HISTORY LESSONS FROM MR. DAVUTOGLU
EDITORIAL | MAY 9, 2014 11:55 AM
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By Edmond Y. Azadian
Ever since Ahmed Davutoglu moved from academia to serve as Turkey’s
foreign minister, he has been repackaging Turkey’s bloody history and
has become an apostle of Prime Minister Erdogan’s denialist policy
on the topic of the Armenian Genocide.
He is more of a sidekick to Mr. Erdogan in the eyes of Genocide
scholars who have long passed their verdicts on the facts of the
Armenian Genocide.
The excuses enumerated by the Turkish leaders can hardly be used for
domestic consumption and perhaps only for a short while, because in
today’s globalized world, the Turkish society itself is undergoing an
intense process of instruction, learning the undeniable facts of the
Armenian Genocide. Mr. Erdogan is trying to intercept the process by
declaring a war against the media.
Less than a year ago, Mr. Erdogan was challenging Armenians to
“come up with one single proof that Turkey has committed [genocide]
against Armenians.”
The Turkish leader’s statements on April 23 were also meant to provide
a cop out to other politicians who are ready to jump on the Turkish
bandwagon. No wonder that our Secretary of State John Kerry was
“stunned” into silence.
But, on the eve of the Genocide centennial, Turkey is anticipating
a tsunami of events unmasking long buried ugly truths in Turkey. In
anticipation of that tidal wave, Turkey has hired high-powered PR
firms to soften the blow or to deflect similar statements recently
made by French President Francois Hollande. The current goodwill
campaign is certainly devised by those PR firms.
In a backdoor understanding with the White House, Prime Minister
Erdogan undertook the initiative to get President Obama off the hook.
In less than a week, Mr. Erdogan offset the goodwill — if any —
generated by offering his condolences to the grandchildren of the
Armenian martyrs.
He indeed denied that Turkey had perpetrated any genocide against
the Armenians when he was interviewed by Charlie Rose on PBS.
In the meantime, another interview given to the German Der Spiegel
surfaced, although this one seems to have been published prior to
the April 23 condolences, in which the Turkish leader continued to
spout the same “there can be no talk of genocide” line.
With all those contradictory statements, Foreign Minister Davutoglu
published an opinion piece in the Guardian on May 2, ostensibly
with an olive branch in his hand, inviting the Armenians to “follow
Erdogan’s lead.”
After some sugarcoated statements about the contributions of the
Armenian musicians and architects to Ottoman history, he resorts to
the same diversionary tactics that Turkey has been using to duck the
issue. He tries to equate the suffering of the Genocide victims with
those of Turkish military losses during World War I.
“The power of the Ottoman empire declined continuously in the 19th
century. The loss of the Balkan provinces was a striking defeat which
resulted in mass atrocities, expulsion and the deportation of Ottoman
Muslims. … Approximately 5 million Ottoman citizens were driven away
from their ancestral homes in the Balkans, the Caucasus and Anatolia.
While much of western history tells of the suffering of the
dispossessed and dead Ottoman Christians, the colossal sufferings
of Ottoman Muslims remains largely unknown outside of Turkey,”
Davutoglu writes.
The murderers’ arithmetic is not compatible with the historic truth.
The historians have taken into account and evaluated objectively the
Ottoman losses, which were the result of a tyrant losing his grip
on his victims and suffering the consequences. For more than four
centuries, Ottoman sultans ruled the Balkans with iron and blood. And
when the empire began crumbling, those lands claimed their independence
and they sent back their torturers to Anatolia.
Any person in his right mind — let alone historians — will ask: what
responsibility do the Armenians bear in the collapse of the Ottoman
rule in the Balkans? After begging for some sympathy for Ottoman
losses, the smart diplomat tries to draw parallels with the Armenian
victims of the Genocide, hoping to create a fictitious “common pain.”
Yes, indeed, Armenians suffered and died, but also some Turks died,
therefore the Armenian martyrs must bear some responsibility for
the Turkish losses and the Diaspora has to use some “just memory”
that the Turks also suffered because they could no longer exploit
the subject nations in the Balkans.
The next building block of Mr. Davutoglu’s sympathy campaign is the old
story of commissioning a joint committee of historians “to discover”
the truth. The same discredited proposal was also made by Erdogan in
his Der Spiegel interview. That proposal comes also with a challenge:
“Turkey has opened its archives, let Armenia open its own archives.”
Serious historians have long established that Turkey has sanitized its
archives from any incriminating evidence. Also, the Ottoman archives
are not open to serious scholars. They are open only to some hired
guns that defend the Turkish government’s official line. Adding insult
to injury, Erdogan and Davutoglu have been proposing to bring those
discredited scholars in the same room with established and respected
scholars who have already “discovered” what the Turkish leaders cannot
seem to do.
At the conclusion of his column, Davutoglu ceremoniously invites the
world to a reconciliation charade: “The statement by Prime Minister
Erdogan is an unprecedented and courageous step taken in this
direction. I believe now is the time to invest in this relationship.
But we can only succeed if this endeavor is embraced by a wider
constituency intent on reconciliation. Turkey stands ready.”
If Turkey is ready, it has to demonstrate its willingness for
reconciliation by taking some concrete steps. During the discussions
leading to the signing of the Protocols, Mr. Davutoglu asked Armenians
to relinquish three regions under Karabagh forces in order to break up
the logjam and to create goodwill on the Turkish-Azerbaijani side. Now
we would like to ask the same from Turkey. Let the Turks lift the
blockade, which will benefit both sides. Let Turkey repeal Article
301 from its Penal Code punishing anyone who insults Turkishness. Let
Turkey come up with a plan to preserve Armenian architectural heritage
in historic Armenia. And let the Turks come up with a compensation
package.
That “Turkey is ready” will sound hollow without any such accompanying
steps.
Mr. Davutoglu proposes: “Let’s bury the common pain.”
But before burying the pain, let us properly bury the 1.5 million
victims. That way, history lessons will find their rightful place.
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