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Norman
(20.07.2013 21:56)
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(This) one-sided and unreliable iaofrmntion (about any people) after a long period of unchallenged time, would create hostility and hatred that would not be easily overcome.” (Cyrus Hamlin, co-founder of the American missionary college in Istanbul [Robert College], opining on anti-Turkish propaganda, late 19th-Century.) If anyone is familiar with the 1957 movie Twelve Angry Men (based on a television play, starring Henry Fonda and Lee J. Cobb later remade with Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott) you might remember how eleven jurors accepted at the outset the obvious guilt of the young man on trial, perpetuated by the race of the accused. The message of the film was that things are not always what they seem and the Henry Fonda character, through logic and facts, turned around the opinions of each of his co-jurors. Quite a task lay before him, since the other co-jurors were motivated by other factors instead of the pertinent one at hand (i.e., Justice), but ultimately truth prevailed as will inevitably occur one day with the Armenian genocide, once people put their prejudices aside, and look at the validity of the evidence offered on both sides. We are now in the first fifteen minutes of the movie, and the Turks are in the Henry Fonda role and the Armenians are in the Lee J. Cobb role. (The one difference in the way our play will work out is that most Armenians will never accept that there was no genocide as the genocide has become too much a reason for the Armenians' existence, and facts become irrelevant, or conveniently altered.)Innocent until proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt should be the legal principle at work here, and ideally it should not be up to the Turks to prove that they did not commit genocide but for Armenians and their Turk-hating supporters to prove that the Turks did. This trial has already historically taken place, as you will soon see and the resulting acquittal hasn't made any difference in the eyes of those who will condemn the Turks, regardless of the facts.(*Regarding impartiality: this refers to most of the supporting documents presented on this site, particularly those from Western sources since anyone with a Western background can safely be assumed not to have been raised with a love for Turks; after all, does the Western society exist that favors a glowing image of Turkey? My own writings [I'm Holdwater, by the way; glad to meet you] are often not impartially written however, if you can prove to me that there definitely was an Armenian genocide, you would find me changing my tune pretty fast. Can you say the same about yourself, if you begin to be convinced what you have been led to believe all this time has mainly been a lie?)
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