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WRITERS BEAT TABOO WITH APOLOGY FOR MASSACRES
Thomas Seibert
The National
Dec 16 2008
United Arab Emirates
In an unprecedented move, a group of Turkish intellectuals yesterday
started an online campaign to express publicly their apology over the
Turkish massacres against the Armenians during the First World War,
an issue still considered a taboo by many of their fellow Turks.
"My conscience does not allow me to accept that the 'Great
Catastrophe', which the Ottoman Armenians were exposed to in 1915, is
met with a lack of sensitivity and is denied. I reject this injustice,
and I, for my part, share the feelings and the pain of my Armenian
brothers, and I apologise to them," reads the intellectuals' short
message on the website www.ozurdiliyoruz.com. "Ozor diliyoruz" means
"We apologise" in Turkish.
The message is to stay online for one year, and participants hope to
gather as many signatures as possible within that time.
Until Monday evening, more than 2,000 people had signed the petition,
among them many prominent academics, journalists and human rights
activists. The Turkish-born co-chairman of the German Green Party,
Cem Ozdemir, also signed.
Although the text does not mention the term genocide, the group's
initiative attracted criticism even before it went public. In a
country that sees itself as the successor of the Ottoman Empire and
where public talk of Turkish massacres directed against the
Armenians can result in a jail sentence even today, a public and joint
apology of this sort is ground-breaking. The group's statement implies
that something went very wrong in Turkish history, a notion that is
rejected by many Turks and that has provoked the ire of nationalists.
Armenia and several countries around the world as well as many
international experts agree that the Ottoman Armenians became the
victims of genocide in 1915 and that up to 1.5 million members of that
Christian minority were killed in massacres and death marches. Turkey
rejects the term genocide and says the deaths were the result of a
relocation initiative under wartime conditions and that many Muslim
Turks were killed by Armenian militias.
Supporters of the apology say that it is time to ask what really
happened in 1915. Cengiz Aktar, a political scientist of Istanbul's
Bahcesehir University and one of the leading members of the group,
said it was the aim of the initiative to address "the silence that
envelopes this question". According to Mr Aktar, some of the reactions
that started to flow in since the group announced their project two
weeks ago showed that the initiative has hit a nerve. "We got plenty
of messages of gratefulness." He compared the initiative to efforts
in Germany after 1945 to face up to the Nazi era.
Some observers think the very fact the group has been able to publish
its apology is a sign of Turkey's growing democratic maturity. "In the
old Turkey that we knew, an effort like this would have been banned,
the leading people would have been threatened and someone would have
tried to open investigations against them,"
Mensur Akgun, a columnist in the daily Referans, wrote yesterday. "At
the moment at least, the situation is different in today's
Turkey. There have been no credible threats."
Still, nationalists have begun to criticise the group. "There is
no crime for which we should be ashamed of and for which we should
apologise," Devlet Bahceli, the leader of the right-wing opposition
Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP, told a party meeting this month.
"First of all let us say that just like no one has the right to
apologise on behalf of the Turkish nation, an initiative like this
that smells like provocation will not benefit anyone," Yigit Bulut, a
columnist, wrote in the daily Vatan. Mr Bulut accused the intellectuals
of doing the bidding of George Soros, a wealthy businessman whose
Open Society Institute is seen by Turkish nationalists as a tool to
undermine the Turkish state.
The Armenian initiative follows a period of an increased and at times
violent debate surrounding the events of 1915 that started when Orhan
Pamuk, a writer and later Nobel laureate, was put on trial in 2005
for saying that one million Armenians were killed by Turks. In Jan
2007, radical nationalists killed the Turkish-Armenian journalist
Hrant Dink, who had called on Turks to face up to their past. Only
last month, Mehmet Ali Sahin, the justice minister, gave permission
to put another writer, Temel Demirer, on trial for publicly speaking
of an "Armenian genocide". He could not allow the state to be called
a killer, the minister said.
With their apology, the intellectuals are trying to move the discussion
away from the word 'genocide' and towards a broader level of coming
to terms with the past.
"Something was done" in 1915, the sociologist Ferhat Kentel, who also
signed the text, told Vatan. "There were one million Armenians in this
country. Today, 60,000 Armenians are left. That means [the Armenians]
are no longer there. We Turks are here. So are the Kurds."
He added: "Call it genocide if you like, call it something else. One
million people were destroyed, were relocated, were killed, were sent
to the deserts, this is a truth."
Thomas Seibert
The National
Dec 16 2008
United Arab Emirates
In an unprecedented move, a group of Turkish intellectuals yesterday
started an online campaign to express publicly their apology over the
Turkish massacres against the Armenians during the First World War,
an issue still considered a taboo by many of their fellow Turks.
"My conscience does not allow me to accept that the 'Great
Catastrophe', which the Ottoman Armenians were exposed to in 1915, is
met with a lack of sensitivity and is denied. I reject this injustice,
and I, for my part, share the feelings and the pain of my Armenian
brothers, and I apologise to them," reads the intellectuals' short
message on the website www.ozurdiliyoruz.com. "Ozor diliyoruz" means
"We apologise" in Turkish.
The message is to stay online for one year, and participants hope to
gather as many signatures as possible within that time.
Until Monday evening, more than 2,000 people had signed the petition,
among them many prominent academics, journalists and human rights
activists. The Turkish-born co-chairman of the German Green Party,
Cem Ozdemir, also signed.
Although the text does not mention the term genocide, the group's
initiative attracted criticism even before it went public. In a
country that sees itself as the successor of the Ottoman Empire and
where public talk of Turkish massacres directed against the
Armenians can result in a jail sentence even today, a public and joint
apology of this sort is ground-breaking. The group's statement implies
that something went very wrong in Turkish history, a notion that is
rejected by many Turks and that has provoked the ire of nationalists.
Armenia and several countries around the world as well as many
international experts agree that the Ottoman Armenians became the
victims of genocide in 1915 and that up to 1.5 million members of that
Christian minority were killed in massacres and death marches. Turkey
rejects the term genocide and says the deaths were the result of a
relocation initiative under wartime conditions and that many Muslim
Turks were killed by Armenian militias.
Supporters of the apology say that it is time to ask what really
happened in 1915. Cengiz Aktar, a political scientist of Istanbul's
Bahcesehir University and one of the leading members of the group,
said it was the aim of the initiative to address "the silence that
envelopes this question". According to Mr Aktar, some of the reactions
that started to flow in since the group announced their project two
weeks ago showed that the initiative has hit a nerve. "We got plenty
of messages of gratefulness." He compared the initiative to efforts
in Germany after 1945 to face up to the Nazi era.
Some observers think the very fact the group has been able to publish
its apology is a sign of Turkey's growing democratic maturity. "In the
old Turkey that we knew, an effort like this would have been banned,
the leading people would have been threatened and someone would have
tried to open investigations against them,"
Mensur Akgun, a columnist in the daily Referans, wrote yesterday. "At
the moment at least, the situation is different in today's
Turkey. There have been no credible threats."
Still, nationalists have begun to criticise the group. "There is
no crime for which we should be ashamed of and for which we should
apologise," Devlet Bahceli, the leader of the right-wing opposition
Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP, told a party meeting this month.
"First of all let us say that just like no one has the right to
apologise on behalf of the Turkish nation, an initiative like this
that smells like provocation will not benefit anyone," Yigit Bulut, a
columnist, wrote in the daily Vatan. Mr Bulut accused the intellectuals
of doing the bidding of George Soros, a wealthy businessman whose
Open Society Institute is seen by Turkish nationalists as a tool to
undermine the Turkish state.
The Armenian initiative follows a period of an increased and at times
violent debate surrounding the events of 1915 that started when Orhan
Pamuk, a writer and later Nobel laureate, was put on trial in 2005
for saying that one million Armenians were killed by Turks. In Jan
2007, radical nationalists killed the Turkish-Armenian journalist
Hrant Dink, who had called on Turks to face up to their past. Only
last month, Mehmet Ali Sahin, the justice minister, gave permission
to put another writer, Temel Demirer, on trial for publicly speaking
of an "Armenian genocide". He could not allow the state to be called
a killer, the minister said.
With their apology, the intellectuals are trying to move the discussion
away from the word 'genocide' and towards a broader level of coming
to terms with the past.
"Something was done" in 1915, the sociologist Ferhat Kentel, who also
signed the text, told Vatan. "There were one million Armenians in this
country. Today, 60,000 Armenians are left. That means [the Armenians]
are no longer there. We Turks are here. So are the Kurds."
He added: "Call it genocide if you like, call it something else. One
million people were destroyed, were relocated, were killed, were sent
to the deserts, this is a truth."