{"id":109492,"date":"2015-01-14T18:20:47","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T16:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=109492"},"modified":"2023-07-26T11:25:37","modified_gmt":"2023-07-26T08:25:37","slug":"ergun-kirlikovali-rebuttal-to-zaman-article-by-cengiz-aktar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2015\/01\/14\/ergun-kirlikovali-rebuttal-to-zaman-article-by-cengiz-aktar\/","title":{"rendered":"ERGUN KIRLIKOVALI: Rebuttal to ZAMAN article by Cengiz Aktar:”DEEP DINKISTS” ARE DISTORTING HISTORY"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"images\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Rebuttal to ZAMAN article by Cengiz Aktar:<\/p>\n

“DEEP DINKISTS” ARE DISTORTING HISTORY<\/p>\n

TO MAKE GENOCIDE CHARGES STICK<\/p>\n

Jewish holocaust is a court-proven fact; Armenian Genocide, a discredited political<\/p>\n

claim. Holocaust is supported by a competent tribunal, Nuremberg; where is the<\/p>\n

Armenians’ Nuremberg?<\/p>\n

To call 1915 a genocide would be to equate much-discredited Armenian narrative<\/p>\n

to factual Jewish experience. It would be an insult to the silent memory of six<\/p>\n

million Jews who were killed just for being Jews. Whereas Armenians resorted to<\/p>\n

terrorism (1862-1922, Nalbandian) revolts (1877-1920, McCarthy) and treason<\/p>\n

(1914-1922, Pope) and caused 515,000 Turks and other Muslims to meet their<\/p>\n

tragic ends at the hands of Armenian revolutionaries. Jews did not commit any of<\/p>\n

those heinous acts in 1930s or 1940s. So how can any fair person treat the two<\/p>\n

events similarly? The UN, the US, the UK, Australia, Israel, Sweden and many<\/p>\n

other countries reject the use of the term genocide to describe the Turkish-<\/p>\n

The landmark decision of the highest court in Europe, the European Court of<\/p>\n

Human Rights (ECHR) dated Dec 17, 2013 on Perincek vs Switzerland also<\/p>\n

supports this position. Convicting Switzerland for violating Turks’ rights to free<\/p>\n

speech and expression, ECHR verdict was based on solid facts and reasoning.<\/p>\n

ECHR correctly stated that \u201c[t]he existence of a \u2018genocide\u2019, which was a precisely<\/p>\n

defined legal concept, was not easy to prove\u2026 (ECHR) doubted that there could<\/p>\n

be a general consensus\u2026 given that historical research was, by definition, open to<\/p>\n

discussion and a matter of debate, without necessarily giving rise to final<\/p>\n

conclusions or to the assertion of objective and absolute truths\u201d.<\/p>\n

Thus, the ECHR created a legal precedent of inadmissibility of any comparison<\/p>\n

between the court-proven Jewish Holocaust and the discredited Armenian political<\/p>\n

claims, as the latter lacks what the former clearly has: concrete historical facts,<\/p>\n

clear legal basis, and existence of the \u201cacts had been found by an international<\/p>\n

court to be clearly established\u201d.<\/p>\n

If one needs further proof of the fallacy of the Armenian Genocide, one can simply<\/p>\n

look at this photo at http:\/\/www.ethocide.com\/ which refutes the entire Armenian<\/p>\n

narrative. Do these people in the photo look like \u201cpoor, starving, unarmed, helpless<\/p>\n

Armenians? Taken in 1906\u2014nine years before 1915–it depicts cadets in full<\/p>\n

uniform at an Armenian Military Academy in Bulgaria, arrogantly brandishing<\/p>\n

their Russian-made MOSIN rifles. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation used<\/p>\n

these weapons since 1893 in Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus, and the Balkans,<\/p>\n

murdering Muslim, mostly Turkish, civilians\u2014including my grandparents and<\/p>\n

exterminating the Turkish population of the village of KIRLIKOVA (hence my last<\/p>\n

name.) My father, as a one-year-old baby, was the sole survivor under conditions<\/p>\n

Let the historical facts speak for themselves:<\/p>\n

1914 “\u2026Armenian nationalist movement had blossomed since the turn of the<\/p>\n

(20th) century, armed and encouraged by the Russian, and several minor coups<\/p>\n

were repressed by the YOUNG TURK government before 1914. Denied the right to<\/p>\n

a national congress in October 1914, moderate Armenian politicians fled to<\/p>\n

BULGARIA, but extreme nationalists crossed the border to form a rebel division<\/p>\n

with Russian equipment. It invaded in December an slaughtered an estimated<\/p>\n

120,000 non-Armenians while the TURKISH ARMY was preoccupied with<\/p>\n

mobilization and the CAUCASIAN FRONT OFFENSIVE TOWARD<\/p>\n

Source: The Macmillan Dictionary of The First World War, Stephen Pope &<\/p>\n

Elizabeth-Anne Wheal, Macmillan Reference Books, London, 1997, ISBN 0 333<\/p>\n

68909 7 (and 2003, ISBN 0 85052 979-4,) page 34.<\/p>\n

1917 \u201c\u2026For fourteen days, I followed the Euphrates; it is completely out of the<\/p>\n

question that I during this time would not have seen at least some of the Armenian<\/p>\n

corpses, that according to Mrs. Stjernstedt\u2019s statements, should have drifted along<\/p>\n

the river en masse at that time. A travel companion of mine, Dr. Schacht, was also<\/p>\n

travelling along the river. He also had nothing to tell when we later met in<\/p>\n

Baghdad\u2026 \u2026In summary, I think that Mrs. Stjernstedt, somewhat uncritically, has<\/p>\n

accepted the hair-raising stories from more or less biased sources, which formed<\/p>\n

the basis for her lecture\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Source: H.J. Pravitz, A Swedish officer, Nya Dagligt Allehanda, 23 April, 1917<\/p>\n

issue (A Swedish Newspaper published from 1859 to 1944)<\/p>\n

1923 “\u2026In some towns containing ten Armenian houses and thirty Turkish houses,<\/p>\n

it was reported that 40,000 people were killed, about 10,000 women were taken to<\/p>\n

the harem, and thousands of children left destitute; and the city university<\/p>\n

destroyed, and the bishop killed. It is a well- known fact that even in the last war<\/p>\n

the native Christians, despite the Turkish cautions, armed themselves and fought<\/p>\n

on the side of the Allies. In these conflicts, they were not idle, but they were well<\/p>\n

supplied with artillery, machine guns and inflicted heavy losses on their<\/p>\n

Source: Lamsa, George M., a missionary well known for his research on<\/p>\n

Christianity, The Secret of the Near East, The Ideal Press, Philadelphia 1923, p 133<\/p>\n

1928 “…Few Americans who mourn, and justly, the miseries of the Armenians, are<\/p>\n

aware that till the rise of nationalistic ambitions, beginning with the ‘seventies, the<\/p>\n

Armenians were the favored portion of the population of Turkey, or that in the<\/p>\n

Great War, they traitorously turned Turkish cities over to the Russian invader; that<\/p>\n

they boasted of having raised an Army of one hundred and fifty thousand men to<\/p>\n

fight a civil war, and that they burned at least a hundred Turkish villages and<\/p>\n

exterminated their population…\u201d<\/p>\n

Source: John Dewey, The New Republic, 12 November 1928<\/p>\n

1976 \u201c\u2026 The deafening drumbeat of the propaganda, and the sheer lack of<\/p>\n

sophistication in argument which comes from preaching decade after decade to a<\/p>\n

convinced and emotionally committed audience, are the major handicaps of<\/p>\n

Armenian historiography of the (Armenian) diaspora today\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Source: Dr. Gwynne Dyer, a London-based independent journalist, 1976<\/p>\n

1988 \u201c\u2026In all the countries, under all the regimes, the staff of the armies in the<\/p>\n

field evacuate towards the back, the populations which live in the zone of fights<\/p>\n

and can bother the movement of the troops, especially if these populations are<\/p>\n

hostile. Public opinion does not find anything to criticize to these measures,<\/p>\n

obviously painful, but necessary. During winter of 1939-1940, the radical –<\/p>\n

socialist French government evacuated and transported in the Southwest of<\/p>\n

France, notably in the Dordogne, the entire population of the Alsatian villages<\/p>\n

situated in the valley of the Rhine, to the east of the Maginot line. This German-<\/p>\n

speaking population, and even sometimes germanophil, bothered the French army.<\/p>\n

It stayed in the South, far from the evacuated homes and sometimes destroyed until<\/p>\n

1945\u2026.And nobody, in France, cried out for inhumanity\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Source: Georges de Maleville, lawyer and a specialist on the Armenian question,<\/p>\n

La Trag\u00e9die Arm\u00e9nienne de 1915, (The Armenian tragedy of 1915), Editions F.<\/p>\n

Sorlot-F. Lanore, Paris, 1988, p 61-63<\/p>\n

2005 \u201c\u2026From 1911 to 1923, the Ottoman Empire and the people of Turkey<\/p>\n

participated in five long, hard, and destructive wars. These were the Tripolitanian<\/p>\n

War \/ Trablusgarb Harbi \/ T\u00fcrk Italyan Harb\u0131 (1911-1912), the two Balkan Wars<\/p>\n

(1912-1913), World War I (1914-1918), and the Turkish War of National<\/p>\n

Liberation (1918-1923). To most Turkish people who lived through that era, these<\/p>\n

wars were really only one, the Seferberlik, or period of mobilization, which went<\/p>\n

on continuously throughout these years.<\/p>\n

During these wars, the entire infrastructure of life in the Ottoman Empire<\/p>\n

was destroyed. Fields were left barren and uncultivated; roads and railroad lines<\/p>\n

were destroyed and their equipment wrecked; harbors and quays were blown up by<\/p>\n

repeated bombing, and many of the people living nearby were killed; Istanbul and<\/p>\n

the other great cities of the empire were partially destroyed by bombing,<\/p>\n

bombarding and great fires. The entire nation, thus, was for all practical purposes<\/p>\n

destroyed. One of the greatest miracles of Atat\u00fcrk\u2019s leadership during and after<\/p>\n

the Turkish War of National Liberation was the manner in which he was able to<\/p>\n

raise the Turkish people from this wreckage and lead them to revive and<\/p>\n

reconstruct what became the Turkish Republic.<\/p>\n

In the midst of all this destruction, no fewer than 30 percent, one third, of all<\/p>\n

the people who lived in the Ottoman Empire at the start of the war died. In the war<\/p>\n

zones, Macedonia and Thrace, western Anatolia, northeastern Turkey and<\/p>\n

southeastern Turkey, that percentage was as high as sixty or even seventy percent,<\/p>\n

much higher than any other country that was involved in these wars. No-one was<\/p>\n

counting, so it is very difficult to give actual figures, but perhaps no fewer than<\/p>\n

four million people died in the lands of the Ottoman Empire during these wars, and<\/p>\n

these were people of all races and religions, all ethnic origins, they were Muslims,<\/p>\n

Jews and Christians, they were Turks and Armenians, Arabs and Greeks, and<\/p>\n

Source: From \u201cThe Ottoman Holocaust\u201d; a lecture delivered by Stanford J.<\/p>\n

Shaw (1930-2006, Professor of Modern Ottoman History, Bilkent University,<\/p>\n

Ankara, Turkey; Professor of Turkish History, University of California, Los<\/p>\n

Angeles,) to the First International Symposium on Armenian Claims and The<\/p>\n

Reality of Azerbaijan, sponsored by the Atat\u00fcrk Research Center, 5 May 2005,<\/p>\n

Ankara, Turkey, 1990<\/p>\n

What we need is honest research, reasoned debate, and civilized dialogue, not<\/p>\n

name-calling, deceptions, and partisan monologues that lead to more polarization.<\/p>\n

Ergun KIRLIKOVALI<\/p>\n

\uf0b7 Son of Turkish survivors from both paternal and maternal sides of<\/p>\n

atrocities committed by Armenian cadets and Balkan Ottoman-<\/p>\n

Christians (www.ethocide.com )<\/p>\n

\uf0b7 His father was the sole survivor, as a one-year-old baby, of the<\/p>\n

massacres of October 1912<\/p>\n

tellers\/ and was cared for by the Bebek Orphanage in Istanbul<\/p>\n

WAL_History_Forging_Turkish_Identity )<\/p>\n

\uf0b7 His mother was one of the few survivors of her family subjected to<\/p>\n

massacres in 1912, Skopje, who migrated to Anatolia and grew up in<\/p>\n

\uf0b7 The untold story of pain and suffering of his parents and masses of<\/p>\n

other faceless, nameless Turkish victims of Ottoman-Christian<\/p>\n

militias, especially of Armenians in the East and Greeks in the West,<\/p>\n

during 1911-1923 is the single most powerful driving force behind his<\/p>\n

modest efforts “to tell the other side of the story.”<\/p>\n

Key words:\u00a0 Armenian, genocide, cengiz Aktar, Ergun Kirlikovali,<\/p>\n

Hrant dink, Tereset, Ethocide, mosin, Kirlikova, Sarishaban, Drama,<\/p>\n

Kavala, Doksat, Doxat, dinkist, deep dinkist, derin dinkciler, ECHR,<\/p>\n

perincek, Turkey, Anatolia, first world war<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rebuttal to ZAMAN article by Cengiz Aktar: “DEEP DINKISTS” ARE DISTORTING HISTORY TO MAKE GENOCIDE CHARGES STICK Jewish holocaust is a court-proven fact; Armenian Genocide, a discredited political claim. Holocaust is supported by a competent tribunal, Nuremberg; where is the Armenians’ Nuremberg? To call 1915 a genocide would be to equate much-discredited Armenian narrative to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":109493,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[464],"tags":[1414,9700,8099,151],"class_list":["post-109492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ergun-kirlikovali","tag-armenian","tag-cengiz-aktar","tag-ergun-kirlikovali-2","tag-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}