Germany and the Armenian Genocide
An Interview with Margaret Anderson
By Khatchig Mouradian
ZNet
November 14, 2006
The issue of German responsibility in the Armenian Genocide has been researched by a number of scholars in the past decades. The Ottoman Empire was an ally of Germany during WWI, when up to a million and a half Armenians were uprooted from the Empire and perished in a state-sponsored campaign of mass annihilation.
On June 15, 2005, the German Parliament passed a motion honoring and commemorating “the victims of violence, murder and expulsion among the Armenian people before and during the First World War.” The Bundestag deplored “the deeds of the Young Turkish government in the Ottoman Empire which have resulted in the almost total annihilation of the Armenians in Anatolia.”
The Bundestag also acknowledged and deplored “the inglorious role played by the German Reich which, in spite of a wealth of information on the organized expulsion and annihilation of Armenians, has made no attempt to intervene and stop these atrocities.”
In this interview with Professor Margaret Anderson, conducted by phone from Beirut, we discuss issues related to Germany and the Armenian Genocide.
Margaret Anderson is a professor of history at the University of California in Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. from Brown University. She has researched electoral politics and political culture in Germany and in a comparative European perspective; democracy and democratic institutions; religion and politics; and religion and society, -especially Catholicism in the 19th century. She is the author of Windthorst: A Political Biography (Oxford University Press, 1981 and , Practicing Democracy: Elections and Political Culture in Imperial Germany (Princeton University Press, 2000). Her research has more recently revolved around Germany and the Ottoman Empire during the Armenian Genocide.
Khatchig Mouradian: How did you first become interested in the Armenian Genocide?
Margaret Anderson: It was quite an accident. When I finished my last book, I needed to do something different so that I didn’t get stale. A colleague of mine, who researched Italian history during the same period, said “You should work on the Armenians.” I told him that I can’t work on the Armenians, I don’t read Armenian, I don’t read Turkish. And he said, yes, but you read German and there is a lot of stuff to do on Germany.” He was right. There are 56 volumes in the German Foreign Office devoted to the Armenian persecutions, as well as many more under other titles—like the embassy in Constantinople—that are quite relevant to this horrible story.
I have a colleague, Stephan Astourian, a specialist in Armenian history, without whom I could never have begun this. He was immediately helpful in steering me to the proper Armenian sources and letting me understand the historiography.
K.M.: How thoroughly have these documents been researched?
M.A.: Vahakn N. Dadrian has used them, most notably in German Responsibility in The Armenian Genocide: A Review of the Historical Evidence of German Complicity (1996), and even before that several other people have done it. Ulrich Trumpener had an excellent chapter in his 1968 book, Germany and the Ottoman Empire 1914-1918. More recently, Rolf Hosfeld's Operation Nemesis: Die Türkei, Deutschland und der Völkermord an den Armeniern (2005); Isabel V. Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Cornell, Ithaca, 2005) and Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Armenians (Oxford, 2005) employ these documents to good effect. As far as I know, scholars in Turkey haven’t published anything using these materials; though when I was in the German Foreign Office Archives in Berlin, it was clear that some Turkish scholars had seen them. When you work in German archives you have to sign a sheet saying you have used these documents. So sometimes you can see who has used them ahead of you. Now, the documents from the German Foreign Office published by Johannes Lepsius in 1919 (under the title Deutschland und Armenien), along with the parts that his edition left out (which are not as significant as some scholars have thought) can be found online, edited by Wolfgang Gust. Gust has inserted in italics the parts that Lepsius's Deutschland und Armenien left out. Gust was able to do this by comparing Lepsius’s collection with the original documents. These are available online [at www.armenocide.de].
K.M.: In German Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide, Dadrian argues that Lepsius left these sections out on purpose.
M.A.: I think Gust himself has now become a little more moderate on that issue. Most of the phrases and passages left out are completely insignificant from the standpoint of the question, Was there an Armenian Genocide and who was involved? They do not bear significantly on the question of the Genocide’s character. In some cases, Lepsius—if it was Lepsius who was responsible for the omissions—may have been protecting fellow Germans and Germany’s reputation, but in most of the cases, it seems to me, he was protecting Armenians. That is—and the national school of Turkish historians will be quick to jump on this—he would soften or leave out cases of Armenian revolutionary violence, and cover that up. Lepsius presents a picture of almost complete Armenian victimhood, of a people with no ability to strike back. Well, we know that is not true; the Armenians struck back when they could. But Lepsius was a churchman, and so disapproved of violence. And he was also trying to protect Armenians against what he had long known was the false charge of the German Turkophiles: that the Armenians were terrorists, that the “deportations” were a security measure against traitors, and that the CUP [Committee of Union and Progress] was only protecting the Ottoman state.
K.M.: Before we discuss Germany and the Ottoman Empire during WWI, can you put the pre-war German-Ottoman relations into perspective?
M.A.: Twenty years before the war and even right before the war, Germany didn’t have as many interests in the Ottoman Empire as, for example, the French and even the Austrians. It had less economic investment and fewer cultural institutions, but it certainly hoped to have a future there. Until the second Balkan war (1912-13), Germany worked very hard to keep the Ottoman Empire in operation because it was afraid, as many of the great powers were, that if the Ottoman Empire disintegrated, another European power would get it—probably Russia, and maybe even England or France. There was the fear that any country that annexed the Ottoman Empire, or parts of it, would grow too powerful, and the European equilibrium would grow dangerously unbalanced. Germany would suffer in particular, because unlike the others it had no foothold in the Mediterranean. This is why the Germans didn’t want the Ottoman Empire to dissolve.
After 1912, the Ottoman Empire began to look as if it were going to dissolve anyway, whatever Germany or the other European powers did. This feeling that it would soon go into “liquidation,” as the German Foreign Office called it, caused Germany to suddenly support the Armenians in 1913-14 in ways it had not done before. Germany in fact now so supported the reform deal in Eastern Anatolia that the powers finally forced the Ottomans to sign in February 1914, granting the Armenians in Eastern Anatolia a certain parity in public offices with the Muslim population there, and thus a kind of regional autonomy. Germany had not been in favor of insisting on reforms in the past, siding with the Ottoman government in resisting them. But in 1913 and the first half of 1914, seeing that the dissolution of the Empire might be near, it wanted to have friends in what would be the leftover pieces. These friends, they hoped, would be the Armenians.
K.M.: But this was far from materializing into something positive for the Armenians, wasn’t it? According to Hilmar Kaiser, from 1915-16 a uniform position toward the Ottoman Armenians did not exist.
M.A.: Well, yes. But by 1915-16, Germany was in the midst of a World War, which changed every calculation. And remember, the German government lacked a uniform position on many burning issues: about the future of the Ukraine, which the Germans were occupying in 1915, and the future of Belgium, which they had occupied since August 1914. There was no uniform German position on any of the central questions about the post-war settlement. Rather, there were huge conflicts within the German government itself during WWI as the right-wingers (much of the Army) and the moderates (mostly the Chancellor, Bethmann Hollweg, and the Foreign Office) struggled for control over future policy. So the absence of a uniform position on the Ottoman Armenians is not surprising. However, having said that, I think it is also true that at the higher reaches of the German government, the decision was that they had an ally—the Ottoman government—and they would not do anything that would jeopardize their alliance with it. Although there were many Germans in the Ottoman Empire itself—businessmen, bankers, engineers, diplomats—protesting the Ottoman policy, by the time the issue got to the top in Berlin, the Chancellor’s position was clear: Whatever the Turks may do, they are our allies and not the Armenians.
K.M.: So can we say that there was a policy of denying the extermination of the Armenians.
M.A.: Yes and no. Yes, it was denied to the public at large. This was a policy in which other sections of society were complicit. My work has been on German public opinion, and the elites knew what was going on. Top professors of oriental languages; some journalists; at least six superintendents (roughly bishops) in the Protestant church; certainly the lay leadership among German Catholics (such as the Center Party's leader in parliament Matthias Erzberger, who was assassinated by Right-wing thugs after the war); the pope; the head of the Deutsche Bank (as Hilmar Kaiser and Gerald D. Felman have shown); and other important members of the Reichstag, such as the later winner of the Nobel Peace Price, the liberal Gustav Stresemann, knew. Stresemann decided to keep silent about it. An Armenian-born graduate student in Berlin, Frau Elizabeth Khorikian, did a study of one of the largest circulation (and Left-wing) newspapers in Berlin during 1915, the Berliner Tageblatt. This paper issued sometimes three to four different editions a day, because every time there was war news, they brought another edition. And She looked at every single one. And in all of these issues, she found only five mentions of the Armenians during that whole period. Three were interviews with Talaat Pasha, Enver Pasha and Halil Pasha, and two were reproductions of Turkish news releases. That’s it. The newspapers knew very well what was going on. Both the Social Democratic and the Christian press knew it. Christian journals said the most, although they said it carefully and in guarded language. Lepsius gave an interview on the 5th of October, 1915, to a group of newspapermen in Berlin, to tell them what he had learned on his recent trip to Constantinople/Istanbul from late July to early August. An editor of a socialist newspaper wrote: “If one wanted to apply European concepts of morality and politics to Turkish relationships, one would arrive at a completely distorted judgment.” In general, the newspapers were willing to follow the view that, We are in a war and the government thinks this alliance is important to us, so we will continue this alliance.
K.M.: Are you saying that there was no direct censorship?
M.A.: There was also direct censorship. When Lepsius printed 20,500 copies of his documents, many of them were confiscated by the German General in charge of censorship for the Berlin area before the Turks had even protested. But I think that had the press wanted to break the story, they could have done it. There was so much self-censorship that the government didn’t have to intervene. We will never know what would have happened if the press had tried to distribute Lepsius’s material, but they didn’t try, because they believed that it was more important to have the Turks on their side. The Allied invasion of Gallipoli began in March 1915. The defense of Gallipoli, it was believed, was absolutely central to a German victory, which Germans equated with their survival. And remember: 1,303 German soldiers died, on average, every day between August 1914 and armistice in November 1918. Not surprisingly, Germans were preoccupied by what was happening in Belgium, France, Galicia and the eastern front. They were not thinking that much about Turkey.
For me, that is all the more reason to see Lepsius, for all his flaws, as a hero. He didn’t pay attention only to what was best for Germany. Five days after his son was killed on the eastern front, he arrived in Constantinople, and according to him interviewed not just Enver Pasha but also Talaat. In my view, nobody has looked into the genuine mysteries behind Lepsius’s trip to Constantinople/Istanbul enough: Why did the German Foreign Office give him permission to go? How was he able to get an interview with Enver, and if he was telling the truth, also with Talaat? An ordinary friend of the Armenians and an ordinary writer and journalist (he wasn’t a pastor anymore since he had been forced to give that up when he refused to stop agitating on behalf of the Armenians in 1896) certainly would not have been able to in wartime talk to the War Minister or the Interior Minister of his own country, much less a foreign one. I believe that he was only able to do that because the German Foreign Office put pressure on the Turks to receive him. Why do you think they would have done that? Isn’t that a question worth asking?
K.M.: Why do you think they did that?
M.A.: In my view, they did it because at that time Lepsius made the German Foreign Office believe that the Armenians were, in fact, militarily important. Lepsius was playing a very dangerous game. He tried to play up the military importance of the Armenians on the Russian side of the border, and argued that they could be rallied to the side of the Central Powers (Germany and Austria), and that if they weren’t rallied behind the German cause—and here was the dangerous corollary—that they could actually hurt the Germans and the Turks in the war. That is, of course, the very excuse the Turkish government uses to justify what happened. But I think that in fact Lepsius was trying to exaggerate the military danger of the Armenian revolutionary movement in order to get Germany to pressure the Turks to stop the deportations and massacres. But by the time he got to Constantinople, by late July or early August 1915, most Armenians had already been deported, and it was clear to the German government that they had nothing to offer the Germans and posed no military threat to the Turks.
K.M.: Are there any documents on this?
M.A.: Beginning in late May 1915, Lepsius began contacts with the German Foreign Office in connection with the Van massacres and offered himself as a mediator between the Turks and Armenians. He tried to impress the Foreign Office with how important the Armenians could be for Germany. “One cannot treat a nation of four million as a quantité négligeable,” he said. He described the Armenians as a rope stretching from Turkey to Russia, with one half of in Russia and the other in Turkey. “It cannot be to our advantage, if one half, the Russian half, is constantly courted and flattered, while the other, the Turkish half, faces only oppression.” Like a tug-of-war, the advantage would go to whichever side can pull that rope over to its side. “It is impossible to cut that rope. Language, Literature, Church, Customs are an unbreakable band. The extermination policy of Abdul Hamid only wove the rope even tighter.” In early June 1915, the Undersecretary of State at the German Foreign Office, Arthur Zimmermann, thought that it might be true and asked the German Ambassador to Constantinople, Hans vonWangemheim, to arrange an interview. Wangenheim said that the Turks don’t want to see Lepsius, and advised against any visit. But the Foreign Office insisted, I think, not out of any particular humanitarianism, but because Lepsius had managed to convince it that the Armenians would be helpful to them. Lepsius, of course, knew that they were being victimized. If Lepsius had been able to get to Constantinople right away, maybe in early June, he would not have been able to convince the CUP. But given his Foreign Office backing, he just might have been able to bring more German influence to bear on Turkish policy.
It is not only now that Turkey tries to deny what happened. Even then the CUP tried to keep everything absolutely secret in order to maintain “deniability” at all times. In my view, the major weapon against what was happening was publicity, and that is what the Turkish government, and later Lepsius, understood. But not everyone who supported the Armenians understood that. On the 16th of July, 1915, the U.S. Ambassador to Constantinople, Henry Morgenthau, wrote to the American State Department that “a campaign of race extermination is in progress,” yet he recommended against any protest, because he thought it would make the situation worse. Morgenthau is a hero among the Armenian-Americans (see, for example, Peter Balakian’s book, Black Dog of Fate), not only because of the efforts he made on behalf of the Armenians while he was in Turkey, but also, probably, because at the end of the war he writes memoirs in which he makes himself look brave and good—and the German diplomatic personnel look all bad. I don’t deny that Morgenthau helped the Armenians, and he gave information to Lepsius to publish. But he was also first and foremost an employee of the American government (just as German diplomats in Turkey were first and foremost employees of their governments). After he left Constantinople in the late winter of 1916, Morgenthau even went around making public appearances with the Turkish ambassador to the U.S. This infuriated an Armenian journal published in the United States. Pro-Armenians in America could not understand how Morgenthau would deign to appear on the same platform with a representative of the murderous Turkish government. They couldn’t understand why Morgenthau would do such a thing. He did it because he was an Ambassador of the USA and the USA was a neutral power interested in good relations with the Turks. In the summer of 1915, he reported everything to the American government, and privately did his best to help Armenians (as did German consuls on the spot). But he also advised his government that protests might only make matters worse, and suggested that it inform missionary groups to do the same, as well.
K.M.: What was the reason he did this?
M.A.: Well, don't forget that when diplomatic pressure was brought to bear upon Abdul Hamid in 1896, he responded by massacring the Armenians in Istanbul/Constantinople. People like Morgenthau did not think the Turks were civilized people, for good reason. I’m not saying there weren’t any civilized Turks in the Ottoman Empire, but Turks and Kurds had already behaved so horribly in the 1890s, that some people didn’t think the Ottoman government would respond to something like the pressure of European and American public opinion. Morgenthau didn’t. Noting that even men like Morgenthau believed this, I think, gives a little bit of respectability to other people—like the pope—who believed, however mistakenly, that you could get more accomplished for the Armenians by working behind the scenes to convince Turks to do this or that.
K.M.: Couldn’t the German government interfere in any way to stop the Genocide and the deportations?
M.A.: German soldiers in the Ottoman Empire were not part of the German Army but were all under Ottoman command—and that includes the worst of them, like the first assistant chief of staff of the Turkish General Staff, Colonel Bronsart von Schellendorf. There was no practical legal way that the German government could have ordered them to intervene. What the German government could have done was to have ordered them to withdraw from Ottoman service and come home. It is also sometimes asked, “Why didn’t the German government threaten to cut off their supplies to the Ottomans?” That is a good argument. I used to believe it myself before I read the interviews with Zimmermann in 1915—interviews that had nothing, by the way, to do with Armenians—which revealed that he was in constant anxiety because Germany was unable to get supplies to the Ottomans. It was not until mid-January 1916, after Serbia was conquered, that German trains could reach Istanbul. Before then, they could not ship supplies to Turkey (except for money, which was useless), so there were no supplies that they could cut off in 1915. Or at least, so Zimmermann said.
K.M.: What can you say about the Baghdad Railroad?
M.A.: I have seen documents from the company archives that show \ the company knew what went on. Representatives on the spot did in fact, as Kaiser said, try to hide Armenians and protect them; they also protested and reported to their home offices. However, the German officer delegated to be the liaison between the German army and the Baghdad railroad, Lt. Col. Böttrich, overrode the Baghdad (Anatolian) railway personnel and signed a deportation order for some of their Armenian workers himself. I’m not trying to say that there weren’t certain Germans in Turkey who clearly adopted the position of CUP.
K.M.: Reading the literature, I didn’t feel there was a concerted policy, and this could have been why some people behaved differently.
M.A.: I haven't done the kind of intensive research that I would like to on German military behavior; and most of Germany's military archives were destroyed by bombing in World War II, so we will never have the kind of certainty that we have with the diplomatic record. But there were two German officers, at least, who behaved differently. Field Marshall Liman von Sanders saved the Armenians in Edirne and Izmir. True, there weren’t many Armenians in those two towns, so they were less important to the CUP than the Armenians in Van or Urfa. In that sense, Liman probably faced less resistance from the Ottoman authorities than he would have had he attempted something similar in Eastern Anatolia. But he did meet resistance, and he absolutely refused to allow them to be deported. (Liman, however, had a personality that everyone disliked, and he disliked everyone, so you can almost predict that he would do the opposite of what other people wanted him to do. Had every German office and diplomatic official behaved like Liman, the results would probably have been terrible for Ottoman-German relations. On the other hand, the Ottoman Empire was by then so deeply involved in the war, and had so many enemies in the Entente powers already committed to gaining territory at its expense, that we have to ask, Would it really have left the German-Austrian alliance? Probably not. But if the Turks had made a separate peace with the Entente, it would have given them an even freer hand with the Armenians. The other German officer who behaved differently was Colonel (later General) Kress von Kressenstein, the chief of staff of Jemal Pasha. He apparently convinced Jemal not to deport 400 Armenian orphans.
In German-occupied territory in the Russian Empire, the German army prevented pogroms against the Jewsby local populations (Ukrainians and Russians, for example), which were incited by the retreating Tsarist armies. There was a very similar hysteria against ethnic minorities throughout Europe during World War I, and specifically Eastern Europe and encouraged by the Tsarist army. In some cases, it was the German minority that was the target; in others it was the Ukrainians or Poles or Baltic populations. But the targets almost always included the Jews. Wherever it went, the German army protected the Jews. But they had orders to do so from Berlin. And they were occupying territory they had conquered. Berlin couldn’t give orders to German officers who serve in the Ottoman army.
K.M.: Dadrian mentions that these German officers were misguided by information they received from Turkish subordinates. Was this a frequent occurrence?
M.A.: In some cases that may have been the case. It’s interesting that Wolffskeel von Reichenberg, a Major in Marash, was told that Armenians were massacring Turks. He was there and he saw that the story was not true and quashed that story. Later on, however, under the command of Fakhri pasha, he subdued Zeitun and the Armenians in Urfa, and was there at Mousa Dagh, so I don’t think that the best explanation for their behavior is that German officers were given false information, as much as they adapted and began to see things from the perspective of the people they worked for.
K.M.: Is the word “complicity” appropriate, in your opinion, in describing German involvement in the Armenian Genocide?
M.A.: In my view it gives a false impression. I think the German historians are harshest in judging the Germans (although Dadrian judges them harshly too), particularly Tessa Hoffman and Wolfgang Gust, as well as Swiss historian Christoph Dinkel. They tend to make these Germans look like early Nazis. That may be true of a few of these officers, but I think in general the Germans did what people in all countries do most of the time, which is to operate on what they think is best for their own country.
For example, the Jews in England were horrified at the treatment of the Jews in Russia before the war; yet just like the friends of Armenians in Germany with regard to Turkey, they didn’t want England to have an alliance with Russia. They really hated it when the Entente with Russia was established in 1907. Then came the war and England allied with Russia, even though the Russian army “evacuated” three million Jews. (You can call it deportation.) They didn’t usually massacre them, but they did forcibly evacuate them, as a “security measure,” and as a punitive measure, accusing them of collaborating with the Germans. In many cases, the evacuees lost everything they had: homes, furniture, businesses, everything. And the Tsarist armies were complicit in the pogroms that sometimes ensued. Jews in England protested, and they were allowed to protest. That is a difference. But did their protests against Russian treatment of the Jews affect the policy of the British government? No. And in fact, the British Ambassador to St. Petersburg, Sir George Buchanan, wrote back to his government saying that “There cannot be the slightest doubt that a very large number of Jews in German pay and have acted as spies during the campaigns in Poland.” That is, he believed and transmitted all those lies the Russian army was telling about the Jews. Well, I have to say that the German diplomats in the Ottoman Empire were more objective and honest than that. They carefully looked into the charges the CUP was making against the Armenians. They were convinced that the majority of the Armenians were innocent of the charges against them, that the mass of the Armenian people had not behaved as traitors. And they informed their own government of the truth. I think the term “complicity” sets up a false impression of the behavior of German officials. I don’t want to say the Germans were “good,” but they behaved the way officials of most countries would.
K.M.: What do you think about the view that the Armenian Genocide was a precursor to the Holocaust and that some officers who served in the Ottoman army were later high ranking Nazi officials?
M.A.: There are certainly some carry-overs, although the fact that men who later served the Nazis also spent time in Turkey is not surprising given the war and given the importance of the Constantinople post and the Ottoman Empire generally. Many of the same people also spent time in Belgium and France. One of the worst Germans, as far as being unwilling to help the Armenians, was Constantin von Neurath. He was chargé d’affairs in the German Embassy at Constantinople and later became the first Foreign Minister under Hitler, though he was not a member of the Nazi Party. He wrote Berlin, in the fall of 1915, that he hoped the friends of the Armenians in Germany [The German-Armenian Society founded by Lepsius] could be made to keep quiet, though he admitted that the German government couldn’t actually shut them down. He thought that the money they were collecting for Armenian relief would be better used for German relief. So he was clearly a heartless guy.
However, I should also mention one of the true ironies. Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter was the vice-consul of Erzerum and an officer in the Bavarian army. He had been sent out to eastern Anatolia to organize Muslim guerrillas behind the Russian lines, much like the way some people have argued the Russians were organizing Armenians. However, when he got there, the consul of Erzerum had just been captured by the Russians, and so Scheubner-Richter was made the vice-counsul in his place. This man constantly protested the treatment of the Armenians to his government. He was also extremely bold in protesting it to the Ottoman government. He got reprimanded by his own government for being too undiplomatic towards the Turks. He took out of his own money to feed some Armenian refugees going through Erzerum. At this stage, he is a true hero. After the war, he became a Nazi and in 1923 was shot down in Munich, marching next to Hitler in the Beer Hall Putsch. He was at that time Hitler’s main right-hand man for the party's finances. Hitler refers to him in letters from the period as “my delegate.” He served as the liaison between the early Nazi movement, the military interests, and the business interests.
The worst person in Germany, as far as the Armenians were concerned, was Ernst Jäckh, a journalist who also had some academic credentials. He founded an important pro-Turkish lobby in Germany, the German-Turkish Union, and advertised himself as close to Enver Pasha. His wartime activities were largely confined to propaganda, but he worked hard to see that a pro-Turkish message was constantly disseminated to the German public. He was practically an employee of the Turkish government, someone who joined the German-Armenian Society in order to spy on them. He also spied on Lepsius and reported on his activities to his government, and was always working to twist information in a pro-Turkish direction. After the war, he became a leading spokesman in Germany for the movement on behalf of the League of Nations. In 1933, he left Germany for New York, and became a professor in Columbia University and a big-time democrat and liberal. In fact, he had always been a liberal. So, I don’t think you can draw any straight line between the perpetrators in WWI and those later on in the Nazi regime.
K.M.: And what is the line that we can draw between the Armenian Genocide and German responsibility?
M.A.: In that regard, I think the connection is “ethnic cleansing.” The CUP was very influenced by integralist nationalism and—as Sukru Hanioglu has shown—social Darwinism and European racist thought as the basis of a powerful nation-state. German intellectuals were powerful contributors to these currents and German successes seemed to demonstrate the truth of the argument: homogeneous nation, powerful state.
K.M.: There is Marshal Colmar von der Goltz who has proposed something like ethnic cleansing.
M.A.: Some people say that but I haven’t seen the proof. They also say that about the publicist, Paul Rohrbach, which I doubt very much, at least in the sense attributed to him. Rohrbach was certainly a German nationalist and an imperialist—as were most men in the educated classes in those days—although he advocated “peaceful imperialism”: spreading German culture and “ideas” through development help, schools and cultural exchanges. He was actually a friend of Armenians, and on the board of directors of Lepsius’s Geman Armenian Society. People say Rohrbach thought it would be a good idea to remove the Armenians along the route of the prospective Berlin-Baghdad railway and plant Germans there, but I don’t think that can be true. When Rohrbach found out about the deportations he was devastated, and resigned his membership in Jäckh's German-Turkish Union. I don’t know about von der Goltz; I’d like to see the hard evidence on that.
The continuity between the two regimes—CUP and Nazi—is in their common desire to create an ethnically homogeneous state. The Young Turks got that idea from Europe, but the Nazis were the first European country to try hard to put it in effect in any consistent and rigorous way. I think the CUP were like the Nazis, but I don’t think they were that way because there were Germans who were allied with the Turks in WW1, and then these Germans did it themselves the second time around. Sukru Hanioglu, of Princeton, has shown in his two volumes on the CUP, that even before 1908 they had adopted Social Darwinist ideas. Rather, the both movements “drank from the same well” of integralist nationalism. I think the CUP was the Turkish version of what would later be called "Fascists."
A colleague of mine who teaches Turkish history in the United States (let us not give his name because I don’t think he could visit his family in Turkey if his name is published) told me that he has no doubt that there was a Genocide. For him, the only question is how far the responsibility goes within the CUP. How many people were involved in the decision? Because it was a dictatorship. An interesting difference between the CUP Genocide and the Nazi one is that in the Third Reich when the Jews are being killed, there are no protests from German officials ever! In Turkey, several valis and lower Ottoman officials did protest. And paid the price. In Turkey, also, some Kurds, Arabs and even some Turkish Muslims criticized the policy and rescued Armenians openly. In Germany, those few Germans who did rescue Jews did not do it openly. Unless you count the riot by the Christian wives at the Rosenstrasse Berlin railway station over the deportation of their husbands. And that was unique. Perhaps this difference with Turkey is because Germany was such an "organized" country and it was much harder to get away with behavior that was counter to official policy (or at least, so people may have thought) than it was in Turkey.
K.M.: What about Germany today? Does it have the moral responsibility to acknowledge the Genocide?
M.A.: Absolutely! As does Turkey. However, Turks have been raised on one view of history. If they are told by foreigners that they have to change their view of history, they may end up signing on the dotted line—if, for example, that is the price for entering the EU—but it won’t make them believe it. My hope comes from the fact that there are Turkish historians in Turkey today who absolutely know the truth and don’t dare to, right now, say what it is. But that is changing. As Turkey becomes more democratic and as the army becomes more and more discredited, there will be freedom of debate in Turkey. And I think then historians who want to be credible outside of Turkey will have to look at the evidence the same way we look at it.
Showing posts with label Turkey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Turkey. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
An Interview with Elif Shafak II
A Storyteller's Quest
By Khatchig Mouradian
ZNet
March 14, 2006
"Anatolia has always been a mosaic of flowers,
filling the world with flowers and light.
I want it to be the same today"
Yasar Kemal
The Anatolia Yasar Kemal, arguably the greatest Turkish author of the 20th century, wants to see and the Anatolia he can actually see today cannot possibly be considered the same region of Turkey. What was a century ago a mosaic of ethnic and religious groups (Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Turks, Kurds, etc.) is now almost homogenized through blood and destruction, and the memory of many of the peoples that once dwelled in the region of Eastern Turkey is being negligently allowed to pass into oblivion.
A number of Turkish intellectuals are striving to push Turkey to face its past and recognize the "mosaic of flowers" that Anatolia once was. Will their vision one day become reality? Much depends on the changes currently taking place in Turkey. Novelist Elif Shafak, one of the courageous intellectuals struggling today for the preservation of memory and recognition of cultural diversity, spoke to me of Turkey today and the Turkey she would like to see tomorrow.
The Two Faces of Turkey
"I feel connected to so many things in Turkey, especially in Istanbul. The city, the people, the customs of women, the enchanting world of superstitions, my grandmother's almost magical cosmos, my mother's humanism, and the warmth, the sincerity of the people," Shafak tells me, speaking of her native country. "At the same time I feel no connection whatsoever to its main ideology, its state structure and army," she notes.
Turkey is the country of opposites which oftentimes, defying the laws of physics, repel one another. Eastern and Western, Islamic and secular at the same time, the country is torn between democracy and dictatorship, memory and amnesia. These dualities, bordering on schizophrenia, are unsettling for Shafak, an author of five published novels. "I think there are two undercurrents in Turkey, both very old. One is nationalist, exclusivist, xenophobic and reactionary. The other is cosmopolitan, Sufi, humanist, embracing. It is the second tide that I feel connected to," she says.
Not surprisingly, the first tide she mentions is not at all happy with her line of conduct. Hate-mail and accusations of being a traitor to her country have become commonplace for the young writer.
"The nationalist discourse in Turkey-- just like the Republicans in the USA-- is that if you are criticizing your government, you do not like your nation. This is a lie. Only and only if you care about something you will reflect upon it, give it further thought. I care about Turkey. It hurts me to be accused of hating my country," she explains.
However, Elif Shafak, who spent most of her childhood and adolescence in Europe and later moved to Turkey to pursue her studies, is anything but wrong when she points out that her country has come a long way in the last few years. "There are very important changes underway in Turkey. Sometimes, in the West, Turkey looks more black-and-white than it really is, but the fact remains that Turkey's civil society is multifaceted and very dynamic. Especially over the past two decades there have been fundamental transformations," she says.
"The bigger the change, the deeper the panic of those who want to preserve the status quo," she adds.
A cornered tiger is the fiercest, however, as an Eastern proverb says. This is why the prospect of membership to the European Union (EU) is deemed necessary by the country’s cosmopolitan undercurrent, which is struggling against the status quo. For decades, those, who have dared to challenge the official rhetoric on a wide spectrum of issues, have faced oppression, persecution, and imprisonment, and they know well that the only way not to take the country back in time is to keep it going in the direction of the EU. Shafak herself believes that Turkey's bid to join the EU "is an important process for progressive forces both within and outside the country". She adds: "Definitely the whole process will reinforce democracy, human rights and minority rights. It will diminish the role of the state apparatuses, and most importantly the shadow of the military in the political arena."
Dealing with the Turkish Society's 'Underbelly'
"For me, the recognition of 1915 is connected to my love for democracy and human rights," says Shafak. 1915 is the year when the Turkish government embarked on a genocidal campaign to exterminate the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire. This topic remained the greatest of all taboos in Turkey until very recently.
Although the Armenian genocide is acknowledged by most genocide scholars and many parliaments around the world, the Turkish government's official stand maintains that the Armenians were not subjected to a state sponsored annihilation process that killed more than a million and a half people in 1915-16. The Armenians were, the Turkish official viewpoint argues, the victims of ethnic strife or war and starvation, just like many Muslims living in the Ottoman Empire during WWI. Moreover, according to the official historiography in Turkey, the number of the Armenians that died due to these "unfortunate events" is exaggerated.
Like a growing number of fellow Turkish intellectuals, it is against this policy of denial that Elif Shafak rages. "If we had been able to face the atrocities committed against the Armenians in Anatolia, it would have been more difficult for the Turkish state to commit atrocities against the Kurds," she argues.
"A society based on amnesia cannot have a mature democracy," she adds.
Why did she choose to tackle this very sensitive issue, knowing well that harassment and threats were inevitable? "I am a storyteller. If I cannot "feel" other people's pain and grief, I better quit what I am doing. So there is an emotional aspect for me in that I have always felt connected to those pushed to the margins and silenced rather than those at the center", she notes. "This is the pattern in each and every one of my novels; I deal with Turkish society's underbelly."
Her upcoming novel, "The Bastard of Istanbul", is no exception. The Turkish translation of the novel, titled “Baba ve Pic” was released in Turkey on March 8, 2006. The original novel in English will be released in the U.S. in January 2007 out of Penguin/Viking press. "The novel is highly critical of the sexist and nationalist fabric of Turkish society. It is the story of four generations of women in Istanbul. At some point their stories converge with the story of an Armenian woman and, thereby, an Armenian-American family. I have used this family in San Francisco and the family in Istanbul as mirrors," she explains. "Basically, the novel testifies to the struggle of amnesia and memory. It deals with painful pasts both at the individual and collective level," she adds.
The Turkey she would like to see in 2015, a century after the Armenian genocide, stands in deep contrast to the Turkey the world has known for the better part of the past century. It is "a Turkey that is part of EU, a Turkey where women do not get killed on the basis of "family honor", a Turkey where there is no gender discrimination, no violations against minorities; a Turkey which is not xenophobic, homophobic, where each and every individual is treated as valuably as the reflection of the Jamal side of God, its beauty."
It would be hard to disagree with Shafak that only in the Turkey she envisions can cosmopolitism overshadow nationalism and remembrance emerge victorious over denial.
By Khatchig Mouradian
ZNet
March 14, 2006
"Anatolia has always been a mosaic of flowers,
filling the world with flowers and light.
I want it to be the same today"
Yasar Kemal
The Anatolia Yasar Kemal, arguably the greatest Turkish author of the 20th century, wants to see and the Anatolia he can actually see today cannot possibly be considered the same region of Turkey. What was a century ago a mosaic of ethnic and religious groups (Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Turks, Kurds, etc.) is now almost homogenized through blood and destruction, and the memory of many of the peoples that once dwelled in the region of Eastern Turkey is being negligently allowed to pass into oblivion.
A number of Turkish intellectuals are striving to push Turkey to face its past and recognize the "mosaic of flowers" that Anatolia once was. Will their vision one day become reality? Much depends on the changes currently taking place in Turkey. Novelist Elif Shafak, one of the courageous intellectuals struggling today for the preservation of memory and recognition of cultural diversity, spoke to me of Turkey today and the Turkey she would like to see tomorrow.
The Two Faces of Turkey
"I feel connected to so many things in Turkey, especially in Istanbul. The city, the people, the customs of women, the enchanting world of superstitions, my grandmother's almost magical cosmos, my mother's humanism, and the warmth, the sincerity of the people," Shafak tells me, speaking of her native country. "At the same time I feel no connection whatsoever to its main ideology, its state structure and army," she notes.
Turkey is the country of opposites which oftentimes, defying the laws of physics, repel one another. Eastern and Western, Islamic and secular at the same time, the country is torn between democracy and dictatorship, memory and amnesia. These dualities, bordering on schizophrenia, are unsettling for Shafak, an author of five published novels. "I think there are two undercurrents in Turkey, both very old. One is nationalist, exclusivist, xenophobic and reactionary. The other is cosmopolitan, Sufi, humanist, embracing. It is the second tide that I feel connected to," she says.
Not surprisingly, the first tide she mentions is not at all happy with her line of conduct. Hate-mail and accusations of being a traitor to her country have become commonplace for the young writer.
"The nationalist discourse in Turkey-- just like the Republicans in the USA-- is that if you are criticizing your government, you do not like your nation. This is a lie. Only and only if you care about something you will reflect upon it, give it further thought. I care about Turkey. It hurts me to be accused of hating my country," she explains.
However, Elif Shafak, who spent most of her childhood and adolescence in Europe and later moved to Turkey to pursue her studies, is anything but wrong when she points out that her country has come a long way in the last few years. "There are very important changes underway in Turkey. Sometimes, in the West, Turkey looks more black-and-white than it really is, but the fact remains that Turkey's civil society is multifaceted and very dynamic. Especially over the past two decades there have been fundamental transformations," she says.
"The bigger the change, the deeper the panic of those who want to preserve the status quo," she adds.
A cornered tiger is the fiercest, however, as an Eastern proverb says. This is why the prospect of membership to the European Union (EU) is deemed necessary by the country’s cosmopolitan undercurrent, which is struggling against the status quo. For decades, those, who have dared to challenge the official rhetoric on a wide spectrum of issues, have faced oppression, persecution, and imprisonment, and they know well that the only way not to take the country back in time is to keep it going in the direction of the EU. Shafak herself believes that Turkey's bid to join the EU "is an important process for progressive forces both within and outside the country". She adds: "Definitely the whole process will reinforce democracy, human rights and minority rights. It will diminish the role of the state apparatuses, and most importantly the shadow of the military in the political arena."
Dealing with the Turkish Society's 'Underbelly'
"For me, the recognition of 1915 is connected to my love for democracy and human rights," says Shafak. 1915 is the year when the Turkish government embarked on a genocidal campaign to exterminate the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire. This topic remained the greatest of all taboos in Turkey until very recently.
Although the Armenian genocide is acknowledged by most genocide scholars and many parliaments around the world, the Turkish government's official stand maintains that the Armenians were not subjected to a state sponsored annihilation process that killed more than a million and a half people in 1915-16. The Armenians were, the Turkish official viewpoint argues, the victims of ethnic strife or war and starvation, just like many Muslims living in the Ottoman Empire during WWI. Moreover, according to the official historiography in Turkey, the number of the Armenians that died due to these "unfortunate events" is exaggerated.
Like a growing number of fellow Turkish intellectuals, it is against this policy of denial that Elif Shafak rages. "If we had been able to face the atrocities committed against the Armenians in Anatolia, it would have been more difficult for the Turkish state to commit atrocities against the Kurds," she argues.
"A society based on amnesia cannot have a mature democracy," she adds.
Why did she choose to tackle this very sensitive issue, knowing well that harassment and threats were inevitable? "I am a storyteller. If I cannot "feel" other people's pain and grief, I better quit what I am doing. So there is an emotional aspect for me in that I have always felt connected to those pushed to the margins and silenced rather than those at the center", she notes. "This is the pattern in each and every one of my novels; I deal with Turkish society's underbelly."
Her upcoming novel, "The Bastard of Istanbul", is no exception. The Turkish translation of the novel, titled “Baba ve Pic” was released in Turkey on March 8, 2006. The original novel in English will be released in the U.S. in January 2007 out of Penguin/Viking press. "The novel is highly critical of the sexist and nationalist fabric of Turkish society. It is the story of four generations of women in Istanbul. At some point their stories converge with the story of an Armenian woman and, thereby, an Armenian-American family. I have used this family in San Francisco and the family in Istanbul as mirrors," she explains. "Basically, the novel testifies to the struggle of amnesia and memory. It deals with painful pasts both at the individual and collective level," she adds.
The Turkey she would like to see in 2015, a century after the Armenian genocide, stands in deep contrast to the Turkey the world has known for the better part of the past century. It is "a Turkey that is part of EU, a Turkey where women do not get killed on the basis of "family honor", a Turkey where there is no gender discrimination, no violations against minorities; a Turkey which is not xenophobic, homophobic, where each and every individual is treated as valuably as the reflection of the Jamal side of God, its beauty."
It would be hard to disagree with Shafak that only in the Turkey she envisions can cosmopolitism overshadow nationalism and remembrance emerge victorious over denial.
An Interview with Eren Keskin
Against All Odds
Human Rights Activism in Turkey
by Khatchig Mouradian
ZNet
April 05, 2006
“I refuse to buy my freedom of speech by paying money,” said Eren Keskin, the Head of the Istanbul Branch of the Human Rights Association of Turkey, during a press conference in Istanbul on the 22nd of March. A few days earlier, a Turkish court had sentenced her to 10 months’ imprisonment for insulting the country’s military. The sentence was then converted to a fine of 6000 New Turkish Liras, which Keskin is refusing to pay, however, saying that she will go to prison instead. Moreover, she asserts: “I will continue to express both verbally and in writing my thoughts, which are banned unlawfully by the ruling powers, because we are not the ones who should change; they are.”
“The case will be heard by the Court of Appeals. It will take several months before it reaches a verdict. In the meantime campaigns in support of freedom of speech in Turkey both at home and abroad will help a lot to influence the general climate in Turkey for greater democracy,” told me Ayse Gunaysu, an activist in the organization headed by Keskin.
The court sentence against Keskin was based on the notorious Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which states that public denigration of Turkishness, the Grand National Assembly (Turkey’s legislature) or the Government of the Republic of Turkey, the judicial institutions of the state, as well as the military and security structures are punishable by imprisonment of between six months and three years. In recent months, dozens of Turkish activists and intellectuals, including the world-renowned author Orhan Pamuk, have been charged under this article.
Keskin, who is also the founder of the Project for Legal Aid to Victims of Rape and Sexual Assault Under Custody, had been accused of “insulting” the Turkish military big time in 2002, after giving a speech in Köln, Germany about cases of sexual assault against women inmates by the state security forces in Turkey. Keskin explains: “In my presentation under the topic “Sexual Violence Perpetrated by the State,” I shared with the audience certain findings of our project, which had been going since 1997. I said that sexual torture was used as a systematic method of psychological warfare and that victims of such torture were afraid to file complaints against the security forces.”
I discussed with Eren Keskin issues related to human rights violations in Turkey in late March, a few days after the recent court ruling. Taking into account the oft-repeated assertions that Turkey had made great strides towards respect for human rights in the last few years in its quest for EU membership, I asked her whether these changes were radical or cosmetic. “I don't believe that the changes that have been made or are being made in this process are radical,” she replied. “I don't think that the state has any intention to change, because the changes introduced have no power to transform the essence of the system. Yet we have to admit that they have at least provided an atmosphere where certain issues are being discussed.”
Thou Shalt not Insult the Army
The generals in Turkey consider themselves the guardians of the country’s secular constitution and they have an established tradition of directly intervening in politics, including a number of direct and indirect military coups since 1960. In Keskin’s opinion, all legislative, executive and judicial powers in Turkey are still under their control. “The military in Turkey not only determines both domestic and foreign policy, but also enjoys huge economic power through one of Turkey's biggest business groups, OYAK, which operates literally in all sectors of the economy, from banking to tourism. Moreover, all OYAK companies are exempt from any tax liability,” explained Keskin. Hence, she believes that the main impediment to improving Turkey’s human rights record is the military.
“Today, even those who define themselves as being part of the left in Turkey do not question the taboos determined by the “red lines,” which the military has set,” she said, noting that overcoming the military’s domination of the state is extremely difficult in Turkey.
“Domestic Enemies”
As this article is being written, thousands of protesters, mostly Kurds, are clashing with the Turkish police in the southeast of the country. For decades, Turkey has failed to find a decent solution to its Kurdish problem. Ankara is reluctant to grant the most basic of cultural and political rights to the millions of Kurds, who live mainly in the country’s southeast, where the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, unleashed an armed struggle against the Turkish state in the 1980s.
“Kurds are one of the “domestic enemies” that this system, controlled by the military, needs to create in order to sustain its domination,” asserted Keskin. “Failure in providing any solution to this issue makes the military all the more powerful. Even the minor progress made lately in this field – achieved at enormous cost and partly the outcome of the EU accession process – does not change the fact that “the policy of ‘non-solution’ still dominates the government’s approach to the Kurdish issue.”
State of Denial
For decades, the greatest of all taboos in Turkey has been the Armenian genocide of 1915. In recent years, a number of intellectuals in the country have started to speak up about this issue, calling upon Turkey to face its past, oftentimes at the cost of being persecuted or sued under Article 301. “The Turkish official thesis regarding the Armenian genocide is still very influential in the street and in academia, although there are efforts to overcome this domination,” said Keskin, when asked about Ankara’s policy of denial towards the annihilation by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and under the cover of World War I of an estimated a million and a half Armenians in the dying years of the Ottoman Empire.
The overwhelming majority of genocide scholars and many parliaments around the world recognize this instance of mass slaughter as a classic case of genocide. The descendents of the genocide victims, in turn, continue to demand that Turkey, too, recognize the genocidal intent behind the decimation of the Armenians, who lived on their ancestral land. The Turkish government vehemently denies, however, that there was a planned destruction of an entire ethnic group. It also argues that the number of victims is vastly exaggerated.
According to Keskin, “there is no real break with the ideology of the CUP not only among the extremists but also among those who consider themselves part of the democratic opposition in Turkey. The ideology that led to the Armenian genocide was a very important element of the founding ideology of the Republic of Turkey.”
Keskin has little faith that Turkey will come to terms with its past in the near future. “The general mindset of the majority of Turkish society, including a significant part of the left, has been shaped under the influence of this ideology. It is for this reason that I don't believe much progress can be made in the short run,” she said. “However, I believe recognition of the genocide is crucial. Turkish people should acknowledge the sufferings of the Armenians, empathize with them and apologize for what happened in 1915.”
* * *
Eren Keskin and many of her colleagues in Turkey operate in an environment of intimidation and threats. “We, the human rights activists, have learned, throughout these years, how to live with fear and to go on despite its persistence,” she said. “Up till now 14 executives and members of our Human Rights Association have been killed by what we call the counter-guerilla units. I myself have been the target of two armed attacks. I still receive death threats. Of course all these generate some fear in me, but if there is one thing, which we have learned by now, is to continue with our struggle despite fear. I guess we owe this to our faith in what we do.”
Indeed, it is on this faith that many people are counting.
Human Rights Activism in Turkey
by Khatchig Mouradian
ZNet
April 05, 2006
“I refuse to buy my freedom of speech by paying money,” said Eren Keskin, the Head of the Istanbul Branch of the Human Rights Association of Turkey, during a press conference in Istanbul on the 22nd of March. A few days earlier, a Turkish court had sentenced her to 10 months’ imprisonment for insulting the country’s military. The sentence was then converted to a fine of 6000 New Turkish Liras, which Keskin is refusing to pay, however, saying that she will go to prison instead. Moreover, she asserts: “I will continue to express both verbally and in writing my thoughts, which are banned unlawfully by the ruling powers, because we are not the ones who should change; they are.”
“The case will be heard by the Court of Appeals. It will take several months before it reaches a verdict. In the meantime campaigns in support of freedom of speech in Turkey both at home and abroad will help a lot to influence the general climate in Turkey for greater democracy,” told me Ayse Gunaysu, an activist in the organization headed by Keskin.
The court sentence against Keskin was based on the notorious Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which states that public denigration of Turkishness, the Grand National Assembly (Turkey’s legislature) or the Government of the Republic of Turkey, the judicial institutions of the state, as well as the military and security structures are punishable by imprisonment of between six months and three years. In recent months, dozens of Turkish activists and intellectuals, including the world-renowned author Orhan Pamuk, have been charged under this article.
Keskin, who is also the founder of the Project for Legal Aid to Victims of Rape and Sexual Assault Under Custody, had been accused of “insulting” the Turkish military big time in 2002, after giving a speech in Köln, Germany about cases of sexual assault against women inmates by the state security forces in Turkey. Keskin explains: “In my presentation under the topic “Sexual Violence Perpetrated by the State,” I shared with the audience certain findings of our project, which had been going since 1997. I said that sexual torture was used as a systematic method of psychological warfare and that victims of such torture were afraid to file complaints against the security forces.”
I discussed with Eren Keskin issues related to human rights violations in Turkey in late March, a few days after the recent court ruling. Taking into account the oft-repeated assertions that Turkey had made great strides towards respect for human rights in the last few years in its quest for EU membership, I asked her whether these changes were radical or cosmetic. “I don't believe that the changes that have been made or are being made in this process are radical,” she replied. “I don't think that the state has any intention to change, because the changes introduced have no power to transform the essence of the system. Yet we have to admit that they have at least provided an atmosphere where certain issues are being discussed.”
Thou Shalt not Insult the Army
The generals in Turkey consider themselves the guardians of the country’s secular constitution and they have an established tradition of directly intervening in politics, including a number of direct and indirect military coups since 1960. In Keskin’s opinion, all legislative, executive and judicial powers in Turkey are still under their control. “The military in Turkey not only determines both domestic and foreign policy, but also enjoys huge economic power through one of Turkey's biggest business groups, OYAK, which operates literally in all sectors of the economy, from banking to tourism. Moreover, all OYAK companies are exempt from any tax liability,” explained Keskin. Hence, she believes that the main impediment to improving Turkey’s human rights record is the military.
“Today, even those who define themselves as being part of the left in Turkey do not question the taboos determined by the “red lines,” which the military has set,” she said, noting that overcoming the military’s domination of the state is extremely difficult in Turkey.
“Domestic Enemies”
As this article is being written, thousands of protesters, mostly Kurds, are clashing with the Turkish police in the southeast of the country. For decades, Turkey has failed to find a decent solution to its Kurdish problem. Ankara is reluctant to grant the most basic of cultural and political rights to the millions of Kurds, who live mainly in the country’s southeast, where the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, unleashed an armed struggle against the Turkish state in the 1980s.
“Kurds are one of the “domestic enemies” that this system, controlled by the military, needs to create in order to sustain its domination,” asserted Keskin. “Failure in providing any solution to this issue makes the military all the more powerful. Even the minor progress made lately in this field – achieved at enormous cost and partly the outcome of the EU accession process – does not change the fact that “the policy of ‘non-solution’ still dominates the government’s approach to the Kurdish issue.”
State of Denial
For decades, the greatest of all taboos in Turkey has been the Armenian genocide of 1915. In recent years, a number of intellectuals in the country have started to speak up about this issue, calling upon Turkey to face its past, oftentimes at the cost of being persecuted or sued under Article 301. “The Turkish official thesis regarding the Armenian genocide is still very influential in the street and in academia, although there are efforts to overcome this domination,” said Keskin, when asked about Ankara’s policy of denial towards the annihilation by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and under the cover of World War I of an estimated a million and a half Armenians in the dying years of the Ottoman Empire.
The overwhelming majority of genocide scholars and many parliaments around the world recognize this instance of mass slaughter as a classic case of genocide. The descendents of the genocide victims, in turn, continue to demand that Turkey, too, recognize the genocidal intent behind the decimation of the Armenians, who lived on their ancestral land. The Turkish government vehemently denies, however, that there was a planned destruction of an entire ethnic group. It also argues that the number of victims is vastly exaggerated.
According to Keskin, “there is no real break with the ideology of the CUP not only among the extremists but also among those who consider themselves part of the democratic opposition in Turkey. The ideology that led to the Armenian genocide was a very important element of the founding ideology of the Republic of Turkey.”
Keskin has little faith that Turkey will come to terms with its past in the near future. “The general mindset of the majority of Turkish society, including a significant part of the left, has been shaped under the influence of this ideology. It is for this reason that I don't believe much progress can be made in the short run,” she said. “However, I believe recognition of the genocide is crucial. Turkish people should acknowledge the sufferings of the Armenians, empathize with them and apologize for what happened in 1915.”
* * *
Eren Keskin and many of her colleagues in Turkey operate in an environment of intimidation and threats. “We, the human rights activists, have learned, throughout these years, how to live with fear and to go on despite its persistence,” she said. “Up till now 14 executives and members of our Human Rights Association have been killed by what we call the counter-guerilla units. I myself have been the target of two armed attacks. I still receive death threats. Of course all these generate some fear in me, but if there is one thing, which we have learned by now, is to continue with our struggle despite fear. I guess we owe this to our faith in what we do.”
Indeed, it is on this faith that many people are counting.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
An Interview with Rudolph Rummel
An Interview with Rudolph Rummel
By Khatchig Mouradian
Aztag Daily
January 15, 2004
Rudolph J. Rummel is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science in
University of Hawaii. He has dedicated his career to the study of
causes and conditions of collective violence and mass murder,
and has written about two dozen books and around a hundred
professional articles on the subject. According to his website
( www.hawaii.edu/powerkills ), he was finalist for Nobel Peace Prize
in 1996.
Aztag- What brought the issue of murder by government to your
attention, making you dedicate yourself to the research of war and
mass murder?
Rudolph J. Rummel- I have spent much of my career in the study of
war in order to understand how to stop this massive killing, I was
increasingly surprised to come across references to murdered in
China, the Soviet Union, and elsewhere. I began to wonder if more
were murdered by governments than died in war.
Secondly, it became clear in my research that democratic freedom was
a solution to war. The natural question was then: Is this also true
of democide?
Aztag-What lessons does your research teach us about human nature
and how human society should be "constructed" to ensure a safer future?
Rudolph J. Rummel- What I've learned that is most important is that
war, democide, and famine are not matters of psychology, economics,
or bad rulers, but a matter of the social structure of society. When
society is so structured that the people of a society determine
its policies and leaders (democratic freedom), then war, democide,
and famine will disappear (note that no democracies have ever had
a famine).
Aztag- Your research has revealed that the number of people killed
by absolutist governments in the 20th century far exceeds that for
all wars. Is this unique for the 20th century?
Rudolph J. Rummel- No, although the numbers for the previous centuries
are very uncertain, my feeling for it, having gone through all the
data on this I could find, is that in all previous centuries democide
far exceeds war dead.
Aztag-You say that "the more democratic freedom a nation has,
the less likely its government will commit foreign or domestic
democide". However, such nations have rarely interfered when calamities
like the Armenian genocide and later genocides have taken place. Is
interference in such situations not a moral responsibility that comes
with being a democratic country?
Rudolph J. Rummel- In my view, the democracies have a moral
responsibility to intervene and stop massive democide. I would go
further, since it is the absolute dictators of the world that are the
major source of war and democide, I would rule dictatorship itself
a crime against humanity.
Aztag-Your work with numbers, statistics, calculations, and estimations
related to democide is impressive. In historiography, when can numbers
speak louder than words?
Rudolph J. Rummel- When they are large enough. Just take the number
murdered by communist governments, which is about 110,000,000. that
number alone speaks volumes. Add to it that this is more 3 times
the number killed in all international and domestic wars. This adds
more highly significant volumes still to our historical knowledge. I
would add the visualizations of the numbers to this. See, for example,
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/RM1.RINGS.OF.TEARS.HTM
Aztag- Some of your conclusions have been criticized for "not
considering the number of deaths due to anarchy and the lack
of government, through mechanisms such as civil conflict, the
breakdown of society, and foreign invasion". What would you say to
such criticism? If we accept this criticism, does it change anything
of the "big picture" you have helped create?
Rudolph J. Rummel- The criticism does not realize that we live in
the world's largest anarchy, which is the international system. Then
compare the number killed in wars within this anarchy to the numbers
within a state killed by its governments in democide and its civil
wars. Some of the most violent wars have been civil (up to 40 million
in the Teiping Rebellion, for example, whereas WWII killed in combat
about 16 million; the American Civil War was the deadliest war between
the Napoleonic Wars and WWI). Unknown to many is the we can test this
argument about anarchy empirically, and what in shown is that the most
peaceful society (if peace is one's only value) would be anarchy. I am,
however, not an anarchist, but a libertarian who believes in minimal
government--there are other values besides peace).
Aztag- How did you first become interested in the Armenian genocide?
Rudolph J. Rummel- In the process of collecting data on and histories
of democide. The Armenian genocides is, of course, a big one, and
I wrote a chapter on it in my Death By Government--my statistics on
this are in a chapter on the genocide in my Statistics of Democide
(see URL below).
Aztag- You say about 2.1 million Armenians were murdered by Turkish
regimes, while many scholars put the number somewhere between 1-1.5
million. Can you elaborate a little on on how you made that estimate?
Rudolph J. Rummel- Too many scholars stop their analysis at the end
of the Young Turk Regime. But genocide also occurred after that, even
involving the Turks invasion of the new, postwar Armenian state. See my
statistical analysis at: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP5.HTM
Aztag-The fact that the murder committed against Armenians is genocide
is never in doubt in your work. Many Other genocide scholars have
provided a great body of evidence which indicates the same. However,
there are still many historians (mainly Turkish) and a far larger
number of governments (Turkish and other) who deny/refuse to
acknowledge the Armenian genocide. How do you visualize recognition
and reparation in the case of Armenian genocide?
Rudolph J. Rummel- No reparations. Too much time has passed, virtually
no one in authority during this period is alive, and Armenians loses
in property and income are too diffuse to determine now anyway. The
other side of this in the injustice that would be committed against
Turks that had no role in the genocide and may have opposed it, and
whose even may have fought against it (many Turks did try to help
the Armenians).
What I do think is right is recognition internationally and especially
by Turkey that the genocide occurred, and a formal government to
government apology.
By Khatchig Mouradian
Aztag Daily
January 15, 2004
Rudolph J. Rummel is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science in
University of Hawaii. He has dedicated his career to the study of
causes and conditions of collective violence and mass murder,
and has written about two dozen books and around a hundred
professional articles on the subject. According to his website
( www.hawaii.edu/powerkills ), he was finalist for Nobel Peace Prize
in 1996.
Aztag- What brought the issue of murder by government to your
attention, making you dedicate yourself to the research of war and
mass murder?
Rudolph J. Rummel- I have spent much of my career in the study of
war in order to understand how to stop this massive killing, I was
increasingly surprised to come across references to murdered in
China, the Soviet Union, and elsewhere. I began to wonder if more
were murdered by governments than died in war.
Secondly, it became clear in my research that democratic freedom was
a solution to war. The natural question was then: Is this also true
of democide?
Aztag-What lessons does your research teach us about human nature
and how human society should be "constructed" to ensure a safer future?
Rudolph J. Rummel- What I've learned that is most important is that
war, democide, and famine are not matters of psychology, economics,
or bad rulers, but a matter of the social structure of society. When
society is so structured that the people of a society determine
its policies and leaders (democratic freedom), then war, democide,
and famine will disappear (note that no democracies have ever had
a famine).
Aztag- Your research has revealed that the number of people killed
by absolutist governments in the 20th century far exceeds that for
all wars. Is this unique for the 20th century?
Rudolph J. Rummel- No, although the numbers for the previous centuries
are very uncertain, my feeling for it, having gone through all the
data on this I could find, is that in all previous centuries democide
far exceeds war dead.
Aztag-You say that "the more democratic freedom a nation has,
the less likely its government will commit foreign or domestic
democide". However, such nations have rarely interfered when calamities
like the Armenian genocide and later genocides have taken place. Is
interference in such situations not a moral responsibility that comes
with being a democratic country?
Rudolph J. Rummel- In my view, the democracies have a moral
responsibility to intervene and stop massive democide. I would go
further, since it is the absolute dictators of the world that are the
major source of war and democide, I would rule dictatorship itself
a crime against humanity.
Aztag-Your work with numbers, statistics, calculations, and estimations
related to democide is impressive. In historiography, when can numbers
speak louder than words?
Rudolph J. Rummel- When they are large enough. Just take the number
murdered by communist governments, which is about 110,000,000. that
number alone speaks volumes. Add to it that this is more 3 times
the number killed in all international and domestic wars. This adds
more highly significant volumes still to our historical knowledge. I
would add the visualizations of the numbers to this. See, for example,
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/RM1.RINGS.OF.TEARS.HTM
Aztag- Some of your conclusions have been criticized for "not
considering the number of deaths due to anarchy and the lack
of government, through mechanisms such as civil conflict, the
breakdown of society, and foreign invasion". What would you say to
such criticism? If we accept this criticism, does it change anything
of the "big picture" you have helped create?
Rudolph J. Rummel- The criticism does not realize that we live in
the world's largest anarchy, which is the international system. Then
compare the number killed in wars within this anarchy to the numbers
within a state killed by its governments in democide and its civil
wars. Some of the most violent wars have been civil (up to 40 million
in the Teiping Rebellion, for example, whereas WWII killed in combat
about 16 million; the American Civil War was the deadliest war between
the Napoleonic Wars and WWI). Unknown to many is the we can test this
argument about anarchy empirically, and what in shown is that the most
peaceful society (if peace is one's only value) would be anarchy. I am,
however, not an anarchist, but a libertarian who believes in minimal
government--there are other values besides peace).
Aztag- How did you first become interested in the Armenian genocide?
Rudolph J. Rummel- In the process of collecting data on and histories
of democide. The Armenian genocides is, of course, a big one, and
I wrote a chapter on it in my Death By Government--my statistics on
this are in a chapter on the genocide in my Statistics of Democide
(see URL below).
Aztag- You say about 2.1 million Armenians were murdered by Turkish
regimes, while many scholars put the number somewhere between 1-1.5
million. Can you elaborate a little on on how you made that estimate?
Rudolph J. Rummel- Too many scholars stop their analysis at the end
of the Young Turk Regime. But genocide also occurred after that, even
involving the Turks invasion of the new, postwar Armenian state. See my
statistical analysis at: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP5.HTM
Aztag-The fact that the murder committed against Armenians is genocide
is never in doubt in your work. Many Other genocide scholars have
provided a great body of evidence which indicates the same. However,
there are still many historians (mainly Turkish) and a far larger
number of governments (Turkish and other) who deny/refuse to
acknowledge the Armenian genocide. How do you visualize recognition
and reparation in the case of Armenian genocide?
Rudolph J. Rummel- No reparations. Too much time has passed, virtually
no one in authority during this period is alive, and Armenians loses
in property and income are too diffuse to determine now anyway. The
other side of this in the injustice that would be committed against
Turks that had no role in the genocide and may have opposed it, and
whose even may have fought against it (many Turks did try to help
the Armenians).
What I do think is right is recognition internationally and especially
by Turkey that the genocide occurred, and a formal government to
government apology.
An Interview with Henry Theriault
Free Speech, 'Open Mindedness', and the Denial of the Armenian Genocide
An Interview with Henry Theriault
by Khatchig Mouradian
Aztag Daily
Professor Henry Theriault received his B.A. from Princeton University and
his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Massachusetts. He serves as
Associate Professor of philosophy and coordinates the Center for the Study
of Human Rights at Worcester State College (Massachusetts, USA). His
research interests include genocide, nationalism, and the philosophy of
history.
Henry Theriault visited Beirut in April. His visit was initiated by the
Lebanese-Armenian Heritage Club of the American University of Beirut. He
gave public lectures at the American University of Beirut, Haigazian
University, the Hagop Der Melkonian hall, and the Armenian Catholicosate of
Cilicia. Despite his tight schedule, he managed to spare some time for an
interview, which ended up being more of a lively discussion. Excerpts:
Aztag- Having specialized in philosophy, you bring a fresh perspective to
the study of the Armenian Genocide. This is evident from the few papers you
have so far published as well as from your lectures. In what way can
philosophy be helpful in the study of genocide and mass murder?
Henry Theriault- One issue where such an approach is necessary is that of
denial. People often respond to denial on the level of presenting the facts.
However, denials are really never about the facts, they are about trying to
manipulate a target audience and make them see the realities of the world in
a way that's not accurate. To achieve this end, there are a number of
techniques that deniers use. For example, they introduce ideas that every
perspective on a historical event is equally valid. And if you approach the
deniers from a historical perspective, you state the facts and you end up
getting into a debate about which facts count and which ones don't. In my
opinion, you can almost never win that debate. A denier can always reject
whatever fact you have, any document you produce, no matter how good the
evidence. A denier can always bounce back and you get in an ongoing battle
over the facts; a battle that doesn't end, and the ultimate result is a kind
of stalemate where whatever historical facts you are trying to prove is
never really proven. In case of the Armenian genocide, for instance, the
Turkish deniers sometimes just make the same arguments over and over again
to new audiences. The arguments can be discredited, they can be completely
fallacious and yet, every time they make them, they get taken seriously
again and again, and you have to fight that battle forever.
Aztag- You put this very bluntly when you said in one of your lectures in
Beirut that it is not important for the deniers to make people believe in
what they say, the important thing for them is that what the Armenians say
is not believed.
Henry Theriault- Exactly! They create a situation where there's no clear
truth; for a denier, that's victory! The audience doesn't have to believe
any version. I find the claim put forth by some extreme deniers that the
Armenians committed genocide by killing Turks and other Muslims very
striking. If anyone with a basic understanding of history just looks at the
number of Armenians who were in the Ottoman Empire and what possible access
of arms they had, the notion that Armenians committed genocide becomes so
absurd. But when deniers make that claim, people end up balancing:
`Armenians say Turks committed genocide against them; Turks say the
Armenians committed genocide against them. These two groups hate each other,
and who knows what is the truth is and what's not, we can't commit to either
side."
As I said, there are also things like the appeal to free speech. Deniers
insist that that every opinion should be heard and taken seriously no matter
what it is. One of the problems in the US is that people are very simplistic
about free speech. Every opinion should be heard doesn't mean every opinion
should be taken equally seriously, and what happens is that people make that
mistake; they think "oh, this is an opinion, that's an opinion too. I'll be
open minded and take them BOTH seriously". That's great if you're talking
about complicated political issues where you're really trying to reach an
understanding of different positions. But when we're talking about a basic
historical fact, then you want to make sure you get the evidence, the
available information, and then you take it and you try to make some sense
out of it.
>From a philosophical standpoint, there are other problems as well. There is
this idea of absolute positivism where no historical fact is ever proven
unless somehow there's absolute evidence on it. But the problem is the
evidence standards that a lot of deniers try to get people to commit to are
so extreme that no person really thinking rationally would accept them. The
deniers say, for instance, that to prove that Armenian genocide happened,
you have to have absolute data, a huge number of valid data that support
every particular point you're making and there should be no ambiguous data
and so forth. But sometimes even in the hard sciences, absolute data is not
available. People ought to be very careful when they claim that evidence of
the genocide isn't sufficient because it really accepts the deniers' view
that whatever evidence you give, the bar goes up a little bit higher to the
point that it becomes irrational.
People have a lot of very simplistic ideas about critical thinking. For
instance, they think one should listen to the both sides of the story and
you never judge, or the proper way that objectivity is the same as
neutrality, which is completely false. I think anyone claiming that he knows
anything about history should be willing to accept that some basic facts are
beyond doubt. One may disagree on the number of Armenians killed in the
Armenian genocide, but the fact that a large number of Armenians were killed
because of a systematic state policy is something that's either a fact or it
isn't.
In a murder case, it's very rare to have direct and conclusive evidence of a
crime. You trust this witness, you trust that witness. Somebody was supposed
to be somewhere at 10 o'clock at night, and somebody says he saw a car like
the one that person drives on the street, miles away...you put the evidence
together and the bottom line is that you eventually have to come to a
conclusion. Deniers would like to keep the question open forever. So by
saying that there's not enough evidence of genocide you're essentially
giving a victory to denial, because you're not settling the question. As
soon as you say you need more evidence then it's your job to make sure you
get it. I'm an academic and I certainly have this `disease' as well. We tend
to think in terms of decades of thinking and research and so forth, but when
you're dealing with Human Rights issues, like the Armenian genocide, lives
can be on the line and future human rights issues could be at stake. So I
think we have to hurry ourselves up occasionally and make some tough
decisions.
Aztag- And, of course, that doesn't mean that the research should stop.
Henry Theriault- No it doesn't. The way you test whether someone is being
reasonable in their opinions, you ask him `what kind of evidence you would
it take to make you change your position?' and if the person says there is
no evidence that could possibly make him change his mind, then you know that
the person is committed to the idea without really weighing it through the
process of evaluation. If someone asks what it would take to make me change
my mind about, say, the Armenian genocide or the Rwandan genocide, I would
answer that if I suddenly found out I've been brainwashed or something, then
I would have to accept the argument that these genocides didn't occur.
However, the evidence is so overwhelming that it will be entirely irrational
and unreasonable for me not to take it seriously. Anyone who studies the
events in the Ottoman Empire during that period of time would conclude that
what took place was genocide.
Aztag- But we have to be realistic. People cannot research every single
issue to form an opinion about it. At some point, they have to accept the
views of professionals specialized in that field. You are saying that anyone
who researches these events will conclude that what took place was genocide.
The deniers can, in turn, say that anyone who does some research will find
out that what took place wasn't genocide. No wonder some people are confused
and approach the issue with `open-mindedness'.
Henry Theriault- I would like to say two things about this. First, in the
field of philosophy there's a debate about whether you can have something
called theory neutral data. If you just collect the data, will it point to
some theory or is it always necessary to have some kind of framework? The
use of a bad relativist framework convinces people that this is a good way
to look at the world, and then when they're confronted with data of the
Armenian genocide or any other human rights violation they see it within a
framework where it doesn't look like genocide, it doesn't look like a one
sided violence.
Second, I'd like to say that in life there is no absolute certainty. People
300 years ago thought that Newton's equations of motion were the absolute
last word in physics. I'm not an expert on this, but the universe doesn't
fit together in quite the neat way. And human reality is so much more
complicated than the hard sciences. And of course, nothing fits together in
a nice neat package. If the deniers apply their evidence standards on the
Holocaust, and even on issues of hard sciences, they would sound equally
convincing.
Aztag- This atmosphere that denial creates is intolerable for the ever
decreasing number of Armenians who faced these atrocities as well as for us,
their descendents. However, the Turks who are not aware of the facts, and
who are brought up in schools where the denialist or, at best, the
relativist approaches are being taught, would feel great frustration as well
when they face the `Armenian claims'. Denial's detrimental effects are felt
on both sides and on many levels, aren't they?
Henry Theriault- If I were a Turk today, I would be reaching back to the
Ottoman Empire to think of something good about my country. Today, Turkey is
in a very weak position, it looks very strong but Turkey is effectively a
state of the United States; the US government more or less tells turkey what
it wants and Turkey has to do it. Of course, if you look back to the days of
the Ottoman Empire, the contrast is striking. Nowadays, Turkey is not only
very dependent on the USA, but also it's not much liked in the region by
most governments. It also has internal problems (Islamism, democracy
standards, Kurds). And you can understand, maybe on a human level that Turks
would want to identify with the good things in their history. The problem is
when they takes that to the level of "I desperately need to have a proud
identity and anybody that says anything negative at all about Turkey as my
enemy and it's got to be wrong". But the anger that an Armenian feels at
denial and the anger that a Turkish person might feel at having to confront
the fact of the genocide are not the same angers, they're not coming from
the same source and they shouldn't be evaluated in the same way.
Aztag- You are working on a paper where a new approach to the interpretation
of the motives that led to the Armenian genocide will be presented. What was
your `problem' with the previous theories?
Henry Theriault- A lot of important and invaluable research has been done on
the Armenian genocide. But there are two issues that I often think about.
One is that people tend to look for one mechanism that accounts for the
genocide. The way I understand genocide is in terms of the particular
perpetrators who participate at the high levels, at the ground level and in
between. There are different kinds of perpetrators, there are different
kinds of motives: some perpetrators have overlapping multiple motives;
economic, ideological, psychological etc.
Some theories of Holocaust would reduce it down to "Hitler was insane, and
hated his grandmother who was a Jew" or something like that; that's just
ridiculous because that may be a piece of the bigger puzzle and it might
very important to include it, but when people take one piece and present it
as the whole truth, that's too much. One should know what the historical
facts are, and then try to understand why they are as they are.
One needs to look at economic issues, clerical issues, prejudice on the
ground, racism, if there were religious issues, historical trends and
shifts, demographics, migration patterns, one needs to look at a whole range
of issues to understand genocide. In this respect, there are some missing
pieces in the Armenian genocide historiography because a lot of the scholars
try to reduce it down to one or two mechanisms.
This is somehow related to Nietzsche's Perspectivism. One of the things
Nietzsche does in his writings is work through different perspectives and
different ideas; people think he's contradicting himself, but what he's
actually doing is bringing different things into perspective, and going
through that takes a fairly sophisticated intellectual sense of what's going
on.
What I'm saying is that if one is going to explain a complicated historical
event that involves millions of people, one has got to recognize that your
understanding of that event is going to be very complicated. It doesn't mean
that you can't focus in on certain clear pieces that help to reduce it down
for easy kind of understanding, and it doesn't mean you can't say that the
Turkish government committed genocide of Armenians; of course they did, but
that genocide was complicated, the way it works. In my paper, a draft of
which you saw, I'm not giving a comprehensive view of the genocide, but I'm
trying to pay attention to some things that have not been paid attention to,
such as the interior issues among the Turks and within the Armenian
community.
Aztag- In an interview conducted in January, I asked Professor Rudolph
Rummel about the issues of recognition and reparation. He said, `No
reparations. Too much time has passed, virtually no one in authority during
this period is alive, and Armenians loses in property and income are too
diffuse to determine now anyway. Theother side of this in the injustice that
would be committed against Turks that had no role in the genocide and may
have opposed it, and whose even may have fought against it (many Turks did
try to help the Armenians)'.
What do you think about his comment?
Henry Theriault- The amount of time that passed doesn't matter; it's whether
the repercussions of the genocide and the loss of land still have an impact.
For example, I fully support the case of land claims of native Americans,
and part of the reason why I do that is the impact of the loss of lands.
Native Americans today are facing great difficulty because of the legacy of
the genocide; I don't care if a thousand years go by. The case of Armenians
is similar. If you just look at the delicate political situation of Armenia,
its vulnerability to Turkey, the dependence on Russia and the US and others
for basic survival, what I mean becomes clear. So I think that part of the
reparations is to help rebuild the victim community in a way that makes it
secure and viable.
An Interview with Henry Theriault
by Khatchig Mouradian
Aztag Daily
Professor Henry Theriault received his B.A. from Princeton University and
his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Massachusetts. He serves as
Associate Professor of philosophy and coordinates the Center for the Study
of Human Rights at Worcester State College (Massachusetts, USA). His
research interests include genocide, nationalism, and the philosophy of
history.
Henry Theriault visited Beirut in April. His visit was initiated by the
Lebanese-Armenian Heritage Club of the American University of Beirut. He
gave public lectures at the American University of Beirut, Haigazian
University, the Hagop Der Melkonian hall, and the Armenian Catholicosate of
Cilicia. Despite his tight schedule, he managed to spare some time for an
interview, which ended up being more of a lively discussion. Excerpts:
Aztag- Having specialized in philosophy, you bring a fresh perspective to
the study of the Armenian Genocide. This is evident from the few papers you
have so far published as well as from your lectures. In what way can
philosophy be helpful in the study of genocide and mass murder?
Henry Theriault- One issue where such an approach is necessary is that of
denial. People often respond to denial on the level of presenting the facts.
However, denials are really never about the facts, they are about trying to
manipulate a target audience and make them see the realities of the world in
a way that's not accurate. To achieve this end, there are a number of
techniques that deniers use. For example, they introduce ideas that every
perspective on a historical event is equally valid. And if you approach the
deniers from a historical perspective, you state the facts and you end up
getting into a debate about which facts count and which ones don't. In my
opinion, you can almost never win that debate. A denier can always reject
whatever fact you have, any document you produce, no matter how good the
evidence. A denier can always bounce back and you get in an ongoing battle
over the facts; a battle that doesn't end, and the ultimate result is a kind
of stalemate where whatever historical facts you are trying to prove is
never really proven. In case of the Armenian genocide, for instance, the
Turkish deniers sometimes just make the same arguments over and over again
to new audiences. The arguments can be discredited, they can be completely
fallacious and yet, every time they make them, they get taken seriously
again and again, and you have to fight that battle forever.
Aztag- You put this very bluntly when you said in one of your lectures in
Beirut that it is not important for the deniers to make people believe in
what they say, the important thing for them is that what the Armenians say
is not believed.
Henry Theriault- Exactly! They create a situation where there's no clear
truth; for a denier, that's victory! The audience doesn't have to believe
any version. I find the claim put forth by some extreme deniers that the
Armenians committed genocide by killing Turks and other Muslims very
striking. If anyone with a basic understanding of history just looks at the
number of Armenians who were in the Ottoman Empire and what possible access
of arms they had, the notion that Armenians committed genocide becomes so
absurd. But when deniers make that claim, people end up balancing:
`Armenians say Turks committed genocide against them; Turks say the
Armenians committed genocide against them. These two groups hate each other,
and who knows what is the truth is and what's not, we can't commit to either
side."
As I said, there are also things like the appeal to free speech. Deniers
insist that that every opinion should be heard and taken seriously no matter
what it is. One of the problems in the US is that people are very simplistic
about free speech. Every opinion should be heard doesn't mean every opinion
should be taken equally seriously, and what happens is that people make that
mistake; they think "oh, this is an opinion, that's an opinion too. I'll be
open minded and take them BOTH seriously". That's great if you're talking
about complicated political issues where you're really trying to reach an
understanding of different positions. But when we're talking about a basic
historical fact, then you want to make sure you get the evidence, the
available information, and then you take it and you try to make some sense
out of it.
>From a philosophical standpoint, there are other problems as well. There is
this idea of absolute positivism where no historical fact is ever proven
unless somehow there's absolute evidence on it. But the problem is the
evidence standards that a lot of deniers try to get people to commit to are
so extreme that no person really thinking rationally would accept them. The
deniers say, for instance, that to prove that Armenian genocide happened,
you have to have absolute data, a huge number of valid data that support
every particular point you're making and there should be no ambiguous data
and so forth. But sometimes even in the hard sciences, absolute data is not
available. People ought to be very careful when they claim that evidence of
the genocide isn't sufficient because it really accepts the deniers' view
that whatever evidence you give, the bar goes up a little bit higher to the
point that it becomes irrational.
People have a lot of very simplistic ideas about critical thinking. For
instance, they think one should listen to the both sides of the story and
you never judge, or the proper way that objectivity is the same as
neutrality, which is completely false. I think anyone claiming that he knows
anything about history should be willing to accept that some basic facts are
beyond doubt. One may disagree on the number of Armenians killed in the
Armenian genocide, but the fact that a large number of Armenians were killed
because of a systematic state policy is something that's either a fact or it
isn't.
In a murder case, it's very rare to have direct and conclusive evidence of a
crime. You trust this witness, you trust that witness. Somebody was supposed
to be somewhere at 10 o'clock at night, and somebody says he saw a car like
the one that person drives on the street, miles away...you put the evidence
together and the bottom line is that you eventually have to come to a
conclusion. Deniers would like to keep the question open forever. So by
saying that there's not enough evidence of genocide you're essentially
giving a victory to denial, because you're not settling the question. As
soon as you say you need more evidence then it's your job to make sure you
get it. I'm an academic and I certainly have this `disease' as well. We tend
to think in terms of decades of thinking and research and so forth, but when
you're dealing with Human Rights issues, like the Armenian genocide, lives
can be on the line and future human rights issues could be at stake. So I
think we have to hurry ourselves up occasionally and make some tough
decisions.
Aztag- And, of course, that doesn't mean that the research should stop.
Henry Theriault- No it doesn't. The way you test whether someone is being
reasonable in their opinions, you ask him `what kind of evidence you would
it take to make you change your position?' and if the person says there is
no evidence that could possibly make him change his mind, then you know that
the person is committed to the idea without really weighing it through the
process of evaluation. If someone asks what it would take to make me change
my mind about, say, the Armenian genocide or the Rwandan genocide, I would
answer that if I suddenly found out I've been brainwashed or something, then
I would have to accept the argument that these genocides didn't occur.
However, the evidence is so overwhelming that it will be entirely irrational
and unreasonable for me not to take it seriously. Anyone who studies the
events in the Ottoman Empire during that period of time would conclude that
what took place was genocide.
Aztag- But we have to be realistic. People cannot research every single
issue to form an opinion about it. At some point, they have to accept the
views of professionals specialized in that field. You are saying that anyone
who researches these events will conclude that what took place was genocide.
The deniers can, in turn, say that anyone who does some research will find
out that what took place wasn't genocide. No wonder some people are confused
and approach the issue with `open-mindedness'.
Henry Theriault- I would like to say two things about this. First, in the
field of philosophy there's a debate about whether you can have something
called theory neutral data. If you just collect the data, will it point to
some theory or is it always necessary to have some kind of framework? The
use of a bad relativist framework convinces people that this is a good way
to look at the world, and then when they're confronted with data of the
Armenian genocide or any other human rights violation they see it within a
framework where it doesn't look like genocide, it doesn't look like a one
sided violence.
Second, I'd like to say that in life there is no absolute certainty. People
300 years ago thought that Newton's equations of motion were the absolute
last word in physics. I'm not an expert on this, but the universe doesn't
fit together in quite the neat way. And human reality is so much more
complicated than the hard sciences. And of course, nothing fits together in
a nice neat package. If the deniers apply their evidence standards on the
Holocaust, and even on issues of hard sciences, they would sound equally
convincing.
Aztag- This atmosphere that denial creates is intolerable for the ever
decreasing number of Armenians who faced these atrocities as well as for us,
their descendents. However, the Turks who are not aware of the facts, and
who are brought up in schools where the denialist or, at best, the
relativist approaches are being taught, would feel great frustration as well
when they face the `Armenian claims'. Denial's detrimental effects are felt
on both sides and on many levels, aren't they?
Henry Theriault- If I were a Turk today, I would be reaching back to the
Ottoman Empire to think of something good about my country. Today, Turkey is
in a very weak position, it looks very strong but Turkey is effectively a
state of the United States; the US government more or less tells turkey what
it wants and Turkey has to do it. Of course, if you look back to the days of
the Ottoman Empire, the contrast is striking. Nowadays, Turkey is not only
very dependent on the USA, but also it's not much liked in the region by
most governments. It also has internal problems (Islamism, democracy
standards, Kurds). And you can understand, maybe on a human level that Turks
would want to identify with the good things in their history. The problem is
when they takes that to the level of "I desperately need to have a proud
identity and anybody that says anything negative at all about Turkey as my
enemy and it's got to be wrong". But the anger that an Armenian feels at
denial and the anger that a Turkish person might feel at having to confront
the fact of the genocide are not the same angers, they're not coming from
the same source and they shouldn't be evaluated in the same way.
Aztag- You are working on a paper where a new approach to the interpretation
of the motives that led to the Armenian genocide will be presented. What was
your `problem' with the previous theories?
Henry Theriault- A lot of important and invaluable research has been done on
the Armenian genocide. But there are two issues that I often think about.
One is that people tend to look for one mechanism that accounts for the
genocide. The way I understand genocide is in terms of the particular
perpetrators who participate at the high levels, at the ground level and in
between. There are different kinds of perpetrators, there are different
kinds of motives: some perpetrators have overlapping multiple motives;
economic, ideological, psychological etc.
Some theories of Holocaust would reduce it down to "Hitler was insane, and
hated his grandmother who was a Jew" or something like that; that's just
ridiculous because that may be a piece of the bigger puzzle and it might
very important to include it, but when people take one piece and present it
as the whole truth, that's too much. One should know what the historical
facts are, and then try to understand why they are as they are.
One needs to look at economic issues, clerical issues, prejudice on the
ground, racism, if there were religious issues, historical trends and
shifts, demographics, migration patterns, one needs to look at a whole range
of issues to understand genocide. In this respect, there are some missing
pieces in the Armenian genocide historiography because a lot of the scholars
try to reduce it down to one or two mechanisms.
This is somehow related to Nietzsche's Perspectivism. One of the things
Nietzsche does in his writings is work through different perspectives and
different ideas; people think he's contradicting himself, but what he's
actually doing is bringing different things into perspective, and going
through that takes a fairly sophisticated intellectual sense of what's going
on.
What I'm saying is that if one is going to explain a complicated historical
event that involves millions of people, one has got to recognize that your
understanding of that event is going to be very complicated. It doesn't mean
that you can't focus in on certain clear pieces that help to reduce it down
for easy kind of understanding, and it doesn't mean you can't say that the
Turkish government committed genocide of Armenians; of course they did, but
that genocide was complicated, the way it works. In my paper, a draft of
which you saw, I'm not giving a comprehensive view of the genocide, but I'm
trying to pay attention to some things that have not been paid attention to,
such as the interior issues among the Turks and within the Armenian
community.
Aztag- In an interview conducted in January, I asked Professor Rudolph
Rummel about the issues of recognition and reparation. He said, `No
reparations. Too much time has passed, virtually no one in authority during
this period is alive, and Armenians loses in property and income are too
diffuse to determine now anyway. Theother side of this in the injustice that
would be committed against Turks that had no role in the genocide and may
have opposed it, and whose even may have fought against it (many Turks did
try to help the Armenians)'.
What do you think about his comment?
Henry Theriault- The amount of time that passed doesn't matter; it's whether
the repercussions of the genocide and the loss of land still have an impact.
For example, I fully support the case of land claims of native Americans,
and part of the reason why I do that is the impact of the loss of lands.
Native Americans today are facing great difficulty because of the legacy of
the genocide; I don't care if a thousand years go by. The case of Armenians
is similar. If you just look at the delicate political situation of Armenia,
its vulnerability to Turkey, the dependence on Russia and the US and others
for basic survival, what I mean becomes clear. So I think that part of the
reparations is to help rebuild the victim community in a way that makes it
secure and viable.
An Interview with Muge Gocek
On the Foundations of Turkey
An Interview with Muge Gocek
By Khatchig Mouradian
Aztag Daily
17 January, 2005
"Historians have primarily been concerned with protecting the interests of
the state. This has been the dominant historiography since the founding of
the Turkish Republic," says Muge Gocek in this interview. She adds, however,
"Today, there are new works, like the works of Taner Akcam and the
interviews of Halil Berktay that approach the State's views critically.
These, put together with the fact that recently - in the last two decades -
especially the Aras publishing house in Turkey has been translating
Turkish-Armenian literature into Turkish, make me think, or hope and wish
that there may be a post-national critical narrative developing."
Gocek, Associate Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies at the
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, certainly does much more than hoping and
wishing, however, regarding what she calls a "post-national critical
narrative." She is one of the few Turkish voices in wilderness, organizing
conferences that bring together Turkish and Armenian scholars who are
prepared to set aside prejudices and confront history with all
its ugliness. She writes papers and gives lectures on the Armenian genocide,
and is currently, authoring a book on the subject.
The number of Turkish scholars that challenge the state's point of view
regarding the Armenian genocide - any Turkish diplomat would immediately
tell you it is the "so-called Armenian genocide" -- is not extensive.
However, their work speaks for itself. It is already catching the attention
of their Armenian colleagues, as well as historians, publicists and
politicians in the West.
Will the dominant Turkish elite have the courage to confronts its past and
acknowledge the suffering that the government of the Young Turks in the
Ottoman Empire inflicted on a considerable segment of its subjects? Will the
souls of more than a million Armenians that perished because of
state-sponsored killings finally rest in peace? For what they believe will
be for the good of all on both sides of the divide, Gocek and some of her
like-minded Turkish colleagues want to make sure that the answers to these
questions are all in the affirmative.
You can call them 'turncoats' or you can call them 'pioneers'. They will not
feel intimidated by the first label. Nor will they be blinded by the second.
However you will describe them, one thing is certain: their work is a
harbinger of things to come.
Aztag- How did your research interests lead you to research the fate of the
Armenians in the early 20th century Ottoman Empire?
Muge Gocek- When I came to do my doctoral degree here in the US, I was
interested in the decline of the Ottoman Empire, especially in the elements
that led to its demise, and also in the rise of the Turkish Republic--my
dissertation was titled "the Rise of the Bourgeoisie and Demise of the
Empire". During my research, I was alerted to the role the religious
minorities played in the Ottoman Empire and how, with the emergence of the
nation-state, these minorities were drawn out of the picture, and how their
exclusion led to the formation of a different type of society in Turkey. But
at that particular juncture, my interest in the minorities didn't go beyond
that.
However, as a historical sociologist, I was very interested in writing about
the histories of social groups that had not had a voice in history; this was
eventually compounded by my interest in the lack of democratization and the
lack of the participation of social groups in determining the Turkish
political structure. I was especially distressed about what was happening to
the Kurds and to other minority groups in Turkey today.
The way that the Armenians came into the picture had to do with my
particular location in the US. Whenever I told Armenians I was a Turk, I was
immediately asked to account for killing all those Armenians; I'm still
telling them that I honestly had nothing to do with it!
Initially, the issue was extremely politicized for me to venture into that
field. Anyhow, at the time I was working on other projects, and that is why
I put off getting involved in this matter. But then all my interests came
together and after I established my professional standing here and got
tenure, I figured that, as an academic, this was an issue I had to research
for a number of reasons. The most important reason is something which is
not covered much and that has to do with the emotional aspect of what
happened: The Armenians I talked with were so hurt because of this awful
thing that had happened in the past; they were not able to mourn it properly
because it was not recognized. Regardless of what happened, if one doesn't
recognize something that has happened to someone, and something that has
been an extremely traumatic experience, it increases the trauma even more
and warps them emotionally. That's why when I said "look, I feel for you as
a human being, I'm willing to listen to what made you suffer so much, made
your life so miserable, tell me what happened to you," people were
immediately so much relieved that they almost became speechless. That was
an extremely eye-opening experience for me: I never realized how much
acknowledging and sharing people's emotions and sufferings can make them and
you better people, part of a humane community.
Just as eye-opening for me was that in Turkey, when this issue came up, the
Turks I talked to became extremely angry. That made me realize how much the
official historiography there had left out what had happened in the past. I
got the best education Turkey had to offer before I came to the US and I
myself wasn't aware of what happened, because there are no sources that I
could have read and critically studied other than the ones that presented
the Turkish State's version of history. This was, of course, very hard to
overcome and I was able to do so because I came to the US and continued my
scholarship. The position that emerges in Turkey is unfortunately one based
on the ignorance of our own past, partly because of the partial knowledge
that exists out there in what passes as Turkish scholarship and also
because, as a consequence of the alphabet reforms, people cannot read the
original Ottoman texts themselves, and the translation of those Ottoman
sources into Latin script has been controlled by the government as well.
Still, because of personal experiences and hearsay, there is a general
awareness in society that things are not what they are portrayed to be and
that in the public rhetoric there are some missing elements. In Turkey,
there is general criticism of the State control over knowledge today and I
think that criticism is also reflected on the Armenian issue as well.
Given the existing state of affairs --the strong emotions of the Armenians
here and the strong emotions in Turkey-- and the fact that I had now
established my own credentials as an academic, I thought it was the right
time for me to pick this topic up for further analysis. Of course, the first
thing I had to do was to prove that I really was not an Armenian. This had
to be done because the nationalist Turks thought I had to have some Armenian
blood in me since no Turk in is his/her right mind would engage in such
"destructive" behavior toward the Turkish state, because they see what I'm
doing as leading to the destruction of the Turkish nation-state. Likewise,
whenever I presented my thoughts to the Armenian audiences here in the US,
they would say that I had to be Armenian, since they couldn't think of any
Turk who could say such things, because they believed Turks in general were
not capable of being so reasonable or say things that are critical of Turkey
and the Turks. What is of course very striking here is that both sides have
the same prejudice. That's how I am probably going to start the book I'm
writing on the subject. But I had to go back and trace all my ancestors to
see if there was one part which was Armenian.
Aztag- They really got you doubting didn't they?
Muge Gocek- Well, if there was an element of truth in it, I wanted to make
sure it was I who discovered it first, rather than have them discover it at
some point. My ancestors all come from Anatolia-I do not have any Balkan
origins at all. One of my ancestors was from Agn (Kemalye), from a village
called Bashvartenik, however. I went there to discover who my ancestors
were--my mother's grandfather had left there in 1903-- and it turns out we
are Sunni Muslims to the core, and came there from the Caucasus in the 16th
century. I asked the people there why the place is called Bashvartenik, an
Armenian name meaning 'large rose bushes', and they said, "Before we came,
there were Armenians here, but they had migrated to Agn". Obviously, my
ancestors had no connection to the Armenians in any way, especially to 1915.
However, I still cannot convince them that I'm not an Armenian.
What I'm trying to do is to come to terms with how the historiography on
1915 was created in Turkey. I'm writing a book on this as we speak, with the
hopes that if we see the dynamics behind the creation of this
historiography, if we understand the dynamics, people can go from denial to
remembrance to respect.
Another thing that I tell audiences here is that recognition of what
happened in 1915 will be very cathartic for the Armenians, but for the
Turks, it will be the beginning of a very long process, an arduous process
because there are many other social groups in Turkish history that have also
suffered; there are the Greeks, the Assyrians, of course, the Kurds, and, at
certain junctures, the Islamists. Turkey has a lot to come to terms with and
it is going to be a very long and difficult process.
Aztag- In one of your papers, you refer to "the other silences" in Turkish
history.
Muge Gocek- Exactly! I was originally going to write on the silences of
Turkish history and speak about all the different groups that suffered - in
addition to the groups I mentioned previously, I was also interested about
the terrible fate of the leftist intellectuals in Turkey and how they too
were suppressed. But Ronald Suny was here, and he and I would meet and talk
about these things, and he thought I was the only Turk who thought
critically about Turkish history and about the Armenian problem. I said no
there are others, and that's how we started thinking about bringing together
scholars from both sides. The first workshop we held was at the University
of Chicago in 2000 and we had another at the University of Michigan in 2002
and one at Minnesota in 2003. In all these workshops, what we first tried
to do was develop a common language; I think we have been able to do this,
the group keeps growing and hopefully we can now start working on joint
projects together.
Aztag- You have come a long way. At the very beginning, there were many
historians who had reservations and refused to take part in the workshops.
Muge Gocek- Yes. Quite a number of them initially stayed out of it; some
wanted us to write declarations stating that we are recognizing the Armenian
genocide before we even started. It was interesting because Ron himself
said, "look, we are scholars and that goes against the nature of
scholarship". We just went along with the ones who were willing to take the
risk and come, and then of course time proved us right.
Aztag- Some even confused your workshop with the meetings of the
Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission (TARC), didn't they?
Muge Gocek- Yes. It is very interesting, because that confusion was there on
both sides; both the Armenians and some of the Turks I talked to thought
that I was inviting them to this place where we were going to advocate the
views of the Turkish State. I think this demonstrates how ingrained and
dominating the political narrative of the Turkish state is in this matter.
It's very hard for people to perceive that there is scholarship done
independently of the Turkish state, that there is a Turkish society that is
separate from the Turkish state. Even in the Armenian Republic, some
newspaper editorials appeared stating that the scheduling and timing of our
workshop had been strategically planned in relation to the reconciliation
meetings. This was very ironic because the scheduling was actually done with
respect to when Ronald Suny, I, and others had free time in our teaching
schedules...
The whole politics around the subject was actually one of the reasons why we
decided at the very beginning that the workshop should be closed to the
public. We didn't want participants marching in and declaring what we should
be doing, but nevertheless we thought that there ought to be a public
component to the workshop where we shared the results of our workshop with
others. Now we have a public presentation session at each workshop where we
summarize what we have accomplished. We also invite some journalists to
attend so that they could see for themselves what's happening and report on
it to the larger public.
Aztag- You speak about three phases in Turkish historiography. Based on what
criteria did you make this distinction?
Muge Gocek- When Ronald Suny and I decided to do the workshops, he said that
we should start them off by presenting surveys of existing historiographies
on 1915, suggested he would look at the English-language historiography
himself and I could look at the Turkish-language historiography. He thought
that the critical analysis of the historiography would set the tone for the
workshop very nicely. I said "ok, sure no problem." I figured it wouldn't
take me long to get the official historiography down since it just keeps
repeating itself. However, because I am an Ottoman specialist, I didn't stop
with the official Turkish historiography, went further back, and researched
the Ottoman historiography on the Armenians starting from the late 1800's.
And that is when I realized that at first, there was an Ottoman
interrogative narrative; the Ottoman state was trying to understand what was
going on, was attempting to decipher it, and this continued all the way
until sultan Abdul Hamid's reign. In 1878, when the subject of reform comes
up, when the Ottoman administrators talk about the reform, some like Ahmed
Izzet Pasha try to undertake the reforms, others resist them entirely.
Furthermore, the first incidents were seen as the subjects being unhappy
with the situation and initially there is no rhetoric that developed against
them. The hostile stand against the Armenians developed later when they
gradually started to be portrayed as "the other".
The rhetoric of the Committee of Union and Progress to justify what was
going on was much more different and proto-nationalist, and this rhetoric
was then adopted by the Turkish Nation-State. The ensuing Republican period
acquired a defensive narrative as the historians were primarily concerned
with protecting the State's interests. This has been the dominant
historiography since the founding of the Turkish Republic. I call it the
Republican defensive narrative.
Today, there are new works, like the works of Taner Akcam and the interviews
of Halil Berktay that approach the State's views critically. These, put
together with the fact that recently in the last two decades, especially the
Aras publishing house in Turkey has been translating Turkish-Armenian
literature into Turkish, make me think, or hope and wish, that there may be
a post-national critical narrative developing.
Aztag- Is being a Turkish historian an advantage when you are dealing with
the Archives in Turkey?
Muge Gocek- The problem is that the type of research that's done by Turkish
historians tends to be extremely scholastic in nature; it either focuses
exclusively on just deciphering one or two documents or describing the state
of affairs through lots of documents with very little analysis. Of course,
since the alphabet reform severed the connection of most Turks with their
own past, there wasn't a very large body of historians in Turkey to start
with; in addition, the Republic was moving forward and did not want to look
back and study its past - it was much more concerned with progress. There
aren't too many Turkish students and faculty - that is, in relation to the
size of our country -
who conduct research in the archives and the ones who do tend to, as I said,
focus on institutions and such and are not willing to risk or are not
encouraged to work on politically charged issues.
What happened to me was that when I was very interested in the
westernization of the Ottoman Empire - which is what the first two of my
sole-authored books are on-I did an interim project on education.
Considering the fact that the ways western knowledge was brought into the
Ottoman Empire varied according to the type of school that brought this
knowledge, I thought it would be very interesting to compare a State school,
like the Galatasaray lyceum, with a quasi-missionary school like the Robert
College and a minority school, like the Uskudar Djemaran. I picked Djemaran
just by chance - it could have been a Greek school or a Jewish one instead,
but I wanted it to be a minority school that was established around the same
time period with Galatasary and Robert College and that was still in
existence today in one form or another, and that happened to point out
Djemaran.
When I went into the Ottoman archives to research the documents existing on
these three schools, I had no trouble getting documents on the first two,
but then had all the trouble on the third one. I was very surprised because
this was education; what I was looking at really did not have any political
bearings at the time. The fact that I was systematically not shown any
documents that the Ottoman Armenians themselves had written not only on this
school but on education as a whole made me realize that even though the
archives were open, the documents that the people got to see were actually
inspected by a group of people/officials before they were permitted out. I
was told that all such documents I located in the catalogues were either
missing, miscataloged, in repair or actually not related to my topic. There
was something strange about this and I did write to them about this and said
that I both as a scholar and a Turkish citizen was very disillusioned by the
fact that it wasn't as open as it should be. The archives may be open to
others who use them selectively and who upfront tell what it is that they're
going to "find" from the archives. Obviously, that's not how scholarship
works. Therefore, although the archives are there and technically indeed
open, how much of an advantage that gives the Turkish scholars or anyone is
debatable.
Aztag- Where do you go from here?
Muge Gocek- Well, there is the next workshop we're planning in Salzburg in
April 2005 and the increasing number of scholars participating in our
workshops is, in my opinion, a step in the right direction. We are also in
the process of putting out edited volumes out of all the papers presented at
our workshops. Most of the papers were of very high quality, so we decided
to do an edited volume on the ones that focused on the Armenian massacres
and another one on the background of those events. This way, there will be a
new body of scholarship that all scholars could draw upon.
There have been other examples of such undertakings as well and I laud them
all. Recently, other conferences are also bringing together Turkish and
Armenian scholars. Nobody should have any monopoly over this. It should be a
general movement. Given the current world context, I think with time, there
is going to be more and more scholarship that is critical of the official
stand in Turkey. A stand manned -I'm saying "manned" because there are no
women among them- by people who are not even professional academics, but
rather retired bureaucrats or historians who do their work in an amateurish
manner. With time, people in Turkey will recognize the things that
transpired in their past and will come to terms with it; I know that they
have the courage and perseverance to do so. What I want to be extremely
careful about, however, is that because this process is being introduced
after a very long silence, one should work in a way that recognizes the
total lack of knowledge among the Turks concerning what happened to the
Armenians of Anatolia. I think that it is probably going to take us a decade
or so to see Turkish society reconcile with its past, to get concrete
results. That's how I think when the days are sunny and I'm in a good mood!
Aztag- Well then, I wouldn't dare ask you what you think if you aren't in a
good mood!
Muge Gocek- Well I also get distressed at times. We hear of Turks living in
the US who think people like me are 'turncoats'; that we are out to destroy
the Turkish Republic. There are these nationalist Turkish-Americans out
there, mostly professionals dying to be the mouthpieces of the Turkish
State, who know nothing about the Armenian issue other than what the State
has instructed them to believe, or who have maybe read at most one
propaganda piece on the topic, but are of course sure everything in there is
correct because they have no scholarly training to assess its quality. Then
they have the guts to get out in public and denigrate you without even
bothering to read what you have written!
But this also happens to my Armenian colleagues: nationalism and scholarship
do not go well together. They have to see that you cannot scare scholars
into not doing research, into getting them to fear you and censor
themselves. That isn't healthy and pleasant -- and it also won't work. But
obviously that conflict comes with the territory, it comes with the subject,
and we are in this profession to do what we want and choose to do, and
thankfully the freedom of thought and expression is something guaranteed to
those academics among us who live and practice scholarship in the United
States, and I'm going to practice that for good, and that's the way it goes.
It's just that at times it becomes difficult and unpleasant, but life is
sometimes unfair, so what can you do, right?
Aztag- We spoke about the Armenians not having the chance to fully mourn,
but you've also written that even Turkey hasn't had the chance to mourn. Can
you explain what you mean by that?
Muge Gocek- Turkey has not had the chance to mourn either. I think because
of building this new nation on new Republican principles, the Turkish people
themselves have never had the chance to come into terms with the traumas in
their own past; the Balkan wars, the traumatic expulsion from the Balkans,
the various uprisings, rebellions, and other murders in Turkey itself that
were put down so violently. These haven't been acknowledged and publicly
mourned either. All these societal issues will have to come up, hopefully in
a constructive way. That's what I meant.
Nations usually come to a point in their histories when they are able to
face their past and undertake such mourning in order to heal for a healthier
future, and I think Turkey has reached that point because the level of
education in Turkey has increased dramatically and with education the
capacity to think as a society increases as well.
Aztag- Some historians and sociologists argue that the Armenian genocide and
other tragedies are at the foundations of the Turkish Republic, so
recognizing the Genocide would really shake those foundations and that is
why Turkey is so reluctant to face its past.
Muge Gocek- Well, it would definitely shake it, but Turkey has gone through
many earthquakes and is nevertheless still there. If there is a foundation
and you know there are problems with it, would you live in that house? You
would have to if you have no place to go, but you would know that
eventually, at one point it's going to cause trouble. You know you'll
eventually have to fix the foundation. Otherwise, the whole thing will
eventually collapse. So you have to get the tools out and start working on
it; you can't keep pretending all is fine, you can't keep painting the
surface over and over again with expensive paint to make it appear strong -
none of that is going to work in the long run if the foundations are shaky.
Aztag- And scholars like you are not only looking at the building, but also
studying the foundations.
Muge Gocek- Exactly. I think in Turkey most people look at the building and
judge things by appearance alone. And they see of the foundations only what
Mustafa Kemal and the official historiography built for them. They don't
realize that those foundations run deeper and include many things that
happened before the founding of the Turkish Republic. I think that's where
the problem with the foundations is located.
Aztag- I read that you like translating novels from Turkish into English;
there must be a story there.
Muge Gocek- Oh yes, I do. I did translate one of the novels of Elif Shafak.
Why did I become interested in that? In a society where the official
historiography and official documents don't give you much information about
what has actually transpired in history, literature becomes extremely
important in capturing the past. Literature conveys the spectrum of meanings
in a society and that's why I'm very interested in novels that highlight the
multi-ethnic, multi-cultural fabric of Turkish society, past and present.
These works haven't been translated enough, however; that's why I have
translated Elif Shafak because I think she is a very important Turkish
novelist who captures that fabric.
Aztag- I'm currently reading "Snow", Orhan Pamuk's latest novel.
Gocek- I'm including that book in my 'post-nationalist narrative'. There
recently appeared one or two critical articles in Turkey on all the Armenian
elements in it. When you go to Kars--I was in Kars this summer--you cannot
avoid seeing all the Armenian houses, buildings, and structures, and the
fact that Pamuk does mention all that has been noticed in Turkey.
Interestingly enough, I think in that novel he does a much better job
capturing those multi-ethnic elements than the Islamic ones on which he is
rather weak. Still, he's obviously cognizant of those elements of Turkey's
past and it's good that people outside of Turkey see that.
I mean the Turkish standpoint is so dominated by the State narrative that
the people do not realize that many Turkish intellectuals are aware of these
dynamics and write about them, until, of course, their works are translated
into English. That's why the works that deal with those dimensions have to
be translated. And it is a shame only Orhan Pamuk gets to be translated
because there are many others who do just as good a job who are not yet
translated into English.
An Interview with Muge Gocek
By Khatchig Mouradian
Aztag Daily
17 January, 2005
"Historians have primarily been concerned with protecting the interests of
the state. This has been the dominant historiography since the founding of
the Turkish Republic," says Muge Gocek in this interview. She adds, however,
"Today, there are new works, like the works of Taner Akcam and the
interviews of Halil Berktay that approach the State's views critically.
These, put together with the fact that recently - in the last two decades -
especially the Aras publishing house in Turkey has been translating
Turkish-Armenian literature into Turkish, make me think, or hope and wish
that there may be a post-national critical narrative developing."
Gocek, Associate Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies at the
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, certainly does much more than hoping and
wishing, however, regarding what she calls a "post-national critical
narrative." She is one of the few Turkish voices in wilderness, organizing
conferences that bring together Turkish and Armenian scholars who are
prepared to set aside prejudices and confront history with all
its ugliness. She writes papers and gives lectures on the Armenian genocide,
and is currently, authoring a book on the subject.
The number of Turkish scholars that challenge the state's point of view
regarding the Armenian genocide - any Turkish diplomat would immediately
tell you it is the "so-called Armenian genocide" -- is not extensive.
However, their work speaks for itself. It is already catching the attention
of their Armenian colleagues, as well as historians, publicists and
politicians in the West.
Will the dominant Turkish elite have the courage to confronts its past and
acknowledge the suffering that the government of the Young Turks in the
Ottoman Empire inflicted on a considerable segment of its subjects? Will the
souls of more than a million Armenians that perished because of
state-sponsored killings finally rest in peace? For what they believe will
be for the good of all on both sides of the divide, Gocek and some of her
like-minded Turkish colleagues want to make sure that the answers to these
questions are all in the affirmative.
You can call them 'turncoats' or you can call them 'pioneers'. They will not
feel intimidated by the first label. Nor will they be blinded by the second.
However you will describe them, one thing is certain: their work is a
harbinger of things to come.
Aztag- How did your research interests lead you to research the fate of the
Armenians in the early 20th century Ottoman Empire?
Muge Gocek- When I came to do my doctoral degree here in the US, I was
interested in the decline of the Ottoman Empire, especially in the elements
that led to its demise, and also in the rise of the Turkish Republic--my
dissertation was titled "the Rise of the Bourgeoisie and Demise of the
Empire". During my research, I was alerted to the role the religious
minorities played in the Ottoman Empire and how, with the emergence of the
nation-state, these minorities were drawn out of the picture, and how their
exclusion led to the formation of a different type of society in Turkey. But
at that particular juncture, my interest in the minorities didn't go beyond
that.
However, as a historical sociologist, I was very interested in writing about
the histories of social groups that had not had a voice in history; this was
eventually compounded by my interest in the lack of democratization and the
lack of the participation of social groups in determining the Turkish
political structure. I was especially distressed about what was happening to
the Kurds and to other minority groups in Turkey today.
The way that the Armenians came into the picture had to do with my
particular location in the US. Whenever I told Armenians I was a Turk, I was
immediately asked to account for killing all those Armenians; I'm still
telling them that I honestly had nothing to do with it!
Initially, the issue was extremely politicized for me to venture into that
field. Anyhow, at the time I was working on other projects, and that is why
I put off getting involved in this matter. But then all my interests came
together and after I established my professional standing here and got
tenure, I figured that, as an academic, this was an issue I had to research
for a number of reasons. The most important reason is something which is
not covered much and that has to do with the emotional aspect of what
happened: The Armenians I talked with were so hurt because of this awful
thing that had happened in the past; they were not able to mourn it properly
because it was not recognized. Regardless of what happened, if one doesn't
recognize something that has happened to someone, and something that has
been an extremely traumatic experience, it increases the trauma even more
and warps them emotionally. That's why when I said "look, I feel for you as
a human being, I'm willing to listen to what made you suffer so much, made
your life so miserable, tell me what happened to you," people were
immediately so much relieved that they almost became speechless. That was
an extremely eye-opening experience for me: I never realized how much
acknowledging and sharing people's emotions and sufferings can make them and
you better people, part of a humane community.
Just as eye-opening for me was that in Turkey, when this issue came up, the
Turks I talked to became extremely angry. That made me realize how much the
official historiography there had left out what had happened in the past. I
got the best education Turkey had to offer before I came to the US and I
myself wasn't aware of what happened, because there are no sources that I
could have read and critically studied other than the ones that presented
the Turkish State's version of history. This was, of course, very hard to
overcome and I was able to do so because I came to the US and continued my
scholarship. The position that emerges in Turkey is unfortunately one based
on the ignorance of our own past, partly because of the partial knowledge
that exists out there in what passes as Turkish scholarship and also
because, as a consequence of the alphabet reforms, people cannot read the
original Ottoman texts themselves, and the translation of those Ottoman
sources into Latin script has been controlled by the government as well.
Still, because of personal experiences and hearsay, there is a general
awareness in society that things are not what they are portrayed to be and
that in the public rhetoric there are some missing elements. In Turkey,
there is general criticism of the State control over knowledge today and I
think that criticism is also reflected on the Armenian issue as well.
Given the existing state of affairs --the strong emotions of the Armenians
here and the strong emotions in Turkey-- and the fact that I had now
established my own credentials as an academic, I thought it was the right
time for me to pick this topic up for further analysis. Of course, the first
thing I had to do was to prove that I really was not an Armenian. This had
to be done because the nationalist Turks thought I had to have some Armenian
blood in me since no Turk in is his/her right mind would engage in such
"destructive" behavior toward the Turkish state, because they see what I'm
doing as leading to the destruction of the Turkish nation-state. Likewise,
whenever I presented my thoughts to the Armenian audiences here in the US,
they would say that I had to be Armenian, since they couldn't think of any
Turk who could say such things, because they believed Turks in general were
not capable of being so reasonable or say things that are critical of Turkey
and the Turks. What is of course very striking here is that both sides have
the same prejudice. That's how I am probably going to start the book I'm
writing on the subject. But I had to go back and trace all my ancestors to
see if there was one part which was Armenian.
Aztag- They really got you doubting didn't they?
Muge Gocek- Well, if there was an element of truth in it, I wanted to make
sure it was I who discovered it first, rather than have them discover it at
some point. My ancestors all come from Anatolia-I do not have any Balkan
origins at all. One of my ancestors was from Agn (Kemalye), from a village
called Bashvartenik, however. I went there to discover who my ancestors
were--my mother's grandfather had left there in 1903-- and it turns out we
are Sunni Muslims to the core, and came there from the Caucasus in the 16th
century. I asked the people there why the place is called Bashvartenik, an
Armenian name meaning 'large rose bushes', and they said, "Before we came,
there were Armenians here, but they had migrated to Agn". Obviously, my
ancestors had no connection to the Armenians in any way, especially to 1915.
However, I still cannot convince them that I'm not an Armenian.
What I'm trying to do is to come to terms with how the historiography on
1915 was created in Turkey. I'm writing a book on this as we speak, with the
hopes that if we see the dynamics behind the creation of this
historiography, if we understand the dynamics, people can go from denial to
remembrance to respect.
Another thing that I tell audiences here is that recognition of what
happened in 1915 will be very cathartic for the Armenians, but for the
Turks, it will be the beginning of a very long process, an arduous process
because there are many other social groups in Turkish history that have also
suffered; there are the Greeks, the Assyrians, of course, the Kurds, and, at
certain junctures, the Islamists. Turkey has a lot to come to terms with and
it is going to be a very long and difficult process.
Aztag- In one of your papers, you refer to "the other silences" in Turkish
history.
Muge Gocek- Exactly! I was originally going to write on the silences of
Turkish history and speak about all the different groups that suffered - in
addition to the groups I mentioned previously, I was also interested about
the terrible fate of the leftist intellectuals in Turkey and how they too
were suppressed. But Ronald Suny was here, and he and I would meet and talk
about these things, and he thought I was the only Turk who thought
critically about Turkish history and about the Armenian problem. I said no
there are others, and that's how we started thinking about bringing together
scholars from both sides. The first workshop we held was at the University
of Chicago in 2000 and we had another at the University of Michigan in 2002
and one at Minnesota in 2003. In all these workshops, what we first tried
to do was develop a common language; I think we have been able to do this,
the group keeps growing and hopefully we can now start working on joint
projects together.
Aztag- You have come a long way. At the very beginning, there were many
historians who had reservations and refused to take part in the workshops.
Muge Gocek- Yes. Quite a number of them initially stayed out of it; some
wanted us to write declarations stating that we are recognizing the Armenian
genocide before we even started. It was interesting because Ron himself
said, "look, we are scholars and that goes against the nature of
scholarship". We just went along with the ones who were willing to take the
risk and come, and then of course time proved us right.
Aztag- Some even confused your workshop with the meetings of the
Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission (TARC), didn't they?
Muge Gocek- Yes. It is very interesting, because that confusion was there on
both sides; both the Armenians and some of the Turks I talked to thought
that I was inviting them to this place where we were going to advocate the
views of the Turkish State. I think this demonstrates how ingrained and
dominating the political narrative of the Turkish state is in this matter.
It's very hard for people to perceive that there is scholarship done
independently of the Turkish state, that there is a Turkish society that is
separate from the Turkish state. Even in the Armenian Republic, some
newspaper editorials appeared stating that the scheduling and timing of our
workshop had been strategically planned in relation to the reconciliation
meetings. This was very ironic because the scheduling was actually done with
respect to when Ronald Suny, I, and others had free time in our teaching
schedules...
The whole politics around the subject was actually one of the reasons why we
decided at the very beginning that the workshop should be closed to the
public. We didn't want participants marching in and declaring what we should
be doing, but nevertheless we thought that there ought to be a public
component to the workshop where we shared the results of our workshop with
others. Now we have a public presentation session at each workshop where we
summarize what we have accomplished. We also invite some journalists to
attend so that they could see for themselves what's happening and report on
it to the larger public.
Aztag- You speak about three phases in Turkish historiography. Based on what
criteria did you make this distinction?
Muge Gocek- When Ronald Suny and I decided to do the workshops, he said that
we should start them off by presenting surveys of existing historiographies
on 1915, suggested he would look at the English-language historiography
himself and I could look at the Turkish-language historiography. He thought
that the critical analysis of the historiography would set the tone for the
workshop very nicely. I said "ok, sure no problem." I figured it wouldn't
take me long to get the official historiography down since it just keeps
repeating itself. However, because I am an Ottoman specialist, I didn't stop
with the official Turkish historiography, went further back, and researched
the Ottoman historiography on the Armenians starting from the late 1800's.
And that is when I realized that at first, there was an Ottoman
interrogative narrative; the Ottoman state was trying to understand what was
going on, was attempting to decipher it, and this continued all the way
until sultan Abdul Hamid's reign. In 1878, when the subject of reform comes
up, when the Ottoman administrators talk about the reform, some like Ahmed
Izzet Pasha try to undertake the reforms, others resist them entirely.
Furthermore, the first incidents were seen as the subjects being unhappy
with the situation and initially there is no rhetoric that developed against
them. The hostile stand against the Armenians developed later when they
gradually started to be portrayed as "the other".
The rhetoric of the Committee of Union and Progress to justify what was
going on was much more different and proto-nationalist, and this rhetoric
was then adopted by the Turkish Nation-State. The ensuing Republican period
acquired a defensive narrative as the historians were primarily concerned
with protecting the State's interests. This has been the dominant
historiography since the founding of the Turkish Republic. I call it the
Republican defensive narrative.
Today, there are new works, like the works of Taner Akcam and the interviews
of Halil Berktay that approach the State's views critically. These, put
together with the fact that recently in the last two decades, especially the
Aras publishing house in Turkey has been translating Turkish-Armenian
literature into Turkish, make me think, or hope and wish, that there may be
a post-national critical narrative developing.
Aztag- Is being a Turkish historian an advantage when you are dealing with
the Archives in Turkey?
Muge Gocek- The problem is that the type of research that's done by Turkish
historians tends to be extremely scholastic in nature; it either focuses
exclusively on just deciphering one or two documents or describing the state
of affairs through lots of documents with very little analysis. Of course,
since the alphabet reform severed the connection of most Turks with their
own past, there wasn't a very large body of historians in Turkey to start
with; in addition, the Republic was moving forward and did not want to look
back and study its past - it was much more concerned with progress. There
aren't too many Turkish students and faculty - that is, in relation to the
size of our country -
who conduct research in the archives and the ones who do tend to, as I said,
focus on institutions and such and are not willing to risk or are not
encouraged to work on politically charged issues.
What happened to me was that when I was very interested in the
westernization of the Ottoman Empire - which is what the first two of my
sole-authored books are on-I did an interim project on education.
Considering the fact that the ways western knowledge was brought into the
Ottoman Empire varied according to the type of school that brought this
knowledge, I thought it would be very interesting to compare a State school,
like the Galatasaray lyceum, with a quasi-missionary school like the Robert
College and a minority school, like the Uskudar Djemaran. I picked Djemaran
just by chance - it could have been a Greek school or a Jewish one instead,
but I wanted it to be a minority school that was established around the same
time period with Galatasary and Robert College and that was still in
existence today in one form or another, and that happened to point out
Djemaran.
When I went into the Ottoman archives to research the documents existing on
these three schools, I had no trouble getting documents on the first two,
but then had all the trouble on the third one. I was very surprised because
this was education; what I was looking at really did not have any political
bearings at the time. The fact that I was systematically not shown any
documents that the Ottoman Armenians themselves had written not only on this
school but on education as a whole made me realize that even though the
archives were open, the documents that the people got to see were actually
inspected by a group of people/officials before they were permitted out. I
was told that all such documents I located in the catalogues were either
missing, miscataloged, in repair or actually not related to my topic. There
was something strange about this and I did write to them about this and said
that I both as a scholar and a Turkish citizen was very disillusioned by the
fact that it wasn't as open as it should be. The archives may be open to
others who use them selectively and who upfront tell what it is that they're
going to "find" from the archives. Obviously, that's not how scholarship
works. Therefore, although the archives are there and technically indeed
open, how much of an advantage that gives the Turkish scholars or anyone is
debatable.
Aztag- Where do you go from here?
Muge Gocek- Well, there is the next workshop we're planning in Salzburg in
April 2005 and the increasing number of scholars participating in our
workshops is, in my opinion, a step in the right direction. We are also in
the process of putting out edited volumes out of all the papers presented at
our workshops. Most of the papers were of very high quality, so we decided
to do an edited volume on the ones that focused on the Armenian massacres
and another one on the background of those events. This way, there will be a
new body of scholarship that all scholars could draw upon.
There have been other examples of such undertakings as well and I laud them
all. Recently, other conferences are also bringing together Turkish and
Armenian scholars. Nobody should have any monopoly over this. It should be a
general movement. Given the current world context, I think with time, there
is going to be more and more scholarship that is critical of the official
stand in Turkey. A stand manned -I'm saying "manned" because there are no
women among them- by people who are not even professional academics, but
rather retired bureaucrats or historians who do their work in an amateurish
manner. With time, people in Turkey will recognize the things that
transpired in their past and will come to terms with it; I know that they
have the courage and perseverance to do so. What I want to be extremely
careful about, however, is that because this process is being introduced
after a very long silence, one should work in a way that recognizes the
total lack of knowledge among the Turks concerning what happened to the
Armenians of Anatolia. I think that it is probably going to take us a decade
or so to see Turkish society reconcile with its past, to get concrete
results. That's how I think when the days are sunny and I'm in a good mood!
Aztag- Well then, I wouldn't dare ask you what you think if you aren't in a
good mood!
Muge Gocek- Well I also get distressed at times. We hear of Turks living in
the US who think people like me are 'turncoats'; that we are out to destroy
the Turkish Republic. There are these nationalist Turkish-Americans out
there, mostly professionals dying to be the mouthpieces of the Turkish
State, who know nothing about the Armenian issue other than what the State
has instructed them to believe, or who have maybe read at most one
propaganda piece on the topic, but are of course sure everything in there is
correct because they have no scholarly training to assess its quality. Then
they have the guts to get out in public and denigrate you without even
bothering to read what you have written!
But this also happens to my Armenian colleagues: nationalism and scholarship
do not go well together. They have to see that you cannot scare scholars
into not doing research, into getting them to fear you and censor
themselves. That isn't healthy and pleasant -- and it also won't work. But
obviously that conflict comes with the territory, it comes with the subject,
and we are in this profession to do what we want and choose to do, and
thankfully the freedom of thought and expression is something guaranteed to
those academics among us who live and practice scholarship in the United
States, and I'm going to practice that for good, and that's the way it goes.
It's just that at times it becomes difficult and unpleasant, but life is
sometimes unfair, so what can you do, right?
Aztag- We spoke about the Armenians not having the chance to fully mourn,
but you've also written that even Turkey hasn't had the chance to mourn. Can
you explain what you mean by that?
Muge Gocek- Turkey has not had the chance to mourn either. I think because
of building this new nation on new Republican principles, the Turkish people
themselves have never had the chance to come into terms with the traumas in
their own past; the Balkan wars, the traumatic expulsion from the Balkans,
the various uprisings, rebellions, and other murders in Turkey itself that
were put down so violently. These haven't been acknowledged and publicly
mourned either. All these societal issues will have to come up, hopefully in
a constructive way. That's what I meant.
Nations usually come to a point in their histories when they are able to
face their past and undertake such mourning in order to heal for a healthier
future, and I think Turkey has reached that point because the level of
education in Turkey has increased dramatically and with education the
capacity to think as a society increases as well.
Aztag- Some historians and sociologists argue that the Armenian genocide and
other tragedies are at the foundations of the Turkish Republic, so
recognizing the Genocide would really shake those foundations and that is
why Turkey is so reluctant to face its past.
Muge Gocek- Well, it would definitely shake it, but Turkey has gone through
many earthquakes and is nevertheless still there. If there is a foundation
and you know there are problems with it, would you live in that house? You
would have to if you have no place to go, but you would know that
eventually, at one point it's going to cause trouble. You know you'll
eventually have to fix the foundation. Otherwise, the whole thing will
eventually collapse. So you have to get the tools out and start working on
it; you can't keep pretending all is fine, you can't keep painting the
surface over and over again with expensive paint to make it appear strong -
none of that is going to work in the long run if the foundations are shaky.
Aztag- And scholars like you are not only looking at the building, but also
studying the foundations.
Muge Gocek- Exactly. I think in Turkey most people look at the building and
judge things by appearance alone. And they see of the foundations only what
Mustafa Kemal and the official historiography built for them. They don't
realize that those foundations run deeper and include many things that
happened before the founding of the Turkish Republic. I think that's where
the problem with the foundations is located.
Aztag- I read that you like translating novels from Turkish into English;
there must be a story there.
Muge Gocek- Oh yes, I do. I did translate one of the novels of Elif Shafak.
Why did I become interested in that? In a society where the official
historiography and official documents don't give you much information about
what has actually transpired in history, literature becomes extremely
important in capturing the past. Literature conveys the spectrum of meanings
in a society and that's why I'm very interested in novels that highlight the
multi-ethnic, multi-cultural fabric of Turkish society, past and present.
These works haven't been translated enough, however; that's why I have
translated Elif Shafak because I think she is a very important Turkish
novelist who captures that fabric.
Aztag- I'm currently reading "Snow", Orhan Pamuk's latest novel.
Gocek- I'm including that book in my 'post-nationalist narrative'. There
recently appeared one or two critical articles in Turkey on all the Armenian
elements in it. When you go to Kars--I was in Kars this summer--you cannot
avoid seeing all the Armenian houses, buildings, and structures, and the
fact that Pamuk does mention all that has been noticed in Turkey.
Interestingly enough, I think in that novel he does a much better job
capturing those multi-ethnic elements than the Islamic ones on which he is
rather weak. Still, he's obviously cognizant of those elements of Turkey's
past and it's good that people outside of Turkey see that.
I mean the Turkish standpoint is so dominated by the State narrative that
the people do not realize that many Turkish intellectuals are aware of these
dynamics and write about them, until, of course, their works are translated
into English. That's why the works that deal with those dimensions have to
be translated. And it is a shame only Orhan Pamuk gets to be translated
because there are many others who do just as good a job who are not yet
translated into English.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)