ARMENIAN - Erevangala500

И — — — М М М
Mount Ararat - and Noah's Arc... One o f the main myths of
Armenian mythomania. In fact they mean nothing but endless
wars, assassinations and hatred.
INTRODUCTION
By A fif Erzen, Istanbul
It is hard to imagine anything that could be as detrimental
to the search for historical truth as mixing stories with
history - or worse yet, confusing one for the other. A similar
error involves the confusion o f politics with the use
of violence. All too often, such confusions are the result
of interest groups (seldom of peoples, who always want
peace) laying claim to their "historical homeland". Such
"historical demands" have always meant war, or at least
terrorism, an ugly variation on war. The right to sovereignty
and independence can only be seen as legitimite
when it is bound up with the rights of a majority.
Anything else would contradict our commonly recognized
democratic principles. Even the Armenian apologists
for an "Armenian state" on Turkish territory clearly
share this way o f thinking. This is demonstrated by their
support of the Greek Cypriots over the Turkish minority.
Many people try to give a superficial glimmer of "legitimacy"
to the contemporary Armenian claims to Turkish
lands in eastern Anatolia. These people are simply ignoring
the fact that those demands violate the law of nations
and international law since virtually no Armenians whatsoever
live in the regions claimed. The standard counterargument
that Armenians once lived in these areas is
indeed correct, but it fails to consider one important fact:
Even before 1915, the Armenians only made up a small
minority (roughly a sixth) of the population in the land
claimed by them. This minority had not enjoyed any kind
of national sovereignty since long before the arrival of the
Seljuks in Anatolia - in other words, for nearly a millennium.
Aside from that, the Armenian minority was in a
"state o f war" with their own Ottoman government in
8
1915. The Armenians' own national leaders confirmed
this repeatedly. They had started a civil war that had produced
a genuine bloodbath among the Islamic inhabitants
in eastern Anatolia, mainly in Van.
Another myth, which is equally detrimental to historical
truth, involves the attempt to justify Armenian claims to
eastern Anatolia on the basis of the alleged "descent" of
the Armenians from the Urartians. In virtually every publication
put out or supported by the Armenian side, there
appears, in one form or another, a certain picture of history.
This picture gives the impression that the history of
the Haik - as the "Armenians" call themselves - in eastern
Anatolia goes back to the second millenium before
Christ. This impression is created by simply tacking the
history of the Urartians onto that of the Haik. This is
made much easier by the fact that many people today
confuse the inhabitants of the historical province of
Armenia with "the Armenians", who actually call themselves
"Haik", as mentioned above, and are only one of
the countless groups that have lived in the historical
region of Armenia in the course o f history.
This appropriation of the history o f Urartu is the final
attempt of certain Armenian historians and propagandists
to bridge the gap between the Haik and their political and
historical claims to the historical province of Armenia.
This effort was begun after an older attempt, claiming
that the Haik were the first legitimate heirs o f Noah
(based on the Ararat legend), failed due to sheer ludicra-
cy.
The foundation inscription of Sardurihinili was discovered in incredibly
good condition by Afif Erzen. It was written in Urartian, an
Asian, agglutinative language showing strong similarities to the Ural-
Altaic language family and in particular to Turkish. The inscription
has been translated by Emin Bilgic (sumerologist at Ankara
University):
Line 1 Sardur, son of Argishti, this temple for the god
Irmushini.
Line 2 Because I ascended my father's throne, says Sardur something
of this nature has> never been built .
Line 3 I a temple throne for the god Haldi there. For the
god Irmushini and for this fortress
Line 4 1 have a canal from the Hoshap River wine gardens, fields and vegetable gardens. I have
Line 5 surrounded this town. These magnificent