May 21

May 21, 1864 is a date only known to historians in Turkish and Western societies. For the man on the street, this date means nothing. However, the peoples of the northern Caucasus have been silently commemorating May 21 as the anniversary of great tragedies. The Turkish and Western societies that are not cognizant of 1864 know well about 1915 due to the Armenian genocide claims. Why is Turkey always on the defensive against these claims? Why is Turkey afraid of its own past? Actually, Turkey's fear of its past is pointless. This is because almost half of the 70 million people of the Turkish Republic are the descendants of the people who had been subjected to ethnic cleansing, genocide or forced migration in various parts of the world and who had just recovered from the traumas of these tragedies. The Adyghe, Ubykh, Karachai, Balkar, Cossak (Russian Kazakh) and Abkhaz people from northern Caucasus; Chechen, Dagestan and Osset people from the northeast Caucasus; Karabakh, Azerbaijan, Meskhetian (Ahıska), Terekeme, Karapapak, Adjarian and Georgian people from the southern Caucasus; Crimean Tatar, Ukrainian, and Belarusian people from the north of the Black Sea; the Balkan Turks, Albanian, Bosnian, Pomak, Ulah, Torbesh and Macedonian people from the Balkans; Arab and Jewish people from Spain; the Turkish and Muslim people in Crete and Rhodes and the other Aegean islands from the Aegean region; the Turkish Cypriots from Cyprus; Turks, Palestinians and Kurds from the Middle East; Uzbek, Kyrgyz and other Afghan people from Afghanistan; Uzbek, Turkmen, Kyrgyz, Kazakh and Tajik people from Central Asia and the Uyghur people from the Far East have sought refuge in Turkey for the last 150 years, haven't they? In fact, Anatolia has been the homeland of those migrants, who were subjected to injustice and deportation in their native lands. So why does Turkey fail to address these facts? Why does it fail to erect a monument in remembrance of those who were murdered in these vicious events? Why does it not make any attempt to do this? Who are we waiting for? Why doesn't Turkey have a special day set aside to commemorate our ancestors and Anatolia becoming a homeland? Aren't our ancestors who arrived in Anatolia as their new homeland from the Caucasus, the Balkans, Cyprus, Crete, Rhodes, Crimea, Central Asia, eastern Turkistan, Afghanistan and other regions entitled to have a monument in remembrance of their tragedies?

Armenians constitute the only item on Turkey's agenda. Some Turkish intellectuals have adopted a pro-Armenian tragedy discourse. What about the tragedy of the people constituting more than half of the people of Turkey, those who were forced to migrate to the country? Don't the Adyghe, Balkan Turks, Crimean Tatars and Cretan Turks have their tragedies? Aren't non-Christians allowed to have tragedies? Turkish intellectuals should be interested in the tragedy of their fellow brothers instead of emphasizing the pains of Turkey's neighbors. It should be stressed that Armenians were relocated rather than deported because they were displaced within the Ottoman territories out of necessity. Because of the conditions of World War I, they were forced to move from Anatolia to the Middle East. They were not deported; however, the Turkish and Muslim migrants were deported. So Armenians cannot say they were deported.