Thanks to a recent petition prepared and signed by a group of intellectuals, we have found ourselves discussing the Armenian issue. It appears that not only the recognition of genocide claims but also the fact of the massacres against the Ottoman Armenians is a taboo. Those who signed the petition have been accused of treason.
Even Turkish President Abdullah Gül, who recognized the right of individuals to prepare any kind of petition, became a target of a racist assault by Republican People's Party (CHP) deputy Canan Arıtman, who argued that Gül's ancestors may be of Armenian origin. This scandalous statement was, in fact, a logical outcome of the xenophobia that has grown amongst Turkey's secularist circles.
But there also exists a historical aspect of this hatred toward "foreigners." We should not forget that not only Armenian identity, but modern Turkish identity, too, has been shaped by the events of 1915. As Minister of Defense Vecdi Gönül admitted a month ago, many in Turkey believe that the forced deportation of Armenians and Greeks made it possible to establish a "Turkish nation-state" in Anatolia.
This is the bottom line: Anything that is viewed as necessary to form a state, any kind of state, which is the guarantee of the survival of the "nation," is to be justified. For this reason, ultranationalists in recent years have been calling for the need to wage "another war of independence," aware that such a state of affairs would justify anything, including a military coup. Their motto made this very clear: "If the motherland is at stake, the rest is a matter of details." So those ultranationalists were trying to build a consensus on the "essentials" of the national existence: to protect the state (whose characteristics would not matter at all) vis-à-vis the assault of global forces and their domestic collaborators.
The secularists and the "conservative democrats," including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, have united in defense of what the Committee of Union and Progress did in 1915.
We do not have to, and should not, accept that the 1915 events constituted genocide, but we must stop trying to find excuses for the massacres of Ottoman citizens of Armenian origin. Otherwise, we can find excuses for the suppression of the Kurds, of Islamic dervish orders, of the girls who wear the headscarf, etc. If we allow the raison d'état to reign, then everything will be explainable and justifiable.
The debate over the apology campaign has revealed that many in Turkey, including Islamists, conservatives, leftists and even liberals, continue to think within the paradigm of the nation-state and nationalism.
The fact is that at the turn of the 19th century, all the peoples of the Balkans and Anatolia suffered at the hands of nationalists, be they Bulgarian, Greek, Turkish or Armenian nationalists. There is, therefore, no point in maintaining and reproducing the same nationalist sentimentalities today. What is needed is a process of reconciliation that does not come through by standing behind the crimes of nationalists of all kinds committed a century ago.
22 December 2008
Even Turkish President Abdullah Gül, who recognized the right of individuals to prepare any kind of petition, became a target of a racist assault by Republican People's Party (CHP) deputy Canan Arıtman, who argued that Gül's ancestors may be of Armenian origin. This scandalous statement was, in fact, a logical outcome of the xenophobia that has grown amongst Turkey's secularist circles.
But there also exists a historical aspect of this hatred toward "foreigners." We should not forget that not only Armenian identity, but modern Turkish identity, too, has been shaped by the events of 1915. As Minister of Defense Vecdi Gönül admitted a month ago, many in Turkey believe that the forced deportation of Armenians and Greeks made it possible to establish a "Turkish nation-state" in Anatolia.
This is the bottom line: Anything that is viewed as necessary to form a state, any kind of state, which is the guarantee of the survival of the "nation," is to be justified. For this reason, ultranationalists in recent years have been calling for the need to wage "another war of independence," aware that such a state of affairs would justify anything, including a military coup. Their motto made this very clear: "If the motherland is at stake, the rest is a matter of details." So those ultranationalists were trying to build a consensus on the "essentials" of the national existence: to protect the state (whose characteristics would not matter at all) vis-à-vis the assault of global forces and their domestic collaborators.
The secularists and the "conservative democrats," including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, have united in defense of what the Committee of Union and Progress did in 1915.
We do not have to, and should not, accept that the 1915 events constituted genocide, but we must stop trying to find excuses for the massacres of Ottoman citizens of Armenian origin. Otherwise, we can find excuses for the suppression of the Kurds, of Islamic dervish orders, of the girls who wear the headscarf, etc. If we allow the raison d'état to reign, then everything will be explainable and justifiable.
The debate over the apology campaign has revealed that many in Turkey, including Islamists, conservatives, leftists and even liberals, continue to think within the paradigm of the nation-state and nationalism.
The fact is that at the turn of the 19th century, all the peoples of the Balkans and Anatolia suffered at the hands of nationalists, be they Bulgarian, Greek, Turkish or Armenian nationalists. There is, therefore, no point in maintaining and reproducing the same nationalist sentimentalities today. What is needed is a process of reconciliation that does not come through by standing behind the crimes of nationalists of all kinds committed a century ago.
22 December 2008
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