March 9th, 2014
Outside Turkish Consulate
Los Angeles
Outside Turkish Consulate
Los Angeles
Fellow Americans of Eastern Christian churches of Armenian,
Greek and Assyrian heritage.
Fellow descendants of survivors of the Genocide by Ottoman
Turks and their Kurdish allies against our three nations, I salute you for being
here today.
For the past three years the world has been witnessing the
destruction of Syria at the hands of US allies; Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar
with complete disregard for human life. From the early days of the civil war, Wahhabi
money was flowing into Syria in support of the Islamist terrorists while the
Turkish government openly extended logistical support to the rebels and
facilitated the inflow of thousands of foreign jihadists from all over the
world into the country.
Turkey and the gulf Wahhabis tried to portray to the world
that the so called uprising has popular support in Syria and that the rebels
are secular freedom fighters striving for democracy and Human rights in a
country ruled by a ruthless dictator.
They accused the regime of using Chemical weapons when in fact it was
the terrorists who used them, according to reliable sources from investigative
reporters to UN weapons inspectors as well as several members of Congress. The US
and its allies then put together conferences, Geneva I and then Geneva II and
perhaps a Geneva III soon.
But you already know all this so why am I wasting your time
you ask? What ideas do I have to offer so we can work together as American
citizens to help elevate the pain and suffering of our Christian brethren in
Syria and the rest of the Middle East? I will get to that shortly.
But first I want to share these thoughts with you.
As an Assyrian Christian I believe that May 29th
1453 when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman hordes was a dark day in the lives
of the Christians of the region and their descendants for centuries to come. If
the Ottoman Turks were defeated at that time, the Middle East area, the
caucuses, North Africa and Eastern Europe would not have fallen into centuries
of oppression, cruelty, corruption, mass deportations and Genocide. Armenians,
Greeks and Assyrians and other ethno-religious minorities would have flourished
and perhaps numbered in the millions with their own countries and governments
on lands now divided between Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria majority of which are
claimed by Kurds to be “Greater Kurdistan”. I would like to point out here that
Kurds were always allied with the Ottomans and had been the main benefactors of
Ottoman Turks’ murderous policies of ethnic destruction of Christian nations in
the region.
As an Assyrian Christian I also believe that a unified
Independent Armenia with Western Armenia included within its borders in the
second decade of the 20th Century would have been a beacon of light
for the indigenous Christians of neighboring lands of what is today Iran, Iraq,
Syria and Lebanon. I further believe that Assyrians would have been able to
establish a government of their own on their ancestral lands with help from
Armenia and the Armenian people who we share with centuries of fraternal
relations and peaceful coexistence.
So you ask: how is this related to our situation today. What
can we learn from it? And what steps should we take?
The Islamists rulers of Turkey have grandiose dreams of
assuming the leadership of the Islamic world by re-establishing the Caliphate,
a vision that is shared with Al-Qaeda and other Salafists and Jihadist thugs.
The enemy is the same, it’s Turkey and it has western allies supporting its
anti-Christian policies just like the West supported Turkey in the Caucuses in
the 19th century and early 20th century.
Turkey’s policies have not changed since the days of the
Ottoman’s. The Ottoman Empire and its successor the Turkish Republic lost the
war, yet they were never punished for the Genocide they had committed. Turkey
continues to act like a rogue state until this day. In the early 1970 Turkey
threatened to go to war against Greece over Islands belonging to Greece and its
jet fighters invaded Greek airspace to provoke Greece into a military
confrontation. In 1974 its military occupied a large portion of the Island of
Cyprus and established a puppet Turkish State and it continues to occupy that
part of Cyprus until this day. Where is the International community why wasn’t
Turkey punished?
Turkey has supported Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia
and has openly declared that the Artsakh region must be returned to Azerbaijan.
Turkey is meddling in Iraq’s internal affairs by assisting the Kurdish Regional
Government to illegally export oil to and through Turkey and allowing the KRG
to deposit the revenue into Turkish State owned banks. It does all this for the
Kurds of Iraq while oppressing its own Kurds. Bully politics to destabilize
Iraq and its economy because Turkey sees the Iraqi regime as an extension of
the Iranian Shiite government. A narrow sectarian vision from a country that
wants to be admitted to a secular and modern European Union yet behaves in a
manner reminiscent of 17th or 18th century nation lead by
an intolerant and bigoted religious oligarchy.
We have so far established that the enemy remains the same
and its policies continue to be the same and we have also established that what
has tragically happened to one of us has affected all of us, so my question to
you is: why do we continue to be divided?
We, at the American Mesopotamian Organization believe that American
citizens of Armenian, Greek Assyrian descent along with other Christians of the
Middle East, must come together and form a constituent based coalition to
influence US policies in the Middle East. American Jews have done it; Muslims
have it; why can’t we do it?
A coalition that has the support of the American people with
hundreds of members of Congress belonging to it can help our brethren in the
Middle East who get little financial support from our individual communities,
nothing from Western governments and plenty of prayers from Western Church
leaders.
We believe we can change all that if we unite and coordinate
our efforts for the betterment of all of us. We have been massacred and
expelled from our ancestral homelands by Turks and Kurds because of our
Christian faith. Our enemies didn’t divide us; they treated us equally by massacring
all of us. During the Genocide, the murdering Turks had a saying they often
used and it goes something like this: “an onion is an onion regardless if its
white or green, all must be chopped.”
We know the establishment of a Christian coalition will not
be an easy task and that it will require a lot of work and convincing of many
individuals and organizations across numerous and diverse communities but we
are confident it can be done.
On this day, March 9th, 2014, American
Mesopotamian Organization is calling for the establishment of the “Nicaean
Coalition” and we ask you our brothers and sisters in Christ; Armenians,
Greeks, Copts, Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians and Jordanians to join us
God Bless you all and God bless the United States of
America.
