Arda Eksigil
April 24 has a highly symbolic meaning for us, Turkish citizens. It
is a day of national reunification – a national rebirth of sorts. To a
nation deeply polarized over discussions on Islamism and secularism,
corruption scandals, political assassinations, and the ‘Kurdish
problem,’ April 24 presents itself as the perfect opportunity to
rekindle Turkey’s lost national fervor. On the day when Canada and the
world commemorate the mass murder of nearly 1.5 million Armenians by
Ottoman Turks in 1915, we defy the collective memory of the entire world
and simply refuse to remember.
He doesn’t. Geopolitical considerations win over moral ones, as
usual. The president follows the path set by his predecessors: he
acknowledges the suffering and pain of the Armenian people, talks about
horrendous massacres and mass murder – after all, it’s not what he says,
but what he declines to say, that matters. He is well aware of Turkey’s
position as a ‘key ally of the U.S.’.
The annual thriller ends in victory and relief. Until further notice,
Armenians are kindly invited to return to their hundred-year-old
mourning while we cheerfully go back to our necropolis, still haunted by
their grandparents’ agonizing souls. It is springtime, and the race for
the title in the National Football League is closing in. We’ve got
bigger issues than acknowledging a genocide.
Our glorious ancestors put on their best efforts to conceal the
actions in which they were engaged a hundred years ago. Names of
countless villages, mountains, and rivers that could have reminded us of
past Armenian presence were methodically changed; hundreds of churches
and schools were destroyed or reused as barns or warehouses (recycling
alla turca); houses were seized and redistributed among the local Muslim
population – the recently abandoned creaky Presidential Palace in
Ankara belonged to the Kasabians, an Armenian family that fled Ankara
during the genocide. Traces of Armenian heritage have thus been
systematically and successfully erased, while streets, boulevards, and
universities have been renamed after the main perpetrators of the
violence, who were glorified and hailed as national heroes. Nowadays, no
one remembers the Pangaltı Armenian Cemetery that once stood near
Istanbul’s main square, Taksim. Desecrated and razed, the gravestones
have been reappropriated and used to build the stairs of the legendary
Gezi Park, the only piece of greenery left in central Istanbul.
The Ministry of National Education has also played its part in
forging the ideal, enlightened Turkish denier. At school, we were
initially told that we hadn’t killed Armenians (believe it or not, they
had killed us). If this answer seemed unsatisfactory or biased in any
way, we were told that – sadly indeed – the Armenians had to be
exterminated: it was a state of war and they had betrayed us. What else
was there to do but to orchestrate the massacre of 1.5 million men,
women, children, and elderly people?
Another argument frequently heard in Turkey is that we, Turks, are
not racists and are thus incapable of committing a genocide. Racism, a
Western invention, did not exist in Turkey: our cordial relations with
the Armenian community still residing in Istanbul – also known as “the
leftovers” – are living proof of that. In fact, so long as they don’t
meddle in politics or mention the g-word, Armenian Turkish citizens are
allowed to breathe, walk, and travel freely within our borders. Yes,
Hrant Dink, an Armenian journalist challenging national historiography,
may have been killed in broad daylight, but a non-negligible number of
Turkish or Armenian public intellectuals holding similar opinions are
still alive, protected by bodyguards or living in exile.
I conclude with a note on the boundless limits of our freedom of
expression. Insulting Jews, Greeks, Armenians, or any other minority
group is routinely met with the utmost compassion and admiration from
both state and society, and the same goes for assassinating them: the
police officers who arrested Hrant Dink’s murderer swiftly got in line
to take photographs with their ‘hero’ under the Turkish flag while a
famous pop singer composed a song praising the killer’s
‘accomplishment.’ When it comes to speaking of the dispossessed, even
the most unorthodox views are freely expressed by people who think
themselves courageous. Here is a brief conversation I had with a cab
driver in Turkey a few years ago. For some reason, the discussion turned
politico-historical:
“Do you believe in the Armenian Genocide?” the driver asked me.
“Yes.”
“You know what, I do too.”
“Really?”
“Yes. And if they come back, we’ll do it again.”
"McGill Daily," May 22, 2015
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