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LAT: A Turkish 'I apologize' campaign to Armenians

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  • LAT: A Turkish 'I apologize' campaign to Armenians

    Los Angeles Times, CA
    Jan 5 2009

    Opinion
    A Turkish 'I apologize' campaign to Armenians


    The fate of Armenians in 1915 remains taboo in Turkey, but some
    intellectuals are taking action.

    By Esra Özyürek
    January 5, 2009

    Two hundred Turkish intellectuals last month launched an Internet
    signature campaign for an apology to Armenians for the 1915
    massacres. "My conscience does not accept the insensitivity showed to
    and the denial of the Great Catastrophe that the Armenians were
    subjected to in 1915," the brief statement reads. "I reject this
    injustice and for my share, I empathize with the feelings and pain of
    my Armenian brothers and sisters. I apologize to them."

    Within a month, more than 26,000 people signed on, a significant
    number in a country where the fate of the Armenians at the end of the
    Ottoman Empire has been largely unmentionable for decades. To those
    long frustrated by Turkey's intractability on the issue, this campaign
    may appear an inadequate gesture. But it has immense value, educating
    many Turks about the violence done to Armenians for the first time and
    enabling those who are ready to come to terms with it.

    The official Turkish position on 1915 has shifted over time. It was a
    fight between local Turkish and Armenian bands. Or it was a forced
    resettlement -- a march on which hundreds of thousands of Armenians
    were sent to Syria, but most never arrived. Historians and politicians
    also have argued that it was actually Armenians who massacred Turks
    and that talk of an Armenian genocide was an international
    conspiracy. In contemporary Turkey, novelists, journalists, historians
    or other intellectuals who call the events a genocide or even mass
    murder can face trial under the infamous Article 301 of the Turkish
    Penal Code, which outlaws insulting Turkey, its government or its
    people.

    Organizers of the "I apologize" campaign notably shied away from the
    word genocide, opting instead for "the Great Catastrophe," a phrase
    initially used by Armenians. Still, Turkish nationalists were quick to
    condemn the project and launch multiple, counter we-want-an-apology
    campaigns.

    Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, quickly dismissed the
    apology movement. "These Turkish intellectuals must have committed the
    genocide," he said mockingly, "since they are the ones who are
    apologizing." Opposition parties in the parliament, other than the
    Kurdish-inclined Democratic Turkey Party, have all condemned the
    campaign as well. The Nationalist Action Party, for example, issued a
    statement that said, in part, "There is no single page in the
    honorable history of the Turkish nation for which we should be
    embarrassed, and no crime for which we should apologize. No one has
    the right to smear our ancestors by deviating from history, declaring
    them guilty, and ask them to apologize."


    Granted, 26,000 signatories to the campaign means Turks interested in
    apologizing remain few and far between in a nation of 70
    million. Still, this is a very significant development in Turkey. In
    the last 10 years, several Turkish scholars began studying the
    Armenian massacres outside the official Turkish framework, and some of
    them, such as Taner Akcam, have openly acknowledged those events were
    a genocide. Turkish and Armenian scholars organized joint workshops to
    discuss what happened to Armenians at the end of the Ottoman
    Empire. When Hrant Dink, a prominent journalist of Armenian
    background, was assassinated by a nationalist thug in Istanbul two
    years ago, 200,000 Turks marched in the streets carrying banners that
    said, "We are all Armenian."

    Critics will certainly reply that these modest activities do not
    compensate for the original crime nor the suffering caused by its
    denial for almost a century. They will complain that the current
    signature campaign does not use the word genocide. Yet the
    significance of this campaign cannot be understated.

    I grew up in Turkey in a politically engaged, educated and reasonably
    liberal family in the 1970s and the 1980s, and I had only a vague idea
    about the animosity between Turks and Armenians. It wasn't until I
    enrolled in graduate school at the University of Michigan, one of the
    most important centers of Ottoman and Armenian studies in the United
    States, that I learned about the unacceptably sad end of the Armenian
    subjects of the Ottoman Empire.

    Turks growing up today surely are better informed about the history of
    the land they inhabit. Even those who accept the nationalist line have
    to be aware of the sudden end of the centuries-long Armenian presence
    in Anatolia. Regardless of the terms they employ or the specific
    amount of responsibility they willingly shoulder, this next generation
    of Turks is already in a much better position to face the darkest
    aspect of their national history and develop a more responsible
    relationship to it.

    It may appear a small gesture now, but the initiators of the "I
    apologize" campaign have introduced a ray of hope for reconciliation
    between Armenians and Turks before the 100th anniversary of the
    catastrophe comes around.

    Esra Özyürek is an associate professor of anthropology at UC San Diego
    and the author of "Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and
    Everyday Politics in Turkey" and "Politics of Public Memory in
    Turkey."

    http://www.latimes.com/news/opin ion/sunday/commentary/la-oe-ozyurek5-2009jan05,0,3 908273.story
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