Investigative journalist Uzay Bulut writes this in an in-depth article published by the Gatestone Institute. A narrative of events that “distorts history,” denying even that Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks are indigenous peoples. And children grow into adults “repeating by heart the lies they are taught in schools.”
Istanbul () – A real “brainwashing”, says Turkish investigative journalist Uzay Bulut, in an article published on the Gatestone Institute website entitled “Turkish textbooks: distortion of history”, the textbooks that Ankara uses for students in the section dedicated to the history of the Armenian and Assyrian genocide.
“Turkish government authorities,” the journalist writes, “have targeted their own indigenous peoples of Anatolia, namely the Pontic Greeks and Armenians. In the 20th century, Ottoman Turkey largely exterminated these peoples through genocide.” However, the texts speak of “unfounded claims of Greeks and Armenians.” Previously, the sections were called, the analysis continues, “Pontic Question” and “Armenian Question.” Now “they have been changed to “Unfounded Claims of Pontus” and “Unfounded Claims of Armenians.”
Ankara also denies that Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks are indigenous peoples of the land where the Turks settled centuries later, occupying the territory and exterminating those who already lived there. One of the most critical elements, underlines Uzay Bulut, “is that young Turkish schoolchildren, who have no idea of the true history of their country, are brainwashed with falsehoods about the origin of their country and hatred towards the remnants of minorities is fuelled.”
As a result, these children grow into adults repeating by heart the lies they are taught in schools, denying that the Ottoman Empire committed genocide against the native Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks. These children, he says, are “not to blame for not knowing the true history of their country, nor the facts about the genocide committed against minorities.
They are fed the lie that minorities lived “happily” in the empire for centuries, until the European powers “incited them to rebel against their rule.” On the contrary, minorities living in the Ottoman Empire – he warns – were always oppressed, enslaved, attacked, robbed, kidnapped, raped and massacred, until the genocide of 1915. These minorities were not even considered second-class citizens.
Minorities “had no rights and were at the mercy of their brutal rulers,” the journalist stresses, describing the education of Turkish students as “disinformation, deliberate distortion and historical revisionism.” “It is not just a dispute between Armenians and Turks,” because Ankara “knows better than anyone that the accusations of genocide are real.” Proof of this are “the Ottoman archives in its possession” that explain “the truth, even after having been selectively cleared of any incriminating evidence.”
According to Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, president of Genocide Watch, denial is the final stage of genocide: “Denial is the continuation of genocide because it is a continuous attempt to psychologically and culturally destroy the victim group, to deny its members even the memory of the murders of their relatives.” The Turkish government should finally face “the reality of the facts” and teach “innocent Turkish students the tragic facts of history about massacres and genocide,” the journalist concludes. Because neither “the young generation of today nor the current Turkish government, which did not even exist during these murders, are responsible.”
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