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DENIAL OF AN UGLY PAST IS HOLDING TURKEY BACK
by Colin Tatz
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/denial-of-an-ugly-past-is-holding-turkey-back-20101108-17k8f.html
Nov 9 2010
Australia
Turkey must acknowledge the Armenian genocide if it wishes to move
forward as a modern. democratic country. Photo: Reuters
The idea that Australia was born as a nation on Gallipoli's shores
is now deeply cemented in our history books and national psyche. We
are about to see the annual holding of hands by the former combatants
on Armistice Day, when thousands will visit the "sacred site". Turks
and Australians will join in understandable commemoration but less
comprehensible celebration; and friendship societies will become
tearful and lyrical during this anniversary of the shedding of
brotherly blood.
But intruding on this mourning ritual is the growing world recognition
of the Ottoman (and, later, Kemalist) Turkish genocide committed
between 1915 and 1922. Some 26 nation states and more than 50 regional
governments, including NSW and South Australia, formally recognise
the Turkish attempts to annihilate 3 million Armenians and possibly 1
million Pontian Greeks and Christian Assyrians. At least 1.5 million
Armenians were killed by bayoneting, beheading, bullets, butchering,
crucifixion, drowning, elementary gas chambers, forced death marches,
hanging, hot horseshoes, medical experiments, and other unprintable
atrocities.
Turkey is totally dedicated, at home and abroad, to having every
hint or mention of an Armenian genocide contradicted, countered,
explained, justified, mitigated, rationalised, relativised, removed
or trivialised. The entire apparatus of the Turkish state is tuned to
denial, with officers appointed abroad for that purpose. Their actions
are spectacular, often bizarre, and without distinction between the
serious and the silly, including: pressures to dilute or even remove
any mention of the genocide in the Armenian entry in the Encyclopaedia
Britannica; threats to sever diplomatic relations with France over the
latter's parliamentary declaration that there was such a genocide;
replacing the Turkish Prime Minister's Renault with an inferior
Russian limo; Sydney Turks demanding that the broadcaster SBS pulp
its 25th anniversary history for twice making passing reference to
an event they claim "never happened"; and, more recently, frenetic
Turkish efforts to stop a memorial to the dead Assyrians in the
western Sydney district of Fairfield.
Advertisement: Story continues below Explanations abound. One is
that Turkey is the victim of the single greatest conspiracy in world
history, with states such as Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, France,
Germany, Holland, Italy, Northern Ireland, Poland, Russia, Scotland,
Sweden, Switzerland, the Vatican and Wales conniving to falsely brand
Turkey as a genocidaire. Another is that somehow 11 million Armenians
around the globe have subverted the truth, history and dozens of
nations to "frame" innocent Turkey. Yet another is that witnesses
- such as British historians Arnold Toynbee and Viscount Bryce,
German missionary Dr Johannes Lepsius and German medico Armin Wegner,
the American ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau and his Swedish
diplomatic colleagues - invented their sometimes daily conversations
with the major perpetrators, Talaat Pasha and Enver Pasha, and lied to
besmirch Turkish honour. Another is that the dozens of Australian PoWs,
isolated and often grossly maltreated in remote villages rather than
in camps, deliberately faked the photographs and invented the atrocity
stories they brought back home. They assert that the special Turkish
military courts-martial held in Istanbul in 1919 only sentenced several
perpetrators to death in absentia and imprisoned some 30 others for
war crimes only because of duress from the Allies.
The best explanation is that the Turks did precisely what they
were recorded and filmed as doing, for which their own tribunals
convicted them.
We are approaching a serious junction: the path to Gallipoli grows
in scale and traffic each year, but so does the avenue to official
recognition that what occurred was genocide, one in so many ways the
prologue to, and template for, the Holocaust less than 20 years later.
Sooner rather than later the US Congress will find the numbers
for the two-thirds majority needed for recognition. The British
government won't be far behind. More Australian states will follow
and, inevitably, an unwilling (and very unhappy) federal government
will have to do so. Our dilemma will be profound.
There is, of course, a way forward: an admission of truth about the
events; a genuine opening of all the Ottoman archives to obviate the
old Turkish chestnuts about "awaiting the verdict of historians" and
"Armenian revolutionaries engaged in civil war"; an offer of regret,
or apology, even one leavened by a limitation on reparations. That
way Turkey can more readily enter the European Union and the comity
of nations. But the hysterical and obsessive denialism of the Batak
massacres in Bulgaria in 1876, the 200,000 Armenians dead at the hands
of Sultan Abdul Hamid II between 1894 and 1896, the 1.5 million dead at
the hands of the Young Turks from 1915, will always get in the way of
"normal" relationships.
Even if today's Turkey decided to become more rather than less secular,
more West-oriented, less cosy with Syria, Iran and Hezbollah in a
jihadist worldview, more willing to address its past in relation to
Christians generally, the juggernaut of the denialism industry is
such that it simply cannot stop.
The machine has developed its own mind, its own convulsive and
reflexive responses. Turks see genocide as a blot on their escutcheon
and honour; they see themselves as decent people, and decent people
don't commit genocide. Wrong. "Decent people" - like Americans,
Canadians, Belgians, Italians, Germans, Austrians, Spaniards and
Australians - have all done just that.
Colin Tatz is a visiting fellow in the College of Arts & Social
Sciences, Australian National University. He is the author of With
Intent to Destroy: Reflecting on Genocide.
From: A. Papazian
by Colin Tatz
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/denial-of-an-ugly-past-is-holding-turkey-back-20101108-17k8f.html
Nov 9 2010
Australia
Turkey must acknowledge the Armenian genocide if it wishes to move
forward as a modern. democratic country. Photo: Reuters
The idea that Australia was born as a nation on Gallipoli's shores
is now deeply cemented in our history books and national psyche. We
are about to see the annual holding of hands by the former combatants
on Armistice Day, when thousands will visit the "sacred site". Turks
and Australians will join in understandable commemoration but less
comprehensible celebration; and friendship societies will become
tearful and lyrical during this anniversary of the shedding of
brotherly blood.
But intruding on this mourning ritual is the growing world recognition
of the Ottoman (and, later, Kemalist) Turkish genocide committed
between 1915 and 1922. Some 26 nation states and more than 50 regional
governments, including NSW and South Australia, formally recognise
the Turkish attempts to annihilate 3 million Armenians and possibly 1
million Pontian Greeks and Christian Assyrians. At least 1.5 million
Armenians were killed by bayoneting, beheading, bullets, butchering,
crucifixion, drowning, elementary gas chambers, forced death marches,
hanging, hot horseshoes, medical experiments, and other unprintable
atrocities.
Turkey is totally dedicated, at home and abroad, to having every
hint or mention of an Armenian genocide contradicted, countered,
explained, justified, mitigated, rationalised, relativised, removed
or trivialised. The entire apparatus of the Turkish state is tuned to
denial, with officers appointed abroad for that purpose. Their actions
are spectacular, often bizarre, and without distinction between the
serious and the silly, including: pressures to dilute or even remove
any mention of the genocide in the Armenian entry in the Encyclopaedia
Britannica; threats to sever diplomatic relations with France over the
latter's parliamentary declaration that there was such a genocide;
replacing the Turkish Prime Minister's Renault with an inferior
Russian limo; Sydney Turks demanding that the broadcaster SBS pulp
its 25th anniversary history for twice making passing reference to
an event they claim "never happened"; and, more recently, frenetic
Turkish efforts to stop a memorial to the dead Assyrians in the
western Sydney district of Fairfield.
Advertisement: Story continues below Explanations abound. One is
that Turkey is the victim of the single greatest conspiracy in world
history, with states such as Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, France,
Germany, Holland, Italy, Northern Ireland, Poland, Russia, Scotland,
Sweden, Switzerland, the Vatican and Wales conniving to falsely brand
Turkey as a genocidaire. Another is that somehow 11 million Armenians
around the globe have subverted the truth, history and dozens of
nations to "frame" innocent Turkey. Yet another is that witnesses
- such as British historians Arnold Toynbee and Viscount Bryce,
German missionary Dr Johannes Lepsius and German medico Armin Wegner,
the American ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau and his Swedish
diplomatic colleagues - invented their sometimes daily conversations
with the major perpetrators, Talaat Pasha and Enver Pasha, and lied to
besmirch Turkish honour. Another is that the dozens of Australian PoWs,
isolated and often grossly maltreated in remote villages rather than
in camps, deliberately faked the photographs and invented the atrocity
stories they brought back home. They assert that the special Turkish
military courts-martial held in Istanbul in 1919 only sentenced several
perpetrators to death in absentia and imprisoned some 30 others for
war crimes only because of duress from the Allies.
The best explanation is that the Turks did precisely what they
were recorded and filmed as doing, for which their own tribunals
convicted them.
We are approaching a serious junction: the path to Gallipoli grows
in scale and traffic each year, but so does the avenue to official
recognition that what occurred was genocide, one in so many ways the
prologue to, and template for, the Holocaust less than 20 years later.
Sooner rather than later the US Congress will find the numbers
for the two-thirds majority needed for recognition. The British
government won't be far behind. More Australian states will follow
and, inevitably, an unwilling (and very unhappy) federal government
will have to do so. Our dilemma will be profound.
There is, of course, a way forward: an admission of truth about the
events; a genuine opening of all the Ottoman archives to obviate the
old Turkish chestnuts about "awaiting the verdict of historians" and
"Armenian revolutionaries engaged in civil war"; an offer of regret,
or apology, even one leavened by a limitation on reparations. That
way Turkey can more readily enter the European Union and the comity
of nations. But the hysterical and obsessive denialism of the Batak
massacres in Bulgaria in 1876, the 200,000 Armenians dead at the hands
of Sultan Abdul Hamid II between 1894 and 1896, the 1.5 million dead at
the hands of the Young Turks from 1915, will always get in the way of
"normal" relationships.
Even if today's Turkey decided to become more rather than less secular,
more West-oriented, less cosy with Syria, Iran and Hezbollah in a
jihadist worldview, more willing to address its past in relation to
Christians generally, the juggernaut of the denialism industry is
such that it simply cannot stop.
The machine has developed its own mind, its own convulsive and
reflexive responses. Turks see genocide as a blot on their escutcheon
and honour; they see themselves as decent people, and decent people
don't commit genocide. Wrong. "Decent people" - like Americans,
Canadians, Belgians, Italians, Germans, Austrians, Spaniards and
Australians - have all done just that.
Colin Tatz is a visiting fellow in the College of Arts & Social
Sciences, Australian National University. He is the author of With
Intent to Destroy: Reflecting on Genocide.
From: A. Papazian