February 16, 2011 By Appo Jabarian Executive Publisher and Senior Editor of USA Armenian Life Magazine Southern Sudan’s recent referendum on independence was, against all odds, a delayed implementation of 28th U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s “Fourteen Points of Light” declaration that permeated the globe soon after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The post-World War I Wilsonian doctrine propagating self-determination for oppressed peoples, also curbed the imperial appetites of England and France on creating separate mandates over much of the countries that were being freed from the Ottoman Turkish yoke. For his courage and fairness, President Wilson became a beloved U.S. President and a hero to millions of Middle Easterners such as Arabs, Assyrians, Kurds, and Druze; and Eastern Mediterranean people such as Armenians, Greeks, and others. The United States won big on PR and eventually was remunerated with huge economic benefits for several decades. President Wilson became the national hero of the would-be beneficiary people. But alas, his doctrine was undermined by selfserving economic and political forces from within the West. Armenia and Armenians became the first victims of western corporate cannibalism that obstructed justice. While Armenians, Greeks and other victims of genocide are jubilant with the people of South Sudan, they extract a guarded level of hope to remedy their problems. South Sudan’s experience has certain similarities with Genocide-stricken Armenia (1915- 1923); Greek Constantinople, Smyrna and Pontus; Assyrians of Mardin, today’s Kurds, and Republic of Artsakh (Karabagh) (1988-1989). When Turkish-occupied Armenia demanded freedom, it was subjected to outright genocide and forced deportations by succeeding tyrannical Turkish regimes – 1) Young Turks during the years 1915-1922; and 2) Kemalist Turkey during the years 1922-1923. In the 1915-1923 Turkish-occupied Western Armenia and Cilicia, Armenians were not given weapons and “materiel” to defend themselves. The survivors were mainly given humanitarian assistance by western missionaries, but were eventually forced by the Turkish perpetrators into involuntary exile sustaining the loss of an entire homeland in Western Armenia and Cilicia. Greek and Assyrians faced similar fates. When the Greeks of Smyrna, Pontus and Constantinople demanded reunification with motherland Greece, they were massacred and burned alive and thrown into the sea along with their Armenian neighbors under the watchful eyes of western military and commercial vessels’ personnel (1920′s). When Kurds living under the yoke of Kemalist Turks demanded freedom, their entire villages and towns – hundreds of them — were and continue to be gassed by Turkish military helicopters (1980′s-present). When South Sudan demanded freedom, it was given a civil war that engulfed several generations; and was subjected to genocidal response by the occupying side, North Sudan under the cover of civil war. In March 2008, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Sudan’s dictator Omar al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the conflict in the Darfur region, the first sitting head of state ever indicted by the ICC. And in July 2010, the ICC issued a second arrest warrant for al-Bashir, adding the charge of genocide. South Sudanese lost millions of innocent lives to the North’s genocidal campaigns, and millions more were uprooted and dispossessed. But having learned from its double-standards in Armenia of 1915; and Greek Smyrna, Pontus and Constantinople of the 1920’s, the international community backed the people of South Sudan to defend what was left of their ancestral homeland. “A democratic, pluralistic Middle East aligns perfectly with our desire for a peaceful and prosperous region. Indeed, this could be Obama’s Woodrow Wilson moment,” remarked the Vice President of the Middle East Institute Kate Seelye in The Huffington Post. Does President Obama really care about having a Wilsonian moment? The Obama administration has no choice but to take into serious consideration the legitimate demands of the people in Egypt and many countries of the Middle East, the Mediterranean basin, and the Caucasus. If there is any semblance of patriotic wisdom and political will among presidential advisers to re-establish America’s good name in the Middle East and much of the world, President Obama, as the leader of corporate-dominated western democracies, has no choice but to revive the Wilsonian doctrine. Starting from South Sudan to Armenia, Artsakh (Karabagh), Greek Smyrna, Pontus and Constantinople; to Northern Cyprus, Palestine, Israel, and yes, Turkey (right-sized Turkey also deserves gaining genuine independence from its imperial-genocidal past), the completion of the cycle on the Wilsonian doctrine of self-determination is a prerequisite for the endurance of peace and prosperity in the entire region.

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