on turks

Sunday, June 12, 2011
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TRAVELS IN SPACE AND TIME
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That’s the title of a book by Dr. Noubar Janoyan:
(Jamportoutiun Jamanagi yev Daradsoutian michov).
Does anyone know him?
I would like to have his e-mail address
in order to let him know how much I am enjoying it.
The book was published by Grakan Etalon in Yerevan.
It’s a collection of stories, anecdotes, and encounters
with fellow Armenians in the Homeland and the Diaspora.
It does not shrink from exposing the dark side
of our collective existence.
It is written in East Armenian.
I suspect Dr. Janoyan had it translated from his West-Armenian
(he was born in Iraq and now lives in Glendale).
The prose is eminently readable and accessible.
It deserves to be a best-seller.
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Monday, June 13, 2011
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IDEAS THAT HAVE ENHANCED
MY AWARENESS OF REALITY
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The following quotations are from Toynbee who was a historian as well as a metahistorian – that is, a philosopher of history.
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“…authorities are not to be taken at their word, as if they were infallible oracles of gospel truth.”
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“Society is the total network of relations between human beings. The components of society are thus not human beings but relations between them.”
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“When prophets disagree, are we to give credit to either of their opposing voices?”
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“When top-dog sees a heaven, under-dog will see a hell.”
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“…the orthodoxy that they idnetified with their own faith and a heresey that they identified with the ideology of their adversaries.”
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“The apotheosis of the community spells slavery for individual beings.”
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“Man is not an angel, and in seeking to be one, he deprives himself of something that is essential to his being.”
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“A monument in a museum is one that has been desecrated and sterilized.”
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“A reputation for scholarliness is expendable, and it is a scholar’s duty to risk it.”
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“In art, in illuminating antithesis to practical life, there is more to be made out of failure than out of success.”
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“There is no such thing as a human organization that can be established securely through being made weather-proof against the all-disintegrating action of time.”
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Tuesday, June 14, 2011
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CORRECT ME,
IF I AM WRONG
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Monkeys, we are told, have three enemies:
pythons, leopards, and eagles;
and according to recent studies,
they have a distinctive alarm call for each.
Men, by contrast,
have developed a much more sophisticated communication system,
but they have lost the ability to recognize an enemy
when they see one.
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Murder in one dimension
means suicide in another.
By committing genocide,
Turks lost the ability to tell the difference
between truth and lies,
right and wrong, and
democracy and fascism –
hence, their apotheosis of Kemal.
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In a recent commentary
I incorrectly stated that Turks
outnumbered Armenians 40 to 1.
One of my gentle Turkish readers
took it upon himself to question
the accuracy of my math and
even the existence of my sources.
I am now willing to reconsider my figures.
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If we take into account
only Armenian revolutionaries
versus the perpetrators of the Genocide
(namely, the regime and the regularly army
augmented by Kurds and criminals
released from prison for the occasion)
the ratio would be closer to 400 to 1.
I say this because no one,
not even the most loyal and fanatic Turkish nationalist
would dare to suggest that unarmed civilians –
women, children, and old men –
could be thought of by any stretch of the imagination
as posing a threat to the terrirotial integrity of the nation
or the stability of the regime,
which was the rationale for the Genocide
as well as the context in which
the 40 to 1 ratio was stated.
Correct me if I am wrong.
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Wednesday, June 15, 2011
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THEM AND US
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We may never succeed in convincing Turks
that they are guilty of genocide.
We may, however, have better luck
in convincing them that
there is no such thing as a Turk
and that many so-called Turks
have Armenian blood.
One reason this aspect of their identity
has been ignored or not emphasized enough is that
it is repellent to both them and us
who like to proceed on the false assumption that
explanations are good
only when they flatter our collective ego.
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The discovery of DNA is the most convincing argument
against nationalism.
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All talk of pure blood is impure nonsense.
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Translation is a difficult art to master
because every culture creates its own semantic atmosphere
in which words carry their own baggage.
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