Beginning to face up to a terrible past

At least the Turks now allow the Armenian tragedy to be talked about

Turkey’s Armenians

The Economist
April 7th 2005

DIYARBAKIR — ZEKAI YILMAZ, a Kurdish health worker, was 12 when he
found out that his grandmother was Armenian. “She was speaking in
a funny language with our Armenian neighbour,” he recalled. “When
they saw me they immediately switched to Kurdish.” Pressed for
an explanation, his grandmother revealed an enormous scar on
her back. At 13 she had been stabbed and left for dead together
with hundreds of fellow Armenians in a field outside Diyarbakir.
Mr Yilmaz’s grandfather found her, rescued her, converted her to
Islam and married her. “But in her heart she remained an Armenian
and I sort of feel Armenian too,” said Mr Yilmaz.

Similar accounts abound in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish south-eastern
provinces. The region was home to a thriving community of Armenian
Christians until the first world war; traces of their culture are
evident in the beautifully carved stone churches that lie in ruins
or have been converted into mosques.

But the first world war was when, according to the Armenians, 1.5
million of their people were systematically murdered in a genocide
perpetrated by Ottoman Turks, a massacre that went on even when the
war was over. Millions of Armenians worldwide are set to commemorate
the 90th anniversary of the start of the violence on April 24th.

The Turks deny there was genocide. Though they admit that several
hundred thousand Armenians perished — the figures vary from one
official to the next — they insist that it was from hunger and
disease during the mass deportation to Syria (then also Ottoman)
of Armenians who had collaborated with the invading Russian forces
in eastern Turkey.

Some Kurds dispute this version saying that their forefathers had
joined in the slaughter after being promised Armenian lands — and a
place in heaven for killing infidels — by the Young Turks who ruled
Turkey at the time. “You [Kurds] are having us for breakfast, they
[Turks] will have you for lunch,” an Armenian proverb born in those
days, was “eerily prescient” says a Kurdish journalist, referring to
the violence between Turkish forces and separatist Kurds that later
racked the south-east.

Until recently such talk would have landed these Kurds in jail on
charges of threatening the integrity of the Turkish state. But as
Turkey seeks membership of the European Union, its repressive laws
are being replaced by ones that allow freer speech. Calls are mounting
within Europe, and much more encouragingly among some Turks themselves,
for the country to face up to its past. As a result, unprecedented
debate of the Armenian issue has erupted in intellectual and political
circles and the mainstream Turkish press.

Some of the reaction has been ugly. Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s best-known
contemporary novelist, received death threats when he told a Swiss
newspaper that “One million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed
in Turkey.” One over-zealous official in a rural backwater went
so far as to issue a circular calling for all of Mr Pamuk’s books
to be destroyed — only to find there were none in his town. His
actions were applauded by a vocal and potentially violent group of
ultra-nationalists, who claim that the Europeans are using Armenians,
Kurds and other minorities to dismember Turkey.

Yet there are hopeful signs that the Turks are willing to listen to
other opinions as well. Halil Berktay, a respected Ottoman historian
long ostracised for his unconventional views, survived telling the
pro-establishment daily Milliyet recently that the Armenians were
victims of “ethnic cleansing”. After decades of wavering, Fethiye
Cetin, a Turkish lawyer, roused the courage to publish the story of
her grandmother, another “secret Armenian” rescued by a Turk. Published
in November, the book is already into its fifth edition.

In Istanbul members of a newly formed ethnic Armenian women’s platform
have vowed to shatter negative stereotypes by publicising the works
of their successful sisters. “We are fed up with Turkish movies that
portray us as hairy, morally promiscuous and money-grubbing creatures,”
explained one.

In a groundbreaking if modest gesture, Turkey’s mildly Islamist prime
minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, made a joint call last month with
the main opposition leader, Deniz Baykal, for an impartial study
by historians from both sides of the genocide debate. His reason,
he said, was that he did not want “future generations to live under
the shadow of continued hatred and resentment.” He believes that the
findings will show there was no genocide.

The move has been shrugged off by Armenia as a ploy to quash attempts
in various EU quarters to link Turkey’s membership with recognition
of the genocide, as well as deterring America’s Congress from a
possible resolution mentioning “genocide”. Turkish officials retort
that the prime minister’s call marks the first time any Turkish leader
has invited international debate of Turkey’s past, albeit a purely
academic one. If the government were insincere, they ask, why did
the Turkish parliament ask a pair of ethnic Armenian intellectuals
to brief it on April 5th?

Hrant Dink, the publisher of Agos, a weekly read by Turkey’s
60,000-member Armenian community, was one of the questioned
intellectuals. He offered plenty of sensible advice. He says that
Turkey, rather than getting bogged down in endless wrangles over
statistics and terminology, needs to normalise its relations with
neighbouring Armenia. As a first step, it should unconditionally open
its borders with the tiny, landlocked former Soviet republic. These
were sealed in 1993 after Armenia occupied large chunks of ethnically
Turkic Azerbaijan in a bloody conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh
enclave.

Make friends with Armenia, first

Not only would Turkey score valuable credit with the EU and the United
States, but mutual trade would blunt the influence of the hawkish
Armenian diaspora. A recent survey carried out jointly by a Turkish
and Armenian think-tank showed 51% of Turkish respondents and 63%
of Armenians in favour of opening the borders.

Even so, mutual hostility prevails. Among the Armenians, 93% said
it would be “bad” if their son married a Turkish girl, while 64%
of Turks said the same of an Armenian bride. This does not worry
the irrepressibly optimistic Mr Dink. “Let’s first get to know one
another,” he declares. “Love will follow.”