Agence France Presse — English
September 5, 2008 Friday 2:36 AM GMT
Turkey not ready to reconcile with bloody past: analysts
by Hande Culpan
ANKARA, Sept 5 2008
Turkish President Abdullah Gul’s visit Saturday to Armenia is a brave
step, but it is unrealistic to expect Ankara to reconcile soon with a
bloody past that has poisoned ties with Yerevan, analysts say.
In a first for Turkish diplomacy, Gul will fly to Armenia on Saturday
to watch a qualifying match between the two countries for the 2010
World Cup finals upon an invitation from his Armenian counterpart
Serzh Sarkisian.
"Gul’s visit is a bold move, but one should not expect much from it,"
said Cengiz Aktar, an international affairs expert at Istanbul’s
Bahcesehir University.
"First of all, there is no a real desire in Turkey to make peace with
Armenia and the atmosphere is not suitable for ground-breaking moves,"
he explained.
Turkey and Armenia, two neighbours with no diplomatic relations, have
long been held hostage by their common tragic past: Yerevan claims
that up to 1.5 million Armenians perished in systematic killings
between 1915 and 1917 as the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor of modern
Turkey was falling apart.
Ankara categorically denies the genocide label and argues that 300,000
Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife during World
war I when Armenians revolted against Ottoman rule and sided with
invading Russian troops, resulting in an order to deport them em masse
from their homelands.
The Armenian question for years remained a taboo in Turkey with school
books mentioning in a brief paragraph a problematic people who were
sent into forced exile for betraying the Ottomans and clearing Turks
of all guilt for their deaths.
Only recently have Turks — albeit only liberal-minded intellectuals
and the educated elite — begun to question the official line and
alternative books re-examining Turkish history have begun to hit the
shelves.
But the self-reflection has yet to spread to rural parts of Turkey
where many still believe deeply in official nationalist history.
"Fundamentally, the Turkish population is deeply nationalistic and one
of the founding stones of the Turkish nationalistic streak is
animosity to Armenians," Aktar said.
Last year, ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, reviled by many for
calling the Armenian killings a genocide, was shot dead outside his
office in Istanbul by an ultra-nationalist youth.
Several intellectuals, among them Turkey’s first Nobel laureate Orhan
Pamuk, were recently tried in court for remarks contesting Ankara’s
version of the events.
"The loss of Hrant opened the way for Turkish people to come closer
mentally to discussing what happened in those years, but politically
we are still far from any reconciliation with the past," said Etyen
Mahcupyan, who replaced Dink as chief editor of the Armenian newspaper
Agos.
The government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is too weak to
make any ground-breaking moves.
The Islamist-rooted ruling party has only just survived a legal bid
seeking its closure; it is under pressure over a controversial
investigation into an ultra-nationalist gang and the influential
army’s top brass has begun to step up warnings of rising Islamist
threats to the secular country.
"There needs to be a period of stability in order to see clearly
ahead. Turkey is lacking that at the moment and that is why it is
unable to discuss the past," Mahcupyan said.
The Armenians massacres is also fodder for domestic politics on both
sides of the border, preventing an honest discussion of the issue, he
explained, as seen by opposition parties attacking Gul even before he
confirmed his visit.
Turkey was one of the first countries to recognise Armeania when it
gained independence in 1991 but no diplomatic relations were
established because of Armenian efforts to have the killings
internationally recognised as genocide.
In 1993, Turkey also shut its border with Armenia in a show of
solidarity with Azerbaijan, which was at war with Armenia over the
Nagorny-Karabakh enclave.