Armenian Encounter
By Ali Bayramoglu ([email protected])
Yeni Safak newspaper
11/26/2004
The Alcazar Music Hall in Marseilles occupies a significant place in
French cultural history. This old music hall where the most important
past virtuosos of “chanson francaise” like Edith Piaf, Yves Montant
were born, where the spirit of French resistance was represented during
the German occupation of World War II and which has been turned into
a library today was the place of an interesting meeting the other day.
Put more correctly, an interesting encounter was experienced.
In the meeting entitled “Europe/Turkey: A Key for Understanding”
Turkey’s EU membership, or to put more correctly, the perceptions of
the French and France on Turkey was discussed.
Any meeting in France, especially in Marseilles, cannot be held
without the Armenian problem.
Actually this was the target of the meeting from the out start.
This was a meeting instigated especially by Jean Kehayan, the
journalist from the Liberation newspaper, and organized by those
people who are truly a minority within the Armenian diaspora because of
their views that the solution of the Armenian problem, the successful
confrontation of the events of 1915, the expansion of Armenia’s living
space are all possible through the will of the Turkish populace and
Turkey’s democratization and membership in the EU, and that external
pressures generate attempts that are reactionary in nature.
Its purpose was to create an encounter between the Armenians of Turkey
and diaspora Armenians, put more correctly, to enable the Armenians
of Turkey to provide an account of Turkey to them from within seen
through a democratic lens and to explain to them why they as a
community defended Turkey’s EU membership.
The meeting was attended from Turkey by Etyen Mahcupyan and Hrant Dink.
And I accompanied them in order to narrate the process of change Turkey
underwent and to explain how the Armenian problem was perceived and
lived by different segments of society.
The encounter was rough…
The analyses undertaken by the Turkish Armenians, their different
attitudes, their criticisms of the diaspora politics in relation to
Turkey, the image of the Turk, and Armenian identity first had the
effect on the audience of a cold shower. Then it led to a heated
discussion.
For instance, Etyen Mahcupyan’s argument that the fact the diaspora
executed its ‘genocide recognition’ politics through their attitudes
toward the Turks and Turkey meant that they did not actually want
this recognition to take place caused uproar in the hall.
That the diaspora heard from Etyen himself how this problem nurtures
Armenian nationalism and the identity of the Armenian diaspora in a
very unhealthy manner was a very striking encounter and confrontation.
Likewise, Hrant Dink’s stating that “some of the steps you are taking
here is damaging the future of the Armenian world” and making similar
criticisms within the same framework created a similar consequence.
This much is evident:
Turkey’s advent to EU membership has escalated the differences
among Armenian communities, politicized them, and set into action a
differentiation process.
We have to comprehend and digest… With the exception of elements
such as identity and culture, the common denominator of different
Armenian communities is inarguably and inescapably the events of 1915.
Regardless of however much this trauma is denied by us, and in however
many ways it is proved, it is a serious trauma bringing the past into
the present with severe and permanent effects on society. Actually it
is this trauma that lies behind modern Armenian nationalism.
–Boundary_(ID_8pzAepp7ZxSDSI9/qiB5jA)–