Politics, history and daftness!
The Armenian “genocide” of WWI is once again in the news. The Americans seem to be on the point of recognizing what happened as genocide, much to the fury of the Turks. (though Obama is – once again – apparently wobbling ….)
To my mind, what happened WAS genocide or as near it as makes no difference, but that judgement is best left to historians and is not what interests me in this matter. No, once again it is the absolute hysteria that nationalism can provoke that intrigues me. I take hysteria to be a form of insanity; it is certainly as potentially destructive. How can most of an entire nation be insane?
The point is – but logic seems to go straight out of the window when nationalist hysteria takes over – that this happened nearly ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. Any Turks involved are long dead. Present-day Turks cannot POSSIBLY be blamed for what their predecessors did, no more than Germans today can be blamed for Hitler or indeed today’s Mongols for Genghis Khan.
What is the POINT of Turks protesting so loudly about what was the appalling mass killings of Armenians? Nobody is going to blame TODAY’S Turks, are they?
The Turks’ current position could be described as anything from wrong through illogical to insane. For goodness sake, just admit the truth and let’s get on with the future. It happened, it wasn’t YOUR fault but THE TRUTH must be told. Without the truth, we are lost.
The irony is – and irony is never far from human experience – that one supposes the Turkish reluctance to admit that it WAS a genocide or as near as dammit is because to do so would mean they “lost face” or “were guilty”, whereas in fact what is reprehensible is the very FACT that they refuse to admit it, not the original events themselves for which THEY TODAY cannot be held responsible.
This seems to me such a self-evident truth that I truly do not understand the Turkish position. Perhaps someone else can help me here ……
As for “we must avoid damaging relations with Turkey”, I can only throw up my hands in despair. The truth is the truth, and what is the VALUE of “relations” based on lies?
As for joining the EU, forget it. There is enough hysteria within our borders already without adding another 90 million people’s worth.
PS And while we’re on the Turks and Armenia, it is time that the Japanese made a more convincing admission that their army was guilty of appalling atrocities in WWII.
By Chris Snuggs
Learning from Dogs 
Old Turks die, but their ideas live on inside Young Turks. And those ideas say that a non-existent Armenian who disappeared in a holocaust that did not happen is a good thing, making Turkey a greater nation, hence enormous Turkish ideals stand ever taller.
Nationalism is not about dead ideas. It is about live ideas that ought to be dead, but thanks to which many live by.
The Argentine military pilots used to exhibit proud:”Las Malvinas son nuestras!” They lived, and died, by it.
PA
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