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TURKEY'S ARMENIAN OPENING: TOWARDS 2015
Open Democracy
June 25 2014
Kerem Oktem and Christopher Sisserian
25 June 2014
The approaching centenary of the genocide of Armenians in the Ottoman
empire is a moment for Turkey's civil society to create a new ethical
reality around the issue
The centenary of the Armenian genocide in 1915 is fast approaching.
Much attention will shift towards Turkey, the successor state to
the Ottoman empire. Since its inception, the Turkish republic has
rejected responsibility for the genocide and mobilised its cultural
and educational infrastructure to eradicate Armenians from Turkey's
history.
In recent years, especially since the murder of Turkish-Armenian
journalist Hrant Dink in January 2007, an increasing number of
individuals and civil-society organisations has begun to engage with
the heritage and history of the country's once substantial Armenian
communities and their violent end. This interest in parts of civil
society had little impact on government policy until 23 April 2014, the
day before the genocide's traditional commemoration, when the office
of Turkey's prime minister released a letter offering condolences to
the grandchildren of those that perished.
This statement was significant; it was the first time a Turkish
prime minister had addressed the issue of Armenian suffering and
loss. The letter was seen by some as a humane expression of grief
and as a departure from the cold rhetoric of Turkish denialists, who
fetishise numbers and documents in a way that barely conceals their
racist reflexes. A closer look, however, suggests that Recep Tayyip
Erdogan's words seem less to break with the denialist mindset than
to reframe the existing state position. They do this by shifting the
gaze from the genocide, and relativising the destruction of Ottoman
Armenians through an emphasis on the uprooting and suffering of Turks
during the Balkan war and the first world war. In reality the statement
may have been more about Erdogan's quest for power than about justice
and atonement with Armenians (whether in Turkey, in the diaspora,
or in the Armenian republic).
Turkey briefly acquired an image as role model for the Arab-spring
countries, which underpinned its attempts at regional leadership. But
after this interlude, Turkey lost much of its international credibility
over both the heavy police violence meted out to the Gezi park
protesters in 2013, and a series of foreign-policy blunders in Syria,
Egypt and Iraq. Erdogan's AKP government has become isolated, both
domestically and internationally, and is now desperately seeking
to restore its international stature. To Erdogan's advisers and
foreign-ministry strategists, any goodwill gesture must therefore
have appeared a sensible policy option. As 2015 drew nearer, a
symbolic change in rhetoric over the Armenian issue eventually looked
appealing. Turkey's breach with Israel, whose camp in the United States
was once enlisted to do the dirty work of lobbying against recognition
of the genocide, meant that this route was no longer open to Ankara.
Hence Erdogan's letter. It is a masterly work that manages to appear to
talk about the Armenian genocide without actually recognising it; that
insinuates reconciliation without acknowledging injustice; and that
uses words of condolence, while warning its recipients not to establish
"a pecking order of suffering" (i.e. not to insist on recognition).
The role of civil society
1915 means many things to different people. For Armenians it is
overwhelmingly about a sense of justice; for many liberals in Turkey
it is about the country's democratic future; and, this must also
be said, for the majority of Turks socialised in the notoriously
nationalist education system, it means a plot by western powers to
divide Turkey's territory.
The liberals' argument goes like this: only by addressing the country's
violent past and the authoritarian behemoth of the modern Turkish
state will the republic be able to transform itself into a state of
all its citizens regardless of their ethnic, religious, linguistic
heritage or gender. The Gezi park protests show there is a sizeable
constituency that would subscribe to this argument. But as prime
minister Erdogan's relentless stance against the protesters and the
police repression against them both demonstrate, power in Turkey is
not in liberal hands. Turkey today is not much more of an inclusive
democracy than it was a decade ago.
Turkey's civil society has often been at the forefront of the struggle
for a more democratic polity, but not necessarily for the recognition
of genocide. The latter remains a highly contested topic, which only
the most radical of civil-society organisations is ready to tackle.
The centenary of the Armenian genocide therefore presents an
opportunity for Turkey's critical civil society to confront the
country's record of state-organised mass violence, as well as to
explore the remnants of what once was a thriving community of Ottoman
Armenians without whose contribution Turkish culture as it is today
would be unthinkable.
Such recognition will not come from this government and probably
not from the next one either. The administration of Recep Tayyip
Erdogan has proven repeatedly that democratisation is not its primary
objective, and that any reckoning with the modern Turkish republic's
record of violence and destruction - something built into its DNA,
and by no means a record of the past only - is not in its interest.
It is unimaginable that Erdogan, or any other Turkish political leader
in this decade, would kneel down before Yerevan's genocide memorial
and ask for forgiveness. His letter was above all an attempt to avoid
such a heartfelt expression of grief, commiseration and responsibility
for the crimes of his forefathers' generation.
But if political Turkey will not kneel down in the foreseeable future,
some civil-society organisations began to do so several years ago. A
series of genocide remembrance events have been held in Istanbul
and several other Turkish cities. In the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir,
a memorial was inaugurated in 2013 that laments all those killed by
injustice. In the steps of Hasan Cemal, a respected journalist and
grandson of one of the key perpetrators of the genocide, hundreds of
Turks have visited Dzidzanagabert, Armenia's equivalent of Yad Vashem;
many have laid flowers in memory of those who perished.
So where hope can be found, it is not in the realm of strategically
placed and half-hearted swings in rhetoric but in the courageous work
of those facing history, accepting responsibility and moving beyond
enmity. Activists in Turkey have been helped in this quest by members
of the Armenian diaspora, who have moved beyond their own concerns and
fears of re-engaging with people of a country which, for many years,
has been porteayed as the enemy per se.
The position of Armenians in Turkey
Yet this is where Erdogan's government, embattled as it is, has
also been making a difference. Not through any big strides forward,
but through simple measures such as easing the heavy discrimination
and restrictions on Armenian community life of the kind it has faced
since the foundation of the Turkish republic. Even the recent years'
limited restitution of foundation properties and church buildings,
for example, has helped reinvigorate Armenian life in Istanbul.
Istanbul's official Armenian population today amounts to 70,000, which
may only be a faint shadow of its larger presence in the 1920s or
even the 1960s. But numbers can be misleading. For the community has
been able to sustain an impressive network of sophisticated schools,
churches and civil-society institutions, which distinguishes it from
many other Armenian communities. It is also growing in less visible
ways, and has culturally related and sympathetic kin groups all over
Turkey and beyond.
Tens of thousands of citizens from Armenia now live and work in
Turkey. Many more "Muslim Armenians" are also beginning to discover
their Armenian heritage; these are people whose grandparents survived
the genocide by forced conversion or marriage, and who are estimated
to number several hundred thousand. Some convert to Christianity,
others explore the possibilities of engaging with Armenian identity
outside the church, and yet others seek to reconcile their interest
in Armenian heritage with their Islamic faith.
Istanbul itself is also a meeting-point between those with an Armenian
connection and members of the Hemsinli community, an Armenian-speaking
Muslim population from the mountains of the eastern Black Sea, many
of whose members have migrated to Istanbul in recent decades. Their
folk songs and laments about loss, grief and survival are mutually
understood.
Istanbul today, with all things considered, therefore hosts much more
of an Armenian presence than might be glimpsed at first sight. It is
there that the genocide was planned and it also there - not in the
republic's capital, Ankara - that the genuflections are taking place.
And it is there too that civil society will explore to what extent
Turkey can become a multicultural, multi-religious and multilingual
society of all its people: not under the conditions of Ottoman
authority or Erdogan's authoritarianism, but in the spirit of a free
and inclusive democracy.
This article was inspired by a workshop on Armenian-Turkish relations
at Sheffield Hallam University on 8 June 2014. It was convened
by Joanne Laycock (Sheffield) and Sossie Kasbarian (Lancaster) and
brought together a wide range of academics, activists and civil-society
representatives as well as performers and filmmakers
http://www.opendemocracy.net/kerem-oktem-christopher-sisserian/turkeys-armenian-opening-towards-2015
Open Democracy
June 25 2014
Kerem Oktem and Christopher Sisserian
25 June 2014
The approaching centenary of the genocide of Armenians in the Ottoman
empire is a moment for Turkey's civil society to create a new ethical
reality around the issue
The centenary of the Armenian genocide in 1915 is fast approaching.
Much attention will shift towards Turkey, the successor state to
the Ottoman empire. Since its inception, the Turkish republic has
rejected responsibility for the genocide and mobilised its cultural
and educational infrastructure to eradicate Armenians from Turkey's
history.
In recent years, especially since the murder of Turkish-Armenian
journalist Hrant Dink in January 2007, an increasing number of
individuals and civil-society organisations has begun to engage with
the heritage and history of the country's once substantial Armenian
communities and their violent end. This interest in parts of civil
society had little impact on government policy until 23 April 2014, the
day before the genocide's traditional commemoration, when the office
of Turkey's prime minister released a letter offering condolences to
the grandchildren of those that perished.
This statement was significant; it was the first time a Turkish
prime minister had addressed the issue of Armenian suffering and
loss. The letter was seen by some as a humane expression of grief
and as a departure from the cold rhetoric of Turkish denialists, who
fetishise numbers and documents in a way that barely conceals their
racist reflexes. A closer look, however, suggests that Recep Tayyip
Erdogan's words seem less to break with the denialist mindset than
to reframe the existing state position. They do this by shifting the
gaze from the genocide, and relativising the destruction of Ottoman
Armenians through an emphasis on the uprooting and suffering of Turks
during the Balkan war and the first world war. In reality the statement
may have been more about Erdogan's quest for power than about justice
and atonement with Armenians (whether in Turkey, in the diaspora,
or in the Armenian republic).
Turkey briefly acquired an image as role model for the Arab-spring
countries, which underpinned its attempts at regional leadership. But
after this interlude, Turkey lost much of its international credibility
over both the heavy police violence meted out to the Gezi park
protesters in 2013, and a series of foreign-policy blunders in Syria,
Egypt and Iraq. Erdogan's AKP government has become isolated, both
domestically and internationally, and is now desperately seeking
to restore its international stature. To Erdogan's advisers and
foreign-ministry strategists, any goodwill gesture must therefore
have appeared a sensible policy option. As 2015 drew nearer, a
symbolic change in rhetoric over the Armenian issue eventually looked
appealing. Turkey's breach with Israel, whose camp in the United States
was once enlisted to do the dirty work of lobbying against recognition
of the genocide, meant that this route was no longer open to Ankara.
Hence Erdogan's letter. It is a masterly work that manages to appear to
talk about the Armenian genocide without actually recognising it; that
insinuates reconciliation without acknowledging injustice; and that
uses words of condolence, while warning its recipients not to establish
"a pecking order of suffering" (i.e. not to insist on recognition).
The role of civil society
1915 means many things to different people. For Armenians it is
overwhelmingly about a sense of justice; for many liberals in Turkey
it is about the country's democratic future; and, this must also
be said, for the majority of Turks socialised in the notoriously
nationalist education system, it means a plot by western powers to
divide Turkey's territory.
The liberals' argument goes like this: only by addressing the country's
violent past and the authoritarian behemoth of the modern Turkish
state will the republic be able to transform itself into a state of
all its citizens regardless of their ethnic, religious, linguistic
heritage or gender. The Gezi park protests show there is a sizeable
constituency that would subscribe to this argument. But as prime
minister Erdogan's relentless stance against the protesters and the
police repression against them both demonstrate, power in Turkey is
not in liberal hands. Turkey today is not much more of an inclusive
democracy than it was a decade ago.
Turkey's civil society has often been at the forefront of the struggle
for a more democratic polity, but not necessarily for the recognition
of genocide. The latter remains a highly contested topic, which only
the most radical of civil-society organisations is ready to tackle.
The centenary of the Armenian genocide therefore presents an
opportunity for Turkey's critical civil society to confront the
country's record of state-organised mass violence, as well as to
explore the remnants of what once was a thriving community of Ottoman
Armenians without whose contribution Turkish culture as it is today
would be unthinkable.
Such recognition will not come from this government and probably
not from the next one either. The administration of Recep Tayyip
Erdogan has proven repeatedly that democratisation is not its primary
objective, and that any reckoning with the modern Turkish republic's
record of violence and destruction - something built into its DNA,
and by no means a record of the past only - is not in its interest.
It is unimaginable that Erdogan, or any other Turkish political leader
in this decade, would kneel down before Yerevan's genocide memorial
and ask for forgiveness. His letter was above all an attempt to avoid
such a heartfelt expression of grief, commiseration and responsibility
for the crimes of his forefathers' generation.
But if political Turkey will not kneel down in the foreseeable future,
some civil-society organisations began to do so several years ago. A
series of genocide remembrance events have been held in Istanbul
and several other Turkish cities. In the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir,
a memorial was inaugurated in 2013 that laments all those killed by
injustice. In the steps of Hasan Cemal, a respected journalist and
grandson of one of the key perpetrators of the genocide, hundreds of
Turks have visited Dzidzanagabert, Armenia's equivalent of Yad Vashem;
many have laid flowers in memory of those who perished.
So where hope can be found, it is not in the realm of strategically
placed and half-hearted swings in rhetoric but in the courageous work
of those facing history, accepting responsibility and moving beyond
enmity. Activists in Turkey have been helped in this quest by members
of the Armenian diaspora, who have moved beyond their own concerns and
fears of re-engaging with people of a country which, for many years,
has been porteayed as the enemy per se.
The position of Armenians in Turkey
Yet this is where Erdogan's government, embattled as it is, has
also been making a difference. Not through any big strides forward,
but through simple measures such as easing the heavy discrimination
and restrictions on Armenian community life of the kind it has faced
since the foundation of the Turkish republic. Even the recent years'
limited restitution of foundation properties and church buildings,
for example, has helped reinvigorate Armenian life in Istanbul.
Istanbul's official Armenian population today amounts to 70,000, which
may only be a faint shadow of its larger presence in the 1920s or
even the 1960s. But numbers can be misleading. For the community has
been able to sustain an impressive network of sophisticated schools,
churches and civil-society institutions, which distinguishes it from
many other Armenian communities. It is also growing in less visible
ways, and has culturally related and sympathetic kin groups all over
Turkey and beyond.
Tens of thousands of citizens from Armenia now live and work in
Turkey. Many more "Muslim Armenians" are also beginning to discover
their Armenian heritage; these are people whose grandparents survived
the genocide by forced conversion or marriage, and who are estimated
to number several hundred thousand. Some convert to Christianity,
others explore the possibilities of engaging with Armenian identity
outside the church, and yet others seek to reconcile their interest
in Armenian heritage with their Islamic faith.
Istanbul itself is also a meeting-point between those with an Armenian
connection and members of the Hemsinli community, an Armenian-speaking
Muslim population from the mountains of the eastern Black Sea, many
of whose members have migrated to Istanbul in recent decades. Their
folk songs and laments about loss, grief and survival are mutually
understood.
Istanbul today, with all things considered, therefore hosts much more
of an Armenian presence than might be glimpsed at first sight. It is
there that the genocide was planned and it also there - not in the
republic's capital, Ankara - that the genuflections are taking place.
And it is there too that civil society will explore to what extent
Turkey can become a multicultural, multi-religious and multilingual
society of all its people: not under the conditions of Ottoman
authority or Erdogan's authoritarianism, but in the spirit of a free
and inclusive democracy.
This article was inspired by a workshop on Armenian-Turkish relations
at Sheffield Hallam University on 8 June 2014. It was convened
by Joanne Laycock (Sheffield) and Sossie Kasbarian (Lancaster) and
brought together a wide range of academics, activists and civil-society
representatives as well as performers and filmmakers
http://www.opendemocracy.net/kerem-oktem-christopher-sisserian/turkeys-armenian-opening-towards-2015