Exactly three years after Azg published the English translation of an article I wrote about the distortion of an Armenian song commemorating the 1909 Adana massacre by the Young Turks, I came across to the “Turkish version” of the song on YouTube which reminded me of a more recent attempt by a Turkish artist to promote reconciliation between Armenians and Turks by distorting Armenian history that I blogged on a few days ago.

It seems pretty sick that reconciliation of two neighbors can only be done by deliberatly “integrating” Turkish versions to Armenian history. But vandalism is not only limited to the Armenian-Turkish case.

I am reading Australian journalist Robert Bevan’s The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at Warand finding out how the world is similar – when it comes to treating the cultural monuments of the “other” for instance.  Only a few years back, in March of 2004, “a mob of young Serbs set fire to the historic Islam-aga mosque in Nis, Serbaia. The attach, and one on the Bayrakli mosque in Belgrade, were a response to the destruction of dozens of Orthodox churches and monasteries in Kosovo by Kosovar nationalists the day before.”

I follow international news as much as possible but I don’t recall reports of the March 2004 destruction of mosques and churches in former Yugoslavia.  Why is the world so silent about cultural vandalism?