Are the Turks Confessing from Conviction or from Convenience?
Rauf Naqishbendi
July 16, 2007
From denial to admission, suppression to confession, innocence to guilt - the Turks are pressured to confront their past and to finally acknowledge their commission of genocide against the defenseless Assyrians and Armenians.
But the purpose of admitting past mistakes is typically to disconnect with past behavior, come clean of moral indecencies, wholeheartedly join humanity, and through good deeds and actions console the pain of the victims. When the Turks truly bear the responsibilities of the genocide they committed, then they should be credited for their courage and humility. However, the truth is that their coming forward now and confessing past crimes is merely a requirement for EU membership, not spurred by a heartfelt desire to change. Furthermore, this acknowledgement of genocide and the supposed repentance of the Turks are nullified by their continued and conspicuous human rights abuses against the Kurds today.
Since the genocide, the Turks have made a concerted effort to exonerate themselves through a campaign of misinformation and heavy propaganda. They have tried to shift the guilty verdict to the Armenians, telling the world it was the Armenians who betrayed the Turks, sided with their war enemies, and killed thousands of innocent people. But the facts speak for themselves, showing that the Armenian genocide was a protracted process that went on for almost two decades.
First between 1884 to 1896, Sultan Abdul-Hamid II massacred up to 30,000 civilians and left tens of thousand of others destitute. In 1908, a group of Turkish extreme nationalists, called Young Turks, designed to save what was left of the collapsed Ottoman Empire. Less than a year after they took control, they committed a large-scale massacre against Armenians and Assyrian Christians.
As the Ottoman Empire started to crumble, the Turks made a last-ditch effort to pursue a pan-Turkish state that would stretch to central Asia. Since they wanted a purely Islamic Pan-Turkish state, they were convinced that the final impediment to their objectives was the existence of the Christian minorities.
In 1915, the Turks initiated an organized and systematic genocide against Armenians and Christian minorities, killing 1.5 million people. They started with killing Turkish intellectuals in Istanbul and other major cities to rob Armenians of their leadership. Then they asked the Armenians to hand over their hunting rifles as a contribution to the war against the Russians during World War I. As the Armenians turned over their weapons, the Turks used the numbers of weapons confiscated as proof that the Armenians had been planning a revolt. Once this proof was established, the Armenian villages and towns were obliterated, their churches flattened, and many innocent Armenians executed. The Turks killed them in groups or individually, in public or in remote locations, whichever was most expedient, using every tool and resource in their disposal to annihilate the Christian minority in Turkey.
A massive group of Armenians was rounded up for deportation, their final destination being the Syrian Desert, Der Zor. Most of the deportees died from hunger and starvation. Females over the age of ten were raped and many were seized from their families and taken as slave brides. Few of the victims were able to escape the desert and tell their stories to a silent and deaf world.
Half a century after this ferocious crime, the Turks continued to pursue the destruction of everything and anything associated with the Armenians, so that no evidence would be left behind for Armenians to claim as proof of the genocide. Per David Holford, "as the curator of the Armenian Museum in Jerusalem told William Dalrymple, ’Soon there will be no evidence that the Armenians were ever in Turkey. We will have become a historical myth.’"
The EU is to be praised for setting high standards for Turkish membership in this economic and political union. For contrast, consider that the United States has made a mockery of freedom and liberty by fueling the vicious regime of Turkey for near half a century. It never occurred to the US to attach human rights strings to their enormous aid to such a repressive regime. In February of 1990, a commemorative resolution was introduced to both houses of representatives in the US to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. The state department feared the passage of such a resolution might harm US-Turkey relations, thus the resolution never received enough votes to pass.
During the time of genocide, Ambassador Morgenthau pleaded with the American State Department to intervene in any way possible, but the response he got was "we just don’t know what is going on." The Turks are not the only ones who need to offer remorse for the genocide they committed. What about the silent world that made no difference, particularly the United States and United Kingdom, who both were aware of this horror? The fact that they did nothing to stop these atrocities from continuing can only mean that they were willing participants in them, however silently they looked on.
It’s admirable to see the Turks come to terms with their past crimes against humanity, but they shouldn’t be allowed to stop there. They also need to address their present human rights abuse practices against the Kurds in Turkey, a minority that, until recently, had been deprived of the most basic of human rights, including speaking their mother tongue. Since the rise of Turkish nationalism after the collapse of Ottoman Empire, the Kurds have been the subject of Turkish brutalities. Since the 1980’s, more than 5,000 Kurdish villages across Turkey’s border with Syria and Iraq have been demolished and their inhabitants forced to relocate elsewhere in Turkey. Moreover, tens of
thousands of Kurds have been jailed and subjected to the most inhumane torture for no other reason than being Kurds. These are the kinds of brutalities practiced in today’s Turkey.
Turks need to face their current human rights abuses before turning the page on their past atrocities against humanity. Coming to terms with past evil-doing requires decency in one’s present actions and a sense of remorse that originates from the heart rather than from external forces. The latter circumstance indicates a degree of convenient self-interest, nothing more than lip service and pretense, and therefore should not be taken seriously. What is even more absurd is that the Turks continue to proclaim their innocence of genocide, and want the world to see them as the victims of an unfair EU, who is forcing them to confess a crime they never committed. If and when they ever do acknowledge their hand in Armenian atrocities, what will that really mean?
But the purpose of admitting past mistakes is typically to disconnect with past behavior, come clean of moral indecencies, wholeheartedly join humanity, and through good deeds and actions console the pain of the victims. When the Turks truly bear the responsibilities of the genocide they committed, then they should be credited for their courage and humility. However, the truth is that their coming forward now and confessing past crimes is merely a requirement for EU membership, not spurred by a heartfelt desire to change. Furthermore, this acknowledgement of genocide and the supposed repentance of the Turks are nullified by their continued and conspicuous human rights abuses against the Kurds today.
Since the genocide, the Turks have made a concerted effort to exonerate themselves through a campaign of misinformation and heavy propaganda. They have tried to shift the guilty verdict to the Armenians, telling the world it was the Armenians who betrayed the Turks, sided with their war enemies, and killed thousands of innocent people. But the facts speak for themselves, showing that the Armenian genocide was a protracted process that went on for almost two decades.
First between 1884 to 1896, Sultan Abdul-Hamid II massacred up to 30,000 civilians and left tens of thousand of others destitute. In 1908, a group of Turkish extreme nationalists, called Young Turks, designed to save what was left of the collapsed Ottoman Empire. Less than a year after they took control, they committed a large-scale massacre against Armenians and Assyrian Christians.
As the Ottoman Empire started to crumble, the Turks made a last-ditch effort to pursue a pan-Turkish state that would stretch to central Asia. Since they wanted a purely Islamic Pan-Turkish state, they were convinced that the final impediment to their objectives was the existence of the Christian minorities.
In 1915, the Turks initiated an organized and systematic genocide against Armenians and Christian minorities, killing 1.5 million people. They started with killing Turkish intellectuals in Istanbul and other major cities to rob Armenians of their leadership. Then they asked the Armenians to hand over their hunting rifles as a contribution to the war against the Russians during World War I. As the Armenians turned over their weapons, the Turks used the numbers of weapons confiscated as proof that the Armenians had been planning a revolt. Once this proof was established, the Armenian villages and towns were obliterated, their churches flattened, and many innocent Armenians executed. The Turks killed them in groups or individually, in public or in remote locations, whichever was most expedient, using every tool and resource in their disposal to annihilate the Christian minority in Turkey.
A massive group of Armenians was rounded up for deportation, their final destination being the Syrian Desert, Der Zor. Most of the deportees died from hunger and starvation. Females over the age of ten were raped and many were seized from their families and taken as slave brides. Few of the victims were able to escape the desert and tell their stories to a silent and deaf world.
Half a century after this ferocious crime, the Turks continued to pursue the destruction of everything and anything associated with the Armenians, so that no evidence would be left behind for Armenians to claim as proof of the genocide. Per David Holford, "as the curator of the Armenian Museum in Jerusalem told William Dalrymple, ’Soon there will be no evidence that the Armenians were ever in Turkey. We will have become a historical myth.’"
The EU is to be praised for setting high standards for Turkish membership in this economic and political union. For contrast, consider that the United States has made a mockery of freedom and liberty by fueling the vicious regime of Turkey for near half a century. It never occurred to the US to attach human rights strings to their enormous aid to such a repressive regime. In February of 1990, a commemorative resolution was introduced to both houses of representatives in the US to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. The state department feared the passage of such a resolution might harm US-Turkey relations, thus the resolution never received enough votes to pass.
During the time of genocide, Ambassador Morgenthau pleaded with the American State Department to intervene in any way possible, but the response he got was "we just don’t know what is going on." The Turks are not the only ones who need to offer remorse for the genocide they committed. What about the silent world that made no difference, particularly the United States and United Kingdom, who both were aware of this horror? The fact that they did nothing to stop these atrocities from continuing can only mean that they were willing participants in them, however silently they looked on.
It’s admirable to see the Turks come to terms with their past crimes against humanity, but they shouldn’t be allowed to stop there. They also need to address their present human rights abuse practices against the Kurds in Turkey, a minority that, until recently, had been deprived of the most basic of human rights, including speaking their mother tongue. Since the rise of Turkish nationalism after the collapse of Ottoman Empire, the Kurds have been the subject of Turkish brutalities. Since the 1980’s, more than 5,000 Kurdish villages across Turkey’s border with Syria and Iraq have been demolished and their inhabitants forced to relocate elsewhere in Turkey. Moreover, tens of
thousands of Kurds have been jailed and subjected to the most inhumane torture for no other reason than being Kurds. These are the kinds of brutalities practiced in today’s Turkey.
Turks need to face their current human rights abuses before turning the page on their past atrocities against humanity. Coming to terms with past evil-doing requires decency in one’s present actions and a sense of remorse that originates from the heart rather than from external forces. The latter circumstance indicates a degree of convenient self-interest, nothing more than lip service and pretense, and therefore should not be taken seriously. What is even more absurd is that the Turks continue to proclaim their innocence of genocide, and want the world to see them as the victims of an unfair EU, who is forcing them to confess a crime they never committed. If and when they ever do acknowledge their hand in Armenian atrocities, what will that really mean?
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