Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Sept 3 2007
Soli Özel: Turkey’s relations hostage to Armenian issue
The Armenian issue will be a priority for the new government because
it’s blocking our international relations, says Soli Özel, a senior
lecturer in international relations and political science at Ýstanbul
Bilgi University, specializing in Turkey’s relations with the United
States.
"There has been talk that the Turkish government should do something
about the border with Armenia. Some say Armenians should do something
before Turkey does something. There are people in this country
dissenting from the official version of what happened in 1915.
Those people would have much more credibility than any of the
official people that we send around. Have the historians work on the
issue and have the dissenters on the historical committee,’ Özel
said.
Recently, the US-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reversed its
long-time policy concerning the killings of Anatolian Armenians in
the early 20th century and said the killings of Armenians by Ottoman
Turks `were indeed tantamount to genocide.’
Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of their kinsmen died in a genocide
campaign by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, but Ankara
rejects the label, saying both Armenians and Turks died in civil
strife when the Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern
Anatolia, siding with Russian troops that were invading the crumbling
Ottoman Empire.
And there is a non-binding `Armenian genocide resolution’ pending at
the US Congress, likely to pass next year. Özel said there might be a
crisis over the Armenian issue with the US.
For Monday Talk, Özel told us the circumstances that prompted the
ADL’s stance, what the Turkish government can do at this point and
how Turkey’s relations with the US have been affected.
How should we put the ADL’s decision into perspective?
First we have to distinguish the position that the ADL now wishes to
take vis-à-vis whether or not what happened in 1915 should be
considered genocide. And second, whether or not the ADL should
support a genocide resolution in the US Congress. In terms of
Turkey’s political demands of the Jewish agencies’ not supporting the
resolution in the US Congress, their position remains the same, but
obviously the fact that they are changing their position in terms of
how to judge the events of 1915 undermines that political position,
at least vis-à-vis some Congress people who may be susceptible to
their pressures.
Do we need to talk about the internal dynamics of the organization?
Whether or not this is purely an internal affair or it is to be
understood in a context, these two are linked, but I think the
immediate crisis that we’ve seen was a function of an internal ADL
development. When we look at the chronology of events, what we see is
the New England chapter elects a new president, Andrew Tarsy. He
decides to call what happened in 1915 genocide, and he is summarily
dismissed from his position. There is an upheaval within ADL, so
Abraham Foxman says, yes indeed, we consider these brutalities and
violence as genocide; we’ve changed our position in terms of how
we’re going to be naming what happened.
Foxman had also an announcement after that. Was it a step back?
The second announcement by the ADL was not a step back. However, one
has to take into consideration … [that] the Jews are the most liberal
community in the American political system; they take the lead in
every humanitarian cause. And when even the entire country was in
favor of a war against Iraq, most Jews had been against it as a
community, in spite of the fact that many of the neoconservatives
themselves were of Jewish origin. So you could not really as Turkey
go on indefinitely expecting from such a liberally minded, sensitive
constituency to go against its own better judgment in an age when the
term genocide has been a bit depreciated, has been `desanctified,’ if
you will, not to really go the extra mile and say what happened
really is genocide.
Did some of Turkey’s foreign policy steps, like becoming friendly
with Syria and Iran, have an effect on the ADL’s decision?
There are circumstances that make it easier for an internal dynamic
within the organization to make it possible for the organization
itself to change course. And that is of course the recent events
during the term of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party): the
invitation of Hamas, Turkey’s reluctance to accept it as other
Western countries do as a terrorist organization, cozy relations with
Syria, and far more importantly very cozy relations with Iran, which
Israel sees as a mortal enemy — and obviously many American Jews
share that perception of the Israelis. The fact that Turkey has not
been very vocal in protesting the holocaust denying conference in
Iran, and Turkey has not been against the nonsensical remarks of
[Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad who questioned the holocaust
and called for wiping Israel off the world map, these are strong
words, as far as the Israelis and the Jewish community in America
were concerned, Turkey’s reaction was not at a desired level.
The American Jewish Committee took a political stand too when its
head wrote, `Picture a day when a muscle-flexing Iran or Saudi Arabia
seeks to make denial of the Holocaust a condition of doing business
with other countries.’
What in my view is far more politically oriented was an editorial
written in The Jerusalem Post by David Harris, national executive
director for the American Jewish Committee, a much more hard-core,
politically engaged organization in Jewish affairs, probably more
attuned to Israeli sentiment. I cannot suggest that Israel has asked
these organizations to do what they’ve done. It was [Israeli
President] Shimon Peres’ intervention which led Foxman to equivocate
rather than take a step back. But in the context there is enough
circumstantial reasoning to suspect that there has been some give and
take.
Why did Peres step in?
Because Turkey asked him to step in. Turkey basically threatened that
Turkish-Israeli relations would suffer gravely and instead of calling
the American ambassador, we called in the Israeli ambassador, and in
my judgment we made a mistake there by erasing the distinction
between the American-Jewish community and American domestic politics,
and Israel. I personally don’t see why Israel would overtly offend
Turkey and push those organizations. Also I wouldn’t think that these
organizations would act only when Israel told them to do something. I
think in that particular case, they’ve acted on their own, fully
knowing how Israel would react and the repercussions.
Have the Jewish organizations been really willing to fight Turkey’s
fight?
Over the last few years the Jewish organizations have been more
reluctant to go out to fight Turkey’s fight. Because let’s admit it,
this is a losing fight because of the way we choose to fight this
resolution issue. We made many mistakes that weakened our position
and made our believability suspect.
What type of mistakes?
At a time when you’re discussing whether genocide took place, and
your argument is, no it was reciprocal and the Armenians did the most
harm, the head of your historical association comes up with an idea,
which is anathema to anyone let alone the Jews, of having lists of
people based on their ethnic origin. And the government has not
disassociated itself [from this].
What should have been done?
We should have talked about the context, we should have talked about
nationalism, and we should have talked about the responsibility of
the great powers in both instigating certain things and being
perpetrators of some other things. But most importantly, we should
have been able to express regret that such a human tragedy has taken
place. Then you could ask for respect for all who have died during
World War I. The Turkish Republic is not responsible for what
happened in 1915. The Turkish authorities could express deep sorrow
for the tragedies that happened.
So the Turkish strategy has failed?
Obviously the strategy to stop this momentum, to stop the US Congress
from passing a non-binding resolution, has utterly and miserably
failed. Let’s just recognize this, a congresswoman elected from
California who is the speaker of the house today cannot afford —
unless extraordinary circumstances are present — not to bring the
resolution to the floor of Congress before the 2008 elections. There
are more than 225 co-signatories already. Unjustly perhaps, but this
is the battle Turkey has lost.
How could Turkey change the terms of the debate?
What the Armenian diaspora wants is to call it genocide. We don’t
have to accept that. Nobody in Turkey will accept that. But we have
played along in this name game. It’s not the naming game what is
important; the real issue is to get into the bottom of things. You
can take what [Yusuf] Halaçoðlu [head of the Turkish Historical
Society (TTK)] had said and turn the table around. You can say this
is really a multireligious and multiethnic land. We have people who
felt compelled to convert to Islam, obviously to save their lives.
Use the same fact for a different narrative. By accepting the name
game, you basically put the entire population face to face with a
major threat. By putting the issue in an ethnic and nationalistic
discourse, you made an emotional interpretation of what happened.
First, you have to change the air, and then you can discuss things.
How would normalizing relations with Armenia help Turkey?
The only reason I could see why Turkey would not do such a thing is
because of Azerbaijan and sensitivities among the Turkish public that
20 percent of Azerbaijan proper, in addition to Nagorno-Karabakh, is
under occupation; people are refugees in their own countries and the
Armenians are doing nothing about it, the world community is not
doing anything — then why open the border. If Turkey were to open
the [border] gate with Armenia, it would have much more influence on
Armenia than it has today. Secondly, it will be better able to
explain its position, because many foreigners do not know of our
unofficial flights between Yerevan and Turkey; there are about 30,000
Armenians who actually work here. And finally, border towns want the
borders to be opened because they suffer economically. I think we
should also reason it out with the Azeris as well and get on with
life. This would be enough to help Turkey with the Armenian
resolution.
If the resolution passes next year, would Turkey close Ýncirlik base?
Turkey will have to respond to this. I don’t think it will
necessarily close down Ýncirlik altogether but it may not allow
supplies to be sent from Ýncirlik. Which, by the way, may be the only
way for the Bush administration to convince Congress — if that is
the case then the lives of American soldiers would be jeopardized.
The Bush administration may then put the blame on the Democrats and
say, `You jeopardized the lives of American troops.’ It may also
backfire on the Republicans and the Democrats may say, `We always
told you Turkey was an unreliable ally — at a time when our troops
are suffering they’re doing this to us.’
What are the other foreign policy priorities ahead of the new Turkish
government?
Relations with the European Union of course, but I’d say relations
with the United States. Our relations with the United States have an
effect on all of our other relations, including Iran, Iraq, the rest
of the Middle East and Russia. We’ve got to have a new understanding
with the United States as to where we want to take those relations.
The time may come when Turkey will have to choose between Iran and
the United States, or Iran and the West, or even Iran, Russia and the
West. Even though Iraq has harmed US-Turkish relations gravely, we’ve
got have a dialogue and we have to be much more actively be part of
the solution. Turkey is probably the best-meaning of the parties
involved in Iraq, but because of our inability to deal with the
Kurdish issue, we have not been recognized as a constructive actor.
We’ve got to come to an understanding with the United States about
what they want to do in Iraq and what we want to do in Iraq. Mending
our relations with the United States is a priority foreign policy
issue, in addition to the European Union.
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[PROFILE]
Soli Özel
A senior lecturer in international relations and political science at
Ýstanbul Bilgi University, he is also a columnist for the daily
Sabah. He has also taught at UC Santa Cruz, Johns Hopkins University
School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), the University of
Washington, Hebrew University and Ýstanbul’s Boðaziçi University. He
has received fellowships from St. Antony’s College, Oxford
University, the EU Institute of Security Studies and the Woodrow
Wilson Center for International Scholars. His pieces have been
published in international publications.
03.09.2007
YONCA POYRAZ DOÐAN