End of the Armenian debate?
By Gwynne Dyer
Trinidad Express
Saturday, October 17th 2009
The first great massacre of the 20th century happened in eastern Anatolia 94
years ago. Armenians all over the world insist that their ancestors who died
in those events were the victims of a deliberate genocide, and that there
can be no reconciliation with the Turks until they admit their guilt. But
now the Armenians back home have made a deal.
On October 10, the Turkish and Armenian foreign ministers signed an accord
in Zurich that reopens the border between the two countries, closed since
1993, and creates a joint historical commission to determine what actually
happened in 1915. It is a triumph for reason and moderation, so the
nationalists in both countries attacked it at once.
The most anguished protests came from the Armenian diaspora: eight million
people living mainly in the United States, France, Russia, Iran and Lebanon.
There are only three million people living in Armenia itself, and
remittances from the diaspora are twice as large as the country’s entire
budget, so the views of overseas Armenians matter.
Unfortunately, their views are quite different from those of the people who
actually live in Armenia. For Armenians abroad, making the Turks admit that
they planned and carried out a genocide is supremely important. Indeed, it
has become a core part of their identity.
For most of those who are still in Armenia, getting the Turkish border
re-opened is a higher priority. Their poverty and isolation are so great
that a quarter of the population has emigrated since the border was closed
16 years ago, and trade with their relatively rich neighbour to the west
would help to staunch the flow.
Moreover, the agreement does not require Armenia to give back the
Armenian-populated parts of Azerbaijan, its neighbour to the east. Armenia’s
conquest of those lands in 1992-94 was why Turkey closed the border in the
first place (many Turks see the Turkic-speaking Azeris as their "little
brothers"), so in practical terms Armenian president Serge Sarkisian has got
a very good deal.
But can any practical consideration justify abandoning the traditional
Armenian demand that Turkey admit to a policy of genocide? Yes it can,
because it is probably the wrong demand to be making.
Long ago, when I was a budding historian, I got sidetracked for a while by
the controversy over the massacres of 1915. I read the archival reports on
British and Russian negotiations with Armenian revolutionaries after the
Ottoman empire entered the First World War on the other side in early 1915.
I even read the documents in the Turkish General Staff archives ordering the
deportation of the Armenian population from eastern Anatolia later that
year. What happened is quite clear.
The British and the Russians planned to knock the Ottoman empire out of the
war quickly by simultaneous invasions of eastern Anatolia, Russia from the
north and Britain by landings on Turkey’s south coast. So they welcomed the
approaches of Armenian nationalist groups and asked them to launch uprisings
behind the Turkish lines to synchronise with the invasions. The usual
half-promises about independence were made, and the Armenian groups fell for
it.
The British later switched their attack to the Dardanelles in an attempt to
grab Istanbul, but they never warned their Armenian allies that the
south-coast invasion was off. The Russians did invade, but the Turks managed
to stop them. The Armenian revolutionaries launched their uprisings as
promised, and the Turks took a terrible vengeance on the whole community.
Istanbul ordered the Armenian minority to be removed from eastern Anatolia
on the grounds that their presence behind the lines posed a danger to
Turkish defences. Wealthy Armenians were allowed to travel south to Syria by
train or ship, but for the impoverished masses it was columns marching over
the mountains in the dead of winter. They faced rape and murder at the hands
of their guards, there was little or no food, and many hundreds of thousands
died.
If genocide just means killing a lot of people, then this certainly was one.
If genocide means a policy that aims to exterminate a particular ethnic or
religious group, then it wasn’t. Armenians who made it alive to Syria, then
also part of the Ottoman empire, were not sent to death camps. Indeed, they
became the ancestors of today’s huge Armenian diaspora. Armenians living
elsewhere in the empire, notably in Istanbul, faced abuse but no mass
killings.
It was a dreadful crime, and only recently has the debate in Turkeybegun to
acknowledge it. It was not a genocide if your standard of comparison is what
happened to the European Jews, but diaspora Armenians will find it very hard
to give up their claim that it was. Nevertheless, the grown-ups are now in
charge both in Armenia and in Turkey, and amazing progress is being made.
– Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist