Yerkir
May 26, 2009
Yerevan — That an Armenian repatriate, American-born into a legacy
of remembrance inherited from a line of survivors of genocide nearly
a century ago, feels compelled to entitle his thoughts with a focus
on Turkey — and not Armenia — reveals a larger problem, a gaping
wound, and an imperative for closure long overdue on both sides of
history’s tragic divide.
The new Armenia, independent of its longstanding statelessness
since 1991, is my everyday life, as are the yearnings of my fellow
citizens for their daily dignity, true democracy, the rule of law,
and an empowering end to sham elections and the corruption, arrogance
and unaccountability of power.
"Generation next" is neither victim nor subject, nor any longer an
infidel "millet." We seek not, in obsequious supplicancy, to curry the
favor of the world’s strong and self-important, whose interests often
trump their own principles and whose geopolitics engulf the professed
values of liberty and justice for all. Gone are the residual resources
for kissing up or behind.
And so, with a clarity of conscience and a goodness of heart, I expect
Turkey and its administration to address the multiple modern challenges
they face and offer to this end a list of realities, not commandments,
that will help enable a new era of regional understanding and the
globalization of a peaceful order that countenances neither victims
nor vi ctimizers.
1. Measure sevenfold, cut once: This old local adage suggests a
neat lesson for contemporary officials. Before launching, at Davos
or elsewhere, pedantic missiles in condemnation of the excesses of
others, think fully about the substance and implications of your
invectives. This is not a narrow Armenian assertion; it includes all
relevant dimensions, including all minorities. Occupation, for its
part, is the last word Turkish representatives should be showering
in different directions at different international fora, lest someone
require a textbook definition of duplicity.
Maintain dignity but tread lightly, for history is a powerful and
lasting precedent.
2. Self-reflection: Democracies achieve domestic success, applicants
accomplish European integration, and countries become regional
drivers only when they have the political courage and moral fortitude
to undergo this process. Face yourself, your own conduct, and the
track record of state on behalf of which you speak. Not only the
success stories and points of pride, but the whole deal. Be honest
and brave about it; you do possess the potential to graduate from
decades of denial. Recent trends in civil society, however tentative
and preliminary, attest to this.
3. The Armenian genocide: Don’t revise history, recognize the
historical record and take responsibility. There is a wealth of
evidentiary documentation, more than sufficient to disarm the various
instruments of offic ial denial that have been employed over the
years. But this is only the paperwork. The most damning testimony is
not in the killing of more than a million human souls in a manifest
execution of the 20th century’s first genocide or, in the words of
the American ambassador reporting at the time, "race extermination."
4. Homeland-killing: Worse than genocide, as incredible as that
sounds, is the premeditated deprivation of a people of its ancestral
heartland. And that’s precisely what happened. In what amounted
to the Great Armenian Dispossession, a nation living for more
than four millennia upon its historic patrimony, was in a matter
of months brutally, literally, and completely eradicated from its
land. Unprecedented in human history, this expropriation constitutes to
this day a murder, not only of a people, but of a civilization and an
attempt to erase a legacy of culture, a time-earned way of life. This
is where the debate about calling it genocide or not becomes absurd,
trivial, and tertiary. A homeland was exterminated by the Turkish
republic’s predecessor and under the world’s watchful eye, and we’re
negotiating a word. Even that term is not enough to encompass the
magnitude of the crime.
5. Coming clean: It is the only way to move forward. This is not a
threat, but a statement of plain, unoriginal fact. Don’t be afraid
of the price tag. What the Armenians lost is priceless. Instead
of skirting this catastrophic legacy through counterarguments
or commissions, return to the real script and undertake your own
critical introspection and say what you plan to do to right the wrong,
to atone for and to educate, to revive and restore, and to celebrate
the Armenian heritage of what is today eastern Turkey. Finally take
the initiative for a real reconciliation based on the terrible truth
but bolstered by a fresh call to candor.
6. Never again: The rewards of coming to this reality check far
outweigh its perils. What is unfortunately unique about the Holocaust
is not the evil of the Shoah itself, but the demeanor of postwar
Germany to face history and itself, to assume responsibility for
the crimes of the preceding regime, to mourn and to dignify, to seek
forgiveness and make redemption, and to incorporate this ethic into
the public consciousness and the methodology of state. A veritable
leader of the new Turkey, the European one of the future, might do
the same, not in cession but in full expression of national pride
and honor. My grandmother, who survived the genocide owing to the
humanity of a blessed Turkish neighbor who sheltered little Khengeni
of Ordu from the fate of her family, did not live to see that day.
7. The politics of power: Turkey’s allies can help it along this way.
Whether it’s from the West or the East, the message for Turkey is that,
in the third millennium AD, the world will be governed by a different
set of rules that might well respect right, that no crime against
humanity or its denial will be tolerated. The Obama Administration
bears the burden, but has the capacity for this leadership of
light. And it is now being tested.
8. Turkey and Armenia: These sovereign neighbors have never, in
all of history, entered into a single bilateral agreement with
each other. Whether diplomatic, economic, political, territorial,
or security-specific, no facet of their relationship, or the actual
absence thereof, is regulated by a contract freely and fairly entered
into between the two republics. It’s about time. Hence, the process
of official contacts and reciprocal visits that unraveled in the
wake of a Turkey-Armenia soccer match in September 2008 should mind
this gap and structure the discourse not to disdain the divides
emanating from the past, but to bridge them through the immediate
establishment of diplomatic relations without the positing or posturing
of preconditions, the lifting of Turkey’s unlawful border blockade,
and a comprehensive, negotiated resolution of all outstanding matters,
based on an acceptance of history and the commitment to a future
guaranteed against it recurrence.
9. Third-party interests: Nor should the fact of dialogue, as facially
laudable as it is, be exploited as an insincere justification to
deter third-parties, and particularl y the US Congress, from adopting
decisions or resolutions that simply seek to reaffirm the historical
record. Such comportment, far from the statesmanship expected,
contradicts the aim and spirit of rapprochement.
10. The past as present: The current Armenian state covers a mere
fraction of the vast expanse of the great historical plateau upon
which the Armenians lived until the surgical disgorgement of homeland
and humanity that was 1915. Accordingly, as improbable as it seems
in view of its ethnic kinship with Azerbaijan, modern-day Turkey also
carries the charge to discard outdated and pursue corrective policies
in the Caucasus. This high duty applies not only to a qualitatively
improved and cleansed rapport with the Republic of Armenia, but also
in respect of new regional realities.
On the road to inevitable self-discovery, Turkey, its future with
Armenia, and their immediate neighborhood have come to form one of the
planet’s most sensitive and seismic tectonic plates. Integrity, equity,
and a bit of humility might help to save the day. And our world.
Raffi K. Hovannisian was Armenia’s first minister of foreign affairs
and currently represents the opposition Heritage party in the National
Assembly.