Oktay Eksi: Closing the barn door after the horses are out: Gul and the Armenian claims
Güncelleme Tarihi:
If only we could have asked Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, who said yesterday in Washington, DC "Preventing the passage of the Armenian genocide bill is the duty of the Turkish people, the government, civil society organizations, and intellectuals," where he had been up until now.
For years now we have been saying, in this column, that books should be printed, international conferences should be held, films should be made, foreign student groups should be formed, and that we should abandon our defense strategy and move to full war mentality on this matter.
Is there even one example which shows that Abdullah Gul, who has headed up our foreign policy now for four years, has listened to any of this?
It is only now that it has become clear that the US Congress will pass a bill recognizing that "The Turks did commit genocide" that Gul decides to visit Washington and fire some salvos into the Congress.
Pushing aside anything which has been written in this column or others on the matter, what about examples such as when Professor Justin McCarthy spoke before the Turkish Parliament, urging "Why don't you pass out the books that have been published on this question, the ones which are sitting in the depos of the ministries, so at least people can learn the basic theses of this matter." That too never happened.
Maybe you have read about this in the newspapers. Recently, TIME magazine's European edition announced a decision not to amend the phrase "Turkish genocide" with any cautioning words. In fact, it even offered a free 52 minute DVD along with the up to 550 thousand magazines it sold across Europe, the DVD being a focus on the "genocide carried out by the Turks." In addition, it also announced that it was publishing a full page ad from Armenian sources free of charge. All of this, it turns out, in response to the fact that the Ankara Chamber of Commerce gave a paid-for ad and a DVD aiming at "promoting tourism to Turkey" which some then claimed aimed to "deny the genocide and trick people with lies."
As you can see, some of the things we do just wind up making the situation messier. Because up until now, no one has stepped forward to coordinate this business for Turkey, neither the government, nor the Foreign Ministry in particular.
Never mind the DVD business though. I wonder whether Abdullah Gul has even heard of the British Turkish Federation's move to have January 27 be made into a "Remembering our Slain Diplomats Day"? Both Mehmet Baydar and Bahadir Demir were two Turkish diplomats slain by the militant Armenian group ASALA.