TURN THE PAGE, BUT READ IT FIRST: WHY EUROPE AND TURKEY MUST NOW
ADDRESS THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
By Administrator
`It’s not the land that we lost, nor the dead. No, the worst is the
hatred.’
-Saroyan, the main character impersonated by Charles Aznavour, in Atom
Egoyan’ s film on the Armenian Holocaust `Ararat’.
By Nicolas Tavitian, Worldpress.org, Brussels, 04/01/2005
On Dec. 13, the ghost of the 1915 Armenian genocide suddenly burst on
the E.U. scene as French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier announced
that Turkey would be expected to recognize the event during
E.U. accession negotiations.
Why should the recognition of an event 90 years old be an issue today?
Why connect it to Turkey’s E.U. bid? Indeed, why rack up the past, as
Jack Straw put it?
This is not about Turkey recognizing the Armenian genocide: it is
about the country ending its denial, and the low-level, state
orchestrated hate campaign that goes with it.
The Armenians were eradicated from the Ottoman Empire in 1915-16
because they had been used as a pretext for interference on the part
of the great powers of the day. In a gruesome and purposeful affair
carried out over less than a year, an estimated 1.5 million people
were killed. Many more fled to Russiaand Syria. The remainder were
swept up in cleansing campaigns over the following decades. As a
result, Turkey’s Armenian population dropped from 10-15 percent to 0.1
percent of Turkey’s overall population, and all in Istanbul.
How does a country return to normal after such an enormous – indeed,
unprecedented – atrocity? By blaming the victim: Turkey has
accusedArmenians of rebelling during the war, of helping the Russians
and of killing as many Turks as Turks killed Armenians. With this
inescapable corollary, the Armenians were, and remain, a threat to
Turkey.
This narrative has been anchored in the minds of Turks by 90 years of
official historiography and nationalistic campaigning. Its natural
conclusion is that Armenians, wherever they live, are the enemy and
their claim to genocide recognition is nothing less than a covert
attempt to seize territory from the Turkish Republic. It is a message
that has been driven by government policyfor decades, and it has
fuelled widespread hostility in the Turkish population towards a group
they no longer have direct contact with.
According to Turkish historian Taner Akcam, this narrative played an
important role in the reconstruction of Turkey by Kemal Ataturk as a
newborn, anti-imperialist and thus necessarily innocent nation. It has
bred a natural hostility to Armenians that can easily turn to fear and
hatred. Europeans will recognize here parallels with fears of the
Jewish conspiracy propagated by anti-Semites.
In the eyes of many Turks, Armenians in Europe and America who
continue to commemorate the catastrophe are a threat, and this threat
is being pursued around the world.
Turkey’s hostility to Armenians manifests itself on the most
irrelevant occasions. When permission is requested to build an
Armenian church in a European city, a Turkish Ambassador is likely to
be working against it. When Armenians hold an event – say a conference
or an exhibition – in a public building, the odds are Turkey will work
to have it cancelled.
More dramatically, the prevailing state of mind in Turkey has played a
major role in shaping the country’s policy towards the state of
Armenia. The civil conflict between the ethnic Armenians of Karabagh
and the state of Azerbaijan in the early 1990’s actually fed the
narrative of Armenian expansionist threat (Azeris are considered Turks
in Turkey). In defiance of its own interests, Turkey refused to
establish diplomatic relations with Armenia and closed its border with
that country.
In Turkey, the few remaining Armenians are still considered a security
threat. They are supervised directly by the National Security Council,
an honor they would happily do without.
The narrative of denial and its consequences are noxious, and it is
not compatible with joining a community of nations such as the
European Union- Copenhagen criteria or not.
Noxious, too, is the vigour that the Turkish state displays in
obliterating the memory of the genocide abroad. Any event relating to
the genocide =80` film, conference, memorial, publication – literally
anything will be fought against tooth and nail by Turkish Embassies,
mobilizing Turkish immigrant communities if need be. Violence may be
involved, as in the French town of Valence on Nov. 28.
Most people are not heroes; they yield. The British government itself
has yielded. So has the European Commission as it sidelined the issue
in the context of Turkey’s relations with the E.U. Many press agencies
and media yield by presenting the genocide as an Armenian `claim,’ as
if 90 years had not been sufficient to establish the facts as more
than a claim. Countless authors, filmmakers, and others who considered
telling the story of the annihilationof an ancient nation also
yielded.
That is why the Armenian genocide, a crime of unprecedented magnitude,
is so little known and has barely been mentioned in more than a
passing fashion in the context of Turkey’s membership bid. And that is
why the twin evils of denial and the group hostility it has bred –
call it nationalism, racism, xenophobia – must not be allowed into our
community of nations.
Michel Barnier’s declaration teaches us at least one lesson: the
legacy of genocide is too big to be brushed under the carpet. Turkey’s
true friends in the E.U. must have the wisdom to confront genocide
denial.
Nicolas Tavitian is Director of European Programmes for the Armenian
General Benevolent Union (AGBU, online at ), a founding
member of the Turkish Armenian association TABDC-EU, and author of
several reports on relations between Turkey and Armenia, including
`Les relations arméno-turques: la porte close de l’Orient'(2003),
available on