Acknowledging Armenian Genocide Necessary for Turkish Democracy
by Mavi Zambak
Asia News, Italy
April 22 2005
Antakya (AsiaNews) — “For Turkey, acknowledging the Armenian genocide
would be an important step on the way of full democratisation and
would increase the country’s international prestige,” this according
to Ghagik Bagdassarian, Armenian Ambassador to Italy, who like all
Armenians after so many decades still insists that the world not forget
and that Turkey admit its responsibilities in the extermination of
countless Armenians.
April 24 marks the 90th anniversary of the start of the mass slaughter
that led to the death of up to 1.5 million Armenians between 1915
and 1923.
Turkey has always rejected that claim, arguing instead that 300,000
Armenians and thousands of Turks died in a ‘civilian uprising’ during
the First World War when the former rebelled against Ottoman rule.
Any accusations of ethnic cleansing are for the Turkish government
“an invention that weakens the nation”.
The obstinate negationist camp in Turkey is less solid than it once
was; an ‘Armenian question’ has become a public issue.
In view of Turkey’s application to join the European Union, many
national parliaments in France, Canada and Switzerland have urged
Ankara to officially acknowledge that genocide did take place.
Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyp Erdogan has responded recently
by urging historians to examine the country’s archives in order to
establish the truth.
“Teams of historians from both sides should conduct studies in these
archives,” he said, adding that “[w]e do not want future generations
to have a difficult life because of hatred and resentment.”
In the meantime, the issue has become highly controversial in
Turkey because the local press has given space to voices trying to
convince public opinion that Europe is behind the proposed historical
investigation, which for them amounts to blackmail to satisfy unfounded
Armenian claims and demands.
However, a small group of Turkish intellectuals have started to raise
doubts about the official view of what happened and in doing so have
raised a hornet’s nest for themselves. For example, Turkish writer
Orhan Pamuk has received death threats after admitting to a German
publication that “a million Armenians were killed in Turkey”.
For Ambassador Bagdassarian, any historical judgement must “be limited
to those who were effectively responsible for the extermination”
(i.e. Turkish leaders of the time). He also noted that Armenians have
no intention of “blaming the Turkish people”.
Armenians, especially the 80,000 who still call Turkey home, only
want the genocide inflicted on their people stop being treated as a
“nameless crime”, and be instead acknowledged as a deep scar on the
whole of humanity.
As some survivors point out, “90 years are just a short period of
time if we haven’t learnt any lesson from it, if that genocide was
but a rehearsal of other massacres, other holocausts”.
Those years “are nothing if today people still try to forget or
place economic or political interests before truth and justice. The
sacrifice of those martyrs would be worthless if nothing is written
about them in history books, if the anniversary is just another day,
if what happened is justified and if we become accomplices with the
criminals of those years.”