UNGOR: TURKEY HAS ACKNOWLEDGED THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
by Ugur Ungor
The Armenian Weekly Magazine
April 27, 2012
“Turkey denies the Armenian Genocide” goes a jingle. Yes, the Turkish
state’s official policy towards the Armenian Genocide was and is indeed
characterized by the “three M’s”: misrepresentation, mystification,
and manipulation. But when one gauges what place the genocide occupies
in the social memory of Turkish society, even after nearly a century,
a different picture emerges. Even though most direct eyewitnesses to
the crime have passed away, oral history interviews yield important
insights. Elderly Turks and Kurds in eastern Turkey often hold
vivid memories from family members or fellow villagers who witnessed
or participated in the genocide. This essay is based on countless
interviews conducted with the (grand-)children of eye witnesses to
the Armenian Genocide. The research results suggest there is a clash
between official state memory and popular social memory: The Turkish
government is denying a genocide that its own population remembers.
Children in Mush (photo by Khatchig Mouradian) Oral history in Turkey
Oral history is an indispensible tool for scholars interested in
mass violence. A considerable collection of Armenian and Syriac oral
history material has been studied by colleagues.1 The existing body
of oral history research in Turkey, though gradually developing,
has hardly addressed the genocide. A potential research field was
politicized by successive governments and the Turkish Historical
Society. Several documentaries about the victimization of Ottoman
Muslims in the eastern border regions have included shots of elderly
Muslims speaking about their victimization at the hand of Armenians
(and presumably Cossacks) in 1918. It seems unmistakable that the
Turkish-nationalist camp fears that the local population of Anatolian
towns and villages might “confess” the genocide’s veracity and disclose
relevant details about it. For example, the 2006 PBS documentary “The
Armenian Genocide” by Andrew Goldberg includes remarkable footage
of elderly Turks speaking candidly about the genocide. One of the
men remembers how his father told him that the génocidaires had
mobilized religious leaders to convince the population that killing
Armenians would secure them a place in heaven.
Another middle-aged man recounts a recollection of his grandfather’s
that neighboring Armenian villagers were locked in a barn and burnt
alive.2
In the past decade, I have searched (and found) respondents willing to
relate their personal experiences or their family narratives related
to the war and the genocide. In the summers of 2002 and 2004-07, I
conducted up to 200 interviews with (grand-)children of contemporaries
in eastern Turkey, all semi-structured and taped. Needless to say,
oral history has its methodological pitfalls, especially in a
society where the memory of modern history is overlaid with myth
and ideologies. Many are unwilling to reflect about their family
histories because they have grown accustomed to ignoring inquisitive
and critical questions, not least on their own moral choices in the
face of their neighbors’ destruction. Others are reluctant to admit
to acts considered shameful.3
But while some were outright unwilling to speak once I broached the
taboo subject, others agreed to speak but wished to remain anonymous,
and again many others were happy to speak openly, with some even
providing me access to their private documents. Even though direct
eyewitnesses to the crime have most probably passed away, these
interviews proved fruitful. Elderly Turks and Kurds often remember
vivid anecdotes from family members or villagers who witnessed
or participated in the massacres. My subject position as a “local
outsider” (being born in the region but raised abroad) facilitated
the research as it gave me the communicative channels to at once
delve deeply and recede at the appropriate moments. It also provided
me with a sense of immunity from the dense moral and political field
in which most of this research is embedded.
Turkish and Kurdish eyewitness accounts
A.D., a Kurdish writer from Varto (MuÅ~_), recalled a childhood memory
from 1966 when an earthquake laid bare a mass grave near his village.
The villagers knew the victims were Armenians from a neighboring
village. According to A.D., when the village elder requested advice
from the local authorities on what to do, within a day military
commanders had assigned a group of soldiers to re-bury the corpses.
The villagers were warned to never speak about it again.4
Interviews with elderly locals also yielded considerable useful data
about the genocide itself. For example, a Kurdish man (born 1942)
from Diyarbekir’s northern Piran district, had heard from his father
how fellow villagers would raid Armenian villages and dispatch their
victims by slashing their throats wide open. As they operated with
daggers and axes, this often led to decapitations. After the killing
was done, the perpetrators could see how the insides of the victims’
windpipes were black because of tobacco use.5 Morbid details such as
these are also recorded by the following account from a Kurdish man
from the Kharzan region, east of Diyarbekir:
My grandfather was the village elder (muhtar) during the war. He told
us when we were children about the Armenian massacre. There was a
man in our village; he used to hunt pheasants. Now the honorless man
(bêÅ~_erefo) hunted Armenians. Grandpa saw how he hurled a throwing
axe right through a child a mother was carrying on her back. Grandpa
yelled at him: “Hey, do you have no honor? God will punish you for
this.” But the man threatened my grandfather that if he did not shut
up, he would be next. The man was later expelled from the village.6
Here is another account from a Turkish woman (born 1928) from Erzincan:
Q: You said there were Armenians in your village, too. What happened
to them?
A: They were all killed in the first year of the war, you didn’t know?
My mother was standing on the hill in front of our village. She saw
how at Kemah they threw (döktuler) all the Armenians into the river.
Into the Euphrates. Alas, screams and cries (bagıran cagıran).
Everyone, children and all (coluk cocuk), brides, old people, everyone,
everyone. They robbed them of their golden bracelets, their shawls,
and silk belts, and threw them into the river.
Q: Who threw them into the river?
A: The government of course.
Q: What do you mean by ‘the government’?
A: Gendarmes.7
These examples suggest that there still might be something meaningful
gained from interviews with elderly Turks and Kurds. Needless to say,
had a systematic oral history project been carried out in Turkey much
earlier, e.g. in the 1960’s or 1970’s, undoubtedly a wealth of crucial
information could have been salvaged. Besides the excellent research
conducted in Turkey by colleagues such as Leyla Neyzi, AyÅ~_e Gul
Altınay, and others, interviews by individual researchers are at
best a drop in the ocean. A measured research project with a solid
book as output would be a memorable achievement for the centenary of
the genocide.
Discussion
When I was traveling from Ankara to Adana in the summer of 2004, I
stopped by the friendly town of Eregli, north of the Taurus mountain
range. My friend, an academic visiting his family, had invited me
along. Strolling through the breezy town, we came across one of my
friend’s acquaintances, an “Uncle Fikri.” The old man looked sad,
so we asked him what was wrong. He said, “My father has been on
his deathbed for a few days now.” When we tried to console him, he
answered: “I’m not sad because he will die, he has been sick for a
while now. I just cannot accept that he refuses to recite the Kelime-i
Shehadet before he passes on.” (Shahadah, the Muslim declaration of
belief: “There is no God but Allah and Muhammed is his Prophet.”) The
man looked deep into our eyes, there was an awkward silence for four
seconds, we understood each other, and we parted.
In this example, only two generations separated us from the eyewitness
generation. Therefore, I believe there might still be avenues for
oral history research on the genocide. Father Patrick Desbois is a
French Catholic priest who travels to Ukraine in a concerted effort to
document the Shoah through the use of oral history. His team locates
mass graves and interviews contemporary witnesses about the mass
shootings of Jews, which often took place just outside the Ukrainian
villages they visit. The elderly respondents usually remember the
slaughter in vivid detail.8 Desbois’ work on Ukraine has proven helpful
in completing the already comprehensive picture historians have of
Nazi mass murder in that region. During a private conversation, Desbois
intimated that he would be interested in launching a similar project in
Turkey, if a viable initiative was proposed.9 It might be worthwhile to
gauge what place the Armenian Genocide occupies in the social memory
of Turks and Kurds, even after nearly a century. The conclusion would
undoubtedly warrant my introductory comment: The Turkish government
is denying a genocide that its own population remembers.
Endnotes
1. Donald E. Miller and Lorne Touryan-Miller, Survivors: An Oral
History of the Armenian Genocide, Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1993; David Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors:
Muslim-Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I,
Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006, appendix; AyÅ~_e Gul Altınay
and Fethiye Cetin, Torunlar (Istanbul: Metis, 2009).
2. Andrew Goldberg, “The Armenian Genocide,” Two Cats Productions,
2006.
3. For parallel problems in Russian history, see Orlando Figes, The
Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia, London: Penguin, 2007, p.
XXXV.
4. Interview conducted with A.D. (from Varto district) in Heidelberg,
Germany, Nov. 24, 2009.
5. Interview conducted with M.Å~^. (from Piran district) in
Diyarbakır, July 15, 2004.
6. Interview conducted with Erdal Rênas (from the Kharzan area)
in Istanbul, Aug. 18, 2002.
7. Interview conducted with K.T. (from Erzincan) in Bursa on June 28,
2002 and Aug. 20 2007, partially screened in the documentary “Land
of our Grandparents” (Amsterdam: ZeloviÄ~G Productions, 2008).
8.Patrick Desbois, Porteur de Mmémoires: sur les Traces de
la Shoah par Balles, Paris: Michel Lafon, 2007. Also, see
9. Personal communication with Patrick Desbois at the conference “The
Holocaust by Bullets,” organized by the Amsterdam Center for Holocaust
and Genocide Studies at the Nationaal Museum Vught (Netherlands),
Sept. 11, 2009.
http://www.armenianweekly.com/2012/04/27/ungor-turkey-has-acknowledged-the-armenian-genocide/
www.shoahparballes.com.