THE ?SIX APOLOGIES? TURKS HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR SINCE WW1
	Ergun KIRLIKOVALI	ergun@turkla.com

Dear Readers,

The following example illustrates just how careful the Turkish-Americans must be against those subtle anti-Turkish punches, usually thrown by members of the AFATH (Armenian Falsifiers and Turk-Haters) community. In this case, an English teacher, trying to poke fun at Bush re-election, knowingly or unknowingly, but certainly unfairly, defames Turks in the process. Let’s first read her essay, published on November 20, 2004, in Sydney Morning Herald , Australia . My response follows.

SORRY FOR ALL THE APOLOGIES
By Ruth Wajnryb

It might bemuse a visiting anthropologist from Mars to discover within Earth culture a speech event loosely called "saying sorry". If s/he stays around long enough, s/he may discover that the sorry speech event is an umbrella term for a diverse collection of utterances (or sorry noises) that leaders of democratic nations emit - or feel compelled to emit - usually at some symbolic occasion. Anniversaries of genocides are good.

I say "democratic nations" because for the life of me I can't remember one such verbal engagement with the issue of sorriness coming out of the mouths of tyrants. It's not the Idi Amin Club members who wrestle with apologetics. At the bookends of the 20th century, descendants of the dispersed survivors of the Armenian genocide and those of Saddam's gassed Kurds are still waiting.

I'd like to propose "apologetics" (note the small "a") as a superordinate to cover all the verbal noises that accrue with the issue of sorriness. The word refers both to the verbal act and the rumblings that surround it.

A recent example comes from Tony Blair. Jeered on by anti-war protesters outside the annual conference of the British Labour Party, and with considerable visible angst (most angst, of course, being an interior experience), Blair wrestled with his apologetics, struggling to find a way between the simplicity of straight-talking and the complex pressures of public opinion mixed with party constraints.

He refused to apologise for the Iraq war. "The world is a better place with Saddam in prison, not in power." When it came to allegations about the "sexing up" of prewar intelligence reports, Blair's ice got thinner: he "admitted", "acknowledged" and "accepted" that evidence about the weapons of mass destruction "has turned out to be wrong". It was a tenuous path to walk - between the cajoling of anti-war protesters (they who, strangely, only surface in democracies) and the sensitive fact that, as he speaks, he has boys in the field. Even amid the party faithful, "guarded" and "gingerly" are the ways to go.

An apology means saying you're sorry. This seems straightforward enough until you poke at the scar tissue of history. Sometimes, etymology offers insights. It was not until the 18th century that "apologise" seriously took on the meaning of "a frank expression of regret for wrong done". Before that, its meaning was closer to the Latin and the original Greek, apologia, where apo (from, off) and logos (speech) combine to produce an account mounted in defence or justification. In modern terms, think of the closing argument of the defence lawyer.

English retains this original sense in its "apologist", though this too has been tainted by negativity. Alleged apologists usually deny that they are. The pseudo-historian David Irving denies being an apologist for Hitler even while uttering his absurd claims that openly seek to exonerate or explain away or diminish the monstrosity of Nazism.

If you key "apologetics" into case-non-sensitive Google, you get almost a million hits. These are mostly (big-A) Apologetics - a Christian term for the practice of defending the Christian faith against those who raise objections to its validity. This usage more closely resembles the original Greek sense.

Contrast is a great mechanism for discerning the less-than-obvious. To grasp the navigational complexity of apologetics, consider the sheer simplicity of an uncomplicated act of sorry. At http://www.sorryeverybody.com, Democrat-voting Americans apologise for Bush's re-election.

One is reminded that English allows both forthrightness and obfuscation, each achieved through words.



. (And here is my response to the above unfair attack on Turks & Turkish-Americans)

THE “SIX APOLOGIES” TURKS HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR SINCE WW1

I was amused by Ruth Wajnryb's recent essay "Sorry for all the apologies" (November 20, 2004, Sydney Morning Herald , Australia). At first glance, I thought she was apologizing for her torturous last name, which looked like someone hadn't yet heard of useful tools called "the vowels" (meant as a joke!).

She pontificates "...it might bemuse a visiting anthropologist from Mars to discover within Earth culture a speech event loosely called 'saying sorry'. If s/he stays around long enough, s/he may discover that the sorry speech event is an umbrella term for a diverse collection of utterances (or sorry noises) that leaders of democratic nations emit - or feel compelled to emit - usually at some symbolic occasion. Anniversaries of genocides are good..." So far is so good.

But then she drops the ball: "...At the bookends of the 20th century, descendants of the dispersed survivors of the Armenian genocide..." are still waiting.

Well, we Turks are still waiting , too, for apologies from the following "democratic nations", which they seem to feel comfortable to simply ignore:

1. From UK, not only for invading Turkey in a brutal way during 1915-1921, but also for the infamous wartime propaganda materials collectively called "The Blue Books". These books demonized Turks to the West in order to drum up public support in UK and USA, for the allied war effort during WWI. The UK had long since cleansed the Royal files of these forgeries exaggerations, lies, and forgeries, but did nothing when others, for example Armenians, used them to justify Armenian terrorism to this date. The UK also owes a big apology to all the people of Anatolia for the naval blockade during WW1 that caused war-induced starvation to reach epidemic proportions;

2. From France, not only for invading Turkey in the brutal way that they did, but also for the infamous wartime propaganda materials collectively called "The Yellow Books", which demonized Turks to the West in order to drum up public support in France and in non-German Europe, for the allied war effort during WWI. France also owes a huge apology to Turks for using the Armenian-Ottoman citizens under French uniforms against their fellow Turkish-Ottoman citizens, resulting in neighbor killing neighbor, to advance the causes of France and then shamelessly passing a weird “1 sentence law” recognizing Turkish-Armenian civil war they partially provoked as genocide (a strange law that muzzles free speech in France on this issue and one that the US Ambassador to Ankara dubbed “a UFO”.;

3. From Russia, for using the Armenian-Ottoman citizens against their fellow Turkish-Ottoman citizens, resulting in neighbor killing neighbor for the benefit of Czarist Russia and letting the Armenian nationalists wreak havoc in eastern Anatolia while wearing Russian uniforms;

4. From U.S. Protestant missionaries, for destroying a "millennium of peaceful co-habitation and harmony" in Anatolia between Turks and Armenians, by their divisive, polarizing, and anti-Turkish, "Christian" sermons, in 50 short years (1865-1915), and causing unspeakable pain, suffering, and death to Turks and other Muslims during WWI, spilling all this Turkish and Armenian blood in the name of "working for the cross" and "in the service of God";

5. From the biased newspapers Boston Globe and, more importantly, the New York Times, for printing unsubstantiated, racist, and/or exaggerated horror stories defaming Turks. These, so called, “reports” were sent by anti-Turkish biased missionaries and their Armenian nationalist patrons in Anatolia during 1914-1918, for the sole purpose of drumming up support for the US entry into WWI by demonizing Turks ( Case in point: NYT published 145 stories defaming Turks in 1915 alone, with zero reports, responses, and/or rebuttals from the Turkish side and zero reports about the Turkish suffering and losses which were four times worse than the Armenian experience.);

6. From Armenians, for destroying a millennium of Turkish-Armenians peaceful co-habitation and harmony in Anatolia, by following the hateful messages of Armenian revolutionary leaders, in pursuit of a utopia (establishment of Greater Armenia on Turkish soil where the Armenians were always a minority). This act of supreme treason, at a time of war of survival for Turks, coupled with wide scale armed Armenian rebellions and Armenian terrorism caused the much respected Armenian image of "the most loyal nation" in the Ottoman Empire to turn into "the relocated nation" of back-stabbers in 25 short years (1890-1915). Armenian also owe a huge apology to today’s Turks and Azerbaijanis for international Armenian terrorism from 1973-to present; and for aggression and the ensuing ethnic cleansing in Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabag where 1 million Azeri refugees still battle poverty, near-starvation, leaky tents and harsh winters, in full view of the "Apologetics".

There is more but I'll stop here for now... I think your unsuspecting readers should finally have an idea, no matter how slight, about the "other side of the story".

…And I "apologize" to Ruth Wajnryb if the "democratic" terms like fairness, balance, and truth confuses the writer.

Ergun Kirlikovali