Groups who lead Armenian politics in the diaspora exert special effort to have the parliaments of the countries in which they live recognize the massacres that took place in 1915 and afterwards under the Ottoman administration. Reminded of these events, political parties and politicians immediately feel compelled to take some action. As for Turkey, it engages in extraordinary diplomatic efforts accompanied by a complicated state of mind, which considers a range of options from secret blackmail to showing patience and understanding.In essence, everyone is just doing their job. They are doing what people expect them to do. But in the end, the situation is simply disgraceful for both sides. The Armenian diaspora’s politics is ignoring the Turkish people and is trying to bring the Turkish state to its knees. Every year on April 24 this strategy becomes more stringent and falls into the claws of a dull banality. Armenians directly address the Turkish state because they see themselves as the “state.” One of the reasons behind this is that it’s always easer to create an identity through politics than it is to produce a social energy through culture. But, engaging in politics by addressing states will make you an item of those states and make you more dependent and less powerful. It is very natural for the Armenian diaspora to want the events of 1915 and on to be recognized as genocide. No one should think the Armenians in Turkey have a different view. However, the validity of the end result does not inherently make the means valid as well. Today, the Armenian diaspora’s political authority is creating a new foundation. It is disregarding Turkish society’s pluralistic nature and trying to homogenize it by pushing it behind the state.
We should not forget that this is how former unionists (İttihatçılar) viewed the Armenians, and it was due to this kind of view that genocide occurred. It is disgraceful that Armenians are sticking to a mentality that led to their own destruction.
It is obvious that the main goal of the political parties which brought Armenian genocide resolutions to their respective parliaments is to win votes, not to address some moral concern. The claim that recognizing genocide will prevent other genocides from happening is an example of ignorance. In order for this thesis to be correct, those who committed the genocide need to truly regret and accept the crime of their own free will. In other words, to stop genocides from happening implies a change in mentality. But decisions by Western parliaments to recognize the genocide are consolidating Turkey’s authoritarian mentality because they are exhibiting the same mentality themselves. It is not right to force someone else to accept their reality by offering the facts in an arrogant and condescending manner. It is a shame that a culture which preaches democracy is sticking to this kind of a political strategy.
In this picture, Turkey is standing in the most fragile place and it is avoiding facing its past by employing a strategy of denial that it has turned into a state policy. The state, which asserts that history should not be held captive by politics, has turned not only the Armenian issue but even its own establishment’s history into a state matter. With this stance Turkey is not just denying the genocide but it is essentially denying history, the past and the things that happened. If Turkey had accepted past events but said it did not want them to be labeled as “genocide,” then Turkey could have been at a very different place today. But the real danger for the official state ideology in Turkey is not genocide but other things that happened and not the Armenians but other perpetrators.
The acceptance of these events will shed light on other perpetrators, which will imply changing the official history of Turkey’s establishment. It is for this reason that Turkey is protesting countries that accept the Armenian genocide. But what it is exactly disapproving is unclear. At the outset, they are saying, “You cannot make this judgment,” but it’s evident that covertly they are saying, “These kinds of things did not happen.” This embarrassing politics is not only constricting Turkish politics, but it is also doing a grave injustice to Turkish society because a change of mentality is occurring in this country. Society is reaching democratic benchmarks, and this new view is affecting history as well. It is time to put states outside of this matter. Armenians need to address the Turkish people. This issue isn’t about whether we should call a historical event genocide, it is about sharing the pain and embracing our humanistic side. Otherwise, this common disgrace is not going to leave us alone.
