Will Turkey ever acknowledge the Armenian genocide? No, not for the next 1000+ years.

Pulat Tacar

Harun Resit Aydin, history lover
Answered Apr 10
Will Turkey ever acknowledge the Armenian genocide?

No, not for the next 1000 years.

And don’t take this as a cruel statement, I’m saying you the deadly truth about the situation not my own feelings.

You’ll mostly hear about the narrative ‘’I like the Turks, they are good, but their political rulership..they’re refusing to acknowledge the genocide..’’

Well, nothing could be more wrong. Exactly during this government time, some of his advisors came to the idea that it’s possible to settle this issue for all at once and forgot that this subject has a whole more than ‘’let’s shake hands finally’’, which ranges from Turkish and Armenian lobby groups who spend millions and billions for the advertisement of their narrative, states who are at stake with Turkey and use this incident for their own goals and the sentiments on both sides. And like expected, it backfired a lot for the political leaders and they took a ‘’u-turn’’ as soon as possible.

That means, a politician represents in a large majority his own people, he is a guy who comes from the same streets of the same country and lives among these people. And his only chance to survive is to represent as much as possible the sentiments of his people and need to be very careful that he doesn’t play too much on these feelings.

What made this whole subject a ‘’no-go’’ in history and turned it to a eternal denial are two incidents:

1- The existence of the Holocaust and the aftermath results

2- That people especially after the second world war for the first time came out with that narrative and tried to connect it to the Holocaust or tried to draw a parallel.

If these two incidents would not happen, nobody would even bother about this situation in Turkey much and it would be solved much easier.

So why I’m saying this and what is the sentiment in Turkey?

I’ve told in another answer of mine the sufferings of my own family during this time:

Harun Resit Aydin’s answer to What caused Turkey to initiate the Armenian Genocide?

And there are around 300–500 k victim families in Turkey, who during the first world war suffered in the hands of Armenian militias. These families have carried these horrible memories with themselves over decades and told their kids, just like it was the case on the Armenian side who left their soil. Exactly here the main problem is that the whole subject is discussed very wrong over decades.

The Turkish people think this:

1. We have not killed the Armenians like it was the case of the Jews in Nazi Germany just because we felt so, but because we were attacked in thousands in our villages and lived the most horrible things..
2. Why then only WE should apologize when we have lost also thousands of people due to the Armenian Terror.

Obviously, the Armenians because of their numbers have suffered later more losses than the Turks (even that is flawed very much, Kurds were in these regions in majority, just like my fathers Kurdish family, the Turks more in minority), but they look it from the perspective

‘’being called a murder and on the top of it not even getting acknowledgment of their own death tolls and a sorry for that..’’

That’s maybe less present in the urban areas of the metropols in Turkey where there are some people who want to accept the ‘’Armenian Genocide’’ because no one in their family has lived it during that time and the story is very far to them, but boy, if you come to Anatolia and speak with people who have lost their entire families into the brutality of these incidents, you’ll realize that this incident will be never ever recognized in the next 1000 years and anyone in the politics, who even mention this, can forget to rule Turkey

Therefore, my only thought is for a solution, that both sides say openly that they commited massacres on both sides and apologize at the same time and maybe open a memorial about it in these respective countries together or this incident will continue to be spoken from one side and the others will just ignore it and move on.

And honestly, despite the fact that my family has lost so many members during this crime and an entire village was wiped out, I totally forgot it and forgive. It’s so much in past, that nobody anymore remembers and none of us had to do something with it. I really don’t understand why we keep accusing each other about ancient things when we today losing so many kids and innocent people into war where we actually need to step in and help out.

I feel for all the victim families from both sides during these difficult times.

Thanks.