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The trouble with the Armenian Genocide

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  • The trouble with the Armenian Genocide

    The trouble with the Armenian Genocide

    http://hetq.am/eng/opinion/21544/the-trouble-with-the-armenian-genocide.html
    14:31, December 14, 2012

    By Cecilie Banke

    (The following opinion piece appeared in the December 14, 2012 edition
    of the Copenhagen Post)

    Machiavelli once wrote that you can conquer a people, but you can't
    conquer their memories. Suppressed memories, he concluded, will only
    have a way of cropping up whenever they get the chance. There can
    hardly be a better modern example of this than the massacre of the
    Armenians during the First World War.

    Even though over 90 years has passed since Armenians living in the
    former Ottoman Empire were forcibly deported, and even though the
    memory of what happened was first suppressed and then later neglected,
    the past two decades have seen increasing international focus on what
    happened.

    Most recently, the Danish Royal Library came under hefty criticism
    from both sides for its decision to organise an exhibition about the
    Armenian Genocide.

    First, they were criticised by the Turkish Embassy. Then, when the
    library decided to allow the Turks to present their side of the story,
    the Armenian side protested. The decision was seen as kowtowing to
    Turkey and continuing the denial that lies at the heart of the
    dispute.

    But how can something that happened over 90 years ago continue to
    divide two countries? And why should the Royal Library be dragged into
    a conflict that boils down to the Armenians' struggle for the world to
    recognise what happened to them during the war - before modern Turkey
    even came into existence? It has happened because the question of the
    Armenian genocide has become a part of the global culture of memory,
    which over the past two decades has come to play an increasingly
    significant role in inter-state relations and in the relationship
    between minority groups and states. The question touches on not just
    state policies towards minorities, it also touches on foreign policy
    and security policy. States can improve their relations with their
    neighbours if they own up to past crimes. The most famous example is
    West Germany accepting its responsibility for crimes committed against
    the Jews during the Second World War, symbolised by the spontaneous
    gesture of humility and penance by the chancellor of West Germany,
    Willy Brandt, when he fell on his knees at the memorial to the victims
    of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Other gross violations of human
    rights have come to define which historical signals states choose to
    show to the rest of the world.

    The row over the Royal Library's exhibition shows how even a small
    country like Denmark can get caught up in other countries' conflicts
    over how a specific period of history should be interpreted.
    Disagreements about how the past should be interpreted can grow into a
    diplomatic dispute and come to determine which signals independent
    states show the rest of the world. The US Congress has, on more than
    one occasion, been close to ratifying a resolution that would
    recognise the Armenian Genocide, but each time pressure from Turkey
    has prevented this from happening.

    It is actions like these that Armenian interest groups, as well as
    historians and other scholars, say constitute a Turkish attempt to
    downplay the brutal deportation of Armenians and other Christian
    groups. As Taner Akcam, a Turkish historian now teaching at Clark
    University in the US, wrote in the New York Times recently: `Turkey's
    attitude towards the Armenians sends a worrying signal to the
    Christian minority in the region. In such an interpretation,
    responsibility for preserving not just Turkey's modern history, but
    also its Ottoman history, needs to be seen in terms of overarching
    questions of security, stability and democracy in a region where
    continued denial of past transgressions only adds to tensions between
    ethnic and religious groups.'

    Akcam's views can also be seen as part of another trend in this global
    culture of memory; it is expected that countries will own up to their
    pasts the way Germany did. Germany has admitted its historical guilt
    and has set the standard for how other states should act when faced
    with a problematic past.

    Nowadays, we expect that a state admits its guilt, atones for its
    transgressions and compensates its victims. This is precisely what
    Turkey is fighting against. Turkey does not believe it is responsible
    for crimes committed by the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.
    Nor does it see itself as having done something comparable to Germany
    or that it needs to atone for anything or compensate anyone. As long
    as there is an expectation that Turkey will face up to its violent
    past, Turkey will continue to resist international pressure to
    recognise the genocide.

    However, letting Turkey present its version of the massacre of the
    Armenians will not contribute to the process being carried out by
    European and American historians to draw up a modern picture of the
    Armenian Genocide. The Armenians will feel Denmark has bowed to
    Turkish pressure. Instead, the library should support the efforts of
    historians to place the Armenian Genocide in a historical context
    together with other religiously motivated violence that arose as a
    result of the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Doing so would move the
    discussion away from the difficult issue of whether or not it was
    genocide and towards historical research and documentation, for the
    benefit of everyone involved.

    Memory is the way we recall what happened in the past. History is what
    makes us wiser about it.

    (The author is the head of the Danish Institute for International
    Studies' holocaust and genocide research unit)

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