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ANKARA: Historian Hilmar Kaiser Challenges Armenian Arguments

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  • ANKARA: Historian Hilmar Kaiser Challenges Armenian Arguments

    Zaman
    22 March 2009, Sunday

    EMÄ°NE KART ANKARA

    Historian Hilmar Kaiser Challenges ARMENIAN Arguments
    The general tendency to debate the events of 1915 ' the killings of
    Anatolian Armenians during World War I ' by employing politically
    motivated theories on the nature of these events stands as a barrier
    between the peoples of Armenia and Turkey, preventing them from
    adequately airing their deep, almost century-old grievances.

    Historian challenges politically motivated 1915 arguments
    HILMAR KAISERProminent German historian Hilmar Kaiser is presently in
    Ankara carrying out research in the Turkish archives. In an interview
    with Sunday's Zaman this week, Kaiser says the field of history `is
    flooded with political advocates who are less historians than
    opinion-formers,' drawing a picture full of gray areas, showing there
    is still ample room for research on the 1915 events.

    In the 1990s, Kaiser was working exclusively in Ä°stanbul and
    that period, he was only granted access to the Ottoman archives, which
    were under special regulations, and had been declined permission to
    carry out his research in any other library or archive by the
    then-Tansu Ã?iller government. Today, however, Kaiser believes
    that there aren't any issues as far as access to the state archives is
    concerned.

    `Two weeks ago, I was in Washington, D.C., presenting my research and
    photos at an Armenian Assembly [of America] conference, and I
    suggested that if they are looking for a good director for their
    archives and genocide museum, they might consider hiring Yusuf
    Sarınay, the head of the Turkish state archives, or Mustafa
    Budak, the head of the Ottoman archives. These are two highly
    qualified people with vision, determination and commitment. Some
    people were surprised, but I was very serious about it,' says Kaiser.

    `Yes, there are still problems, but having said this, I should
    immediately add there are problems everywhere. The important thing is
    there is a process in place to overcome these problems. It's a huge
    administration, and encountering problems is part of the daily work. I
    can only say that, as far as I'm concerned, and I know the same for
    many, many researchers ' both Turkish or foreigner ' that they have
    had exactly the same experiences. If there is a problem, it's
    immediately addressed and resolved. That's all you can ask for. Turkey
    has gained a lot of credit with its new archive policy, and it will
    gain more credit if the present government would support the archives
    more strongly with additional funding,' he notes.

    Historical research and reassessments

    Kaiser is critical of colleagues who prefer doing their work without
    researching the context of original documents and thus making
    `reassessments' of certain theses ' one of which is that the
    Ä°ttihat ve Terakki (Committee of Union and Progress) had a
    racist motivation, acted premeditatedly and had developed a systematic
    extermination policy during the 1915 events.

    `One should stop thinking of the [Committee of Union and Progress] CUP
    as a kind of monolithic party. Research on the Armenians in WWI has
    tended to try to create the impression of a Turkey that was like a
    small version of Nazi Germany, with a single party and with a poor
    man's SS named TeÅ?kilat'ı Mahsusa. I think this is
    totally wrong; one has to study the Turkish-Armenian case on its
    own. Yes, there were some people within the CUP inspired by European
    positivists, who were partly racist, but thinking that this was not
    the general party line. That racism was not the driving motive behind
    the Armenian policy is quite clear because if you compare it to the
    German racism, you cannot explain the survival of tens of thousands of
    Armenian women and children in Muslim houses, even in the government
    orphanages. This would have been completely impossible if the
    government had been inspired by the German type of racism,' says
    Kaiser.

    `People like to compare Young Turk-Turkey to Nazi Germany, but it is
    not a comparison; they equate it. A comparison should also stress the
    fundamental differences,' he continued. `Racism as well as Muslim
    fundamentalism were not driving forces. Some allege that Islam was
    very conducive to large-scale massacres of Armenians. It's totally
    illogical. If Islam is very conducive to large-scale massacres of
    Armenians, why were they here for 600 years? Second, why did the
    survivors survive in Muslim societies in the Middle East?'

    `Ridiculous' mega explanations

    There is a major argument over demographic planning, suggesting that
    it was planned by the Committee of Union and Progress and culminated
    in the Armenian relocation.

    Kaiser stresses demographic planning is as old as the Ottoman Empire,
    starting in the 14th century.

    `There has always been demographic planning ' before and after
    1915. One has to establish a direct link between the policy against
    Armenians and demographic planning, more specifically that the
    demographic planning was a motive behind the policy. I'm very
    skeptical about this. Demographic planning played a role, but let's be
    realistic: When you have tens of thousands of Muslim refugees from the
    Balkans and from the Russian border areas camping in the open and you
    start deporting Armenians, and you have access to empty houses, what
    do you do with it? Of course, you use it. To make the claim that this
    was the driving force behind the deportations is, in my view, wrong
    because it cannot explain the timing of the deportations. This
    demographic argument is in a way a substitute for a blueprint,' he
    asserts.

    `People who believe there was more some kind of long-term planning,
    like since 1909 or 1912, have had a problem in showing a concrete link
    between what happened in 1915 and these alleged earlier plans. So we
    are faced now with a lot of substitutes after the earlier arguments
    had been dismantled. Yes, demographic planning is very important, but
    is not the driving motive. Not in my research; I haven't found any
    convincing proof ' on the contrary, the evidence points in different
    directions.'

    Kaiser also is opposed to those who depict the Committee of Union and
    Progress and the Ottoman army as homogeneous bodies.

    `Yes, the CUP was a nationalist group, but it also included very
    religious groups. These people cannot be united. They obviously put on
    a straight face in public, like some politicians do today. And even if
    you're a Turkish nationalist, that doesn't make you a killer. There
    were people who were famous Turkish nationalists like Halide Edip; she
    advocated assimilation of Armenians, but she very strongly opposed any
    kind of murder. On the other hand, this opposition against it was not
    just limited to nationalists; it also included anti-CUP opposition,
    for example, from the Liberal Party. Believe it or not, this
    opposition that concentrated on Cemal Pasha in the area of the Fourth
    Army cooperated ' there is proof for this ' with the Armenian
    underground against Talat,' he explains.

    `Let me say something more radical: The one person who saved most
    Armenians in World War I was nobody other than Cemal Pasha. That this
    hasn't been discussed so far is just due to the fact that we have a
    couple of political problems with the whole thing, and our field is
    really flooded with political advocates who are less historians than
    they are opinion-formers. We have reports from German navy officers
    who were on the staff of Pasha because he was also minister of the
    navy. Sometimes when he saw abuse of Armenian deportees, he just let
    the official be hung on the spot, he didn't even wait for it. There
    are many, many Armenian sources about this as well, like memoirs. On
    the other hand, one should not be too romantic about it.'

    And cheap political arguments

    Kaiser also has crucial notes suggesting that the Turkish Republic was
    built by killers, and the alleged `Armenian genocide' was the founding
    act.

    `Then you can also find other founding acts like the defeat in the
    Balkan Wars. I mean this is nonsense. You have to establish a direct
    link. The Armenian population base was destroyed, and look around
    Turkey today: It's obvious, and this had a strong impact, but the
    republic wasn't founded on this. This is very important; it was a part
    of the environment that the republic was founded in, and as far as I
    can see, I haven't found anything from contemporary sources that would
    suggest that Mustafa Kemal was involved in the killings. The only
    thing I found is that he was very much opposed to it, very outspoken
    at the time. But that later his opinions about Armenians changed has
    something to do with the war in the Trans-Caucasus and then the
    Soviet-Turkish problems. But what we were told about what happened in
    1915, 1916 does not lend itself to any kind of interpretation that
    Kemal followed any policy that was not dignified for a Turkish
    officer.

    `Coming to the army ' the Fourth Army, they have resisted. We do have
    a problem with the military; this is the Third Army because it is
    there where the big killing took place. The problem with the Third
    Army is that you have a kind of `çorba' [soup in Turkish] among
    political officers who owed their quick advancement to positions of
    prominence to their party connections, or their dependency on Enver
    PaÅ?a. These people were not very much liked by the standard
    career officers who had earned their position on merit.

    `Secondly, you have all sort of elements of the so-called
    TeÅ?kilat-ı Mahsusa, the special organization operator,
    and I remind you I was able to identify some of these units who were
    killing Armenian villagers before even
    SarıkamıÅ?. So there you have elements and players
    that had been already active under Abdulhamid. They were just
    continuing that trade under a different name.

    `We need precision in research and these mega explanations ' the army,
    the Turks, the Muslims ' this is simply ridiculous, and this is only
    useful if you want to make a cheap political argument, which I don't.'
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