REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST
by Christopher Vasillopulos

Today’s Zaman
March 23 2009
Turkey

Some years ago in my first days on northern Cyprus, I participated
in an ugly incident. While attending an international conference on
nationalism at Eastern Mediterranean University, I lost my temper with
a Turkish-Canadian economist. Instead of presenting an academic paper,
he complained of Armenian-Canadian efforts to insert the Armenian
massacre into the school curriculum.

His children were being called "war criminals" and "murderers." As
a father he was outraged and eager to protect his children from
abuse. As an ethnic Turk he felt disrespected and misunderstood. He
went so far as to deny that anything happened to the Armenians beyond
the normal horrors of war. As he received a standing ovation from a
largely Turkish-Cypriot audience, the rest of us were stunned into
silence. Except for me.

I had agreed to go to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC)
despite many objections, mostly from the Greek-American community,
and personal concerns. I did not want to become a propaganda weapon
in an inter-cultural conflict. And I certainly did not want to be
associated with a claim that several hundred thousand Armenians took
a walk in the Syrian desert and who knows what happened to them. So
I confronted a Turkish-Canadian colleague in a way that was rude and
insensitive to his concerns as a father and an ethnic Turk. When I
regained my composure, I apologized to him and forgot the incident.

Until this week, that is. A friend of mine, Manoug Manougian,
had produced an award-winning four-hour documentary, "The Genocide
Factor." As part of our human rights program, he spoke to faculty and
students at my university. Some of my Turkish students came to the
lecture, which included graphic illustrations of many massacres and
heart-breaking descriptions of rape, torture and murder by survivors
and relatives of survivors, including Armenians. I was concerned
that Manougian’s natural and inevitable emphasis on Armenians would
trouble my Turkish students. They said they were all right, when I
inquired about their reaction to what must have seemed to them to
be a one-sided presentation. Although the presentation did speak of
many other atrocities, it did spend more time on Armenians than any
other. My students seemed stricken and upset. What surprised me more
was how upset I was. It was not that I thought the presentation was
unfair, but that I could not stand to see my students hurt.

So, finally, after 20 years, I understood, at least partially,
my Turkish-Canadian colleague’s concern for his children. It is
not disrespectful to the suffering of thousands to be worried about
the suffering of your children or your students or anyone you feel
responsible for. My thoroughly decent students were being singled
out, unintentionally to be sure, as the descendents of war criminals,
no matter how many years ago, no matter how many regime changes have
intervened. So the damage to Armenians nearly 100 years ago continues
to do damage today.

Resuming my role as a political scientist, I considered what might be
done to close out this tragic issue. What must be done to place it in
its proper historical and cultural context? What must be done to honor
the deaths of so many innocent women and children? What must be done
to honor the children of the present of all nationalities? What must
be done to make such tragedies less likely? I do not have answers to
these questions. Let me echo instead the suggestions of my German
colleagues, who have had experience in this sort of thing. There
should be an inquiry conducted under the supervision of international
scholars who produce a report. The purpose of the report is not to
indict or condemn but to ascertain the facts in the context of the
political and cultural conflicts of World War I. This is more than a
process of setting the historical record straight, of eliminating the
exaggerations of the victims and the denials of the perpetrators. It
is more than an acknowledgment of Armenian suffering and Turkish
complicity. A definitive and objective account would enable Turks and
their friends to live in the present and to face the future without
fearing that their children will be held responsible for atrocities
done by different people in a different time and a different place
and under circumstances than can only be imagined. I cannot say that
the pain inherent in this revisiting the past will be worth it. I
can say that the pain endured by many by not clearing the record is
as difficult to endure as its promise to be unending.