Brandi Phillips: Turkey should admit it tried to commit genocide
Re “Angry Turkey protests Czech parliament's genocide vote” (Online, April 27): Turkey has continuously refused to acknowledge the “Meds Yeghern,” or Great Tragedy, Armenians faced as genocide. Though it has been 100 years since the Great Tragedy ended, Turkey has yet to confess to the role it played in the horrendous incident.
Recently, Turkey claimed “those killed (were) victims of a civil war;” however, they attempted to eradicate an entire population in order to pursue Turkification, which was a process to transform Turkey into an entirely Turkish state. Wanting to eliminate the Armenian population is completely different from two armed groups fighting against one another.
More importantly, according to Article 2 of the Genocide Convention, genocide is defined as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial or religious groups.” Therefore, the tragedy Armenian’s faced fall under the definition of genocide.
It is time for Turkey to admit to the wrongdoings of its actions. Constantly denying what happened to the Armenians in the past will not make this tragic event “go away.” After all, “a wound gets worse when treated with neglect.”
Brandi Phillips, Merced
This story was originally published May 1, 2017 at 6:04 PM with the headline "Brandi Phillips: Turkey should admit it tried to commit genocide."