{"id":76109,"date":"2014-03-26T08:37:37","date_gmt":"2014-03-26T04:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/archive2.ankakh.com\/?p=76109"},"modified":"2014-03-26T08:37:39","modified_gmt":"2014-03-26T04:37:39","slug":"what-should-armenians-learn-from-prime-minister-erdogan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive2.ankakh.com\/en\/?p=76109","title":{"rendered":"What Should Armenians Learn From Prime Minister Erdogan?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\u0540\u0561\u0580\u0578\u0582\u0569-\u054d\u0561\u057d\u0578\u0582\u0576\u0575\u0561\u05761\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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By Harut Sassounian<\/p>\n

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Publisher, The California Courier<\/p>\n

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The purpose of this column is to draw lessons from the recent attacks on the Armenian town of Kessab in Syria.<\/p>\n

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Last week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan took two bold actions: 1) he blocked Twitter, a social media site with 12 million users in Turkey, to cover up revelations of corruption about himself and his inner circle; and 2) he aided and abetted the Jihadist fighters\u2019 invasion of Kessab, located in the Northwest corner of Syria, bordering Turkey!<\/p>\n

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What do these two seemingly unrelated events have in common?<\/p>\n

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Erdogan himself indirectly answered this question, during a campaign rally on March 20: \u201cwe will wipe out Twitter. I don\u2019t care at all what the international community says. Everyone will see the power of the Turkish Republic.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Clearly, the Prime Minister does not care that he would be criticized for violating the democratic principle of freedom of expression and acting as an autocratic thug. He says and does whatever he thinks is in Turkey\u2019s or his own best interest!<\/p>\n

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US officials reacted by paying mere lip service to Erdogan\u2019s internet crackdown. Samantha Power, US Ambassador to the United Nations, tweeted the following message: \u201cDeeply troubling that Turkey blocked Twitter. Shutting down free access to info inconsistent with democracy; support citizens\u2019 call to unblock.\u201d\u00a0Douglas Frantz, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and former managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, who was forced to resign after blocking publication of an article on the Armenian Genocide, described Erdogan\u2019s anti-Twitter action as: \u201c21st<\/sup>\u00a0century book burning.\u201d\u00a0Similar benign criticisms were voiced by State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, and European Union Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes.<\/p>\n

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Did Erdogan care about these verbal lashings? Absolutely not! He didn\u2019t give a damn! He had already blocked YouTube for two years, because the website carried videos deemed insulting to Kemal Ataturk. The Turkish Prime Minister now threatens to ban both facebook and YouTube after the\u00a0March 30\u00a0elections.<\/p>\n

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Why don\u2019t Armenian leaders — in Armenia and Diaspora — act more boldly, similar to Erdogan, especially when the survival of Armenians is at stake?\u00a0It is most appropriate to raise such a question after the invasion of Kessab byJihadists, taking Armenian hostages, pillaging their homes, and desecrating their churches.<\/p>\n

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Regrettably, repeated pleas by Armenian-American organizations to US officials, to help protect Armenians and other Syrian Christians, have fallen on deaf ears. On March 24, the ANCA sent another strongly-worded letter to Pres. Obama, demanding immediate White House and congressional intervention to stop the attacks on Kessab. The US government does not seem interested in the tragic fate of Syrian-Armenians and other minorities, since Washington is hell-bent on toppling Bashar al-Assad\u2019s regime, ignoring the loss of innocent lives.<\/p>\n

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Armenians should not be content by merely shaking their heads and complaining to each other about the tragic news emanating from Syria. They must wake up from their collective coma and take bold action. Daily demonstrations must be held in major U.S. cities and in front of American, British, French, Saudi, and Turkish embassies and consulates around the world to protest their arming of so-called rebels who are kidnapping and murdering Syrian Armenians, among many others.<\/p>\n

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Urgent meetings should be held with top US, British and French officials, demanding that they immediately halt deliveries of all weapons and financial assistance to \u2018rebels\u2019 in Syria, until they cease attacks on civilians!<\/p>\n

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I wrote a column back in 2002 with the following headline: \u201cThe Armenian \u2018Mouse\u2019 Needs to Roar More Often.\u201d Basically, it was a call for bolder action. I had referred to the short story written by William Saroyan, titled: \u201cThe Armenian Mouse,\u201d in which a brave mouse, by its aggressive behavior, manages to defend itself from more ferocious beasts.<\/p>\n

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Remaining silent and inactive are no longer viable options, while our compatriots are getting slaughtered in Syria. Sheepish behavior only serves to embolden the enemies of the Armenian nation.<\/p>\n

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Armenians need to be proactive rather than reactive. On the eve of the Genocide Centennial, they cannot be silent bystanders while the Turkish government and its allies are directly or indirectly embarking on a new campaign of exterminating Armenians in Syria.<\/p>\n

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Armenians must speak up, protest, and take effective action to defend their countrymen in all corners of the world. They need to become the \u2018mouse\u2019 that ROARS!<\/p>\n

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\u0531\u0576\u056f\u0561\u056d<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        By Harut Sassounian   Publisher, The California Courier      …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":17657,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[224,113,212],"tags":[1929,416,8491,387],"class_list":["post-76109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics","category-weekly-news","tag-erdogan","tag-harut-sassounian","tag-kessab","tag-syria","post_format-post-format-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive2.ankakh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive2.ankakh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive2.ankakh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive2.ankakh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive2.ankakh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive2.ankakh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive2.ankakh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive2.ankakh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive2.ankakh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive2.ankakh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}