Category: Main Issues

Football diplomacy gives impetus to second track diplomacy as a group of Turkish and Armenian historians and social scientists gathered at a workshop in Armenia’s capital city Yerevan to discuss past and present relations of the two nations.

The rapprochement that started with the Turkish president’s visit to Yerevan last month to watch a Turkey-Armenia football match has also intensified the efforts of non-political actors in the two countries.

As officials in both countries continue seeking greater formal reconciliation, a group of Turkish and Armenians historians and social scientists gathered around a table in the Armenian capital Yerevan last month to hold an academic discussion about ways to reach mutual understanding. The academics were brought together by the Institute for International Cooperation of the German Adult Education Association, or DVV International, the main aim of which is to establish peace and stability in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Turkish and Armenian social scientists and historians brainstormed on the two peoples’ past and present relations during a weekend workshop titled “History and Building Bridges for Dialogue and Understanding.”

During the meeting, the parties exchanged views on the richness of oral and documentary history that is either not utilized or used selectively to substantiate partisan viewpoints. After scientists became acquainted with each other individually, they analyzed the Turkish-Armenian relations from an academic perspective based on past and present experiences.

The countries’ education systems were scrutinized, with the official history taught in schools and its effects on future generations specifically criticized. Participants from Armenia and from Turkey included professor Doğu Ergil, professor Leyla Neyzi of Sabancı University, historian Fikret Adanır and professor Ayhan Aktar, and spoke to the Turkish Daily News about their unique academic workshop in Yerevan. The academics had the chance to discuss, free of prejudice, various issues during the meeting. Ergil, Neyzi, Adanır articulated a shared view, saying they and the Armenian participants were looking for academic means to understand one another and that the chance to meet was an opportunity they cherished.

A second meeting will soon be held as part of the project. Historians from both countries will focus on existing historical documents, and social scientists will collect oral history. Based on primary and secondary sources, the academics will then shed light on the experiences of the two peoples over the last century. Figures and documents collected during the project will be gathered in a book that will be written in Turkish, Armenian, German and English and in an easily understandable form and tone. The targeted audience for the book is ordinary citizens in Turkey and Armenia. The book will be sold where it is easily accessible for both peoples.

Bilateral relations through academic lens

Ergil, who noted they approached history as a coherent unit during the workshop, said they did not focus on a specific period or event.

“We are two peoples who have lived together for centuries,” he said, adding that during the workshop they searched for answers to the following questions: Why was a centuries-long joint journey of two peoples stopped? Can that journey restart? If it restarts, what kind of responsibilities should academics undertake?

A map of emotions and values shared by Turks and Armenians

Ergil said history is full of bitter episodes between Turks and Armenians, but in the end, the two peoples should meet on common ground.

“During the studies we will carry out, we shall not take phenomena we have already had in mind as Turkish and Armenian historians but phenomena that have been experienced by people of both sides. Our main goal is to bring to light a map of emotions and values shared by Turks and Armenians,” he said.

An official from DVV International said any meetings between Turks and Armenians often becomes marked by the painful events that occurred in 1915.

“We Armenians still carry traces of that big pain inside us,” the official said. “The attitude of Turkish academics with whom we collaborated was highly objective. We had the opportunity to discuss many issues from a perspective that was free from prejudices.” He also highlighted the significance of cooperation of Turkish and Armenian social scientists. He said such meetings and joint projects would contribute to solving problems and establishing dialogue between the two peoples.

Academics’ dream

Neyzi, an anthropologist, said studies they planned to undertake would not be based on official history accounts but focus on ordinary individuals. “We, as Turkish and Armenian academics, share a dream,” she said. “Our dream is for friendship, reconciliation and dialogue.”

The biggest mission of such projects is to look at the issues from different perspectives and to prepare ground that will allow for a tolerance-oriented coverage of history to flourish, she said. Adanır, on the other hand, said he was happy to meet Armenian colleagues. “Our project is currently in its preparatory stage. But I am hopeful about the results.”

Commentary

Asli Aydintasbas 12.26.08, 12:01 AM ETISTANBUL–Should we apologize to Armenians?

It’s almost a miracle, but I have somehow managed to avoid the “Armenian issue” throughout my journalism career. I never wrote a single column on it, even throughout the various diplomatic rows between Turkey and Armenia on whether or not the tragic events of 1915 were genocide.

During the time I covered Washington for a Turkish paper, I stayed a dispassionate reporter as the Armenian Diaspora tried year after year to pass various U.S. congressional resolutions condemning the 1915 events–and Ankara lobbied hard to ward these off.

The truth was, undeniably bad things happened in the Eastern provinces of the declining Ottoman Empire in 1915, but I had no idea whether or not they “amounted to” genocide.

Depending on whom you believe, 500,000 or 1.5 million Armenians were either forcibly deported or coldly massacred, either during the chaos of a civil war or by an organized state campaign. The Armenians in turn either killed thousands of Muslim Turks in an effort to establish an independent homeland, or they were fighting a civil war of liberation.

I am not trying to make light of the fact that this was a horribly painful episode, leading to the death of thousands of innocents. But today’s discussion is largely semantic–“genocide or not?”

While most Turks are taught in schools that killing happened “on both sides” and do not believe their Ottoman ancestors committed the g-word, Armenians in the tiny modern Caucasus republic have built their national identity on the pain of genocide. It is to them what the Jewish Holocaust is to Israelis.

But the reason I have so far avoided the topic was not because of an inability to face the past, but because I felt I never could do justice to the mountains of books, memoirs and historic archives arguing one side or the other. After all, plenty of Turkish, Armenian, American and French historians dedicated lifetimes to this debate.

I, on the other hand, lacked that kind of attention span. At school, we were taught that the “so-called genocide” charge was trumped up by the Armenian diaspora because it was their raison d’être. Friends and family mostly seemed to think the Ottomans had committed some sort of “ethnic cleansing,” but that it wasn’t genocide. (Legally speaking, “war crimes” and “ethnic cleansing” do not necessarily mean genocide, the most heinous of all crimes against humanity.)

During the time I lived abroad, I encountered plenty of Armenian resentment toward Turkey, but then again, I thought, “What’s new?” After all, neighboring Greeks, Kurds, Iranians, Arabs and some Europeans often seemed to hate Turkey, too! (Being the descendants of an imperial people is overrated on the karmic scale.)

But not everyone in Turkey is willing to go with the type of “strategic ignorance” I have been carefully practicing on the Armenian issue. Recently, a group of 200 Turkish intellectuals signed an online petition “apologizing” to Armenians for their suffering at the hands of Ottoman forces during the First World War.

It reads: “My conscience does not accept the insensitivity showed to and the denial of the Great Catastrophe that the Ottoman Armenians were subjected to in 1915. I reject this injustice and for my share, I empathize with the feelings and pain of my Armenian brothers. I apologize to them.” The name of the Web site translated into English is “weapologize.com.”

Even with no mention of genocide, the short text hit a raw nerve with the Turkish public. Politicians lined up to condemn the initiative, while a group of academics and retired diplomats issued a counter-declaration, denying charges of genocide and asking for the Armenians to apologize for the murder of 38 Turkish diplomats in the 1970s by Armenian terrorists seeking revenge. “I find it unreasonable to apologize when there is no crime,” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. Spinoff Web sites are full of nationalist fervor.

In clogged Istanbul traffic, an irate driver gave me his unsolicited view: “Excuse me, miss, but now they want to apologize to Armenians. I am a Muslim expelled from the Balkans when the empire collapsed. My family was annihilated. We lost all land and property and took refuge in Turkey. Who will apologize to me?”

Another unsolicited response came over e-mail from the lady who had recently decorated our home: “I have no idea whom else we are supposed to apologize to. The Anzacs for the Gallipoli? The Greek, British, and Italian soldiers for having liberated our homeland [in 1923] from their invasion? Does anyone remember there were two sides to this conflict?”

I ran into a senior diplomat at a funeral and he told me that neither the apology nor the counter-declaration rang the right tone. “They are both extreme positions and would encourage extremists on both sides.” In Turkey, the apology certainly created a backlash, while in Armenia, it is likely to encourage those who want to seek compensation and land from Turkey.

So incendiary has the apology been that the Turkish President Abdullah Gül had to withdraw his initial support for the statement when he was accused of having Armenian blood. And Turkey’s military issued a statement condemning the apology, suggesting it would torpedo any possibility of rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia.

It is difficult to tell if the online petition has actually lifted a taboo or reinforced it. For starters, Turks are never good at apologizing. With no exposure to Oprah and psycho-babble, anger is preferable to soul-searching in much of the Middle East. But even most liberal Turks I know hate the idea of an apology to Armenians, partly because it tacitly admits to genocide–something the majority do not believe happened.

Of course Turkey needs to face its past and have a more open debate on the Armenian issue. But do you begin with an apology? I fear this would foment enough anger on both sides of the border to just about block any meaningful dialogue.

Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was assassinated by Turkish nationalists after he labeled the 1915 events a genocide. On the Armenian side, there are politicians who still have hopes of reclaiming land. In both countries, there is a potential climate of violence and, until that abates, an apology will just incite more trouble.

I wish the petition Web site said everything that it did, but had stopped short of an apology. It would have more appeal here in Turkey. Rome was not built in a day and bridges between nations cannot be either.

Turks and Armenians have a long way to go in overcoming hatred, and certainly setting history straight will have to be part of that process. But apology is not the beginning. Friendship, something we lacked for almost a century, is.

If I could have my own petition, I would say to Armenians, “Friends, I feel your pain and am sorry for not recognizing it before. Let’s leave aside semantics for now and just meet.” And then wait for what they had to tell me.

Asli Aydintasbas is an Istanbul-based journalist and former Ankara bureau chief of the newspaper Sabah.

https://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/12/24/Turkey-Armenians-genocide-oped-cx_aa_1226aydintasbas.html

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