Turkey: The AKP Government.

Submitted by Sophie (Canada), Oct 31, 2005 at 19:31

I would like to ask Sultan if he reads The Hurriyet Newspaper.
This is from MEMRI.
One Day You Wake Up and Find That the Nazis Have Invaded Turkey "
Turkish columnist Mehmet Y. Yilmaz wrote in Hurriyet: [8]

"The debate regarding the arrest of Van's YYU President Prof. Yucel Askin is becoming more interesting by the day. An AKP member of parliament recently said that the president [Prof. Askin] was in fact an 'Armenian' and was appointed to his position 'in order to divide Van, a city claimed by the Armenians.' Following his remarks, [the Islamist Turkish daily] Vakit wrote that President [Askin's] grandfather Mehmet Yakup Bey and his grandmother Ayse Huriye Hanim had notations in their registration documents showing them to be 'converts,' meaning they had changed their religion [from Christianity to Islam].

"I know nothing about the veracity of these allegations.

"But when I combined this 'news' with the remarks made by this AKP parliamentarian, I felt as if I was watching a 'Twilight Zone' film: One day you wake up and find that the Nazis have invaded Turkey! [People] with swastikas on their armbands are taking away all those who have in their pasts any relationship with Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Serbians, Georgians, Croatians, Albanians, Gypsies, Russians, Moldavians, Bulgarians, Arabs, Persians, [and others]!

"For centuries, we lived on the lands of an empire [i.e. the Ottoman Empire] that included many ethnic groups. We intermarried. We lived as neighbors and became also relatives.

"[…] In such a nation that lived in harmony, tolerance and peaceful relations, that can set an example for many other nations in the world, how can anybody go back, search, and find 'pure blood'?

"[…] Those who have recently gone searching with a magnifying glass for Armenian blood in all those they dislike remind me of […]Nazi Germany. Because what ended in concentration camps and gas chambers there started exactly in this manner.

"As a society, we must raise our voices against a new kind of fascism."
Hurriyet October 26, 2005

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