TURKEY CHANGES TACTICS ON "GENOCIDE"

Golos Armenii
Feb 21 2009
Yerevan

Armenia is losing in the "information war" against Turkey and
Azerbaijan, says a columnist with the pro-government Armenian
newspaper Golos Armenii. Turkey has recently changed its tactics
to prevent international recognition of the Armenian genocide,
Razdan Madoyan says. The Armenian language and literature have
started to be taught at several universities in Turkey. The Turkish
government has also decided to start "TV propaganda" in Armenian,
Madoyan says in an article headlined "They have started to act…" He
accuses the Armenian authorities of not doing enough to counteract
Turkey. Subheading as given:

According to Turkish news agency reports, universities there have
started to open departments of Armenian language and literature. They
are almost competing with one another on this. Universities not only
in Istanbul but in other places are also doing so. Thus recently
Erciyes University in Kayseri province received the Turkish Higher
Education Council’s permission to open such a department.

[Passage omitted: the rector of the university says the faculty will
be set up in two months and students for 2009-2010 will be enrolled].

A boom for tutors of the Armenian language has started in Turkey. There
is a lack of such tutors. For this reason, the University of Nevsehir
(another out-of-the-way place in Turkey), for example, cannot start
enrolling students into the already opened department of the Armenian
language and literature.

Under the conditions of the quite tense and mutually uncompromising
Armenian-Turkish relations, regardless of the football diplomacy,
this Turkish policy (this is a policy and not a private initiative)
is of course explained not by altruistic motives but an urge to know
a neighbour better, which can be welcomed per se.

Turkey understands that the mere denial of the Armenian genocide is
already not enough; both countries not favourably disposed to it and
its yesterday’s friends and allies already do not believe it. The
USA will use the fact of genocide in every possible way as a means
of putting pressure upon it; Israel has proved by its behaviour
that it needs Turkey’s friendship as long as it benefits from this
friendship, and will not refrain from throwing it in Turkey’s face
upon necessity. Turkey understands that it is impossible to stop the
avalanche and tries to avoid it with minimum losses.

Turkey has comparatively recently said that the genocide did not
take place, as it has no documents proving this in its archives. The
archives are open for researchers, Turkish politicians said, and anyone
can get convinced of this in person. However, the archive topic was
no further developed. It is apparent that not all were allowed access
[to the archives] and not to all materials. It is quite possible that
Turkey is going to again announce the opening the archives, and ahead
of this it wants to comb them out, in particular, to carry out a total
check of Armenian materials; of course there should be many of those
there. Their own reliable personnel are needed for this cause, and
Turkish universities have been assigned to prepare those. It becomes
clear that in such state of affairs why there is a lack of tutors:
naturally those cannot be accidental people, invited from the side.

Turkey is shifting from the unproductive policy of denying the genocide
to anti-propaganda, and this requires other types of means and other
actions. Turkey’s decision to start TV propaganda for Armenia in
Armenian should be considered in this perspective. On the one hand,
Turkey will try to break the stereotypes established in the Armenian
public by presenting itself as a tolerant, democratic country, which
is full of love for its neighbour. Much space will be allocated to
cultural interference, which of course did take place; to stories
how well they treat Armenia and Armenians in modern Turkey; maybe
they will create soap operas. It will be, of course, done with great
professionalism, and specialists of Armenian language and literature
– Turks – are needed for this very purpose. Unfortunately, all this
will look very attractive against the background of idiocy broadcast
by Armenian TV channels.

Under the quickly changing conditions Turkey needs peculiar
"rapid reaction forces" of propaganda, which would monitor the
everyday situation in Armenia, drawing conclusions and submitting
recommendations. This is another reason of the "boom" of Turkish love
for Armenian things.

The Turks are not just good: they are great diplomats, and we get
convinced of this again and again. They can turn even their military
and economic defeats into diplomatic victories. In the contemporary
world it is much more important to win in the information-political
war than in the battlefield, moreover that the latter happens rarely.

Armenia has no TV propaganda against Turkey

We have been trying to make ourselves heard by our government, saying
that we are losing in the information war with Turkic Azerbaijan,
that it, as any war, cannot be let take its course, that it can’t
be won with the efforts of individual heroes, and that the state,
and not bushfighters should wage this war. If the state of affairs
at the second Armenian-Turkish front is a little better at present,
this is due no to the Armenian state, but to the Diaspora. However,
the Diaspora cannot take upon all the functions of a state.

In the days of [former President Levon] Ter-Petrosyan’s junta, when
every parvenu who had power shouted "I am the state!", the general
staff of the ideological and information war was destroyed due to its
being dangerous for the junta people, and the whole sector got under
the control of their people. The second president [Robert Kocharyan]
did not manage to, and rather did not want to change the state of
affairs, the third one [Serzh Sargsyan] will do something but will
he do it?

That’s why one feels sick of the programmes of almost all Armenian TV
channels, and the satellite ones are a disgrace. That’s why we have
not been able to take time and establish not a special channel for
broadcasting for Turkey but even an ordinary 15-minute news bulletin
in Turkish. That is why we do nothing but talk. If the Turks open
their archives, no-one will be able to work there, as we do not have
specialists of Ottoman [Turkish] language.

We are not preparing tutors or specialists of the Azerbaijani language
while we have an opportunity to do this. We will have to do it from
scratch in the future.