What a Victory Day!

Turkey was marking Sunday the anniversary of the Great Victory with ceremonies, limited to a presidential reception and commemorative events. With a Prime Ministry order, all festivities were banned. Why? Because of the national pain over the loss of beloved sons to terrorism related violence? A reason which has become routine of the country after the death of the three-year-old "Kurdish opening" during which the gang, apparently armed to the teeth, prepared for increased violence while those ruling the country were busy with some other petty things, such as elevating themselves to all powerful positions.

The loss of five to ten leftists, rightists but mostly young people and occasionally prominent lawyers, unionists, writers was the pre-1980 routine. There was no Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) violence during those years. The Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) gang was mercilessly murdering Turkish diplomats in world capitals. Five ambassadors, four consul-generals and 25 junior diplomats and security people at Turkish missions fell victim to ASALA. Up until the Paris Orly attack in July 1983, the world was deaf and blind to Armenian crimes. World governments were all hiding behind lofty anti-terrorism statements, while many of Turkey's Western allies, particularly France, were in many ways discreetly abetting and indeed supporting the terrorists.

ASALA vanished from the active terrorism picture in 1986, two years after the PKK entered the scene, to take over and play its own role. Since 1984, Turkey has lost over 35,000 sons and daughters, toddlers, teenage students and elderly people. Of course, not only those murdered at a Diyarbak?r bomb blast in front of an education premises, in the attack of the gang to exterminate an...