Friday, January 19, 2007

The dark side of nationalism

I suppose Orhan Pamuk was too high-profile, so the nationalist nutjobs in Turkey had to settle for a second-tier substitute. This Turkish predilection towards myopic readings of their own history is deeply, deeply distressing:
Dink, 53, had received threats from nationalists who viewed him as a traitor, the Associated Press news agency reported.

He was one of Turkey's most prominent Armenian voices.

He once gave an interview with the Associated Press in which he cried while describing the hatred some Turks had for him, saying he could not stay in a country where he was unwanted.

Hundreds of thousands of Armenians died in 1915, in what many Armenians say was a systematic massacre at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.

Turkey denies any genocide, saying the deaths were a part of World War I.

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