Turkish Human Right Advocate: Calls from the Mosques Reminded the Calls from the Minarets during the Armenian Genocide (EXCLUSIVE)

• 07.17.2016, 11:45
•  Region,  World,  Interview

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"All night through, right after the news of a military coup, there were prayers and calls to people from the loudspeakers of mosques for taking the streets "in the name of the motherland and our religion". Immediately crowds gathered in public spaces, including the Bosphorus Bridge which was taken by the soldiers, chanting Allahu Akbar, the Takbir in Arabic, meaning "God is greater" or "God is the greatest", which is used by, among others of course, the ISIS while chopping the heads of people and bombing places. At the end the soldiers surrendered and one of them’s throat was cut and several of them in other places were lynched to death," a human rights advocate, a feminist, a member of the Committee Against Racism and Discrimination of the Human Rights Association of Turkey (Istanbul branch), Ayşe Günaysu said in a talk with "Armedia" IAA, speaking about the military coup attempt in Turkey.  She also added that the next day everybody got a text message on their phones from "The State of the Republic of Turkey" calling everybody to take the streets to defend "democracy"!

According to Günaysu the coup attempt was a pathetic one, not at the beginning, but right afterwards, when the details started to get clearer. "I personally witnessed, since my age of 7, the 1960 military take over, then the unsuccessful coup attempt of 1963, when warplanes flew over our heads in Ankara, the military intervention in 1971, then the disastrous military coup in 1980. This was nothing like one of these. It started not early in the morning before the break of the day, but at a time when the city was wide awake, i.e. about 10:15 p.m.," the human rights advocate said.

"On his arrival at the İstanbul airport, President Erdoğan referred to the failed coup attempt as a ‘gift from Allah’ and seemed extraordinarily self-confident and powerful. It is obvious that Erdoğan will emerge from this process more powerful and more determined to silence any criticism against his rule," she added.

For Günaysu, the endless calls from the mosques made one remember the calls from the minarets during the Armenian Genocide (and the genocide of Assyrians/Syriacs and Rums of Asia Minor and Pontos) calling people to the holy war against the infidels. "Imagining that time and the role of Islam in the genocide makes one shiver – although I know that genocide is unimaginable, inconcivable, and unrepresentable by any means,", she said adding: "So, we, the democracy forces in Turkey, feel ourselves under greater threat with this escalating public display of potential Islamic violence represented by the high-volume chanting of takbir: Ya Allah ya Bismillah Allahu Akbar!"