IN HISTORY AND BEYOND HISTORY
Azg/arm
11 Nov 04
Armenians and Turks: a Thousand Years of Relations Venice, Island of
San Giorgio Maggiore 28, 29, 30 October 2004
The Institute for Venice and Europe of the Giorgio Cini Foundation
has conceived and organised an international conference involving
historians, philosophers, jurists, psychoanalysts, and experts on
politics and human rights from Europe, the United States, Armenia,
Israel and Turkey.
The conference analysed the relations between Armenians and Turks from
the Middle Ages to the tragedy of the Armenian genocide in the early
20th century and beyond. The analysis focused on general aspects
and theoretical issues (philosophical, legal, historiographical,
and psychoanalytical), but at the same time some specific historical
cases also were presented.
The following scholars took part in the Conference: from the
United States Taner Akçam (University of Minnesota) and Rouben
Adalian (Armenian Assembly of America); from Canada Frank Chalk
(Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Studies); from France
Raymond H. Kévorkian (Director of the Noubarian Library of Paris),
Hélène Piralian-Simonyan (psychoanalyst), Yves Ternon (physician
and historian); from Germany Hermann Goltz (Director of the Lepsius
Archives, University of Halle-Wittenberg), from Israel: Israel Charny
(Director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide of Jerusalem,
Hebrew University of Jerusalem), from Turkey Murat Belge (Bilgi
University), Ferhat Kentel (Bilgi University), Halil Berktay (Sabanci
University), Baskin Oran (Faculty of Political Sciences of Ankara),
Ragip Zarakolu (writer and publisher, “Belge” Publications), from
Armenia Vladimir Margarian (jurist, counsellor at the Constitutional
Court), Ruben Safrastyan (Director of the Institute of Turkology of the
National Academy of Sciences), from Italy Antonia Arslan (University
of Padua), Giampiero Bellingeri (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice),
Mauro Bussani (University of Trieste), Aldo Ferrari (responsible of
the research programme Caucasia-Asia at ISPI in Milan, ex-lecturer
at the Universities of Trieste, Gorizia and Venice), Gianclaudio
Macchiarella (Ca’ Foscari, ex-attaché culturel at the Embassies of
Italy in Washington, Athens, Teheran and Ankara), Pier Paolo Portinaro
(University of Turin), and the members of the Scientific Council of the
Conference Prof.s Antonio Rigo (Ca’ Foscari, Director of the Institute
“Venezia e l’Europa” of Fondazione Cini) and Boghos Levon Zekiyan
(Ca’ Foscari).
The conference had five sessions in which the following topics were
made object of discussion: the notion and typologies of “genocide”
(Portinaro, Charny, Chalk), its psychological repercussions
(Piralian), the demographic question (Kévorkian), the state of
archives’ research (Adalian), negationism (Ternon), relations between
Armenians and Turks from the Seljuk Age through the Ottoman Empire to
the Republican Period (Safrastyan), the complicity of Imperial Germany
(Goltz), the ittihadist solution and Turkish republican identity
(Akçam), the relation between discourse, reality, and Turkish
national imagination (Berktay), interethnic relations in Anatolia
from the Ottoman period on (Zarakolu), the situation of Armenians
today in Turkey (Kentel), the “Armenian question” and human rights
(Belge), the bases of international legal responsibility (Margarian),
the roots of taboos and relapses (Oran), the acknowledgement of the
Armenian Genocide by the European States (Ferrari), and various other
questions as the placement of the Armenian case in the frame of the
Genocides of the 20th century, the sense of guiltiness, the problem
how to explain to Turkish public opinion the Armenian Genocide after
decades of amnesia and negationism, its importance in the frame of
contemporary European history, etc.
At the end of the conference there was a round table as a moment to sum
up the proceedings and establish a starting point for future studies.
The idea of such a conference was originated from the awareness
of the current stalemate due to denialism and the impossibility of
dialogue. The new historical perspective, adopted by the conference,
viewing Armenian-Turkish relations in their centuries-long and
multifarious aspects, combined with the tools provided by a long-term
interdisciplinary approach, invites us and may help to go beyond the
separate analysis of specific cases to overcome the obstacles still
hindering an effective approach to the topic.
Fondazione Giorgio Cini onlus, Istituto Venezia e l’Europa
–Boundary_(ID_h9Fb3Fe/N5IWmJiJQEMIFg)–