Arab News, Saudi Arabia
Oct 13 2006
Editorial: Confronting the Past
13 October 2006
TURKS prize the characteristics of toughness and fixity of purpose
that have made the ordinary Turkish soldier such an indomitable and
ferocious foe on the battlefield. The elite Janissaries from the
country’s Ottoman past, with their alarming tactic of relentless
advance using an eccentric swaying march, epitomize a sturdiness,
which after the humiliations of defeat in 1918, the Turks reasserted
under Ataturk’s leadership and threw occupation forces out of the
country.
However, in this formidable stubborn strength lies Turkey’s weakness
as the country bids for EU membership, for which in many other ways
it is eminently qualified. Turkey’s obdurate denial of the massacres
that took place for three years after an Armenian insurrection in
1915 is a folly that helps only those who wish to exclude it from the
EU.
With the 1983 return of democracy under Turgut Özal, work was
actually begun on a public-relations campaign that would at last have
recognized the horrors in Eastern Turkey. It would have argued that
the government of Enver Pasha feared a czarist Russian-inspired
rebellion that could have opened a further front for the already
overstretched Turkish armed forces. The point would also have been
made that Kurds, who turned on their more prosperous Armenian
neighbors, did much of the killing. In the event the project was
abandoned in favor of publishing a collection of source documents
that majored on the atrocities committed by Armenian rebels. History
is never black and white. Unfortunately almost a century after the
fact, Turkey is still stubbornly committed to a denial, not only that
there was official sanction for the massacres of maybe up to 1.5
million Armenians, but also of the fact that the massacres took
place. In France, which has a very large Armenian community,
legislators are making denial of the Armenian massacres a crime.
Regardless of the wisdom of this curtailment of free speech (proposed
by the opposition Socialists), the move is only the latest by French
parties of all political colors to block Turkey’s EU entry.
Socialist presidential challenger next year Segolene Royal, her rival
Nicolas Sarkozy, and President Chirac have all called for a
referendum on Turkish membership. Given current anti-Muslim feeling
and the articulate and wealthy Armenian community, that vote would
likely go against Turkey. Even in Italy and the UK, Turkey’s leading
supporters, there is now some concern that though many reforms
demanded by Brussels are being implemented by Ankara, Turks have not
grasped the wider implication of EU membership: that Europe is built
on compromise often hammered out in exhausting all-night
horse-trading sessions.
As the French themselves have been learning in recent years,
`nationalism’ is a dirty word in the EU. National pride is fine, but
it cannot be carried over into nationalist policies that tear apart
this unique economic and political organization of nation states.
Turkey’s staunch nationalism and obdurate refusal to confront a
tragic past plays right into the hands of its opponents.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
