It is indeed political
Saturday, March 12, 2005
TDN editorial by Yusuf KANLI
Yusuf KANLI
It’s difficult for Turks and others who have not been to Armenia and
who have no idea of the components making up Armenian nationalism to
understand Yerevan’s outright rejection of a Turkish proposal for a
genocide study.
For Turks, Britons, Spaniards, Israelis, Arabs and other nationalities,
the concepts of “homeland,” religion, history, national pride and
such, and even the idea of things as simple as the success of the
local soccer team, constitute the bulk of what creates a sense of
belonging to the country and the nation. The love for the homeland
and for the nation and the sense of belonging are the driving elements
that produce a nationalism which is not based on racism or chauvinism.
Don’t we have racial and chauvinistic preoccupations? Unfortunately
we do, and they are among the reasons why we have been struggling for
the past decades to democratize this country and enhance individual
rights and liberties and acquire a higher level of freedom of
expression. Though we sometimes wrongly portray this struggle in
Turkey with the clichéd “Westernization” or “Western vocation of
Turkey” rhetoric, what we have been involved in is indeed just a
fight to preserve our differences while at the same time becoming
a more homogenous society, replacing a concept of nationality that
includes racial connotations with an understanding of constitutional
citizenship, creating a national identity that provides room for
sub-identities, making all citizens of this nation and all parts of
the country equal and thus boosting the perception of belonging to
this state and nation.
Had they not developed a sense of belonging, could the Israelis have
survived thousands of years of rejection and humiliation, many wars,
the Inquisition and a heinous Holocaust in addition to a campaign of
anti-Semitism that still exists in many societies albeit to a much
lesser degree?
But if one looks at Armenia, is there any element that can create
a sense of belonging among Armenians dispersed around the world to
the land-locked state next door to Turkey? Armenia is incapable of
becoming a center of attraction or placing itself at the center of
nationhood for Armenians. It won its independence a decade ago with
over 3.5 million people, fought a foolish war of expansion against
Azerbaijan and occupied a substantial piece of territory — ignoring
all international calls to hand it back to Baku — and now has a
population of barely 1.5 million, while the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh
and adjacent Azerbaijani territories are virtually deserted except
a few settlements.
The “genocide monument” in Yerevan has more importance to Armenians
anywhere in the world than the entire Armenian territory does
because while the country has been unable to become a centerpiece of
nationhood, that monument is its symbol. For Armenians, the alleged
genocide is not a matter for historians; it is the backbone of their
nationhood, and they cannot risk it being challenged.
Therefore, remarks of Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan
claiming that the alleged genocide was not a matter for the historians
but a political issue that had to be resolved politically were just
expressions acknowledging this reality.
Oskanyan and other political leaders in Yerevan as well as the Armenian
diaspora, which has successfully transformed the “genocide campaign”
into an international industry, knew better than the Turks that there
is not even one document proving a systematic campaign of genocide
by the Turks against the Armenians. There is nothing more than some
memories, letters and propaganda booklets prepared by the powers
fighting against Turkey in World War I. That’s why the Turkish call
for genocide studies under the auspices of UNESCO received such an
immediate cold shoulder from Yerevan. Armenia simply cannot face the
risk of being stripped of the glue of its nationhood.
–Boundary_(ID_NGZR07S7xA8LCs/6R7sWCQ)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress