The Majalla Magazine (Saudi Magazine published in the UK)
May 13 2013
Breaking the Armenian Taboo
Moving from denial to truth on the 1915 massacre
Written by : Barçin Yinanç
ANATOLIAN DISPATCHES blog: Posts from across the Bosporus. The
Republic of Turkey is turning its attention eastwards and proving
itself a heavyweight in the Middle East arena. `Anatolian Dispatches’
sets the compass to the new Turkish orientation.
`For years, I have told my foreign friends that there is no such issue
as the Armenian question,’ confided a Turkish businessman in his
fifties. `Now, I feel cheated,’ he said in a private conversation we
had recently.
His sense of feeling duped over the facts of what happened to the
Armenian community in the last days of the Ottoman Empire is not
shared by the majority in Turkey. However, the number of Turkish
people who are becoming aware that they were not told the truth is
growing by the day.
`Doubt is the key word; it is always growing,’ said Cengiz Aktar, an
academic who launched an online petition to apologize for the mass
killings during World War I, which Armenians say amount to genocide.
`My conscience does not accept the insensitivity showed to, and the
denial of, the Great Catastrophe that the Ottoman Armenians were
subjected to in 1915,’ reads the statement that has garnered 32,500
signatures in four years. `The big bulk of the signatures came in the
very first months,’ said Aktar.
The campaign marked one of the milestones in the changing climate in
Turkey concerning the 1915 massacres of Armenians. It would have been
inconceivable to undertake such an initiative only a few years before.
In 2005 a conference about Ottoman Armenians, to be held at a Turkish
state university, was cancelled at the last minute due to fierce
opposition to the meeting; government officials branded the organizers
`traitors.’ The conference, which questioned Turkey’s official line on
the massacres, was held four months later at a private university.
The conference broke a major taboo in Turkish academia. It was
followed by further academic research and meetings’not only on
Armenians, but also on other non-Muslim minorities such as the Greeks,
Jews and Syriac Christians who continued to experience persecution
during the Republican era.
`There is certainly change in the society, from the point of total
denial to an awareness that something bad has happened,’ Garo Paylan,
a prominent member of the Turkish`Armenian community, recently told
me.
Taboos are also being broken in the publishing and broadcasting
sectors, where it is no longer unusual to see programs or books
dedicated to the stories of those who discover their ancestors are of
Armenian origin, or that members of their families were orphaned after
their parents were killed in the massacres.
`There are many in Anatolia who were hiding their Armenian origin [who
are] now going public,’ said Paylan. `Young generations in Anatolian
towns are questioning their parents more on what happened to the
Armenians in their city, and older generations are now less shy about
telling what happened.’
`Civil society is going through a memory work and it is independent of
the government. This is how it should be; so it is a very healthy
process,’ said Aktar.
The assassination of Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in 2007
also proved to be a turning point as thousands attended the funeral
raising banners that read `We are all Hrant Dink.’
Then came another first, in 2010: on April 24, the day Armenians all
over the world commemorate the 1915 tragedy, a small group gathered in
Istanbul to do the same. While it faced opposition protests, the
commemoration made the headlines in Turkey. This year, the
commemoration was organized for the fourth time. The opposition
protests are fading with each year and cities where commemorations
have taken place now include Malatya, Adana, İzmir, Urfa, Diyarbakır
and Tunceli.
I believe the democratic reform process undertaken over the last two
decades as part of Turkey’s bid to join the European Union played a
crucial role in changing the mentality of Turks towards the Armenian
massacres. The reforms on fundamental freedoms that gained momentum
during the first two terms of the ruling Justice and Development Party
have certainly led to an easing in freedom of thought and expression,
although this still remains below international standards.
Paylan feels that the Kurdish fight for rights has emboldened Turkish
Armenians to become more vocal on the issue; previously, younger
generations of Armenians were asked by older generations to remain
silent.
The relative political stability in Turkey, economic achievements, as
well as a stronger standing in the international arena have certainly
boosted self confidence in Turkey, which makes reconciliation with the
past easier.
`I saw that the society is much more ahead of the state,’ Alexis
Govciyan, a prominent member of the French-Armenian community told a
Turkish newspaper after attending this year’s commemoration in
Istanbul.
——
Barçın Yinanç started her career in journalism in 1990 at Milliyet
Daily, one of Turkey’s major newspapers. She worked as a diplomatic
reporter covering Turkish foreign policy issues, Turkey`EU relations,
transatlantic ties and regional developments from the Middle East to
the Caucasus. In 2001, she became a television reporter for CNN Türk,
later becoming a program editor for the same channel. She is currently
a columnist for the English-language newspaper Hürriyet Daily News.
She lives in Istanbul.
http://www.majalla.com/eng/2013/05/article55241262