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“Creation of a Common Future: Reconciling Turks and Armenians”
Fatma Müge Göçek
University of Michigan
I want to start my talk with two sets of thanks, to those of you in the audience for being here and to the organizers of the “Facing History and Ourselves” on both sides of the Atlantic for inviting me to give this talk. I want to note at this juncture that this is the first time I am giving a talk on this very significant yet politically polarizing topic outside of an academic setting: I had as a matter of principle decided not to talk outside academia because of the very emotional connection Armenians and Turks have toward the historical events associated with 1915.
Why is 1915 so emotional for the Turks and the Armenians? For the Armenians, 1915 signifies death, destruction and suffering, a forced deportation and final removal from their ancestral homelands, it signifies years of wandering as they settle throughout the world forced to start anew from scratch in societies alien to them, carving out new lives for themselves while yearning for what they left behind without being able to return, while trying to explain to their children why they can not go back to their homeland; what happened to them and why; why their children do not have grandparents like the others around them; why they cannot mourn their past tragedies faced by the denial of their suffering by the Turkish state. As a consequence, 1915 translates into mounting frustration, sometimes into hatred toward the Turkish state, extends into dislike of Turks in general, and disappointment with humanity and the loss of hope in ever making peace with themselves and, more importantly, of establishing a peaceful world for their children.
For the Turks, 1915 likewise signifies a political injustice foisted upon them by a unified West intent upon keeping them out of the European Union, a historical event that indeed may be a tragedy but is actually one of the many tragedies that the Turks faced in the process of the destruction of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the Turkish Republic; for the Turks, being forced to recognize this particular tragedy may bring about memories that may fragment them and tear them apart to the point of no return. It is not that the West actually cares about the Armenian tragedy, but is actually exploiting this particular event, as it has done so many times in the past, as an excuse to once again keep the Turks out of Europe; it cannot openly state it does not want Turkey in Europe so it makes the most use of each and every opportunity to keep them out. So for the Turks too, 1915 translates into mounting frustration, sometimes into hatred toward the European Union, extends into dislike of the West in general, and disappointment with humanity and the loss of hope in ever making peace with themselves and, more importantly, of establishing a peaceful world for their children.
So you see that the end-result for the two groups is the same: disappointment with humanity and the loss of hope in ever making peace with themselves and, more importantly, of establishing a peaceful world for their children. And this is why I have decided to make an exception and accepted the invitation of the “Facing History and Ourselves” because they provide us with a peaceful vision and a solution that will take us away from this very polarized and dangerous juncture. For this polarized and politicized environment benefits no one: it does not benefit the Armenians who still have to live with their escalating anger, hatred and frustration, awaiting futilely as they have for so many years for the chance to grieve and mourn for their tragic losses and start their healing process confronted yet again by a Turkey moving away from them; and it does not benefit the Turks who once again turn inward and suppress amongst themselves all vestiges of difference, liberty and democracy in the name of national unity, withdrawing inward, away from the West, away from all that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the Turkish Republic once aspired for toward an uncertain future. It does not benefit a Europe that attempts to become global in an increasingly multi-cultural world but seems to falter when it is time to accept as a member a country that is ‘different’ than the rest, withdraw instead to its traditional borders under various excuses.
Why is the endeavor of “Facing History” so significant? I think the only way our new twenty-first century is going to produce peaceful solutions is if all societies, including the Turkish, Armenian, British, American, French as well as countless others, can truly confront their histories, their past again and again, constantly and systematically, to account for the numerous injustices embedded in them with the intention to make sure they are not repeated in the future. To thus ascertain that these injustices do not keep repeating themselves to produce so much pain and suffering, pain and suffering to destroy and maim not only cultures, civilizations and generations of people, but also their descendants for decades and centuries. Bright futures are only possible by confronting, facing the evils of the past, not by burying them, or by chastising, censoring or punishing those who research the past. And the mission is to research and generate knowledge and understanding not to politicize, not to impose one particular version of the past at the expense of others: in this process, total freedom in both conducting research into the past and into expressing one’s various interpretations of the past is, of course, a must. This is why it is important to have, rather than states, foundations, academic institutions and scholars involved in the research of the past for states have particular political agendas and develop their own nationalist histories of the past.
With this introduction, what I want to do during the rest of my talk is to share with you my own history of my research on the events surrounding 1915. I have been trained as a historical sociologist and as such I study specifically how history is negotiated in the present by contemporary societies. Before I do so, however, let me provide you with a brief summary of what happened in 1915 that is still with us as if it happened yesterday.
What happened in 1915 and how has it impacted the course of events until today? . The origins of the problem can be traced back to the 19th century intersection of the ability of Europe to embark on an imperialist expansion at the expense of the Ottoman Empire, the inability of the Ottoman Empire to meet the challenges of the rising West, and the concomitant inability of the Ottoman Armenians to meet their economic and political aspirations within the Ottoman Empire. A majority of Armenians, having lost their state in their homeland in the 11th century, had been living under Ottoman rule since the 16th century, the balance having been absorbed into the Persian and later Russian empires. Even though the Ottoman Empire undertook a series of reforms at this particular intersection, they ultimately failed to improve the conditions of rural and small town Armenian subjects or alleviate their unequal status within the Ottoman state dominated by Muslim Turks.
On the eve of World War I, the situation became more polarized with the advent of the ideology of nationalism. After reform minded officials of the Committee of Union and Progress first intervened to establish constitutional rule in the empire in 1908, a handful of military minded ones among them carried out a coup to assume direct power in 1913, thereby creating a dangerous political context: this proto-nationalist group in power from among the Young Turks defined the preservation of their power and the state at all costs as their top priority and sacred duty. They started to view and define the Armenian political parties and leadership that in general sought assistance for reforms from the Great Powers as a major threat against the Ottoman state.
The parameters of the conflict between the Armenians and the Turks as it appears today were thus delineated in the years 1915-1917 during World War I when the Ottoman Turkish government orchestrated the deportation of most and massacre of an estimated one million Armenians from throughout Anatolia that had been their ancestral lands. The government justified its actions then as the removal of a perceived threat against the Ottoman state. Based on the testimonies of the victims, the eyewitness accounts of the foreigners, Western consular reports and other documentation, the world community of scholars has eventually identified and termed what happened to the Armenians as genocide. The Republic of Turkey that succeeded the Ottoman state, however, has denied this assessment to this day and has argued instead that what occurred was a deportation instigated by the seditious behavior of the Armenian subjects of the empire against the Ottoman army defending the state. Hence, not only does the Turkish state reject that the initial intention had been to massacre the Armenians, but it also justifies the actions that were taken by continuing to accuse the victims themselves for their subsequent destruction.
The victim’s expectation that the crime committed against it be recognized as such has instead encountered the Turkish counter-view, which places its own victimization by the Great Powers at the center of its own perception of history. By replacing their own victimization by the Great Powers with the victimization of the Armenians that they are asked to account for, the Turkish counter-view thus makes what happened to the Armenians an almost irrelevant detail, a nuisance at best, something that should be denied, trivialized, or explained away. The mainline official Turkish position has been to do all three, at the same time.
The dispute over this historical event has had serious consequences. Internationally, it has forced the Turkish state to spend millions of dollars over the decades and make constant political and military concessions to defend and sustain its claims; domestically, the production of historical research and information on the event has had to be tightly controlled both in the public sphere as well as in school textbooks, producing a citizenry that by and large remains ignorant of this and so many other similar events of Ottoman history. Faced with the Turkish state denial, the Armenian Diaspora was also adversely affected. Not only has it had to suffer through the trauma of the genocide and the subsequent displacement, but because of this denial, it could not start to mourn and eventually heal: it has therefore had to continue living with the pain and suffering of 1915 to this day, accompanied in the meanwhile by escalating anger and hatred. The Diaspora too has had to spend millions of dollars to prove that what happened to them was indeed genocide.
Three generations after the historical events the battle lines have been drawn on either side of their characterization. On the level of individuals, most Armenians and Turks recognize each other through the way in which they define their identity in relation to the term genocide: while the Armenians insist on employing the term the Turks demand its rejection. The Armenian agenda to compel others to recognize the genocide has become a principle of community organization and power legitimation. As a consequence, energies concentrate almost exclusively on genocide recognition at the expense of many social, political and economic concerns. For the security minded Turkish state, the fight against such recognition emerges as a significant dimension of the continued and continuously promoted “Sevres syndrome,” the fear of the intent of the world to dismember Turkey. As a result, militaristic thinking and repressive policies dominate within the country at the expense of more democratic developments.
A number of countries have also not refrained from utilizing this battle around genocide recognition to their own advantage whenever it fits into their agenda. They have, for instance, employed this battle as a tool of pressure on Turkey, during her application to join the European Union or to compel her to participate in conflicts in the Middle East. For others that do not wish to see relations between Turkey and independent Armenia normalize, the battle around genocide recognition has provided an excellent field of action within which to polarize the two sides. And it is unfortunate that for the policy-makers in Turkey, this continued international engagement in the battle around genocide recognition only serves to justify and feed into their fears and repressive policies, thereby confining their choice of actions. As can be surmised, this highly destructive state of affairs makes reconciliation all the more relevant and urgent for regional and international peace and stability as well as for the peoples affected.
Why did I decide to work on this issue? My knowledge about what happened in 1915 was practically non-existent when I was in Turkey because this subject was not taught in our textbooks: I think that what I was taught in my history courses back then was very nationalistic and highly selective. My first encounter with the topic was an emotional one and probably resembles that of many other Turks: I arrived in the United States in 1981 to do my doctoral research at Princeton University and as I met Armenians on social occasions I was immediately asked as to why I murdered their grandparents. This is highly offensive when you do not know what has happened in the past and you are suddenly accused with a heinous crime you know nothing about: you cannot react in any way except to deny or justify or withdraw. In my case, as I was training to become a historical sociologist, I decided to slowly research this phenomenon. But I did so gradually, after I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the rise of the bourgeoisie and the demise of the Ottoman Empire and after I received tenure at the University of Michigan. For I was aware that this was also a highly politically contentious topic and one that could only be approached if one belonged to a community of scholars who shared a certain vision of the future. It helped, nevertheless, that I had been working in the Ottoman archives since 1979 and I knew Ottoman documents and sources; I therefore knew many scholars who worked on Ottoman and Middle Eastern history.
It was in1998, however, that I made the specific decision to concentrate on 1915 as the topic of my next book particularly as a consequence of the intersection of two events. One concerned the issue of democracy in Turkey where I was focusing on a specific question: what were the historical processes that hindered Turkey’s democratization?
Fatma Müge Göçek
University of Michigan
I want to start my talk with two sets of thanks, to those of you in the audience for being here and to the organizers of the “Facing History and Ourselves” on both sides of the Atlantic for inviting me to give this talk. I want to note at this juncture that this is the first time I am giving a talk on this very significant yet politically polarizing topic outside of an academic setting: I had as a matter of principle decided not to talk outside academia because of the very emotional connection Armenians and Turks have toward the historical events associated with 1915.
Why is 1915 so emotional for the Turks and the Armenians? For the Armenians, 1915 signifies death, destruction and suffering, a forced deportation and final removal from their ancestral homelands, it signifies years of wandering as they settle throughout the world forced to start anew from scratch in societies alien to them, carving out new lives for themselves while yearning for what they left behind without being able to return, while trying to explain to their children why they can not go back to their homeland; what happened to them and why; why their children do not have grandparents like the others around them; why they cannot mourn their past tragedies faced by the denial of their suffering by the Turkish state. As a consequence, 1915 translates into mounting frustration, sometimes into hatred toward the Turkish state, extends into dislike of Turks in general, and disappointment with humanity and the loss of hope in ever making peace with themselves and, more importantly, of establishing a peaceful world for their children.
For the Turks, 1915 likewise signifies a political injustice foisted upon them by a unified West intent upon keeping them out of the European Union, a historical event that indeed may be a tragedy but is actually one of the many tragedies that the Turks faced in the process of the destruction of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the Turkish Republic; for the Turks, being forced to recognize this particular tragedy may bring about memories that may fragment them and tear them apart to the point of no return. It is not that the West actually cares about the Armenian tragedy, but is actually exploiting this particular event, as it has done so many times in the past, as an excuse to once again keep the Turks out of Europe; it cannot openly state it does not want Turkey in Europe so it makes the most use of each and every opportunity to keep them out. So for the Turks too, 1915 translates into mounting frustration, sometimes into hatred toward the European Union, extends into dislike of the West in general, and disappointment with humanity and the loss of hope in ever making peace with themselves and, more importantly, of establishing a peaceful world for their children.
So you see that the end-result for the two groups is the same: disappointment with humanity and the loss of hope in ever making peace with themselves and, more importantly, of establishing a peaceful world for their children. And this is why I have decided to make an exception and accepted the invitation of the “Facing History and Ourselves” because they provide us with a peaceful vision and a solution that will take us away from this very polarized and dangerous juncture. For this polarized and politicized environment benefits no one: it does not benefit the Armenians who still have to live with their escalating anger, hatred and frustration, awaiting futilely as they have for so many years for the chance to grieve and mourn for their tragic losses and start their healing process confronted yet again by a Turkey moving away from them; and it does not benefit the Turks who once again turn inward and suppress amongst themselves all vestiges of difference, liberty and democracy in the name of national unity, withdrawing inward, away from the West, away from all that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the Turkish Republic once aspired for toward an uncertain future. It does not benefit a Europe that attempts to become global in an increasingly multi-cultural world but seems to falter when it is time to accept as a member a country that is ‘different’ than the rest, withdraw instead to its traditional borders under various excuses.
Why is the endeavor of “Facing History” so significant? I think the only way our new twenty-first century is going to produce peaceful solutions is if all societies, including the Turkish, Armenian, British, American, French as well as countless others, can truly confront their histories, their past again and again, constantly and systematically, to account for the numerous injustices embedded in them with the intention to make sure they are not repeated in the future. To thus ascertain that these injustices do not keep repeating themselves to produce so much pain and suffering, pain and suffering to destroy and maim not only cultures, civilizations and generations of people, but also their descendants for decades and centuries. Bright futures are only possible by confronting, facing the evils of the past, not by burying them, or by chastising, censoring or punishing those who research the past. And the mission is to research and generate knowledge and understanding not to politicize, not to impose one particular version of the past at the expense of others: in this process, total freedom in both conducting research into the past and into expressing one’s various interpretations of the past is, of course, a must. This is why it is important to have, rather than states, foundations, academic institutions and scholars involved in the research of the past for states have particular political agendas and develop their own nationalist histories of the past.
With this introduction, what I want to do during the rest of my talk is to share with you my own history of my research on the events surrounding 1915. I have been trained as a historical sociologist and as such I study specifically how history is negotiated in the present by contemporary societies. Before I do so, however, let me provide you with a brief summary of what happened in 1915 that is still with us as if it happened yesterday.
What happened in 1915 and how has it impacted the course of events until today? . The origins of the problem can be traced back to the 19th century intersection of the ability of Europe to embark on an imperialist expansion at the expense of the Ottoman Empire, the inability of the Ottoman Empire to meet the challenges of the rising West, and the concomitant inability of the Ottoman Armenians to meet their economic and political aspirations within the Ottoman Empire. A majority of Armenians, having lost their state in their homeland in the 11th century, had been living under Ottoman rule since the 16th century, the balance having been absorbed into the Persian and later Russian empires. Even though the Ottoman Empire undertook a series of reforms at this particular intersection, they ultimately failed to improve the conditions of rural and small town Armenian subjects or alleviate their unequal status within the Ottoman state dominated by Muslim Turks.
On the eve of World War I, the situation became more polarized with the advent of the ideology of nationalism. After reform minded officials of the Committee of Union and Progress first intervened to establish constitutional rule in the empire in 1908, a handful of military minded ones among them carried out a coup to assume direct power in 1913, thereby creating a dangerous political context: this proto-nationalist group in power from among the Young Turks defined the preservation of their power and the state at all costs as their top priority and sacred duty. They started to view and define the Armenian political parties and leadership that in general sought assistance for reforms from the Great Powers as a major threat against the Ottoman state.
The parameters of the conflict between the Armenians and the Turks as it appears today were thus delineated in the years 1915-1917 during World War I when the Ottoman Turkish government orchestrated the deportation of most and massacre of an estimated one million Armenians from throughout Anatolia that had been their ancestral lands. The government justified its actions then as the removal of a perceived threat against the Ottoman state. Based on the testimonies of the victims, the eyewitness accounts of the foreigners, Western consular reports and other documentation, the world community of scholars has eventually identified and termed what happened to the Armenians as genocide. The Republic of Turkey that succeeded the Ottoman state, however, has denied this assessment to this day and has argued instead that what occurred was a deportation instigated by the seditious behavior of the Armenian subjects of the empire against the Ottoman army defending the state. Hence, not only does the Turkish state reject that the initial intention had been to massacre the Armenians, but it also justifies the actions that were taken by continuing to accuse the victims themselves for their subsequent destruction.
The victim’s expectation that the crime committed against it be recognized as such has instead encountered the Turkish counter-view, which places its own victimization by the Great Powers at the center of its own perception of history. By replacing their own victimization by the Great Powers with the victimization of the Armenians that they are asked to account for, the Turkish counter-view thus makes what happened to the Armenians an almost irrelevant detail, a nuisance at best, something that should be denied, trivialized, or explained away. The mainline official Turkish position has been to do all three, at the same time.
The dispute over this historical event has had serious consequences. Internationally, it has forced the Turkish state to spend millions of dollars over the decades and make constant political and military concessions to defend and sustain its claims; domestically, the production of historical research and information on the event has had to be tightly controlled both in the public sphere as well as in school textbooks, producing a citizenry that by and large remains ignorant of this and so many other similar events of Ottoman history. Faced with the Turkish state denial, the Armenian Diaspora was also adversely affected. Not only has it had to suffer through the trauma of the genocide and the subsequent displacement, but because of this denial, it could not start to mourn and eventually heal: it has therefore had to continue living with the pain and suffering of 1915 to this day, accompanied in the meanwhile by escalating anger and hatred. The Diaspora too has had to spend millions of dollars to prove that what happened to them was indeed genocide.
Three generations after the historical events the battle lines have been drawn on either side of their characterization. On the level of individuals, most Armenians and Turks recognize each other through the way in which they define their identity in relation to the term genocide: while the Armenians insist on employing the term the Turks demand its rejection. The Armenian agenda to compel others to recognize the genocide has become a principle of community organization and power legitimation. As a consequence, energies concentrate almost exclusively on genocide recognition at the expense of many social, political and economic concerns. For the security minded Turkish state, the fight against such recognition emerges as a significant dimension of the continued and continuously promoted “Sevres syndrome,” the fear of the intent of the world to dismember Turkey. As a result, militaristic thinking and repressive policies dominate within the country at the expense of more democratic developments.
A number of countries have also not refrained from utilizing this battle around genocide recognition to their own advantage whenever it fits into their agenda. They have, for instance, employed this battle as a tool of pressure on Turkey, during her application to join the European Union or to compel her to participate in conflicts in the Middle East. For others that do not wish to see relations between Turkey and independent Armenia normalize, the battle around genocide recognition has provided an excellent field of action within which to polarize the two sides. And it is unfortunate that for the policy-makers in Turkey, this continued international engagement in the battle around genocide recognition only serves to justify and feed into their fears and repressive policies, thereby confining their choice of actions. As can be surmised, this highly destructive state of affairs makes reconciliation all the more relevant and urgent for regional and international peace and stability as well as for the peoples affected.
Why did I decide to work on this issue? My knowledge about what happened in 1915 was practically non-existent when I was in Turkey because this subject was not taught in our textbooks: I think that what I was taught in my history courses back then was very nationalistic and highly selective. My first encounter with the topic was an emotional one and probably resembles that of many other Turks: I arrived in the United States in 1981 to do my doctoral research at Princeton University and as I met Armenians on social occasions I was immediately asked as to why I murdered their grandparents. This is highly offensive when you do not know what has happened in the past and you are suddenly accused with a heinous crime you know nothing about: you cannot react in any way except to deny or justify or withdraw. In my case, as I was training to become a historical sociologist, I decided to slowly research this phenomenon. But I did so gradually, after I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the rise of the bourgeoisie and the demise of the Ottoman Empire and after I received tenure at the University of Michigan. For I was aware that this was also a highly politically contentious topic and one that could only be approached if one belonged to a community of scholars who shared a certain vision of the future. It helped, nevertheless, that I had been working in the Ottoman archives since 1979 and I knew Ottoman documents and sources; I therefore knew many scholars who worked on Ottoman and Middle Eastern history.
It was in1998, however, that I made the specific decision to concentrate on 1915 as the topic of my next book particularly as a consequence of the intersection of two events. One concerned the issue of democracy in Turkey where I was focusing on a specific question: what were the historical processes that hindered Turkey’s democratization?