Los Angeles Times, CA
Jan 5 2009

Opinion
A Turkish ‘I apologize’ campaign to Armenians

The fate of Armenians in 1915 remains taboo in Turkey, but some
intellectuals are taking action.

By Esra Özyürek
January 5, 2009

Two hundred Turkish intellectuals last month launched an Internet
signature campaign for an apology to Armenians for the 1915
massacres. "My conscience does not accept the insensitivity showed to
and the denial of the Great Catastrophe that the Armenians were
subjected to in 1915," the brief statement reads. "I reject this
injustice and for my share, I empathize with the feelings and pain of
my Armenian brothers and sisters. I apologize to them."

Within a month, more than 26,000 people signed on, a significant
number in a country where the fate of the Armenians at the end of the
Ottoman Empire has been largely unmentionable for decades. To those
long frustrated by Turkey’s intractability on the issue, this campaign
may appear an inadequate gesture. But it has immense value, educating
many Turks about the violence done to Armenians for the first time and
enabling those who are ready to come to terms with it.

The official Turkish position on 1915 has shifted over time. It was a
fight between local Turkish and Armenian bands. Or it was a forced
resettlement — a march on which hundreds of thousands of Armenians
were sent to Syria, but most never arrived. Historians and politicians
also have argued that it was actually Armenians who massacred Turks
and that talk of an Armenian genocide was an international
conspiracy. In contemporary Turkey, novelists, journalists, historians
or other intellectuals who call the events a genocide or even mass
murder can face trial under the infamous Article 301 of the Turkish
Penal Code, which outlaws insulting Turkey, its government or its
people.

Organizers of the "I apologize" campaign notably shied away from the
word genocide, opting instead for "the Great Catastrophe," a phrase
initially used by Armenians. Still, Turkish nationalists were quick to
condemn the project and launch multiple, counter we-want-an-apology
campaigns.

Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, quickly dismissed the
apology movement. "These Turkish intellectuals must have committed the
genocide," he said mockingly, "since they are the ones who are
apologizing." Opposition parties in the parliament, other than the
Kurdish-inclined Democratic Turkey Party, have all condemned the
campaign as well. The Nationalist Action Party, for example, issued a
statement that said, in part, "There is no single page in the
honorable history of the Turkish nation for which we should be
embarrassed, and no crime for which we should apologize. No one has
the right to smear our ancestors by deviating from history, declaring
them guilty, and ask them to apologize."

Granted, 26,000 signatories to the campaign means Turks interested in
apologizing remain few and far between in a nation of 70
million. Still, this is a very significant development in Turkey. In
the last 10 years, several Turkish scholars began studying the
Armenian massacres outside the official Turkish framework, and some of
them, such as Taner Akcam, have openly acknowledged those events were
a genocide. Turkish and Armenian scholars organized joint workshops to
discuss what happened to Armenians at the end of the Ottoman
Empire. When Hrant Dink, a prominent journalist of Armenian
background, was assassinated by a nationalist thug in Istanbul two
years ago, 200,000 Turks marched in the streets carrying banners that
said, "We are all Armenian."

Critics will certainly reply that these modest activities do not
compensate for the original crime nor the suffering caused by its
denial for almost a century. They will complain that the current
signature campaign does not use the word genocide. Yet the
significance of this campaign cannot be understated.

I grew up in Turkey in a politically engaged, educated and reasonably
liberal family in the 1970s and the 1980s, and I had only a vague idea
about the animosity between Turks and Armenians. It wasn’t until I
enrolled in graduate school at the University of Michigan, one of the
most important centers of Ottoman and Armenian studies in the United
States, that I learned about the unacceptably sad end of the Armenian
subjects of the Ottoman Empire.

Turks growing up today surely are better informed about the history of
the land they inhabit. Even those who accept the nationalist line have
to be aware of the sudden end of the centuries-long Armenian presence
in Anatolia. Regardless of the terms they employ or the specific
amount of responsibility they willingly shoulder, this next generation
of Turks is already in a much better position to face the darkest
aspect of their national history and develop a more responsible
relationship to it.

It may appear a small gesture now, but the initiators of the "I
apologize" campaign have introduced a ray of hope for reconciliation
between Armenians and Turks before the 100th anniversary of the
catastrophe comes around.

Esra Özyürek is an associate professor of anthropology at UC San Diego
and the author of "Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and
Everyday Politics in Turkey" and "Politics of Public Memory in
Turkey."

ion/sunday/commentary/la-oe-ozyurek5-2009jan05,0,3 908273.story