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Armenian genocide: Why many Turkish people have trouble accepting it

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  • Armenian genocide: Why many Turkish people have trouble accepting it

    Armenian genocide: Why many Turkish people have trouble accepting it
    Commentary: All Turkish people must accept the full scale of
    atrocities committed against Armenians in 1915.
    Gonca Sönmez-Poole

    http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/commentary/armenian-genocide-why-turkish-people-have-trouble-accepting-it

    May 4, 2012 14:51

    Lebanese Armenians burn the Turkish flag during a protest outside the
    Turkish embassy in Rabieh, northeast of Beirut, to commemorate the
    97th anniversary of the Ottoman Turkish genocide against the Armenian
    people on April 24, 2012. (Joseph Eid /AFP/Getty Images)BOSTON -
    Another April 24 has come and gone. It is the day Armenians around the
    world remember as beginning of the Armenian Genocide of 1915, when
    thousands of their ancestors perished.

    I am a 52-year-old Turkish-American woman and I must admit that it
    wasn't until I was in my late forties that I ever had a conversation
    with an Armenian person about the Armenian Genocide. Why? The answer
    lies in why I am compelled to write now about my own personal journey
    and two murders a quarter of a century apart.

    On May 4, 1982, I learned that a man I knew had been shot to death on
    his way home from work. That kind and gentle man was Orhan Gündüz, who
    at the time was Turkey's honorary consul to Boston. I had stopped by
    his little souvenir shop in Cambridge for a quick hello. As it
    happened, this was just a few hours before he died. What I remember
    most vividly is how his murder (a group named Justice Commandos
    against Armenian Genocide claimed responsibility) confused me so much
    that I spent the next 25 years avoiding the subject.

    Like most other Turkish people of my generation, my knowledge of
    Armenians was limited to what I had studied in history classes: that
    the Armenians had sided with the Western allies during the waning days
    of the Ottoman Empire, and for that they were forever marked as
    traitors by Turkey and the Turks. Over the two decades following
    Gündüz's assassination, I simply shunned the subject of the Armenian
    Genocide because it was too uncomfortable, too painful, and too
    difficult for me to deal with.

    Then came the summer of 2006, when I received an invitation to work on
    an Armenian-Turkish dialogue project in greater Boston. I immersed
    myself in the subject. I learned the history of the Ottoman Armenians,
    which had been missing from the school textbooks I read as a child. I
    made new friends, including Armenian-Americans with whom I'd been
    living parallel lives, while never exchanging a word.

    During this time I heard the news of an assassination. Hrant Dink, a
    Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor, was gunned down in Istanbul by a
    16-year-old Turkish nationalist. I did not know much about Dink at the
    time. I knew only that he was the founder of Agos, the first community
    newspaper in Turkey printed in both Armenian and Turkish, that he had
    opened the eyes of his traditionally quiet and passive Armenian
    community, encouraging both Armenians and Turks to speak openly about
    their ethnic identities and their family histories, and that countless
    people in Turkey had discovered their lost Armenian ancestry through
    his help and support. The date was January 19, 2007, 25 years after I
    had buried the subject of the Armenian Genocide.

    More from GlobalPost: Armenian genocide anniversary marked with
    remembrance, protests (PHOTOS)

    For the next five years, I attended workshops, participated in events,
    and watched countless videos and films on the Armenian Genocide and
    its aftermath. Most important, I spoke with many Armenians, from a
    variety of backgrounds and affiliations. As I became acquainted with
    the names of former Armenian villages and understood why every
    Armenian I met would mention the name of a village I knew only by its
    Turkish name, I was saddened - and enraged - by the lack of
    information, and by the silence I had experienced growing up in
    Turkey.

    I've also have learned from my Turkish friends and colleagues. Because
    all Armenians call this period the Armenian Genocide, and would like
    to hear the same from Turks, there is a dialogue of the deaf at work
    between these two groups.

    Many Turkish people - who are just starting to learn about their own
    history - feel that somebody is always trying to shut them up unless
    they start any sentence with the `G' word. Genocide is the word that
    encapsulates the events of 1915: large-scale deportations and
    massacres. To Armenians, this is known as the Armenian Genocide.
    Turkish people speak of the same events in the context of other
    factors that occurred during the waning days of the Ottoman Empire.
    They don't deny there were large-scale deportations and even murders.
    They acknowledge the killing of women and children as a result of the
    deportations. But they have a hard time describing all of this as
    `genocide.'

    Turkish people also feel that more attention should be given to the
    pressure that was exerted at the start of World War I in 1914 and into
    1915 to protect their land and their culture as the Ottoman Empire was
    ending and the Republic of Turkey was being established.

    More from GlobalPost: Analysis: Do genocide denial laws deny human rights?

    As important as these points may be, I believe that all Turkish people
    need to know and accept one simple truth: somewhere, somehow, an
    ancestor of theirs may have taken the life of an innocent Armenian
    person just because that person was Armenian. When this information is
    understood, genuinely accepted, digested, and settled into the hearts
    and minds of every Turkish person, then, and only then, can we all
    start a new chapter. In that chapter, the discussion will no longer be
    an argument about the term genocide, the definition of intent, or the
    total tally of killings on either side; it will simply be a discussion
    about the question we want to leave for our children to consider: how
    do we deal with the `other' - that is, those seen as different or
    foreign.

    Orhan Gündüz was killed because he was a Turkish diplomat, and he
    represented the misguided silence on the mass deportation of Ottoman
    Armenians from their original homes. Hrant Dink was killed because he
    was an Armenian from Turkey who spoke up and began a dialogue so that
    Armenians in Turkey as well as Turks could speak openly about what
    really happened in 1915; you could say he helped break the taboo of
    silence on the issue.

    More from GlobalPost: France Turkey dispute: Armenian genocide bill stalled

    So where does all of this leave me, an American citizen of Turkish
    descent, in the tortured landscape of Armenian-Turkish relations?

    I now use the word genocide when speaking about the massacres of 1915
    because doing otherwise would be a retreat into ignorance on two
    fronts, both intellectual and personal. I know I simply cannot go on
    denying the true depth of brutality and suffering brought upon the
    Ottoman Armenians, and the animosity and hatred 1915 perpetuated for
    nearly a century. On a more personal level, such a denial would be an
    affront to all of my new friends and acquaintances ... not only because
    they happen to be Armenian, but because they are human beings whom I
    care about.

    Gonca Sönmez-Poole is an American citizen of Turkish descent who has
    been a member of the Boston media community for the past 28 years. She
    has worked in television, both within the United States and
    internationally, focusing on issues pertinent to minority communities.
    For the past six years, she has been involved in dialogue and
    confidence-building efforts within the Turkish and Armenian
    communities in the Boston area.




    From: A. Papazian
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