THE ARMENIAN SHADOW OVER TURKEY’S DEMOCRATISATION
Gunes Tezcur
Open Democracy, UK
Oct 13 2005
Turkish acceptance of the fate of the Armenians in 1915 would unlock
a society steeped in denial of its own historical experience, says
Gunes Tezcur
“Every society experiences defeat in its own way”, observes Wolfgang
Schivelbusch in his book The Culture of Defeat: On National Mourning,
Trauma and Recovery, “but the varieties of response within vanquished
nations conform to a recognisable set of patterns that recur across
time and national boundaries.”
Turkish responses to the Ottoman defeat in the “great war” of 1914-18
have been idiosyncratic. After all, that ignominious defeat gave
birth to ultimate victory under the nationalist leadership of General
Mustafa Kemal, who succeeded in creating a homeland for the Turks and,
as Kemal Atatűrk, led the country until his death in 1938.
Perhaps as a result, almost ninety years since the greatest debacle
ever to have befallen the Turkish people, a collective amnesia of the
disaster prevails. History textbooks do not even tell young Turkish
citizens that the Ottoman empire was defeated in the war.
Also on the future of Turkey in openDemocracy:
Reinhard Hesse, “Turkish honey under a German moon” (March 2004)
Murat Belge, “Turkey and Europe: why friendship is welcome”
(December 2004)
Fred Halliday, “Turkey and the hypocrisies of Europe” (December 2004)
Fadi Hakura, “Europe and Turkey: the end of the beginning” (October
2005)
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For the ultimate surrender of the empire, they blame the failure of
the Germans and the allies; for the loss of the Arab territories,
they perpetuate the myth of an “Arab stab in the back.” This denial of
defeat has been accompanied by a denial of any responsibility for the
fate of the empire’s Armenian subjects. And that tragic fate of the
Armenians still haunts Turkey’s prospects for democratisation today.
Debates on the fate of the Armenians living under the Ottoman empire
have intensified in recent years. Armenian communities in the west have
long been active in publicising the Armenian genocide and in urging
western parliaments and governments to recognise it. On 28 September
2005, the European parliament passed a resolution that calls on Turkey
“to recognise the genocide of the Armenians” and considers this act
as a “prerequisite to accession to the European Union.” Meanwhile,
an Istanbul conference organised by Turkish scholars who challenge
the official Turkish line stirred a major controversy after various
attempts to prevent it from convening it proved futile.
Still, Turkish public opinion remains very sensitive to the claims
that Armenians were deliberately annihilated in a policy of ethnic
cleansing. Not just the Turkish state, but large segments of Turkish
society remain defensive. Dissidents have a hard time swaying public
opinion; they feel compelled to state that they are not “traitors.”
How to make sense of the current state of Turkish public opinion?
What can it tell us about the power of national imaginations vis-a-vis
the past on the future of democracy?
Four elements of denial
The denial of Turkey’s defeat in the first world war translates
into sympathy for the Ottoman rulers who perpetrated the acts of
genocide against the Armenians. Mehmet Talat Pasha, the wartime
grand vizier who ordered the mass deportation of Armenians in 1915,
was assassinated in Berlin by an Armenian survivor, Sogomon Teleyran,
in 1921. His remains were brought to Turkey from Germany in 1943 and
reburied on the “hill of liberty” in Istanbul along with those of
the formidable war minister, Enver Pasha.
Talat, Enver, and their accomplices brought about the demise of six
centuries of empire in pursuit of hollow, grandiose designs; they were
men who sent millions to their deaths with impunity. Yet they still
enjoy the status of heroes in contemporary Turkey. Despite the fact
that the Young Turks lost the war, their crimes are long forgotten
if not forgiven by Turkish nationalists.
There are four reasons why Turkish public opinion cannot swallow the
term “genocide”.
First, Turks do not believe that the “Turkish nation” is capable of
committing such unspeakable atrocities.
Second, the extermination of the Armenians has been shrouded in
the claims of a civil war: “if we killed some of them, they also
killed many of us” is the usual reaction of ordinary Turks. It is
not uncommon for the Turkish media to show newly discovered mass
graves full of Turks killed by Armenian militias in eastern Turkey,
or to publish memoirs of old Turks who witnessed Armenian atrocities.
Turkish public opinion is stirred up by the perception that Armenians
exclusively monopolise the status of victim.
Third, it is an open secret that without the annihilation of Armenians,
Turkey’s eastern borders would look quite different.
Fourth, the extreme politicisation of the issue in the international
arena and western pressure on the Turkish government to recognise
the Armenian genocide have strongly contribute to widespread Turkish
feelings of unfairness, exploitation, and inferiority vis-a-vis the
west. In this connection, the passivity of western governments during
the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda, to cite the most recent cases,
hardly helps their claims to serve as arbiters of justice.
For all these reasons, discussions of the fate of the Armenians
in contemporary Turkey are largely deprived of moral concerns and
sensitivities.
Also in openDemocracy, Nouritza Matossian’s essay on the Armenian
painter Arshile Gorky, “Disinterring the past” (July 2001):
“The violation of history continues to unhinge the present.”
New past, new future
An unfettered and open discussion of the fate of the Armenians would
lead to greater public awareness of the perils of absolute state
power, as it would buttress democratic and accommodative approaches
to dealing with Kurdish nationalism.
It would be naïve, however, to expect that the emergence of the
Armenian issue as a major factor in negotiations between the European
Union and Turkey would tame the chauvinistic tendencies in Turkish
nationalism. It would more likely play into the hands of isolationists
and ultra-nationalists who insist that Europe is insincere and seeks to
“betray” Turkey over and over again.
How the defeats of the past are articulated in national memory
inevitably affects how nations behave in the conflicts of the
present. Crimes committed in times of national desperation or
decadence can occasion healing only when all of their justifications
are categorically rejected by present generations. Then, the culture
of impunity unravels.
In the case of Turkey, this entails a self-critical and unflinching
examination of its greatest defeat, the first world war, as well
as its subsequent victory in the war of independence of 1919-22. A
more open and ethical understanding of the fate of the Armenians is
absolutely essential for Turkey’s democratic future.
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