Must Overcome The Old Hates

Regarding the controversy over whether the President Obama should have referred to the events of 1915-1917 as the Armenian "genocide": The evidence shows that many or most of the casualties and atrocities were in the context of a civil war, when the Armenian rebels had an army and Russian help in fighting the Ottoman Empire. Bad things happened and a lot of people died.

As a Christian who was born and raised in the cosmopolitan Istanbul of the 1940s and 1950s with Armenian friends, I want to express my understanding of the pain and suffering of the losses of their earlier generations in Anatolia, known as Armenia before the Ottoman Empire.

But will the declaration of an Armenian genocide bring back the lives of the victims who died 100 years before? We should accept the values of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who in his new republic (1923) rose above the old wounds, the hate and barbarism, and made it possible for people of all cultures, including Armenians, to live in peace for many good years in Istanbul.

And where is the resolution declaring treatment of the American Indians as genocide? Over the course of history, bad things have happened against humanity, but it is important to overcome the old hates and survive together in this crazy world.

Anesti Nova, South Windsor

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