Category: Armenian Question

By ETHAN BRONNER

JERUSALEM — The Israeli Parliament on Monday held its first public debate on whether to commemorate the Turkish genocide of Armenians nearly a century ago, an emotionally resonant and politically fraught topic for Israel, founded on the ashes of the Holocaust and trying to salvage frayed ties with Turkey.

The session resulted from a rare confluence of political forces — an effort under way for decades by some on the left to get Israel to take a leading role in bringing attention to mass murder, combined with those on the right angry at how Turkey has criticized Israel over its policies toward the Palestinians.

Previous efforts to declare one day a year a memorial for “the massacre of the Armenian people” have failed, and hearings on the topic were restricted to closed sessions of the Parliament’s defense and foreign affairs committee because of concerns over Turkey’s reaction, especially at a time when relations were friendlier.

But with Turkey having recalled its ambassador from Tel Aviv, the hearing was moved this year to the education committee, where sessions are open. The debate was on live television.

“As a people and as a country we stand and face the whole world with the highest moral demand that Holocaust denial is something human history cannot accept,” Reuven Rivlin, the speaker of the Parliament, who has favored official recognition of the genocide, said in his testimony. “Therefore we cannot deny the tragedy of others.”

More than 15 countries have officially labeled as genocide the slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians in the chaos connected to World War I and the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Its denial is a crime in Switzerland and Slovenia.

Turkey acknowledges atrocities occurred, but not any specific death toll.

At Monday’s hearing, some advocates of commemorating the massacre said their efforts had nothing to do with politics or with the Turkey of today. Rather, they said, the goal was to educate young Israelis about genocide and publicly assert the need to prevent such acts.

But officials from the Foreign Ministry said relations with Turkey were fragile and that passing such a resolution could have bad strategic consequences.

After Israel invaded Gaza three years ago to stop rocket fire by Palestinian militants, Turkey expressed anger. A year and a half ago, the Israeli navy stopped a Turkish-sponsored flotilla from going to Gaza, killing nine activists aboard. Turkey demanded an apology and compensation. When Israel refused, ties were downgraded.

Otniel Schneller, a legislator from the opposition Kadima Party, spoke against the commemoration, saying the region was growing more hostile to Israel in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings and that Israel had to be pragmatic.

“This is the time when we must rehabilitate our relations with Turkey because this is an existential issue for us,” he said. “Sometimes our desire to be right and moral overcomes our desire to exist, which is in the interest of the entire country.”

The committee took no action, agreeing to meet again.

www.nytimes.com, December 26, 2011

It goes without saying that had Turkey not spent the last few years doing everything it could to destroy its erstwhile alliance with Israel there would have been no debate in the Knesset yesterday about whether to commemorate the Turkish genocide of Armenians during World War I. But since the Turks have become the sponsors and perhaps even the financial backers of Hamas, the consensus within the Israel to stay away from anything touching the Armenian question has dissolved. Though there were some MKs who thought the commemoration should be shelved as part of a new effort to win back the affections of Turkey, most Israelis rightly understand the ship has sailed on good relations with its former ally.

The discussion will, it should be admitted, do nothing to ameliorate the now tense relationship, let alone revive the now shattered alliance between the two nations. With the Turks, as Max noted yesterday, willing to engage in name calling and accusations with France over the genocide issue, there can be no doubt that the Knesset’s session will only widen the breech between Ankara and Jerusalem. But rather than a mystery, the Turks’ decision to make a nearly century-old controversy a diplomatic litmus test can be understood in light of their history. Their unwillingness to bend even a little bit on the Armenians must be understood as something that speaks to their national identity and is unlikely to be dropped anytime soon.

Max is right that logically it makes no sense for the Turkish republic to be so uptight about criticism of the actions of the Ottoman Empire that it replaced. But the Turkish Army carried out the mass slaughter of Armenians. The army was the heart and soul of the Ataturk regime that succeeded the old empire. It was the same army, led by Ataturk, that defeated the Greeks in the aftermath of World War I and evicted the Greeks from Asia Minor.

Though we may see no connection between the Young Turk government that conducted the genocide and what followed, Ataturk’s modern republic is based on the idea of creating a Turkish national identity in which minorities such as the Greeks, the Kurds and, yes, the Armenians could play no real role. While the exodus of the Greeks from Turkey was more a matter of a mass ethnic cleansing than genocide, the intent was not dissimilar. So, too, was the decades-long Turkish campaign to eradicate the language, culture and political identity of the Kurds within their borders.

I agree that Turkish gestures toward the Armenians or just a decision to drop their perennial campaign to make other nations stop commemorating the genocide would objectively cost them nothing. But they can’t seem to do it because to admit that Turks were at fault with the Armenians might also mean they were at fault with the Greeks or the Kurds. Just as the political culture of the Palestinians is so obsessed with negating Zionism that it prevents them from doing the rational thing and making peace with Israel, so, too does Turkey’s history render them incapable of giving up the argument about the Armenians.

The one upside to the decision of Turkey’s Islamic government to betray their alliance with Israel and embrace Hamas is that it is no longer obligated to keep quiet about the Armenian genocide. The same goes for American Jews who understandably chose to make nice with the Turks for the sake of their backing of Israel. No longer need Israelis listen to lectures about the treatment of the Palestinians from a government that denies the Armenian genocide while oppressing Kurds in our own time.

www.commentarymagazine.com, 27.12.2011