Erdogan's Condolences: Too Little, Too Late within a Steadily Chan

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http://www.e-ir.info/2014/05/08/erdogans-condolences-too-little-too-late-within-a-steadily-changing-context/

E-International Relations

Erdogan's Condolences: Too Little, Too Late within a Steadily Changing Context

Ara Sanjian, May 8 2014


After the Islamist Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma
Partisi or AKP) started governing Turkey in 2002, a number of Turkey
watchers privately told their Armenian friends to expect a different
approach from this new political elite regarding Ankara's official
position on the Armenian Genocide of 1915. They argued that the Young
Turks, who executed the genocide, were positivists, nationalists, and
social-Darwinists, not Islamists. Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), the founder
of the Turkish Republic, which replaced the Ottoman Empire, had himself
been a Young Turk. When, in 1919, he embarked upon his nationalist
struggle against the victorious World War I Allies, Greeks and
Armenians, many former Young Turks joined him because remaining loyal to
the Ottoman sultan could have led to their arrest, trial, and conviction
for involvement in the genocide. The modern Turkish nation-state, which
Atatürk built, could not have been achieved had Armenians and Greeks
continued to live in large numbers in eastern Turkey. For Young
Turks-cum-Kemalists, recognizing Ottoman Turkish government
responsibility in effecting the Armenian Genocide would be tantamount to
accepting that many of the founders of their cherished republic were
implicated in one of the twentieth century's bloodiest episodes. The
ideological predecessors of the Islamists, conversely, were not in power
in 1915. The Islamists do not idealize Atatürk's republic. It would be
easier for them to come to terms with this painful chapter and thus end
the ongoing antagonism with Armenians.

This scenario is yet to be realized. However, there have been noticeable
changes in Turkish attitudes toward what they now call `the events of
1915.' A number of collections of primary documents and key secondary
studies on the Armenian Genocide published outside Turkey have been
translated to Turkish and are available in bookstores. Next to these
translations, it is also possible to find a few books, originally
written in Turkish and authored by Turkish citizens, openly admitting
the genocidal nature of the 1915 killings. Article 301 of the Penal
Code, which criminalizes the `denigration of Turkishness,' was
frequently used in the past to silence Turkish voices who acknowledged
the immensity of Armenian suffering in 1915. This practice has
apparently now been put on hold. Most symbolically, it is now an annual
tradition for a small number of liberal-minded Turkish citizens to
commemorate in Istanbul every April 24, the anniversary of the Armenian
Genocide. In 2005, a group of Turkish historians and intellectuals,
critical of the official interpretation of `the events of 1915,' were
permitted to organize an academic conference, where the genocide was
openly acknowledged. In November 2013, a further conference in Istanbul
broached another previously taboo subject, that of Armenians who
survived the genocide only through voluntary or forced Islamization.
Kurdish deputies in Turkey's parliament have raised the issue of
condemning and apologizing for the Armenian Genocide more than once.

While most of these developments have occurred under AKP rule, Islamists
are not among those pushing for change. The pioneers of this new
approach are liberal-minded intellectuals with ideals very different
from those of the Islamist current. They dream of a tolerant,
multi-ethnic, and multi-cultural Turkish society, celebrating its own
diversity. Moreover, this steadily growing movement, despite the
interest it has created for providing an alternative to the government's
standpoint, is still very small and remains largely confined to
Istanbul. It coexists uneasily with the official discourse, which
continues to be incomparably dominant not only among government circles
and the political elites of the mainstream, but also across Turkey's
many provincial universities.

Erdogan's Inherited Dilemma
It is very difficult for outside observers to decide to what extent we
owe these changes to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the AKP
leader, or if they should be seen as an inevitable outcome of the
overall changes Turkey is witnessing since the end of direct military
rule in the 1980s.

The Young Turk leaders, who executed the genocide, fled the country
toward the end of World War I. The next (and last) Ottoman government
tried them in absentia, together with a number of their junior
accomplices it had arrested. All were charged with unlawfully deporting
the Armenians en masse and massacring them. Mustafa Kemal, who deserted
the Ottoman government in 1919, was opposed to these trials. Under the
republic, which he established, the memory of the Armenian Genocide was
pushed into oblivion. Decades later, when the descendants of survivors
began demanding acknowledgement and compensation, Ankara adopted a rigid
attitude, denying that any genocide had occurred. It mobilized its
diplomatic corps toward that end and sponsored researchers ready to
justify its stand. In the official Turkish interpretation, it is
admitted that some Armenians suffered during World War I, but this
calamity was primarily the fault of the victims themselves, of the
Allies (Britain, Russia, and France), and sometimes of Kurdish and Arab
tribes in the area. Indeed, almost everybody is held responsible for
`the Armenian tragedy' except for Turks as an ethnic group, the Ottoman
government, and its army. Prior to the rise of nationalism in
19th-century Middle East, this narrative goes, the different Ottoman
ethnic groups-Turks and Armenians included-had lived peacefully together
in Asia Minor for centuries. These arguments constitute essential
pillars of the official interpretation of the modern Turkish republic's
`Immaculate Conception'-to borrow a metaphor coined by Israel's
so-called `New Historians' some 25 years ago to describe their country's
Myth of Origin. Numerous Turkish academics and journalists widely
reiterate this government-supported narrative to date. They reject that
`the events of 1915' were genocidal by questioning the occurrence of
massacres during the deportations. They also argue that Turks cannot
apologize for something that did not happen.

However, over the years, bits and pieces of confidential information
have leaked that at least some high-ranking Turkish officials have
recognized during closed discussions that, in an international political
atmosphere resulting from persistent Armenian activism, Ankara has found
itself in a hole and it should stop digging. In 1986, former Turkish
Ambassador Mahmut Dikerdem confided to the Greek Consul-General in
Istanbul that

he had actually proposed in a meeting in the Turkish Ministry of Foreign
Affairs that it was to the national interest of Turkey to recognize the
Genocide and blame it on the previous Ottoman regime. His proposal was
immediately rejected, and from that moment his problems started in the
ministry. He further told me that if his country recognized the
Genocide, the Turkish authorities were afraid that they would have to
face compensation claims by the relatives of the victims and perhaps
territorial claims by the Armenian SSR.

In 2007, journalist Padraig Reidy reported that, because of fears that
ceding an inch in the genocide debate `might lead to endless legal
wrangling in the US courts,' Turkish diplomats had studied the three Rs
of `recognition, recompense, and restitution.' Thereafter, legal opinion
had shifted, and the Turkish foreign ministry had come to view that the
possibility of the US House of Representatives passing a non-binding
resolution affirming the Armenian Genocide would not open the flood gate
to class actions.[ii] More importantly, close aides of Turgut Özal
disclosed in 2012 that, soon after assuming the premiership in 1983, he
had defended behind closed doors `the idea of holding negotiations with
Armenians to settle a dispute that has had great potential to deal a
serious blow to Turkish interests in international politics.' In 1984,

he ordered his advisers to work on possible scenarios about the economic
and political price Turkey would have to pay if Turkey compromises with
the Armenian diaspora, an early Turkish acceptance of the term
`genocide.' Another scenario was also prepared. This plan sought to
gauge the political cost of a Turkish acceptance of genocide within 20
to 30 years if Turkey is forced to accept it one day. His aim was to
solve the problem before it got too late and through few concessions
after reaching a deal with the Armenians... However, strong opposition
from some politicians from his party and from the military led to him
delaying sharing the details of the plan with the public, and he decided
to wait for a more appropriate time.[iii]

This duality in maintaining a rigid denialist attitude in public, while
privately exploring the possibilities of compromise, has undergone
changes under Erdogan and the AKP. While the state still supports the
old interpretation, and Turkish diplomats and politicians (including
Erdogan) frequently restate its theses in public, at times they also
depart from this inflexible stand and come up with `softer'
interpretations of `the events of 1915,' suggesting to Armenians,
directly or indirectly, formulae which they hope would provide the basis
for eventual reconciliation. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is most
active in this regard. New concepts like `shared pain' and `just memory'
appear to be his brainchildren. This approach no longer denies Armenian
suffering during World War I. It does not blame the Armenians for
massively killing Turks, even committing genocide against them, and it
shies away from using terms like `Civil War,' which was employed in the
past to establish some sort of parity between Armenian and Turkish
wartime deaths. Last December, Davutoglu went as far as saying that `we
never supported the deportation. This is an inhumane act and it is not
possible to approve of this.'[iv] The new approach still stresses,
however, that Turks and other Muslims also suffered immensely during the
war, and that their pain should also be commemorated. It refuses to see
any qualitative difference in the circumstances under which Muslims and
Armenians lost their lives in 1914-1918.

A Message of Condolence
Erdogan's condolences on April 23 to the grandchildren of Armenian
victims in 1915 is the latest example of this duality.[v]

The key sentence in the Turkish Prime Minister's message reads: `We wish
that the Armenians who lost their lives in the context of the early
twentieth century rest in peace, and we convey our condolences to their
grandchildren.' The message also repeats Davutoglu's assertion that the
`relocation' of Armenians `had inhumane consequences.' If limited to
these two sentences, the message, coming from Turkey's chief executive,
is indeed unprecedented, and the international media reported it as
such; no Turkish leader had offered condolences to Armenians before.
However, these two sentences constitute only about 35 words in a
700-word-long message. The rest of the message reasserts old attitudes
and positions, which the international media largely ignored. Yet, their
dominant presence in the message made most Armenians wary of greeting
the latter with any measure of enthusiasm.

The message reiterates that the people of Anatolia had lived together
for centuries regardless of their different ethnic and religious
origins. It underlines that Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Armenians, and millions
of other Ottoman citizens all suffered during the last years of the
Ottoman Empire. It condemns `constructing hierarchies of pain' or
`comparing and contrasting suffering,' arguing that `the incidents of
the First World War are our shared pain' and that this painful period of
history should be evaluated through `a perspective of just memory.'
Referring indirectly to growing voices inside Turkey demanding the
official recognition of the genocide, the message welcomes the free
expression of different opinions and thoughts and asks all sides `to
approach different discourses with empathy and tolerance.' However, it
also warns that `some may perceive this climate of freedom in Turkey as
an opportunity to express accusatory, offensive and even provocative
assertions and allegations' and stresses that `using the events of 1915
as an excuse for hostility against Turkey and turning this issue into a
matter of political conflict is inadmissible.' The message repeats
Turkey's call for a commission with the participation of Armenian,
Turkish and international historians to study `the events of 1915' in a
scholarly manner. It also takes pride in Turkey having opened its
archives to all researchers. Finally, the last paragraph of the message
pays tribute to `all Ottoman citizens who lost their lives in the same
period and under similar conditions' (emphasis added), thus
reintroducing some sort of parity between Armenian and non-Armenian
wartime deaths.

Most Armenians, to whom the message is addressed, will point out that
while there may not have been Armenian uprisings in Asia Minor under
Ottoman rule until the late 19th century, Armenian-Turkish coexistence
in that period was still based on inequality; Islamic law and custom
deprived non-Muslims of many basic rights enjoyed by the empire's Muslim
subjects, like joining the administration or enlisting in the army. They
will also object that the notion of `shared pain' does not distinguish
between the circumstances under which Armenian and Muslim deaths
occurred. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians died as a consequence of a
premeditated government plan. Moreover, unlike the Turkish state, which
continuously denies the Armenian Genocide, the Armenian state and
Diasporan organizations would argue that they have never questioned the
suffering of Muslims during the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 or during the
Allied attack on Gallipoli in 1915. Armenians did not cause these
deaths, and they have never lobbied with foreign governments to silence
public discussion of these events.

The issues of the archives and the proposed joint historical commission
are of more concern to researchers. While the Prime Minister's Archives
in Istanbul are now largely accessible, and many Armenian Genocide
scholars have used them in recent years, they report that many key
documents, which they expected to find there, are missing. This has led
to the belief that this archive may have been combed, probably by the
military regime in the early 1980s. The equally important Turkish
General Staff Archives remain largely inaccessible.

Many Armenians are also worried that the Turkish government may simply
use the proposed historians' commission to convince third parties to
avoid discussing or expressing opinion on the Armenian Genocide
indefinitely. Moreover, if the commission's Armenian and Turkish members
will be appointed by their respective governments, they will be under
intense pressure from politicians and the public to toe the established
battle-lines, and if any side is eventually persuaded by the arguments
of the other, the first reaction among their ethnic kin will be to
accuse them of having sold out to the enemy. Such a commission cannot
succeed unless there is a dramatic change inside Turkish government
circles to face the past with courage.
These misgivings make many Armenians believe that the condolences,
offered the way they were, constitute too little at this stage and do
not provide hope for any major breakthrough in Armenian-Turkish relations.

Erdogan's message also appears to many Armenians as being too late
because, in recent years, they have become accustomed to hearing more
unequivocal condemnation of, even apologies for, the Armenian Genocide
from certain Turkish scholars, journalists, and human rights activists.
Within this context, Erdogan appears not as a confident leader guiding
his people firmly along the path of confronting the past and achieving
reconciliation, but as a politician desperate to keep up with the times
and mitigate international pressure, without unduly antagonizing his
more nationalistic rivals on the Turkish political scene.

Emulating Willy Brandt?
The Belge Publishing House, owned by the Zarakolu family, has issued
many Turkish translations of books on the Armenian Genocide since the
early 1990s. In the preface to the 1994 translation of Yves Ternon's La
Génocide Arménienne, Ragip Zarakolu suggested that a future Turkish head
of government should emulate former West German Chancellor Willy
Brandt's kneeling down at the monument to the victims of the Warsaw
Ghetto Uprising and lay a wreath at the genocide memorial in Armenia.
This image has fascinated many Armenians since. It appears at the moment
that Erdogan will not be that head of government. However, when such a
visit takes place eventually, future analysts will certainly look back
at the Erdogan era as a necessary step on this difficult road. How they
will evaluate the role of Erdogan the politician in this process is
still difficult to predict.

Leonidas T. Chrysanthopoulos, Caucasus Chronicles: Nation-Building
and Diplomacy in Armenia, 1993-1994. (Princeton and London: Gomidas
Institute Books, 2002), 28.

[ii] Padraig Reidy, `Wrestling with genocide,' Index on Censorship,
October 18, 2007, available at
http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2007/10/wrestling-with-genocide/.

[iii] `Late President Turgut Özal Worked to Solve `Armenian Genocide'
Dispute,' Today's Zaman, April 23, 2012, available at
http://www.todayszaman.com/news-278371-late-president-turgut-ozal-worked-to-solve-armenian-genocide-dispute.html.

[iv] `Deportation of Armenians inhumane, Davutoglu says in Yerevan,'
Today's Zaman, December 13, 2013, available at
http://www.todayszaman.com/news-333980-deportation-of-armenians-inhumane-davutoglu-says-in-yerevan.html.

[v] The full translation of Erdogan's message is available in seven
languages at
http://www.basbakanlik.gov.tr/Forms/_Article/pg_Article.aspx?Id=e11bde56-a0b7-4ea6-8a9a-954c68157df9.

About The Author (Ara Sanjian):
Ara Sanjian is Associate Professor of Armenian and Middle Eastern
History and the Director of the Armenian Research Center at the
University of Michigan-Dearborn. He is the author of Turkey and Her Arab
Neighbors, 1953-1958: A Study in the Origins and Failure of the Baghdad
Pact (2001), as well as scholarly articles on twentieth century history
of the Armenians.

[Eddie]

The topic may appear dated, but is not so. Erdogan's remarks were an opening salvo. Here something I contributed at the time of his remarks and submit now to the forum now prefacing it with my condolences to the all the families who suffered loss from the recent mining disaster in Turkey.

 

 

Erdogan’s condolences to the Armenian people – fine words butter no parsnips

A sideways glance at Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s 23 April 2014 statement of ‘condolences to the grandchildren’ of the Armenian dead of 1915 could be readily welcomed and applauded. Some Armenians could even feel better, less bitter, less entrenched in anti-Turkish sentiment on hearing the Prime Minister of a resurgent imperial Turkey speak so about the Armenian dead, in such an unprecedented and compassionate manner.

But the deeper truth of the Turkish Prime Minister’s pronouncement reveals a disappointing pedestrianism. It lacks any novel, radical or courageous dimension. Albeit laced with touching humanist sentiment, Erdogan appears engaged in no more than an opening gambit to undermine what in 2015 will be powerful global commemorations of the 100^th anniversary of the 1915 Armenian Genocide. His remarks appear designed particularly to ease what will likely be huge pressure on Turkey from both Europe and America where significant Armenian lobbies are insistently urging recognition of the Genocide on its up-coming 100^th anniversary.

Erdogan’s statement that has been translated into numerous languages is worth examination. Its employment of fine humanist turns of phrase are significantly revealing both of denied truths and of the limits and the actual designs of his statement.

‘It is our hope and belief’ says Erdogan, ‘that the peoples of an ancient and unique geography, who share similar customs and manners, will be able to talk to each other about the past with maturity and to remember together their losses in a decent manner.’

A fine sentiment and in the context of Armenian-Turkish relations a moving and indeed unprecedented one for the explicit Turkish state/elite recognition that the Armenian people are indeed and contrary to much shameless historical fabrication, one of the ‘peoples’ of the ‘ancient and unique geography’ enclosed today within the borders of a modern Turkish Republic.

But fine words butter no parsnips.

Action alone, not words, can produce conditions necessary for ‘mature’ and ‘decent’ discourse between Armenian and Turk. And the fact is Turkish state/elite actions prohibit such discourse.

I

Erodogan’s statement contains no hint, even of the slimmest kind of any action, of any change in Turkish state policy that blocks and even punishes mature and decent discourse. And here, be clear, we do not talk of land claims or reparations for 1915. We refer only to the necessity for greater freedoms and democratic rights for all the peoples who ‘share’ ‘customs’, ‘manners’ and a ‘unique and ancient geography.’

Where are proposals to halt the widespread denigration of Armenians in Turkey? Where even a hint to root out embedded extreme nationalist Turkish hostility to Armenians that leads to the murder of a Hrant Dink or to the ugly sight of Turkish politicians insulting an opponent for allegedly having Armenian ancestry. Where a hint of a friendly invitation into the open public sphere for Armenians forcibly converted to Islam, to the tens of thousands of hidden Armenians, who fear being engulfed in tidal wave of xenophobic Turkish nationalism?

The ‘compassion and mutually humane attitudes to one another’ that Erdogan expresses hopes for demands that the national rights of all the peoples of this ‘ancient and unique geography’ be protected; the right to schooling in their own languages, the freedom for their educational institutions to function without unending obstruction, the freedom of their social and welfare organizations from endless hostile pressure and threats that come often with calls to confiscate their properties.

For ‘decent’ and ‘mature’ discourse and relations, due respect has to be accorded to the cultural and historical legacy of the different peoples of the region. Not words but concrete proposals for action alone can signal honest intent. Where the hint for the need to properly protect Armenian architectural and other monuments surviving within Turkish state borders, the call to reverse the systematic destruction and to properly identify the Armenian origins of those that survive? Where a suggestion that the ceaseless destruction of a rich cultural legacy, a destruction that is part of the falsification of the history of the region, where the suggestion that this will be brought to an end?

Where the acknowledgement of the Armenian contribution to the cultural and economic development of this ‘unique and ancient geography’ during the era of the Ottoman Empire? Where even the faintest note of Armenian enrichment of the Turkish state’s economic, social and cultural history?

Erdogan raises no sound against the ceaseless falsification and distortion of Armenian history that striving to wipe them out of the region or diminish them there a humiliate them altogether demonizing them before the Turkish masses and so strangling all prospect of ‘decent’ and ‘mature’ discourse.

‘Decency’ and ‘maturity’ be furthermore cannot be sustained in the face of the Turkish state’s blockade of Armenia and of its collaboration with a hostile and aggressive Azerbaijani elite intent on demolishing the last remaining portions of an Armenian homeland, home indeed to a large segment of the grandchildren of 1915.

All these are vital ingredients for equal and humane relations in, let us not fear repetition here, this ‘shared’ ‘unique and ancient geography’.

II

Let us be clear!

It is not the case of greedy and ungrateful Armenians seizing upon an unprecedented and generous Turkish declaration to table unreasonable extremist demands. No! All the above flows directly from Erdogan’s words that, correctly and explicitly, put an equal mark between Turk and Armenian and between ‘all ethnicities’ that ‘lost their lives’ during the period 1914-1918. But this equal sign mean nothing if there is no enlargement of national, cultural, historical and democratic space that would allow all ‘ethnicities’ who share ‘customs and manners’ and a ‘unique and ancient geography’ to walk tall and proud.

Yes! Compassionate and humane relations must be mutual. Armenian pundits, intellectuals and politicians, social and national leaders and Churchmen have their obligation and responsibility to cast aside Armenian variants of chauvinist dismissal of the history of the Turkish people, so manifest in ugly everyday discourse, in the Armenian media, on the Armenian social media, discussion lists as well as text and history books.

First and foremost it is beholden on Armenians to abandon claims of collective Turkish responsibility for the 1915 Genocide, to abandon claims that the Turkish common people today can be held responsible for and accountable for the historical crimes of Ottoman Empire’s elites, of the Young Turks and the Turkish state.

Whilst Armenians are responsible for clearing up Augean stables of their own making, it requires stating in bold that much of their prejudice and bigotry is reaction to relentless hostile machination and denial by the Turkish state and its elite that has taken not a single step to ease the pain of a people so ‘inhumanely’ uprooted (‘relocated’ in the words of Erdogan’s mealy mouthed speech writers) and denied any right of return or compensation, even moral compensation, let alone material!

III

A Turkish politician does not speak as Erdogan did without calculation. He is in deep trouble and these troubles will mount in the run up to 2015. Even as his remarks may ease pressure from Europe and America, they risk raising the ire of extreme Turkish nationalism that remains a dominant force in Turkish society. But the benefits perhaps outweigh potential losses.

Erdogan has to cope with the challenge of the formidable Gulenists (who have their own stand on the Armenian question), steer clear of their damaging corruption charges, resolve debilitating internal elite battles and negotiate increasingly difficult economic waters, as well deal with the Kurdish Question. Here his remarks on the Armenian Genocide can serve to dam up troubles from other sources.

Erdogan can hope to at least begin to dim the chances of a potentially dangerous European and American succumbing to the Armenian lobby. Europe and the USA have of course never been concerned with the plight of Armenians, nor will they ever be. But in the run up to 2015, even a genuflection in that direction official Genocide Recognition could offer a declining Europe and America a new stick with which to meddle in the affairs of resurgent Turkey. Erdogan’s speech can begin to neutralize this stick.

Erdogan can also hope to neutralize an already immobile Armenian state. In the run up to 2015 Armenian elites too will come under immense pressure to more actively take up the many existing long term consequences of the Genocide, something that it has obstinately refused to do. Hints and suggestions of conciliatory official Turkish regret will suffice to embolden these elites in their flagrant refusal to go beyond words, in their flat failure to table significant issues for discussion with the Turkish state.

* * * * * *

It is clear that Erdogan’s 23 April 2014 statement has no genuine intent to encourage ‘compassionate and humane’ relationships between Turk and Armenian. The existing status quo in Turkey is not conducive, by any standard, to flourishing ‘compassion and mutually humane attitudes’ between the many different nationalities inhabiting the region and the statement has nothing to indicate that this status quo is designed to change.

It’s alas the same old story underlined again by the fact that Erdogan is once again advancing the notion of ‘a joint historical commission’ of scholars and researchers to establish the truth of 1915. What better way to package away all the continuing consequences of the Genocide, to store it out of sight, in the world of ivory tower academia, as far away from concrete, wide, open democratic discussion that would actually deal with historical consequences and generate the mature and good relations between us all that we all desire.

Prove us wrong and we will be delighted.

Orhan Dink, brother of murdered Hrant, made his own wise evaluation. Though ‘some might say’ that it came late’ Erdogan’s statement and his condolences are ‘a first step’, a ‘most basic brick’ to ‘build democracy in Turkey’. Genuine condolences are indeed a first and necessary step to democracy. Prove to us then Mr Erdogan that yours are genuine. Extend, enhance and multiply democratic rights in Turkey, rights that accord equality and respect, freedom and dignity to all national groups in within your jurisdiction. Carry through the tranche of measures indicated above, measures that have been tabled many times over the years.

Then and only then, can we together begin the process that, as Orhan put it, to bring ‘both societies to normalization.’ Only then will the idea of a historical commission acquire positive quality, only that is, after taking the concrete measures to overcome the still painful legacies of 1915.

Eddie Arnavoudian

[Yervant1]

TURKISH JOURNALIST: HOW I FACED THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE -

May 23, 2014

By Rasim Ozan Kutahyali -

Another April 24 is coming around. A landmark in Middle Eastern
history, the date this year will mark the 99th anniversary of the
catastrophe of 1915. Ninety-nine years ago, one of the region's
Christian peoples, the Armenians, fell victim to a great tragedy
they call Metz Yeghern, or genocide. A deep, insurmountable enmity
has haunted Turks and Armenians ever since, with tensions bound to
reach a crescendo next year, the centenary of the genocide. This year,
like those that went before, the spokespeople of various countries
will repeat their cliches. The annoying nonsense will go on.

Today, I tell of my own mental journey and the transformation of
conscience I experienced on this issue as a Turk. I speak of how I
faced up to the massacres of Armenians and Christians and how the
truth scarred my inner being. The road to acceptance was definitely
hard, but I eventually came to terms with the truth. The Armenians
were uprooted from the lands where I lived. Hundreds of thousands of
them were slain brutally on the orders of Talaat *****'s Young Turk
government. In the ensuing Kemalist era, Turkey's Christians and Jews
were again expelled from their homeland. It was an unmistakable act of
ethnic cleansing, which the state I belonged to denied. Such denial,
on top of everything else, is shameful.

I was in high school when I first became curious about the events
of 1915. Our Kemalist teachers spoke of "Armenian allegations" and
"Armenian lies." The Kemalist education we had received in earlier
grades had already instilled in me and my classmates an anti-Armenian
sentiment. Then, we were shown a government-sponsored documentary
according to which Turks, in fact, were the victims of genocide at
the hands of the Armenians.

The documentary was a ridiculous production, devoid of quality and
intellectual insight. I wasn't convinced. On the other hand, being
the child of a Turkish family, I did not want to believe that "we"
slaughtered the Armenians. Turkey's current official position --
It was not a massacre, but mutual killings -- was in its fledgling
stages in the 1990s. To allay my own conscience, I endorsed this
thesis as the most credible one.

I began to read studies that supported the government's version of
the events. Whenever the issue popped up, I insisted that there had
been no massacre, only mutual killing. During my university years,
I continued to read up on the issue, as it occasionally became a topic
of discussion and whetted my appetite to read more. Frankly, however,
I didn't bother to read material from both sides, try to be objective
or fully seek the truth. To me, the truth was already in my mind:
An Armenian genocide never took place. The two peoples slaughtered
each other. Thus, my only purpose in reading was to reinforce the
"truth" I had already come to accept.

As the late Armenian luminary Hrant Dink used to point out, as a Turk
I was simply incapable of coming to terms with anything like genocide.

I could not bring myself to say, "Yes, we Turks slaughtered the
Armenians." Dink argued that the urge toward denial was in fact a
natural human reaction. While on other political issues my thinking
matured into libertarian and democratic outlooks, on the Armenian
question I remained conditioned to insist that "It was mutual," that
"Apologies should be extended on both sides," that "It was a time of
war and there was no massacre, but mutual killings."

Although I never read a study affirming the genocide, I gradually began
to sense that something was wrong with the pro-Turkish arguments. The
Turkish literature on the subject varied from "Nothing happened" to
"The killings were mutual" and ultimately to "Yes, it did happen,
but it was necessary." At this point, I had a change of heart.

As a Turk, I might have felt the urge to delude myself, but to
endorse an argument that was more or less saying, "Yes, we did it,
and we were right to do so" seemed to me cruel and simply immoral.

The American scholar Justin McCarthy, whose work I read extensively at
the time, was a leading foreign supporter of the Turkish version. He
had the strong backing of the Turkish state and often visited Turkey
at Ankara's invitation to make speeches here and there.

McCarthy did not deny the huge number of atrocities that resulted
from deportations, but concluded that if the deportations had not
taken place, the Turks would have lost eastern Anatolia. Therefore,
their actions were justified. This argument offered easy vindication
for Turks, most of whom might have been relieved to think it was the
right thing to do, after all.

As Dink also said, denying what happened or not believing in it was,
in a sense, a noble reaction. Most Turks probably harbor this sentiment
today. Yet, a large number of people tend to embrace the theory that
the Turks were in the right. This is terrible and truly shameful,
because it points to a cruel and immoral mindset that legitimizes
murder and mass killings.

In my case, even the pro-Turkish writings I read to delude myself
and relieve my conscience led me to eventually conclude that what
happened was a crime against humanity. Yet, at the same time, I came
to realize that labeling an entire nation as the butcher of another
is no less intellectual nonsense than the perspective of seeing an
enemy in each and every member of another nation. This holds true not
only in the Turkish-Armenian context, but also in the German-Jewish
and Serbian-Bosnian cases.

The real murderer is the mindset, not a nation, that justifies the
extermination of ethnic or religious groups from an allegedly lofty
purpose. It is such a revolting, results-oriented mindset that has
made possible all massacres and genocides, deeming all means legitimate
in achieving a purported sacred end. In regard to the events of 1915,
this morality- and conscience-deprived mindset emerged in the avatar
of the Young Turks ideology, embodied in Talaat, a man who saw people
as mere objects in his population-engineering designs.

So, that's my personal story. I no longer deceive myself. What
happened in these lands in 1915 was a great tragedy, a genocide against
Armenians, a crime against humanity. Every "but ..." argument about
this crime makes me nauseous.

AL MONITOR

Rasim Ozan Kutahyali has been a columnist for Sabah since 2011
after writing for Taraf from 2008 to 2011. He is a popular political
commentator on various TV programs, having started at CNNTurk and
now appearing on Beyaz TV. Kutahyali is known for his anti-militarist
and liberal political views.

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