Submitted by Kamer Minassian, Aug 28, 2007 16:46

Hillel Halkin's is right to the point, I congratulate his high moral stand and objectivity.

Turkey is a poor country and is still suffering from the criminal abusive empire syndrome of the past; today she is nothing, she needs Israel and the other countries much more than they need her, she knows that very well; she also knows from experience that the western countries will prefer to sacrifice the weak and harmless Armenian side rather than face the small discomfort of the Turkish bluff.

Besides, all major countries have recognized the Armenian Genocide with the exception of US, Isreal and UK; with the further recognition of these three countries, Turkey will have no room to maneuver, manipulate, blackmail or retaliate; she will be trapped and the numerous Turks, inside and outside Turkey who are against the genocide denial, will be given the much necessary support to have the Turkish government change its century-long complex, then the world will be a much better place to live.

It takes only a small amount of courage, imagination and practical vision on behalf of the politicians to act. The article of Hillel Halkin is an excellent eye-opener.

Therefore, Israel, US and UK have a crucial role to play in recognizing the Armenian Genocide and send a strong message, once and for all, to Turkey who, for more than 7 centuries has continuously committed crimes against humanity and is still committing, because she was left unchecked, by the naive European countries.

It is a fallacy to say that, the Armenians and the Turks must sit down and resolve their problems, oh yea right, it happened in the past between the Jews and the nazis; they can kid themselves. Also, it never happened that the perpetrator has acknowledged the crime voluntarily, unless a third party came and forced the admission of the crime.

For the record, it is appropriate to remind that at the end of WW II, Turkey having lost the war by the side of Germany, became occupied by the allied forces Britain, France and Italy who forced on the transitional Turkish government to establish a tribunal in Constantinoples (a precursor of the Nuremberg tribunal) to try and indict all the criminal leaders of the past regime, such as Talaat, Enver, Djemal, Shakir...who had fled the country; the tribunal admitted the crimes committed against the Armenian Nation, all the leaders were condemned to death by hanging in absentia, ten thousand most important officials were imprisoned, the trials lasted for one year and only one person was hanged. Gradually, the allies seeing that their interest was to make seperate deals with Turkey rather than punish her, especially that the Armenian side was practically non-existant, they abandoned the trials and all the prisoners were released. When later, in 1922 Kemal Ataturk seized power, he destroyed all the trial's documents.

To say that Turkey did not admit to the crime of Genocide is wrong. Beginning from Ataturk, turkey began to deny, in the same way as nazis still deny the Jewish Genocide.

Thus an easy and golden opportunity was lost by the "civilized world", to punish the criminal and serve as an example and for sure we would not have had the sebsequent Genocides.

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