Not so long ago, on the day when a US congressional committee voted on the same type of resolution, I was watching the Turkish NTV station. As the voting proceeded, the moderator quickly turned into a cheerleader for “no” votes. She was full of hope and smiles when the “no” votes passed the “yes” votes and seemed to immensely enjoy the sensation it brought. It felt like a defeat for her when the resolution was passed by the margin of a single vote.Certainly, none of these votes should have been seen as a horserace. To deal with the profound human suffering in the depths of history as a soccer match or a type of Eurovision Song Contest leaves a bitter trace in any sensible mind. Yet, this has become the ugly reality of today. The game of obstinacy and folly is on full display.
There should be no dispute or denial of what took place in the last phases of the Ottoman Empire. As it crumbled, under the increasing threat of nationalisms of its diverse subjects and massive immigration of its Muslim groups who were ethnically cleansed and massacred in the Balkans, its implosion brought massive suffering, to varying degrees, for all of them. With the Armenians in the lead, they lost their lives, property and homeland. Call it genocide or something else; it was a human tragedy of the highest order. To deny this is tantamount to a lack of human conscience and is inhuman behavior.
So, the systematic denial by today’s official Turkey of the suffering is certainly inconceivable. Ankara refuses to come to terms with the fact that categorical rejection has so far led only to frustration and anger abroad. Sadly, Ankara has been “mentally hijacked” by denialist, old-generation diplomats and ultranationalist academics, suggesting the continuity of “living a lie” and playing a foolish blame game. The government has to therefore revisit unproductive positions and realize that the inherited suffering of former Ottoman subjects must be met with empathy and recognition. Hoping that the issue of the late Ottoman tragedies will simply go away through denial is nothing less than deceiving oneself.
Curiously, a similar type of folly is playing out on political platforms and parliaments in the world. As lucidly pointed out by Elizabeth Özdalga, a prominent Swedish social scientist based in Turkey, in the daily Svenska Dagbladet in Stockholm, the vote in Stockholm neither clarifies further what happened in that episode of history nor contributes to the already troubled “normalization” process between Turkey and Armenia. It displayed a farce in which a large number of politicians, most of whom presumably had no background on the bloody episode, decided to act as “self-appointed judges” and issued a “verdict.”
In any such case -- as with the US congressional committee, the Swedish parliament and elsewhere -- one crucial point is being missed: The moment one starts playing politics with past human sufferings, one automatically contributes to the foolish process of leaving the important term “genocide” devoid of its entire meaning. The 1984 UN definition of genocide is already quite broad, and it faces becoming totally meaningless, turning into an instrument even for dictators who are ready to accuse their adversaries using the same term just because democracies will then make a big issue out of it.
Leave aside the fact that in both the US and Sweden politicians acted with more concerns about their election rather than 1915, the most disturbing element is, along with the obstinate denial of mass suffering, the hypocrisy and cynicism.
Henri Barkey, a professor at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, points out in a recent article in The Washington Post the following: “For Armenians, the genocide issue is of paramount concern, and Armenian populations in Europe have even supported laws punishing Armenian genocide deniers. Yet in 2007, Yerevan State University awarded an honorary degree to the No. 1 Holocaust denier in the world: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iranian president not only invited fellow deniers to Tehran for a ‘conference,’ but he has systematically called for the destruction a member state of the United Nations. This clearly didn’t bother Armenian politicians who, in the interest of fostering ongoing friendly ties with neighboring Iran, decided to honor him.”
For all those third parties concerned, one way of fighting the folly would be, in this case, to act much more resolutely to encourage Turkey and Armenia to open their borders, establish diplomatic relations and deepen their ties. This will help them come to terms with the past.
