Semih Idiz: Turkey must keep its cool

TDN
Thursday, May 5, 2005
OPINIONS

Let no one mistake it, 1915 was a year of tragedy for the Armenian
people. As for the ‘numbers game,’ this is irrelevant. The Armenians
say 1.5 million died. Turks acknowledge that anything up to 600,000
Armenians died during the forced expulsions that started in May 1915.
But what difference does it make when you are talking about hundreds
of thousands of innocent people who lost their lives in brutal
circumstances.

Semih IDIZ – Let no one mistake it, 1915 was a year of tragedy for the
Armenian people. As for the “numbers game,” this is irrelevant. The
Armenians say 1.5 million died. Turks acknowledge that anything up
to 600,000 Armenians died during the forced expulsions that started
in May 1915. But what difference does it make when you are talking
about hundreds of thousands of innocent people who lost their lives
in brutal circumstances.

Let no one mistake it that these years were also years of tragedy
for the Turks, Kurds and other Muslim peoples of Anatolia. Again,
the numbers game is irrelevant, but the number of innocent Muslims
killed in Anatolia, the Balkans and the Caucasus during those years
runs into the millions. Their tragedy is no less than that of the
Armenians, even if many in the West insist on looking at this whole
affair from a skewed perspective, disregarding this basic fact for
historic, cultural, and religious reasons.

Armenians acknowledge that many Turks were killed during that
period. They usually say, however, that this is the price they paid
for “starting the fight.” This is like saying — as many Czechs and
the Poles do today — that the millions of Sudeten Germans who were
brutally murdered in horrific acts of vengeance at the end of World
War II deserved this so there can be no accountability. Tell that to
the millions of East Prussian Germans who are still seeking justice
for what was done to them.

History tells us that simple people do not start these big
fights. Their leaders do. Otherwise, if left to their own resources,
simple people can coexist in harmony, the way the Turks and Armenians
did for centuries. On the Turkish side it was the “Ittihadists,”
the first “coupists” in modern Turkish history, who co-engineered the
Armenian tragedy. On the Armenian side it was the equivalent of the
Ittihadists, whether they went under the name of the “Dashnaks” or the
“Hunchaks,” who led their own people down a blind alley by falling
for the promises given to them by the big powers, most notably Russia,
France and Great Britain — thus cultivating dreams of independence —
only to find themselves deserted over and over again in their hour
of need.

The question today, therefore, not only revolves around the issue of
whether the events of 1915 can be termed genocide or not. There is
a broad history that has to be unearthed to be able to see the “big
picture.” Since the term “genocide,” on the other hand, like the term
“homicide,” is a legalistic term, all that can be said today is that
a valid court of law — or a tribunal like the Nuremberg Tribunal
set up for the Germans at the end of World War II – has not ruled
that what happened in 1915 was genocide.

The only court that convened for the atrocities against the Armenians
sat in Istanbul, when that city was under allied occupation —
and everything was stacked in favor of the Armenians — after the
Ottoman Empire capitulated along with the Germans in 1918. That
court convicted some Ottoman officials for these atrocities but had
to let a much larger number go for lack of evidence. The attempt by
various parliaments in Europe today to “legislate history” with a
one-sided version of the events of 1915 does not alter this simple
fact. Parliaments can legislate that the sun should not set tomorrow
if they like, for all the good that will do.

Looked at what is transpiring today against this backdrop, one cannot
help but notice a correlation between the strong endorsement that
Turkey has gotten from the U.S., the EU and a host of influential
quarters, for its suggestion that Ankara and Yerevan set up a joint
commission to investigate the events of 1915 and the attempts by
“tangential” quarters to force-feed Turks with a one-sided version
of history under pressure from Armenian quarters.

The reason is not difficult to understand. Hardcore Armenians,
especially those led by the Dashnaks — who are still influential today
— and their non-Armenian sympathizers hate the idea of such a joint
commission, just as they hate any attempt at reconciliation between
Turks and Armenians. Those who doubt this can talk to the Armenian
members of the Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Committee, set up a
few years ago, who were so intimidated by the Dashnaks with threats
and abuse that they had to resign from this committee in the end.

One can also follow the statements of the Armenian National Committee
of America on these topics in order to find the extent to which
ultranationalist Armenians are in a panic today in the face of the very
proactive and positive move by Turkey to open up all its archives,
demand that others do so too and call for the establishment of a
Turkish-Armenian Commission to investigate 1915. They are afraid,
of course, that the “other side of the story” will emerge — something
they are loath to see happen.

It is also apparent that the Armenian issue is an ideal device for
those in Europe who do not want to see Turkey in the EU and who are
using this to dampen the enthusiasm of the Turks for membership in
the union. It was interesting to note, for example, Foreign Minister
Abdullah Gül saying during an interview with Milliyet earlier this
week that there are such ugly pressures being applied on Turkey today
that it almost drives a person to say, “God, damn the lot of them!”

This was in fact an unfortunate — not to mention undiplomatic —
remark because it sent a signal to those quarters in Europe that
Gül was referring to and who are abusing issues like the Armenian
issue against Turkey to continue as they are “because the Turks are
near breaking point.”

To put it in a nutshell, there is an ugly game that is being played in
Europe today by a host of quarters who have become strange bedfellows
against Turkey. Some want to make Turkey eat humble pie for their own
prejudicial reasons based on historic events; others want to keep the
Turks out of Europe; and yet others want to salve their consciences
for having always dumped the Armenians in the past during their hour
of need after having incited deep hatred between Armenians and Turks.

This is why Turkey has to stand firm today and not lose its cool in
the face of all this while continuing to be proactive on the Armenian
issue, as its has started to be as of late. While doing this it also
has to free itself from ossified perceptions about 1915 and acknowledge
the great human suffering that took place during those years without
getting involved in “tit-for-tat” arguments about who started what.

As for the blatantly racist anti-Turkish chorus in the West that is
singing its ugly tune against this country today by using the Armenian
issue, among others: All that one can do is repeat the time-tested
Turkish saying, “The cur may howl, but the caravan moves on…”  

–Boundary_(ID_IFO/ZB4ink0n6M+CnIrb9w)–