Deportation in Essence or So-Called Genocide … Does it Really Matter?

By Yigit Bener

(An online Turkish journal)
April 2005 issue

Exile or genocide? Massacre or self-defense? Should the historians
decide or the politicians?

We are watching the debate as if we were watching a soccer match.
Although we keep getting scored against, we still haven’t lost our
faith saving the game using new tactics: If we could just get our
official history accepted, we are sure that we will have a great
victory… We are proud. We are motivated. We get excited by the
cues of our cheerleaders, and we wave our flags in support of our
representatives on the playing field. Our anger overflows against
the overcrowded opposing side in the stadium and the biased referees
who keep making decisions unfavorable for us, and we mix angry
profanities into our cheering and booing. And if somebody from our
side of the stadium supports the opposing team, we really fly off
the handle: while the most primitive among us wish to lynch them,
our intellectuals condemn them as nationless. See, that’s because
this is a national cause. We are in the right, we are united, and we
absolutely want to win the game.

Frankly, we aren’t interested in exactly what happened in 1915; we
leave the details to historians to sort out; besides, as ordinary
people, we don’t have much to say about those details. We believe in
our elder experts: whatever is in our archives must be the truth!

In any case, the important thing is to disallow the mention of the word
“genocide” without the “so-called” qualifier, and to define the event
as “exile”, `internecine fighting’, and hopefully even more ambiguous,
obscure terms that are hard to find in ordinary dictionaries. When
we substitute those words, we will have won, you see.

Even if we assume that we are historically correct, and that our
official thesis is accurate, and that it contains the truth and only
the truth, don’t you think there is something fishy and troublesome
in the hostile attitude and the demeanor of a football fanatic that
we adopt every time this issue comes up? The efforts of some of our
retired diplomats and state historians to reduce what happened in 1915
to some “technical definition” or some arcane problem of legalese,
their cold-blooded assertions that the real number of dead wasn’t 1.5
million as the Armenian nationalists claim, and that “only” 300,000
were killed, mentioning it with a smirk on their faces, as if they
just made a really clever move … Don’t you discern the crassness,
rawness, and shamelessness in all that?

Even if we are content with our official numbers, are we so far removed
from our humanity to forget that we are talking about the murder of
THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND citizens of this country, including women,
children, the old and the sick? In other words, let’s assume that
the Armenian nationalists are lying and slandering … but don’t you
think we have at least a rudeness problem? When talking about the
death of so many people in front of the whole world, don’t you think
we should at least use a more humane, more respectful language? So
where are our famous customs and traditions that we are so boastful of?

Aren’t we going to think about the meaning of the numbers we are
willing to admit? After saying “The number of dead was just three
hundred thousand; those Armenians are really exaggerating”, is it
easy to continue where we left off to wax lyrical about “how right we
are in this national issue” with the same self-confident tone without
thinking of the horror this n umber represents, without taking a moment
to sincerely feel sorry, without sorrow, without wishing “condolences”
to the grandchildren of the victims, and without feeling a particle
of discomfort?

Are we ever going to face the forgotten human reality hiding behind
the terms in our official thesis? For example, aren’t we ever going to
ask the question: “Just what does 300,000 people mean?”. What kind of
a number is 300,000? Is it close to the number of dead in the recent
tsunami disaster in Asia? Or twenty times the number of dead in the
Golcuk earthquake? Sixty times the number of Kurds killed in Halabja
by Saddam? Twice the number of Turks in Cyprus? The size of a city
like Chorum or Sivas?

If the number of dead in 1915 is “only” three hundred thousand instead
of 1-1.5 million, can we sleep well at night? Does the image of three
hundred thousand corpses put side by side look insignificant when
viewed from a distance of 90 years? Are the lives of three hundred
human souls that cheap?

Besides … let’s say that our official thesis is correct and those
people that died were not systematically killed wholesale because of
their being Armenian (that is, they were not subject to genocide or
ethnic cleansing), and that they died inadvertently due to disease,
accident, and one or two acts of banditry during a forced relocation.
Does it really make that much of a difference in terms of the
humanitarian and political responsibilities of the government?

Even if we assume that our official thesis is correct, aren’t we going
to ask those questions: Weren’t the killed the citizens of the state
that took the decision of exile? Weren’t they under the protection
of that state? Did the officials that made the decision to hastily
remove such a huge number of civilians from Northeastern Anatolia to
remote locations on foot really not know that a significant portion
of them would die on the road? (furthermore, if we are saying that
“not all of the exiled died”, implying that a small proportion of
them died, then we have to admit that the number of people forced
into relocation was much, much higher than three hundred thousand!)
Could they really not see what was about to happen?

If the decision to exile them was taken with the full knowledge of its
consequences, was it not an act of cruelty? And if the responsible
officials were unaware of the consequences of their decisions, and
did not act with ill will, shouldn’t they still be held accountable
for such a terrible, terrifying decision that resulted in the deaths
of three hundred thousand citizens? Isn’t that decision itself a big
enough crime? Aren’t we going to question how much the “pashas cared
about the lives of the civilians they accused of collaborating with
the enemy when they led their own troops to oblivion in Sarikamish?
Aren’t we going to protest the mentality behind the decision for the
forceful relocation?

It can be said that the rulers of the period had not taken that
decision in a vacuum, and that it had a reason. Of course, the third
leg of our official thesis states that, during wartime, Armenian
organizations collaborated with the Russian and British imperialism,
massacred Turkish villages, and that the decision for the expulsion
was taken in self-defense.

But shouldn’t we remind ourselves that the war in question was not
a righteous war of independence, but a global war of imperialistic
interests in which tens of millions of people died pointlessly? Under
these conditions, when the rulers of the state sacrificed 90,000
soldiers in Sarikamish for their rabid adventures of Turanism, can
we pretend that some elements of a crumbling empire would not be
contemplating independence? Furthermore, how honest is it to close
our eyes to the fact that the Ottoman rulers were collaborating
with German imperialists, who were at least as ruthless and savage
as the British and the Russians, and whose army general staff had
considerable influence in the Ottoman army, and then turn around
and accuse Armenians of collaborating with imperialists? Were “we”
really so innocent in that war?

But even if we don’t consider such arguments, assume that our official
thesis is entirely truthful, and assume that Armenian bandits duped
by the imperialists rebelled against their government and that they
massacred the Muslim population … Can we really ascribe the crimes
of Armenian bandits to the entire Armenian population? In other words,
even if there was a civil war, can a “collective punishment” resulting
from “collective guilt” be defended at all?

If we look back into the past, can the reasons cited in our official
thesis, which are used to justify the decision of forced expulsion
that caused the death of three hundred thousand civilians, be still
justified? If we analyze the events by contemporary standards of a
nation of laws –even if we take wartime conditions into account–
can the actions of Armenian political organizations justify the
forceful relocation of the entire Armenian civil population under
the conditions of war? Can such a decision, regarding its essence
and its humanitarian consequences, be still defended today?

Even if the official narrative is entirely truthful, as the citizens
of today’s Republic of Turkey, a country that signed the European
convention on human rights, looking at it through the prism of a
democratic regime of a country of laws, shouldn’t we have declared
that a decision that resulted in the death of so many people cannot be
defended under any circumstances? Is it really so easy to trivialize
what happened as a “simple tragedy” without accepting the above,
and without facing the logical consequences of our thesis regarding
the values we pretend to have today?

Even if we suppose that Armenian claims are libelous, don’t you
recognize a brusqueness that should bother every Turkish citizen of
conscience (let alone the grandchildren of the killed), an ugly lack
of respect for the memory of the deceased, and an unbelievable lack
of concern about the feelings of their relatives when you see the
spokespersons of the official Turkish thesis, their accusing of the
victims, their demeanor in defending what was done, and the way they
express their contempt of Armenians?

As long as we discuss the matter in this way, what difference does
it make if it was a “so-called genocide” or an “exile in essence”?

Is this really about objecting to “unfair accusations of genocide”?
Or, can it be that our inability to show the slightest respect to the
memory of those who died in 1915, and our inability to express the
smallest heartfelt regret are indications of something else? Say,
do you think there is an entirely different mentality lying under
spewing hatred towards the grandchildren of those that died, defending
a decision that caused so much death, and glorifying the rulers of
the time as heroes?

In fact, that is the crucial point: The official thesis and the
manner in which it is defended rely on a line of thought that goes
beyond trying to explain what was done 90 years ago, and extends
into justifying “Armenians deserved what was done”. Sometimes even
that defense really gets out of hand and degenerates to a nonchalant
“So what if we did it? We would do it again today”. The problem is
that the flag bearers of the official thesis appear to share the same
ideology and the same sort of nationalism of the Ottoman rulers of
that time. In other words, they seem to defend their own mentality
and ideology by defending the forced deportation. Perhaps that is
why they ar e so hostile, as they would be when caught in the act.

Do the creators of that narrative, who try to establish the supremacy
of the chauvinism of Enver and Talat Pashas, an ethnic nationalism that
is capable of not only sinking a huge empire, but also of destroying
the Republic as well, realize that they go beyond even those who
took the decision of forced deportation? Because, if those decision
makers did not make that decision for the purpose of annihilation,
as the official thesis claims, they could try to defend themselves by
saying “If we knew so many people would die, we would not have done
it”. However, current defenders of that decision have no such excuse as
they know what the consequences were: 90 years after a long-gone war,
they still find the sacrifice of three hundred thousand civilians
justifiable! Furthermore, their hateful rhetoric that accuses the
Armenians for what happened to them has neither the excuse nor the
cover given by “wartime conditions”. The inability to display a
humanitarian, rational behavior even after ninety years can only be
explained by a certain ideological outlook, a well-known “deep state”
mentality: a paranoid, aggressive, racist nationalism that views
anyone who is not a “Turk” and does not think like them as enemy,
and that intimidates the population by the purported existence of
perennial internal and external enemies.

Those behind such rhetoric will say that Armenians also approach the
matter with hostility, and from a nationalist/chauvinist angle, view
history with a bias, and that especially the diaspora Armenians have
turned the issue into a “raison d’etre”, and add that Armenians also
killed Turks during those times. They will also remind about ASALA’s
terror campaign for revenge, and the murders committed by them.

But is criticizing the chauvinism of one side, and talking about its
acts of murder, equivalent to supporting the other side’s chauvinism
and excusing their acts of murder? Can’t one be against all kinds of
chauvinism and murder? Besides, the logic of nationalism and chauvinism
is the same everywhere and they feed off one another; therefore
there is no reason to suppose that Armenian chauvinism is any more
humanitarian than Turkish chauvinism. This much is certain: there can
be no good excuse for any massacre or any terrorist act. There is no
“good” or “innocent” side in an inter-ethnic conflict. Regardless of
his nationality, a murderer is a murderer. And every nation produces
murderers. An Armenian that slaughters a Turk is a murderer, just as
a Turk that slaughters an Armenian is a murderer. Whatever the pains
endured by whomever, an entire nation cannot be declared “murderer”,
and a “collective guilt” of an entire people cannot be accepted.

On the other hand, let us not forget that whenever the murderers had
lots of power, weapons, a state apparatus, and an army they caused
that much more harm to humanity!

Apart from everything else, if we don’t want to create conditions
that lead the way to new massacres and fester new feuds and perpetual
hatred by using the past events as excuses, all sides should hold their
murderers to account, even if the crimes were committed against the
“other” side. Every people must deal with its conscience itself, and
face its own history. No one has the right to justify their shameful
acts by using the acts of the “other side”.

Now if we turn to ourselves, even our official thesis admits that
three hundred thousand people died as a result of the decision to
forcefully exile civilians. When are we going to understand that
we cannot get anywhere with an ideology that defends or excuses a
massacre, and even tries to present it as “righteous”!

In other words, it is not necessary to accept the Armenian theses,
to pronounce the “genocide” without the “so-called” qualifier, or
to talk about one million dead in order to move away from the ugly,
shameless demeanor adopted by the majority of the defenders of the
official thesis. The confessions contained in the official Turkish
thesis are horrible enough!

In order to really be able to discuss the Armenian question, Turkey
first of all must deal with its own official thesis, the confessions
it contains, and manage to face those sad truths. Looking into the
official Turkish thesis without putting on our chauvinistic glasses
will suffice to show us that we need to approach the Armenian question
from an entirely new perspective, and an entirely new attitude. Simply
facing what has been admitted in our official thesis will force us
to move towards a more humane and more ethical level.

It is impossible to seriously discuss the extent to which Armenian
claims are true before understanding and sharing their pain, facing the
human dimensions of the matter, and adopting a more humane attitude. We
can never enter into a healthy dialog with the grandchildren of the
“the other side” as long as we do not adopt an ethical approach to
the events of 1915, the breaking point of our shared history. Indeed
we cannot solve these problems without establishing a constructive
dialog towards reconciliation among the grandchildren of all the
sides that belong to various chapters of this land’s history. And we
haven’t been able to for ninety years anyway!

Besides, let us not forget that some of those grandchildren with
whom we have to reconcile are still the citizens of our country;
they are Armenians of Turkey and are part of the national totality we
define as “us”. If Turkey is not a country that belongs to a single
ethnic group, if it is truly a secular, unitary country based on
the supremacy of the law, how can an exclusionary, insensitive,
and unconvincing history on their ancestors be written?

Whatever was experienced in 1915, if we are not acting with “genocidal
mentality” today, and our aim is not the complete erasure Armenian
existence from this land, we cannot forget that the Armenians of this
country are equal citizens of the Republic of Turkey, that since the
Armenians in our neighbor Armenia share ancestry with them they share
ancestry with us, and that we can only write our common history by
coming together in that effort. Moreover, it is helpful to remember
that even those diaspora Armenians, with whom we are so angry,
are the grandchildren of the people who once lived on these lands,
that their origins are in this soil, and that in their essence they
are of this soil, and that they are our people and our relatives.

Objecting to the chauvinism and hostile manners of our side will
encourage the other side to do the same, and will help those with
similar, reconciliatory mentality. If we truly want to solve this
problem, we need to abandon the “genocide match against the opposing
team” mentality, and approach our common history from a humane
perspective and with a view to understand, share, and transcend,
rather than with the “war” mentality.

Besides, let us not forget that the ones that are going to ultimately
decide on these issues are not the historians, the politicians, or
the diplomats. The ultimate arbiters are those among the people of
these lands who can judge the events of the past relying on their
conscience. That is, we will decide, together, collectively. If the
peoples of this land cannot agree on what transpired in the past,
and cannot forgive one another, none of the diplomatic “victories”
will have any meaning to anyone.

It is not necessary to be a historian, an archivist, a specialist of
international law, or a retired diplomat. Because the problem is not
“was it deportation or genocide?”, or some other legal/technical
matter. From a human perspective, as far as the pain suffered by
people, what they have lost, and what we have lost are concerned,
there is no difference between deportation and genocide! The fact
is that, of the Armenians, who constituted a significant part of the
population before the First World War, only a relative handful remain
on these lands. Therefore, in terms of its consequences, there is no
difference between deportation and genocide. Even if the Turkish and
Armenian theses describe what happened in 1915 differently, there is
no difference in terms of its human cost.

In order to understand what we lost in 1915, we need to be able to
look into people’s faces, not into the archives. Archives form a
dimension that interests historians. Documents, treaties, conventions
are of course important in the workings of a state. But in order to
face our history, instead of looking at mol dy, dusty documents in
archives, we need to look into the eyes of our people, and manage to
see their heartache.

The problem is that, even if we manage to convince everyone with our
thesis, that would not bring back what we lost in 1915. Just as the
symbolic apology resulting from having the genocide thesis accepted,
or the decision of an international forum or an international court,
or the compensation that may be paid can never bring back what we
have lost …

Because, regardless of whether you call it deportation, genocide,
massacre, or internecine fighting, and regardless of whether you
call it ethnic cleansing or a “tragedy”, in the end “We” are the
losers. In every war, in every division, in every separation, in
every population-exchange, in every wave of emigration, every time
a village was emptied, in every massacre, in every assassination,
in every enmity, we, as the people of this land, lost, became less,
became poorer. We killed one another, and we lost the “we” that gave
his soil its richness.

So, there is nothing Turkey can win in the “genocide game”. On
the contrary, as long as we continue discussing the issue with
a chauvinistic language and attitude we will forever lose the
grandchildren of the Armenians we lost ninety years ago. We will have
poisoned a new generation of Turkish and Armenian youths with inhuman
hatred. We will have lost the right to be a civilized society.

Instead, if we can get rid of our chauvinistic blinders when looking
at our past, if we can face what all of our people have lived through
and the pains they suffered, if we share those pains, and if we manage
to see what’s lost as our loss, and if we accomplish that today,
then maybe tomorrow we can win back the “we” that we lost yesterday,
and reconstitute it with a new, common struggle.

It is still not too late to regain that richness.