The Monitor (McAllen, Texas)
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune News Service
July 10, 2009 Friday
Armenian victims: Dark past for Turkey
By Peter Balakian, Fredericksburg (Va.) Free Lance-Star
COMMENTARY
HAMILTON, N.Y.
HAMILTON, N.Y. _ The Armenian Genocide continues to hover over
international politics 94 years later. Its ethical force in memory
haunts not only the legacy of the perpetrator, Turkey, but the legacy
of the victims, the Armenian people and the diaspora.
The political intensity surrounding U.S. recognition of the Armenian
Genocide surfaced this past April in President Obama’s engagement with
the issue. Having promised as a presidential candidate to acknowledge
as genocide the events that befell the Armenians of Ottoman Turkey in
1915, on visiting Turkey in April, President Obama stopped short of
using the word "genocide" but spoke powerfully to the Turkish
Parliament about the importance of acknowledging dark chapters of
one’s past.
"History is often tragic but, unresolved, can be a heavy weight. Each
country must work through its past. And reckoning with the past can
help us seize a better future. I know there are strong views in this
chamber about the terrible events of 1915. While there has been a good
deal of commentary about my views the best way forward for the Turkish
and Armenian people is a process that works through the past in a way
that is honest, open, and constructive."
THE ‘G’ WORD
Armenians, Turks and the human-rights community awaited April 24, the
date of the president’s annual Armenian Genocide commemorative
address, as the international press speculated whether he would use
the word "genocide." When he did not, most Armenians were
disappointed, some bitterly so. Yet Obama’s statement was the most
ethically serious, probing statement on the subject ever made by a
U.S. president: "I have consistently stated my own view of what
occurred in 1915, and my view of that history has not changed. My
interest remains the achievement of a full, frank and just
acknowledgment of the facts," and he remembered "the 1.5 million
Armenians" who were "massacred or marched to their death."
To get a sense of how seriously the president acknowledged the
Armenian Genocide, albeit by syllogism, one need only note what he
said on the campaign trail in September 2008: "As a U.S. senator, I
have stood with the Armenianâ??American community in calling
for Turkey’s acknowledgement of the Armenian Genocide." In April he
said: "It is imperative that we recognize the horrific acts carried
out against the Armenian people as genocide, and I will continue to
stand with the Armenian-American community in calling for the
government of Turkey to acknowledge it as such."
However, what ensued between the April 6 visit to Turkey and the April
24 address was some secret diplomacy, brokered _ some believe
coercively _ by Turkey with Armenia to create a "road map" to
normalizing relations between the two countries (their common border
has been closed since the founding of the Armenian Republic in
1991). This new diplomacy involves Armenia agreeing to Turkey’s
persistent request that there be a historical commission to "decide"
what happened to the Armenians in 1915. To many, and especially those
in the human-rights community, this is an obvious gimmick, by which
Turkey hopes to cast doubt on the scholarly consensus about the events
of 1915 for the purpose of continuing to deny its responsibility for
the genocide.
OWNING UP TO THE PAST
The irony spills into absurdity. The Turkish government spends
millions of dollars a year on PR firms and lobbyists in a campaign to
rewrite the history of the Armenian extermination. Turkey’s courts
have prosecuted writers and intellectuals who acknowledge the Armenian
Genocide, most notably Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, who not only stood
trial for it but has been a target of death threats. Most tragically,
the assassination of Armenian Turkish journalist Hrant Dink in 2007
made it clear that dealing openly with the Armenian Genocide in Turkey
was dangerous business.
Turkey has shown no inclination to own up to the truth of its past. In
2004, it agreed to be part of a Turkish Armenian Reconciliation
Commission, but after the arbitrator, the International Center for
Transitional Justice, rendered an assessment that the events of 1915
were genocide, the Turkish government angrily pulled out of the
commission.
Would we allow President Ahmadinejad’s government to be part of a
commission on the Holocaust? When countries such as France, Canada,
Poland, Greece, Russia and 15 others (as well as 41 U.S. states)
passed resolutions affirming the Armenian Genocide over the past
decades, they were not attempting to determine history, but rather to
affirm an existing historical record and, in large part, to redress
Turkey’s continued aggressive denial campaign.
When Congress once again entertains an Armenian Genocide resolution,
many genocide scholars and the human-rights community hope it will
have the courage to stand up to Turkish pressure. Turkish historian
Taner Akcam has said U.S. acknowledgment of the Armenian genocide
would give the United States "self-respect" in this arena, and "It
would liberate Turks, Armenians, and itself in the process."
It is important that we not confuse the exigencies of diplomacy with
the need to stand firm about the moral reality of genocide and reject
any nation’s attempts to cover up a genocidal crime. The history of
genocide is not a poker chip. While Armenia and Turkey must of course
look to the future and normalize relations so that the status of
Nagorno Karabagh and other political and economic issues can be
resolved, Armenia’s President Sarkissian has stated that the road to
the future of Turkishâ??Armenian relations should not be
brokered with preconditions.
If Turkey believes in its future leadership in the region, then it
must, in President Obama’s words, reckon with its past. Speaking as he
did on Turkish soil, Obama has already done some important work in
helping Turkey understand why acknowledging its past will only aid its
future.
The acknowledgement of the genocide that became a template for Hitler
is not just a Turkish-Armenian affair, but a universal moral issue:
The world’s most powerful country can summon the courage to help
resolve it with a congressional resolution in the coming year.
___
ABOUT THE WRITER
Peter Balakian teaches at Colgate University and is the co-translator
of the recently published "American Golgotha: A Memoir of the Armenian
Genocide, 1915-1918" by Girgoris Balakian. Readers may send him e-mail
at [email protected] He wrote this for the Fredericksburg
(Va.) Free Lance-Star.