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Turkey should face the past. Yavuz Baydar
20:18, 19 September, 2012
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 19, ARMENPRESS: Apology, in my opinion, is
secondary. First and foremost, the emphasis should be on this
society's courage to face the sins of the past. We were deprived of it
until today. This is a frightened society. I am not ashamed to say
this: We were fed this fear, we were scared throughout all our lives.
Our ruling system has been based on fear. We have to change that. The
only way is to confront our past. As Armenpress reports citing
Huffington Post, these are the words of Ä°shak Alaton, a prominent
octogenarian Turkish businessman of Jewish origin. After releasing his
memoirs not so long ago, Alaton has become more and more vocal,
calling endlessly for an end to the bloody Kurdish conflict as one of
the "wise men" ready to be part of a dialogue on reconciliation,
asking for the courage to face the crimes that were committed during
the collapse of Ottoman rule and asking citizens to speak out. When a
ship called the Struma was dragged to the port of Old Ä°stanbul in
1941, Alaton was a 15-year-old witness to the agony onboard. The
60-year-old vessel was the last hope of 769 Romanian Jews fleeing the
Nazis, but its engines had stopped at the Black Sea end of the
Bosporus. The issue led to pressure on Ankara from Adolf Hitler's
regime, and after 72 days of despair, the Struma was sent by Turkish
authorities back into the Black Sea, where it was torpedoed by the
Soviet navy. Only one person survived. "Those responsible for this in
Ankara are, to my mind, murderers. This society, of which I am a part,
has a problem with hiding from its past. We pretend that if we lock
them away the problems will be gone. But the corpses that rot in there
poison the air that we breathe. Is any serenity possible without
confrontation? Let us do it, so that we can make peace with the past."
The Struma disaster, a hidden episode in the republic's history, is
the subject of a new book written by Halit Kakınç, and its preface is
written by, yes, Alaton himself. It is not for nothing the subject of
"genies out of the bottle." is to persist on the agenda of Turkey,
opened up in a sort of "Turkish perestroika" by the ruling Justice and
Development Party (AKP) in the past decade. And, only days after the
release of the Struma book, another hit the shelves -- a potential
intellectual bombshell. "1915: Armenian Genocide" is its title and,
not only due to its cover but also its groundbreaking content, it
overwhelms many others on the subject that have been published. What
makes the book outstanding and unique is that it was written by Hasan
Cemal, an internationally renowned editor and columnist who is the
grandson of Cemal Pasha. This kinship is key to understanding the
book's historic significance: Cemal Pasha was a member of the
triumvirate, whose other parts were Talat and Enver Pasha, responsible
for the Great Armenian Tragedy, which started with a mass deportation
of Ottoman Armenians from their homelands and ended with their
annihilation between 1915 through 1916. In his account, Hasan Cemal
concludes it was genocide. He does not intend, or pretend, to argue
his case like a historian would. His is a painful intellectual journey
that takes us through his own evolution, a rather ruthless
self-scrutiny of his intellectual past that amounts to an invaluable
piece of private archeology. He has done this before. In other books,
he questioned his "militarist revolutionary" past, confronting boldly
his own mistakes his deep disbelief in democracy, plotting coups, his
experience as newspaper editor, etc. But this one is even more
personal. "It was the pain of Hrant Dink which made me write this
book," he told the press. Dink was a dear Turkish-Armenian colleague
to many of us, as he was to Cemal. He was assassinated in broad
daylight on a street of Istanbul by a lone gunman in January 2007,
sending shockwaves around the world. "Look at my age; it's been years
and years that I have defended the freedom of expression. But should I
keep secret some of my opinions, only for myself? Should I still have
some taboos of my own? Should I still remain unliberated? Is it not a
shame on me, Hasan Cemal?" In the preface, he writes: "We cannot
remain silent before the bitter truths of the past. We cannot let the
past hold the present captive. Also, the pain of 1915 does not belong
to the past, it is an issue of today. We can only make peace with
history, but not an 'invented' or 'distorted' history like ours, and
reach liberty." The pain of Dink's memory, which scarred many of us
so eternally may have been a crucial point for it, but by turning a
"personal taboo-breaking" into a public one, Cemal opened a huge hole
in the wall of denial of the state. It broke another mental dam. This
bold exercise in freedom of speech will, in time, pave the way for the
correct path. It is up to the individuals of Turkey to do the same,
and bow before their consciences. Perhaps this is why there has been
such silence over this book in the days since its publication. It is
also very difficult to find in bookstores. There are rumors that some
chains are refusing to sell it. This may be true, but it cannot now be
unpublished. The genie is out of the bottle but the ghosts of the past
are also very much alive. The "silent treatment" is proof of that. If
anything, it shows how frightened people are. Not only does the state
owe an apology for the past, but an even bigger apology is necessary
for enforcing, decade after decade, a mass internalization of
denialism in this country.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
20:18, 19 September, 2012
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 19, ARMENPRESS: Apology, in my opinion, is
secondary. First and foremost, the emphasis should be on this
society's courage to face the sins of the past. We were deprived of it
until today. This is a frightened society. I am not ashamed to say
this: We were fed this fear, we were scared throughout all our lives.
Our ruling system has been based on fear. We have to change that. The
only way is to confront our past. As Armenpress reports citing
Huffington Post, these are the words of Ä°shak Alaton, a prominent
octogenarian Turkish businessman of Jewish origin. After releasing his
memoirs not so long ago, Alaton has become more and more vocal,
calling endlessly for an end to the bloody Kurdish conflict as one of
the "wise men" ready to be part of a dialogue on reconciliation,
asking for the courage to face the crimes that were committed during
the collapse of Ottoman rule and asking citizens to speak out. When a
ship called the Struma was dragged to the port of Old Ä°stanbul in
1941, Alaton was a 15-year-old witness to the agony onboard. The
60-year-old vessel was the last hope of 769 Romanian Jews fleeing the
Nazis, but its engines had stopped at the Black Sea end of the
Bosporus. The issue led to pressure on Ankara from Adolf Hitler's
regime, and after 72 days of despair, the Struma was sent by Turkish
authorities back into the Black Sea, where it was torpedoed by the
Soviet navy. Only one person survived. "Those responsible for this in
Ankara are, to my mind, murderers. This society, of which I am a part,
has a problem with hiding from its past. We pretend that if we lock
them away the problems will be gone. But the corpses that rot in there
poison the air that we breathe. Is any serenity possible without
confrontation? Let us do it, so that we can make peace with the past."
The Struma disaster, a hidden episode in the republic's history, is
the subject of a new book written by Halit Kakınç, and its preface is
written by, yes, Alaton himself. It is not for nothing the subject of
"genies out of the bottle." is to persist on the agenda of Turkey,
opened up in a sort of "Turkish perestroika" by the ruling Justice and
Development Party (AKP) in the past decade. And, only days after the
release of the Struma book, another hit the shelves -- a potential
intellectual bombshell. "1915: Armenian Genocide" is its title and,
not only due to its cover but also its groundbreaking content, it
overwhelms many others on the subject that have been published. What
makes the book outstanding and unique is that it was written by Hasan
Cemal, an internationally renowned editor and columnist who is the
grandson of Cemal Pasha. This kinship is key to understanding the
book's historic significance: Cemal Pasha was a member of the
triumvirate, whose other parts were Talat and Enver Pasha, responsible
for the Great Armenian Tragedy, which started with a mass deportation
of Ottoman Armenians from their homelands and ended with their
annihilation between 1915 through 1916. In his account, Hasan Cemal
concludes it was genocide. He does not intend, or pretend, to argue
his case like a historian would. His is a painful intellectual journey
that takes us through his own evolution, a rather ruthless
self-scrutiny of his intellectual past that amounts to an invaluable
piece of private archeology. He has done this before. In other books,
he questioned his "militarist revolutionary" past, confronting boldly
his own mistakes his deep disbelief in democracy, plotting coups, his
experience as newspaper editor, etc. But this one is even more
personal. "It was the pain of Hrant Dink which made me write this
book," he told the press. Dink was a dear Turkish-Armenian colleague
to many of us, as he was to Cemal. He was assassinated in broad
daylight on a street of Istanbul by a lone gunman in January 2007,
sending shockwaves around the world. "Look at my age; it's been years
and years that I have defended the freedom of expression. But should I
keep secret some of my opinions, only for myself? Should I still have
some taboos of my own? Should I still remain unliberated? Is it not a
shame on me, Hasan Cemal?" In the preface, he writes: "We cannot
remain silent before the bitter truths of the past. We cannot let the
past hold the present captive. Also, the pain of 1915 does not belong
to the past, it is an issue of today. We can only make peace with
history, but not an 'invented' or 'distorted' history like ours, and
reach liberty." The pain of Dink's memory, which scarred many of us
so eternally may have been a crucial point for it, but by turning a
"personal taboo-breaking" into a public one, Cemal opened a huge hole
in the wall of denial of the state. It broke another mental dam. This
bold exercise in freedom of speech will, in time, pave the way for the
correct path. It is up to the individuals of Turkey to do the same,
and bow before their consciences. Perhaps this is why there has been
such silence over this book in the days since its publication. It is
also very difficult to find in bookstores. There are rumors that some
chains are refusing to sell it. This may be true, but it cannot now be
unpublished. The genie is out of the bottle but the ghosts of the past
are also very much alive. The "silent treatment" is proof of that. If
anything, it shows how frightened people are. Not only does the state
owe an apology for the past, but an even bigger apology is necessary
for enforcing, decade after decade, a mass internalization of
denialism in this country.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress