Washington Post
April 18 2015
Can Armenia move past its hatred of Turkey?
By Arman Grigoryan April 17 at 8:21 PM
The writer is an assistant professor of international relations at
Lehigh University. He served in the Armenian government from 1991 to
1993 as an analyst and a foreign service officer.
Next Friday Armenians in this country and around the world will
commemorate the 100th anniversary of the most calamitous event of
their history — the mass murder of their ancestors in the Ottoman
Empire. There will be solemn speeches, ceremonies and rallies. There
will be impassioned calls on governments that have not recognized the
murder of Armenians as genocide to do so. And there will be
denunciations of the Turkish policy of denial.
The anniversary is also a good opportunity for another kind of
reflection. The Armenian politics of memory has not been without its
controversial aspects, which are rarely discussed openly and honestly.
Such a discussion is long overdue, especially if Armenians do not want
the politics to harm Armenia and are interested in Turkey someday
recognizing the genocide.
First, if we are genuinely interested in not just the rest of the
world but also Turkey recognizing the Armenian genocide — and, at
least to this Armenian, that is the recognition that matters — we must
fundamentally revise our attitudes toward Turks, as emotionally
understandable as these attitudes may be. Specifically, we must stop
treating criticism of or even antagonism toward the Turkish state as
interchangeable with hostility and hatred toward Turks themselves.
Ordinary and decent Turks should be our allies in the struggle for
recognition by the Turkish state. Yet we can hardly hope to win their
solidarity if we continue to indulge in anti-Turkish rhetoric, glorify
the Armenian terrorists who killed Turkish diplomats in the 1970s and
1980s or portray Turks as a race of bloodthirsty barbarians to our
children in schools and summer camps. It is high time we reconsider
these attitudes, not only because they are politically self-defeating
but also because they are wrong.
Second, we must decide what exactly we want from Turkey — recognition
of the genocide or territorial restitution? It is no secret that some
of the most important Armenian organizations in the diaspora espouse
an overtly revisionist ideology and argue that recognition of the
genocide by the world and Turkey is only the first step in the process
of reclaiming our ancestral homeland and establishing Armenian
sovereignty over parts of eastern Turkey.
Under pressure from such organizations, even Armenia’s government
decided to include allusions to such claims in its recent declaration
on the 100th anniversary of the genocide. Putting aside all kinds of
thorny issues related to international law and treaties that have
determined the territorial status quo, it should be painfully obvious
the Turkish state will never soften its stance on recognition in the
face of these claims. Therefore, if it is recognition that we want,
and I do believe that recognition should be the priority, we must
renounce them.
Third, if the diaspora cares not only about the memory of Armenians
who perished in 1915 but also about the security and well-being of
Armenians living today, it should stop pressuring Armenia to adopt an
aggressive posture toward Turkey. Armenia can ill afford such a
posture. In fact, normalization of relations with Turkey, frozen
because of the Armenian-Azerbaijani dispute in Nagorno-Karabakh, is a
vital interest for landlocked, poor and vulnerable Armenia.
Yet, when the first post-communist government of Armenia adopted a
course for normalization with Turkey, it became the target of a
vicious campaign by some organizations in the diaspora, including the
most powerful one — the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. Proponents
of normalization remain the most despised targets for these
organizations. The corollary of this problematic attitude is the
diaspora’s willingness to support any regime in Armenia as long as it
takes a hard line against Turkey, no matter how corrupt and
anti-democratic that regime is.
I am not naive enough to think that if Armenians fundamentally
transformed their rhetoric and renounced territorial claims against
Turkey, the Turkish state would revise its position overnight and
Turkish society would fundamentally transform. That will not happen
quickly, and it may never happen. But it is my firm conviction that if
there is any likelihood of such a transformation, the Armenian
campaign, with its traditional rhetoric, demands and ideology, is only
creating obstacles in its path.
Turkey, in fact, has undergone some important changes with respect to
the “Armenian issue.” Literature on the Armenian genocide is freely
available there, many Turkish scholars and intellectuals have
acknowledged and condemned the genocide, commemoration ceremonies are
held annually in Istanbul and the Turkish state has even moved from
its preposterous position of flat denial to acknowledging the Armenian
tragedy and offering condolences.
Armenians can and should encourage a deepening of this trend. They
must also impress upon organizations in the diaspora that support or
opposition to the government in Armenia must depend on more than its
rhetoric vis-Ã -vis Turkey. Business as usual will only delay
recognition by Turkey, exacerbate the problems between Turkey and
Armenia and contribute to bad governance in Armenia.