20 March 2010 / GÜLAY GÖKTÜRK BUGÜN,
Look at what Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said: “There are 170,000 Armenians in my country; 70,000 of them are Turkish citizens.
But we allow 100,000 of them in our country right now. What am I going to do tomorrow? If I have to, I’m going to tell these 100,000 that they need to go home as well.” Treating illegal Armenians in Turkey like prisoners of war and trying to “exchange” them for a political purpose is not politically moral, to say the least. People cannot be used as a means to achieve a certain end. The “I will do this if you do that” attitude is not appropriate for states, institutions or people. Every state and every person must be bound to their own principles, value systems and ethics. No matter what other people do, that person must do what he believes is right. He must be consistent with his views and actions even if it looks like it is in conflict with “national interests.” We should not forget that the rising trend in world politics is a demand for a new political style that is based on moral groundwork. We are moving towards a world where the attitude by nation states of having no moral concerns and the acceptance of any political means as legitimate as long as it is consistent with national interests is becoming “outdated.”
