COMMENTARY:WHY IS THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE STILL A TABOO?
By Erol Ozkoray
2010/03/2 9 | 20:58
region
I heard about the Armenian genocide for the first time in Paris
during the 70s, and the very logical question I asked myself and also
expressed in my writing at that time (university papers, a reader’s
letter I sent to Le Monde newspaper, etc.) was the following: if the
Republic of Turkey is based on a rejection of the Ottoman Empire, then
why is the 1915 Armenian genocide not being dumped on the Ottomans?
Why is the Turkish Republic assuming responsibility for this scandalous
event, which is the 20th century’s first crime against humanity and
that century’s first genocide? Later, in my career as a journalist,
this question always remained on my agenda.
I am generally known as the journalist who explained Armenian terrorism
(ASALA) to Turkey during the years 1980 – 1984. I was a socialist,
but I was also opposed to terrorism, and my articles even lead to a
deterioration of relations between Francois Mitterrand’s socialist
government (which I supported) and Turkey.
Both myself and my family and friends suffered a lot from ASALA:
my friend Nazan Erez’s father, Turkey’s Ambassador to France Ismail
Erez was killed on duty in Paris; my friend Gokberk Ergenekon was
wounded in Rome; my name was put on ASALA’s hit list and removed only
after I met with ASALA’s then lawyer Patrick Devedjian, who is now
France’s Minister in charge of the Economic Recovery Plan (in 1982,
I did not see these events as genocide, but I did not accept Turkey’s
official version either); my cousin Sitki Sencer was caught up in
the shooting during ASALA’S attack on the Ankara Esenboga airport
and was shot 8 times by Turkish policemen (miraculously, he survived)
whereas my mother and her sisters, also present, came away uninjured
by the skin of their teeth.
In reality, the list is much longer, but the purpose in my mentioning
these is to indicate that I have worked a lot on the Armenian question,
I know quite a lot about it and I have suffered because of it,
and therefore I have the moral right to say the things I’m about
to say. In other words, the things I say here are the conclusions
an intellectual has reached after 35 years of engagement with this
issue and after repeated reassessments of his position.
If we go to the beginning… as the years passed, my reading
progressed and new documents and books came out, it was revealed
that the question I have been asking (to blame the genocide on the
Ottomans) was the product of sophistry and devoid of any meaning,
due to at least three reasons.
Firstly, even though Mustafa Kemal did not get along with the
triumvirate of Talat-Enver-Cemal and he did not take any part in the
Armenian genocide on account of being engaged in the fighting on the
Gallipoli front at the time (in a sense, these helped him be later
designated a leader), the genocide that had already been accomplished
served him very well structurally, because he based the Republican
regime on the Turkish race. During the years 1926 – 1927, discourse
on the Turkish race constituted the principal nationalist ideology of
the State (Turkish race = Turkish nation), and therefore Anatolia had
to be ‘cleansed’ of all Christian and foreign elements (Armenians,
Greeks, Assyrians and Kurds). These policies of ethnic, cultural,
economic and social cleansing were actively implemented through seven
genocides executive during the Republican period. No Armenians,
no Greeks and no Assyrians were left in Anatolia. Only the Kurds
resisted, and despite four genocides, they could not be exterminated.
Just for this reason, every person in Turkey must respect the
Kurds’ struggle for their lives and their rights. Thus, there was
a continuity inherited from the Ottomans with regards to ‘Massive
Annihilation’. In 95 years, 10 genocides were carried out on these
lands (see the archives at ). Among the founders
of the Republic, there were murderers who had been involved in,
organized and implemented the Armenian genocide.
Secondly, there is another line of continuity from the Ottomans to the
Republic, as money and goods confiscated from the Armenians played a
determining role in the financing of the War of Independence. Apart
from monetary and weapons help received from Lenin, the biggest
financial source for the War of Independence was money appropriated
through the Armenian genocide. With this money, weapons were purchased,
an army was set up and its logistics provided. The persons involved
in these came to form a new social class that owed its wealth to
the Armenians’ property (for instance, the porter Haci Omer Sabanci
is the ancestor of today’s Sabanci family, and grocer Vehbi Koc the
progenitor of today’s Koc family), and thus the social bases of the
movement emerged.
The reasons for the Armenian genocide becoming a taboo are hidden in
these three observations. Otherwise, it would have been very easy
to solve the problem by putting the blame for the genocide on the
Ottomans. The person who put these issues on the agenda by producing
major works that influenced Turkish intellectuals on the matter of
the Armenian genocide is Taner Akcam.
Because of the reasons I have enumerated, whenever the expression
‘Armenian genocide’ is uttered, people lacking good sense in Turkey
go berserk. What I’m saying here is that, unlike the official history
thesis, the Turkish Republic was not founded after an anti-imperialist
war (in the War of Independence, the Army only fought against the
Greeks, but not against France or England, which were the imperialist
powers of the era), rather, it was founded on the Armenian genocide.
This reappraisal means that what you and everyone have been told and
taught would be sent to the trash bin. This is the real reason why
there is a big trauma whenever anybody says ‘Armenian genocide’.
Everything has been a lie since 1923. In other words, the situation
is not as simple as the state hiding the reality of the genocide,
as certain intellectuals are now saying.
Today, when one talks about recognizing the Armenian genocide,
practically everything has to be put on the table: the Republic,
Kemalism, the State, the State’s ideology, those who founded and
governed the Republic, Turkey’s regime, this country’s political
system, its army, its universities, its educational programs, its
press, its elite, its businessmen (the sources of certain capital
accumulations), the courts, the political parties, etc.
It is self-evident that no one can cope with such a gigantic
confrontation. Especially in the kind of crypto-fascist and
crypto-totalitarian regime where we are living, it is very difficult –
not to say impossible – to settle accounts with the things enumerated
above even in one’s dreams!
This traumatic situation, in its historical, political and intellectual
dimensions, goes miles and miles beyond the capacity of our current
Islamist government. Nothing can be accomplished with the protocols
signed between Turkey and Armenia. In any event, didn’t the invisible
forces in Ankara make the Armenia Protocols null and void within 24
hours, and through the very hand of the Prime Minister? This State,
in its current structure, will repulse any solution, as there is no
solution that it could accept.
The problem can be solved – like the other problems of the country
– only by a statesman with the highest intellectual credentials,
who has internalized the culture of democracy, come to power through
elections and formed public opinion in this direction. It is impossible
for ordinary small persons to overcome Turkey’s gigantic problems. We
need politicians and statesmen on the level of Mitterrand, Allende and
[Felipe] Gonzales in order to resolve these gangrenous problems. In
other words, we need Big Men.
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