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February 15, 2007

After All, Who Remembers The Ottoman Muslims?

[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]

An oft-repeated quote from Adolf Hitler is the words he uttered to silence the internal resistance to his Final Solution. “But after all,” the Nazi leader asked, "Who remembers the Armenians?”

Of course, history proved Hitler wrong. His evil plan for exterminating the Jews – along with Slavs, Gypsies or the German disabled – could not ultimately triumph; moreover the world remembers his crimes with a justified abhorrence. And nowadays we are repeatedly told to prove him wrong once more by remembering the perished Armenians whom he assumed to be forgotten.

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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 11:29 PM | Comments (4)

February 7, 2007

Why President Sezer is Wrong About Secularism

[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]

Turkey's President Ahmet Necdet Sezer has just made another of his customary warnings about the principle of secularism and the “threats” it is supposedly facing. Calls for “redefining secularism” are absurd and dangerous, Mr. Sezer claimed, because Turkey simply has a perfect application of that principle.

Ah, he is so wrong.

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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 9:12 AM | Comments (4)