THOMAS DE WAAL: “GREAT CATASTROPHE” IS A VERY POWERFUL TERM

February 2, 2015 10:56
EXCLUSIVE

Mediamax’s interview with Thomas de Waal, Senior Associate at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

– First of all, let me congratulate you with your new book “Great
Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide”. What is
the main message of your book and who you consider the main audience:
Turks and Armenians, or the Western world?

– Thank you. The starting-point for all my books is in identifying a
“gap in the literature” that I believe needs to be filled. In the case
of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-16, there has been some very good
writing in recent years by academic historians about what happened and
why. I am thinking of the work of Donald Bloxham, Raymond Kevorkian,
Taner Akcam and others. Ronald Suny is about to publish a new book
which looks excellent. However, much less has been written about the
aftermath and politics of the issue and the way it has changed over the
last 100 years. I am thinking of the struggles in the Armenian diaspora
about the Soviet Union, Stalin’s territorial claims against Turkey
in the 1940s, the terrorism of the 1970s and the Turkish response,
the re-awakening and demonstrations of 1965. In particular, over the
last 12 years an enormous amount has happened in Armenian-Turkish
relations much of it very positive. I write about my trips to Turkey,
the “Armenian opening” in Diyarbakir and the re-discovery of oral
histories and Islamicized Armenians. So I wanted to write a book that
reflects on all those issues.

Who is the book for? Anyone who takes an interest in the whole complex
of Armenian-Turkish relations. Also, anyone who is interested in a
bigger question that cuts across morality and politics, “What do we
owe to the past and those who suffered? What do we need to remember
and honor and when should we let go?”

– Are there any plans to translate the book to Armenian and Turkish?

– A respected Turkish publisher, Iletisim, is working on a Turkish
version of the book. Obviously I would be delighted to see an Armenian
version too, but there are no proposals at the moment. I think there
are a lot of information and episodes in the book which are little
known to both Armenian and Turkish readers.

– When naming the book “Great Catastrophe” you meant “Medz Eghern”
– how the Armenians call the Genocide?

– Yes, that is right. One question I wanted to investigate in the book
was about the naming of the catastrophe that the Armenians suffered
in 1915-16. “Great Catastrophe” seems to me a very powerful term. I
know that there are other Armenian words as well and that Marc
Nichanian likes to use the word “aghed”. The Turkish intellectual
Cengiz Aktar also calls the Armenian Genocide the “Great Catastrophe
of all Anatolia”.

– In your recent piece in the Foreign Affairs you have suggested that
Armenians focus too much on the “G-word”. Do you think that Armenians
could make better use of President Obama’s usage of “Medz Eghern” term?

– When beginning my work, I set myself to answer two research
questions. First, “When, how and why did the catastrophic trauma
that Armenians called ‘Medz Eghern’ come to be called the ‘Armenian
Genocide?'” Second, “How come that usually the first question people
ask when the issue comes up about the destruction of the Ottoman
Armenians is ‘Was it genocide?'” I do find it a bit strange that for
most people this has become the question remind people that there
are other big questions to be asked and answered.

– Don’t you think that there is too much hypocrisy around this issue?

Everybody in the West accepts that more then 1 million Armenians were
killed in 1915 and it obvious that such a massacre was a planned
operation against particular nation. So, everybody agrees that it
was genocide by a definition, but prefers to name it with other terms.

Don’t you think that this hypocrisy makes Armenian angry and unable
to fix their attention on other conceptual issues?

– I understand that Armenians get angry about this. The Turkish
Republic didn’t carry out the killings but it has suppressed the
history of what happened-although that has begun to change. And
most scholars, starting with Raphael Lemkin, who have studied the
history, agree that what the Ottoman state did to the Armenians fit
the category of “genocide,” the word Lemkin invented in 1944. As I
say, I also use the term “Armenian Genocide.” It’s become a standard
scholarly term and I prefer to be on the side of those who use it,
including many Turks, rather than those who do not.

Having said that, I wrote the book and also the Foreign Affairs essay
in part to invite Armenians and others to consider the negative
side of the word “Genocide.” The term has become very politicized
and there are endless legalistic arguments about the meaning of the
definition used in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention
of Genocide. It is used as a political term of abuse and numerous
ethnic groups aspire to call their historical suffering “genocide.” In
my view all this hullabaloo throws up a barrier to ordinary people
understanding the human story of the Medz Eghern and to ordinary Turks
recognizing it. So, yes, there is a certain logic to the use of the
“genocide” word but it’s also, in view, a rather cold legal ugly term.

It is somewhat equivalent to a man whose grandparents were murdered
going around and telling friends and families and strangers “My
grandparents were the victims of homicide.” Correct, but not so
conducive to getting them to listen to your story.

– What you think – what went wrong with the Turkish-Armenian protocols
process? Armenians miscalculated the situation and were tricked by
the Turks who just wanted to gain time and were not going to normalize
the relations? Or the Turks underestimated the level of Azerbaijan’s
influence on them? Or something else?

– I think everyone miscalculated a little. One part of the worldwide
Armenian community and one part of Turkey – the Armenian government
and one half of the Turkish government-wanted to normalize relations,
open the border and work on the problems from a position of greater
trust. But others were skeptical or fearful–I am thinking of many
Diaspora Armenians, some Turks, and Azerbaijan above all. And the
negative voices prevailed. I talked to most of the people involved
in the negotiations that began in 2007. The Swiss mediators did a
very professional job. The United States government pressed hard,
but I think it’s clear now that the Americans should have devoted
many more resources to persuading the doubters of the value of the
Protocols-and in the first place Azerbaijan, which played the key
role in blocking the deal.

– Armenian President needs to make a tough decision before April
24, 2015. One option is that he calls off the Armenian signature
under the protocols – and this move will be hardly welcomed by the
Western partners and U.S. in particular. Another option – he keeps
the protocols while understanding Turkey will not ratify them for
another 5 years. It seems that Turkey wins in both cases and Armenia
gets nothing. What you think? Or maybe you see some third option?

– I believe that President Sargsyan gains more internationally
by keeping the Armenian signature on the Protocols than he does by
revoking it. But of course he is a politician and he will use the fact
that he can revoke the document to win some leverage. It should not be
forgotten that the 2015 centenary puts pressure on Turkey to take some
constructive steps. I hope we can see some progress on some symbolic
issues – Armenian churches in Anatolia, the renaming of monuments and
street-names-as well as some practical ones, such as the laying of a
fiber-optic cable to the Armenian border. We should not forget that
there are many people in Turkey who still want a normalization of
relations with Armenia–and some of them are still in the government.

If the Armenian-Turkish wall cannot be pulled down all at once,
efforts can at least be made to take it down brick by brick.

– What you think about Russia’s role in Turkish-Armenian process?

Sergey Lavrov was present together Javier Solana, Hillary Clinton
and others during the protocols signing but it seemed that Russian
was not very much involved in the preparation process. And what is
Russia’s position today regarding Turkish-Armenian relations given
the fact of Putin-Erdogan rapprochement.

– I think the Russian government basically played “both sides”
on this issue. They saw benefits from a successful Armenian-Turkish
rapprochement, especially economic ones for the Russian-owned companies
in Armenia. But the failure of the Protocols process also enabled
them to strengthen the military alliance with Armenia.

Ara Tadevosyan talked to Tom de Waal

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