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Professor Mahmut
Esat Ozan has been the rare, tireless voice in the United States, putting up
his dukes in the sea of Turcophobes for many years. Here is a commentary that
appeared in The
Turkish Forum.
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LISTEN
TO YOUR FATHER, MR. PRESIDENT, PARENTS KNOW BEST |
President George W. Bush The White House Washington, D,C, USA Dear
President Bush During March of last year (2000) your parents, the ex-President George Bush
and your mother, Barbara Bush, were visiting their favorite spot, Istanbul, Turkey. Your
father has a large following of friends there. "We'd rather be here than any other
place" was their statement last year. Lo and behold, they are there this month also
at the invitation of some Turkish industrialist friends of theirs. Of course the paparazzi
are always around them.. Last time they had asked your Father what should the posture of
his son, W. Bush be if he were elected the President of the United States. At the time he
said the following: "I guarantee you that when he becomes the next U.S. President,
George will be on your side. He will advocate Turkey's entry into the European Union, and
just like his father he will be a true friend of Turkey and Turks." Then, the former
U.S. President, as is his jovial custom, added jokingly, to the journalists' inquiry of,
"What if he doesn't Sir? " The ex-U.S. President said: "You know if he
doesn't, his father will 'kill' him."
Mr. President, George W. Bush, you may be 'living on borrowed time,'
so to speak, as the levity allows me to remind you. Your dear father has given a similar
statement the other day to a group of Turkish and European members of the Media. We are
hoping that he is right in his assessment of your true feelings for our country of origin,
Turkey. For decades now, the Armenians have pulled the wool over your eyes, and the
collective eyes of all the world. Through 'hocus pocus,' 'abracadabra' 'hook and crook'
they delivered a 'bill of goods' to the entire planet. This was done with the
determination and the aplomb of an Armenian rug dealer's tenacity wanting to close a deal.
I am sure you have noticed how they hover around you, never letting you forget for a
smidgen of a moment that you are their last chance to pronounce the term 'Genocide",
even though no other U.S. President has wished to use that word. This "G" word
is like the "N" word for us Turks. We do hope you refrain from uttering it.
I am known, in my circles, for calling a 'spade a spade.' When it
comes to telling of what there is in my mind. I do not 'beat around the bush,' no puns
intended I assure you. Up till now, tales of the problems besieging Turks and Armenians
have been told and retold by historians, State Department officials, politicians and the
news reporters. With your presumed permission I shall refer to the words written by an
American housewife who loves to travel the world over . Her name is Mary Lee Settle, and
she has long loved to explore new lands, old worlds, and unknown shores. In her book
" Turkish Reflections" she offers an intimate portrait of the one place in all
her travels that both charmed her spirit and captured her heart: Turkey, the happiest home
she has ever known. She sounds a little bit like your parents doesn't she?
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Well, it is quite apparent that Ms. Mary Lee Settle had no
'dog in the fight'. She had 'no axe to grind.' She was completely neutral, only a
keen observer. She was unlike the zealot Christian missionaries in 1915 who were
feeding the then American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau in Istanbul, sitting in the
comfortable chair in his office and never venturing out go anywhere for first hand
observations. Mary Lee Settle did not have to rely on the ugly lies the likes of
which were being supplied to the U.S. Ambassador some 80 years earlier. She went out
to see things personally, listen to ordinary folks and wrote her findings candidly,
in her book . As you may surmise, Mr. President the following lines of hers are
rather meaningful because this lady had to go through a transformation of sorts
before she became a believer of the Turkish everything. Mary Lee Settle says
,"I knew next to nothing about Turkey, and what I knew was not good. What I did
not know then is that the country has the worst and the most ill-drawn public image
of almost any country in the world."
The time of your decision-making is approaching
fast. You have only 72 hours left in which to pass a judgement either for or against
accepting the terms of the Armenian lobby's quasi ultimatum on a subject of the 24th
day of April. They claim this particular day is the beginning of an alleged
premeditated racial cleansing initiated by the Turks against the innocent subjects
of the now-defunct Ottoman Empire. The cleverly fabricated news concerning these
atrocities committed by the Turks which have been vociferously filibustered for ages
against the Turks are so ridiculous. And yet they could be so believable. If you
listen to them you may think as you once did, Mr. President, that they really took
place 87 years ago in a far away land no Christian, such as yourself should bother
to worry about.
These are the descendents of the old citizens
of the Ottoman Empire who treacherously revolted against their own government, back
stabbing their own fellow soldiers and selling their country to the highest bidders
of the times. It was Czar Nicholas II who incited them with a promise of
independence which they had never enjoyed before as recorded in the annals of the
history of the world. The wartime propaganda machine of the Czar said, if they
revolted against their own government, they would have their own land one day in the
future. But alas! that day has never come. In the process, dear Mr. President, as
you well know, they helped plunge the Middle East into the shape you find it today.
What happened in the Eastern Anatolia was just one of the myriad of sufferings which
had befallen humankind in the past.
If we bring the Ottomans and their perfidious
subjects, the Armenians of 1914-23 who had revolted against them, and place them in
mock-up court proceedings involving this crime they insist on calling a
"genocide", then we'll find the judges and the juries would be looking
meticulously for the existence of an evidence of reciprocity in actions. That is if
there existed an unmitigated and premeditated reason for the crime to be committed
and/or if there was blood spilled by both sides. The long records of jurisprudence
in the world show practically in all such cases it is both of the parties who are
guilty of blood-letting. But the Armenians who are responsible for the deaths of
over 2,5 million Muslims among the population of the Ottoman Empire do not even own
up to having caused a nose-bleed.
This is the type of intransigent people you are
dealing with now and will do so more in the remaining years of your presidency .
Your decision to placate these unreasonable filibusterers and your relationship with
them is bound to shape your foreign policy for these United States of America. Your
preference of not listening to your father and going against his sophisticated
knowledge of the Turks will either make or break the success of your Middle Eastern
posture and demeanor . Your much needed strength in the credibility of your future
Trans Caucasian outlook may be considered as being the backbone of your willpower .
Furthermore, it will corroborate, above all, your respect for your parents.
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"Turkey stands alone among the nations." says Jan Morris,
who wrote the introduction for Mary Lee Settle's "Turkish Reflections." She adds
that Turkey, for centuries was the terror of Christianity; for generations it was the Sick
Man of Europe; today it stands formidably on the edge of Asia surrounded in the universal
mind, as always, by an aura of mingled respect, resentment and fear. The assaults of
tourism have not much weakened this daunting national personality. The echoes of
historical quarrels ,old and new, still swirl around the name of Turkey: the accusations
of Greeks, the recriminations of Armenians, the clash between a secular state and reviving
Islam. One treads carefully in the Turkish presence. Turkey is no joke."
Yes, Mr. President, "Turkey is no joke" Nevertheless, in
the hands of a real bunch of jokers themselves, the Armenians, your decision aggrandizes
your responsibility many fold. Please do not feel that you are to remain eternally
beholden to a bunch of sly, crafty Armenian hate merchants, for the use of soothing
campaign rhetoric you employed during your run for the Presidency. Do not be beguiled by
their voluminous mail, and their veiled threats. These people who have been demonstrating
more allegiance to Yerevan than to Washington, with the help and abetting done by a group
of bootlicking politicians in the U.S. Congress, the Armenian lobby has been
steamrollering over every decent attempt by the tiny Turkish opposition. The Boniors, the
Radanovics and the Pallones who ignore the damage they have been causing to this wonderful
country of ours, would rather keep their fat salaries and stomach the take the fabricated
myth of the Armenian lobby. There is no doubt that they are devoid of any real knowledge
of world history and as far as I am concerned they lack a sense of patriotism for their
own country. Reflecting on the incessant badgering you have been receiving to fulfill the
requisite of a campaign rhetoric would be too much to ask from you.
Mary Lee Settle says, "I found there (in Turkey) the greatest
capacity for friendship I have ever known..." She continues, "This discovery was
only one of the surprises- there is pride, and dignity, and honesty, and the dangerous
sensitivity of essentially warm and honest people who, when they feel that their
friendship has been offered and betrayed, can erupt into violence, which seems to be all
that has been exported of the Turkish ethos.
" Dr. Stephan Ronart, in his "La Turquie d'Aujourdhui ,
Librairie Orientaliste, Paul Genthner, Paris; 1937, writes: "Turks never let the
slightest religious intolerance take hold among themselves, nor did they advance
superiority of one faith or of one sect over another."
The famous French writer Pierre Loti, who lived among Turks for a
number of years during the times when Turks were accused of committing those horrendous
genocidal crimes had the following to say in their defense: "One should be blind to
history not to understand the Turks. The dignified silence of Turks against mounting
unjustified (Armenian and Greek ) attacks and mean slanders can only be explained by their
pity for the blind..." In Fantome d'Orient",1928.
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So, in conclusion, Mr. President, don't listen
to those whose loyalty for this country does not equate with our own. Listen to
Collin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and above all to a real astute political figure, and
the youngest war hero in the history of our land, your father George Herbert Walker
Bush, who knows well, the menace, the ominous duo of one Vladimir Putin and his
lackey Robert Kocharian of Armenia mean to our country. It is the same Armenia which
receives the second highest proportional monetary aid from the U.S.A., despite the
fact that it attacked its neighbor Azerbaijan and murdered 5000 innocent men, women,
and children by slitting their throats while they slept in their beds, in Nogorno
Karabakh and caused one million refugees. The Armenians are still holding 24% of
Azeri land in occupation, Armenia whose supporters in the U.S. Congress are telling
you to celebrate April 24 as a day of Armenian "genocide." Armenia, is the
same country which has donated a portion of its territory facing Turkey to the
Russians, free of charge. It is also the country which is executing every known
trick in the world to scuttle the American foreign policy in the Caucasus. Again,
Mr. President, don't be duped by their demands. Use your own inherited sense of
values. Armenian politicos are not your friends. They will not remain in amity to
you or to this country in time of need . As a Russian proverb says, "One
hundred friends is not too many, one enemy is."
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