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Should Turkey Apologize To The Armenians?

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  • Should Turkey Apologize To The Armenians?

    SHOULD TURKEY APOLOGIZE TO THE ARMENIANS?
    Asli Aydintasbas

    Forbes
    http://www.forbes.com/opinions /2008/12/24/Turkey-Armenians-genocide-oped-cx_aa_1 226aydintasbas.html
    Dec 27 2008
    NY

    ISTANBUL--Should we apologize to Armenians?

    It's almost a miracle, but I have somehow managed to avoid the
    "Armenian issue" throughout my journalism career. I never wrote a
    single column on it, even throughout the various diplomatic rows
    between Turkey and Armenia on whether or not the tragic events of
    1915 were genocide.

    During the time I covered Washington for a Turkish paper, I stayed
    a dispassionate reporter as the Armenian Diaspora tried year after
    year to pass various U.S. congressional resolutions condemning the
    1915 events--and Ankara lobbied hard to ward these off.

    The truth was, undeniably bad things happened in the Eastern provinces
    of the declining Ottoman Empire in 1915, but I had no idea whether
    or not they "amounted to" genocide.

    Depending on whom you believe, 500,000 or 1.5 million Armenians were
    either forcibly deported or coldly massacred, either during the chaos
    of a civil war or by an organized state campaign. The Armenians in turn
    either killed thousands of Muslim Turks in an effort to establish an
    independent homeland, or they were fighting a civil war of liberation.

    I am not trying to make light of the fact that this was a horribly
    painful episode, leading to the death of thousands of innocents. But
    today's discussion is largely semantic--"genocide or not?"

    While most Turks are taught in schools that killing happened "on
    both sides" and do not believe their Ottoman ancestors committed the
    g-word, Armenians in the tiny modern Caucasus republic have built
    their national identity on the pain of genocide. It is to them what
    the Jewish Holocaust is to Israelis.

    Comment On This Story

    But the reason I have so far avoided the topic was not because of
    an inability to face the past, but because I felt I never could
    do justice to the mountains of books, memoirs and historic archives
    arguing one side or the other. After all, plenty of Turkish, Armenian,
    American and French historians dedicated lifetimes to this debate.

    I, on the other hand, lacked that kind of attention span. At school,
    we were taught that the "so-called genocide" charge was trumped up by
    the Armenian diaspora because it was their raison d'etre. Friends and
    family mostly seemed to think the Ottomans had committed some sort of
    "ethnic cleansing," but that it wasn't genocide. (Legally speaking,
    "war crimes" and "ethnic cleansing" do not necessarily mean genocide,
    the most heinous of all crimes against humanity.)

    During the time I lived abroad, I encountered plenty of Armenian
    resentment toward Turkey, but then again, I thought, "What's
    new?" After all, neighboring Greeks, Kurds, Iranians, Arabs and some
    Europeans often seemed to hate Turkey, too! (Being the descendants
    of an imperial people is overrated on the karmic scale.)

    But not everyone in Turkey is willing to go with the type of
    "strategic ignorance" I have been carefully practicing on the Armenian
    issue. Recently, a group of 200 Turkish intellectuals signed an online
    petition "apologizing" to Armenians for their suffering at the hands
    of Ottoman forces during the First World War.

    It reads: "My conscience does not accept the insensitivity showed to
    and the denial of the Great Catastrophe that the Ottoman Armenians
    were subjected to in 1915. I reject this injustice and for my share,
    I empathize with the feelings and pain of my Armenian brothers. I
    apologize to them." The name of the Web site translated into English is
    "weapologize.com."

    Even with no mention of genocide, the short text hit a raw nerve
    with the Turkish public. Politicians lined up to condemn the
    initiative, while a group of academics and retired diplomats issued
    a counter-declaration, denying charges of genocide and asking for the
    Armenians to apologize for the murder of 38 Turkish diplomats in the
    1970s by Armenian terrorists seeking revenge. "I find it unreasonable
    to apologize when there is no crime," Turkish Prime Minister Recep
    Tayyip Erdogan said. Spinoff Web sites are full of nationalist fervor.

    In clogged Istanbul traffic, an irate driver gave me his unsolicited
    view: "Excuse me, miss, but now they want to apologize to Armenians. I
    am a Muslim expelled from the Balkans when the empire collapsed. My
    family was annihilated. We lost all land and property and took refuge
    in Turkey. Who will apologize to me?"

    Another unsolicited response came over e-mail from the lady who had
    recently decorated our home: "I have no idea whom else we are supposed
    to apologize to. The Anzacs for the Gallipoli? The Greek, British, and
    Italian soldiers for having liberated our homeland [in 1923] from their
    invasion? Does anyone remember there were two sides to this conflict?"

    I ran into a senior diplomat at a funeral and he told me that neither
    the apology nor the counter-declaration rang the right tone. "They
    are both extreme positions and would encourage extremists on both
    sides." In Turkey, the apology certainly created a backlash, while in
    Armenia, it is likely to encourage those who want to seek compensation
    and land from Turkey.

    So incendiary has the apology been that the Turkish President Abdullah
    Gul had to withdraw his initial support for the statement when he
    was accused of having Armenian blood. And Turkey's military issued
    a statement condemning the apology, suggesting it would torpedo any
    possibility of rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia.

    It is difficult to tell if the online petition has actually lifted
    a taboo or reinforced it. For starters, Turks are never good at
    apologizing. With no exposure to Oprah and psycho-babble, anger is
    preferable to soul-searching in much of the Middle East. But even
    most liberal Turks I know hate the idea of an apology to Armenians,
    partly because it tacitly admits to genocide--something the majority
    do not believe happened.

    Of course Turkey needs to face its past and have a more open debate
    on the Armenian issue. But do you begin with an apology? I fear this
    would foment enough anger on both sides of the border to just about
    block any meaningful dialogue.

    Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was assassinated by Turkish
    nationalists after he labeled the 1915 events a genocide. On the
    Armenian side, there are politicians who still have hopes of reclaiming
    land. In both countries, there is a potential climate of violence and,
    until that abates, an apology will just incite more trouble.

    I wish the petition Web site said everything that it did, but
    had stopped short of an apology. It would have more appeal here in
    Turkey. Rome was not built in a day and bridges between nations cannot
    be either.

    Turks and Armenians have a long way to go in overcoming hatred,
    and certainly setting history straight will have to be part of that
    process. But apology is not the beginning. Friendship, something we
    lacked for almost a century, is.

    If I could have my own petition, I would say to Armenians, "Friends,
    I feel your pain and am sorry for not recognizing it before. Let's
    leave aside semantics for now and just meet." And then wait for what
    they had to tell me.

    Asli Aydintasbas is an Istanbul-based journalist and former Ankara
    bureau chief of the newspaper Sabah.
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