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Recognition by Turks of the Armenian Genocide

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  • Recognition by Turks of the Armenian Genocide

    "It would certainly be wiser for the Turkish government to come to
    terms with its history."


    Turkish Scholars and the Armenian Question
    An Interview with
    Dr. Fatma Muge Gocek

    By Aris Babikian

    In the last few months many righteous Turks have began to challenge the
    Turkish Government policy of denial on the Armenian Genocide. The Istanbul
    Conference, in Bilgi University, was a turning point in breaking the taboo
    of discussion on the Armenian Genocide in Turkey. By challenging their
    government, these Turkish historians and intellectuals have provided an
    opportunity for the Turkish people to hear a more balanced version of their
    history, very different from what successive Turkish Governments have
    maintained.

    Those courageous and honourable Turkish intellectuals have been vilified,
    threatened, blackmailed, intimidated and labelled traitors by some
    nationalists, paramilitary and governments circles. Among the pioneering
    intellectuals are Elif Shafak, Taner Akcam, Halil Berktay, Orhan Pamuk,
    Ragip Zarakolu and others.

    Dr. Fatma Muge Gocek is another one of these honest and righteous Turks who
    have stood up to the might of the Turkish Government and establishment. We
    had the opportunity to meet her and provide our readers some of her
    thoughts, feelings, and insights on the Armenian Genocide, the
    Armenian-Turkish dialogue and how to bring reconciliation to our nations.

    Aris Babikian - Can you tell us about your background?

    Fatma Muge Gocek - I was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey. After
    receiving my B.A. and M.A. at Bogazici University and spending some time at
    the Sorbonne learning French, I came to the United States for my Ph.D. I
    received another M.A. and a Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University and
    then started to teach at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; I received
    tenure some time ago. I specialize on social change in the Middle East in
    general and historical sociology of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish
    Republic in particular.

    AB - What motivated you to get involved in the Armenian Genocide issue? To
    be such an outspoken person and to take a stand against the Turkish
    Government's policies?

    FMG - There are two trajectories that led me to focus on the Armenian
    question, one intellectual and the other personal. Intellectually, my
    initial academic work was on the history of Westernization in the Ottoman
    Empire. My dissertation analyzed the inheritance registers in the Ottoman
    archives with the intent to trace the eighteenth and nineteenth century
    diffusion into the empire of Western goods, ideas and institutions. That
    analysis alerted me to the significance of the Ottoman minorities (Greeks,
    Jews and Armenians) in the empire in negotiating relations with the West; it
    also emerged that these minorities formed the first Ottoman bourgeoisie.

    Yet because they were structurally separated from the Muslims in such a way
    that it was difficult for them to cooperate in forming this news social
    class: my subsequent work on the dynamics of nationalism revealed how those
    minorities were then tragically replaced by a Turkish Muslim bourgeoisie.

    Personally, I was most struck by how, when I was in Turkey, I had not even
    been aware there was an Armenian question; we were not taught anything about
    it in school. When I came to the United States for my dissertation work, the
    opposite held true: I was constantly confronted by Armenians who were often
    hostile to me for having killed their ancestors. The sociologist in me
    wondered why there was so much silence on this issue in one country and so
    much voice in the other. Then this question combined with another, namely
    why there existed in Turkey so much prejudice against the minorities (that I
    had personally witnessed throughout my life there) and so much state
    rhetoric that this was not the case as all Turkish citizens were equal
    regardless of religion..

    All these factors combined and led me to the study of the Armenian question.

    Historical sociology enabled me to study how past events played themselves
    out in the present, so I decided to focus on the Armenian question both as
    it transpired in the past -- especially in 1915 - as well as how it played
    itself out in the present. As I studied the available archival documents
    and memoirs, I realized that the official Turkish stand had many problems
    and discrepancies all of which suggested that the work done had not been
    academic but rather political. Hence I did not set out to take an explicit
    stand against the Turkish state; such a stand emerged as my research
    findings contradicted those reached by the state. My outspokenness in the
    context of the Armenian question thus emerged gradually as I attempted to
    communicate what I had found; I think what I did was to merely take an
    ethical and scientific approach to the Armenian question as opposed to a
    political one.

    AB - Can you tell us about the recent developments in the aftermath of the
    Istanbul Conference? What effect did it have on the Turkish society and
    intellectuals?

    FMG - The Istanbul Conference was symbolically very significant because it
    challenged the official stand of the Turkish state on the Armenian question
    for the first time in Turkish Republican history. It did so by bringing
    together a group of like-minded scholars and intellectuals of Turkey who had
    formulated an alternate reading and interpretation of the Armenian question.

    The immediate effect of the conference was its ability to demonstrate that
    there had developed in Turkey a significant civil society, one able and
    willing to challenge the hegemonic interpretation of the state.

    AB - Did the organizers achieve what they were aiming at?

    FMG - The main aim of the organizers was to demonstrate that they could
    indeed hold such a conference in Turkey and that they could bring together
    an adequate number of scholars to develop an alternative narrative on the
    Armenian problem. The organizers were indeed able to create such an
    academic space and create a community of like-minded people of Turkish
    origin. I think they succeeded in both of these endeavors, but it took a
    lot of political struggle to get the conference off the ground: it was
    postponed the first time and it was almost not held the second time due to
    pressures from nationalist segments of the state and the government.

    AB - During the last year we have witnessed an unprecedented activism by a
    number of Turkish intellectuals, writers and journalist who have challenged
    successive Turkish governments' line on the Armenian Genocide. What drove
    these people to stand up to the establishment within Turkish Government, the
    military, and the intelligence apparatus?

    FMG - The increased level of education in Turkey, the growth of civil
    society especially after the 1980s as well as the visions of the generations
    of the 1960s all coalesced around the aspiration to make Turkey a more
    democratic country, one where human rights superseded the concerns of the
    state. Even though there had always been such intellectuals throughout
    Turkish Republican history, the intellectuals who led this movement finally
    reached a critical mass that the state could not suppress -- the end of the
    Cold War and the subsequent shift of focus from national security and
    stability to democracy also supported their stand. As a result of all these
    developments, the stronghold of the state over society started to fracture.

    AB - We have noticed that even though righteous Turks are speaking against
    the Government line they still refuse to use the term "Genocide" to describe
    what happened to the Armenians in 1915. How do you explain this
    contradiction?

    FMG - The term genocide has become an increasingly politicized term; it is
    so politicized at this point that I think it does not foster research and
    analysis but instead hinders it. The sides polarize their positions as they
    either employ or refuse to employ the term. The Armenians rightfully insist
    on its usage as they believe this term that best reflects the tragedy they
    experienced in the Ottoman Empire especially around 1915. Yet the Turks not
    only refuse to use the term, but they have also suppressed the dissemination
    of the tragic events of 1915 as a consequence of which there formed
    generations of Turkish youth whose experiences and knowledge were totally
    devoid of 1915. Given this dramatic epistemological discrepancy in relation
    to what happened in 1915, even though what happened in 1915 certainly fits
    the definition of genocide as defined by the 1948 United Nations convention,
    I find it more heuristic and strategically more prescient to employ instead
    the term kital (large scale massacres) that the Ottomans themselves employed
    when referring to this tragedy. I personally think that both Turkish
    society and the state would be more willing to listen and engage in
    constructive dialogue that would eventually lead to recognition if what
    happened in 1915 was discussed at first in and of itself.

    AB - I have noticed that the Turkish Diaspora is more hardline on the issue
    of the Armenian Genocide than Turks in Turkey. This phenomenon is puzzling
    since Turks outside of Turkey in contrast with their compatriots in Turkey
    are free of intimidation and pressure to pursue the truth and speak their
    mind. Do you have any thoughts on this puzzling situation?

    FMG - The more conservative stand of the diaspora in relation to those in
    the country of origin has puzzled scholars for some time. The explanation
    in the literature is that those who migrate to a new country bring with them
    the political framework of their country of origin at that particular
    juncture: hence time in their country of origin freezes for them at the
    moment of their departure. Unless the immigrants are scholars who have the
    chance to update their political standpoint, they get stuck at that
    particular time in the past. Even though these immigrants may indeed
    experience no intimidation and pressure to pursue the truth and speak their
    mind, they are incapable to apply these principles of their host society to
    their society of origin. Another factor that fosters this conservative
    stand of the diaspora is positively correlated to the degree of anxiety and
    insecurity they feel in the host society: the diaspora tries to compensate
    for this insecurity and lack of self confidence by adhering to the norms and
    values with which they have arrived.

    In the case of the Turkish diaspora, these norms and values are often
    nationalist ones that they had been socialized into by the state. Starting
    at their point of arrival, the members of the Turkish diaspora reproduce
    these norms and values of the Turkish state at a level of intensity that is
    directly related to the degree of their unsuccessful social and cultural
    adaptation to the host country. In my personal interaction with the Turkish
    diaspora, I have often been struck by two things: (i) how their image of
    Turkey is totally out of date in that they think Turkey is socially still
    like when they had left it, and (ii) how unaware they are of the social
    conditions of the host country, in this case the United States, that they
    live in. Let me give you an example: When my colleague Ron Suny then at the
    University of Chicago and I organized in the year 2000 the second
    Armenian-Turkish workshop at the University of Michigan where I teach, a few
    organizations of the Turkish diaspora came together and wrote a letter to
    the president of my university protesting our workshop because they had
    heard that the term 'genocide' was employed by some of the workshop
    participants. It turns out the Turkish Consulate in Chicago had contacted
    them and asked that they protest; they enthusiastically did as they were
    told without even bothering to contact me first, a Turkish citizen living in
    the diaspora like themselves, to find out what was going on.

    One could argue that by writing the letter of protest, they were exercising
    their right to freely express their views; they indeed were, but the content
    of the letter also demonstrated how out of touch with the U.S. academia they
    really were. In the letter, they went on to instruct the president of the
    University of Michigan as to who should have been invited to the workshop
    instead. Anyone who knows anything about universities in the United States
    is aware that the faculty has total intellectual independence in organizing
    workshops -- they invite whoever they wish to talk on whatever topics they
    want to discuss - and that this intellectual independence from social and
    political pressure is held sacred by all, especially the university
    administration.

    Why did the conservative Turkish diaspora engage in such self-destructive
    behavior? The universities in Turkey often function as extensions of the
    state apparatus; faculty is often treated like civil servants of a state
    that finds in itself the right to control the thoughts and actions of
    faculty. The Turkish diaspora organizations took this Turkish reality and
    assumed that is how things worked in the United States as well: this shows
    how out of touch with American society and educational institutions they
    really are. Needless to say, not only were they totally ineffectual, but I
    as a Turk was embarrassed by what they had done because the university
    administration rightfully formed a very negative impression of them. I know
    that many of their efforts to promote the Turkish state view in the United
    States are just as ineffectual. Interestingly enough, rather than blaming
    their own actions for this failure, they keep blaming others, namely either
    the Armenian diaspora which they claim is so strong that it renders the
    Turkish one ineffectual or, in a very nationalistic move that reifies their
    rigid stands even more, that American society and/or the West is out to get
    Turkey and is therefore unwilling to understand what Turkey is all about. I
    have been trying to get them to be self critical but have had no luck
    whatsoever, especially with the older generations.

    AB - In a follow-up to my earlier question, we have witnessed that outspoken
    Turks like Elif Shafak, Taner Akcam, Halil Berktay, yourself and many others
    have been threatened and labeled traitors. Do you think this attitude is
    widespread in Turkish society?

    FMG - The threats and stigma we all experience is a natural consequence of
    the nationalist rhetoric that dominates and hegemonizes Turkish society and
    state. The media, public opinion as well as popular culture in Turkey have
    all been very successfully controlled by the state up until now. It is hard
    to know how many individuals and groups go along with this control because
    of their personal beliefs along the same lines; my hunch is that many do so
    because they do not know otherwise and they have often not had the option to
    think otherwise. Yet the internet is a very significant mode of
    communication that enables such conditions to alter dramatically, and it has
    indeed started to do so among especially the Turkish youth. It is hard to
    know how widespread this critical stand against the hegemony of the Turkish
    state is, but I can tell you that it is definitely on the rise.

    continued

  • #2
    AB - Some Europeans have been using the Armenian Genocide to undermine
    Turkey's image and thus scuttle Turkey's attempt to join the European Union.

    Wouldn't be it wiser for the Turkish government to come to terms with its
    history and thus remove the Armenian Genocide from the accession
    negotiations?

    FMG - I agree with you that it would certainly be wiser for the Turkish
    government to come to terms with its history and thus remove the Armenian
    question from the accession negotiations. Yet coming to terms with history
    will be a long, arduous process for Turkey because the Turks have, in
    addition to the Armenian problem, many other silences in their history that
    they would need to confront. Also, the continuities between the Ottoman
    Empire and the Turkish nation-state especially in relation to the treatment
    of the minorities needs to be further studied. Added to this is the
    necessity to make Turkish state and society aware of how the lack of
    accountability for past injustices in history has actually sanctioned the
    use of violence by the state against society: only when this dimension is
    further developed can the people in Turkey understand why the resolution of
    the Armenian question is so crucial not only for the Armenians, but also for
    the well-being of all the citizens of Turkey as well as for the health of
    Turkish democracy.

    AB - Do you think the Turkish government's strategy to leave the issue of
    the Armenian genocide to historians and forming a historians' commission to
    investigate the issue, especially after the International Association of
    Genocide Scholars open letter to Prime Minister Erdogan, is a failed
    strategy...trying to avoid the unavoidable?

    FMG - Even though I fully support the opening of the archives in Turkey,
    Armenia and the Armenian diaspora so as to enable the historians to fully
    study the events surrounding 1915 in detail, I concur on this point with the
    Ottoman historian Şukru Hanioğlu that such a move in and of itself would not
    solve the problem. This is so because all documents are socially
    constructed so historians can therefore come up with many varied
    interpretations of the same document -- debates surrounding varying
    interpretations could take decades to settle. This is so because the
    principles of academic research are not political in nature; scholars do not
    approach documents with the intent to settle international disputes or to
    formulate policies, but rather to get closer to understanding historical
    events: the former falls into the field of other experts.

    Also, such a strategy totally overlooks the human dimension; what is most
    important for me as a human being, for instance, is the emotional relief
    that the recognition of the tragedy of 1915 shall bring to both the
    Armenians as well as the Turks. The Armenians can then finally start, with
    the support of the Turks, the much needed grieving process. The Turks in
    turn can assume responsibility for their past injustices and commence to
    live, as a consequence of such recognition, in a much kinder, gentler
    society where they tolerate those who are different from them.

    AB - Why do you think that despite over whelming historical evidence the
    Turkish state remains so intransigent in its recognition of the Armenian
    Genocide?

    FMG - Why the Turkish state remains so intransigent in its recognition of
    the Armenian tragedy in spite of the overwhelming historical evidence is
    actually the topic of my next book I am working on at the moment. What I
    have observed in my analysis is a 'layering of denial' that spans from the
    last decades of the Ottoman Empire into the Turkish nation-state to the
    present, so at first this layering has to be deconstructed. Then the
    Turkish state needs to recognize the continuity between the empire and the
    republic, both in terms of social actors as well as their actions. Such a
    reorientation would in turn lead to a rewriting of the official nationalist
    history to include the narratives of all its minorities, past and present.

    The emerging portrait from this endeavor will end up discrediting many
    individuals and institutions to destabilize the existing power structure in
    Turkey. So the end result would be much less glorious than the Turkish
    nationalism that exists today to legitimate the status quo; even though the
    ensuing Turkish state and society would be much more healthy and democratic,
    I think the reservations I discussed explain why the Turkish state is so
    intransigent.

    AB - We have seen conflicting messages from the AKP government on the
    Armenian Genocide. What is your evaluation of the Islamist government's
    position on this issue?

    FMG - The position of the AK Party government on this issue - as on many
    issues other than the economic ones that they seem to handle most ably - is
    not at all fixed but rather in flux depending on the vagaries of political
    events. Yet I should start off by noting that I am actually delighted that
    it is not fixed, for all previous Turkish governments had very fixed
    nationalist stands on the Armenian issue and such stands are much harder to
    engage in negotiations than a fluctuating one. Probably the most
    significant interconnected foreign policy matter that has put the Armenian
    issue on the agenda of AK party is Turkey's accession talks with the
    European Union. AK Party very much advocates such membership because the
    political survival of the party itself is predicated on it. This
    interconnection had not yet become clear when AK Party initially joined the
    Republican People's Party in signing the letter sent from the Turkish
    parliament to the British one asking that the contents of the Blue Book
    regarding the Armenian massacres of 1915 be dismissed as mere propaganda.

    This embarrassing move was followed by the postponement of the Istanbul
    conference in May 2005 when the Turkish Minister of Justice Cemil Cicek made
    in the parliament the unfortunate remark that the participants of the
    Istanbul Conference were 'stabbing the nation in the back.' Though the
    Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan and the foreign minister Abdullah Gul,
    both out of the country at the time, immediately stated that Cicek's remarks
    were personal and did not at all reflect the stand of the government, it was
    evident at that juncture that there was no set party policy regarding the
    Armenian issue. Still, they went ahead and stated the conference ought to
    take place because Turkey was a country where all such issues could be
    freely talked about. Such a stand in and of itself was distinct and more
    progressive from the nationalist stands of all other political parties in
    that AK Party agreed the conference ought to take place and also did not
    insist that the official state position be represented at the conference.

    When September 2005 came around , AK Party expressed its desire that the
    postponed conference ought to actualize before the EU accession talks on
    October 3rd. Foreign minister Gul stated to the conference organizers that
    he would have personally attended the conference himself had he not been at
    the UN right around that time. Such tacit approval was not sufficient to
    actualize the conference, however, since some ultra-nationalists filed a
    lawsuit to stop it once again. The initial tacit approval then became
    public as all of the social actors of AK party including Cemil Cicek came
    out and expressed their support of the conference.

    AB - When do you think the Turkish state will finally come to term with the
    historical facts and recognize the Armenian Genocide?

    FMG - I personally wish they would do so by 2015 because that year would be
    the centennial of 1915. Getting there is going to require a long and
    difficult journey, however, because there is so much that the Turkish state
    has to come to terms with before reaching that stage. In this context, I
    should note that a lot of responsibility is going to fall upon the Armenian
    diaspora due to the conditions of the other two political actors, namely the
    Turkish and Armenian states. Turks never learned about the historical facts
    of 1915 because of the suppression of the Turkish state in the name of
    nationalism; ironically, the Armenians in the Armenian Republic likewise
    have not had a chance until very recently to research and generate
    scholarship on 1915 because of the Soviet influence that discouraged such
    research for fear that it would generate nationalism. As a consequence, the
    only community that was able to remember and research 1915 was the Armenian
    diaspora. Most of the Armenian diaspora also reside in the lands of two
    major world powers, namely the United States and the European Union that are
    both very interested in the resolution of this conflict in a way that
    satisfies all parties, including the West.

    The Armenian diaspora will need to work with both the Turkish and Armenian
    states and societies and hopefully help both sides shed their nationalistic
    stands on this issue to eventually reach reconciliation. Yet the current
    situation is not yet at this point of development: the foreign policy of the
    Turkish Republic is still staunchly nationalistic with some glimmers of hope
    for a more reconciliatory stand as there is some informal discussion as to
    what recognition, compensation and the like ought to entail - the
    possibility of Turkey's accession to the European Union also very much
    accelerates such constructive discussions. The foreign policy of the
    Armenian Republic used to be much less nationalistic in relation to 1915
    under Ter Petrossian, but seems to be becoming increasingly so, especially
    after the Karabagh standoff. The political stand of the Armenian diaspora
    is likewise unclear; while there are many progressive elements that I am
    most in touch with, I am also told that there are some very nationalistic
    segments that might resist and therefore hinder the negotiations as much as,
    of not more than those elements in the two republics. And an additional
    factor that is going to complicate matters is that the diaspora is scattered
    throughout the world with many organizations that claim to represent it;
    this situation makes its dynamics much more politically volatile and harder
    to comprehend. Yet I believe that we can work through all these obstacles
    altogether once we develop a clear vision of what we want to see
    accomplished.

    AB - During the UCLA conference you mentioned that around 2 million Turkish
    citizens might be of Armenian origin. Can you elaborate on this topic? What
    were the circumstances which forced them to become Turks? What do they feel
    about their dual identities? What role can they play in bringing our two
    peoples together...etc?

    FMG - The large number of Turks of Armenian ancestry was for me the most
    interesting discovery of the Istanbul conference. We did know that there
    had been in 1915 many Armenians who were forcibly converted, daughters
    forcibly married off, and many babies and children taken in by Turkish
    Muslim families, but there were no public accounts provided by such people
    (this is understandable given the silencing that went on for so long in
    Turkey regarding these matters). We do not know how many Turks there are of
    Armenian descent, but I can tell you that Hrant Dink of Agos newspaper is
    especially interested in this matter; the 1-2 million figure I mentioned is
    based on my conversations with him. I just learned that it was Etyen
    Mahcupyan, the prominent Turkish Armenian intellectual, who estimated that
    there are probably 1.5 million such families. Ayşe Gul Altınay of Sabancı
    University just informed me that she, along with some other colleagues, has
    started to interview such families and has conducted 16 in-depth interviews
    so far. She noted that each and every one case reveals very stunning
    insights; you can reach her through her-email address posted on the Sabancı
    University website.

    The other information I have on this matter is anecdotal. I met at the
    Istanbul conference with Fethiye Cetin whose very moving account about
    discovering in her late twenties the Armenian identity of her maternal
    grandmother was recently published in Turkey under the title Anneannem (My
    Maternal Grandmother). I asked her as to whether she knew of any other
    people of similar ancestry and she told me she is contacted by at least 100
    such people a month; she is also working with Ayşe Gul Altınay on the
    research project I mentioned above... At the conference, Halil Berktay also
    remarked that there were quite a number of people attending who had recently
    discovered their Armenian ancestry and who therefore wanted to attend to
    learn more about their silenced past. I personally met two of them there
    who contacted me because they wanted me to help them trace their relatives;
    they stated they felt enriched by the knowledge especially since they were
    now able to trace relatives they did not know they had and, as a
    consequence, had very moving reunions. As you can imagine, they are
    particularly upset by the stubborn stand of the Turkish state on this issue.

    I told them that they, as individuals who concomitantly belong to two
    communities and who are therefore able to move beyond the restricting
    nationalisms that exist in both, could play a very significant role in
    spearheading recognition and reconciliation.

    Aris Babikian is a journalist, lecturer, Human Rights activist and member of
    the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada. He is also on the
    Board of Presidents of the Canadian Ethnocultural Council of Canada

    The above interview appeared in the year end (2005) edition of the
    tri-lingual Horizon Weekly. Horizon is the largest Canadian-Armenian paper.

    It is published in Montreal and distributed Canada wide.

    Comment


    • #3
      Turkish Historian for Teaching Armenian Genocide History at US Schools

      17.01.2006 21:17 GMT+04:00
      /PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Armenian Assembly of America (AAA) announced today that it plans to file a friend of the court brief in response to a lawsuit filed by two public high school teachers, one student and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations challenging a Massachusetts statute allowing for the teaching of the Armenian Genocide. The AAA formed a legal commission to that end. “We devoted ourselves to studying the Armenian Genocide and efforts to prove the fact not only in Massachusetts, but also throughout the nation,” Assembly Board of Trustees Vice President Robert A. Kaloosdian said. The AAA has provided a reference book on the Genocide, based on documents and official evidences, to the US archives. The AAA continues struggling for the genocide history to be taught at state schools. A decision to do that was passed by the authorities of New Jersey state. The Turkish party insists that school children, according to the principle of freedom of speech, should also be provided with reference books on the Armenian Genocide denial policy. In the opinion of Turkish historian of Michigan University, ethnic Turkish Fatima Muge Gocek, who sent a letter to the Wall Street Journal over the trial in Massachusetts, “the suit resulted from the efforts of the Turkish state on behalf of organizations and several persons.” «I do not accept this move, as when teaching there is no need to present all viewpoints over a historical event. The pupils has to decide on his viewpoint himself. Historical facts should be presented at school,» Gocek said. «We should not only teach children at school, but also teach them how to become a good person. We should do it by means of historical facts, including by studying the Armenian Genocide,» she added, reported RFE/RL.
      "All truth passes through three stages:
      First, it is ridiculed;
      Second, it is violently opposed; and
      Third, it is accepted as self-evident."

      Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

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      • #4
        Akcam, Berktay, Gocek and Pamuk are the most prominent.

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