Omar Tesdell’s column on the suspicious suppression of a revolt in Afghanistan deserves some serious criticism.

The mentioning of some examples to set a comparison between past war crimes and the alleged war crimes in the new war on terrorism are filled with some subjective assessments of historical events. My main criticism focuses on the supposed atrocity committed by Ottomans in Armenia.

The first suggestion of a separate Armenian state came under the Treaty of Serves after the first world war.

However, with the Turkish independence war, it never materialized. Tesdell also hastens to juxtapose the Turkish-Armenian experience with Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein.

The Armenian Ottoman citizens tried to establish their own state during the first World War in the eastern provinces.

The riots and the mass killings initiated by the Armenians prompted the Ottoman authorities to relocate them to separate cities on the Ottoman land to preserve the social order.

Armenians were struck by fatal diseases such as typhoid and dysentery.

The mass relocation also resulted in clashes with Turks seeking revenge of the Armenian atrocities in Turkish villages. Such incidents were in strict violation of the Ottoman orders that laid out the principles of the relocation.

In all, an estimated 40,000 casualties had been registered out of 438,758. That hardly can be classified as a genocide as it was never the intent of the Ottomans to engage in any kind of mass killings.

If that was the intent, why would they bother coming up with principles to distribute the Armenian population in an orderly fashion? They could have killed them right on the spot.

It would have been a worthy enterprise on Tesdell’s part to do some research before twisting the history to his needs for the column.

Kubilay Gursel

Graduate student

Economics