In Turkey, taboo lifts over past treatment of Armenians
Last week, Prime Minister Erdogan proposed a joint study into Armenian claims of genocide.
By Yigal Schleifer, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
ISTANBUL, TURKEY -
When Turkish executive Noyan Soyak helped found a group to bring
together businessmen from Turkey and Armenia, the organization stepped
into a gaping void.
"When we started [in 1997], it was
difficult even to publicly pronounce the word 'Armenia' or 'Armenians'
in Turkey," says Mr. Soyak, whose group today has some 250 Turkish and
Armenian members.
The Armenian issue has long been one of
the most fraught in Turkey, the limits of its discussion strictly
controlled by the state. Driven apart by nearly a century of hatred and
accusations of genocide, the two neighbors became further estranged
after diplomatic relations were broken off by Ankara in 1993, in the
wake of Armenia's occupation of a large chunk of territory belonging to
Turkish ally Azerbaijan.
But Soyak and others say something has
changed - that Turkey's increasing democratization and reforms related
to its European Union (news - web sites) membership bid have slowly started to soften the country's historical stance.
Despite the lack of official relations, a
growing number of nongovernmental Turkish groups - from academics and
businessmen to musicians and women's organizations - are now meeting
with their Armenian counterparts, in the process helping to redefine
the debate in Turkey and ease the enmity between the two nations.
"Any and all kinds of relationships are
important for softening up the infrastructure for the politicians,"
Soyak says. "Governments can't move as quickly as we do, so civil
society groups are leading the way."
Hrant Dink, the editor of Agos, a
newspaper serving Turkey's Armenian community, says the evolution of
what is allowed to be said can be seen in the pages of his publication.
When Agos was launched 10 years ago, Mr. Dink took an indirect approach
to writing about the past. "Previously, when we talked about history,
we didn't mention things that happened but focused on culture instead,"
says Dink, speaking in the newspaper's Istanbul office.
"Slowly we started to ask what happened to the Armenians," he says. "Now we're at the point of telling what happened."
Even if the subject is "no longer taboo"
as Dink says, the debate still fundamentally divides Turkey and
Armenia. Armenians say the Ottomans killed 1.5 million of their people
from 1915 to 1923 through deportations and mass killings in what is now
eastern Turkey. Armenians have been waging an international campaign to
have this recognized as genocide; more than a dozen nations do so
today. Turkey rejects the genocide claim. It admits that Armenians were
killed but disputes the number and says that the deaths were
unorganized and part of wider regional violence that also affected
Muslim Turks.
Until recently, the Turkish state's
official version of events was all that could be aired publicly. But
observers say that democratic reforms - many of them the result of
pressure by the EU - have created more space for public debate on the
topic.
"The level of education has gone up and
civil society has expanded, so the state can no longer dominate and
monopolize the public sphere," says Muge Gocek, a Turkish sociologist
who is the co-organizer of the Workshop for Armenian-Turkish Studies,
an annual gathering of Turkish and Armenian scholars.
In an unusual turn, Turkish Prime
Minister Tayyip Erdogan called last week for a study by Turkish and
Armenian historians of claims of genocide at the hands of Ottoman
Turkish troops. The Armenian Foreign Ministry has rejected Mr.
Erdogan's proposal.
Indeed, those involved in
Turkish-Armenian reconciliation efforts caution that the road towards
normalizing relations is still very bumpy. Turkish officials say they
believe Armenian genocide claims will lead to demands for reparations
and territory.
Ustun Erguder, a Turkish political
scientist and member of the Turkish Armenian Reconciliation Commission,
a group of academics and former diplomats from both sides, says the
association of the word "genocide" with the barbarity of Nazi Germany
makes the claim hard for Turks. "I think Turks have come a long way
even to say, 'We did something wrong to the Armenians.' "
The issue remains explosive. When Orhan
Pamuk, a famous Turkish author, stated in a Swiss paper last month that
"a million Armenians were killed in Turkey," the response included
death threats and charges of dishonoring the state filed against him in
court.
Van Krikorian, a former chairman of the
Armenian Assembly of America, says the only way forward is more
dialogue. "On the Turkish side and the Armenian side, people need to
feel they can discuss what happened and not feel as though somebody is
going to attack them," he says.
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