Today’s Zaman, Turkey
March 14 2010
Nationalism rears its ugly head Amidst `genocide’ debates
One has to admit that the ruling Justice and Government Party (AK
Party) has been struggling on various fronts with regards to both
domestic and foreign policy as it has dared to deal with decades-old
issues that have been used as a strong glue for the maintenance of the
status quo in this almost 87-year-old republic.
A republic that still, unfortunately, reflects an adolescent
depression that doesn’t befit the experience of almost nine decades
and that stems from both a lack of self-confidence and a lack of
confidence vis-a-vis the entire world. The thorniest issues the
government has dared confront are the Armenian and Kurdish issues. The
government’s Kurdish initiative was launched last summer in order to
find a solution to Turkey’s long-standing Kurdish problem through the
expansion of the rights and freedoms of the country’s Kurds, who were
long deprived of their fundamental rights.
As for the Armenian issue, following closed-door talks that were held
through Swiss mediation for more than a year on ways to restore
diplomatic relations and open their mutual border, Ankara and Yerevan
announced on April 22, 2009, that they had reached an agreement on a
roadmap to normalize their relations.
Leaving aside what has happened with the Kurdish initiative and
looking to today’s situation regarding the Armenian process of
normalization in the wake of the adoption of a resolution by the US
House Committee on Foreign Affairs recognizing the atrocities against
Anatolian Armenians under Ottoman rule during World War I as genocide
earlier this month, some commentators have even suggested that the
Turkey-Armenia normalization process is dead and that a funeral should
be held for the protocols.
Mehmet Altan, a chief columnist for the Star daily, greatly
appreciates the government’s courage in dealing with both of the
issues.
`Ancient remnants are preventing the government from making further
progress,’ Altan told Sunday’s Zaman. `In its first three years, the
government chose the world as its counterpart. By doing so, it carried
the periphery of the country to the center and then the center to the
world. But as soon as they faced a general election, it turned to the
opposition parties, the Republican People’s Party [CHP] and the
Nationalist Movement Party [MHP], as its counterparts and sacrificed
its assertive policies to local politics,’ Altan said.
The AK Party came to power in the fall of 2002 and was re-elected with
overwhelming support in the July 2007 elections.
`Persuading ourselves’
According to Associate Professor Mensur Akgün, the director of the
foreign policy program at the Ä°stanbul-based Turkish Economic and
Social Studies Foundation (TESEV), right from the beginning of the
normalization process with Armenia, the matter was a domestic policy
issue.
`Since we couldn’t discuss what happened to Anatolian Armenians during
the Ottoman Empire era among ourselves, we found ourselves in an
awkward situation,’ Akgün told Sunday’s Zaman.
`With its retaliatory messages either against the US or Armenia, the
government is actually creating a mutual understanding on the issue.
It is not easy to break long-held taboos in one go. On the other hand,
there is an opposition bloc that is not rational at all. However, it
is obvious that recalling envoys every time a country’s parliament
makes a decision on the 1915 tragedy is not a way out, it leads to
isolating yourself from the rest of the world,’ Akgün went on to say.
As of Friday, Turkey’s ambassador to Sweden had arrived in Ä°stanbul
after being recalled on Thursday upon the Swedish parliament’s
labeling of the World War I killing of Armenians by Ottoman forces
genocide.
The Swedish vote came only a week after Ankara called its ambassador
to the United States home after a US House committee approved the
aforementioned resolution.
`The easiest and shortest way to end these complications is to hold a
full-fledged debate on the issue inside the country. If we can
persuade ourselves about what did or did not happen during those times
of killings, then the issue in the international arena will not be as
thorny to deal with as it is now,’ Akgün said.
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄ?an said Turkey
would not send its ambassador back to Washington until it gets a
`clear sign’ on the fate of the US resolution. Turkey’s message has
already been received by the Obama administration, which displayed a
`clumsy performance’ with its delayed intervention regarding the
issue, Ä°lter Turan, a professor of international relations from
Ä°stanbul Bilgi University, told Sunday’s Zaman. `But Turkey should not
keep its ambassador here any longer than necessary since Ankara will
apparently have to exhaust much of its energy — at least until April
24 — on preventing US President Barack Obama from calling the
Anatolian Armenians’ killings `genocide’ in an annual White House
statement on the day marking Armenian Remembrance Day,’ Turan added.
`Race of nationalism’
`There is an opposition bloc that turned the issue into a race of
`nationalism,’ and this doesn’t make life easier for the government,’
Turan said, noting that from the start of this normalization process,
the government should have tried obtaining the support of the
opposition and made this a `national policy.’
Upon the US vote, the two main opposition party leaders, CHP leader
Deniz Baykal and MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli, earlier this week called
on the government to annul the protocols. However, also earlier this
week, a senior Turkish diplomat desperately tried to explain that the
US resolution, which Ankara expects will not reach the House floor,
and the normalization process `must’ definitely be dealt with as two
separate processes that are independent of each other.
Fethiye Ã?etin is a middle-aged lawyer living in Ä°stanbul. When Ã?etin
was in her mid-20s, her devout Muslim grandmother, Seher, let her know
a closely held family secret, the fact that Seher was actually born an
Armenian Christian and was stolen from her parents by a Turkish
cavalry soldier who went on to raise her.
A few years after Seher’s death in 2000, Ã?etin wrote a book titled `My
Grandmother’ and told of the sufferings of her grandmother, whose
original name was Heranoush. Her book encouraged many other Muslim
Turks to step forward and tell of their family’s similar stories
during World War I.
Her remarks in an interview with Sunday’s Zaman held in August 2007
foreshadowed what Turkey actually needs to debate nowadays.
`The priority is about our history in breaking taboos. One cannot
clear himself by saying that, for example, `The Armenian emigration
took place during the Ottoman Empire era, and that as children of the
Turkish Republic it is not our responsibility to face this reality.’
Because one should not make the mistake of placing the blame on the
entire Ottoman state for the understanding of the Ä°ttihat and Terakki
Party [Party of Union and Progress], whose ideology was that of
purifying all Anatolia through the `Turkification’ of all its segments
and whose understanding was embraced by the founding ideology of this
republic,’ Ã?etin said at the time, noting that the understanding of
the party has cast a long shadow that continues to extend into the
present day and has been embraced by today’s pro-establishment forces.
14 March 2010, Sunday
EMÄ°NE KART ANKARA
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
