocide and are disgusted by it. i had also stressed the point that i accepted no justification whatsoever for the genocide.

 

but your posting - if it can be taken as representative of the majority of the armenian public's opinion - confirms my suspicion, and the hardliners' conviction, that the issue will not stop at genocide recognition and financial or physical reparation of lost property, but is only a first step in a greater attempt to partition my country and grab bits of it. if i get into any discussion of land swaps (by the way, what land are you going to give us, since you are talking about a "swap"), then i am a traitor. and i am no traitor.

 

i firmly tell you to forget about land claims. to the best of my knowledge, no-one has got any piece of land from anyone by anything other than force of arms. if armenians get an inch of land from the turks by such agreements, this will set a legal precedent for similar claims - some with better cases - througout the americas, parts of europe, russia, australia, indian subcontinent, you name it.

 

i have tried to do my best to be polite but firm in this posting. i want you to realise that any questioning of the territorial integrity of my country or any other country is a declaration of war, and you have - maybe inadvertently - just declared war on turkey. we have never shirked a war in our history, and we have won the overwhelming majority of them. edward demian said something like that one day the whole of the west would attack us and crush us, and that everything would fall on armenian hands. this they have tried to do in world war one and the independence war, and failed, at a time we were at our weakest. now we are not at all that weak, neither militarily nor politically nor financially.

 

the closest you came to getting what you wanted was world war one. you failed. now, get it!

 

when we go to war, we are fully prepared to pay the greatest price, namely our lives and the lives of our beloved. if you are going to go to war against us, you make sure that your nation is prepared to pay the same price.

 

we have given our lives, you have given your lives, and we won, you lost. we are not after killing you lot because of your armenian genes like the germans were after killing the jews because of their semitic genes. you are now an independent republic, and we respect your right to life, property, independence, human dignity, and territorial integrity (this does of course not include karabagh) and we are not - and will not be, out of our own accord - engaged in armed conflict against armenia. and we expect the same from you and anyone out there.

 

all this aside, i share your contempt and disgust for the perpetrators of the genocide, and offer my (sincere) condolences for your grandparents.

 

if you are open to any constructive dialogue that excludes as a sine qua non principle any cessation of territory, i am here.

 

regards,

[khodja]

Ali,

 

First I will discuss my land swap comment. I do this with trepidastion because there are some of my fellow Armenians who are totally opposed to any talk of this. As you know there is a slice of Armenian territory which seperates two parts of the present Republic of Azerbaijan. One part of this territory abuts the Republic of Turkey. We know that Turkey wants a land bridge to Azerbaijan proper and better access to the Central Asians Turk nations. Armenia needs a land bridge to the sea. Is not a discussion such as this within the realm of reason?

 

As for Ed Demian, realize that being only 1/2 Armenian he must prove his Armenianess by espousing unrealistic Armenian goals.

 

My family and many others considered themselves Christian subjects of a Turkish nation. They did not want to set up an Armenian nation in Pera (now Beyoglu). They were an integral part of the Turkish economy and wished only to continue their lives there. Male family members of my family were offered their lives if they renounced their religion, personally by members of the Triumvirate. My grandmother received the offer of marriage by a very prominent Turk in the early 1920's. The truth about this era is much more complex than appears on the surface. Please continue your dialogue.

[edward demian]

Perhaps I should change mymoniker to lunatic.

I think that you folks have missed much of what I said and remember only my reactions to certain comments.

One certainty is that hystory is constantly in a state of change. Hodgea missquotes me. I clearly said "all we have to do is wait".

You misscalculate power. Power does not come from the end of the gun only. money is power. Guns don't function wthout bullets and bullets costs money. It seems most of the Turks want us to voluntarily give up our land claims before anything. That won't happen. Ter Petrossian contemplated doing that and he was convinced very quickly to step down. If I was a Turk with the decicion power, I would call the Armenian bluff and say: OK, we are sorry, come back and be loyal cityzens. Very few people will come. As for monetary reparations, even if Turkey paid all that it was asked to do, it would still be just paper. Paper for land and blood. All most Armenians want to do is be recognized as the victims so we can put this to rest. And we are tired with this issue. Personnally, I'm spending more time on this issue than I do running my two businesses. This forum is likd drug addiction.

Also, because of the law training I've had in my early ears, I make a large distinction between legal rights and the physical implementation of those rights, or the willigness to act upon those rights. Turkey could guide it's own destiny by acting on it's own rather than becarried away by world events.

Even this NY incident has changed everything. Don't make the mistake of missjudging the American public opinion. Right now, the muslim world is in trouble. To us, and I am American before Armenian, you are all the same. It is not as you like it to be. The average Americans see Islam as the enemy not just a few missguided elements. America has gone to war against Islam twice in it's short history. The Barbary Pirate war, and the Morro war.

[khodja]

Dear Ali,

 

If I divulged the name of the individual who asked my grandmother to marry him, my identity could be ascertained. Suffice it to say that on the surface this individual was not directly involved in the extermination of the male members of my family. He was one who had been a close associate of my family. My grandmother, exquisitely beautiful at that age, resembled a member of the upper class of Western Europe. In the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Constantinople (now Istambul) there were close associations between Armenians and Turks during the Sultanate. All these sociological truths have been buried with the antagonisms that were engendered by the Genocide. Many Armenians do not realize that my family's Ottoman connections were used to greatly assist Ottoman Armenian subjects. Without the name of the our most prominent family member, this will not be clear to you or anyone else.

[aurguplu]

winston,

 

turkey is currently ostensibly ruled by a coalition of senile third-world communists going around in diapers, the modern versions of the thugs of talat, and a bunch of professional crooks, and really by the army behind the scenes. so what do you expect them to be like?

 

still, as i had said in earlier postings: things are changing: i had openly said in quite a few turkish gatherings (some political ones) that the genocide did occur and that we would get nowhere in armeno-turkish relations without adequately addressing this issue. i said this numerous times where ex-military types had been present, and i am still alive and well, and have not been harrassed a bit by anyone. turkish armenians have openly said in television programmes that there was a drama that their people had gone through that was not adequately addressed (hrant dink of agos), and they urged the government to say something (the patriarch). things are changing, and faster than we might think.

 

and at these times of change, we need intelligent individuals capable of starting - and sustaining - constructive dialogue until peace is finally made.

 

we must also not forget that the peace effort will hurt a number of people on both sides financially and professionally (i mean the genocide industry of the armenians and the "we are under attack" industry of the turks), and these people will do their best to turn the clock back (i am horrified to find myself saying that, but they may attempt to turn it back to 1915).

 

what i am going to say now may shock some, but my working knowledge of the issue, acquaintance with the political and other state structures of turkey, tell me that the army can actually play the decisive role in the rapprochement, if they see the perceived threat to turkish territorial integrity gone for good.

 

for anyone interested, this might be an interesting discussion.

[edward demian]

So I am a dreamer.

Is dreaming so dangerous to you as to need to dismiss and marginalize me. Your collection of migratory bands that numbered 100,000 and no more succeeded into conquering all of Anatolia and most of the middle east. Were they not dreamers? I'm sure that the early Armenians looked at those wretched shepperds and scoffed at the idea of the turks coming to lord over them.

You can find a source of pride in that. So I would not discount dreamers.

[aurguplu]

all right edward, you american before armenian:

 

1. we are your (america's) military ally. we have been the most loyal one since we joined.

 

2. we are the first nation to recognise israel, almost as soon as it was proclaimed. and we never wavered from that position.

 

3. we are the only successfully secular islamic state and by far and away the most developed one in every conceivable respect.

 

3. putting all muslims into the same basket with usama bin laden and his supporters is like putting the whole of christendom into the same basket with adolf hitler (and hitler was democratically elected and recognised as chancellor of germany by the whole of europe, even though what it stood for was obvious to everyone long before that). there is no democratically elected political leader in the islamic world comparable to him. gaddafi, saddam, the ayatollah, the taliban, and usama are all thugs who killed (and still kill) their own people to come to power and stay there.

 

don't underestimate our civilisation, or worse still, overestimate yours. you are one glittering example of how feeble the moralprinciples of it can be.

[aurguplu]

dear khodja,

 

please have a look at my latest posting under "u.s. ambassador says genocide is a spiritual rather than political issue".

 

well, what you say would not have been entirely out of reason if we two nations were still not at daggers drawn. and frankly speaking, to prepare the public opinion in either armenia or turkey would be an incredibly difficult and dangerous task.

 

we are both unsettled wannabe democracies, and the very pronunciation of such an intent would cause instant military interventions in both countries.

 

let's first remove the thorn in the flesh and get genocide recognition, condemnation and reparation out of the way. i very strongly believe that from then on, things will vastly improve in a surprisingly short time. maybe even we will be baffled by the speed of it.

 

let's make peace and then the borders will be no problem. there are joint ventures between turkey and greece now, why can't there be between us?

 

when these are sorted out, you decide to establish such a j.v., i will find you the best partners in turkey and float it at the istanbul stock exchange and yerevan stock exchange simultaneously (no kidding).

 

regards,