ERDOGAN’S LACK OF STATESMANSHIP

The Weekly Standard
FP/2008/12/erdogans_lack_of_statesmanship.asp
Dec 29 2008
Washington, DC

Several days ago, about 200 hundred prominent Turkish intellectuals
launched a first-ever online petition apologizing for the "Great
Catastrophe" in connection with the massacres of up to 1.5 million
Armenians in Turkey during 1915-1917. Titled "I apologize", the brief
statement reads as follows:

"My conscience cannot accept the ignorance and denial of the Great
Catastrophe that the Ottoman Armenians were subjected to in 1915. I
reject this injustice and — on my own behalf — I share the feelings
and pain of my Armenian brothers – and I apologize to them."

The authors of the statement, among them Cem Oezdemir, the new leader
of the German Green Party, deliberately opted for the term "Great
Catastrophe" in an effort to stay clear of the ultra-explosive term
"genocide". While genocide scholars widely agree that the killings
of the Armenians constituted the first genocide of the 21st century,
Turkey strongly rejects such accusations to this very day, arguing
instead that those killed were simply the victims of civil war. So far,
about 22,000 people have signed the online petition, not that many
for a country of more than 71 million inhabitants. Several Turkish
nationalist counter-websites with titles such as "I Expect An Armenian
Apology" or "I Do Not Apologize" have already garnered more than five
times as many votes as the initial "I Apologize" petition.

Turkey’s top leadership, too, has begun a strong push-back to
counter the apology campaign. The powerful army, for instance,
has warned ominously that the petition could "bring about harmful
results". Finally, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan came up with his
own rationale for why he opposes the online petition, saying that
"I did not commit any crimes, so why should I apologize?". As
a private individual, for sure, Mr. Erdogan was not involved in
any of the Armenian massacres. But coming from a Turkish statesman
eager to join the European Union, Erdogan’s statement and cavalier
attitude regarding a very dark chapter in Turkish history is simply
not acceptable in the 21st century.

In contrast to Erdogan’s remark, I am reminded of how then-German
Chancellor Helmut Kohl dealt with the issues of personal guilt and
collective moral and political responsibility in his historic January
1984 speech to the Knesset in Israel. He said: "I speak to you as
someone who could not get caught up in guilt during the Nazi period
because he had the grace of a late birth." At the same time, however,
Helmut Kohl (born in 1930) never left any doubt that as the German
Chancellor, he was willing to assume collective moral and political
responsibility for the atrocities perpetrated by Nazi Germany during
the 1933-1945 period. Prime Minister Erdogan’s stubborn refusal to
assume collective moral and political responsibility for the "Great
Catastrophe" displays a lack of statesmanship and casts a long shadow
on Turkey’s aspirations of joining the European Union any time soon.