"DEFENSE MINISTER CONFESSES THE ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS CLEANSING, BUT TAKES NO LESSONS"
Tolga Korkut – tolgakorkut@bianet.org

BIA
Nov 17 2008
Turkey

Dr. Aktar discusses Defense Minister’s statement that "If the Greeks
and the Armenians had stayed, today’s nation would not come into
existence." While agreeing with the minister’s conclusion, Aktar
emphasizes the same cannot be forced upon the Kurds.

Regarding Vecdi Gönul’s speech about the actions taken by the
Turkish national state as a confession, Dr. Cengiz Aktar, a faculty of
BahceÅ~_ehir University at Istanbul, said, "I do not know if he has
taken into consideration the possible reactions to his speech, but
it is not wrong to say that the Turkish nation was shaped by Islam."

In a speech given at the Turkish Embassy in Brussels on November 10,
Gönul had said "If there would be Greeks in the Aegean region and
Armenians in many regions in Turkey today, then could there be today’s
national state?"

Claiming that the forced migration and exchange of populations had
had positive results for the economy, Gönul continued as follows:
"I had worked at the Izmir Chamber of Commerce for a period. There
was not a single Muslim among the founders of this chamber. It was
composed of the Levantines (the European Christians who had been
living in the Ottoman Empire, for centuries in some cases). There
were four neighborhood inhabited by the Armenians, Greeks, Jews and
Muslims in Ankara before the founding of the Republic. The fertile
lands had belonged to the minorities."

Likening these words to a form of confession, Aktar said these were
very brave words, although they were probably said for different
reasons. He believes these words clearly define what actually
happened. Aktar made the following comments about the speech:

The role of religion in nation-building: Gönul says that at the
beginning of the twentieth century, the bonding factor at the root
of the nationalist currents in this region was religion. In fact, the
concrete base the Unionists and later the Republicans had in mind for
the Turkish nation was Islam. None of the other qualities that make
a nation – language, race, culture and economy – had existed in this
region at the time of the invention of the Turkish nation. Religion
as the fundamental factor of nation-building naturally excludes those
who are not from that religion, consider them as non-national. The
Armenians, the Greeks and the Jews, thus, become the natural other,
the natural enemy of the nation.

Non-Turkish Muslims are Turkified: As Gönul put it, there was no
place for the non-Muslims since the very beginning of the Republic,
but the non-Turkish Muslims could only take their place in the new
nation only after they were Turkified and as long as they would
discard their former identities.

Greece is similar too: This kind of nation-building process based on
religion can be found Greece, too. Over there, no religion is allowed,
other than Greek orthodox faith. In fact, when Greece had conquered
Macedonia in 1912, the first action it had taken was to remove the
Muslim and Jewish components of the city. This process had reached
its culmination with the exchange of populations put into effect
with Turkey.

Instead of taking lessons: The important thing is to read the
nation-building process correctly, with its rights and wrongs, to
accept the pains it caused, to understand it and to take lessons from
it. The nation-building is probably the gravest incident that has
befallen upon humanity in recent history. But Turkey does not have
the luxury to make the Kurdish people to go through the homogenizing
nation-building process of "ethnic and religious cleansing" of the
early 20th century in the 21st century.

"This nation-building process has weakened Turkey" Economy: It is
highly questionable if the operation of making the capital change
hands all over Anatolia was effective economically.

Armenians, the eastern Anatolia and the Kurdish problem: After the
Armenian forced migration and massacres the economy of the eastern
Anatolia crashed, never to recover again. Today’s Kurdish problem
has a lot to do with this economic crash.

Greeks: Even though the economic vacuum created by shipping
off the Greeks from Anatolia was filled with the Muslims coming
from the Balkans and Greece, that the western shore could not
come back economically for a long time is a fact accepted by the
historians. Caglar Keyder’s work titled "Turkey Within the World
Economy" is very enlightening in this respect.

Those who accumulated capital were kicked out: Those bourgeoisie and
artisans who had managed to accumulate capital were kicked out. This
operation was an operation of plunder rather than an operation of the
capital changing hands. For those who got their hands on the Greek and
Armenian properties could not convert them into productive capital,
since they did not have the necessary knowledge and experience. It
took a long time for Turkey to get to the same level and this led to
the weakening of Turkey. The nation-building process did not enrich
Turkey, but rather weakened it.

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