Turkish rift..

The Turkish Empire standing on the offset of the Anatolian peninsula adjoining both Europe and Asia has enjoyed an exemplified location since ever. Standing between the resource rich Mediterranean and the Black Sea it has enjoyed a strategic location by being a NATO partner in the Middle East. Turkey has been an important hand of the US that has been deployed in the region. Its reach in the Iraqi war and the possible check of growing Russian hands in the adjoining nations of Georgia and Azerbaijan have been instrumental.


However tiffs started last year when anti Muslim sentiments were accepted as a mandatory part of the NATO regime. Due to the rising unrest of the Islamic insurgents right from China across India Afghanistan to the West the word Muslim has got entangled with being a militant. What more was to happen - minarets were simultaneously banned in Switzerland as possible militant hideouts and turban which is considered as important Muslim attire was banned to be worn in France. To the extent where human right violation was consistent all these acts of the Western world was unacceptable.


First of all pointing out fingers to the entire community is wrong when only some of them are wrong and doing so would lead to further alienation of the people on moral grounds. Then next question to be put up was -why would a country like Turkey which has a near hundred percent Islamic population stand next to NATO allies wherein the liberties of Muslims are being curtailed?


Well if this is not enough the entire picture of ethnic clashes and liberty curtailment is by and large much bigger. On one hand with Islamic dominion in the Turkish estate the Armenian fraternity is being pushed aside by the Turks. Armenia has been an obvious Turkish enemy since 1915 over a number of issues and this fight has turned ripe with sudden US support to the Armenian cause.

Armenia is a small country landlocked and even being a Russian ally it is surrounded by two anti Russian countries of Azerbaijan and Turkey. Turkey and Armenia never had a relationship of goodwill and trust. It began with during the end or closing of the First World War when ethnic cleansing was in progress and the entire Ottoman Empire was breaking up into nation states. A large chunk of Christian ethnic Armenian population that lived in countries like Bulgaria, Romania, Anatolia, Greece, Georgia, Azerbaijan were forcibly moved from their territories to foreign lands. Many of them were driven towards the southern Syrian deserts and left to die. Many of them slaughtered and butchered on large tracts of wastelands before they could make their way past Anatolia into Armenia.


All this came to be known as the Armenian Genocide of which Turkey still take no acceptance of carrying out.

It is widely acknowledged to have been one of the first modern genocides, as scholars point to the systematic, organized manner in which the killings were carried out to eliminate the Armenians. Indeed, the word genocide was coined in order to describe these events. It is the second most-studied case of genocide after the Holocaust.

The starting date of the genocide is conventionally held to be April 24, 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of food and water, to the desert of what is now Syria. Massacres were indiscriminate of age or gender, with rape and other sexual abuse commonplace. Turkey however openly denies any such incident and openly says that nothing of that sort happened.


The latest Turkish-American rift over the Armenian question—after a congressional committee voted on March 4th to recognise the killings of 1915 as genocide—looks wider than some previous ones. It coincides with a general scratchiness between America and its ally. Turkey is reluctant to slap sanctions on Iran. Anti-Americanism is running high among Turks. Some suspect that Barack Obama retains his view (expressed as a senator in 2008) that “the Armenian genocide is not an allegation…but rather a widely documented fact.”


Still, the chances are that after a deep sulk, Turkey will send its ambassador back to Washington, and the administration will persuade legislators to avoid a vote in the full House, for fear of wrecking an important relationship—and worsening the fading prospects for reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia. A tired diplomatic ritual will play out once again.


Can any actor in this sorry drama do anything to improve the script? One day a Turkish leader will be statesman enough to see that national dignity is better served by acknowledging the sins committed on Anatolian soil than by suppressing debate and punishing truth-tellers. Such a leader could decouple relations with Armenia from Ottoman history. In any case the country that has lost faith of nearly all its allies is America itself.


America- Broke and mass murderer but not going strong anymore. Turkey is an important foothold because of its strategic position on the head of the globe and loosing it would cost the entire Caucuses.