Brainwashing: How Turkish school books narrate the Armenian genocide
Investigative journalist Uzay Bulut pens an article published by the Gatestone Institute that looks at a narrative that turns “history on its head", one that denies that Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks are indigenous in Anatolia. As Turkish children become adults, they parrot “the lies taught to them in their schools.”
Istanbul (AsiaNews) – Actual "brainwashing" is how Turkish investigative journalist Uzay Bulut describes the textbooks Turkey uses for students in the section dedicated to the history of the Armenian and Assyrian genocide
In an article titled "Turkish textbooks: twisting history", an investigation published on the website of the Gatestone Institute, Bulut writes: “Turkish government authorities have targeted their own indigenous peoples of Anatolia, namely the Pontic Greeks and Armenians. In the twentieth century, Ottoman Turkey largely exterminated these peoples through a genocide.”
Yet, the books refer “to ‘unfounded claims’ of Greeks and Armenians.” Once called “the ‘Pontus Issue’ and the ‘Armenian Question’,” the sections “are now changed to the ‘Unfounded Pontus Claims’ and the ‘Unfounded Armenian Claims’.”
Ankara also denies that Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks are indigenous to the land where the Turks settled centuries later, occupying the territory, and exterminating those who already lived there.
One critical factor, Uzay Bulut points out, is that “Turkish schoolchildren, who have no idea about the real history of their country, are brainwashed with falsehoods about their country’s origin and fed hatred about the remnants of the minorities.”
As a result, these children become adults memorising the lies taught to them in school, denying that the Ottoman Empire committed genocide against native Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks.
These children “are not at fault for not knowing the true history of their country nor the facts about the genocide committed against the minorities.”
They are fed the lie that minorities lived "happily" in the empire for centuries, until the European powers “instigated them to rebel against their government.”
In reality, “minorities living in the Ottoman Empire were always oppressed, enslaved, attacked, robbed, kidnapped, raped and massacred, culminating in the Genocide of 1915.”
Not only “These minorities were not even considered to be second class citizens” but they "had no rights whatsoever and were at the mercy of their brutal rulers," points out the journalist, who defines the education of Turkish students as "misinformation, wilful distortion and historic revisionism."
“This is not just a dispute between Armenians and Turks” since “The Turkish government knows better than anyone that the accusations of genocide are factual”. This is because “Ottoman archives in its possession” explain “the truth, even after being selectively cleansed of any incriminating evidence.”
According to Dr Gregory H. Stanton, president of Genocide Watch, denial is the last stage of genocide. “Denial is a continuation of a genocide because it is a continuing attempt to destroy the victim group psychologically and culturally, to deny its members even the memory of the murders of their relatives.”
Turkey should face up to the truth and teach “innocent Turkish students the tragic facts of history about the massacres and genocide” because “neither today’s young generation nor the current Turkish government were responsible since they did not exist during these murders.”
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