ANGST OVER ARMENIA
Kasmir Monitor, India
April 17 2015
Saturday, 18 April 2015
Aijaz Zaka Syed
Angst over Armenia
I am an admirer of all things Turkish. I have fond memories of a
few days spent in Turkey, exploring its rich tapestry of history and
heritage, especially in Istanbul. I have yet to come across a more
fascinating city.
Muslims in the Subcontinent share strong cultural and historical ties
with Turkey thanks to the long Muslim and Mughal rule in India. The
founder of the Mughal dynasty, Babar, was of Turkish stock and wrote
his fine memoirs, Tuzk-e-Babri, in the language that came naturally
to him – Turkish.
Why are we talking about Turkey though? With the 100th anniversary of
the Armenian genocide approaching (April 24), this seems to be open
season on Turkey. This week, an angry Ankara summoned the Vatican
ambassador and recalled its own from there to register its protest
after Pope Francis uttered the ‘G’ word to describe the Armenian
tragedy.
“The first genocide of the 20th century struck Armenian people”,
said the pontiff during a mass in St Peter’s Basilica to mark the
centenary of the tragedy in which a million Armenians are said to
have perished at the hands of the Ottoman army of course.
Turkey, however, rejects the charge, arguing that thousands of Turks
died as well in civil strife when Armenians rose up against the Ottoman
rulers and sided with the Russian and western forces. Ankara argues
that hundreds of thousands of Muslim besides Armenians were killed in
conflicts that engulfed the eastern Ottoman Empire during World War I.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan responded angrily to Pope’s comments
on Tuesday: “We will not allow historical incidents to be taken out
of their genuine context, and be used as a tool to campaign against
our country. I condemn the Pope and would like to warn him not to
make similar mistakes again.”
On Wednesday, the European Parliament joined Pope Francis in urging
Turkey to recognise the 1915 events as genocide, prompting another
rebuke from Ankara. Turkey balks at attempts to put the Ottomans
in the same category as Nazi Germany and a string of dictators from
Stalin to Pol Pot.
Some 20 nations, however, recognise the 1915 killings as genocide. In
2008 Barack Obama condemned them as such although in 2009 – as
president – he was more circumspect in his speech commemorating the
tragedy: “My interest remains the achievement of a full, frank and
just acknowledgment of the facts. The best way to advance that goal
right now is for the Armenian and Turkish people to address the facts
of the past as a part of their efforts to move forward.”
Exactly! The two sides need to move on and that cannot happen
without Turkey acknowledging the past. Excesses may have indeed been
committed by a dying empire, desperately trying to hold on to its
fast slipping dominions. Confronted with the Russian aggression and
combined onslaught of European powers, the receding Ottoman empire
had been fighting for its survival.
The Battle of Gallipoli saw the entire west, including forces from as
far as Australia, ganged up against the world’s only surviving Muslim
empire, eventually dismembering it into bits and pieces. And like
all empires under siege, the Ottoman troops were guilty of excesses
in Armenia, just as they had been in other parts of the crumbling
caliphate. And it is about time modern Turkey acknowledged it. There
is no point in living in denial about it.
But while what happened in Armenia was truly horrific, was it
a coldblooded and calculated genocide along the lines of Jewish
Holocaust at the hands of Nazis or the ethnic cleansing of Balkan
Muslims at the hands of Serbs in 1990s?
The Armenians may have borne the Ottoman wrath for siding with the
invaders but were they picked and eliminated for what they were and
believed in as had been the case with Jews and Muslims in the Balkans?
If it is any consolation, the Ottomans weren’t any less brutal in
dealing with seditious subjects in Muslim lands. The Egyptian soldiery
was dispatched to deal firmly with the rebellious Arabs.
So the attempt by Pope Francis to give this whole issue a religious
overtone comparing it with Christians fleeing oppression at the hands
of Isis is absurd. Equally over the top has been Turkey’s reaction
to the pontiff’s comments.
Whatever the historical circumstances, what happened in 1915 resulting
in the loss of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives was unfortunate
and unconscionable and deserves to be condemned in strongest terms.
War crimes and crimes against humanity are among the gravest in
international law and they are to be dealt with as such no matter
who the victims and their tormentors are. Martin Luther King rightly
argued that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
More often than not though, it’s not genuine humanitarian concerns
but realpolitik and hypocrisy that dictate such denunciations. We are
selective in our collective outrage and choosing our victims. So has
been the case with the Armenian tragedy. It has become an annual ritual
for western politicians and media to beat Ankara with this big stick.
To be fair to Turkey, in the past few years it has gone out of its
way to reach out to its neighbours, including Armenia and Greece,
in an attempt to heal the past. Erdogan surprised everyone, including
his own people, in 2009 when he acknowledged Turkey’s troubled past:
“Those with different ethnic identities were expelled from our
country. This indeed was the consequence of a fascist approach.”
In the same year, in what came to be known as soccer diplomacy
he famously invited Armenian President Serzhe Sarkisian to Turkey
to watch a football match between their national teams. Last year,
Erdogan sincerely apologised and offered condolences for the loss of
hundreds of thousands of Armenian lives in 1915, something unimaginable
for many Turkish politicians. So here is a nation that has had the
courage to own up to its past.
On the other hand, those rushing to condemn and burn Turkey at the
stake hardly come across smelling of roses. Who can feign ignorance
of Europe’s own illustrious past in the last three centuries? Almost
every single European power once boasted of and benefited from
its rich colonies in Africa, Asia and Americas. Besides raping and
denuding Africa of its fabled riches, they stole its most precious
resource by enslaving millions of its people and selling them like
cattle around the world.
Don’t we know how Americas and Australia were won for the west,
nearly wiping out their indigenous populations? Thousands were hanged
in India when it rose in revolt against the empire in 1857.
In the last century alone, millions were killed in the Philippines,
Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia, as part of the colonial project. Tens
of thousands of Palestinians have been killed and millions driven
from their homes after their country was generously gifted away to
European Jews.
We have seen more than a million people killed in Iraq and Afghanistan
in the last one decade alone as part of western wars, not to mention
the chaos unleashed across the Muslim world. Who will account for
all these crimes? How would the European Parliament describe what
some of its member states visited on their former colonies?
The Pope is right in cautioning humanity against forgetting the
‘senseless slaughter’ of Armenians 100 years ago. But while doing so,
let’s also spare a thought for millions of victims of western wars and
historical wrongs. Selective memory, like selective justice, does more
harm than good. Without acknowledgement, there is no reconciliation.