Armenian genocide: Why many Turkish people have trouble accepting it
Commentary: All Turkish people must accept the full scale of
atrocities committed against Armenians in 1915.
Gonca Sönmez-Poole
May 4, 2012 14:51
Lebanese Armenians burn the Turkish flag during a protest outside the
Turkish embassy in Rabieh, northeast of Beirut, to commemorate the
97th anniversary of the Ottoman Turkish genocide against the Armenian
people on April 24, 2012. (Joseph Eid /AFP/Getty Images)BOSTON –
Another April 24 has come and gone. It is the day Armenians around the
world remember as beginning of the Armenian Genocide of 1915, when
thousands of their ancestors perished.
I am a 52-year-old Turkish-American woman and I must admit that it
wasn’t until I was in my late forties that I ever had a conversation
with an Armenian person about the Armenian Genocide. Why? The answer
lies in why I am compelled to write now about my own personal journey
and two murders a quarter of a century apart.
On May 4, 1982, I learned that a man I knew had been shot to death on
his way home from work. That kind and gentle man was Orhan Gündüz, who
at the time was Turkey’s honorary consul to Boston. I had stopped by
his little souvenir shop in Cambridge for a quick hello. As it
happened, this was just a few hours before he died. What I remember
most vividly is how his murder (a group named Justice Commandos
against Armenian Genocide claimed responsibility) confused me so much
that I spent the next 25 years avoiding the subject.
Like most other Turkish people of my generation, my knowledge of
Armenians was limited to what I had studied in history classes: that
the Armenians had sided with the Western allies during the waning days
of the Ottoman Empire, and for that they were forever marked as
traitors by Turkey and the Turks. Over the two decades following
Gündüz’s assassination, I simply shunned the subject of the Armenian
Genocide because it was too uncomfortable, too painful, and too
difficult for me to deal with.
Then came the summer of 2006, when I received an invitation to work on
an Armenian-Turkish dialogue project in greater Boston. I immersed
myself in the subject. I learned the history of the Ottoman Armenians,
which had been missing from the school textbooks I read as a child. I
made new friends, including Armenian-Americans with whom I’d been
living parallel lives, while never exchanging a word.
During this time I heard the news of an assassination. Hrant Dink, a
Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor, was gunned down in Istanbul by a
16-year-old Turkish nationalist. I did not know much about Dink at the
time. I knew only that he was the founder of Agos, the first community
newspaper in Turkey printed in both Armenian and Turkish, that he had
opened the eyes of his traditionally quiet and passive Armenian
community, encouraging both Armenians and Turks to speak openly about
their ethnic identities and their family histories, and that countless
people in Turkey had discovered their lost Armenian ancestry through
his help and support. The date was January 19, 2007, 25 years after I
had buried the subject of the Armenian Genocide.
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For the next five years, I attended workshops, participated in events,
and watched countless videos and films on the Armenian Genocide and
its aftermath. Most important, I spoke with many Armenians, from a
variety of backgrounds and affiliations. As I became acquainted with
the names of former Armenian villages and understood why every
Armenian I met would mention the name of a village I knew only by its
Turkish name, I was saddened – and enraged – by the lack of
information, and by the silence I had experienced growing up in
Turkey.
I’ve also have learned from my Turkish friends and colleagues. Because
all Armenians call this period the Armenian Genocide, and would like
to hear the same from Turks, there is a dialogue of the deaf at work
between these two groups.
Many Turkish people – who are just starting to learn about their own
history – feel that somebody is always trying to shut them up unless
they start any sentence with the `G’ word. Genocide is the word that
encapsulates the events of 1915: large-scale deportations and
massacres. To Armenians, this is known as the Armenian Genocide.
Turkish people speak of the same events in the context of other
factors that occurred during the waning days of the Ottoman Empire.
They don’t deny there were large-scale deportations and even murders.
They acknowledge the killing of women and children as a result of the
deportations. But they have a hard time describing all of this as
`genocide.’
Turkish people also feel that more attention should be given to the
pressure that was exerted at the start of World War I in 1914 and into
1915 to protect their land and their culture as the Ottoman Empire was
ending and the Republic of Turkey was being established.
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As important as these points may be, I believe that all Turkish people
need to know and accept one simple truth: somewhere, somehow, an
ancestor of theirs may have taken the life of an innocent Armenian
person just because that person was Armenian. When this information is
understood, genuinely accepted, digested, and settled into the hearts
and minds of every Turkish person, then, and only then, can we all
start a new chapter. In that chapter, the discussion will no longer be
an argument about the term genocide, the definition of intent, or the
total tally of killings on either side; it will simply be a discussion
about the question we want to leave for our children to consider: how
do we deal with the `other’ – that is, those seen as different or
foreign.
Orhan Gündüz was killed because he was a Turkish diplomat, and he
represented the misguided silence on the mass deportation of Ottoman
Armenians from their original homes. Hrant Dink was killed because he
was an Armenian from Turkey who spoke up and began a dialogue so that
Armenians in Turkey as well as Turks could speak openly about what
really happened in 1915; you could say he helped break the taboo of
silence on the issue.
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So where does all of this leave me, an American citizen of Turkish
descent, in the tortured landscape of Armenian-Turkish relations?
I now use the word genocide when speaking about the massacres of 1915
because doing otherwise would be a retreat into ignorance on two
fronts, both intellectual and personal. I know I simply cannot go on
denying the true depth of brutality and suffering brought upon the
Ottoman Armenians, and the animosity and hatred 1915 perpetuated for
nearly a century. On a more personal level, such a denial would be an
affront to all of my new friends and acquaintances … not only because
they happen to be Armenian, but because they are human beings whom I
care about.
Gonca Sönmez-Poole is an American citizen of Turkish descent who has
been a member of the Boston media community for the past 28 years. She
has worked in television, both within the United States and
internationally, focusing on issues pertinent to minority communities.
For the past six years, she has been involved in dialogue and
confidence-building efforts within the Turkish and Armenian
communities in the Boston area.
From: A. Papazian
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/commentary/armenian-genocide-why-turkish-people-have-trouble-accepting-it