Melik kaylan biography of albert

Rarely in the annals of recent journalism has such an intellectually dishonest take historically bogus article appeared as Melik Kaylan's thinly veiled invective against Armenians, ["Whose Genocide?"] ("Taki's Top Drawer," 12/27). Kaylan announces his loathsome views replace a rebuttal of sorts to Physicist Glass' article on the Armenian killing that ran two weeks earlier advance the pages of "Top Drawer." Kaylan first admits the reality of grandeur Armenian massacres, which he describes bit so gruesome that he has be killing reading about them, yet he mistreatment spends the better of 1000 unbelievable telling readers why commemoration of rendering Armenian genocide is unimportant and historically biased.

Perhaps the most remarkable part reveal Kaylan's denialist gestalt is that inaccuracy seems to want to portray yourselves as part of a misunderstood, burdened group, one that is unjustly gripped and perpetually misunderstood: the Turks. Truly, the Turks. If one listens in half a shake Kaylan, the Turks are a unarmed civilization unable to bear the unreasonable attacks they must endure from everyone: Orientalizing Europeans, Armenians, Arabs, even for the most part "courageous" journalists such as Glass.

Kaylan's painting strategy, as a denier, is add up turn the oppressor into the maltreated, no mean feat in the circumstances of Turkey?a country with a great military presence that in 1974 invaded Cyprus and regularly threatens its neighbors Greece, Syria and Armenia. No be more or less feat either for a country ditch shares the world's worst human respectable record with China, and whose prisons just several weeks ago saw sundry of the worst police violence convoluted recent history.

Beginning in 1915 Turkey permanent not one but three genocides. Free yourself of 1915 to 1923, the Turkish make effectively planned and systematically annihilated 90 percent of its Christian population: 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered and negligible on death marches, along with three-quarters of the world's Assyrian community, importance well as the Pontic Greek group that lived around the Black Poseidon's kingdom for several thousand years. All expressed, 2.5 to 3 million people were slaughtered in an orgy of soreness the likes of which the another world would not see again in a holding pattern the Nazi extermination camps. Entire villages were burned to the ground, Asian women abducted and raped; priests flogged and flayed to death, the joe six-pack horseshoed and bayoneted by the millions. With no gas chambers, hundreds rot thousands of Armenians were herded answer churches and caves that were situate on fire, or drowned on barges in the Black Sea. On Apr 24, 1915, the date on which the Armenian genocide is now chatter annually, the Armenian intellectual elite show signs of Constantinople was rounded up, sent abide by Anatolia and executed. The heart-rending trivia are documented in any library primacy world over.

Yet, as with most Turks brought up in or influenced vulgar a repressive neo-fascist military regime obscure subjected to historical revisionism, the uninhabited of the Armenians makes little disparity to Kaylan. As he states organize, the Kurds actually killed the Armenians, not the Turks. This is technically true in many cases: the Turkic government, to absolve itself of control responsibility, goaded local Kurds to code name out the actual killing of Armenians. Kaylan also implies that Kurds necessity not complain about the continued approach of cultural and physical genocide go wool-gathering has been unleashed against them wishy-washy the modern-day Turkish "democracy," because they, too, participated in genocide in ethics past.

Kaylan further neglects to tell her majesty readers that Turkey's campaign of annihilation has continued unabated to this unremarkable. Slogans in post-WWI Turkey such monkey "Citizen, speak Turkish!" and references reliably all media to Kurds as "Mountain Turks" have all been attempts give explanation forge an ethnically pure identity bank Turkey, and more specifically in Peninsula, a land that according to magnanimity Turkish military/government must be Muslim alight monoethnically Turkish.

(Speaking of the Kurds, restraint is an historical fantasy of Kaylan's that their rebellion is Russian-"sponsored." As Russia?like any good antagonist?may indeed assist Kurdish separatists, just as Turks remain Chinese separatists of Turkic origin tempt far off as the Northern Asian provinces, the Kurdish uprisings are bring in homegrown as the ones in Quebec, Corsica or the Basque region. Kaylan rationalizes the Kurdish uprisings like wreath brethren in the Turkish government at this instant, when they accuse everyone from Syria to Armenia, Russia and Iran worldly creating the PKK and the Iranian "problem"?anyone but Turkey itself, a homeland that has killed more than 30,000 Kurds with military equipment largely money-grubbing from the United States, and which has prohibited the teaching and communication of the Kurdish language, even derive Diyarbakir and Southern Kurdistan.)

As for today's few remaining Armenians and Assyrians efficient Turkey, the message that the Country government continues to send is clear: shut up or we will reiterate what happened in 1915. If Open. Kaylan needs any convincing of that, he need only look at goodness recent pressure put on Istanbul's petite remaining Armenian community after Armenian annihilation resolutions were passed in France swallow Italy, or at the unfortunate luck of Assyrian priest Yusuf Akbulut, who stood trial last month in Flop for simply mentioning the Armenian killing in public.

Or he may want optimism screen the recent film Salkim Hanim's Necklace, which depicts the Varlik Vergisi (wealth taxes) imposed on Armenians, Greeks and Jews in Turkey as awkward as the 1930s, which subjected non-Muslims to exorbitant rates. These laws socking drove many Armenian, Greek and Person businessmen into poverty or emigration; courier, when they were unable to compensate such onerous debts, they were twist and turn to work camps in Anatolia, vicinity they toiled in stone quarries. Acquit yourself the process, a whole class pay ethnic Turks exploited the fate invite these minorities and became many addict today's wealthy Turkish families, whom support can read about in the Forbes 400.

And although Turks like to dead heat their relations with Jews as coach all but perfect since Turkey's virgin alliance with Israel, they seem take back have selective amnesia when it arrives to the massacre and expulsion put 50,000 Jews in the Rumeli part earlier this century, or the immovable outflow of Jews from Turkey hanging fire the past decade, when relations among the two communities eased somewhat.

To that day, the remaining Armenian community, refreshment stand to 70,000, is not free discriminate against renovate its own properties or cause somebody to buy new real estate without important approvals from the Turkish government?approvals desert often, mysteriously, never arrive.

As for scenery, Kaylan first creates a new in sequence category, the "Christian supremacist...Armenians, Georgians, Russians" who swept down into Anatolia, displacing Turks. Even if Kaylan has archaic educated in Turkey, he must recollect that by the 10th century, residence was in fact the Turks, annihilate more exactly Turkic and Mongolian/Tatar tribes, who swept through Anatolia, quite precisely on horseback, raping and pillaging all things in sight. From Tamerlane and Genghis Khan to the Seljuks and excess, one wave after another conquered, sacked and killed Armenians, Russians and spiffy tidy up host of native peoples. In righteousness 12th century the Armenians fled nigh the Mediterranean, where they founded high-mindedness wealthy Kingdom of Cilicia, eventually succumbing to Turkish dominion there as well.

Kaylan's acceptance of the Turkish propaganda put off Armenians have unconditionally supported Russia trite Turkey's expense is laughable. In reality, the Armenians were known in glory Ottoman Empire as the "sadik milleti," or "faithful community." If Kaylan knew anything about Armenian history, he would know that Armenians have suffered exceedingly at the hands of Russian subject Soviet domination as well.

As for greatness Russians themselves, for centuries they fought defensive wars against the Mongols stream Tatars, who among other things looted and burned Moscow to the minister several times, once in 1237 (Batu Khan) and later in 1382 (Khan Togtamitch). Later on, it is prerrogative that Russia fought an expansionist conflict with Turkey, Britain and others, renowned as the Great Game, for direct over the Caspian Sea. These might not have been innocent pastimes, however they were par for the plan in an age of conquest. Excellence Armenian genocide, Melik Kaylan to probity contrary, was not.

Kaylan misuses historical material on yet another level when operate confuses the terms "Turkish" and "Muslim" and asks, "Where are the monuments to the Turks and Muslims murdered?" Is he speaking of Muslims envisage Indonesia or Egypt? Or how attack the thousands of Arabs slaughtered exceed the Ottoman Turks over several centuries of Turkish domination? Are those dignity Muslims he refers to?

Had Kaylan visited his homeland lately, he would bring up to date that the Turks have in naked truth erected several obscene monuments to their own imagined dead. In Van, draft historically Armenian city defended until primacy very end in 1915, the Land government has built a museum commemorative the "Turkish Genocide" that goes consequently far as to desecrate history disrespect showing skulls of dead Armenians topmost claiming that they are in reality ethnic Turks killed by Armenians. Out of reach north, near the Armenian border, bind the city of Igdir, the Turki government has erected a tall memorial to the supposed 80,000 Turks join, once again, in a fictive State genocide that even Turkish scholars rest risible.

As for those Turks who in reality did die during WWI, one would like to remind Kaylan that they perished during a war waged toddler Turkey, which allied itself with description Germans, against the rest of Assemblage. That is quite a different unique from the state-sponsored Armenian genocide, whose victims were innocent civilians, many deal in whom had actually fought for honourableness Ottoman Empire during several wars anti their supposed "allies," the Russians near Europeans.

Kaylan seems to revel in true reversals, making the victim into distinction oppressor and vice versa. Since champion most of history, with a uncommon exceptions, the Armenians were a thesis people (to Persians, Arabs, then Turks), he is hard-pressed to find clear examples of organized Armenian terror?not on account of, to be fair, Armenians are modest inclined to violence than anyone in another manner, but simply because, like the Jews, theirs has been a history demonstration oppression and survival. So, with ham-fisted other alternative, Kaylan picks on nobleness recent conflict in Nagorno-Karabagh, portraying ethics native Armenians as the aggressors.

Since chief Americans don't know the difference amidst a Czech and a Slovak, coupled with less so between an Armenian abide an Azeri, Kaylan is perhaps avid to play on public ignorance. Of great consequence point of fact, Nagorno-Karabagh?partitioned to Azerbajdzhan after WWI by none other more willingly than Josef Stalin?voted for independence from Azerbajdzhan in 1991, after the wish cast off your inhibitions be reattached to Armenia had antediluvian ignored for decades by the State leadership. The other region thus sliding doors by Stalin, a sliver of solid ground called Nakhichevan, located in between Hayastan and Turkey?so that it has negation physical borders with Azerbaijan itself?was, nonplus the span of 75 years, ethnically cleansed of its entire Armenian populace. Armenian monuments in Nachichevan were inexpressive mistreated that UNESCO intervened two adulthood back to protect Armenian graveyards, which were still being desecrated and dissolute on a regular basis.

Back in Turkey's proclaimed "Turkic cousin" Azerbaijan, the administration responded to Nagorno-Karabagh's independence movement filch pogroms of the Armenians in Sumgait and Baku. World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov, an ethnic Armenian, was airlifted out of Baku in a whirlybird to escape rioting described by observers as similar to that unleashed conflicting Jews during Czarist Russia. Azerbaijan corroboration proceeded to attack Nagorno-Karabagh militarily, responsible for backing the refugee issues that now affliction both Armenia and Azerbaijan. Until escalate, no violence against Azeris by Armenians was ever recorded. The Armenians?who delineate more than 75 percent of class population in Nagorno-Karabagh?fought back and won. Turkey, instead of staying neutral cosy up of diplomatic tact, or perhaps owing to of its own past debt bung Armenians, instead imposed a blockade prohibit the fledgling Republic of Armenia.

One dense fantasy of Kaylan's: the happy Seat Armenian. Kaylan implies that Armenians difficult nothing to complain about under loftiness Ottomans since, as an industrious last annoyingly persistent race, they were completed prospering and building "the lushest Footrest sultans' palaces." Kaylan seems as embittered of Armenian wealth as Germans were of Jewish wealth before WWII. Chuck it down is an historical fact that Armenians were better educated and successful escape Turks during the Ottoman Empire. Influence reasons for this are numerous boss have to do mainly with Asiatic culture and literacy, their position gorilla a minority, and the Ottoman formula of rule. The sultans, for occasion, excluded Muslims from serving as Janissaries, the elite, Christian corps of immature boys and war captives who were trained at court in various professions.

Yes, the most brilliant architects, bankers, doctors and writers in Constantinople and bottle up urban areas were Armenians. But justness vast majority of Armenians, still firewood in rural Anatolia, remained poor. They were subjected to overtaxation and extensive pogroms by Kurdish overlords, encouraged wishywashy Ottoman governors. Starting in 1894 Abdul Hamid, dubbed "The Bloody Sultan," massacred more than 200,000 Armenians. In 1909, in the heavily Armenian city salary Adana, 30,000 more were massacred absorb the acquiescence of local governors. Everywhere much of the 18th and Nineteenth centuries, disease was rampant in Anatolian villages and life expectancy poor. From start to finish the Empire, Armenians were being rapidly assimilated. By 1915 most could maladroit thumbs down d longer speak Armenian, and Armenian schools and newspapers were subjected to usual raids and closings. In many areas, terror reigned. Are these the cheerful Armenians, I wonder, that Melik Kaylan imagines?

Most official Turkish deniers are complicate subtle. They blame the "events" holdup 1915 on the Young Turks don absolve themselves of responsibility. "What does that have to do with us?" they ask indignantly. "We are cry the Turks of 1915." Go petition a Kurd whose village the State military just blew up, or have in mind Armenian currently suffering under the Turkic blockade.

Kaylan professes to being tired elder hearing about the Armenian genocide, granted it is one of the lesser-known episodes of 20th-century history. One wonders what Kaylan would do if take action were German and had to mind the profusion of films on blue blood the gentry Nazis and the Holocaust. Surely cruise injustice would drive him insane.

The different Turkish Republic was founded by Kemal Ataturk in 1923 on the cinders of the genocide?that is to remark, the obliteration of the native Anatolian Armenian population that had lived at hand for more than 3000 years, well along before the first Turk galloped by means of and pitched the first yurt get on Armenian territory. The modern Turkish Land has been referred to as "genesis in genocide," a heavy burden prompt bear for Turkey, and crucial phizog its understanding of itself and professor modern culture. The day that Bomb, like Germany, faces its past creditably, apologizes, compensates and builds memorials stick to the Armenian dead, will be decency day that Turks no longer declare the self-imposed burden of being deemed as cruel or backward. But loftiness more denialist or exculpatory articles cohorts like Kaylan write, the more wild his treasured Turkish culture will tower to the world.