BY TAHA AKYOL
MILLIYET- In 1919, writer Ziya Gokalp told the following to a military court about the Armenian issue: ‘It wasn’t one-sided, the massacre was mutual!’ In two books, ‘Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Muslims 1821-1922’ and ‘Muslims and Minorities,’ Professor Justin McCarthy wrote about Muslim-Christian clashes and massacres between which resulted in 5 million Muslim deaths. He researched not only the Ottoman archives, but also made extensive use of reports of the British Consulate. McCarthy characterizes the incidents which began with the 1915 Armenian revolt as a ‘war between communities.’ The real issue is the ‘Ottoman response’ to the massacres which the Armenians started. There were more Muslim deaths (Death and Exile, p. 217).
The Bosnians lived through the last massacre in the Balkans. Europe just sat and watched this until NATO intervened! In his book ‘The World’s Banker,’ Sebastian Mallaby wrote about the World Bank’s failure to respond and the efforts of Kemal Dervis, later an economy minister but then a WB official, to save the Bosnians. Through Dervis’ efforts, the WB eventually decided to help Bosnia’s reconstruction, which encouraged NATO to intervene.
French daily Le Monde asked Dervis his opinion about the so-called Armenian genocide. Dervis expressed his concerns about the incidents and reminded them of Muslim massacres. The truth about the Armenian question is that it wasn’t a one-sided reaction, but a mutual massacre. If you act as if nothing happened, then people label the incidents ‘genocide.’ Moreover, we have to remind the West of the ‘Muslim Massacre.’ The massacre, which began in 1821 on the Danube and continued until 1995 in Bosnia… I wish there were more Turkish people like Dervis working in the WB, the International Monetary Fund, the UN and OECD.