Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News

Turkey Must Face Up To Armenian Genocide
by Stephen Feinstein, Minneapolis Star Tribune - Friday, February 2, 2001
Posted: Tuesday, February 06, 2001 00:59 am CST

Commentary:

When you get down to it, what does the word "genocide" really mean? Does it refer to any sort of mass killing -- or just to a special subset of massacres? The question is worth considering as talk heats up about atrocities committed by the government of the Ottoman Empire against its Armenian subjects between 1915 and 1922. Armenian people around the world want those atrocities labeled a "genocide."

Does the word fit?

It does.

The word was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin, and is used to describe state-sponsored mass killings. Academics across the world generally agree that there indeed was an Armenian genocide.

But Turkey's government officials, and even Turkish students at the University of Minnesota, object to this designation. Some object because they want to protect their history as they know it. Some object because they're lost in denial.

Why all this sudden concern and even outrage? Because of a recent French government resolution calling the event a genocide. That move spurred Turkey to withdraw its ambassador to France, and to cancel a multimillion-dollar satellite contract with a French company. The United States came close to issuing its own condemnation in October, but extreme Turkish pressure led the Clinton administration to halt a proposed congressional resolution.

How has Turkey managed to deny the Armenian genocide for so long? The answer lies in history -- and in politics.

After 1922, the new republic of Turkey became a bulwark against the Soviet Union. It served that purpose for almost the rest of the century. While it may have been a "one-party democracy" characterized by military coups, it was nevertheless a Western ally -- especially in Korea and in NATO.

Somehow, the deaths of up to 1.5 million Armenians did not trouble the Turks, or their allies. That history fell into a memory hole.

Now that the Soviet Union has collapsed, so has the smoke screen obscuring the Armenian genocide. Scholars started asking questions, and suppressed Armenian memories began to surface. Books like Peter Balakian's "Black Dog of Fate" proved there was a second, even a third generation of Armenian survivors -- just as there are successive generations of Holocaust survivors.

This genocide matters more than we might imagine. More and more historians are coming to believe that, had there been war crimes trials of Turkish leaders after World War I, the Holocaust might have been averted. Adolf Hitler's famous 1939 speech is often quoted to bolster the point. His words echo ominously in the modern ear: "Who now remembers," Hitler asked,"the massacres of the Armenians?"

Indeed, not even the Turks remember. The Armenian genocide is not written about in Turkish textbooks. The subject is taboo in most places. Documents are inaccessible because of Ataturk's language reforms in the 1920s, changing the Turkish alphabet from Arabic to Latin script. Even Turks who yearn to discover their history cannot easily find it.

But the story is nevertheless being told. Armenian and Turkish scholars have plumbed old documents for proof that genocide occurred. Outsiders are interested, too. Last fall, for instance, Israel introduced a new school curriculum about the Armenian genocide. Israeli author Yair Auron's new book, "The Banality of Indifference," contemplates Zionism's reaction to the Armenian genocide.

And surely it's only a matter of time before Hollywood makes a feature film based on Franz Werfel's classic book from 1934, "The Forty Day of Musa Dagh" -- a would-be Armenian "Schindler's List."

Turkey's reluctance to face up to its history may be linked to demands for restitution.Several Armenian property claims are underway, including lawsuits against U.S. insurance companies. It's plain that genocide has a financial price, as well as moral and legal implications.

The costs are indeed great, but the Turkish Republic still must come to grips with the past. It needs help from all of us to do so. History casts a haunting shadow over the present. It can be suppressed but, as the Soviet Union learned, it does not go away.

It never will. Just as Americans have acknowledged genocide against Native Americans,the immorality of slavery and the embarrassing internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, the Turks must learn to face their mistakes. They have more to gain than lose in confronting the past.

It's painful, of course, but it's the only way out. For the Turks to hold their breaths, cancel contracts and disrupt diplomatic relations in hopes of squelching the truth is more than futile. It's dangerous. Such denial could poison an entire society and isolate it from the world.

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