EDITORIALS IT WON’T GO AWAY WHEN HISTORY CAN’T BE EVADED
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock)
October 16, 2007 Tuesday
"When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations
[of the Armenians], they were merely giving the death warrant to a
whole race; they understood this well, and, in their conversations
with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact. . . .
Practically all of them were atheists, with no more respect for
Mohammedanism than for Christianity, and with them the one motive
was cold-blooded, calculating state policy."
-Henry Morgenthau, U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, 1913-1916.
"For nothing is lost, nothing is ever lost."
-Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men
WHAT WAS it Mr. Faulkner said? The past is never dead. It’s not even
past. The man was on to something. Because his words keep coming
to mind whenever somebody tries to ignore the darker episodes of
man’s history.
Who’s the latest to put on the blinders? Once again, it’s Turkey,
whose leaders have been trying for nigh unto a century to minimize
the massacre of Armenians there during the First World War. This
time, the Turkish denial threatens to turn into an international
incident. With the United States on the other side.
It’s always sad when man cannot or dare not face his past-whether
it’s a person who can’t admit the harm he’s done or a whole country
that avoids owning up. In either case, the one who suffers most is
the denier. Without an admission of responsibility, there can be
no selfforgiveness. Instead, those in denial embark on an endless
series of explanations that don’t explain, excuses that don’t excuse,
or even outright falsehoods, which are soon enough exposed.
In the case of Turkey and the Armenians, by now most of the world
has recognized the terrible thing that happened there: As many as
1,500,000 Armenians, who found themselves an ethnic and religious
minority in the old Ottoman Empire, were systematically led to their
deaths under Turkish rule. Hundreds of thousands more were forcibly
deported. The massacres peaked in 1915-1917. In the pitiless glare
of history, the massacre of the Armenians is rightly regarded as the
first genocide of the 20th Century. Or at least one of the first. (It
wasn’t exactly a bloodless century.) What the world knows, however,
and even knew at the time, the Turkish government has always denied.
Ankara insists that what was done to the Armenians was not genocide.
In the usual tradition of deniers, the Turks say the number of
Armenians who died has been inflated, that the deaths were the result
of civil war and unrest, that there was no deliberate government
policy behind the slaughter and degradation of the Armenians, that
it just happened . . . . Uh-huh. History says otherwise.
A FEW MONTHS ago, the French parliament voted to recognize what was
done to the Armenians as a genocide. France was only the latest
in a long series of countries to do so. Turkey took offense. In
a demonstration of how past events still affect the present, the
French vote raised tensions between Turkey and the European Union,
which Turkey wants to join.
In this country, a committee of the House of Representatives has
approved a bill labeling the Turkish actions against the Armenians
a genocide, sending it on to the full House. In response, Turkey has
recalled its ambassador to Washington for consultations.
The delicate relationship between our two countries is crucial to
the joint war on terror. Turkey is a vital shipping point through
which we supply our troops in Iraq. The Turks’ anger over the truth’s
finally being recognized threatens to complicate our position in Iraq
even further.
William Faulkner wouldn’t have been surprised at Turkey’s reaction.
But its intensity might cause those who know little about the Armenian
massacres to wonder what all the fuss is about at this late date. Does
a vote by outsiders have any relevance today? Modern Turkey isn’t
responsible for what happened 100 years ago, is it? Why burden an
important ally with the presumed guilt of long-ago crimes?
Who cares?
In the midst of his own genocidal career, Adolf Hitler cynically asked
who remembered the Armenians. The German dictator was wrong about a
lot of things. It’s no surprise he was wrong about the Armenians,
too. Long after Adolf Hitler met his end, the world does remember
the Armenians. With good cause: justice. It demands that what was
done to them be recognized, not covered up.
When the injustice is on such an historic scale, the need to
recognize it is all the greater. The crimes against the Armenians
aren’t forgotten because they cannot be forgotten. Truth is its
own justification, and until the truth is recognized, justice isn’t
possible.
Some in Congress and the administration would buckle to Turkey’s
huffing-andpuffing. Mere truth, they seem to be saying, isn’t worth
harming "our national interest," as if this republic’s deepest
interest could ever be served by denying the truth. It’s instructive
that those in Congress who oppose this congressional resolution,
this long delayed act of simple decency, don’t deny the truth of the
Armenian massacres. They prefer to say that now is not the right time
to do the right thing, which is what they’ve been saying for decades.
The nature of the world is such that there will never be a time
when recognizing this truth is convenient, not as long as Turkey is
determined to deny its responsibility for this monumental crime. As
usual, there is no better time than now to do the right thing. Why?
Because recognizing injustice cleanses the soul. It restores peace.
It makes reconciliation possible. That’s what happened in South
Africa, where truth-and-reconciliation committees heard the stories
of the atrocities that were committed during the dark reign of
apartheid. The hearings allowed the guilty and their victims to find
some peace. Notice the connection: Truth and reconciliation. They go
together. Just as justice is thwarted by denial, so reconciliation is
impossible without a full accounting of the wrongs committed.COMING
to terms with the past isn’t always agreeable work. Against all the
evidence, Iran’s fiery president still questions the truth of the
Holocaust. Japan has yet to fully accept its responsibility for the
brutalities carried out by the Japanese empire in the Thirties and
Forties. Did modern Japan commit those war crimes? No. But by refusing
to acknowledge them, the descendants of the criminals take on part of
the guilt that should have been laid to rest with their ancestors. And
so the sins of the fathers are visited on later generations.
All of this remains relevant today. Genocide isn’t just some artifact
of the 20th Century. A genocide is happening right now in Darfur,
where the Sudanese government is as touchy about that damning word
as Turkey remains.
History is one thing, facts are another. History is the way we
arrange the facts, and our perspective constantly changes. As time
goes by, our sense of the past shifts. Each generation interprets it
differently. What doesn’t change are the facts. We may learn more
of them over the years, for our knowledge of the past can never be
complete. The past is too complicated for that. But to attempt to
change the facts themselves is not just another interpretation of
history. It is a crime against human memory.
When we try to deny the plain facts, we cheat ourselves. Because,
let us have faith, the facts will always have the final say. There
will always be someone, some historian or memoirist or survivor or
just plain conscientious observer, who will speak out-and the force
of the facts will make the world listen.
In the end, nations need to work through their history, not evade it,
even for political reasons that seem so important at the moment. What
we ignore in our past will come back to haunt us, as Americans should
well know by now. We’re still working on our own past. And until we
acknowledge what’s been done, the ghosts will linger. Forget the fate
of the Armenians? Impossible. The wound remains raw. It needs to be
recognized, and allowed to heal. Ignored, it festers.