"John Havoonjian"
OPEN LETTER IN RESPONSE TO THE "USTN" PETITION
Until and unless wars between countries have been outlawed and classified as "crimes against humanity" - just like the UN Convention has decreed genocide as a crime against humanity - it is misleading and confusing to compare calamities concomitant to war, with the crimes committed as part of a genocide. At times, certain wars are righteous; they might be waged to eliminate evil, or to rectify an injustice. But genocides are never righteous or justified. It is usually committed by the majority in hegemony against a helpless minority for selfish reasons. In fact, no reason can justify a genocide; even if the outcome improves the welfare of the group committing it - notwithstanding the recent self-congratulatory words of Turkey's current Defense Minister... In the case of Nagorno-Karabakh, after the collapse of the Soviet Union the majority Armenian population of the region declared their independence. It is true that during the Soviet era, Stalin arbitrarily ceded Nagono-Karabakh to Azerbaijan as an incentive bonus for its joining the communist world (one of the first Muslim countries doing so). During the ensuing war between the Azeries and the Armenians, both sides unfortunately committed atrocities. But these were not part of a genocidal scheme; rather, casualties of the direct war. It is noteworthy that USTN petition laments the Azeri war casualties, but conveniently overlooks the barbaric massacre of innocent Armenians residing in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait - where they had lived and contributed to the overall Azerbaijani society for many decades. The petition issued by the USTN also states "that the events in Easter Anatolia during the WWI remain a controversial issue, with disputing Turkish and Armenian narratives.. ." But history books have the following assessment: "About 25,000 Turkish soldiers died in the high mountains in January 1915. Sarikamish remained in Russian hands. Enver Pasha should have accepted full responsibility for the disaster he had engineered [don't miss the fact that Turkey was the aggressor at this time...], but instead, he looked around for a scapegoat and found one in the Christian Armenians. { The fact that some Armenians in the region of Van took up arms in self defense, or that many Russian Armenians joined the Russian army, can be a legitimate reason for the cataclysmic upheaval that befell the Armenians because of Enver's and Talaat's ire...} It is true that there are "disputing Turkish and Armenian narratives", but historical documents and reliable eye-witness reports, and the vast majority of historians - including the International association of Genocide Scholars - attest to the genocidal character of "the events in Eastern Anatolia". The last phrase is best described as: Forced uprooting (and annihilation) of the inhabitants of historical Wester Armenia from their ancestral lands of over three millennia! With calculated vagueness, as well as willful distortion of the truth, this group is still on the path to deny the Armenian genocide - let alone apologizing, or thinking of amendments and righteous reconciliation. Still hoping for Truth and Justice to prevail! John
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