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Gunaysu: The Impossibility of Discussing Manoyan Comments in Turkey

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  • Gunaysu: The Impossibility of Discussing Manoyan Comments in Turkey

    HYE-TERT
    Sept 12 2009

    Gunaysu: The Impossibility of Discussing Giro Manoyan's Comments in
    Turkey


    By Ayse Gunaysu
    Kaynak: hairenik.com/weekly
    Yer: USA
    Tarih: 12.9.2009

    On Fri., Sept. 4, the daily Taraf, the beloved newspaper of the
    democratic, anti-militarist, and liberal opposition circles in Turkey,
    including myself (despite several objections on certain issues and the
    language it uses from time to time), published an interview with Giro
    Manoyan, one of the top leaders of the Armenian Revolutionary
    Federation-Dashnaktsutiun (ARF), with the headline, `Armenians have
    their own Bahceli,'referring Manoyan and his stance on the steps
    towards a détente between Turkey and Armenia. At first'and
    superficial'glance, one can see why Manoyan was compared to Devlet
    Bahceli: The latter is Turkey's ultra-nationalist leader who violently
    opposes both the process of finding a `resolution' to Turkey's
    so-called `Kurdish Question' and the signals given by the government
    to normalize relations with Armenia. However, Bahceli is also the
    leader of the Nationalist Action Party, which represents the Turkish
    version of
    the neo-Nazi spirit, with its endless hatred of non-Muslims and
    Kurds, and its
    history of violence'murders, massacres (of Alevis), kidnappings,
    tortures, the throwing of bombs on groups of students. The analogy
    drawn between Manoyan and a politician like Bahceli, in a newspaper
    that is the most courageous opponent of the Ittihadist state tradition
    in Turkey, should be considered in the context of the general Turkish
    mindset about anything related to Armenians.


    Taraf later changed the title of the article in its online version.
    What was crucial in Manoyan's interview were his words about the
    Turkish-Armenian border. Manoyan said, among others, that the
    Armenian-Turkey border is disputable, as it was drawn between the
    parties (the Bolsheviks and Kemalists) who were not then recognized by
    the international community. Therefore, according to Manoyan, the
    border issue is still to be decided. In short, he implied that he does
    not recognize the present border, or at least, finds its validity
    questionable.

    But at this point I don't want to discuss what Manoyan said because I
    am more interested in the intellectual environment of Turkey that
    makes it possible for a liberal newspaper editor to equate Manoyan's
    objection to this specific `normalization' project with a Turkish
    ultra-nationalist party leader who had recently threatened to resort
    to violence against any step to resolve the Kurdish Question. This is
    an environment that unconditionally excludes any discussion on a
    comment by a Dashnaktsutiun leader, leave alone his questioning of the
    validity of the border.

    It's a widely known fact that in Turkey, anything'any comment, any
    step'that would supposedly lead to `a partition' of the country, to a
    potential restoration of the Sevres Agreement (which provided for the
    foundation of independent Armenia and Kurdistan in 1919), and to a
    threat to the territorial unity of the country, is utterly
    unacceptable. Anyone who does not think so is unquestionably regarded
    as the enemy of the country. This is the most visible reason why
    Turkish people see in Manoyan's word a declaration of hostility and
    ill-will.

    But there is another equally important factor that makes it possible
    for a liberal Turkish newspaper editor to make such an equation: It is
    the real ignorance in Turkey about anything related to Armenians and
    their history in this country. Many would believe that the average
    Turk denies the genocide knowingly, which is not the case. I know that
    it seems impossible to think that the extermination of such a
    significant part of the country's population, such an apocalyptic
    period with such enormous, widespread consequences that changed the
    social, economic, and demographic landscape of the whole country, can
    be wiped off from the collective memory of a nation. But, as a result
    of a combination of very complicated processes, this is exactly what
    happened. The overwhelming majority of Turkish people, therefore,
    don't even know the most basic truths about their country's Armenian
    past.

    Even many Turkish people who have broken themselves free of the
    official ideology and history, who sincerely recognize the Armenian
    Genocide in their hearts, don't really know the real extent of the
    strong Armenian presence in the Ottoman Empire before 1915. They are
    not aware that the Armenian presence was not limited to the eastern
    provinces of the empire, that there were significant Armenian
    communities in, for example, Ankara, or Eskisehir in central Anatolia,
    or Izmit, or Tekirdag in the Marmara region in the west. Many of these
    Turkish people of conscience don't know that at the turn of the
    century, one in every five persons living in Asia Minor was a
    non-Muslim, and they really think that the so-called `deportations'
    were limited to the eastern provinces of the empire. If this is the
    case with a handful of Turkish people (compared to 70 million) who
    share the painful memory of the genocide, one can imagine the
    situation with the vast
    majority. Unbelievably, they don't even know that Armenians are the n
    ative children of this land who had settled in Asia Minor long before
    the Turks. My Armenian friends often tell anecdotes of how people,
    upon hearing their Armenian names, ask them where there are from, as
    if they are foreigners. People asking these questions are not Armenian
    haters or necessarily Turkish nationalists. They just really don't
    know.

    But how did this happen? How could this happen? How can an entire
    nation be made ignorant of such obvious historical facts? I'm not a
    historian, or a sociologist, or an anthropologist who studies the
    mechanisms and processes that make up the collective mindset of
    nations. However, it's easy to see that the first generation who
    directly witnessed or took part in the massacres and plunder concealed
    the truth out of guilt. Huge properties had illegally changed hands
    and the new owners did everything to legitimize the plunder. Then came
    the reconstruction of a new nation, which helped this first generation
    to pretend that nothing had happened. Unlike the example of Germany,
    where the Nazis were caught red-handed, the victorious Kemalist
    movement was successful in covering up the evidence of the mass
    exterminations and was backed by the Great Powers' efforts to secure
    an international balance of power that would best suit themselves. In
    the meantime,
    the Soviets' support of the so-called `national liberation movement'
    against the `imperialist powers' came like a bonus, as it proved very
    helpful in positioning non-Muslims within this context as the
    supporters of the imperialist powers even in the eyes of the
    mainstream Turkish Left.

    Then came the second generation, which was raised as the `children of
    the young republic,,' a republic that rewrote the history in the
    spirit of a victorious national state and reinforced a patriotism
    based on an ethnically, religiously, and culturally monolithic
    country. The physical traces of Armenian civilization in Asia Minor
    were systematically erased. Armenian monuments were destructed, at
    times even with dynamites. Armenian, along with Greek, Assyrian, and
    Kurdish names of places were changed. No mention is made of the
    ancient Armenian kingdoms and kings. This cleansing of an Armenian
    trace is not restricted to the government's publications; it applies
    to private institutions and organzations as well, as this denial of
    Armenian existence is internalized by the Turkish public at large.

    Moreover, the republican myths of foundation have been taken over by
    the mainstream Turkish Left, which upheld the ideals of the Turkey's
    `War of Liberation' and valued it as a victory against imperialists
    and naturally did not question how the nationalist state came into
    being by bringing the Turkification of the land to its successful
    end. And thus, Turkish society was sadly deprived of a structured
    criticism from the Left of the founding paradigm of the republic.

    As for the ARF-Dashnaktsutiun, the sincere belief that Dashnaks are
    simply haters of Turks is the common denominator of the Turkish Left
    and Right. I will not discuss what the Dashnaktsutiun now represents
    because I am really not familiar with its program, nor its political
    lineor practice. But, I know that in general, the people of Turkey
    know absolutely nothing about its history. They don't know that the
    Dashnaktsutiun was once the closest ally of the Committee of Union and
    Progress (CUP), who were shortly afterwards the perpetrators of the
    Armenian Genocide. They don't know that the Dashnaktsutiun campaigned
    for `Freedom, Equality,, and Brotherhood' for all Ottoman people
    regardless of ethnic origin or religious affiliation against the
    Abdulhamidian tyranny. They don't know that in 1908 in Van (a symbol
    for the denialists), like elsewhere, Dashnaktsutiun leaflets were
    distributed that called for solidarity between Muslims and Christians
    for
    justice and welfare for the poor and freedom for everyone. They do
    n't have any idea that the two parties (CUP and ARF) even signed four
    written agreements between 1907-14 around these principles, that even
    the atrocities of the 1909 Adana massacres didn't prevent Dashnak
    leaders from deciding, at their fifth congress, to continue their
    alliance with the CUP in the hope of a better future, despite
    objections from the Hunchak Party and the Armenian Patriarchate.

    Totalitarian regimes know that knowledge is dangerous for them. So
    they do everything to bar their subjects from knowing and
    understanding. But there is another side to this: We, as human beings,
    instinctively'sometimes subconsciously, sometimes
    half-consciously'choose what to learn and what to know; or, to put it
    the other way round, we choose what not to learn and what not to
    know. This is because we instinctively go after what will give us
    peace of mind and keep us free of any inner unrest. So, although it is
    mainly a matter of the regimes' obscuring and suppressing of the
    truth, there is also the question of our individual decision to always
    search for the truth, and chase it and find it at the cost of losing
    our peace of mind.

    http://www.hyetert.com/haber3.asp?Id=33125& amp;DilId=2
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