How To End A Genocide Debate

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POINT OF VIEW

The frozen relations between Armenia and Turkey are now showing some signs of melting.

By Grenville Byford | NEWSWEEK Published Feb 28, 2009 From the magazine issue dated Mar 9, 2009

It’s almost April, so Washington is gearing up for another performance of the “Armenian Genocide Resolution Spectacular,” a regular event since 1984. Here’s the historical plotline: the Armenian-American lobby gets a few U.S. congressmen to sponsor a resolution recognizing the 1915 massacre of Armenians in what is now Eastern Turkey as a “genocide.” Then other members of the House are induced to support it. (Members of the House may not be history buffs, but they understand the importance of stroking a powerful domestic lobby.) Next, the Turkish government says Turkey is too important to be insulted like this. In response, the American administration, recognizing that Turkey is indeed a critical NATO ally whose Incirlik Air Base is vital to the Iraq mission, starts twisting congressional arms to abandon the resolution. Offstage, the Israeli lobby, generally keen to boost Turkish-Israeli relations (though less so this year), works against the resolution. Finally, the House leadership reluctantly shelves the whole thing and the curtain falls.

Before staging this year’s performance, however, Congress should note that hitherto frozen relations between Armenia and Turkey are now showing signs of melting, and that this may be the first step toward reconciling the Turkish and Armenian peoples. In September, Turkish President Abdullah Gül attended a Turkey-Armenia football match in Yerevan at the invitation of Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, who recently met with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Davos. The two foreign ministers, Turkey’s Ali Babacan and Armenia’s Eduard Nalbandian have also been meeting. Both have made optimistic noises.

Progress has been possible because the Armenians have focused on the concrete issue of opening the Armenian-Turkish border-a vital matter to them since none of their other neighbors (Azerbaijan, Georgia and Iran) can offer a viable trade route to the West. Both sides have wisely avoided the genocide dispute, surely recognizing it will have to be dealt with eventually but that developing economic ties will make it easier to do so. Lingering in the background, however, is the Armenian diaspora’s passionate insistence that there was a genocide-and its mirror image in the fury of the Turkish people denying it. Right or wrong is not the point. No Turkish government could contemplate opening the Armenian border with this issue front and center, and Congress should recognize that a genocide resolution would put it there.

In all probability, Turkey and Armenia can only resolve the genocide dispute if they recognize that “was it a genocide?” may be the ultimate question, but it is not the most important one today. To those aiming for reconciliation, two questions outrank it: what common facts can Turks and Armenians be brought to accept, and is the common ground sufficient for both sides to start binding up the wounds? To this end, Erdogan’s proposal to establish a joint historical commission should be pursued. Though Armenia has rejected the idea so far-largely because it is winning its argument on the world stage-the government has softened its stance recently. If the aim is reconciliation, persuading the Turks to abandon the blanket denial they are taught as schoolchildren is what counts.

Progress is not as implausible as it sounds. In the early days of the Republic, Kemal Atatürk, who was not personally implicated, described the Armenian massacres as “shameful acts.” No ex-Ottoman officials were investigated, however, as Turkey needed the newly minted heroes of its War of Independence to have no stain on their characters. Today, Erdogan will accept an investigation. In return, Armenia must accept a reciprocal investigation into the Ottoman Armenians, who fought with the sultan’s Russian enemy, and their responsibility for massacres of Turks and Kurds. Weaving together these two violently opposed historical perspectives will take time and patience. As important as the final answer, however, is the development of empathy across the divide.

Congress can help keep the path to reconciliation open if it is willing to deny the Armenian-American lobby the instant gratification of a genocide resolution. Surely doing so would be far better than repeating the exercises of the last 25 years over and over again until a resolution finally passes and all the House’s leverage over Turkey evaporates, along with most of the good will in the Turkish-American alliance, and maybe even the alliance itself. For its part, the Armenian diaspora might even support reconciliation if only as its second choice. Finally, good relations between Turkey and Armenia would further U.S. objectives in the Caucasus. The proposed hydrocarbon corridor through the Caucasus from Central Asia looks much more secure in the context of Turkish-Armenian friendship, and it might give Armenia the confidence to break with the status quo in the longstanding Nagorno-Karabakh dispute with neighboring Azerbaijan. Congress and others should recognize that this year holds real promise for the beginning of reconciliation between the Turkish and Armenian peoples. If nothing comes of it, Congress can always return to a resolution.

Byford writes frequently on Turkish affairs and is a regular contributor to Newsweek.com.

© 2009

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Comments

Posted By: vaspuragan @ 03/03/2009 11:44:49 AM

About what “argument” are you talking Turkish karabash all those distorted explenations or falsifications will never convince the world that there has not been a genocide against Armenian Nation.Thousand of German,Austurian,Italian,french,British,Russian,American archives prouve historical truth of Armenian genocide, the premeditated extermination of Armenian people from Edirne to whole Anatolia and Western ARMENIA(OCCUPIED)now.All those nonsense polemics will not contribute to resolve the problem.And it is not a secret that Turkey will be obliged to pay financial compensation and handed over all Armenian territories which keep occupied.Already 30000 turks expressed their pain about the genocide of 1915.Instead of barking as turkish karabash you had better to ask pardon to Armenians you torkish converted muhachir-devshirme.

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Posted By: vaspuragan @ 03/03/2009 9:51:00 AM

“You go and kill more than a million Armenians,wipe the traces of Armenians from Anatolia, grab their property, and then show childeren videos about ‘ What the Armenians did to us’….We are cutting these childeren off from the rest of the world,”said Ahmet Altan, editor of independent newpaper Taraf.”There is a sick, abnormal tissue of Turkish society that poisoned by a nationalist, racist virus”, said Ufuk Uras, an independent MP.To that category belongs all those turkish deneyers who spread deniyelist poison in their comments.
o

Posted By: Lucrece @ 03/03/2009 10:02:08 AM

“Taraf” is an ultra-leftist newspapers, and like many other left-wing extermists, they their proper country. The stupidies of Mr. Altan are supported by no kind of evidence. The arguments for support the so-called “Armenian genocide” were crushed, here and eslewhere.
You do not use rational and scholar study of the past, but unwarranted assertions, for political purposes.

Posted By: Lucrece @ 03/03/2009 10:06:03 AM

Sorry : “they hate their proper country”.

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Posted By: Lucrece @ 03/03/2009 3:49:45 AM

“If you believe in a conspiracy of thousands of Armenian grandparents and that marches through the desert were told by them as ‘propaganda’ then that it your choice. By probability theories, the chance that thousands of Armenian grandparents repeated the exact same story in the exact same time period as being a random event is zero.”
The Armenian witnesses did not say the same things. An Ottoman Armenian, who became an US citizen under the name of James K. Sutherland, praised, in his book “Adventures of an Armenian boy” (Ann Arbor Press, 1964) the policy of Jemal Pasha, governor of the Near East, vis-à-vis the Armenian displaced peoples. Yegisabeth Kasebian (born in 1900) corroborated, later the Sutherland’s testimony: http://www.tallarmeniantale.com/mahmut-granny.htm
Edward Tashji, son of an Ottoman Armenian and an Ottoman Assyrian, defended during all his life the Turkish side, and justified his position by what his parents said to him.
Hatchadurian Hatchik Abedi, an Armenian citizen, interviewed for “Sari Gelin” in front of the “Genocide” monument in Erevan (probably the last place in the World when you could imagine a pro-Turkish speech) said that the Turks were good for Armenians during the Ottoman period, including WWI; and that the killers of Armenians were Kurds. It is an exaggeration for the whole Anatolia (they were Turkish criminals and Kurdish brave peoples, for example in Mamuret-ül-Aziz), but correct for some regions.
By this way: around 100 old Turks produced testimonies about Armenian atrocities, from 1963 to the late 1980’s; several hundreds of other Muslims testified during the WWI, interviewed by Ottoman jandarma, General Kazim Karabekir and the US investigators Emory Niles and Arthur Sutherland, these testimonies were, for a great part, corroborated by material and archeological evidences, as I already explained here. Do you think really that they were wrong?

Posted By: artsakh @ 03/03/2009 5:15:45 AM

Denial is a weakness of the human condition. It takes strength to admit to the mistakes of your ancestors and is a primitive defense mechanism. Germany accepted the Holocaust and now has the strongest economy in Europe. Turkey, even with its great strategic location, is a laggard in comparison despite staying out of WW II. Denying the past keeps a country rooted in the past and the mentality of the past, preventing progression to a full potential economically and democratically. If a Turk loves his country, he or she should accept the past, reject government propaganda, and move forward into the new millenium.
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