This is a debate between believers not thinkers. On one side, there are those who assume millions of Armenians were butchered overnight and on the other there are those who believe hundreds of Turks and Azeris were slaughtered by Armenians. I don´t trust or believe either thesis. I just know some lives were lost and I am willing to express my sorrow for each and every innocent victim regardless what ethnicity they were. Those biased, colored thinker-believers will keep talking about things which they perceive as iron-clad truth about a period which is highly speculative.
You are a conservative person Vineyard. You are a status quo protector. Neither I was expecting you to support this personal apology petition nor I was expecting you to support the idea of people talking about it because it would be against the current status quo which was created by the people who, in fact, repeatedly lied to all Turkish people
There would be no talking, no arguing ALMOST about anything if people thought the same way as you do..
Anyway, going back to the subject
Here is Alpay Sahin´s column (in zaman) about why he has signed it:
About half of the nearly 1.5 million Ottoman Armenians who were subjected to forced deportation lost their lives on the way, either through killings by members of the security forces and bandits, or as a result of epidemics and hunger. Some of them survived the ordeal through protection by Turks and Muslims and conversion to Islam. Others were able to eventually flee to the West, mainly to France and the United States, where most of the Armenian diaspora lives today. There remain only about 70,000 Armenian citizens of the Republic of Turkey today living almost entirely in Istanbul. Those Armenians who served in the Ottoman army upon their return from the war found that their families and communities had all disappeared and that their possessions had been confiscated.
Armenian nationalists maintain that the decision of the Committee of Union and Progress rulers to deport the Ottoman Armenians was part of a plan aimed at their total annihilation. This argument has never been proven, being disputed even by distinguished non-Turkish Ottoman historians. The fact, however, that the Ottoman government collectively and inhumanly punished its Armenian citizens by deportation in retaliation for the crimes of Armenian nationalist rebels who collaborated with the enemy is beyond dispute. ..
http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/yazarDetay.do?haberno=161890
|