Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News

Don’t Mention It
by The New York Press - January 3, 2001
Posted: Friday, January 05, 2001 11:16 am CST

The Mail

Melik Kaylan is correct when he argues in "Whose Genocide?" ("Taki’s Top Drawer, 12/27") that history is complex. Injustices and atrocities have occurred at the hands of, and against, virtually all ethnic groups at one time or another.

However, Kaylan obfuscates matters further by concluding with a kind of moral equivalence theory. According to his logic, African-Americans, Native Americans, Jews and other groups who have suffered extreme oppression should just shut up about it. The unfortunate fact is that Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Eastern Christians have suffered centuries of oppression under Ottoman and Turkish Islam. In some periods and places this was more extreme than in others. What happened to these Eastern Christians in 1915-’16 was the first known genocide of the 20th century. Healing for their ancestors and "redemption" (which Kaylan seems to desire) for the perpetrators and for their Turkish ancestors and Muslim coreligionists would come much more quickly if the groups in question faced and admitted the truth, as some Turkish human rights groups have recently done. Charles Glass’s truth-telling ("Taki’s Top Drawer," 12/13) is much more helpful toward this end than is Kaylan’s obfuscation and denial.

Markos Nickolas,
Boston

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