SILENT MEMORIES SILENT MEMORIES
By Michael Bennett
The West Australian (Perth)
April 22, 2008 Tuesday
METRO
A million were killed but in Turkey you cant talk about it. Michael
Bennett reports
Every year on April 24 cupboards are opened around Australia, boxes
are pulled down from top shelves, medals are dusted off and given the
Brasso treatment. Sons and daughters, grandchildren and widows, and,
indeed, past and present servicemen and women prepare themselves for
the Anzac Day marches that take place with pride in cities and towns
around the nation.
But on the other side of the globe, on April 24, the day before Anzac
Day signifies something very different for another nation of people.
While a link was forged between Turkey and Australia at Anzac Cove on
April 25, 1915, around the same time the history of Armenia was being
rewritten. For Armenians April 24 is their day of remembrance. It is
Genocide Day. A day many Australians would know little about.
As the Anzac landings were taking place on the coast of Turkey,
in Anatolia in central Turkey, ethnic Armenians were being evicted,
harassed and slaughtered. Historians put the death toll as high as
a million with many more displaced. For decades successive Turkish
governments have refused to acknowledge the Armenian genocide.
Two years ago the ABCs Foreign Correspondent reported on Orhan Pamuk,
a recipient of the Nobel prize for literature and Turkeys most famous
author. Pamuk had dared to speak of the genocide and was convicted
of insulting Turkey. The report also featured an interview with Hrant
Dink, the publisher of an Armenian newspaper in Istanbul.
A few months after the report Dink was shot dead, allegedly by a
teenage ultra-nationalist, one of 18 people arrested for the crime.
Eric Campbell, a Foreign Correspondent stalwart since 1996, went
to Armenia and Turkey in February to find out why people were still
being killed in the name of history.
He told The West Australian that Turkish law makes it a criminal
offence to insult "Turkishness".
"One of the definitions of that is to imply that the Ottoman Empire
during World War I committed genocide on the Armenian people,"
Campbell says. "Its not a historical debate, if you take that point
of view you are committing a criminal offence in Turkey."
Both Pamuk and Dink were charged under the law, known as Article
301. The allegation is that Dink was killed for referring to genocide.
He had written a series of articles in which he discussed the
deportation of Armenians. Campbell says Dink crossed a taboo and would
still be alive today if he had not been released from jail. "But
he was out on appeal and he was openly gunned down as he left his
newspaper office."
As part of tonights Foreign Correspondent, Campbell interviews the
family and lawyer of the man accused of being the mastermind behind
the killing. Yasin Hayal, a young nationalist, gave the alleged killer
a gun and money. His lawyer, Fuat Turgut, was recently arrested and
charged, with 30 others, for plotting to murder Pamuk.
Turgut acknowledges that his client provided the alleged killer with
a gun and cash. Hayals father also concedes his son "might have been
tricked because he loves his country and his nation".
Campbell remembers the time when Dink died. "We were all shocked,"
he says. "We had run the story about this guy and it caused a massive
reaction in Turkey with 100,000 people marching at his funeral. But
they appear to be still a minority in Turkey."
According to Campbell people simply dont accept their forbears carried
out genocide. "Even though it was almost a century ago it is still
a very current issue for both Turkey and Armenia."
While a veteran at tackling the maze-like conditions of international
journalism, Campbell says this story posed a few hurdles. As well
as being arrested twice, once on the Armenian border, and once for
filming the US Embassy in Armenia, he found Turgut was in jail when
he wanted to interview him.
"But he was happy to talk to us," Campbell says. "Even though from our
outside perspective it seems terrible that they could deny genocide,
from their point of view there was no genocide, they were actually
victims of Armenians.
"In many ways it was a lot more brutal and bloody than
Gallipoli." Armenians view the tragedy in the same way Jews view the
Holocaust. "But in the Armenians case the world doesnt know about it
and the people they accused of carrying out the genocide refuse to
bear responsibility. Its as though Germany still denied the Holocaust."
Campbell isnt saying who is right or wrong. "But the facts are
very clear that terrible things happened and Turkey has not yet
acknowledged it."