Azg Daily, Armenia
April 15 2010
WHY IS THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE STILL A TABOO?
By Erol Ozkoray
I heard about the Armenian genocide for the first time in Paris during
the 70s, and the very logical question I asked myself and also
expressed in my writing at that time (university papers, a reader’s
letter I sent to Le Monde newspaper, etc.) was the following: if the
Republic of Turkey is based on a rejection of the Ottoman Empire, then
why is the 1915 Armenian genocide not being dumped on the Ottomans?
Why is the Turkish Republic assuming responsibility for this
scandalous event, which is the 20th century’s first crime against
humanity and that century’s first genocide? Later, in my career as a
journalist, this question always remained on my agenda.
I am generally known as the journalist who explained Armenian
terrorism (ASALA) to Turkey during the years 1980 ` 1984. I was a
socialist, but I was also opposed to terrorism, and my articles even
lead to a deterioration of relations between Fran çois Mitterrand’s
socialist government (which I supported) and Turkey. Both myself and
my family and friends suffered a lot from ASALA: my friend Nazan
Erez’s father, Turkey’s Ambassador to France Ismail Erez was killed on
duty in Paris; my friend Gokberk Ergenekon was wounded in Rome; my
name was put on ASALA’s hit list and removed only after I met with
ASALA’s then lawyer Patrick Devedjian, who is now France’s Minister in
charge of the Economic Recovery Plan (in 1982, I did not see these
events as genocide, but I did not accept Turkey’s official version
either); my cousin Sitki Sencer was caught up in the shooting during
ASALA’S attack on the Ankara Esenboga airport and was shot 8 times by
Turkish policemen (miraculously, he survived) whereas my mother and
her sisters, also present, came away uninjured by the skin of their
teeth. In reality, the list is much longer, but the purpose in my
mentioning these is to indicate that I have worked a lot on the
Armenian question, I know quite a lot about it and I have suffered
because of it, and therefore I have the moral right to say the things
I’m about to say. In other words, the things I say here are the
conclusions an intellectual has reached after 35 years of engagement
with this issue and after repeated reassessments of his position.
If we go to the beginning… as the years passed, my reading
progressed and new documents and books came out, it was revealed that
the question I have been asking (to blame the genocide on the
Ottomans) was the product of sophistry and devoid of any meaning, due
to at least three reasons.
Firstly, even though Mustafa Kemal did not get along with the
triumvirate of Talat-Enver-Cemal and he did not take any part in the
Armenian genocide on account of being engaged in the fighting on the
Gallipoli front at the time (in a sense, these helped him be later
designated a leader), the genocide that had already been accomplished
served him very well structurally, because he based the Republican
regime on the Turkish race. During the years 1926 ` 1927, discourse on
the Turkish race constituted the principal nationalist ideology of the
State (Turkish race = Turkish nation), and therefore Anatolia had to
be `cleansed’ of all Christian and foreign elements (Armenians,
Greeks, Assyrians and Kurds). These policies of ethnic, cultural,
economic and social cleansing were actively implemented through seven
genocides executive during the Republican period. No Armenians, no
Greeks and no Assyrians were left in Anatolia. Only the Kurds
resisted, and despite four genocides, they could not be exterminated.
Just for this reason, every person in Turkey must respect the Kurds’
struggle for their lives and their rights. Thus, there was a
continuity inherited from the Ottomans with regards to `Massive
Annihilation’. In 95 years, 10 genocides were carried out on these
lands (see the archives at ). Among the founders of
the Republic, there were murderers who had been involved in, organized
and implemented the Armenian genocide.
Secondly, there is another line of continuity from the Ottomans to the
Republic, as money and goods confiscated from the Armenians played a
determining role in the financing of the War of Independence. Apart
from monetary and weapons help received from Lenin, the biggest
financial source for the War of Independence was money appropriated
through the Armenian genocide. With this money, weapons were
purchased, an army was set up and its logistics provided. The persons
involved in these came to form a new social class that owed its wealth
to the Armenians’ property (for instance, the porter Haci Omer Sabanci
is the ancestor of today’s Sabanci family, and grocer Vehbi Koc the
progenitor of today’s Koc family), and thus the social bases of the
movement emerged.
Thirdly, murderers involved in the Armenian genocide (here I’m talking
about people with blood on their hands) came to constitute a portion
of the new Republican regime’s political and administrative elite.
They purchased their respectability by donating some of the money they
had appropriated from the Armenians to the financing of the War of
Independence. Mustafa Kemal pretended not to know their past. Some
examples: Å?ukru Kaya (Minister of the Interior, Secretary General of
the People’s Republican Party), Mustafa Abdulhalik Renda (President of
the Turkish Grand National Assembly), Arif Fevzi(Minister), Ali Cenani
Bey (Minister of Industry), Rustu Aras (Foreign Minister). Once again,
there is continuity from the Ottoman period. Mustafa Kemal benefited
from these people; he used them, and gave these murderers prominent
positions in the Republic.
The reasons for the Armenian genocide becoming a taboo are hidden in
these three observations. Otherwise, it would have been very easy to
solve the problem by putting the blame for the genocide on the
Ottomans. The person who put these issues on the agenda by producing
major works that influenced Turkish intellectuals on the matter of the
Armenian genocide is Taner Akçam. Because of the reasons I have
enumerated, whenever the expression `Armenian genocide’ is uttered,
people lacking good sense in Turkey go berserk. What I’m saying here
is that, unlike the official history thesis, the Turkish Republic was
not founded after an anti-imperialist war (in the War of Independence,
the Army only fought against the Greeks, but not against France or
England, which were the imperialist powers of the era), rather, it was
founded on the Armenian genocide. This reappraisal means that what you
and everyone have been told and taught would be sent to the trash bin.
This is the real reason why there is a big trauma whenever anybody
says `Armenian genocide’.
Everything has been a lie since 1923. In other words, the situation is
not as simple as the state hiding the reality of the genocide, as
certain intellectuals are now saying. Today, when one talks about
recognizing the Armenian genocide, practically everything has to be
put on the table: the Republic, Kemalism, the State, the State’s
ideology, those who founded and governed the Republic, Turkey’s
regime, this country’s political system, its army, its universities,
its educational programs, its press, its elite, its businessmen (the
sources of certain capital accumulations), the courts, the political
parties, etc. It is self-evident that no one can cope with such a
gigantic confrontation. Especially in the kind of crypto-fascist and
crypto-totalitarian regime where we are living, it is very difficult `
not to say impossible ` to settle accounts with the things enumerated
above even in one’s dreams!
This traumatic situation, in its historical, political and
intellectual dimensions, goes miles and miles beyond the capacity of
our current Islamist government. Nothing can be accomplished with the
protocols signed between Turkey and Armenia. In any event, didn’t the
invisible forces in Ankara make the Armenia Protocols null and void
within 24 hours, and through the very hand of the Prime Minister? This
State, in its current structure, will repulse any solution, as there
is no solution that it could accept. The problem can be solved ` like
the other problems of the country ` only by a statesman with the
highest intellectual credentials, who has internalized the culture of
democracy, come to power through elections and formed public opinion
in this direction. It is impossible for ordinary small persons to
overcome Turkey’s gigantic problems. We need politicians and statesmen
on the level of Mitterrand, Allende and[Felipe] Gonzales in order to
resolve these gangrenous problems. In other words, we need Big Men.
hp?storyid=4140
At the site mentioned, the author has about 10 other articles (all in
Turkish), several of which partly overlap with this one, and there are
also several that are on abolishing the Turkish Armed Forces in its
current `autocephalous’ form, in favor of a professional army (in this
sense, he expresses his admiration of Felipe Gonzales, mentioned in
last paragraph, who did much the same thing in Spain. Mustafa
Abdulhalik Renda (Talat’s brother-in-law, apparently), President of
the Grand National Assembly for several terms, is covered in both
English and Turkish wikipedias.
Ared Misirliyan, Montreal