The Armenian diaspora accuses Obama of the betrayal of their trust and support. The Turks are not happy, either. Obama had, apparently, promised the Turkish administration to omit the “g-word” from his speech, explicitly and implicitly. His short speech though, said all the possible words that can be used to describe genocide, without uttering the word. It was as if he was playing Taboo and saying, “I won’t say it -- I want you to do that.” He even clarified his position about “what had happened there” as unchanged.Hugh Pope, the İstanbul representative of the International Crisis Group and an occasional writer for Today’s Zaman, claimed yesterday in the European edition of The Wall Street Journal that Obama’s speech was a challenge to Turkey and Armenia “to move beyond the stalemates of history.” That challenge was already welcomed by the Turkish and Armenian leadership. But it should be underlined that the stalemates that are haunting both leaderships are not only historical in character. Half a century of “genocide claims” and consequent lobbying has turned the historical incidents into a source of identity and feud for the Armenians; half a century of denial and counter-lobbying have turned them into an issue of honor and self-defense for the Turks.
Even more important than the newly attained meanings of the incidents of 1915 is the apparent anachronism observed on the Armenian side and the tautology seen on the Turkish side. The clock of Armenian history has been stuck in 1915. Everything that has happened since then has been reconstructed with the particular “g-perspective” that have blinded the Armenian diaspora to the realities of their brethren in Armenia. It may be true that the historical research on 1915 is more developed on the Armenian side. But there is a principle problem there: It is not studied as part of history, but as part of a recent, immediate, vivid and vital present. The burden of Armenian historians regarding 1915 is not only a thorough and objective study of the events of that year, but also a study of the whole modern history of Armenia and the Armenian people from a new perspective. The job of the historian should not be to provide “for and against” evidence for a court case or a political lobbying act. It may be true that the Turkish historians have, deliberately or for other reasons, failed to devote enough time, energy and resources to the study of the incidents of 1915; but there is a modern Turkish history, with all its loopholes and still-waiting-to-be-illuminated dark corners, that can be written and read regardless of those incidents. That is what the Armenian side is missing. Take the “g-word” out of Armenian history books and you are left with next to nothing.
The roadmap that the Turkish and Armenian administrations announced to have agreed upon includes an article about setting up a commission of historians. History is both the past and the oral or written word about that past. The first is an ontological reality that has happened once and will never change. The second is an epistemological existence that changes spirit and shape according to who writes and rewrites it. If the spirit that governs the process of history writing is one of proving an idea, supporting a claim, convincing a group of listeners or silencing an opponent by argumentation, the shape of the text that comes out of that spirit will be blind to the valuable historical information that may be irrelevant for that particular act of history writing.
Yes, both Turks and Armenians need to write the history of 1915 anew. In that history a separate chapter should be allocated to the protestant missionaries who frequented Ottoman cities with sizeable Armenian populations.
Prime Minister Erdoğan said, in response to Obama’s speech, that Turkey is not a country to pat and deceive. Without a thorough study of the influence of the foreign powers on the Ottoman capital and their missionary arms in the Ottoman provinces in those years, the Turkish historians will continue to deceive themselves.
