Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News

A Noted Turkish Historian Speaks on the Armenian Genocide
by Ronald Grigor Suny - The Armenian Reporter International - 12/30/2000
Posted: Friday, January 05, 2001 10:22 am CST

The University of Chicago (rgsuny@umich.edu)

In the last few years, intense discussion has gone on among Armenians and Turks about the deportations and massive killings of Armenians in the last years of the Ottoman Empire. While some historians have tried to open a dialogue between Armenian and Turkish scholars, the Turkish state has maintained, even intensified, its campaign of denial of the Genocide. Threats have been made against those Turkish scholars, like Taner Akcam, who have dared to acknowledge the events of 1915 as a genocide; the Turkish ambassador to the United States brazenly pressured the Microsoft Encarta encyclopedia to have its experts revise their articles on Armenia and Genocide; and Turkish money financed powerful lobbyists in Washington to work against, and eventually scuttle, the House of Representatives' resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide. Efforts on the scholarly front continued, however. Turkish and Armenian historians met in a workshop in Chicago in the spring of 2000 to discuss together for the first time the causes and outcomes of Ottoman policies toward their Armenian subjects. Armenian scholars appeared at a conference on oral history in Istanbul and discussed the testimonies of survivors. Taner Akcam wrote about the Genocide in the Turkish press. And, in early summer, the historian Halil Berktay of Sabanci University in Istanbul gave his own perspective on the Armenian massacres in the newspaper Radikal.

Professor Berktay, a participant at the Chicago workshop, is a distinguished historian of the late Ottoman period. His decision to grant this interview took great courage and has resulted in attacks on him in the Turkish press. His views are his own and will not satisfy either those who continue to deny the Genocide or those who want a full and unequivocal apology from the Turkish side. Berktay is critical of both the Turkish government's interventions into the debate and the American Congress's resolution. He wants to contain the discussion within the circle of historians, even though he understands how politicized the issue has become. Whether one agrees with his conclusions or not, Berktay has taken an important step and advanced the dialogue on the Genocide. He has made clear that there are different voices in Turkey today, and that as difficult as dissent may be in that country, a few people are attempting to move to new understandings of the dark pages of the past.

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