TURKEY’S PROBLEM WITH AMERICA
by Christopher de Bellaigue
The Daily Beast
es/2010-03-17/turkeys-problem-with-america/
March 18 2010
Last week a vote by the House Foreign Affairs Committee to recognize
the Armenian genocide resulted in Turkey withdrawing its ambassador.
Christopher de Bellaigue on why Turkey can’t come to terms with its
tortured past.
I don’t doubt the good faith of those 23 members of the House Foreign
Affairs Committee who voted on March 4 that the deaths of some 1.5
million Armenian citizens of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War
constituted genocide, but I’m not convinced of their wisdom in making
the call. Why? Not because the events of 1915, when the Ottomans
deported the Armenians under conditions that could only result in
their deaths by the hundreds of thousands, are undeserving of odium,
but because legislatures are not the right place to make the point.
The expertise of the Foreign Affairs Committee lies, as you might
expect, in foreign affairs. Its members were helped to reach their
decision by Armenian-American and pro-Turkish lobbyists, including arms
manufacturers chasing Turkish contracts. Any resolution on the subject
is a political token, and of little value as a historical judgment.
Ultimately, the argument will be laid to rest not in apologies, or
indemnities, or monuments, but in the pages of Turkey’s schoolbooks,
where children are still given an airbrushed view of history.
First, the politics. As senators, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and
Joe Biden called for the White House to condemn the tragedy of 1915
as genocide, only to have second thoughts after assuming office. As
a big emerging country of (mostly) western-oriented Muslims, and
America’s partner in the pacification of Afghanistan and Iraq, Turkey
is important. The administration has pledged to stop the resolution
from going to a vote on the floor of the House, which would certainly
excite from the Turks a less measured response that they have so far
exhibited. (Turkey’s ambassador has been recalled to Ankara pending
satisfactory resolution of the affair). On the other hand, a big and
well-organized Armenian lobby exerts pressure of its own; to date,
this lobby has godfathered genocide resolutions in 20 legislatures
around the world.
Rebel Land: Unraveling the Riddle of History in a Turkish Town. By
Christopher de Bellaigue. 288 pages. The Penguin Press. $25.95. It is
hard to argue that the political maneuvering is a dignified memorial
to the victims of 1915, or that it encourages the necessary Turkish
sentiments of regret and remorse, without which the tragedy will always
bleed and the modern states of Turkey and Armenia never become cordial
neighbors. Apart from the impression of unwanted interference–imagine,
a Turkish newspaper columnist wrote this week, if the parliament in
Ankara were to rule that America’s treatment of its native populations
amounted to genocide–each of those earlier resolutions has acted
like an injection of testosterone into the Turkish right, stirring
up xenophobic feeling and endangering those Turks brave enough to
propose an honest appraisal of the past.
Urged on by the country’s notorious ‘Deep State,’ an unholy alliance
of army officers, policemen, and criminals, Turkish nationalists
screamed ‘traitor!’ when in 2005 the novelist (and subsequent Nobel
Prize-winner) Orhan Pamuk referred to the Armenian deaths, leading
to his prosecution and temporary exile in the US. They intimidated
and prosecuted other authors and intellectuals, and in 2007 they
cheered the assassination of an inspirational advocate for Turkey’s
few remaining Armenians: the newspaper editor Hrant Dink.
Dink himself used the word "genocide," but did not insist that everyone
else do so. He discerned the inherently anti-democratic nature of
French and Swiss legislation against genocide denial. He realized
that the most important work was not to be done outside the country,
where Ottoman culpability and Armenian agony had been acknowledged,
but in Turkey, where the official denials spoke of a broader inability
to come to terms with the past. This process has now started, but it
is not without pain of its own, for it necessitates the abandonment
of that axiom, of Turkish virtue and foreign treachery, that Kemal
Ataturk employed when setting up his Turkish Republic in 1923. The
Ottoman state is not the Turkish Republic–in important ways, they are
mutually antagonistic. But modern Turks need to learn and understand
what the Ottomans did. This is not something that hectoring foreigners
can achieve.
If all this sounds like a mealy-mouthed defense of the Turkish
position, it isn’t. Between 2005 and 2008 I devoted many months to
uncovering the fate of the forgotten Armenian population of Varto,
a remote region of eastern Turkey, whose present-day inhabitants,
mostly Kurds with some assimilated Armenians, had adopted the Turkish
habit of denial. I was rarely made to feel welcome in Varto. I was
obstructed every step of the way by the state, the deliberate amnesia
of the people, and the systemic dishonesty of much of Turkish history
writing. Now, I am proud to say, my account of the demise of the
Armenians of Varto has been committed to the page and can never be
eradicated. And I did not hesitate to describe the Armenian gangs who,
during the Russian occupation of 1916 and 1917, engaged in wanton and
indiscriminate acts of revenge, for in this case the sinned against
also did some sinning, as is often the case in unvarnished history.
Turkey is full of Vartos whose story needs to be told; the country’s
past is being opened up, fitfully and not without pain, and this is
being led by normal citizens, although the country’s mildly Islamist
government has lent fitful support. An online apology signed by tens
of thousands; the new ubiquity of books detailing the events of 1915;
belated recognition for those converted or assimilated Armenians
who survived the massacres and death marches–these testify to a new
Turkish readiness to take a step back from the past and evaluate it
dispassionately. A small number of Turkish and Armenian academics are
collaborating fruitfully, and the Ottoman archives are more accessible
to foreign scholars than ever before. Twenty genocide resolutions
have not made this so, but Turkey’s own progress towards becoming a
mature democracy, sure of its place in the world, unafraid of the past.
A twenty-first genocide resolution would achieve nothing save the
strengthening of Turkey’s shady ultra-nationalist fringe-including
those members of the Deep State who are being prosecuted on charges
of plotting against the government. Ultimately, the argument over the
events of 1915 will not be resolved in resolutions or even apologies
(though the latter would certainly help), but in the hearts of
Turks-and in their schoolbooks, which must reflect history as it
happened, and not as they wish it had happened. No Congress resolution
will achieve that. It can only slow the process.
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Christopher de Bellaigue was born in London and has spent the past
decade in the Middle East and South Asia. He has worked as a foreign
correspondent for a number of publications, including the Financial
Times, the Economist, and the New York Review of Books. His previous
book, In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs, was shortlisted for the 2004
Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. He lives in London with
his wife and son.