HYE-TERT
Sept 12 2009
Gunaysu: The Impossibility of Discussing Giro Manoyan’s Comments in
Turkey
By Ayse Gunaysu
Kaynak: hairenik.com/weekly
Yer: USA
Tarih: 12.9.2009
On Fri., Sept. 4, the daily Taraf, the beloved newspaper of the
democratic, anti-militarist, and liberal opposition circles in Turkey,
including myself (despite several objections on certain issues and the
language it uses from time to time), published an interview with Giro
Manoyan, one of the top leaders of the Armenian Revolutionary
Federation-Dashnaktsutiun (ARF), with the headline, `Armenians have
their own Bahceli,’referring Manoyan and his stance on the steps
towards a détente between Turkey and Armenia. At first’and
superficial’glance, one can see why Manoyan was compared to Devlet
Bahceli: The latter is Turkey’s ultra-nationalist leader who violently
opposes both the process of finding a `resolution’ to Turkey’s
so-called `Kurdish Question’ and the signals given by the government
to normalize relations with Armenia. However, Bahceli is also the
leader of the Nationalist Action Party, which represents the Turkish
version of
the neo-Nazi spirit, with its endless hatred of non-Muslims and
Kurds, and its
history of violence’murders, massacres (of Alevis), kidnappings,
tortures, the throwing of bombs on groups of students. The analogy
drawn between Manoyan and a politician like Bahceli, in a newspaper
that is the most courageous opponent of the Ittihadist state tradition
in Turkey, should be considered in the context of the general Turkish
mindset about anything related to Armenians.
Taraf later changed the title of the article in its online version.
What was crucial in Manoyan’s interview were his words about the
Turkish-Armenian border. Manoyan said, among others, that the
Armenian-Turkey border is disputable, as it was drawn between the
parties (the Bolsheviks and Kemalists) who were not then recognized by
the international community. Therefore, according to Manoyan, the
border issue is still to be decided. In short, he implied that he does
not recognize the present border, or at least, finds its validity
questionable.
But at this point I don’t want to discuss what Manoyan said because I
am more interested in the intellectual environment of Turkey that
makes it possible for a liberal newspaper editor to equate Manoyan’s
objection to this specific `normalization’ project with a Turkish
ultra-nationalist party leader who had recently threatened to resort
to violence against any step to resolve the Kurdish Question. This is
an environment that unconditionally excludes any discussion on a
comment by a Dashnaktsutiun leader, leave alone his questioning of the
validity of the border.
It’s a widely known fact that in Turkey, anything’any comment, any
step’that would supposedly lead to `a partition’ of the country, to a
potential restoration of the Sevres Agreement (which provided for the
foundation of independent Armenia and Kurdistan in 1919), and to a
threat to the territorial unity of the country, is utterly
unacceptable. Anyone who does not think so is unquestionably regarded
as the enemy of the country. This is the most visible reason why
Turkish people see in Manoyan’s word a declaration of hostility and
ill-will.
But there is another equally important factor that makes it possible
for a liberal Turkish newspaper editor to make such an equation: It is
the real ignorance in Turkey about anything related to Armenians and
their history in this country. Many would believe that the average
Turk denies the genocide knowingly, which is not the case. I know that
it seems impossible to think that the extermination of such a
significant part of the country’s population, such an apocalyptic
period with such enormous, widespread consequences that changed the
social, economic, and demographic landscape of the whole country, can
be wiped off from the collective memory of a nation. But, as a result
of a combination of very complicated processes, this is exactly what
happened. The overwhelming majority of Turkish people, therefore,
don’t even know the most basic truths about their country’s Armenian
past.
Even many Turkish people who have broken themselves free of the
official ideology and history, who sincerely recognize the Armenian
Genocide in their hearts, don’t really know the real extent of the
strong Armenian presence in the Ottoman Empire before 1915. They are
not aware that the Armenian presence was not limited to the eastern
provinces of the empire, that there were significant Armenian
communities in, for example, Ankara, or Eskisehir in central Anatolia,
or Izmit, or Tekirdag in the Marmara region in the west. Many of these
Turkish people of conscience don’t know that at the turn of the
century, one in every five persons living in Asia Minor was a
non-Muslim, and they really think that the so-called `deportations’
were limited to the eastern provinces of the empire. If this is the
case with a handful of Turkish people (compared to 70 million) who
share the painful memory of the genocide, one can imagine the
situation with the vast
majority. Unbelievably, they don’t even know that Armenians are the n
ative children of this land who had settled in Asia Minor long before
the Turks. My Armenian friends often tell anecdotes of how people,
upon hearing their Armenian names, ask them where there are from, as
if they are foreigners. People asking these questions are not Armenian
haters or necessarily Turkish nationalists. They just really don’t
know.
But how did this happen? How could this happen? How can an entire
nation be made ignorant of such obvious historical facts? I’m not a
historian, or a sociologist, or an anthropologist who studies the
mechanisms and processes that make up the collective mindset of
nations. However, it’s easy to see that the first generation who
directly witnessed or took part in the massacres and plunder concealed
the truth out of guilt. Huge properties had illegally changed hands
and the new owners did everything to legitimize the plunder. Then came
the reconstruction of a new nation, which helped this first generation
to pretend that nothing had happened. Unlike the example of Germany,
where the Nazis were caught red-handed, the victorious Kemalist
movement was successful in covering up the evidence of the mass
exterminations and was backed by the Great Powers’ efforts to secure
an international balance of power that would best suit themselves. In
the meantime,
the Soviets’ support of the so-called `national liberation movement’
against the `imperialist powers’ came like a bonus, as it proved very
helpful in positioning non-Muslims within this context as the
supporters of the imperialist powers even in the eyes of the
mainstream Turkish Left.
Then came the second generation, which was raised as the `children of
the young republic,,’ a republic that rewrote the history in the
spirit of a victorious national state and reinforced a patriotism
based on an ethnically, religiously, and culturally monolithic
country. The physical traces of Armenian civilization in Asia Minor
were systematically erased. Armenian monuments were destructed, at
times even with dynamites. Armenian, along with Greek, Assyrian, and
Kurdish names of places were changed. No mention is made of the
ancient Armenian kingdoms and kings. This cleansing of an Armenian
trace is not restricted to the government’s publications; it applies
to private institutions and organzations as well, as this denial of
Armenian existence is internalized by the Turkish public at large.
Moreover, the republican myths of foundation have been taken over by
the mainstream Turkish Left, which upheld the ideals of the Turkey’s
`War of Liberation’ and valued it as a victory against imperialists
and naturally did not question how the nationalist state came into
being by bringing the Turkification of the land to its successful
end. And thus, Turkish society was sadly deprived of a structured
criticism from the Left of the founding paradigm of the republic.
As for the ARF-Dashnaktsutiun, the sincere belief that Dashnaks are
simply haters of Turks is the common denominator of the Turkish Left
and Right. I will not discuss what the Dashnaktsutiun now represents
because I am really not familiar with its program, nor its political
lineor practice. But, I know that in general, the people of Turkey
know absolutely nothing about its history. They don’t know that the
Dashnaktsutiun was once the closest ally of the Committee of Union and
Progress (CUP), who were shortly afterwards the perpetrators of the
Armenian Genocide. They don’t know that the Dashnaktsutiun campaigned
for `Freedom, Equality,, and Brotherhood’ for all Ottoman people
regardless of ethnic origin or religious affiliation against the
Abdulhamidian tyranny. They don’t know that in 1908 in Van (a symbol
for the denialists), like elsewhere, Dashnaktsutiun leaflets were
distributed that called for solidarity between Muslims and Christians
for
justice and welfare for the poor and freedom for everyone. They do
n’t have any idea that the two parties (CUP and ARF) even signed four
written agreements between 1907-14 around these principles, that even
the atrocities of the 1909 Adana massacres didn’t prevent Dashnak
leaders from deciding, at their fifth congress, to continue their
alliance with the CUP in the hope of a better future, despite
objections from the Hunchak Party and the Armenian Patriarchate.
Totalitarian regimes know that knowledge is dangerous for them. So
they do everything to bar their subjects from knowing and
understanding. But there is another side to this: We, as human beings,
instinctively’sometimes subconsciously, sometimes
half-consciously’choose what to learn and what to know; or, to put it
the other way round, we choose what not to learn and what not to
know. This is because we instinctively go after what will give us
peace of mind and keep us free of any inner unrest. So, although it is
mainly a matter of the regimes’ obscuring and suppressing of the
truth, there is also the question of our individual decision to always
search for the truth, and chase it and find it at the cost of losing
our peace of mind.
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