They say ‘incident’. To me it’s genocide

When its finest novelist attacked Turkey’s bloody past, he became a
hero for Armenians and Turks alike, says Nouritza Matossiann

Nouritza Matossiann
Sunday February 27 2005
The Observer

There is a Turkish saying: ‘A sword won’t cut without inspiration from
the pen.’

Orhan Pamuk, wielder of Turkey’s finest pen, has spoken and cut a
swath through his country’s conscience. His most recent novel Snow was
set in Kars and peppered with references to the Armenian culture of
that formerly Armenian city. Brilliant novelist, translated in 20
languages, winner of international prizes, he has become a hate
figure.

His crime was one sentence in an interview with the Swiss newspaper
Tagesanzeiger this month. ‘Thirty thousand Kurds and a million
Armenians were killed in Turkey. Almost no one dares speak but me, and
the nationalists hate me for that.’ All hell broke loose. The press
attacked him for dishonouring the Turkish state and incitement to
racial violence. He has been called a liar, ‘a miserable creature’ and
a ‘black writer’ in the daily Hurriyet. Professor Hikmet Ozdemir, head
of the Armenian studies department at the Turkish Union of Historians,
rejected his statement as a ‘great lie’.

A lone voice, Halil Berktay, professor at Sabanci University,
supported Pamuk: ‘In 1915-16 about 800,000 or one million Armenians
were killed for sure.’

Mehmet Üçok, an attorney, filed charges at the Kayseri
public prosecutor’s office. Another charge was filed by Kayseri Bar
Association attorney Orhan Pekmezci: ‘Pamuk has made groundless claims
against the Turkish identity, the Turkish military and Turkey as a
whole. He should be punished for violating Articles 159 and 312 of the
Turkish penal code. He made a statement provoking the people to hatred
and animosity through the media, which is defined as a crime in
Article 312.’

I find this ironic. My mother’s family was deported from the historic
Armenian city of Kayseri, leaving their murdered menfolk behind.

I was recently in Istanbul lecturing on my biography of
Armenian-American artist Arshile Gorky, the basis for the
controversial genocide movie Ararat. Official permission for my talk
required me not to utter the word ‘genocide’ to refer to the Ottoman
empire’s systematic deportations, tortures and killings of two million
Armenians which Gorky witnessed. I might refer to those
‘incidents’. The crime has never been acknowledged by successive
Turkish governments, Britain or the United States.

Recent discussions of Turkey’s possible entry into the EU were
dominated by France and other countries demanding that Turkey first
admit the Armenian genocide. What if Britain had a law forbidding
criticism of its history, identity, or the armed forces? Turkey has
far to go to reach the legal standards of EU members, with their
humane and non-discriminatory laws aiming at standards of truth and
reason. So much hatred. So much anger. What does Turkey have to hide?

‘Pamuk has always defended freedom of speech and thought, the rights
of minorities,’ writes Hrant Dink, owner of the Armenian
Turkish-language weekly Agos . ‘For 90 years we Armenians have been
abused, insulted and discriminated against. We cannot enter certain
professions, we Turkified our names. We have learnt to survive and
endure without protest. Maybe it is time that the Turkish people also
learnt tolerance and endurance from us.’

In London, a thinly veiled propaganda exercise at the Royal Academy
trumpets Turkish empires, making far-reaching claims about the origins
of the ‘Turkic peoples’. Echoes of master-race ideology. Pamuk himself
writes in the Academy journal: ‘Turks gripped by romantic myths of
nationalism are keen to establish that we come from Mongolia or
central Asia… scholars have come no closer to offering definitive or
convincing evidence to link us with a particular time and place.’

In the show the contributions of other nationals in the Ottoman empire
– Armenians, Greeks and Jews – are not credited. Yet their handiwork
is everywhere, in architecture, pottery, carpets, manuscripts.

Britain colludes in this travesty for the sake of oil interests in
Azerbaijan, Turkey’s closest ally.

Akin Birdal, vice-president of the International Federation of Human
Rights Leagues, emphasises: ‘No matter we have come to the 90th year
of “incidents” Orhan Pamuk talked about, these will of course be
discussed on domestic and international platforms. The aggressions
carried out against Pamuk are those which have been carried out
against thought. Pamuk is not alone.’ Pamuk has cut the Gordian
knot. He has become the hero of every right-thinking person in Turkey
and every Armenian worldwide.

* Nouritza Matossian is author of ‘Black Angel, A Life of Arshile
Gorky’.