REPUBLIC OF TURKEY – THE FIRST FASCIST STATE IN HISTORY.
By Armen Ayvazyan
The Republics of Armenia and Turkey have been in a long-lasting
conflict with no resolution in sight. Therefore a proper assessment
of the political system and state ideology of Turkey is extremely
important for the Armenian state to build a competent foreign policy
and properly position itself in the international arena.
The West has traditionally portrayed the Republic of Turkey which
emerged on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire as a secular democratic
Muslim state.
Even though this cliche is being persistently circulated in the Western
media and very often uttered by American and European officials,
it is far from reality.
Unfortunately, Armenia has not yet dared to offer its own assessment
of modern Turkish statehood and tacitly put up with the aforementioned
international narrative.
In reality, one of the consequences of the Armenian Genocide was
the creation of the first fascist state in Europe’s periphery. The
Republic of Turkey had all the core characteristics inherent to
fascism and Nazism, which later emerged in Italy, Germany and some
other European countries.
1. Turkish chauvinism and genocidal policies. Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk)
was formerly himself a member of the governing body of Committee of
Union and Progress (CUP), the political organization of murderous Young
Turks. Once in power, Ataturk and the Kemalists not only continued the
Armenian Genocide, but directed their tested policies of extermination
of an entire people against Greeks and other ethnic minorities. In
Eastern Armenia alone, the Kemalists destroyed 200,000 Armenians
(1920-1921), in Smyrna – 100,000 Greeks and Armenians (September
1922), in the Black Sea regions – about 300,000 Pontian Greeks
(1919-1923). They also continued the Genocide against the Assyrians,
of whom about 500,000 were annihilated by the Turkish forces from
1915 to 1923.
Deportations, mass exterminations, political and cultural repressions
against the Kurds, the second largest ethnic group in modern Turkey,
began immediately after the Armenian Genocide and continue to this
day. All Kurdish attempts to protect their basic national and human
rights were brutally suppressed in 1925, 1927, and 1937. In 1980s
and 1990s, more than a million Kurds were deported to large cities
(during these deportations, according to various estimates, two to
three thousand Kurdish villages were destroyed).Turkish chauvinism
was legislatively approved in the Constitution of 1937 under the
auspicious name of “nationalism” (Milliyetcilik ), openly aiming to
assimilate non-Turkic ethnic groups and legally identifying them
as Turks. Although later the concept of Turkish “nationalism” was
interpreted in different ways, its chauvinistic nature and essence
has remained unchanged.The modern discipline of Holocaust and Genocide
Studies identifies the denial of genocide as an extension of genocidal
policies.
Gregory Stanton, former President of the International Association
of Genocide Scholars, emphasizes that “Denial is the final stage
of genocide. It is a continuing attempt to destroy the victim group
psychologically and culturally, to deny its members even the memory
of the murders of their relatives. That is what the Turkish government
today is doing to Armenians around the world.”
Elie Wiesel, the famous Holocaust survivor and political activist,
has repeatedly called Turkey’s 90-year-old campaign to cover up the
Armenian genocide a double killing, since it strives to kill the
memory of the original atrocities.
The Armenian government should have assessed Turkish denialism in
similar and even graver terms, but to this date it has failed to do so
for no apparent reason.In contemporary democratic Germany it is simply
impossible to imagine a street or institution named in honor of any
of the leaders of the Third Reich – indeed it is legally prohibited!
Meanwhile, in “democratic” Turkey the leaders of CUP, ie the criminal
organizers and perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide, are openly
glorified.
For example, a district in Istanbul, a few avenues and streets
in different parts of Istanbul, boulevards in Ankara and Edirne,
primary schools in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, and a high school in
Konya are all named after Talat Pasha, Minister of the Interior and
(in 1917-1918) Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, who personally
orchestrated the Armenian Genocide.”Democratic” Turkey also actively
uses the infamous Article 301 of its Criminal Code (“insulting
Turkishness”, in 2008 changed to “insulting the Turkish nation”). This
law, among other things, makes the recognition of the Armenian Genocide
a crime. About 50 trials have already been held based on this article.
2. Totalitarianism. Up to the late 1940s Turkey was a one-party state.
However, even today “democratic” Turkey periodically imposes a ban
on one political party or another (even those elected to parliament),
while its leaders are thrown in jail on trumped-up political charges.
The last of a series of such cases occurred in December 2009, when
the Turkish Constitutional Court banned the pro-Kurdish Democratic
Society Party (DTP), which had 21 MPs. All the property of DTP was
confiscated by the state. This even prompted the European Union,
which by and large turns a blind eye to the racist repressions
against 20 million Kurds in Turkey, to remind Ankara that “the
dissolution of political parties is an exceptional measure that
should be used with utmost restraint.”Turkey’s state propaganda,
all-inclusive revision and falsification of the Ottoman and modern
Turkish history through carefully controlled scholarship, school
curricula, and legally enforced taboos, including severe restraints
on free access to information and freedom of expression, resulted in
effective brainwashing of its own population.
3. Statism (etatism). The Turkish Constitution of 1937 strengthened
the regulatory role of the state not only in the economy, but also
in ideology.
4. Anti-communism. Ataturk, despite his friendship with the Soviet
Union, was a staunch anti-communist. The Communist Party of Turkey
has been banned since 1923 and remained illegal throughout its
whole history, having been routinely subjected to most brutal state
repressions.
5. Leaderism and the cult of personality. In Turkey, the cult of
Ataturk is still in full bloom. Statues and monuments of Ataturk are
installed in every city, his portraits are hung in all government and
administrative institutions, as well as in school classrooms, and his
portraits are on banknotes and coins of all denominations. Criticism
of his life activities and biography are criminalized and carrying
Ataturk as one’s last name is banned.
6. Militarism and aggression. Turkey is one of the most militarized
countries on earth, with the eighth-largest army in the world and
second only to the United States in NATO.
The decisive sway of the Turkish military on domestic politics is
well known: one only needs to recall the three coups d’etat carried
out by the Turkish army in 1960, 1971 and 1980, as well as the
harsh ousting of Islamist Prime Minister N. Erbakan from power in
1997 (incidentally, his ruling “Welfare Party” was also banned).The
Republic of Turkey has repeatedly resorted to military force or threat
of force against neighboring countries, such as Syria, Cyprus, Iraq,
Greece, and Armenia. The Northern part of Cyprus, Syria’s district
of Alexandretta, and the western part of Armenia still remain occupied.
The Turkish army also regularly invades Northern Iraq.In 1920, the
first Republic of Armenia fell under the blows of Kemalists. Indeed,
the direct order that Karabekir-Pasha received from Mustafa Kemal
literally specified “to destroy Armenia morally and physically.”
Immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Turkey’s policy
towards the “third” Republic of Armenia became explicitly aggressive
in nature once again, including an ongoing land-blockade, refusal to
establish diplomatic relations, enduring Armenian Genocide denial,
support and assistance to Azerbaijan in its preparations for a new
military venture against Armenia, etc.The emergence and subsequent
superstructural metamorphosis of fascism in Turkey was not adequately
evaluated by Soviet/Russian or Western historiographies and neither
was it reflected in international legal and political documents.
However, this should not lead anyone astray.
Generally, Turkophilia in political and academic circles in both
the West and USSR/Russia, is a quite multi-faceted phenomenon and a
separate topic for discussion.
Here an incomplete explanation will suffice: the USSR was simply
unable to call Ataturk a fascist, because “the leader of the
world proletariat” Vladimir Lenin and Ataturk signed the infamous
Moscow Treaty of “Friendship and Brotherhood” on March 16, 1921
(incidentally, exactly 90 years ago). Meanwhile, the West avoided
such an unfavorable evaluation, because Turkey has historically been
considered – and actually was – a barrier against Russia/Soviet Union,
and a key strategic ally. Turkey’s alliance with the West was legally
formalized by its accession to NATO in 1952.
If the international community (alias “the great powers”) does not
adequately characterize the fascist essence of the modern Turkish
state, this is simply because it has not been interested in such an
expose. But independent Armenia, by failing to officially identify
and denounce the fascist nature of Turkish state, not only refuses
to clearly see and understand the true ideology, strategic goals and
calculations of its age-old archenemy, but also deprives itself of
the chance to present properly its own dire geostrategic situation
to the world. After all, Armenia’s present security predicaments are
a direct result of crimes by Turkish fascism!Attempts to rehabilitate
Turkey without having it incur its due responsibility – in particular,
without the territorial restitutions and other compensations to
Armenia – can lead to new and repeated genocides. This is the main
conclusion that the international community has yet to draw.
ARMEN AYVAZYAN ist Doctor of Political Sciences “Hayastani Zrucakic”,
N: 10 (173 ), 18 March, 2011 Palabras claves Turquia . Todas las
opiniones son bienvenidas. El sitio se resguarda el derecho de
editarlas y/o rechazarlas.