CORRESPONDENCE 7

Letter 7

Dear Garabet,

I am ready to accept this, but with some conditions:

We have to avoid promoting any kind of discrimination, xenophobia, racism or fanaticism towards any kind of identity (ethnic, racial, religious, socioeconomic class, sex or age). We must be very careful on this issue. I see some blogs full of abusive language, insult and blind fanaticism where people coming from different roots are vomiting their angers, hate, and resentment towards each other: it is a kind of masturbation, and“pornography of hate”. So we must control messages which have this kind of content. Me and you, we must be moderator and on this blog people will have to get our approval to express their views. We should be open every opinion, political views unless they don't contain insult, hate or discriminative expression.

To prevent this we have to avoid overgeneralization while giving information. We have to be careful while using the names of identities as subject and object. For ex: "1.5 million Armenians were killed by Turks". This expression for a Turk is irritating, because every Turk in this period were not Armenian killer, and because almost none of Turks who will read our blog is Armenian killer. Instead we can say " (the number) Armenians were killed by some Turkish/Kurdish bandits, militia and Ottoman regular troops". We can discuss on the details during the creation of this blog, but I think overgeneralization make Turkish people angry and deaf towards Armenian issue. Another important point is, as I said earlier, “...we have to condemn all kind of crime committed by both some Armenians and Turks (and Kurdish), it will be much easier for Turks to admit the responsibility of their ancient governments. In case we accuse just Turks it will be both unfair and unreasonable.”

We should not forget Assyrians, Greeks and Muslim civilians killed, tortured or raped during this period. We should not forgot soldiers either, ordinary privates killed, wounded, taken captive during these wars. Most of them were poor peasants who did not have any idea for what reason they were fighting. All these people who were living together in a country governed by a state called the Ottoman State were victims of human greed and ferocity. If it is true almost 5 million Ottoman citizens (including 800,000 soldiers) were killed during this war. This is one of the greatest numbers of causalities per capita. We were victims of bad government, imperialism and real politic. We were victims of our intolerance, ignorance and egoism.

Best Regards,

Mehmet

ANSWER TO LETTER 7

Dear Mehmet:

You read my mind. I am an academician and would absolutely not want to go to a level as low as some hateful sites are. What I envision is a civil blog in all aspects of the word. Two persons, who are trying to find a common ground, despite the xenophobia surrounding the regarding the issue they are discussing. My aim is not to speak about the genocide as much as I want to show how two civil and polite people from both sides of a thorny issue can talk with and to each other. I want this to be a model for others to emulate.

Let's do this. You have the email that you sent me. Please go over the and do the editing you want and lets avoid the thorny issues that raise tensions. Rewrite them the way you see fit. I will do the same with mine. We can then exchange the writings and after agreeing on them creates the blog we envision. I will then have to work on promoting it through proper tech channels.

Let's see if our endeavor will create a kind of buzz that we both desire.

Best Regards,
Garabet