Bardakçı’s Chest as a Cognovit

 Ümit Kurt

In Kanunların Ruhu: Emval-i Metruke Kanunlarında Soykırımın İzini Sürmek (The Spirit of the Laws: Pursuing the Trace of Genocide on the Abandoned Property Laws), Taner Akçam and I exposed the ways in which the moveable and unmovable properties of the Armenians who were displaced and eliminated in 1915 were obtained and distributed, using all the vehicles provided by the “law,” first by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), and later the Republican regime with the Abandoned Property Laws (Emval-i Metruke Kanunları) that the government inherited.¹

Although all of the laws issued within the scope of the Abandoned Property Laws noted the Armenians’ entitlement to their property and assets, and stated that at the very least their value should be handed over to them, the process was obstructed in many ways. As a result, the Armenians’ material foundations were eliminated and their physical annihilation was complete. The measure of existence “granted” to the Armenians by these laws was reduced to nothingness.

Interview with Ara Sarafian

The following interview with historian Ara Sarafian, director of the Gomidas Institute (London), was published in the July 2012 issue of the French Armenian magazine "Nouvelles d'Armenie."

 

"Nouvelles d'Armenie": Going against the Vidal-Naquet doctrine, you believe that we should have a dialogue with deniers of the Armenian Genocide. Where are we in this issue? Where does this contradictory dialogue stand today?
Thank you for your forthright question. I will respond accordingly. I do not accept the basic premise of your question, as your reference to Naquet suggests, that deniers are all powerful, while their opponents are powerless and voiceless. Such a premise flatters deniers and masks the failures of their opponents. It provides us with a facile excuse to avoid critical scrutiny of our own work. Nor do I accept the view that engaging deniers bestows upon their views legitimacy that those views would not otherwise have enjoyed.     In Turkey today there is a long-awaited opportunity for open debate on the treatment of Armenians. There’s a perhaps unprecedented chance to publicly challenge the state orthodoxy. To squander this opportunity to educate Turkish society would be a great shame. 

“Talaat Pasha’s Report on the Armenian Genocide, 1917”

In 2008 Murat Bardakci, the Turkish journalist and historian, published a facsimile of a report on Ottoman Armenians from Talaat Pasha’s private archives. The report had been given to Bardakci by Talaat’s widow in 1982. In his own presentation of the untitled and undated report, Bardakci acknowledged that the materials he was presenting were open to interpretation. He called the report “A General Account of the Armenian Population after the Population Transfer [Tehcir] (possibly 1915-1916).”[1] Bardakci’s work was somewhat derided by Turkish nationalist historians and generally ignored by others.[2]