Editor,
I would like to respond to a letter I saw in Friday's Daily Lobo about the unjust allegations of "genocide," which are serious, especially when you are condemning a whole nation.
After living together as Ottoman citizens happily and prosperously for hundreds of years, the Ottoman Armenians started a revolt aimed at creating an ethnically and politically homogenous Armenian nation in several eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire.
Over the years, village by village, the Armenian militants massacred civilians loyal to the Ottomans. These atrocities culminated in the slaughter of 40,000 Turks, Kurds, Arabs and Jews in the province of Van alone in 1915.
The Armenian militias also collaborated with invading Czarist-Russian and French armies. Faced with foreign invasion, treason and armed revolt, the Ottoman government responded by relocating the Ottoman Armenians from the war zones.
The Armenian population outside the war zones was not affected.
By the end of WWI, more than 4 million Ottoman Muslims, approximately 600,000 Ottoman Armenians and about 100,000 Ottoman Jews had perished. Ignoring the Turkish, Kurdish, Arab and Jewish victims of the massacres perpetrated by the Armenian terrorists of the time, Armenian lobbyist groups are agitating the United States and other countries to politically convict the Turkish nation of having committed genocide against the Armenians.
Turkish-Americans and Turks all over the world are offended by these efforts to misconstrue and manipulate history and stain the nation, which has been home to so many different cultures, with an unjust allegation of genocide.
This allegation harms not only the Turks, who suffer from prejudice and harassment, but also generations of Armenians who are taught to hate and seek revenge from the Turkish and Turkic peoples. This mentality has led to numerous terrorist acts all over the world targeting Turks and claiming the lives of more than 70 innocent civilians.
This mentality is also used to justify the modern-day ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Armenians against Azerbaijanis. Much like the crimes committed by the Armenian militants between 1885 and 1919, these acts of terrorism are never mentioned and have never been condemned by either the Armenian government or the Armenian diasporas.
Some countries and states unfortunately rushed some quick legislations referring to the so-called "genocide" under the pressure of lobbyists, which I hope will be corrected by time as historians and scientists get together and discuss the issue.
Turkish historians and governments invited Armenian historians and governments several times to discuss the issue and opened their archives for everyone to do research, but they got a negative response.
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We mourn for everyone who suffered and we condemn those who try to exploit those who suffer.
Unal Sakoglu
UNM Turkish Student
Association president
