708) Treating a civil war as a genocide is inaccurate and unethical

Letters to the Editor
Independent , U.K.
Turkish losses during World War One were unfathomable: a whopping 2.5 million! And 523,000 thousand of these Turkish losses were directly attributable to the atrocities committed by the Ottoman-Armenian nationalists supported by the expansionist Western allies. Yet, due to endless, senseless, baseless, and fraudulent Armenian propaganda in the West since 1915, like Rober Fisk's misplaced diatribe "You're talking nonsense, Mr Ambassador" (20 May 2006, Independent,) one hardly ever heard Turkish side of the story, never felt the deeper Turkish pain, and never noticed silent Turkish tears.


I am one of the eight children of a sole Turkish survivor of a Turkish village of Kirlikova (hence my last name) during the Balkan Wars of 1911-1912 that preceded the WWI. My father barely escaped to Anatolia during that turmoil under still mostly unknown conditions as a one year old baby with no surviving parents or relatives and was cared for by the Ottoman Empire and then the Turkish Republic. Millions of Turks today have such traumatic stories behind their uniquely story-telling last names. When those hundreds of thousands of Turks, like my father, who had fled the Ottoman-Christian excesses in the Balkans reached Anatolia, they were met with yet another cycle of Ottoman-Christian violence in Anatolia: by the Ottoman-Greeks in the West and by the Ottoman-Armenians in the East. Thus, those terrorized, devastated, and starving Ottoman-Muslim souls jumped from the frying pan right into the fire. Does any of this sound like a genocide to any open-minded, fair reader? Or does it feel more like a wartime turmoil, bloodshed, and human tragedy as in, perhaps, a civil war?

Genocide is a technical legal term precisely defined by the U.N., to be used only if a verdict by a competent tribunal (such as Nuremberg), is reached after due process where both sides of the conflict are properly represented, heard, and cross examined. Turks were never heard. A court decision does not exist. Therefore, the term genocide should, in all fairness, truth, and objectivity, be preceded by the qualifier "alleged". Not doing so would be a partisan behavior, such as Robert Fisk's was.

Armenian allegations of genocide are racist because they imply Turkish dead do not matter, only Armenian dead do. And they are dishonest because they ignore and/or dismiss the Armenian wartime crimes that led to their temporary resettlement. Armenians have resorted to agitation, terrorism, armed uprising, violent insurgency, and supreme terrorism (as in intentionally and enthusiastically joining and invading enemy army), in that order, between 1890 and 1915. The Ottoman-Armenians broke the camel's back when they finally turned over an important Ottoman city (Van) over to Russian invaders after slaughtering most of its Muslim inhabitants in April and May of 1915. Ignoring all of these facts and misrepresenting a civil war as a genocide is inaccurate, unfair, and unethical.


Peace,

Ergun Kirlikovali
www.turkla.com
3029 South Harbor Blvd.,
Santa Ana, CA 92704-6448, USA
Tel, office: 714/434-0800