Today is the 23rd of April. It will be celebrated across Turkey as The Children’s Festival. It’s the day that the first government was established after the independence war against the Greeks and Allied occupiers after World War I. It’s called the Children’s Festival because Ataturk dedicated the government to the children and to Turkey’s future. <\/p>\n
Tomorrow is April 24 – which to the Armenian community is Armenian Genocide Commenoration Day. Specifically, it’s the 100th anniversary of the events between the Ottomans and the Armenians. <\/p>\n
In Turkey, my blog would be banned for putting those first two words – Armenian and Genocide – together in a sentence. <\/p>\n
President Obama has announced that he won’t call it a genocide, which is a big “win” for Turkey according to the Armenian-American community. <\/p>\n
I think they’re wrong. I don’t think the word matters. <\/p>\n
Here’s what I propose we worry about instead…<\/p>\n
Let’s all use tomorrow to think about how easily, and effectively, modern technology has made it to mass murder millions of individuals with whom we disagree. <\/p>\n
Let’s look at the actions of the Americans (Trail of Tears) Belgians (Congo), the Ottomans (eastern Anatolia), the Germans (the Holocaust), and way too many more to list over the last 200 years, and understand what we need to actively<\/b> do to prevent industrial mass murder from happening again. <\/p>\n
Because you see I can’t change what happened in the past. And the title I give those events doesn’t change that they happened. What I don’t know is whether there are legal ramifications of calling it a genocide, but I doubt Turkey would acknowledge them anyway. <\/p>\n
So I acknowledge that I can’t change the past. I also acknowledge that the past happened (this too might be illegal in Turkey). But I can be part of building a future that makes sure that the innocent, the young, the disadvantaged, and the unlucky still have a voice and a protectorate. <\/p>\n
And I think building that future (by learning from those events in the past) is way more valuable than redefining the words the President uses to describe them.<\/p>\n
So I don’t think whether a politician calls the massacre of Armenians a genocide or not matters. People who didn’t need to, and shouldn’t have, died in numbers that were appalling (regardless of whether it was 1, 400k, or 1.5mil). <\/p>\n
But I do think that we have a responsibility to make sure it doesn’t happen again. And those are the words I want to hear from the West Wing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today is the 23rd of April. It will be celebrated across Turkey as The Children’s Festival. It’s the day that the first government was established after the independence war against the Greeks and Allied occupiers after World War I. It’s called the Children’s Festival because Ataturk dedicated the government to the children and to Turkey’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQyAq-oX","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":70,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2007\/10\/12\/when-reason-doesnt-exist\/","url_meta":{"origin":1547,"position":0},"title":"When Reason Doesn't Exist","date":"October 12, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"If you haven't kept track of the recent workings of the U.S. House of Representatives, then please read this link first.When something like this comes up, the human response is to try to understand why. The main question that I end up asking myself and the people around me is:\"Why\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "just thinking out loud"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":71,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2007\/10\/16\/a-plea-to-turks-everywhere\/","url_meta":{"origin":1547,"position":1},"title":"A Plea to Turks Everywhere","date":"October 16, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"On the topic of H.R. 106 suggesting that the events in Eastern Anatolia during the dying days of the Ottoman Empire were genocide, I ask my fellow Turks to consider the following argument.This isn't an issue of hate, but an issue of reconciliation.We can continue to sling mud over the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "just thinking out loud"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1252,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2014\/09\/14\/sunset-in-turkey\/","url_meta":{"origin":1547,"position":2},"title":"Sunset in Turkey","date":"September 14, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Because sandy beaches, and quiet moments are both too difficult to come by...","rel":"","context":"In "Life Updates"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1071,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2014\/04\/01\/it-feels-insincere\/","url_meta":{"origin":1547,"position":3},"title":"It feels insincere","date":"April 1, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"There was an election in Turkey over the weekend. My Facebook news feed is full of folks who are predicting the beginning of the end for AKP. The change in the vote results is quite noticeable. Unfortunately, it's mainly the right switching from the religious freaks to the nationalist freaks.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "just thinking out loud"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":19,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2006\/07\/23\/weeks-5-8-the-world-catching-up\/","url_meta":{"origin":1547,"position":4},"title":"Weeks 5 - 8 - The World - Catching up","date":"July 23, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Wow, it's been the craziest four weeks of my life. I guess things were once pretty slow because I was able to update every week. Even if I was a little late, there was a weekly update. Now, there's only chaos. So, let's start at the very beginning, a very\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Extreme Blue Internship"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1461,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2014\/12\/31\/a-year-in-review\/","url_meta":{"origin":1547,"position":5},"title":"A year in review","date":"December 31, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"This was set to auto publish a few days ago, but it didn't. And so while it's publishing on January 3rd, it was meant to be published on December 31st. My bad :-) New Year's Resolutions I did awfully with my new year's resolutions this year. I only blogged everyday\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Life Updates"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}