"I am Turkish, I am honest, I am hard-working!"

Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Hurriyet
By Mehmet Y. Yilmaz

Turkish History Foundation Professor Yusuf Halacoglu has turned to be one of those excited about making politics out of the slogan that was heard at the funeral proceedings for slain journalist Hrant Dink: "We are all Armenians! We are all Hrant Dink!"

In fact, Halacoglu has gone a step further than some of the commentaries that we have heard up until today, asserting that "We need to research who exactly it was taking part in the funeral for Dink."

Here is what he says: "There are around 50 thousand Armenians in Turkey. Women, men, children, all together around 50 thousand. Of this number, there were probably 20 thousand at the funeral. So then who else was there? Let's say that there were about 10 thousand sincerely there in terms of protest of Dink's murder. Who were the others, we need to look into this."

I wanted to draw your attention to these strange calculations by Professor Halacoglu, which do not fit any sense of reason or thought I can understand. If this is the way we approach the Armenian matter in Turkey, then we are in real trouble.

Halacoglu asks, among his other comments, "Why didn't anyone shout the slogan 'We are all Turks!'?"

But what I wonder is whether or not Halacoglu ever spent any time in the garden of his primary school here in Turkey. If he had, he must of heard the slogans, shouted in unison by everyone, (including the children of ethnic minorities) which we all know so well: "Turkum, dogruyum, caliskanim." (Meaning, "I am Turkish, I am honest, I am hard-working.")

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.