PETER BALAKIAN AND DEBORAH LIPSTADT
New York Jewish Week, USA
09/21/2007
Turkey Must Acknowledge Its Past
In the wake of the Turkish government’s anger over the Anti-Defamation
League’s recent decision to acknowledge as genocide the extermination
of more than a million Armenians in 1915, crucial issues concerning
human rights, historical memory, and ethics have come to light.
Turkey’s ambassador to Israel, Namik Tan, told The Jerusalem Post
(Aug. 27) that Israel must force the ADL to retract its acknowledgement
of the Armenian genocide, that failure to do this would be a stab in
the heart of the Turkish people and that the Turkish people do not
distinguish between Israeli Jews and Diaspora Jews on this issue. Tan
also said that recognizing the Armenian genocide will mean that
"my ancestors have done something inconceivable," and it will set
off "a campaign against Turkey and the Turkish people." Though he
subsequently tempered his language, this was a very harsh attack with
overtones of classic views of Jewish power.
Turkey has told Israel and various Jewish organizations that if they
favor a congressional resolution acknowledging the genocide it will
not bode well for Israel’s relationship with Turkey or for Turkish
Jews. It is true that Turkey is the only Muslim nation willing to
maintain a close diplomatic relationship with Israel and remains the
only Muslim country that allows a small Jewish community to live in
relative freedom. We know that Turkey is pressured by internal factions
and by other Muslim nations to sever ties with Israel. And it is also
clear how fragile and tenuous, despite seeming quite comfortable,
Jewish life in Turkey is.
Nevertheless, it is equally crucial that historical denial of genocide
be addressed in an uncompromising fashion. While historians are taught
to be skeptical, it is absurd to be skeptical or neutral about events
of the magnitude of the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust, which
are attested to by reams of documents and material evidence as well
as testimonies by victims, perpetrators and bystanders. Neutrality
or skepticism in the case of these two tragedies constitutes denial,
which is the final stage of genocide in that it seeks to demonize
the victims and rehabilitate the perpetrators.
The broad and international record on the Armenian genocide has been
created by an international body of dispassionate scholarship for
decades, and notably, affirmed by The International Association of
Genocide Scholars in repeated statements that note that this history
is not controversial anywhere in the world but in Turkey. Raphael
Lemkin, the noted legal scholar who lost 49 members of his family
in the Holocaust, invented the concept of genocide, in part, on the
basis of what happened to the Armenians in 1915.
The main actor here, however, is Turkey. It is time for Turkey to end
its nine-decade campaign to erase the Armenian genocide. It is time
to stop bullying and attempting to coerce states and organizations
that engage history honestly. Such a campaign is immoral.
By passing the resolution (H.R. 106) before it, Congress must make
it clear to Turkey that, even as we welcome its alliance with the
United States in so many arenas, the time for this denial is over.
Turkey’s calls for a commission of historians to resolve this issue are
disingenuous, especially for a country that has a law that makes it
a crime to "insult Turkishness," under which scholars and publishers
who have spoken about the Armenian genocide have been prosecuted and
even killed. It is wrong and unbecoming for the Jewish community to
participate in what can best be described as a charade, i.e. the notion
that the jury of historians is "still out" on this issue. Imagine if
Germany had taken a similar stance with the Holocaust. While hindsight
may be 20/20, it is regrettable that the Jewish community telegraphed
a message to Turkey that this is a matter of debate and negotiation.
We understand Turkey’s difficulty in acknowledging these dark episodes
in its past. However, acknowledging this crime would, rather than
spawn a campaign against Turkey, as ambassador Tan claims, prompt
applause from the international community. It will be a sign that
Turkey can critique its past honestly. The most effective way for a
country to resolve its criminal past is to acknowledge the criminal
act, try to make some form of recompense and become a force in trying
to prevent the repetition of such events. Germany has, with varying
degrees of success, achieved that. It is time for Turkey to do the
same with the Armenian genocide. And it is time to stop threatening
a small vulnerable Jewish community or the one other parliamentary
democracy in the Middle East for acknowledging historical truth.
The time has come for the U.S. Congress to join more than 20 other
countries, the Vatican, the European Parliament and other world
organizations, in affirming the Armenian genocide. Given that H.R. 106
is a nonbinding resolution with no "teeth in it," the hysteria over
the resolution has reached a point of absurdity. It is time for Turkey
to acknowledge the moral perspective of other countries, and time to
move on.
Peter Balakian is professor of the humanities at Colgate University
and the author of "The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and
America’s Response," which won the Raphael Lemkin Prize. Deborah
Lipstadt is professor of Holocaust studies at Emory University and
author of "History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving,"
which won the National Jewish Book Award.