Those of a political bent should hasten to read the excellent essay posted on Greekworks reflecting on the assassination of the journalist and author Hrant Dink. (It is especially timely in light of the news that a right-wing Turkish politician has been held for questioning in relation to this killing.)
While they reference such seemingly disparate historical threads in this article as Malcolm X's rejection of the Nation of Islam, the founding of Pakistan, and the "autonomous communities" of contemporary Spain, the jaded might think that of course a site with a Greek focus would condemn the assassination of an ethnic Armenian in Turkey. But I am happy to say that the thoughtful and incisive editors of the site, as ever, do not bend to the mindless tropes of nationalism, jingoism, and, as they write in this current piece, "facile identit[y]." (Frankly, if they did, I would never have written for them myself.) A sample:
"It is one of the sadder truths of the history of nations (invariably the history of mass murder) that those who openly reject facile identities are the least understood by—and, therefore, the most conspicuous scapegoats for whatever ails—the particular nation. Ironically, of course, these defenders of historical humility (and, so, of historical integrity) are—and this is where the irony swerves into tragedy—the truest and most unwavering patriots."
Not to mention this:
"We will only add that we know something about founding myths since the defining event of the Greek national psyche in the twentieth century, the Asia Minor Disaster, was the catastrophic (and arrogant) consequence of that psyche’s egotistical compulsion in the nineteenth century: the Megalê Idea. It is one of many historical ironies in the intimate (and intimately entwined), centuries-long relationship binding Turks and Greeks that the latter’s ruin eighty-five years ago was the foundation of the former’s modern rebirth. We fear that that historical lesson of decline and rise (and decline yet again) has been lost on most of the elites
in Turkey today."
