Mother Jones, CA
April 23 2004
The Unknown Genocide
On April 24th, Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, President Bush will
issue a statement mourning the state-sponsored mass killing of more
than a million Armenians between 1915 and 1923 in what was then the
Ottoman Empire. Yet to the disappointment of many Armenian-Americans,
he will refrain from using the term “genocide.” Against the evidence,
Turkey — the successor state to the Ottoman Empire — officially
views the Armenian Genocide as an unfounded allegation, not the
established historical fact that it is.
History, then, is not on Turkey’s side, but realpolitik is. Aside
from being a crucial N.A.T.O. ally, Turkey is also the transit-point
for oil. U.S. companies have a large stake in the ongoing
construction of an oil pipeline running from Baku, Azerbaijan to the
Turkish port of Ceyhan. In 2000, the House of Representatives
withdrew a resolution on the Armenian Genocide after Turkey
threatened to close its airbases to U.S. planes on fly-over missions
in Iraq.
There are about 7 million people of Armenian descent word-wide: 3
million in the Republic of Armenia and 4 million in the Diaspora,
with the largest communities in North America, Europe and the Middle
East. Many are the descendants of genocide survivors and have
campaigned for decades to have Turkey recognize and apologize for the
Armenian Genocide.
One million-plus Armenian-Americans, concentrated in New York,
California, and Massachusetts, make up one of the most politically
active ethnic communities in the country. The Armenian National
Committee of America (A.N.C.A.), a grassroots political organization,
expects its Armenian Genocide Observance on Capitol Hill to be
attended by 110 legislators. The organization’s San Francisco Bay
Area chapter recently mailed 10,000 brochures to history and social
science teachers publicizing a workbook on the Armenian Genocide
developed by the San Francisco school district. The project was
funded by A.N.C.A., which also launched a companion website:
The Armenian Diaspora has made progress in discrediting the Turkish
government’s version of events in legislatures, newspapers, and
classrooms throughout the world. Several parliaments — including the
French National Assembly have passed laws recognizing the Armenian
Genocide. The U.S. Congress had passed resolutions doing the same.
The Association of Genocide Scholars of North America concluded that
the killings meet the definition of the 1948 U.N. Convention on
Genocide which includes the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part,
a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Atom Egoyan’s
“Ararat” — the first major motion picture on the Armenian Genocide
— was shown worldwide and won Canada’s top movie awards in 2003. The
movie focused on the way the Diaspora has dealt, over generations,
with the memory of the genocide and Turkey’s refusal to acknowledge
it.
This year, the New York Times issued guidelines to its journalists
stating that the facts of the Armenian Genocide are well-established
and that references to it “should not be qualified with phrasing like
‘what Armenians call,’ etc.” — reversing a long-standing policy of
using qualifiers.
Turkey contends that the number of Armenians killed is vastly
exaggerated; that there was no systematic effort by the government to
exterminate the Armenians; that traitorous nationalist Armenian
parties allied with the Russian Empire during World War One bear
responsibility for the suffering that befell their people; that
during this time of “international war and inter-communal struggle”
Armenians weren’t uniquely afflicted, suffering along with Muslims,
Jews, and other subject peoples of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey also
refers to the deportations of the Armenians — most infamously via
marches to the Syrian deserts during which many were killed or died
from disease and starvation — as “relocations.”
The problem for Turkey is that records of the “Young Turk” government
which orchestrated the killings, dispatches from Western diplomats,
military officers, and aid workers, and testimonials of genocide
survivors all confirm a systematic effort to wipe out the Armenian
minority.
Fear of being forced to pay reparations — monetary and territorial
— is often cited as a reason for Turkey’s refusal to recognize the
Armenian Genocide. Some Armenians are still calling for “the return
of the lands” from which their ancestors were expelled, a demand that
is not going to be supported by the international community. In any
case, even if it was, mass migrations from Paris and Los Angeles to
populate Turkey’s rural areas are not realistic either — the
descendants of the survivors are well-integrated into their “host
countries.” More likely, international courts will required that
Turkey pay massive reparations.
Turkey’s refusal to recognize the Armenian Genocide, is much more
than a matter of money, though — the recognition would entail a
fundamental transformation of the country’s political and educational
discourse. An honest examination of the violent dismemberment of the
multi-national empire from whose ashes modern Turkey rose would
require that the government dismantle the founding myths of the
state. As Etienne Copeaux of France’s Group for Research and Studies
on Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Affairs told Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty:
“To recognize the genocide would be to recognize that a very large
number of Armenians used to live in Anatolia. Therefore, it would
mean there is a multi-cultural Anatolia. But, as we can see today
with the issue of the Kurds, the Turkish state is envisaged as a
uni-cultural state, a state with a single culture, a single language.
So [to recognize the Armenian genocide] would mean Turkey should
offer concessions not only to Kurds but also to other nationalities
that still live in Turkey.”
The few Turkish historians who are challenging the government’s
version are not to be envied: Taner Akcam, who has called the
killings of the Armenians a “genocide” left Turkey after universities
refused to hire him; he currently teaches at the University of
Minnesota. And after battling genocide denial for so long, many
Armenians are wary of scholars who urge a full reckoning with their
Turkish counterparts. As Armenian-American political scientist Ronald
Grigor Suny told the New York Times: “Many people in the diaspora
feel that if you try to understand why the Turks did it, you have
justified or legitimized it in some way.”
The Republic of Armenia said that it wants Turkey to apologize for
the Armenian Genocide but has not made it a prerequisite for
diplomatic or economic relations. Armenia is currently blockaded by
neighboring Azerbaijan — the two countries are in a “no peace, no
war” stalemate over the Armenian-populated statelet of
Nagorno-Karabakh and several Azeri regions adjacent to it. Turkey —
which shares a border with Armenia — has blockaded Armenia in
support of Azerbaijan. The World Bank estimates that the dual
blockade is costing Armenia $500 million annually. A third of the
country’s population emigrated following the U.S.S.R.’s collapse, as
the economy deteriorated and the Karabakh War escalated, its security
is highly depended on the Russian military, and is the highest
recipient of U.S. aid per capita in the former Soviet Union.
There have been press reports about the re-opening of the
Armenian-Turkish border in the last few months. The United States and
the European Union see resumed trade ties and the normalization of
Turkish-Armenian relations as key to stabilizing the Caucasus.
Several Turkish officers even participated in NATO’s Partnership for
Peace program exercises held in Armenia this year — not without
generating more than its fare share of controversy in the country and
the Diaspora.
Turkey’s drive to enter the E.U. has been met with constant promises
of “tomorrow, tomorrow.” The Europeans have pointed to Turkey’s poor
human rights record, Cyprus, and lack of progress on democratization,
but unwillingness on the part of Europe to let a poor, populous
Muslim country into the club is a reason as well. The E.U. has not
made the acknowledgement of the Armenian Genocide a requirement for
Turkey’s entry, but it has urged Turkey to re-examine its past in
keeping with the E.U.’s commitment to the protection of minority
rights.
Turkey’s younger generation is growing up in a world at odds with
their country’s denial of the Armenian Genocide and under a
government that has little tolerance for dissent on the subject.
Continuing the current policy is bound to backfire internationally by
isolating Turkey, in addition to undercutting its aim of becoming a
fully-fledged democracy.
The few remaining survivors of the Armenians Genocide will not, in
all likelihood, live to hear an apology. It is a shame that Turkey
has begun the new century with its continued rejection of one of the
greatest crimes of the last.
-Nonna Gorilovskaya
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
