Taking Advantage of Armenians

This political cartoon depicts the plight of the Armenians and the response from the United Kingdom (personified by John Bull) at the time. (Source: Wikipedia)

Today was a double whammy in Europe's quest to indirectly demonise the Turks -- the only majority Muslim contender for European Union membership -- through idolizing Christians (even the ones they don't even care about).

First, the Nobel Prize for Literature went to Orhan Pamuk -- a highly-acclaimed best-selling writer whose most high profile claim to fame has been his condemnation by the Turkish government for being anti-Turkish because he has made a cause for himself (some say merely to gain attention) by preaching that the 1915 genocide of over 1 million Armenians by the Turkish government is a crime that needs to be recognized by the state of Turkey.

Following closeby in second place, the French parliament today adopted a bill making it a crime to deny that the Turks did indeed commit this genocide against the Armenians.

Coincidence? Probably not.

The fact is, the French government and Pamuk are right: the Turks did in fact commit genocide against over 1 million Armenians in 1915 -- something any Armenian from anywhere in the world will heartily discuss at the drop of a hat -- and rightly so: all the genocides of the world need to be recognized and condemned. But what neither the Nobel Prize Committee nor the French government will tell you is that not a single European authority gave a care about this atrocity until recent memory when Turkey came forward as a serious and legitimate contender for membership in the EU. Now and only now, does anyone care that the Armenians (who practice a form of Orthodox Christianity) underwent such a horrible experience in their history and are still fighting to get this recognized.

Convenient how this once again pits Muslims against Christians in today's farcical infighting between two major religions that are in fact one and the same. The Armenians should be just as upset as the Turks today. Once again, the Armenian genocide is marginalized in the shadow of greater powers bent on world domination.