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ANKARA: Davutoglu To Armenians: I Do Not Deny Your Suffering; Come,

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  • ANKARA: Davutoglu To Armenians: I Do Not Deny Your Suffering; Come,

    DAVUTOGLU TO ARMENIANS: I DO NOT DENY YOUR SUFFERING; COME, LET US TALK
    by Asli Aydintasbas

    Milliyet
    July 7 2012
    Turkey

    [Translated from Turkish]

    I went to Paris with Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu for the Friends
    of Syria summit. We had a long talk on the flight. I thought what he
    said was important, but with a journalist's cunning I decided to keep
    that waiting for a day. While we had a long discussion with Davutoglu
    about Syria on our way to Paris, the topic somehow switched to the
    Armenian issue.

    Do not say "what does the Armenian issue have to do anything here?"

    The Armenian issue or the events of 1915, and the debate on how those
    events need to be called, all continue to paralyse Turkey even after
    100 years. Look at Hrant Dink, the relations with France that reached
    a breaking point, the millions of dollars that are spent every year in
    order to prevent the US Congress from saying "genocide." And naturally,
    the pain, the sufferance, and the nostalgia a body feels even after
    100 years, caused by a limb that was abruptly cut off...

    I understood from the foreign minister's statements that on the eve
    of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian incidents of 1915, there is
    a brand new "overture" process that is being developed away from the
    public eye. That is a three-step strategy.

    The first step concerns feelings. For years, Turkey either denied
    the Armenian incidents or looked down on the Armenians' suffering
    on the official level using arguments such as the "Hocali massacre"
    or policies in the line of "If it happened to you, it happened to us,
    too." That is why, in my opinion, Davutoglu's following statement was
    important: "The Armenians are not facing a foreign minister who claims
    that nothing happened in 1915. I do not call the incidents genocide,
    but that is at the discretion of the individual. We must develop
    a new language on the issue. We are not denying your sufferance, we
    understand it. Let us get together and do whatever is necessary. That,
    however, cannot be a unilateral declaration of guilt." There is a
    concept developed by Davutoglu called the "just memory." It is based
    on feeling the Armenians' pain, and "not trying to shut them up."

    "We are not like the Germans. We do not have in our history ideas such
    as pogroms or ghettos. The Muslims in the Balkans and the Caucasus
    also have fears, concerns, and losses. Certain things happened causing
    paranoia in people who feared that they would be exiled from Anatolia.

    That, however, was not an ideological reflex that was caused by an
    attempt to liquidate an entire race. It would be unacceptable to draw
    an analogy between the Turks and the Nazis, and present them as a
    murderer race. We cannot accept a unilateral declaration of guilt.

    "I am looking at the glass that is half full. It is important to
    say, albeit late, 'I understand your pain; we will listen to the
    Armenians.' There is an effort for a joint declaration on the subject
    while we are approaching 2015."

    The second step of the overture concerns redefining the word
    "diaspora." The foreign minister said that he sent a circular to all
    the embassies in which he redefined the Turkish diaspora: "We consider
    all those who emigrated from those lands, and not only the Turks,
    to be the diaspora: the Armenians, Jews, Greeks, the people called El
    Turco in Latin America, and the Arabs in Argentina... Those are our
    people... Those are people whose culture and language resemble ours."

    According to this, the embassies will now open their doors to those
    people who were once Ottoman subjects, they will contact them, and
    they will even invite them to national days. The contacts with the
    Armenian diaspora are said to have already started.

    That is a very important evolution for a republican ideology that
    tried to transform the empire's difficult but rich heritage into a
    "homogenous&q uot; Turkish race. Think of that overture together
    with the statement Tayyip Erdogan made last week at the Assembly:
    "Our history did not start in 1923." Bureaucracy will probably have
    a hard time to adjust. Those new notions, however, draw a parallel
    to Turkey's new regional claims.

    The last step concerns the delicate diplomatic ties with Armenia.

    Davutoglu kept recalling that the "protocols" - which have become
    transitory - with Armenia are still "on the table." Hillary Clinton
    reportedly went to Armenia last month. Sarkisyan was reelected. What
    is asked from him at the first stage is to withdraw from a very small
    part of the Azeri lands that are under Armenia's occupation. After
    that, Turkey will open its borders, trade and investments will start,
    and as a high-ranking official I interviewed said: "We will revive
    Yerevan as we revived Arbil." That is an attractive proposal for the
    Armenians. For the Turks, it is a step that has no material value
    but that will psychologically unite the separated souls and the lost
    identities. Davutoglu says: "If you [Sarkisyan] want to contribute to
    the solution of the Armenian issue, come and let us work together. We
    wish the protocols could be implemented. I am still sorry about the
    lost opportunities. We could have easily achieved a lot. That did
    not happen because of psychological factors."

    What can I say? Perhaps it is not too late. Perhaps it will happen.

    [translated from Turkish]




    From: A. Papazian
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