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Turkey And Armenia: Genocide? What Genocide?

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  • Turkey And Armenia: Genocide? What Genocide?

    TURKEY AND ARMENIA: GENOCIDE? WHAT GENOCIDE?

    Open Democracy
    March 2 2015

    John Lubbock, 28 February 2015

    April 1915 saw the start of the Turkish genocide against Armenians
    and other minorities. Erdogan hopes he can ignore the anniversary
    and it will go away--while Armenian politics is stuck in victim mode.

    With the centenary of the onset of the Armenian genocide less than
    two months away, the economically aggrandising but politically
    repressive Turkish state needs to take stock--for the sake of its
    international relations as well as its domestic rapport with its
    minority communities.

    Although many Turks now accept that hundreds of thousands of Armenians,
    Assyrians and Greeks were massacred during the first world war,
    their government is increasingly unwilling to negotiate with Armenia
    to establish diplomatic relations and reopen the land border.

    Reconciliation is a low priority as the executive seeks to increase
    its authority over the remaining semi-independent state institutions,
    like the central bank and the judiciary. In the run-up to important
    elections in June, the ruling AK Party cannot afford to alienate its
    base of nationalistic, religious Turks or divert its attention from
    the Kurdish peace process--around 3.5m Kurds vote for it.

    Gallipoli manoeuvre

    The plan which the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, seems to
    have formulated to deal with the awkward genocide anniversary is to
    ignore it completely. The commemoration of the Battle of Gallipoli,
    in which the Ottoman army halted the Allied invasion, has been moved
    from the usual date of 18 April to 24 April--the day the genocide is
    marked annually.

    Erdogan even invited the Armenian president, among other world
    leaders, to the Gallipoli observances. Zaman, the opposition media
    group influenced by the Cemaat movement of Erdogan's ally-turned-rival
    Fethullah Gulen, reported that so few foreign leaders had accepted
    the offer to attend that the event was being cancelled. This is
    likely to be an exaggeration, intended to make Erdogan look bad,
    but it seems to reflect Turkey's increasing political isolation.

    One country Turkey does count as a close ally, Azerbaijan, is more
    important than any European validation, due to its natural gas reserves
    and ethnically Turkic population. It is the conflict between Azerbaijan
    and Armenia which seems to be the biggest obstacle in Armenian-Turkish
    relations, though Turkey could be using Azerbaijan as an excuse.

    While hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed
    Nagorno-Karabakh region ended in 1994, tensions have never been
    resolved and there are periodic border clashes. Last year, the
    Azerbaijani president, Heydar Aliyev, went on a long Twitter rant about
    the strength of his army after some of its soldiers had been killed.

    Posturing

    The emotive nature of the genocide lends itself to political posturing
    and exaggeration of all kinds. Armenian media are reporting that
    Turkey paid the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to destroy 'Armenian
    genocide documents kept at an institute'--which it's very unlikely
    Egypt would have had in the first place. In Turkey, there are still
    extreme nationalist groups willing to display banners praising their
    ancestors for the 'cleansing' of 1915. Erdogan maintains that an
    'impartial board of historians' should decide if the Ottoman
    authorities were guilty at all.

    A number of diaspora groups and some Armenian parties are demanding
    that Turkey provide compensation--including all of 'Western Armenia',
    in what is now eastern Turkey. Western, or 'Wilsonian', Armenia was
    granted to the latter in the Treaty of Sevres, which partitioned the
    Ottoman Empire and large parts of Anatolia among the victorious allies
    in 1920. Its terms were seen as vindictive and spurred a nationalist
    rebellion, led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, which ejected the occupying
    forces of Britain, Greece and Italy. The treaty was largely unratified
    and unimplemented, and was replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.

    The 1920 treaty has given rise to a reflex in Turkish politics so
    common it has a name: Sevres Syndrome. This manifests itself as a
    paranoia that outside forces are conspiring against Turkey. Armenian
    groups demanding that Turkey voluntarily cede territory play perfectly
    into this fear.

    Giro Manoyan is a politician with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation
    (ARF), a small leftist party in Armenia with a big social and cultural
    role among the diaspora. Asked why such groups demanded the unlikely
    return of territory which no longer contains an Armenian population,
    Monoyan said: "For the ARF, the territorial claims are a strategic
    issue. When Turkey asks Armenia to sign agreements that it has no
    territorial claims from Turkey, then it becomes a priority for us not
    to sign such a document or make such an announcement. It is actually
    Turkey which by its preconditions to Armenia to establish diplomatic
    relations is making the territorial issue a priority."

    Progress stalled

    In 2009 a provisional roadmap towards restarting a diplomatic
    relationship and reopening the border was announced by the two
    countries, but progress stalled and Armenia withdrew, saying
    Turkey was imposing preconditions such as a deal with Azerbaijan on
    Nagorno-Karabakh and the dropping of territorial claims. Armenia has
    however never officially demanded territorial reparations, though
    groups like the ARF and Armenia's prosecutor general have done so.

    Both states look on the complex issue of compensation legalistically.

    Turkey is intent on securing a legal declaration from Armenia that
    it does not seek any Turkish territory, while Armenians, many of
    whose families had property confiscated during the genocide, insist
    on legal compensation for their losses. What Armenian groups like
    the ARF are effectively saying is that they are insulted that Turkey
    wants them to drop legal claims to material compensation--and that
    that is exactly why they are going to keep making them.

    While Erdogan took the unprecedented step in 2014 of offering
    'condolences' to the families of those killed in 1915, the government
    is reluctant to offer a formal apology. This stems partly from fear
    that it could be used to support claims for reparations--similar to
    the reticence of the British Foreign Office about apologising for
    colonial-era crimes.

    Respected figure

    A final strand to the complex interplay of national groups within
    Anatolia and the wider region is the pro-Kurdish HDP, now the only
    serious left-wing party in Turkey. It has a female as well as a male
    leader but the latter, Selahattin Demirtaƅ~_, is undoubtedly more
    prominent. He is a respected figure with undeniable charisma, in
    stark contrast to the old-fashioned and uninspiring leadership of the
    secular-nationalist (now social-democratic) CHP, founded by Ataturk.

    >From my conversations with leftist Turks, Armenians and Kurds in
    Istanbul, the HDP is seen as the only promising trend in Turkish
    politics. Many wealthier Armenians and Kurds vote for Erdogan's AKP
    but those of a more liberal disposition like what the HDP is saying.

    They hope that, by pushing its support above 10% in June, they
    will prevent the AKP from winning the 330 seats it needs to pass
    constitutional amendments giving Erdogan even more power. This could
    be a risky strategy, as falling short of the 10% threshold would see
    the HDP win no seats at all.

    The HDP has recognised the 1915 massacres as a genocide. In a recent
    interview, Demirtaƅ~_ said that "as long as democracy does not develop
    in Turkey, as long as freedoms aren't improved in Turkey, it will
    not be possible to solve any of the country's problems. Firstly,
    there is a need for freedom of expression, the freedom to openly
    express thoughts ... As long as this freedom is not provided, how
    can we talk about, for example, the Kurdish problem, the Armenian
    genocide or the Alevi issue?"

    The HDP is sponsoring reconciliation projects in eastern Turkey;
    allowing Armenian churches to be rebuilt and conferences to be held. A
    new generation of Kurds are talking about the historical guilt felt
    by the descendants of those who participated in massacres, only to be
    subsequently persecuted by the Turkish state themselves. Projects such
    as these, and the social progress promised by the HDP in the areas
    it administers, offer the best prospect of reconciliation between
    the Turkish state and its minorities.

    Silent

    Armenians in Istanbul live today much as their ancestors did in
    the 19th century--economically, socially and culturally integrated
    in Turkish society. Unless they were to broadcast their ethnic
    affiliation, nobody would know they were part of any minority, as
    the ethnic mix of those who today call themselves 'Turks' is drawn
    from all over the former Ottoman Empire. "Happy is the one who says
    'I am a Turk'," said Ataturk, but the reality was that thousands who
    were not Turks simply kept silent about the fact.

    The AKP's rise to power and its removal of the old Kemalist power
    structures in the military, government and education was associated
    with a period of relative freedom of expression in Turkey. Although
    the authorities attempted to prosecute Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize
    winning author, for recognising the genocide in 2005, the charges
    were eventually dropped.

    Once the AKP was fully in control, however, it found that it quite
    liked being in charge. Life has remained difficult for journalists in
    Turkey, particularly if they are from a minority. If the government
    continues its slide into 'competitive authoritarianism', things will
    get worse for poorer Kurds, Alevis, Armenians, Jews and members of
    other minorities.

    The undercurrent of hatred created by the unresolved historical
    question continues to create violence, such as the murder of
    the Armenian Turkish journalist Hrant Dink in 2007, who was being
    prosecuted for 'insulting Turkishness'. His crime, ironically, was to
    appeal to Armenians to let go of their demand for Turkey to confess
    its historical guilt, to "replace the poisoned blood associated with
    the Turk, with fresh blood associated with Armenia". This statement
    was read by extreme Turkish nationalists as suggesting that Turkish
    blood was somehow dirty and probably inspired those who commissioned
    his murder. But his words still stand: both sides must let go of
    their hatred if there is to be any progress.

    Further away

    The centenary of the Armenian genocide is a milestone, to be sure,
    but it will have little impact on the political direction of the
    Turkish and Armenian states. If anything, the emotional significance
    of the anniversary seems to have pushed any possible diplomatic
    reconciliation further away.

    On 24 April in Yerevan, System of a Down, the famous Armenian-American
    rock band, will play to a crowd including thousands of diaspora
    Armenians who will be travelling to the country for the first time.

    They will find an impoverished country in an unstable region, with
    thousands of new Armenian refugees from the Syria conflict. Meanwhile,
    in Canakkale, the nearest town to the site of the Battle of Gallipoli,
    as well as the historical site of ancient Troy, Turkish officials
    will be remembering how their ancestors bravely fought off the
    invading allies, while in the provinces Turkey's minorities were
    being systematically liquidated.

    Away from the international posturing, though, in the newly
    reconstructed Armenian church of Sourp Giragos in Diyarbakir, eastern
    Turkey, Armenians and Kurds will hold a remembrance service likely
    to be attended by many of Turkey's 'hidden Armenians'. While the
    government's history books still deny that the events of 1915 amount to
    a genocide, many of the younger generation are looking again at their
    national mythology and concluding that Turkey is no longer the victim
    of Western political meddling--but an economic powerhouse which could
    use its influence to bring greater stability to a troubled region.

    ----John Lubbock is a journalist and research and advocacy officer
    for the Bahrain Center for Human Rights.

    https://www.opendemocracy.net/node/90896

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