SHOULD TURKEY APOLOGIZE TO THE ARMENIANS?
Asli Aydintasbas
Forbes
/2008/12/24/Turkey-Armenians-genocide-oped-cx_aa_1 226aydintasbas.html
Dec 27 2008
NY
ISTANBUL–Should we apologize to Armenians?
It’s almost a miracle, but I have somehow managed to avoid the
"Armenian issue" throughout my journalism career. I never wrote a
single column on it, even throughout the various diplomatic rows
between Turkey and Armenia on whether or not the tragic events of
1915 were genocide.
During the time I covered Washington for a Turkish paper, I stayed
a dispassionate reporter as the Armenian Diaspora tried year after
year to pass various U.S. congressional resolutions condemning the
1915 events–and Ankara lobbied hard to ward these off.
The truth was, undeniably bad things happened in the Eastern provinces
of the declining Ottoman Empire in 1915, but I had no idea whether
or not they "amounted to" genocide.
Depending on whom you believe, 500,000 or 1.5 million Armenians were
either forcibly deported or coldly massacred, either during the chaos
of a civil war or by an organized state campaign. The Armenians in turn
either killed thousands of Muslim Turks in an effort to establish an
independent homeland, or they were fighting a civil war of liberation.
I am not trying to make light of the fact that this was a horribly
painful episode, leading to the death of thousands of innocents. But
today’s discussion is largely semantic–"genocide or not?"
While most Turks are taught in schools that killing happened "on
both sides" and do not believe their Ottoman ancestors committed the
g-word, Armenians in the tiny modern Caucasus republic have built
their national identity on the pain of genocide. It is to them what
the Jewish Holocaust is to Israelis.
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But the reason I have so far avoided the topic was not because of
an inability to face the past, but because I felt I never could
do justice to the mountains of books, memoirs and historic archives
arguing one side or the other. After all, plenty of Turkish, Armenian,
American and French historians dedicated lifetimes to this debate.
I, on the other hand, lacked that kind of attention span. At school,
we were taught that the "so-called genocide" charge was trumped up by
the Armenian diaspora because it was their raison d’etre. Friends and
family mostly seemed to think the Ottomans had committed some sort of
"ethnic cleansing," but that it wasn’t genocide. (Legally speaking,
"war crimes" and "ethnic cleansing" do not necessarily mean genocide,
the most heinous of all crimes against humanity.)
During the time I lived abroad, I encountered plenty of Armenian
resentment toward Turkey, but then again, I thought, "What’s
new?" After all, neighboring Greeks, Kurds, Iranians, Arabs and some
Europeans often seemed to hate Turkey, too! (Being the descendants
of an imperial people is overrated on the karmic scale.)
But not everyone in Turkey is willing to go with the type of
"strategic ignorance" I have been carefully practicing on the Armenian
issue. Recently, a group of 200 Turkish intellectuals signed an online
petition "apologizing" to Armenians for their suffering at the hands
of Ottoman forces during the First World War.
It reads: "My conscience does not accept the insensitivity showed to
and the denial of the Great Catastrophe that the Ottoman Armenians
were subjected to in 1915. I reject this injustice and for my share,
I empathize with the feelings and pain of my Armenian brothers. I
apologize to them." The name of the Web site translated into English is
"weapologize.com."
Even with no mention of genocide, the short text hit a raw nerve
with the Turkish public. Politicians lined up to condemn the
initiative, while a group of academics and retired diplomats issued
a counter-declaration, denying charges of genocide and asking for the
Armenians to apologize for the murder of 38 Turkish diplomats in the
1970s by Armenian terrorists seeking revenge. "I find it unreasonable
to apologize when there is no crime," Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan said. Spinoff Web sites are full of nationalist fervor.
In clogged Istanbul traffic, an irate driver gave me his unsolicited
view: "Excuse me, miss, but now they want to apologize to Armenians. I
am a Muslim expelled from the Balkans when the empire collapsed. My
family was annihilated. We lost all land and property and took refuge
in Turkey. Who will apologize to me?"
Another unsolicited response came over e-mail from the lady who had
recently decorated our home: "I have no idea whom else we are supposed
to apologize to. The Anzacs for the Gallipoli? The Greek, British, and
Italian soldiers for having liberated our homeland [in 1923] from their
invasion? Does anyone remember there were two sides to this conflict?"
I ran into a senior diplomat at a funeral and he told me that neither
the apology nor the counter-declaration rang the right tone. "They
are both extreme positions and would encourage extremists on both
sides." In Turkey, the apology certainly created a backlash, while in
Armenia, it is likely to encourage those who want to seek compensation
and land from Turkey.
So incendiary has the apology been that the Turkish President Abdullah
Gul had to withdraw his initial support for the statement when he
was accused of having Armenian blood. And Turkey’s military issued
a statement condemning the apology, suggesting it would torpedo any
possibility of rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia.
It is difficult to tell if the online petition has actually lifted
a taboo or reinforced it. For starters, Turks are never good at
apologizing. With no exposure to Oprah and psycho-babble, anger is
preferable to soul-searching in much of the Middle East. But even
most liberal Turks I know hate the idea of an apology to Armenians,
partly because it tacitly admits to genocide–something the majority
do not believe happened.
Of course Turkey needs to face its past and have a more open debate
on the Armenian issue. But do you begin with an apology? I fear this
would foment enough anger on both sides of the border to just about
block any meaningful dialogue.
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was assassinated by Turkish
nationalists after he labeled the 1915 events a genocide. On the
Armenian side, there are politicians who still have hopes of reclaiming
land. In both countries, there is a potential climate of violence and,
until that abates, an apology will just incite more trouble.
I wish the petition Web site said everything that it did, but
had stopped short of an apology. It would have more appeal here in
Turkey. Rome was not built in a day and bridges between nations cannot
be either.
Turks and Armenians have a long way to go in overcoming hatred,
and certainly setting history straight will have to be part of that
process. But apology is not the beginning. Friendship, something we
lacked for almost a century, is.
If I could have my own petition, I would say to Armenians, "Friends,
I feel your pain and am sorry for not recognizing it before. Let’s
leave aside semantics for now and just meet." And then wait for what
they had to tell me.
Asli Aydintasbas is an Istanbul-based journalist and former Ankara
bureau chief of the newspaper Sabah.