PROFESSOR OUTLINES ARMENIAN CONNECTION TO GALLIPOLI
Reporter: Mark Colvin

6039.htm
PM – Monday, 12 February , 2007 18:40:00

MARK COLVIN: What links the first genocide of the 20th century with
the battle most often cited as defining the birth of Australia’s
national identity?

The genocide was the Turkish massacre of the Armenians; the battle
was Gallipoli.

And what they have in common is that they both started on almost the
same day, within a few hundred kilometres of each other.

Why don’t we know this as a nation? That’s the question posed in an
essay by Robert Manne, Professor of Politics at LaTrobe University,
in this month’s issue of the magazine The Monthly.

He’s discovered that Australian historians have hardly noticed the
coincidence of the two events.

ROBERT MANNE: In 1915 the Ottoman Government began one of the first
really systematic genocides in history, certainly of the 20th century.

And within a year or so, perhaps one million Armenians had been killed
because they were a Christian minority in the Muslim Ottoman Empire,
which was in its point of crisis.

And there’d been persecution for a long time, but this was not
persecution, it was the attempt to eliminate a people.

MARK COLVIN: And of course the Turkish Government throughout the
20th century denied that this ever happened, and denial is still
going on. A journalist, Hrant Dink, was just murdered the other day
for talking about the Armenian genocide. To what extent has it been
covered up in history?

ROBERT MANNE: Well, I think two things; I think most people have
a vague awareness now because the Armenians have been absolutely
determined not to let it just fade out of history, but I don’t think
it’s as well known as it ought to be.

The Turkish Government has always utterly denied that a genocide took
place, although they admit that some massacres took place. But they
largely blame the Armenians for that saying they were a rebellious,
subversive element at a time of wartime crisis. But it’s at the
heart of Turkish identity is to deny the meaning and the reality of
that genocide.

MARK COLVIN: And you say that Australian historians have effectively
ignored it, and that’s despite a really close coincidence between
the genocide and a key event in Australian history.

ROBERT MANNE: That’s right.

It seems to me the strangest thing. We have Anzac Day as April the 25th
1915 is remembered; the Armenians have April the 24th 1915 as their
day of mourning, which they take to be the beginning of the genocide.

The two events not only coincided in territory and in time, but there
is quite a lot of evidence that the genocide was pushed on because
of the Dardanelle campaign of the Anglo-French forces in which the
Australians were involved.

So despite the fact that the things happened at the same time and in
the same place more or less, and they were even kind of connected with
a causal link, I looked through book after book about Gallipoli, and
there’s no end of books that Australians have written about it, and
virtually none of them mention it for more than a passing paragraphs
or a couple of lines.

MARK COLVIN: What is the causal link? Tell us more about that.

ROBERT MANNE: Well, there are some contemporary historians, there’s
a wonderful Turkish historian, Tanner Akcham, who think that when the
Gallipoli campaign began, or when the Dardanelles were first bombed by
the Anglo-French in March 1915, that was the final moment of reckoning,
and that the Turkish regime, which was run by two or three young Turks
were the dominant figures, they set upon and decided on a systematic
extermination of the Armenians, saying that at this moment of crisis,
where Constantinople might fall, we can’t afford to have a subversive
minority within our country.

So, the Dardanelle campaign and the Gallipoli landings pushed on and
maybe not exactly caused, but at least triggered the final events
that led to the genocide.

MARK COLVIN: So why should Australian historians look more closely
at it?

Because our national myth says that we weren’t really the strategic
force behind the Dardanelle campaign, we were just the pawns, we were
just the people who were thrown into the breech.

ROBERT MANNE: Yes, my point is not so much that they should, although
I wish they had. My point is how strange it is that the event that’s
really by far the most important historical event in the national
imaginary in Australia, which is the Gallipoli campaign, our historians
have never thought to ask the obvious questions about the connection
between the two events, or even to comment on the fact that the two
events took place at the same time.

Apart from the poet Les Murray, I’ve not come across an Australian
writer who’s really thought imaginatively about the connection of
the two events in whatever they’ve written.

MARK COLVIN: And you think that’s not likely to change? You say,
"in the Australian collectively memory of Gallipoli, the Armenian
genocide simply has no role, I suspect it never will".

ROBERT MANNE: Yes, that’s what I think. That is because, as I say,
I don’t think …

MARK COLVIN: Is that just your natural pessimism or do you think
historians are simply unlikely to heed your call?

ROBERT MANNE: It’s not really pessimism in so much as to think
that history and collective memory are different things. And that
Gallipoli, this event that’s so important to Australians has never
been an important event for historical reasons.

I think it was an important event at first because it was the point at
which the Australian nation felt it was a nation, which they hadn’t
felt at federation, and where they felt they showed to the British
and the British Empire, the kind of manliness that they possessed.

And I think always Gallipoli has been tied up with identity and almost
never been really connected to a kind of interest in the history of
the First World War, let alone an interest in the Ottoman Empire.

And so it’s not really pessimism so much as kind of trying to identify
the difference between history and myth, that I think it’ll never
become a matter of great interest in Australia, except perhaps for
some intellectuals.

MARK COLVIN: But historians are supposed to be interested in facts
not national myths, aren’t they?

ROBERT MANNE: Yes, but the historians that move time and again back
to Gallipoli, I think are driven by the interests of myth. Even
if they want to revise the story, what they’re doing is revising
the myth. But they’re not really interested in the kind of overall
historical questions that are connected to it.

MARK COLVIN: Robert Manne, whose essay on that subject is published
in this month’s issue of the magazine The Monthly.