Turkey Still Refuses To Confront Its Past

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Turkey still refuses to confront its past

By FATMA MUGE GOCEK

 

Globe and Mail, Canada

June 3 2005

 

Friday, June 3, 2005 Page A21

 

Last week was supposed to mark the opening of an unprecedented Turkish

conference on the issues surrounding the killing of Armenians during

the First World War. Organized at Istanbul's Bosporus University,

the three-day event was intended to provide a platform to academics

to question Turkey's official view of the 1915 killings. It also

would have showcased a new open approach by Turkish authorities,

eager to show the kind of freedom of expression that the European

Union expects of prospective members.

 

The conference never took place.

 

In the days leading up to the event, pressure was put on organizers

to include scholars who would defend Turkey's official state view --

which denies that the killings were genocide and rejects estimates

that 1.5 million Armenians were massacred.

 

The more the university organizers resisted any such intervention,

the more the pressure mounted, with the conference ultimately being

described as "detrimental to the interests of the Turkish state

and nation."

 

Turkish Justice Minister Cemil Cicek condemned the gathering as

"treason" and "a stab in the back of the Turkish people." University

officials had little choice but to "postpone" the event.

 

It is apparent that the government feels threatened by the significant

segment of the Turkish population who are increasingly determined to

face the long-standing issue of the Armenian question in a way that

counters the official Turkish thesis.

 

This official view is predicated on a Turkish nationalism that

perceives all existing interpretations of the Armenian issue as either

for, or against, the interests of Turkey. Because the conference

participants did not sanction the official thesis, the Turkish

government characterized the participants as rabble-rousers.

 

The Turkish state is unable to come to terms with its past because its

national identity is predicated upon the rejection of that particular

past. Advocating the nationalist ideology that the contemporary Turkish

state was built upon the ashes of the Ottoman Empire through the War

of Independence fought between 1919-1922, the Turkish state has always

argued that the nation had to look forward and not back into its past,

especially not into the period before 1919 that is considered to be

the birth year of the Turkish nation.

 

The alphabet reform in 1928, when the official script was changed

from Arabic to the Latin script, further alienated the Turks from

their own history. Given the dearth of historical knowledge, Turkish

society could not help but accept the official thesis on the Armenian

issue as historical reality.

 

With more scholars delving into that past to generate their own

interpretations, the state thesis began to lose ground. The state

efforts to cancel the Istanbul conference comprise what I hope is

the last attempt to salvage the dominance of the Turkish official

state thesis.

 

Turkey's possible membership in the European Union is an underlying

reason why debate of the Armenian issue is becoming increasingly

prominent. The EU advocates the recognition and protection of the

rights of all minorities. Among such minorities that currently exist

in Turkey, the tragedy that befell the Armenians before, during

and after 1915, is the most dramatic, and the one that needs to be

most addressed and recognized by Turkish society and the state. Such

recognition necessitates an awareness of minority rights and a public

commitment to protect them.

 

Yet, such a recognition would undermine the Turkish state's control

over the public sphere. The unwillingness of the Turkish state in

general, and the military and the political parties in particular, to

relinquish that control over society has generated this crisis. This

state unwillingness translates into a nationalist stand that portrays

European standards of human rights as inherently destructive and

debilitating. All advocates of such rights within Turkish society

likewise end up branded as subversive elements in service of either

Europe or the United States or both.

 

The chances of Turkey joining the European Union are diminished

without a state commitment to protect the rights of its citizens. In

the meanwhile, however, recent developments in Turkish society such

as the liberalization of the economy and the privatization of mass

communication have generated an increasingly conscious and vocal public

sphere that is willing to take issue with the current nationalist

stand of the state. If the current government utilizes its enhanced

communication with Turkish society -- if it forms, in particular,

alliances with the liberal academics and public intellectuals to

develop a new democratic, multicultural vision for Turkey -- then

the Turkish state could overcome this quagmire.

 

Fatma Muge Gocek, associate professor of sociology at the University of

Michigan, was an organizer of the cancelled Turkish-Armenia conference.