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WHAT IS THE PICTURE FROM THE STANDPOINT OF UN TREATY
ON GENOCIDE?
The genocide concept was defined
by the 1948 United Nations Convention for the Prevention and
Punishment of Genocide Crime. According to the article 2 of
this Convention, the genocide is any of the acts of assassination
of or inflicting serious physical or mental integrity on the
group members or their detainment under living conditions
that would result in its annihilation or introduction of measures
preventing births within the group or forcibly transferring
the children of one group into another in order to partially
or wholly eradicating a national, ethnical, racial or religious
group. The genocide implies acts and actions under a planned
State policy.
When the issue is examined
from the viewpoint of genocide Convention, some events in
the history should be recalled. For the perpetration of such
a serious crime against humanity as the genocide, there should
be a certain tendency toward it in the history of the nation
concerned. The criminality is as much a personal trait as
a national one. A study of the Turkish history reveals no
traces of genocide or assimilation. A short historical tour
of horizon and a recall of the geography once under the Ottoman
rule show us that the Ottomans had penetrated well into Europe
all the way up to Vienna, controlled the whole of the North
African coast and the entire Middle East for a period from
200 to 400 years. Which nation may be said to have been exterminated
during this period? In a era when the sharia prevailed in
Anatolia, creeds such as Syriac, the oldest Christian denomination,
and Yezidite that idolatrised the fire and had their own free
reins and churches were built throughout Anatolia in the 1800s
despite the fact that it was against the religion’s commandments.
As a matter of fact, one of the brothers of Sokollu Mehmet
Pasha, an Ottoman Grand Vizier, was appointed as the Patriarch
of Makarije Serbian Church and led the revival of Serbian
national spirit. We find examples of genocide in the era of
intersectarian wars of Europe, in the people whose languages
were forcibly changed (Hindus and Peshtus), in Africa where
the language and religion were entirely altered and in South
America when the Europeans had set foot there.
The Turkish administration
is used to coexist with the peoples of different cultures
and origins in all regions where it rules. This is probably
a feature acquired by living together with different cultures
for long periods in its history.
The Turkish State tradition
has justice and preservation or cultures, but no trace whatsoever
of massacre or genocide. This is revealed in no uncertain
terms in Justin McCarthy’s book titled Death and Exile,
in which examples are given of how the Balkan and Caucasian
peoples had fled to the Ottoman rule to avoid death. A question
needs to be asked to those accusing the Ottoman administration
of having perpetrated genocide: Why did the Jews and Moslems
leave Spain and Portugal in 1469, why did Tokely Imre and
his entourage leave Hungary and seek refuge in the Ottoman
Empire in 1680, Racozy Ferenè and his confidantes in 1711
and Lajos Kosuth and his two thousand associates in 1849,
and where had the Swedish King Charles and the remainder of
his army the same year, the Polish Prince Chartorsky in 1841
and 1856, the Russian General Vrangel with his army of 135.000
in 1917 and even Trotsky sought safety for life? Don’t those
accusing Turkey of having committed so-called genocide in
1915 know that the Polish and German Jews had fled to Turkey
in the late ‘30s? Why, only after 20 or 25 years after the
so-called genocide, these people preferred Turkey for seeking
asylum and finding safety?
Let us remember the genocide
and assimilation events in the Balkans some 550 years after
Mohamed the Conqueror who confirmed by his firman of 1478
the freedom of and preserving the values inherent in all human
beings and for transferring them to the following generations.
The Balkanic nations whose languages, religions, churches
and schools were put under protection under this firman ousted
the Bosniacs, Albanian Moslems, Macedonians and Bulgarian
Turks from their countries in the 21st century
just for creating homogenous societies. Those accusing Turkey
with genocide disregarded the massacres that continued for
months and ignored the desperate screams of women of all ages
who were raped. The Iraqi people who fled from Saddam’s ire
who attempted to annihilate his own people with the mustard
gas that he had obtained from the Western weapons manufacturers
had found the safety in Turkey where they had fled. The Turkish
people, despite their limited means, shared their food with
them and received without reservations all humans persecuted
in their countries. This is the clean slate that may be shown
as an example to all others of the Turkish nation, Ottomans
and the Republic of Turkey.
In his talk before the United
States House of Representatives, Professor Justin McCarthy
indicated with the following words that Turkey also had suffered
great pains in the World War I but preferred to keep them
deep in its heart:
"The will to avenge is always branded in the minds of those that lose everything
in wars. There would be a far greater number of deaths if
the new Turkish Republic harped on these feelings. For this
reason, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s Government adopted a policy
whereby the losses sustained in the past were overlooked and
peace treaties were signed with its former foes because it
had felt that pressure to be applied on the Armenians and
other minorities would rekindle the old animosities and led
to further wars. Thus the Turks never mentioned their own
problems. This was the best decision that could ever be adopted
under the then prevailing conditions. The point to which we
arrived today is due to the fact that nobody had spoken on
behalf of the Turks. What do you expect the Turks to think
when they are unjustly criticised for something that they
had not done?"
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