232) "Listen To Your Father, Mr. President, Parents Know Best "

Commentary by Professor Mahmut Esat Ozan

President George W. Bush The White House Washington, D,C, USA Dear President Bush During March of last year (2000) your parents, the ex-President George Bush and your mother, Barbara Bush, were visiting their favorite spot, Istanbul, Turkey. Your father has a large following of friends there. "We'd rather be here than . .

any other place" was their statement last year. Lo and behold, they are there this month also at the invitation of some Turkish industrialist friends of theirs. Of course the paparazzi are always around them.. Last time they had asked your Father what should the posture of his son, W. Bush be if he were elected the President of the United States. At the time he said the following: "I guarantee you that when he becomes the next U.S. President, George will be on your side. He will advocate Turkey's entry into the European Union, and just like his father he will be a true friend of Turkey and Turks." Then, the former U.S. President, as is his jovial custom, added jokingly, to the journalists' inquiry of, "What if he doesn't Sir? " The ex-U.S. President said: "You know if he doesn't, his father will 'kill' him."

Mr. President, George W. Bush, you may be 'living on borrowed time,' so to speak, as the levity allows me to remind you. Your dear father has given a similar statement the other day to a group of Turkish and European members of the Media. We are hoping that he is right in his assessment of your true feelings for our country of origin, Turkey. For decades now, the Armenians have pulled the wool over your eyes, and the collective eyes of all the world. Through 'hocus pocus,' 'abracadabra' 'hook and crook' they delivered a 'bill of goods' to the entire planet. This was done with the determination and the aplomb of an Armenian rug dealer's tenacity wanting to close a deal. I am sure you have noticed how they hover around you, never letting you forget for a smidgen of a moment that you are their last chance to pronounce the term 'Genocide", even though no other U.S. President has wished to use that word. This "G" word is like the "N" word for us Turks. We do hope you refrain from uttering it.

I am known, in my circles, for calling a 'spade a spade.' When it comes to telling of what there is in my mind. I do not 'beat around the bush,' no puns intended I assure you. Up till now, tales of the problems besieging Turks and Armenians have been told and retold by historians, State Department officials, politicians and the news reporters. With your presumed permission I shall refer to the words written by an American housewife who loves to travel the world over . Her name is Mary Lee Settle, and she has long loved to explore new lands, old worlds, and unknown shores. In her book " Turkish Reflections" she offers an intimate portrait of the one place in all her travels that both charmed her spirit and captured her heart: Turkey, the happiest home she has ever known. She sounds a little bit like your parents doesn't she?

Well, it is quite apparent that Ms. Mary Lee Settle had no 'dog in the fight'. She had 'no axe to grind.' She was completely neutral, only a keen observer. She was unlike the zealot Christian missionaries in 1915 who were feeding the then American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau in Istanbul, sitting in the comfortable chair in his office and never venturing out go anywhere for first hand observations. Mary Lee Settle did not have to rely on the ugly lies the likes of which were being supplied to the U.S. Ambassador some 80 years earlier. She went out to see things personally, listen to ordinary folks and wrote her findings candidly, in her book . As you may surmise, Mr. President the following lines of hers are rather meaningful because this lady had to go through a transformation of sorts before she became a believer of the Turkish everything. Mary Lee Settle says ,"I knew next to nothing about Turkey, and what I knew was not good. What I did not know then is that the country has the worst and the most ill-drawn public image of almost any country in the world."

The time of your decision-making is approaching fast. You have only 72 hours left in which to pass a judgement either for or against accepting the terms of the Armenian lobby's quasi ultimatum on a subject of the 24th day of April. They claim this particular day is the beginning of an alleged premeditated racial cleansing initiated by the Turks against the innocent subjects of the now-defunct Ottoman Empire. The cleverly fabricated news concerning these atrocities committed by the Turks which have been vociferously filibustered for ages against the Turks are so ridiculous. And yet they could be so believable. If you listen to them you may think as you once did, Mr. President, that they really took place 87 years ago in a far away land no Christian, such as yourself should bother to worry about.

These are the descendents of the old citizens of the Ottoman Empire who treacherously revolted against their own government, back stabbing their own fellow soldiers and selling their country to the highest bidders of the times. It was Czar Nicholas II who incited them with a promise of independence which they had never enjoyed before as recorded in the annals of the history of the world. The wartime propaganda machine of the Czar said, if they revolted against their own government, they would have their own land one day in the future. But alas! that day has never come. In the process, dear Mr. President, as you well know, they helped plunge the Middle East into the shape you find it today. What happened in the Eastern Anatolia was just one of the myriad of sufferings which had befallen humankind in the past.

If we bring the Ottomans and their perfidious subjects, the Armenians of 1914-23 who had revolted against them, and place them in mock-up court proceedings involving this crime they insist on calling a "genocide", then we'll find the judges and the juries would be looking meticulously for the existence of an evidence of reciprocity in actions. That is if there existed an unmitigated and premeditated reason for the crime to be committed and/or if there was blood spilled by both sides. The long records of jurisprudence in the world show practically in all such cases it is both of the parties who are guilty of blood-letting. But the Armenians who are responsible for the deaths of over 2,5 million Muslims among the population of the Ottoman Empire do not even own up to having caused a nose-bleed.

This is the type of intransigent people you are dealing with now and will do so more in the remaining years of your presidency . Your decision to placate these unreasonable filibusterers and your relationship with them is bound to shape your foreign policy for these United States of America. Your preference of not listening to your father and going against his sophisticated knowledge of the Turks will either make or break the success of your Middle Eastern posture and demeanor . Your much needed strength in the credibility of your future Trans Caucasian outlook may be considered as being the backbone of your willpower . Furthermore, it will corroborate, above all, your respect for your parents.


"Turkey stands alone among the nations." says Jan Morris, who wrote the introduction for Mary Lee Settle's "Turkish Reflections." She adds that Turkey, for centuries was the terror of Christianity; for generations it was the Sick Man of Europe; today it stands formidably on the edge of Asia surrounded in the universal mind, as always, by an aura of mingled respect, resentment and fear. The assaults of tourism have not much weakened this daunting national personality. The echoes of historical quarrels ,old and new, still swirl around the name of Turkey: the accusations of Greeks, the recriminations of Armenians, the clash between a secular state and reviving Islam. One treads carefully in the Turkish presence. Turkey is no joke."

Yes, Mr. President, "Turkey is no joke" Nevertheless, in the hands of a real bunch of jokers themselves, the Armenians, your decision aggrandizes your responsibility many fold. Please do not feel that you are to remain eternally beholden to a bunch of sly, crafty Armenian hate merchants, for the use of soothing campaign rhetoric you employed during your run for the Presidency. Do not be beguiled by their voluminous mail, and their veiled threats. These people who have been demonstrating more allegiance to Yerevan than to Washington, with the help and abetting done by a group of bootlicking politicians in the U.S. Congress, the Armenian lobby has been steamrollering over every decent attempt by the tiny Turkish opposition. The Boniors, the Radanovics and the Pallones who ignore the damage they have been causing to this wonderful country of ours, would rather keep their fat salaries and stomach the take the fabricated myth of the Armenian lobby. There is no doubt that they are devoid of any real knowledge of world history and as far as I am concerned they lack a sense of patriotism for their own country. Reflecting on the incessant badgering you have been receiving to fulfill the requisite of a campaign rhetoric would be too much to ask from you.

Mary Lee Settle says, "I found there (in Turkey) the greatest capacity for friendship I have ever known..." She continues, "This discovery was only one of the surprises- there is pride, and dignity, and honesty, and the dangerous sensitivity of essentially warm and honest people who, when they feel that their friendship has been offered and betrayed, can erupt into violence, which seems to be all that has been exported of the Turkish ethos.

" Dr. Stephan Ronart, in his "La Turquie d'Aujourdhui , Librairie Orientaliste, Paul Genthner, Paris; 1937, writes: "Turks never let the slightest religious intolerance take hold among themselves, nor did they advance superiority of one faith or of one sect over another."

The famous French writer Pierre Loti, who lived among Turks for a number of years during the times when Turks were accused of committing those horrendous genocidal crimes had the following to say in their defense: "One should be blind to history not to understand the Turks. The dignified silence of Turks against mounting unjustified (Armenian and Greek ) attacks and mean slanders can only be explained by their pity for the blind..." In Fantome d'Orient",1928.


So, in conclusion, Mr. President, don't listen to those whose loyalty for this country does not equate with our own. Listen to Collin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and above all to a real astute political figure, and the youngest war hero in the history of our land, your father George Herbert Walker Bush, who knows well, the menace, the ominous duo of one Vladimir Putin and his lackey Robert Kocharian of Armenia mean to our country. It is the same Armenia which receives the second highest proportional monetary aid from the U.S.A., despite the fact that it attacked its neighbor Azerbaijan and murdered 5000 innocent men, women, and children by slitting their throats while they slept in their beds, in Nogorno Karabakh and caused one million refugees. The Armenians are still holding 24% of Azeri land in occupation, Armenia whose supporters in the U.S. Congress are telling you to celebrate April 24 as a day of Armenian "genocide." Armenia, is the same country which has donated a portion of its territory facing Turkey to the Russians, free of charge. It is also the country which is executing every known trick in the world to scuttle the American foreign policy in the Caucasus. Again, Mr. President, don't be duped by their demands. Use your own inherited sense of values. Armenian politicos are not your friends. They will not remain in amity to you or to this country in time of need . As a Russian proverb says, "One hundred friends is not too many, one enemy is."
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