TALKING TURKEY IN LONDON
By Ara Iskanderian
NOYAN TAPAN
28.12.2006
Chairman of the Armenian Students Association
CRAG committee member
An increasing number of Turkish intellectuals are emerging to
tackle the previously taboo and highly charged subject of the
Armenian Genocide as part of their individual right to practice free
speech. This time last year the case brought against the subsequently
Nobel Prize in Literature winning writer Orhan Pamuk, who had been
charged with insulting Turkishness under the notorious article 301
of the Turkish penal code, collapsed in an Istanbul Court which
had been heavily criticised for prosecuting this, Turkey’s most
familiar face. Less well known was the case brought against another
Turkish writer. Elif Shafak, prosecuted under the same article, had
a case brought and dropped against her no less than three times for
raising the issue of Armenian Genocide in her novella The Bastard of
Istanbul. A few other examples remain, Taner Akcham for one. The first
Turkish historian to actually write about the subject objectively,
Akcham left Turkey in 1977 and has never returned.
However these are all fairly familiar names, owing in part to their
celebrity. Akcham is much quoted and vaunted by Armenians as an example
of a ‘Good Turk’, Shafak a prominent journalist is quite well known,
and Pamuk is, arguably, today, Turkey’s greatest cultural export. Yet
one such ‘Good Turk’ remains largely ignored by Armenian circles and
enjoys nowhere near as much fame and praise for his criticism of the
Turkish states denial, a certain Mr Ragip Zarakolu who gave a talk
to the Armenian Community as he passed through London recently. Mr
Zarakolu is a highly controversial publisher and journalist based
in Istanbul who has tirelessly undertaken to champion the right
for freedom of speech and openness in the Turkish press. No greater
example of a lack of either in the Turkish media can be found than
that afforded by the issue of the Armenian Genocide, information for
which Zarakolu has worked hard to make public within Turkey.
Zarakolu is no stranger to controversy, he has had over thirty
government actions brought against him, his late wife and his Belge
Publishing House, which was firebombed by right wing extremists in
1995 for its highly controversial publications. Said publications have
included the memoirs of the then American ambassador to Constantinople,
Henry Morgenthau, alongside various eyewitness accounts and personal
testimonies by Armenian writers, even going so far as to publish the
previously banned Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel.
To an Armenian audience in awe of his bravery, Zarakolu not only dwarfs
all other Turkish critics in numbers of charges, and has also served
a jail sentence for his exercising of free speech, he revealed that
almost all the publications had sold out their original print runs. One
of the most recent publications by Belge was Zarakolu’s translation of
London Armenian George Jerjian’s The Truth Will Set Us Free, in which
an epilogue details a projection for Armenian-Turkish reconciliation.
Mr Jerjian was also on hand to introduce his esteemed Turkish
translator, whom he introduced as a Turkish patriot. For according to
Mr Jerjian, Zarakolu did not pursue the issue of Armenian Genocide out
of any love for the Armenians, but out of a love for freedom of speech
and the right to exercise it as an inalienable human principle. His
want to do so branded him a Turkish patriot above all else. Taking
the floor after this Zarakolu answered the immediate question on
everyone’s lips, why then does he chose to champion the Armenian
Genocide, given that it is not the only cover up in Turkey. For this
Zarakolu offered up a touching and personal answer. The maternal
Zarakolu family originates from a small town near the city of Kayseri,
where his family witnessed the events of the Armenian Genocide first
hand. His grandmother, who had rescued two Armenian girls, that were
later on found and killed, forbade his mother from playing outside
for fear of what might happen. The young Ragip grew up listening
to such stories and aware of what had befallen his family’s onetime
Armenian neighbours.
This has subsequently become a metaphor for Zarakolu when pressed
as to why he uses the Armenian Genocide as an issue of freedom of
speech, he merely states ‘because it is time to be let outside to
play’. This he believes can only occur by re-educating the people
of Turkey and the easiest way for that to be done he argues, is by
printing and publishing books. Turkey he says is in a state of flux,
rather reminiscent of the Soviet Union of the 1980s, not entirely free,
but moving towards a greater openness. Turkey is thus experiencing
its own Glasnost and Zarakolu is merely a glasnostnik and a patriot,
who has seen his country’s mistakes and shortcomings and wishes only
that they be rectified that his country might progress as a truly
democratic state.
This was Zarakolu’s closing remarks, we are all patriots, and both
in need of reconciliation, to which Jerjian concurred – Genocide
recognition is not a game of point scoring, it is an issue of seeking
justice and through that, reconciliation. People like Zarakolu, free
thinking intellectuals may be a minority in Turkey, but they are
a growing number and they are the type of Turks that win applause
in European circles, working with and supporting them serves the
process’ of recognition, reconciliation and healing. Mr Jerjian
chose a quotation from Abraham Lincoln in his closing remarks that
remained particularly poignant through the course of Zarakolu’s talk,
"I will defeat and crush my enemies by making them my friends."