By Cem Oguz, head of the Turkish Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Just before his trip to the Caucasus, French President Nicholas Sarkozy was reported to have said to the Armenian media that “everybody must have courage to call 1915 events as genocide.” Then in Armenia, he assertively added that “collective denial is worse than individual denial.”
Subsequent to the heavy moral and spiritual toll wrought by the Jewish Holocaust, three basic concepts were gradually put forward in Western intelligentsia’s genocide literature: a revisionist understanding of history which opposes sedentary history, denial and reconciliation with the past.
In particular, the notion of denial implies great importance, because it is believed that repudiation propels a society that doesn’t confront its past into committing fresh genocides.
Fine, but what renders repudiation justifiable? Actually, the answer is quite straightforward: Contrary to the evidence and overall valid disposition of the concept of sedentary history, it is accepted that proclaiming the Jewish genocide didn’t occur as per se is an indication of repudiation. It is suggested that repudiators are distorting historical facts and they are trying to either legitimize or else prove their innocence through a new outlook upon history.
In this context, researchers or historians such as David Irving or Ernst Zündel, who back the viewpoint that the Jewish genocide did not take place as has been claimed, are automatically accused of repudiation in the West and are faced with the risk of legal sanctions. Statements by the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, directed at Israel, the Jews and the Jewish genocide are viewed as political projections of this mental aptitude.
The strategy the Armenians have lobbied against Turkey is founded upon these concepts. Armenians suggest that their sedentary historical studies declared the Armenian genocide to be a clear-cut fact and slam all scientific studies carried out and works published by Turkish historians and researchers as nothing more than attempts to settle into the concept of revisionist history. They frequently accuse the Turks of being in denial.
It’s right at this point that two crucial problems appear: First of all, does sedentary history really point to only Armenian thesis? More importantly, have the Armenians been able to confront their history in an environment in which the Turks are expected to confront history? If the answer is ‘No’, is one side going to be sufficient to eradicate the problems that exist between the two?
Today, historical studies have left no doubt in regards to the Jewish genocide. On the contrary, the sources claiming that the Armenian tragedy was a genocide are extremely controversial. There are two basic sticking points seen here: The first, almost none of the sources were written by Ottoman historical experts. In fact, there are very few actual historians amongst those researchers who claim that genocide occurred. Secondly, the exit point of Armenian sources are full of either fraudulent or distorted documents; in other words, serious methodological handicaps are clearly evident.
It is precisely for these reasons that Turkey is keen on a proper analysis of history. Unlike the claim by the Armenians, Ankara does not suggest a pre-condition that Armenia or the diaspora back down on their genocide claim. Right from the beginning, it has only demanded that it should be taken up by historians first and that this debate should be carried out on the basis of archival documents.
In fact, the letter Prime Minister Erdoğan sent to the President of Armenia, Robert Kocharian in April, 2005 was the most important evidence of this claim. Kocharian’s reply dated April 25th overtly brushed aside the proposal by giving priority to setting up diplomatic relations with the opening of the Turkish-Armenia border.
It is in such a milieu that Mr. Sarkozy enters the game and suggests that the French parliament might consider a law making denial of the deaths of Armenians as genocide a crime, similar to the French law against Holocaust denial. Do you, however, think that Western politicians like Mr. Sarkozy who support Armenian genocide bills are even aware of realities such as these? If you ask me, I doubt that they have even the slightest crumb of information as to what really happened.
It’s only politics. Dirty politics…
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