One hundred years have passed...so to bring this up now...so what? If Turkey says its sorry...so what.
But lets settle the picture correctly here. The land of Turkey, was run by the Ottoman empire up until the early 1920s...by the Sultan. When you examine these periods of cleansing...which would run two to three years and then simmer....from the mid 1890s until around 1923...it was not the Sultan’s folks who started alot of this unrest. I would call them “young bulls” with an agenda...which was very fascist in nature...and very much anti-Sultan.
The cleansing? Oh...the young bulls would go through a region and start unrest...blaming the Armenians for creating the situation. Property would be taken. Assets in the bank would be taken...and the ones who stood up to challenge this...shot dead. So they slowly pushed the Armenians out of very neutral areas where they were part of the general neighborhood. They created concentration camps later...during WWI and work gangs. Starting to sound familiar? Maybe related to some Hitler dude in Germany? Yep...it is a carbon-copy.
But read on....the German military was there in 1915...and witnessed various acts...sending letters back to Berlin and demanding that the Kaiser bring this up and HALT the genocide going on. This is documented. The German government did nothing because they were involved in a war. The British and Americans....saw and documented vast acts....and attempted after 1919 to bring these up in a world court type setup. Nothing occurred. The guilty parties escaped any punishment.
The Sultan was eventually kicked out, and the new “fascist” government of Turkey, with Mr. Atatürk then took over...with a republic type “look”. Turks will talk boldly of their new government and how things got modern after the Sultan was kicked out. But make no mistake...this was a fascist-state and got results by extreme action.
So did Hitler learn from the Turks? Yes, without any doubt. We need historians to go through the Munich press and find the connection of Hitler and the methods he used in the 1930s/1940s with the Jews...because he learned every trick...from the Turks. He knew they would work....especially with his brown-shirts and a fascist-type environment that he created.
Modern Turkey....built itself on this entire concept. The modern enemy? The Kurds. Thinking about stopping the Turks...oh...don’t even joke about it. The US has this funny relationship that it can’t envision in any other fashion. The Turks are the friends of the US...even if they are modern-day fascists, and even if they would kill 50,000 Kurds tomorrow if given the chance.
So does anything matter 100 years later? Nope...really not. But its funny how you can lay the template of the young bulls of Turkey over Hitler and see the vast connection to the genocide of the Jews. Should that change our minds and make us care in 2007...over a 100-year event? It all depends on how you view your future in the world, and that of the Kurds. Have you learned anything about history yet? Or....the real question...what is the obvious thing that you should have picked up from years and years of observing history?
Thanks for the history lesson, no ill will intended. It’s a good basis for me to start doing some outside reading on the subject. I appreciate your explanation.
I agree with your personal comments as well.