Today’s Zaman, Turkey
July 10 2011
Armenian experts call on Turkey to look at the diaspora with new eyes
10 July 2011, Sunday / EMINE KART, YEREVAN, ANKARA
Two leading Armenian experts based in Armenia have argued that
Turkey’s approach towards the Armenian diaspora is not healthy or
helpful, especially when the issue is restoring bilateral relations
between Ankara and Yerevan.
`Turkey doesn’t actually understand the diaspora, seeing it as the
enemy, and that is based on ignorance,’ says the founder of the
Yerevan-based Regional Studies Center (RSC), an independent, nonprofit
think tank, Richard Giragosian, while director of the Yerevan-based
Civilitas Foundation Salpi Ghazarian says that the diaspora is
misunderstood by `the official Turkey,’ since there is not just one
diaspora.
Giragosian and Ghazarian’s remarks came separately while they were
speaking with a group of journalists who visited Armenia from June 27
to July 3. The seven journalists paid a visit to the neighboring
country under an initiative by the Hrant Dink Foundation. This was the
third `Armenia-Turkey Journalist Dialogue Project,’ which is organized
annually by the foundation with the support of the Heinrich Böll
Foundation.
`Whether it is in the States or from South America, Europe or the
Middle East, our dialogue is fine and great, we have great
connections, we understand the diaspora,’ Ghazarian, said when asked
about dialogue between the foundation and the diaspora.
Civilitas was founded by Vartan Oskanian, a former foreign minister of
Armenia, in October 2008. Oskanian is a member of the honorary board
of Civilitas.
`Not only is it not a problem for us, it is not even a question for
us. I explain Civilitas as the opportunity to connect Armenians to
Armenians. That includes Armenians in Armenia to Armenians in the
diaspora as well. The media in Armenia is not what it ought to be, the
government is not as responsive as it needs to be, and so this is an
opportunity to improve those processes as well. I don’t make a
distinction between what we need to do with the diaspora and what we
need to do with Armenia. We simply need to be a source of information,
of activity and an opportunity to get involved in order for this
society to grow in a healthy way and to open dialogue within itself
and with its neighbors. For that, I need Armenia and I need the
diaspora. I don’t make a distinction,’ Ghazarian went on to say as she
hosted the journalists at the Civilitas’ office. `Now, you haven’t
asked, but let me answer. I think that the diaspora is misunderstood,
there are several diasporas. There is the new diaspora, the diaspora
that left after independence, and it is a diaspora that continues to
maintain very real immediate links to Armenia individually. There is a
traditional, old diaspora that is both the institutions and a whole
lot of individuals. Before independence, that diaspora was known just
by its institutions because there was no other way to interact with
them. With independence, that diaspora is not the diaspora of the
institutions alone. If you look at Armenia now, those who are
investing, those who are coming and visiting, are not the
institutions. Surely, institutions come, but indeed, it is by and
large individual Armenians from the diaspora who need to reconnect,’
Ghazarian elaborated.
`Official Turkey cannot misunderstand, misinterpret and misperceive
that sort of engagement, that is, diaspora’s engagement in Armenia. It
isn’t simply about three political parties, three large benevolent
organizations and 500 community organizations. It is about individual
Armenians all around the world wanting to connect. The churches,
political parties and lobbies are all part of the diaspora, but they
are not the beginning and the end of the diaspora,’ she said.
Giragosian is an analyst specializing in international relations, with
a focus on economics, military security and political developments in
the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and Asia. He hosted the
visiting group at the RSC along with young Armenian-Americans, who
attended the meeting between Giragosian and the journalists.
`Turkey doesn’t actually understand the diaspora, seeing it as the
enemy, and that is based on ignorance. ¦ What the Turkish government
does not understand is that the Armenian government does not control
the diaspora. On the contrary, it is very hard for the Armenian
government to control or direct the Armenian diaspora,’ Giragosian
said. `The Turkish government is mistaken in seeing the Armenian
diaspora as the unified anti-Turkish enemy driven by an anti-Turkish
agenda. This is simply not true,’ he added, noting that there is `a
second mistake’ being made by Turkey.
`Turkey has unofficial ambassadors, bridges to Armenia: the Armenians
of Ä°stanbul. They don’t use them properly and they don’t use them
enough. And, within the broader framework of the ignorance about the
diaspora, there is also ignorance about the Armenian community within
Turkey, ignorance about Armenia in general. Because closing borders
and refusing to have diplomatic relations also means that Turkey has
not known Armenia since 1990. There is no understanding of the current
reality in Armenia,’ Giragosian argued in remarks, elaborating on what
he sees as Turkey’s second mistake. Ghazarian shared her personal
story with the group.
`My grandfather was a merchant from Gürün [a town in the Central
Anatolian province of Sivas]. He was travelling and when he returned,
his wife and grown sons had been killed. On the way to Aleppo, he went
to a village where there was a young Armenian woman living with a
family. He bought her, paid money for her. My grandmother was not
asked if she wanted to stay or leave; she was bought and taken. He
married her and they had a child, my mother. Later my grandmother ran
away from him. You know there is this 13 or 14-year-old young woman
and a 50-year-old man, so she ran away. Mother never forgave my
grandmother for that. My mother and grandmother were raised in an
orphanage in Aleppo, and I took my daughter to Aleppo this time last
year. We went to the orphanage where my mother and grandmother were
raised after we had visited Ä°stanbul a few times. And when we visited
Ä°stanbul, my daughter loved it,’ Ghazarian explained.
`So, her feelings about Ä°stanbul were always positive until Prime
Minister [Recep Tayyip] ErdoÄ?an said `We gave them pocket money on
their deportation.’ After he said that, my daughter asked, `Really,
where was grandma’s pocket money?” Ghazarian continued.
Ghazarian was referring to remarks delivered by ErdoÄ?an in November
2007 during a visit to Washington, D.C. `There was no genocide here.
What took place was called deportation because that was a very
difficult time. It was a time of war in 1915. This was about the time
when there were rebellions. There was rebellion in different parts of
the [Ottoman] Empire. Actually, Armenians were known to be very loyal
subjects of the empire. ¦ There was provocation by some other
countries, and the Armenians became part of the rebellion in those
years, so the government of the time provided them with a travel
allowance and started deporting the Armenian citizens to other parts
of the empire. We have documents in our own archives that attest to
this fact. There are all sorts of instructions about how many people
are to be sent from one area to another and how much money is to be
paid to them as travel allowance, and we have all those documents. So,
what we say is that those who counter those arguments must come up
with their own documents, but there are no documents to be shown,’
ErdoÄ?an was quoted as saying as he responded to a question at a
National Press Club meeting.
Ghazarian added: `Official Turkey cannot afford to lose that
generation. For her [Ghazarian’s daughter], it is not personal, unless
he [ErdoÄ?an] personalizes it. She has no problem with saying `I love
Ä°stanbul,’ as I do. That does not mean that the rewriting of history
must continue. The two can be separated from each other. I, the
victim, can separate them. It remains for the government to be able to
separate them.’
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