While I consider Turkey, unlike "Israel", to be a legitimate nation, and while I condemn in the strongest terms restrictions on freedom of speech and research regarding historal events (or non-events), such as genocides, it is important to point out the following:
1- The historical truth or falsehood of any event does not depend on how this event is used later on by imperialism. I have not researched the subject thoroughly, but I am inclined to believe that the Armenian genocide is, unlike the hollowcause, not false nor exaggerated.
2- The modern Turkish state was built, in part, on the ruins and the territory of other nations usurped by the Ottomans and later by the modern Turkish nationalists. These include Arabs (including Assyrians), Kurds, Armenians, Cypriots, and Greeks.
3- Turkey is an imperialist state. Turkish nationalists have in the past and continue today to behave in an imperialist manner towards their neighbors. Not surprisingly, they have also aligned themselves with imperialism and Zionism. There are many examples of this, two of the more recent and most serious were the damming of the Euphrates and the Tigris without agreement with countries downstream, and in a very threatening manner, and, Turkey, as part of the imperialist NATO, allowed its bases to be used to bomb Iraq from 1991-2003.
4- Turkey continues to deny national and cultural identity rights of minorities, for fear of fragmentation of their artifical state, and tries to forcibly "Turkify" them.
It is to be expected that imperialism will try to make alliances against its main enemy, the Arab nation and Arab nationalism, with neighboring major nationalities such as Turkey and Iran, despite any other secondary contradictions that may exist between them. Tell me, where is the Arab nation occupying land that does not belong to it? Whereas there are Arab lands under occupation by several neighbors of the Arab nation. This was, by design and not by coincidence, the legacy of Sykes-Picot.
Having said the preceding, I do admire Mustafa Kamal Ataturk for what he attempted to do for his nation. And I do salute anti-imperialist Turkish nationalists, but they have to understand that I will never support them at my own expense. If they want my solidarity, then it must come from a position of equality, and that means recognizing what is rightfully mine. True nationalism and true anti-imperialism means recognizing other nations and their rights, and not aligning with or practicing imperialism while preaching the opposite.
Hazem al-Biqaeen
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