Sunday’s Zaman , Turkey
April 25 2010
A weekend to remember
ANDREW FINKEL, Columnist
It is a weekend packed with pain and paradox and a few absurdities. On
April 23, Turkey takes the day off to celebrate National Sovereignty
and Children’s Day, a strange juxtaposition of concepts that the
nation struggles to unravel the other 364 days of the year.
On April 24, 1915, some 250 prominent Armenian citizens in Ä°stanbul
were rounded up in a prelude to what Armenians worldwide commemorate
as a plan to eradicate their presence from their historic homeland. On
April 25, Australia and New Zealand remember the folly of war and the
landing of Allied forces on the beaches along the Gallipoli peninsula
in 1915 in an abortive attempt to knock the Ottoman Empire out of
World War I.
Let me confess that I have always been uncomfortable with Children’s
Day, which always struck me as being less about a celebration of
innocence than a way of forcing a loss of innocence in its
celebration. I can’t imagine any child enjoying parading in a sports
stadium engaged in Soviet-style synchronized flag-waving. And whereas
I can see it might be fun to be the child invited to sit in the prime
minister’s chair and bark platitudes at the press, the spectacle
always makes me wince. I know it is meant to be a passing of the baton
to future generations, but frankly watching perfectly normal children
pretend to be politicians has always struck me as unnatural, like the
British television ads that had chimpanzees dressed in business
clothes savoring a cup of tea. Far better to make politicians pretend
to be children for the day as a prelude to having them behave like
adults.
Turkey holds its breath on April 24 as though it were some apocalyptic
Groundhog Day. As long as the American president does not use the word
genocide to describe the terrible events of 1915, then it can go back
into hibernation for another year. What the president does is
acknowledge the suffering that the Armenians underwent without
uttering the word that will force America’s Turkish ally to engage in
a frenzy of self-harm. It is a ritual that each side perfects through
repetition.
By April 25, Ankara can relax. The wonderful thing about Anzac Day is
that the Australians and New Zealanders blame their own naiveté rather
the Ottoman army for the casualties they suffered. No wonder the
Turkish foreign minister, in his reaction to the genocide resolution
that slipped past the foreign affairs committee of the US House of
Representatives, asked why the Armenians don’t take a bit more of an
Antipodean view of life? `1915 is the year of so-called genocide for
them. For us, we say `pain.’ We are ready to discuss. The same year,
we had Gallipoli,’ Mr. DavutoÄ?lu told The Boston Globe, adding that
his own grandfather appeared on the long list of fatalities of the
Gallipoli campaign. And yet while the comparison can be made, it is
not one that flatters the Turkish side of the argument.
The question is, who is `them’ and who is `us’? It is one thing to be
a soldier who dies defending his country from a foreign invader;
another to be that same soldier whose family dies as a result of being
forcibly deported by the very government on whose behalf you are
risking your life. Capt. Sarkis Torossian was a much-decorated gunner
wounded while defending the Dardanelles in the Gallipoli Campaign. He
later was transferred to Palestine. There he discovered his sister in
rags and his fiancée dying of tuberculosis. From them he learned that
his parents had been killed along the way. Not surprisingly, he then
defected to the Arab side, or so he writes in his 1929 memoirs, `From
Dardanelles to Palestine.’
The time has come to stop transferring the burden of history to future
generations. It is necessary not just to call for a historical
commission but to empathize more openly with the descendants of 1915.
The Turkish children whose holiday has just come and gone deserve
something real to celebrate.
25.04.2010