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AL-Monitor
April 25 2014
Turkish civil society paves way for Erdogan's Armenian opening
Author: Amberin Zaman Posted April 25, 2014
On a gray Istanbul morning, Raffi Hovannisian, a prominent Armenian
opposition politician stood outside the historic Haydarpasha rail
station on the Asian shore of Istanbul and began to speak. `It was
more than a million and a half lives, it was more than genocide ' it
was a loss of 3,000 years of schools and churches, an entire
civilization and a way of life.'
Summary?' Print Some say Erdogan is trying to restore his international
credibility.
Author Amberin Zaman Posted April 25, 2014
Hovannisian was speaking on the 99th anniversary of the mass slaughter
of more than a million Ottoman Armenians, which most respected
scholars (and a growing number of Turks, myself included) say
constituted the first genocide of the 20th century. His grandmother
was among those who survived, thanks to the `brave Turkish and Kurdish
families who saved Armenians' lives.'
For Armenians worldwide, the tragedy began on April 24, 1915, when
over 200 Armenian intellectuals, including the world-famous musician
Gomidas, were rounded up in Istanbul and brought to Haydarpasha for a
sinister journey that, for many, ended in death.
As I listened to Raffi, a treasured friend from my days in the
Armenian capital Yerevan, where I spent three exhilarating years from
2007 to 2010, I was filled with a mix of grief and nostalgia but also
hope. I say hope because until recently it would have been unthinkable
for anyone to utter the word `genocide' in public without being
branded a traitor and hauled into court, as Orhan Pamuk, the
world-acclaimed Turkish novelist found out.
Not only that, a day earlier, Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan issued an official statement to mark April 24. The text,
published in nine different languages (including Eastern and Western
Armenian) parroted the official version of events, denying in effect
that the deliberate ethnic cleansing of Christians had ever taken
place. Yet, Erdogan acknowledged the suffering of the Armenians,
offering condolences and signaling that from hereon, free and
unfettered debate of 1915 was acceptable.
What rendered the statement extraordinary was that Erdogan made the
comments in his capacity as the prime minister of the Republic of
Turkey ' a first for any Turkish government leader. This, in turn,
means that Turkey's official policy is shifting and that it is no
longer imponderable that Turkey may some day offer an apology and make
amends for the horrors of the past. Turkish officials confirmed that
plans are in preparation to offer Turkish citizenship to the
descendants of survivors.
Not surprisingly, these moves unleashed a torrent of wildly divergent
emotions. Diaspora Armenians, for the most part, expressed wariness
and disdain. `Erdogan's message, although unprecedented, is actually
far from being sincere. It is void of any true meaning or openness for
reconciliation, as it is in fact not a departure from the denialist
policy to date of the Turkish government,' Giro Manoyan, a senior
member of the Armenian nationalist Dashnak party, told Al-Monitor.
`True reconciliation and friendly relations among century-old
neighbors requires a truthful and genuine recognition of the full
scale of the suffering of Armenians, not questioning or minimizing it.
It is by putting into question that truth or by minimizing it that
exacerbates the pain and relations between victims and perpetrators,'
he added.
Many Turkish Armenians, however, sounded cautiously optimistic. Raffi
Hermonn, a prominent Turkish Armenian intellectual, told Al-Monitor
that while Erdogan's statement fell far short of Armenians'
expectations `in the political and legal sense,' it had `on a human
level touched us in every way.'
The mood was perfectly captured by the headlines of the Istanbul-based
Armenian weekly newspaper Agos, one of which roughly translated as:
`The condolence threshold on the road to truth.' Agos' views carries
special weight because its founder, Hrant Dink, was among the first
Turkish Armenians to speak openly about the genocide. Dink was
murdered in 2007 by an ultra-nationalist youth who is widely believed
to have been acting under orders from the Turkish state. Dink's
slaying struck a chord. More than 100,000 people attended his funeral.
It was a turning point.
Indeed, it would have probably been impossible for Erdogan to make his
statement, no matter how lame, had civil society initiatives spurred
by Dink's death and quietly encouraged by the government, not laid the
ground. The April 24 commemoration in Haydarpasha is but one example
of a broad swathe of gestures aimed at healing the wounds of the past.
As the veteran Turkish genocide scholar Taner Akcam explained in his
column for the Turkish daily Taraf, in some respects the prime
minister is catching up with a Turkish public whose fight for truth
and justice is merging with that of the Armenian diaspora. This is
somewhat optimistic. Most Turks still believe the official narrative
that says the Armenians killed as many Turks, if not more, than the
Turks killed Armenians as the empire collapsed. And the tired canard
that the Armenians continue to plot with Turkey's enemies (read: the
United States and Israel) to carve out their own state from Turkish
lands continues to hold sway.
Akcam's other argument ' that Erdogan is seeking to restore his
international credibility by reaching out to the Armenians ' certainly
rings true. Indeed, many Turks echo the suspicions of the diaspora
Armenians, saying that the statement is a cynical ploy aimed at
winning Western favor and diverting attention from the corruption
scandals engulfing Erdogan and his government.
Besides, if Erdogan were as humane as suggested in his condolence
message, many ask why does he not extend the same compassion, say, to
the families of the victims of the Gezi Park protests. And why are
there no Armenians in the government or the parliament? As Turkey's
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu frequently points out, there were
under the Ottomans. Why not today, then?
A crime against humanity was committed in 1915. It needs to be
acknowledged, and amends need to be made. I fully agree with Akcam
that a first and immediate step would be to revive a deal signed in
2009 that foresaw the establishment of formal ties and the reopening
of Turkey's sealed borders with Armenia. Turkey shelved it in 2010
under pressure (some would call it blackmail) from Azerbaijan. Many in
the diaspora would argue that genocide recognition needs to come first
and that Armenia should embrace that position, too.
They need not worry. Shortly after making his landmark statement
Erdogan said Turkey's position on Armenia remained unchanged. In other
words, until Armenia withdraws from parts of Azerbaijani territory
that it captured during its war over Nagorno Karabakh, Turkey will not
make peace with Yerevan.
What Turkey doesn't get is that until Armenian citizens feel secure in
their relationship with Turkey they are not likely to make concessions
on Karabakh.
When I lived in Yerevan I learned that some 60% of Armenia's citizens
are descendants of Ottoman Armenians who fled the bloodletting a
century ago. This explains why, once I scraped away its Soviet crust,
Armenia felt so much like home. And that as I uncover Turkey's
secrets, it feels, well, like Armenia.
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/04/turkey-armenia-genocide-reconciliation-erdogan-credibility.html
April 25 2014
Turkish civil society paves way for Erdogan's Armenian opening
Author: Amberin Zaman Posted April 25, 2014
On a gray Istanbul morning, Raffi Hovannisian, a prominent Armenian
opposition politician stood outside the historic Haydarpasha rail
station on the Asian shore of Istanbul and began to speak. `It was
more than a million and a half lives, it was more than genocide ' it
was a loss of 3,000 years of schools and churches, an entire
civilization and a way of life.'
Summary?' Print Some say Erdogan is trying to restore his international
credibility.
Author Amberin Zaman Posted April 25, 2014
Hovannisian was speaking on the 99th anniversary of the mass slaughter
of more than a million Ottoman Armenians, which most respected
scholars (and a growing number of Turks, myself included) say
constituted the first genocide of the 20th century. His grandmother
was among those who survived, thanks to the `brave Turkish and Kurdish
families who saved Armenians' lives.'
For Armenians worldwide, the tragedy began on April 24, 1915, when
over 200 Armenian intellectuals, including the world-famous musician
Gomidas, were rounded up in Istanbul and brought to Haydarpasha for a
sinister journey that, for many, ended in death.
As I listened to Raffi, a treasured friend from my days in the
Armenian capital Yerevan, where I spent three exhilarating years from
2007 to 2010, I was filled with a mix of grief and nostalgia but also
hope. I say hope because until recently it would have been unthinkable
for anyone to utter the word `genocide' in public without being
branded a traitor and hauled into court, as Orhan Pamuk, the
world-acclaimed Turkish novelist found out.
Not only that, a day earlier, Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan issued an official statement to mark April 24. The text,
published in nine different languages (including Eastern and Western
Armenian) parroted the official version of events, denying in effect
that the deliberate ethnic cleansing of Christians had ever taken
place. Yet, Erdogan acknowledged the suffering of the Armenians,
offering condolences and signaling that from hereon, free and
unfettered debate of 1915 was acceptable.
What rendered the statement extraordinary was that Erdogan made the
comments in his capacity as the prime minister of the Republic of
Turkey ' a first for any Turkish government leader. This, in turn,
means that Turkey's official policy is shifting and that it is no
longer imponderable that Turkey may some day offer an apology and make
amends for the horrors of the past. Turkish officials confirmed that
plans are in preparation to offer Turkish citizenship to the
descendants of survivors.
Not surprisingly, these moves unleashed a torrent of wildly divergent
emotions. Diaspora Armenians, for the most part, expressed wariness
and disdain. `Erdogan's message, although unprecedented, is actually
far from being sincere. It is void of any true meaning or openness for
reconciliation, as it is in fact not a departure from the denialist
policy to date of the Turkish government,' Giro Manoyan, a senior
member of the Armenian nationalist Dashnak party, told Al-Monitor.
`True reconciliation and friendly relations among century-old
neighbors requires a truthful and genuine recognition of the full
scale of the suffering of Armenians, not questioning or minimizing it.
It is by putting into question that truth or by minimizing it that
exacerbates the pain and relations between victims and perpetrators,'
he added.
Many Turkish Armenians, however, sounded cautiously optimistic. Raffi
Hermonn, a prominent Turkish Armenian intellectual, told Al-Monitor
that while Erdogan's statement fell far short of Armenians'
expectations `in the political and legal sense,' it had `on a human
level touched us in every way.'
The mood was perfectly captured by the headlines of the Istanbul-based
Armenian weekly newspaper Agos, one of which roughly translated as:
`The condolence threshold on the road to truth.' Agos' views carries
special weight because its founder, Hrant Dink, was among the first
Turkish Armenians to speak openly about the genocide. Dink was
murdered in 2007 by an ultra-nationalist youth who is widely believed
to have been acting under orders from the Turkish state. Dink's
slaying struck a chord. More than 100,000 people attended his funeral.
It was a turning point.
Indeed, it would have probably been impossible for Erdogan to make his
statement, no matter how lame, had civil society initiatives spurred
by Dink's death and quietly encouraged by the government, not laid the
ground. The April 24 commemoration in Haydarpasha is but one example
of a broad swathe of gestures aimed at healing the wounds of the past.
As the veteran Turkish genocide scholar Taner Akcam explained in his
column for the Turkish daily Taraf, in some respects the prime
minister is catching up with a Turkish public whose fight for truth
and justice is merging with that of the Armenian diaspora. This is
somewhat optimistic. Most Turks still believe the official narrative
that says the Armenians killed as many Turks, if not more, than the
Turks killed Armenians as the empire collapsed. And the tired canard
that the Armenians continue to plot with Turkey's enemies (read: the
United States and Israel) to carve out their own state from Turkish
lands continues to hold sway.
Akcam's other argument ' that Erdogan is seeking to restore his
international credibility by reaching out to the Armenians ' certainly
rings true. Indeed, many Turks echo the suspicions of the diaspora
Armenians, saying that the statement is a cynical ploy aimed at
winning Western favor and diverting attention from the corruption
scandals engulfing Erdogan and his government.
Besides, if Erdogan were as humane as suggested in his condolence
message, many ask why does he not extend the same compassion, say, to
the families of the victims of the Gezi Park protests. And why are
there no Armenians in the government or the parliament? As Turkey's
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu frequently points out, there were
under the Ottomans. Why not today, then?
A crime against humanity was committed in 1915. It needs to be
acknowledged, and amends need to be made. I fully agree with Akcam
that a first and immediate step would be to revive a deal signed in
2009 that foresaw the establishment of formal ties and the reopening
of Turkey's sealed borders with Armenia. Turkey shelved it in 2010
under pressure (some would call it blackmail) from Azerbaijan. Many in
the diaspora would argue that genocide recognition needs to come first
and that Armenia should embrace that position, too.
They need not worry. Shortly after making his landmark statement
Erdogan said Turkey's position on Armenia remained unchanged. In other
words, until Armenia withdraws from parts of Azerbaijani territory
that it captured during its war over Nagorno Karabakh, Turkey will not
make peace with Yerevan.
What Turkey doesn't get is that until Armenian citizens feel secure in
their relationship with Turkey they are not likely to make concessions
on Karabakh.
When I lived in Yerevan I learned that some 60% of Armenia's citizens
are descendants of Ottoman Armenians who fled the bloodletting a
century ago. This explains why, once I scraped away its Soviet crust,
Armenia felt so much like home. And that as I uncover Turkey's
secrets, it feels, well, like Armenia.
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/04/turkey-armenia-genocide-reconciliation-erdogan-credibility.html