OWNING UP TO PAST WOULD AID TURKEY'S PATH TO FUTURE

Wed Oct 17, 2007
Yahoo! News
Georgie Anne Geyer

In some sense I feel for the Turks because they have to go to such a great length to deny the Armenian genocide. Now the whole world knows that they are denying and that Americans may once more give in to Turkey. I agree with the author when she says:

"The United States finally dealt with considerable justice with its Native Americans and African-Americans. Did that make America LESS of a great state? The Germans gave massive payments to the millions it harmed or murdered; the young king of Morocco today is putting on television the men and women wronged by his father so they can tell their stories. The Tanzanians have tried West African dictator/mass murderers.

Someday Turkey will feel that need, too, and the Armenian people will finally have some long-denied relief. And I don't think it's going to be too long now, because that is what it means to be a modern people."

WASHINGTON -- Eight years ago when I was traveling in the Caucasus, I decided to stop in the former Soviet republic of Armenia, a country and people I had long wanted to know. What I found was a land of utterly remarkable people that contradictorily struck me as one of the saddest places on Earth.

Here was a people who were, until 1915, the dominant and most prosperous ethnic group in Eastern Turkey. Christians, with their own Armenian Orthodox Church and a language that has enriched the ages, their churches, castles and public buildings were gems of civilization on the too-often scarred landscape of the Middle East.

When you drive to the Turkish border -- everything is very close, Armenia being only a small republic tucked in between Georgia, Iran, Azerbaijan and Turkey -- you can see Mount Ararat, where Christians believe the biblical Noah built his ark to escape God's raging floods.

There is little question that, during that devastating year of 1915, when Europe's collapse into World War I spread even into the Middle East, a vicious interim group in Turkey, the "Young Turks," slaughtered some 1.5 million Armenians. The men were largely murdered outright; the women, dragged from their villages, were either buried alive or sent on a forced death march to the Syrian deserts. The remainders joined the Russians and eventually formed today's Armenian republic.

Today's Turkish government, prosperous and progressive, hoping to join the European Union and refusing to look back, unrelentingly refuses to recognize the well-documented Armenian genocide. That was not today's Turkey, they argue vehemently; that was a ragtag, temporary, vicious end to the 500-year-old Ottoman Empire. Many Turks simply refuse to admit it even happened, and article 301 in their constitution helps them along, allowing as it does for punishment for "insults to Turkishness."

Yet the community of Armenians, not only in today's Armenia but across the world, remain undaunted. Even now, the American Congress, pushed by the capable, organized Armenian community in the United States, is about to pass a resolution (as France did recently) labelng the mass killings of Armenians in 1915 as "genocide."

This has occurred, confusingly enough, at a time when the United States is more dependent than ever upon Turkey for aid to Iraq (Turkish bases are crucial for refueling and resupplying American troops). Which leaves (1) the "progressive Islamist" Turkish government and military saying that, if the resolution passes, relations between the two countries will "never be the same again," and (2) the American administration is begging the Congress to put the resolution aside, at least for this crucially important time.

So, where do we come out in a complex, tragic story like this? The Armenians, whose suffering has become epitomical in the stories of world suffering, deserve, finally, some recompense, even if only of words. Yet the war we have strangely enough chosen to fight today also needs to be conducted seriously.

Let's try to pare the whole situation down to a few central concepts, because the Turkish-Armenian question is one that is duplicated in many parts of the world.

First of all, one of humankind's steps forward in the late 20th and early 21st centuries is the ways in which -- from Chile to South Africa to Liberia and Rwanda -- aggressors are being made to pay in some way for their past transgressions. This has taken different forms: truth commissions, human rights trials, international and regional courts of justice. Though wildly imperfect, the fact is that we are experimenting with means of retribution. This has barely happened before, and it is a way of opening the doors to a more just future.

Moreover, the world the Turks want to join -- the advanced and expanding world of "Europe" -- will never take them until they have, in appropriate ways, truly faced their "Armenian question," just as Germany finally faced its "Jewish question" and France its "Algerian question."

Indeed, in the thousands of pages of regulations and principles that nations must adhere to in order to join the European Union some of the most important ones involve new members solving their ancient ethnic problems. This has already happened with many of the new Eastern European members, as Hungary is dealing humanely now with its ethnic minorities and orthodox Bulgaria has successfully integrated its formerly despised Muslims.

So, no, I don't think that Turkey is yet going to deal with this. It's still a country whose psyche hasn't absorbed its past, who can't accept that its historic DNA contains some unpleasant cancers -- just as all national DNAs do.

The United States finally dealt with considerable justice with its Native Americans and African-Americans. Did that make America LESS of a great state? The Germans gave massive payments to the millions it harmed or murdered; the young king of Morocco today is putting on television the men and women wronged by his father so they can tell their stories. The Tanzanians have tried West African dictator/mass murderers.

Someday Turkey will feel that need, too, and the Armenian people will finally have some long-denied relief. And I don't think it's going to be too long now, because that is what it means to be a modern people.

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.