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  • Turkey's Problem With America

    TURKEY'S PROBLEM WITH AMERICA
    by Christopher de Bellaigue

    The Daily Beast
    http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stori es/2010-03-17/turkeys-problem-with-america/
    March 18 2010

    Last week a vote by the House Foreign Affairs Committee to recognize
    the Armenian genocide resulted in Turkey withdrawing its ambassador.

    Christopher de Bellaigue on why Turkey can't come to terms with its
    tortured past.

    I don't doubt the good faith of those 23 members of the House Foreign
    Affairs Committee who voted on March 4 that the deaths of some 1.5
    million Armenian citizens of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War
    constituted genocide, but I'm not convinced of their wisdom in making
    the call. Why? Not because the events of 1915, when the Ottomans
    deported the Armenians under conditions that could only result in
    their deaths by the hundreds of thousands, are undeserving of odium,
    but because legislatures are not the right place to make the point.

    The expertise of the Foreign Affairs Committee lies, as you might
    expect, in foreign affairs. Its members were helped to reach their
    decision by Armenian-American and pro-Turkish lobbyists, including arms
    manufacturers chasing Turkish contracts. Any resolution on the subject
    is a political token, and of little value as a historical judgment.

    Ultimately, the argument will be laid to rest not in apologies, or
    indemnities, or monuments, but in the pages of Turkey's schoolbooks,
    where children are still given an airbrushed view of history.

    First, the politics. As senators, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and
    Joe Biden called for the White House to condemn the tragedy of 1915
    as genocide, only to have second thoughts after assuming office. As
    a big emerging country of (mostly) western-oriented Muslims, and
    America's partner in the pacification of Afghanistan and Iraq, Turkey
    is important. The administration has pledged to stop the resolution
    from going to a vote on the floor of the House, which would certainly
    excite from the Turks a less measured response that they have so far
    exhibited. (Turkey's ambassador has been recalled to Ankara pending
    satisfactory resolution of the affair). On the other hand, a big and
    well-organized Armenian lobby exerts pressure of its own; to date,
    this lobby has godfathered genocide resolutions in 20 legislatures
    around the world.

    Rebel Land: Unraveling the Riddle of History in a Turkish Town. By
    Christopher de Bellaigue. 288 pages. The Penguin Press. $25.95. It is
    hard to argue that the political maneuvering is a dignified memorial
    to the victims of 1915, or that it encourages the necessary Turkish
    sentiments of regret and remorse, without which the tragedy will always
    bleed and the modern states of Turkey and Armenia never become cordial
    neighbors. Apart from the impression of unwanted interference--imagine,
    a Turkish newspaper columnist wrote this week, if the parliament in
    Ankara were to rule that America's treatment of its native populations
    amounted to genocide--each of those earlier resolutions has acted
    like an injection of testosterone into the Turkish right, stirring
    up xenophobic feeling and endangering those Turks brave enough to
    propose an honest appraisal of the past.

    Urged on by the country's notorious 'Deep State,' an unholy alliance
    of army officers, policemen, and criminals, Turkish nationalists
    screamed 'traitor!' when in 2005 the novelist (and subsequent Nobel
    Prize-winner) Orhan Pamuk referred to the Armenian deaths, leading
    to his prosecution and temporary exile in the US. They intimidated
    and prosecuted other authors and intellectuals, and in 2007 they
    cheered the assassination of an inspirational advocate for Turkey's
    few remaining Armenians: the newspaper editor Hrant Dink.

    Dink himself used the word "genocide," but did not insist that everyone
    else do so. He discerned the inherently anti-democratic nature of
    French and Swiss legislation against genocide denial. He realized
    that the most important work was not to be done outside the country,
    where Ottoman culpability and Armenian agony had been acknowledged,
    but in Turkey, where the official denials spoke of a broader inability
    to come to terms with the past. This process has now started, but it
    is not without pain of its own, for it necessitates the abandonment
    of that axiom, of Turkish virtue and foreign treachery, that Kemal
    Ataturk employed when setting up his Turkish Republic in 1923. The
    Ottoman state is not the Turkish Republic--in important ways, they are
    mutually antagonistic. But modern Turks need to learn and understand
    what the Ottomans did. This is not something that hectoring foreigners
    can achieve.

    If all this sounds like a mealy-mouthed defense of the Turkish
    position, it isn't. Between 2005 and 2008 I devoted many months to
    uncovering the fate of the forgotten Armenian population of Varto,
    a remote region of eastern Turkey, whose present-day inhabitants,
    mostly Kurds with some assimilated Armenians, had adopted the Turkish
    habit of denial. I was rarely made to feel welcome in Varto. I was
    obstructed every step of the way by the state, the deliberate amnesia
    of the people, and the systemic dishonesty of much of Turkish history
    writing. Now, I am proud to say, my account of the demise of the
    Armenians of Varto has been committed to the page and can never be
    eradicated. And I did not hesitate to describe the Armenian gangs who,
    during the Russian occupation of 1916 and 1917, engaged in wanton and
    indiscriminate acts of revenge, for in this case the sinned against
    also did some sinning, as is often the case in unvarnished history.

    Turkey is full of Vartos whose story needs to be told; the country's
    past is being opened up, fitfully and not without pain, and this is
    being led by normal citizens, although the country's mildly Islamist
    government has lent fitful support. An online apology signed by tens
    of thousands; the new ubiquity of books detailing the events of 1915;
    belated recognition for those converted or assimilated Armenians
    who survived the massacres and death marches--these testify to a new
    Turkish readiness to take a step back from the past and evaluate it
    dispassionately. A small number of Turkish and Armenian academics are
    collaborating fruitfully, and the Ottoman archives are more accessible
    to foreign scholars than ever before. Twenty genocide resolutions
    have not made this so, but Turkey's own progress towards becoming a
    mature democracy, sure of its place in the world, unafraid of the past.

    A twenty-first genocide resolution would achieve nothing save the
    strengthening of Turkey's shady ultra-nationalist fringe-including
    those members of the Deep State who are being prosecuted on charges
    of plotting against the government. Ultimately, the argument over the
    events of 1915 will not be resolved in resolutions or even apologies
    (though the latter would certainly help), but in the hearts of
    Turks-and in their schoolbooks, which must reflect history as it
    happened, and not as they wish it had happened. No Congress resolution
    will achieve that. It can only slow the process.

    Plus: Check out Book Beast, for more news on hot titles and authors
    and excerpts from the latest books.

    Christopher de Bellaigue was born in London and has spent the past
    decade in the Middle East and South Asia. He has worked as a foreign
    correspondent for a number of publications, including the Financial
    Times, the Economist, and the New York Review of Books. His previous
    book, In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs, was shortlisted for the 2004
    Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. He lives in London with
    his wife and son.
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