The taboo breaker: Turkish scholar speaks of cracks in the wall of
genocide denial
Genocide | 06.05.11 | 13:11
Cengiz Aktar
By Gayane Abrahamyan
ArmeniaNow reporter, writing from Istanbul, Turkey
Turkish scholar Cengiz Aktar and a few dozen `taboo breakers’ like him
are changing many stereotypes about Turks, raising hopes that one day
Turkey’s denialist policy regarding its past may end.
Aktar, 56, is one of the progressive intellectuals who recognize the
Ottoman-era genocide of Armenians and take action to help the Turkish
society face its past.
When in 2008 Aktar initiated the `I Apologize’ campaign whereby for
the first time Turks offered apologies to the genocide victims,
Armenians, little did he think that the action would become a
`tsunami’ and would cause cracks on `the concrete wall of denial’. He
says for him it was just a move emanating from his heart, a move that
eventually elicited responses from about 40,000 Turks.
`We did that because we were unable to keep silent anymore,’ Aktar
tells ArmeniaNow.
Aktar, a professor at Bahcesehir University and the Chairman of the
Department of EU Relations in Istanbul and columnist for the Turkish
Daily and Vatan newspapers, first heard about the massacres of
Armenians in France where he studied economic and political sciences
and his course included history that he found different from what he
had heard back in his native country.
`During that time I necessarily ended up dealing with the Genocide
issue. Like every Turk the first reaction I had was denial, saying no,
no, we didn’t do that. It was just the contrary. Then I understood
that before denial I had to learn more, because during those days
there was nothing, absolutely no information about it. So when I read
and got more information, I understood there was no way to deny it,’
remembers Aktar.
The scholar worked in France for many years, but returning to Turkey
in 1999 to take up a position as a European Union affairs expert, he
began not only to help smooth Turkey’s path to the European family,
but also try to reverse the Turkish policy of genocide denial.
Aktar says his acquaintance with Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian
journalist and minority rights champion assassinated in Istanbul in
2007, was a new experience, through which his academic knowledge about
Armenians turned into being more practical recognition.
`It is quite different when you meet an Armenian of Turkey who lives
amongst Turks every day. Here in Turkey everything is different, the
feeling, the responsibility, and that became even more acute after
Dink’s murder,’ says Aktar.
Still two years before Dink’s murder, in 2005, one of the leading
universities in Turkey, Bilgi, which has about 12,000 students, hosted
an international conference on the subject of `Armenians during the
Decline of the Ottoman Empire’. Turkey’s then justice minister Cemil
Cicek called the scholars who organized that conference `back
stabbers’. But despite such accusations and threats the event did take
place.
That conference as well as the subsequent assassination of Dink and
the apology campaign proved a large tsunami that passed through the
consciousness of the Turkish society, sending waves that would have an
impact on the giant wall formed on 96 years of denial.
`The taboo has not been broken yet, but it definitely now has cracks,’
says Aktar.
The cover of his book that he presented in its Armenian translation in
Yerevan earlier this year has this meaning – a huge concrete wall of
denial gets cracks and the information and memories coming through
these cracks, according to the scholar, will one day give results.
`Young people are now mainly inclined to stick to denialist positions.
But unlike the time when I was young, when there was a complete
information vacuum, this information exists today and youths become
inquisitive. The more they learn, the easier denial will one day give
way to acknowledgement,’ the scholar says.
Aktar is sure that a new era in relations between Turkey and Armenia
will be ushered in by individuals and societies rather than statesmen
and politicians.
`Authorities have their own interests, people have consciousness and
feelings. Officials are not guided by emotions. Emotions mean nothing
to them. It is interests that matter to them. And a society is a
different organism, and if a change in public consciousness begins, if
they acknowledge and accept the reality of genocide, then the demand
from the bottom is certain to reach the government one day,’ says the
Turkish scholar.
Meanwhile, before that realization comes, being a taboo breaker in
Turkey remains hard and dangerous. After the assassination of Dink in
broad daylight, just in front of his Agos newspaper’s editorial
office, the Turkish state has provided bodyguards to people
championing the right to know the past. But Aktar refused to have
bodyguards.
`It is impossible to live this way. Even though danger now is much
less than it was years ago, there is still no guarantee. After the
apology campaign we were receiving hundreds of threatening letters
every day, but, happily, none of us has been killed. I think those
times are gone,’ says Aktar.
According to him, Turkish intellectuals are reaching out to Armenians
because they, too, suffer the burden of blame.
`It is not easy for us, either. But the return of memory is
reassuring. Turks have an old saying, `When Armenians were gone, luck
was gone, too’. If they remember and try to understand the meaning of
these words, many things will change,’ concludes Aktar.
Gayane Abrahamyan is reporting from Turkey with the support of the
Global Political Trends Center (GPoT) and Internews Armenia
From: A. Papazian