Ara Sanjian
After the Islamist Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi
or AKP) started governing Turkey in 2002, a number of Turkey watchers
privately told their Armenian friends to expect a different approach
from this new political elite regarding Ankara’s official position on
the Armenian Genocide of 1915. They argued that the Young Turks, who
executed the genocide, were positivists, nationalists, and
social-Darwinists, not Islamists. Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), the
founder of the Turkish Republic, which replaced the Ottoman Empire, had
himself been a Young Turk. When, in 1919, he embarked upon his
nationalist struggle against the victorious World War I Allies, Greeks
and Armenians, many former Young Turks joined him because remaining
loyal to the Ottoman sultan could have led to their arrest, trial, and
conviction for involvement in the genocide. The modern Turkish
nation-state, which Atatürk built, could not have been achieved had
Armenians and Greeks continued to live in large numbers in eastern
Turkey. For Young Turks-cum-Kemalists, recognizing Ottoman Turkish
government responsibility in effecting the Armenian Genocide would be
tantamount to accepting that many of the founders of their cherished
republic were implicated in one of the twentieth century’s bloodiest
episodes. The ideological predecessors of the Islamists, conversely,
were not in power in 1915. The Islamists do not idealize Atatürk’s
republic. It would be easier for them to come to terms with this painful
chapter and thus end the ongoing antagonism with Armenians.
While most of these developments have occurred under AKP rule, Islamists are not
among those pushing for change. The pioneers of this new approach are
liberal-minded intellectuals with ideals very different from those of
the Islamist current. They dream of a tolerant, multi-ethnic, and
multi-cultural Turkish society, celebrating its own diversity. Moreover,
this steadily growing movement, despite the interest it has created for
providing an alternative to the government’s standpoint, is still very
small and remains largely confined to Istanbul. It coexists uneasily
with the official discourse, which continues to be incomparably dominant
not only among government circles and the political elites of the
mainstream, but also across Turkey’s many provincial universities.
Erdoğan’s Inherited Dilemma
It is very difficult for outside observers to decide to what extent
we owe these changes to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the AKP
leader, or if they should be seen as an inevitable outcome of the
overall changes Turkey is witnessing since the end of direct military
rule in the 1980s.
The Young Turk leaders, who executed the genocide, fled the country
toward the end of World War I. The next (and last) Ottoman government
tried them in absentia, together with a number of their junior accomplices it had arrested. All were charged with unlawfully deporting the Armenians en masse
and massacring them. Mustafa Kemal, who deserted the Ottoman government
in 1919, was opposed to these trials. Under the republic, which he
established, the memory of the Armenian Genocide was pushed into
oblivion. Decades later, when the descendants of survivors began
demanding acknowledgement and compensation, Ankara adopted a rigid
attitude, denying that any genocide had occurred. It mobilized its
diplomatic corps toward that end and sponsored researchers ready to
justify its stand. In the official Turkish interpretation, it is
admitted that some Armenians suffered during World War I, but this
calamity was primarily the fault of the victims themselves, of the
Allies (Britain, Russia, and France), and sometimes of Kurdish and Arab
tribes in the area. Indeed, almost everybody is held responsible for
‘the Armenian tragedy’ except for Turks as an ethnic group, the Ottoman
government, and its army. Prior to the rise of nationalism in 19th-century
Middle East, this narrative goes, the different Ottoman ethnic
groups–Turks and Armenians included–had lived peacefully together in
Asia Minor for centuries. These arguments constitute essential pillars
of the official interpretation of the modern Turkish republic’s
‘Immaculate Conception’–to borrow a metaphor coined by Israel’s
so-called ‘New Historians’ some 25 years ago to describe their country’s
Myth of Origin. Numerous Turkish academics and journalists widely
reiterate this government-supported narrative to date. They reject that
‘the events of 1915’ were genocidal by questioning the occurrence of
massacres during the deportations. They also argue that Turks cannot
apologize for something that did not happen.
However, over the years, bits and pieces of confidential information
have leaked that at least some high-ranking Turkish officials have
recognized during closed discussions that, in an international political
atmosphere resulting from persistent Armenian activism, Ankara has
found itself in a hole and it should stop digging. In 1986, former
Turkish Ambassador Mahmut Dikerdem confided to the Greek Consul-General
in Istanbul that
he had actually proposed in a meeting in the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs that it was to the national interest of Turkey to recognize the Genocide and blame it on the previous Ottoman regime. His proposal was immediately rejected, and from that moment his problems started in the ministry. He further told me that if his country recognized the Genocide, the Turkish authorities were afraid that they would have to face compensation claims by the relatives of the victims and perhaps territorial claims by the Armenian SSR.[i]
In 2007, journalist Padraig Reidy reported that, because of fears
that ceding an inch in the genocide debate ‘might lead to endless legal
wrangling in the US courts,’ Turkish diplomats had studied the three Rs
of ‘recognition, recompense, and restitution.’ Thereafter, legal opinion
had shifted, and the Turkish foreign ministry had come to view that the
possibility of the US House of Representatives passing a non-binding
resolution affirming the Armenian Genocide would not open the flood gate
to class actions.[ii] More importantly, close aides of Turgut Özal
disclosed in 2012 that, soon after assuming the premiership in 1983, he
had defended behind closed doors ‘the idea of holding negotiations with
Armenians to settle a dispute that has had great potential to deal a
serious blow to Turkish interests in international politics.’ In 1984,
he ordered his advisors to work on possible scenarios about the economic and political price Turkey would have to pay if Turkey compromises with the Armenian diaspora, an early Turkish acceptance of the term “genocide.” Another scenario was also prepared. This plan sought to gauge the political cost of a Turkish acceptance of genocide within 20 to 30 years if Turkey is forced to accept it one day. His aim was to solve the problem before it got too late and through few concessions after reaching a deal with the Armenians… However, strong opposition from some politicians from his party and from the military led to him delaying sharing the details of the plan with the public, and he decided to wait for a more appropriate time.[iii]
This duality in maintaining a rigid denialist attitude in public,
while privately exploring the possibilities of compromise, has undergone
changes under Erdoğan and the AKP. While the state still supports the
old interpretation, and Turkish diplomats and politicians (including
Erdoğan) frequently restate its theses in public, at times they also
depart from this inflexible stand and come up with “softer”
interpretations of ‘the events of 1915,’ suggesting to Armenians,
directly or indirectly, formulae which they hope would provide the basis
for eventual reconciliation. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu is most
active in this regard. New concepts like ‘shared pain’ and ‘just memory’
appear to be his brainchildren. This approach no longer denies Armenian
suffering during World War I. It does not blame the Armenians for
massively killing Turks, even committing genocide against them, and it
shies away from using terms like ‘Civil War,’ which was employed in the
past to establish some sort of parity between Armenian and Turkish
wartime deaths. Last December, Davutoğlu went as far as saying that ‘we
never supported the deportation. This is an inhumane act and it is not
possible to approve of this.’[iv] The new approach still stresses,
however, that Turks and other Muslims also suffered immensely during the
war, and that their pain should also be commemorated. It refuses to see
any qualitative difference in the circumstances under which Muslims and
Armenians lost their lives in 1914-1918.
A Message of Condolence
Erdoğan’s condolences on April 23 to the grandchildren of Armenian victims in 1915 is the latest example of this duality.[v]
The key sentence in the Turkish Prime Minister’s message reads: ‘We
wish that the Armenians who lost their lives in the context of the early
twentieth century rest in peace, and we convey our condolences to their
grandchildren.’ The message also repeats Davutoğlu’s assertion that the
‘relocation’ of Armenians ‘had inhumane consequences.’ If limited to
these two sentences, the message, coming from Turkey’s chief executive,
is indeed unprecedented, and the international media reported it as
such; no Turkish leader had offered condolences to Armenians before.
However, these two sentences constitute only about 35 words in a
700-word-long message. The rest of the message reasserts old attitudes
and positions, which the international media largely ignored. Yet, their
dominant presence in the message made most Armenians wary of greeting
the latter with any measure of enthusiasm.
The message reiterates that the people of Anatolia had lived together
for centuries regardless of their different ethnic and religious
origins. It underlines that Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Armenians, and millions
of other Ottoman citizens all suffered during the last years of the
Ottoman Empire. It condemns ‘constructing hierarchies of pain’ or
‘comparing and contrasting suffering,’ arguing that ‘the incidents of
the First World War are our shared pain’ and that this painful period of
history should be evaluated through ‘a perspective of just memory.’
Referring indirectly to growing voices inside Turkey demanding the
official recognition of the genocide, the message welcomes the free
expression of different opinions and thoughts and asks all sides ‘to
approach different discourses with empathy and tolerance.’ However, it
also warns that ‘some may perceive this climate of freedom in Turkey as
an opportunity to express accusatory, offensive and even provocative
assertions and allegations’ and stresses that ‘using the events of 1915
as an excuse for hostility against Turkey and turning this issue into a
matter of political conflict is inadmissible.’ The message repeats
Turkey’s call for a commission with the participation of Armenian,
Turkish and international historians to study ‘the events of 1915’ in a
scholarly manner. It also takes pride in Turkey having opened its
archives to all researchers. Finally, the last paragraph of the message
pays tribute to ‘all Ottoman citizens who lost their lives in
the same period and under similar conditions’ (emphasis added), thus
reintroducing some sort of parity between Armenian and non-Armenian
wartime deaths.
Most Armenians, to whom the message is addressed, will point out that
while there may not have been Armenian uprisings in Asia Minor under
Ottoman rule until the late 19th century, Armenian-Turkish
coexistence in that period was still based on inequality; Islamic law
and custom deprived non-Muslims of many basic rights enjoyed by the
empire’s Muslim subjects, like joining the administration or enlisting
in the army. They will also object that the notion of ‘shared pain’ does
not distinguish between the circumstances under which Armenian and
Muslim deaths occurred. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians died as a
consequence of a premeditated government plan. Moreover, unlike the
Turkish state, which continuously denies the Armenian Genocide, the
Armenian state and Diasporan organizations would argue that they have
never questioned the suffering of Muslims during the Balkan Wars of
1912-1913 or during the Allied attack on Gallipoli in 1915. Armenians
did not cause these deaths, and they have never lobbied with foreign governments to silence public discussion of these events.
The issues of the archives and the proposed joint historical
commission are of more concern to researchers. While the Prime
Minister’s Archives in Istanbul are now largely accessible, and many
Armenian Genocide scholars have used them in recent years, they report
that many key documents, which they expected to find there, are missing.
This has led to the belief that this archive may have been combed,
probably by the military regime in the early 1980s. The equally
important Turkish General Staff Archives remain largely inaccessible.
Many Armenians are also worried that the Turkish government may
simply use the proposed historians’ commission to convince third parties
to avoid discussing or expressing opinion on the Armenian Genocide
indefinitely. Moreover, if the commission’s Armenian and Turkish members
will be appointed by their respective governments, they will be under
intense pressure from politicians and the public to toe the established
battle-lines, and if any side is eventually persuaded by the arguments
of the other, the first reaction among their ethnic kin will be to
accuse them of having sold out to the enemy. Such a commission cannot
succeed unless there is a dramatic change inside Turkish government
circles to face the past with courage.
These misgivings make many Armenians believe that the condolences,
offered the way they were, constitute too little at this stage and do
not provide hope for any major breakthrough in Armenian-Turkish
relations.
Erdoğan’s message also appears to many Armenians as being too late
because, in recent years, they have become accustomed to hearing more
unequivocal condemnation of, even apologies for, the Armenian Genocide
from certain Turkish scholars, journalists, and human rights activists.
Within this context, Erdoğan appears not as a confident leader guiding
his people firmly along the path of confronting the past and achieving
reconciliation, but as a politician desperate to keep up with the times
and mitigate international pressure, without unduly antagonizing his
more nationalistic rivals on the Turkish political scene.
Emulating Willy Brandt?
The Belge Publishing House, owned by the Zarakolu family, has issued
many Turkish translations of books on the Armenian Genocide since the
early 1990s. In the preface to the 1994 translation of Yves Ternon’s La Génocide Arménienne,
Rağıp Zarakolu suggested that a future Turkish head of government
should emulate former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s kneeling
down at the monument to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and
lay a wreath at the genocide memorial in Armenia. This image has
fascinated many Armenians since. It appears at the moment that Erdoğan
will not be that head of government. However, when such a visit
takes place eventually, future analysts will certainly look back at the
Erdoğan era as a necessary step on this difficult road. How they will
evaluate the role of Erdoğan the politician in this process is still
difficult to predict.
[i] Leonidas T. Chrysanthopoulos, Caucasus Chronicles: Nation-Building and Diplomacy in Armenia, 1993-1994. (Princeton and London: Gomidas Institute Books, 2002), 28.
[ii] Padraig Reidy, “Wrestling with genocide,” Index on Censorship, October 18, 2007, available at http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2007/10/wrestling-with-genocide/.
[iii] “Late President Turgut Özal Worked to Solve ‘Armenian Genocide’ Dispute,” Today’s Zaman, April 23, 2012, available at http://www.todayszaman.com/news-278371-late-president-turgut-ozal-worked-to-solve-armenian-genocide-dispute.html.
[iv] “Deportation of Armenians inhumane, Davutoğlu says in Yerevan,” Today’s Zaman, December 13, 2013, available at http://www.todayszaman.com/news-333980-deportation-of-armenians-inhumane-davutoglu-says-in-yerevan.html.
[v] The full translation of Erdoğan’s message is available in seven languages at http://www.basbakanlik.gov.tr/Forms/_Article/pg_Article.aspx?Id=e11bde56-a0b7-4ea6-8a9a-954c68157df9.
"E-International Relations," May 8, 2014
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