27 Nisan 2010 tarihinde MFD Gazetesinde yer alan ve 1915 olaylarına ilişkin Ermeni iddialarına destek veren makale üzerine anılan gazeteye gönderilen yazımız aşağıda sunulmuştur:



TURKISH EMBASSY

Ambassador

Prague, 03 May 2010

No.: 2010/PragBE/2688

Mr. Robert Cásensky

Editor-in-Chief

Mladá Fronta Dnes

P r a g u e

Dear Editor-in-Chief,

1.I would like to refer to the article titled “1 500 000 Armenians” by editor Mr Milan

Vodicka, which appeared in Your esteemed newspaper on 27 April 2010.

2.Turkey has long been facing a systematic defamation campaign carried out by certain

Armenian lobbying groups and their third party collaborators.

Such groups of the Armenian diaspora systematically continue their activities throughout the world, towards the recognition of the events of 1915 as “genocide” by national and local legislatures.

In order to prepare fertile ground for that, they try to influence certain scholars, editors, artists, politicians etc in each country and work heavily on them.

Such groups know perfectly well that their claims and even their “raison d’être” do rest on mere fabrications rather than historic and/or legal facts and therefore resort to populist political propaganda against Turkey.

Forgeries, deplorably, have been part of this campaign since the very beginning.

3.The biased contents and unfair nature of the article clearly indicate that this time regret-

tably Mr. Vodicka has fallen victim to the forgeries of these groups.

Otherwise, he should have acted in line with the well-known fact that the term “genocide” is a very serious legal concept and can never be used against anyone without basing on a clear-cut verdict of a specialized international Court of Law, like that of Nuremberg or Srebrenica Court and others.

No institution with public responsibility, be it a legislature, administrative, educational or press/media should use such terms like “genocide”, “holocaust” without this pre-condition.

Therefore, the article of Mr Vodicka can be classified only as a simple repetition of the biased and forged claims regarding the 1915 events, fabricated by certain lobbyist groups of Armenian diaspora.

4.With due to respect to Your esteemed newspaper and with a view to furnish the

readers of Mlada Fronta Dnes with correct information, I take the liberty to draw attention to the following points:

a)Reference to Hitler’s words ``Who will today remember the Armenian massacre`` is already proven to be unsubstantiated. Authorized German version of this account through the original Nuremberg documents form a clear legal evidence that Hitler never spoke such a sentence.

Therefore, Mr. Vodicka’s attempt to draw parallels between “Holocaust” and 1915 events can be identified as gross ignorance at least, if not misintent.

Trying to draw any analogy between Holocaust and 1915 events is not only a vehement and lamentable insult to the sacred souls of the Jewish victims of Holocaust, but also an attempt to trivialize Hitler’s crimes.

As You may wish to explain to Your readers the difference between the Holocaust and the events of 1915, I am enclosing a fact sheet on this important topic.

b)Reference to Mr Churchill and a British spy likewise, is an ill-attempt, since it does not mention that, even if they were true, such remarks must have been made in the heat of the World War I and subsequent Turkish Independence War against the Occupation of the British, French and others’ forces, which lasted until August 1922.

It is already acknowledged by contemporary historians that the British Propaganda Bureau successfully invented many documents in that era in order to humiliate the image of the Ottoman Empire and the Turks.

Unfortunately, Armenian lobbyists are still reprinting and referring to these fabrications today, as if they were true.

What is more unfortunate is the attitude of Mr Vodicka to adapt such slanderous allegations without proper questioning.

In order to straighten out the related records concerning the actual British position, I would like to bring the following information to Your kind attention:

i.At the end of the World War I, the defeated Ottoman Empire had to hand over to the Allied Powers, 114 high-level Ottoman officials who were accused of "massacres" against Armenians.

Even the principal informants to the British High Commission in Istanbul leading to the arrests were local Armenians and the Armenian Patriarchate.

ii.These 144 officials were arrested by the British Occupation Forces and deported to the island of Malta, for trial.

iii.The British Government appointed an Armenian scholar, Mr. Haig Khazarian, to conduct a thorough examination of documentary evidence in the Ottoman, British, and U.S. Archives to substantiate the charges against the deportees in Malta.

Access to Ottoman records was certainly unfettered, as the British and French forces occupied Istanbul at the time.

Khazarian’s corps of investigators revealed utter lack of evidence demonstrating that Ottoman officials neither sanctioned nor encouraged killings of Armenians.

iv.At the conclusion of the investigation, the British Prosecutor General determined that it was "improbable that the charges would be capable of proof in a court of law," exonerated and released all 144 detainees -- after two years and four months of detention without trial.

Dear Editor-in-Chief,

I certainly have no intention to answer each and every allegation reproduced by Mr. Vodicka.

However, I would strongly suggest Mr. Vodicka and others to keep in mind that there are often discrepancies between history and memory. Memories not always reflect the historical truths and concerning a given historical period or event, memories of different societies may differ from each other.

Therefore, no society can be obliged to adopt the memory of another, particularly those based on fabrications and defamations, unless there are clear-cut, scientifically and historically proven, legally authorized, undeniable facts.

There is no doubt that what happened in 1915 is an emotional issue for both the Turks and the Armenians, as both sides have lost hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians under the well known conditions of the World War I.

It is particularly for this reason that history should be left to the judgment of the historians.

Unlike what Mr. Vodicka implies in his article, third countries’ parliaments do not have a task or function to re-write history. The mission of parliaments should be to improve relations between peoples, not harm them on the basis of fabrications of certain ill-intended lobbyist groups.

In this respect, Turkey has opened all its archives, including military records, to all researchers and encourages all historians, scholars and researchers to freely examine and discuss this historical issue in every platform.

In the same vein, Turkey has officially proposed in 2005, to the Government of Armenia, the establishment of a joint history commission” to be composed of historians from both and other interested sides to jointly study the events of 1915.

The Commission is supposed to study all related archives of Turkey, Armenia, Russia, United States, United Kingdom, France and others. Their findings should be shared with public.

Unfortunately, the Armenian Government has not yet given a clear-cut positive response to the Turkish initiative.

On the other hand, the Protocol on the Development of Relations between Turkey and Armenia, signed on 10 October 2009 in Zurich, stipulates the formation of a Sub- Commission. However, Armenia recently has decided to unilaterally suspend the ratification process of this Protocol.

We, in Turkey believe that it does not help any nation’s interest to draw hostilities from the history.

I will highly appreciate it, if You could kindly bring this letter and its annex to the attention of Your distinguished readers.

Dear Mr Cásensky,

Last but not least, I wish that next time You kindly decide to allocate a place for Turkey in Mlada Fronta Dnes, it would be for the purpose of furthering the relations between our two countries, for example in following fields:

-Energy Sector: With regard to expected energy gap in Europe in the next 10-15 years, Czech and Turkish companies can and should develop their mutual cooperation and also extend their partnerships to source countries. Turkey is becoming an energy corridor and also a regional energy hub and needs sustainable partners from the Czech industry.

-Logistics Sector: In parallel to the priorities of the Czech Government, logistics sector is of high importance also for Turkey. Much can be done with sound promotions of the MFD.

-Merchandise Trade: Our economies have a far larger potential to achieve a better bilateral merchandise trade of ca. USD 2 billion attained so far. MFD can and should contribute to lessening of lack-of-awareness of capabilities between the respective business communities.

It has become clear that the 21^st century will be the Asian-century. We can jointly draw more benefits for our nations, if our business communities join their alternative advantages and unite their forces on this ground.

-Investments: According to a press release of the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade, Turkey has been the leading country in 2009, in drawing Czech foreign investments. Turkey on the other hand, ranks within the first ten sources of foreign investments in Czech Republic. With a better awareness of capabilities on both sides, Czech and Turkish investments can be increased in each other’s countries.

-Tourism: According to the TTG polls, Turkey has ranked within the first two most preferred destinations among the Czech tourists in the last two years. In terms of package tours, it stands within the first three most preferred destinations of Czechs. Last year ca. 167.000 Czech tourists visited Turkey, and over 90.000 Turkish tourists visited Czech Republic. Time has come already to mutually initiate investments also in tourism sector.

-Culture-Education: The Turkish studies (Turkology) in the modern sense developed in the Czech lands at the end of the 19th century. Turkish philology was first taught at the Prague Charles University by Professors M. Grünert (1826–1929). J.B. Košut (1854–1880) and R. Dvorák (1860–1920) as a part of Oriental studies.

Turkology became fully independent subject field in 1925, when Prof. Jan Rypka (1886–1968), a highly regarded and world-known Turkologist, founded the so-called „Seminar for the Turkish language and literature“ at the Faculty of Arts and Literature of the Charles University in Prague.

Turkology Chair of the Charles University is fully active, teaching modern Turkish linguistics and history under Prof Jitka Maleckova.

Another prestigious institution, the Oriental Institute of Prague - founded by Prof. Bedrich Hrozny, a famous linguist who for the first time deciphered the Hittite script - incorporated Turkish studies into its research program. The students of Prof. Rypka, Prof. Josef Kabrda (1906–1968) and Dr. Zdenka Veselá (1930–1998), both active in the field of Ottoman and modern Turkish history, and Dr. Ludek Hrebícek (*1934) in Turkish linguistics had been doing research at this institution.

Accept, Mr Editor-in-Chief the assurances of my consideration.

Koray Targay