The recent formation of a high level Turkish Armenian Reconciliation Commission may 
be just what the doctor ordered.  Although this reconciliation commission is made up of 
highly intellectual and world-wise Armenian and Turkish individuals, it should also be 
noted that they are not legally sanctioned representatives of either government.  
Therefore, any decisions or compromises formulated by this commission will not be 
binding unless both governments agre with the terms.


This being the case, I would like to reserve judgment until I see in what direction these 
talks will be going.  And in his regard, I would also like to see some periodic updates 
from neutral objective sources.


To begin with, the 1915 Genocide should not become a central issue in these proceedings.  
It should not be used by our Armenian negotiators to get admissions of guilt from the 
Turks, nor should it be used by the Turks to try and use it as a bargaining chip to get our 
people to underwrite denials.


Suffice it to say that regardless of all the tiptoeing our United States State Department has 
been doing around this volatile issue, it has already become accepted history throughout 
the majority of our civilized world, therefore, today it is more Turkey’s problem than it is 
ours.  As for our President and our State Department, perhaps in time they’ll mature 
enough to look on the 1915 Genocide as a crime against humanity instead of a tool for 
geo-political alignment


Overall, however, let us not as Armenians, look on the Turkish people as a nation of 
rogues.   As we’ve all no doubt experienced in our own U.S.A., the first democratic 
multi-racial nation in the world, there’s good uns and there’s bad uns.   No nation or race 
of people have a monopoly on rogues.  Furthermore, I’m sure most of us have known or 
have heard of Armenians who were saved from being massacred by a compassionate 
Turk.   And I believe I have some authority to speak on this matter.


When I was in the service during WWII, I entered Germany as an infantry rifleman who 
looked on all Germans as Nazis.   And believing in our Allied propaganda, I also believed 
that the only good Germans were dead Germans.  But as we got well into Germany’s 
heartland and as the war started settling down, we started coming more and more into 
contact with the average German people whose nation had been seduced and corrupted by 
that mustached Austrian paperhanger.  We found that, aside from the war, these people 
were on an average, just as religious and morally sound as those who lived in America.  
But sadly, by the time the dust had cleared, taking into account the Holocaust of 
6,000,000 Jews, Stalin’s ruthless purges and the fatalities incurred from bombings, 
disease, starvation, and of those who paid the ultimate price while in the military service 
of their country there were, conservatively speaking, over 50,000,000 less people in our 
world after World War II.  In short, rogue governments make rogue nations.  

That’s why we have to go to those polls every time we have the opportunity to cast a 
vote--a vote against autocracy.


I would like to wish the Turkish Armenian Reconciliation Commission Godspeed to a 
mutually successful understanding and thereafter a mutual acceptance by both nations 
involved.  No doubt, if the term reconciliation can be adopted, even if it’s only for a 
fraction of what either side wants, then and only then, can we start hoping for a just peace 
for Armenia.  And God willing, if reconciliation continues, maybe it will replace armed 
conflict and  maybe we can at long last put the 1915 Genocide behind us as well.


Joseph Vosbikian