Sins of Our Fathers

Eklavya, good to see you here at Chowk. been a while. :) All I meant was that some of the explanations here of what happened tend to favor the Turkish side, hence a denial of the genocide, and it is somewhat reminiscent of Lewis' favoring the Turkish side of events.

"Some of what I am reading here sounds like Bernard Lewis."

Ana, can you please explain that. What in Bernard Lewis sounded like the arguments advanced here (and vice versa)? Thanks.

when one says "no genocide should go uncondemned but. . ." that sounds very much like a justification rather than a condemnation. Some of what I am reading here sounds like Bernard Lewis. Even if the Armenians were not "completely innocent" there is no justification for the death marches and the expulsion from their homes. And the official accusation of genocide was brought forth a long time ago, not 100 years later. If a Chancellor of Germany can express his shame and acknowledgment for what happened to the Jews, what stops Turkey from doing the same? To describe what happened to the Armenians as genocide is punishable by law in Turkey. How messed up is that?

Evidently, when Hitler asked who remembers the Armenians in planning the extermination of the Jews, he thought he knew what he was talking about. Because it was remembered differently. And it still is. As are other genocides. Look at what happened in Rwanda. The State Department at the time fudged and fumbled about what defines genocide while people were being massacred, and then Clinton decides to go to Rwanda and mention the word "genocide" multiple times in a five to ten minute speech.

So we can all sit at our keyboards and discuss whether this is a genocide or not, and the obvious assertion that history does not happen in a vacuum. It obviously teaches us little to nothing either.

mZehra -- Salim is right -- no genocide should go uncondemned -- but that was the overboard reaction of the harried and hapless Turks under assault by surrounding Europeans armies helping Greeks to capture Turkish territory who were using the Armeninans as rearguard fifth column for the occupying Greek forces -- the Armenians rightwing extremists in Greek occupied Turkish territories went crazy they indulged in large scale ethnic cleansing of the Turks from Armenian Turkish mixed neighborhoods -- killing and displacing thousands of Turks from their ancestral homes.

An Armenian friend of mine Ohanian told me this -- that "we Armenians are not as innocent as the radical Armenians would like the world to believe" -- he said what the Turk did was to overreact on a massvie scale after Ataturk recaptured those Turkish terriitories -- under the seige and revenge-taking mentality -- the Turks went berserk and killed almost a million Armenians for thousands of dead Turks.

Before the Armenian ethnic cleansing of the Turkish neighborhood the Turks and Armenians were living side by side for centuries as good neighbors.

mzehra #34 {"The Turkish population had a lot of resentment towards the Armenians due to their losses and the plundering of Muslim lands, but revenge is not a justification nor an honorable motive.

Every action has a reason, even murder, but it does in no way justify it. "}

Mahvish,
I agree with your sentiment and, of course, there is no justification for manslaughter or murder. But officially accusing a deceased empire almost 100 years later with a formal charge of "genocide," is even less sensible than trying Harry Truman for the "murder" of a quarter million Japanese civilians in 1945 or George Bush Jr. and Sr. for the "murder" of half a million Iraqis, or LBJ and Nixon for the slaughter of two million Vietnamese.

Re: # 33
Salim Chauhan,

As you say no action occurs in a vacuum, when the Ottoman Turks made such a huge decision to drive the Armenians out of their lands by a method that would insure maximum numbers of casualties, they must have been provoked in some manner.

Because the Armenians supported the Russians in the war against Turkey in hopes of gaining their own independence, the punishment they got in return was highly disproportionate. The Turkish population had a lot of resentment towards the Armenians due to their losses and the plundering of Muslim lands, but revenge is not a justification nor an honorable motive.

Every action has a reason, even murder, but it does in no way justify it.

Dear Mahvish Zehra,

You have every right to shed light on a subject that preoccupies the US Congress almost perennially. Of course, if massacres in history are given importance based on the voting clout of their survivors' descendants in Southern California, then we need to question this persistence.

The carnage of Armenians did not occur in a vacuum. The events of 1915 must be seen as sequels to the disasters of 1878, 1911, 1912, and of course the then ongoing WW I of 1914-1918.

The Russo-Turkish War of 1878 saw a calamitous defeat of the Ottomans at the hands of the Romanoffs resulting in the loss of Muslim Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia. This was in addition to the loss of Muslim Crimea, Azov, and eastern Black Sea areas earlier in the 18th century. Each of these defeats was followed by wide-scale massacre and uprooting of the Muslim populations, sometimes a majority, of these territories.

The Balkan Wars of 1911-1912, followed by the Italian invasion of Libya were major disasters with additional loss of territory in Albania, Macedonia, Kosova, Rumelia, and Western Thrace not to mention Libya and all of the Dodecanese Islands of the Aegean Sea. In each case there were widespread rapes, looting, expulsions, and massacres of Muslims residing in the lost territories. The Turkish heartland was filled with arriving refugees full of stories of inhumane treatment, lost relatives, raped daughters, and looted homes.

In this compounding of suffering, Turkey entered WWI on the side of the Central Powers (Germany and Austria) against the Allies (UK, France, Serbia, Russia, and later the US). The Russians were counting on support from their fellow Christian Armenians in the east, while the British invaded in Europe. The Armenians took up arms and supported the invading Russians. Many Turkish lives were lost in defeat after defeat on the eastern front against Russia. A decision was made to move the entire Armenian population from the east to the south in Syria. The result of this forced migration was hunger, disease, deprivation, and yes, cruel treatment at the hands of Ottoman soldiers, including many Kurds.

As a result of this harsh policy, Turkey was able to defeat the Russians in the east and thus cause Russia's exit from WW I after the second Russian Revolution that ended Romanoff rule.

While the huge loss of life is a black mark on Turkish history and pride, the fact that there were sizable and intact Armenian populations in Istanbul, Bursa, and elsewhere in Anatolia, after the "Holocaust of 1915," negates the charge that there was a premeditated, deliberate, and thorough genocide committed by the Ottoman Turks.

Sometimes it makes sense to consider both sides of a conflict before we judge, with perfect 20/20 hindsight, one side as aggressor and the other as pure victim. All death and all suffering are horrible and should not be tolerated. All we need to do is to exercise fairness before we play the blame game based on our self-righteous sense of selective morality.

Salim Chauhan

As recent as last week, a case against Jamat Islami has been filed with the highest court in Bangladesh in reference to Bangladeshi Genocide of 71, and how Jamat Islami was involved in mass killing. No wonder the Bangladeshi Mullas don’t like the title Genocide and describe the events of 71 as ‘civil war’. To answer the earlier question that Ana posed, yes there are repercussion as to what to call (ranging from economic to political). Who would have thought that Jamat Islami was used by the Pak Army (surprise surprise) in 1971 to mass kill civilians. That’s what Mullahs do.

Here’s a list of most significant conflicts and how they are described by the UN - Afghanistan (Coups: 1973-1978), Angola (War with UNITA: 1975-1992), Argentina (Dirty War: 1976-1983), Bosnia (Civil War & Genocide: 1992-1995), Cambodia (Genocide:1970s), Chad (Civil War: 1965-1979), El Salvador (Civil War: 1970s-1980s), Ethiopia (War & Civil War: 1974-1999), Guatemala (Civil War: 1975-1979), Guyana (Ethnic Conflict: 1970s-1980s), Haiti (Civil War: 1990s), East Timor (Indonesian invasion & Genocide: 1974-1999), Iran (Iran-Iraq War: 1980-1989), Lebanon (Civil War: 1975-1990), Liberia (Civil War: 1989-1997), Libya (War with Chad: 1980-1987), Mozambique (Renamo War: 1970s-1992), Nicaragua (Contra War: 1980s), Pakistan (Balochistan Insurgency: 1973-1977), Palestine (1st Intifada: 1987-1992), Peru (Shining Path War: 1980s), Russia (Chechen Uprising: 1994-1996), Rwanda (Civil War and Genocide: 1991-1996), Sierra Leone (Civil War: 1990-2002), Somalia (Civil War: 1977-78, 1986-1990), South Africa (Anti-Apartheid Struggle: 1948-1994), Sri Lanka (Tamil Civil War: 1983-2002), Sudan (Civil War: 1980s-1990s), Uganda (War In The Bush: 1980-1985), and Yemen (Civil War: 1990-1994).

The titles must be used with utmost care.

Re: # 30
At the moment, the term "holocaust" in my view seems more appropriate for mass killings of a certain tribe or people in a planned and calculated manner. The number of resulting deaths making up of a large proportion of the target population.
The Bangladeshi killings which are regarded as a form of genocide by some parts of the international community, was not in effect carried out to exterminate the whole of the Bangladeshi community.

#12 So, the term "holocaust" for writer would be applicable to the heinous crimes perpetrated (so recently) by West (Pakistan) on East Pakistanis (Bangladesh). Once we get that cleared, it is truly just a question of semantics, isn't it?

Ana, whether the Congress passes the resolution calling Armenian massacre a Genocide or not, does not change what it was. Meanwhile, Qatar (yep, that little piece of shyt country in the middle of nowhere) while a rotating member of the UNSC didn’t let the resolution for sanctioning Sudan get thru to the GA. This was followed by Pakistan’s outright support of Sudanese government, on the premise, it “being” the internal matter of Sudan. Yes, there might be consequences to how the issues are resolved, but let’s be realistic about who is creating the obstacles. Yes, it is the Ummah, but these morons with blinders like MNI, are more interested in arguing over how the terms are defined, purely to deflect attention from the nonsense being carried out in places like Darfur. No matter what happens, the anti-Semitism among muslims is despicable, and no story goes without bringing in the Holocaust and Jewish suffering, while being completely oblivious to what is going on in their own lands.

The comments at Chowk are interesting as always. . .

If someone believes that this article implies something about Hitler, it was Hitler afterall who said, "Who (afterall) remembers the Armenians?" The Armenian Genocide is connected to the Holocaust in that Hitler thought he could get away with mass extermination just as the Young Turks did.

And the Turks are still getting away with it.

What I read here, not in the article, but in the comments, is a lot of minimizing. Whether the Armenian genocide is called a Holocaust or a Genocide, is not as crucial I believe as our reaction to it, our denial or our minimizing it. And Kulharee, I am in full agreement that the focus should be on Darfur, but here's the thing: When a government supported by other governments is still able to quash any reference to what happened in 1915 as a genocide, don't you think it has any effect whatsoever on how horrific events like Rwanda or Darfur are viewed?

MNI, perhaps unlike you, I don’t come to Chowk to be considered smart or enlightened.

Bhatti.. can you read up the definition of shufuckashafook in the dictionary? Are you that dumb? Holocaust means murder on a mass scale.. where the fuk does Iraq come into that? And what exactly are you suggesting? Saddam killed more Marsh Arab Shias than Iraqis killed by the coalition forces. Are you accusing Saddam of committing a Holocaust?

Kulharee,

Here is the meaning of holocaust in oxford dictionary:
"
holocaust
/hollkawst/

• noun 1 destruction or slaughter on a mass scale. 2 (the Holocaust) the mass murder of Jews under the German Nazi regime in World War II.

— ORIGIN from Greek kaustos ‘burnt’.

Now tell me one thing. Is the blood of Iraqis too cheap to be included in this term........

Kulharee,

Here is the meaning of holocaust in oxford dictionary:
"
holocaust
/hollkawst/

• noun 1 destruction or slaughter on a mass scale. 2 (the Holocaust) the mass murder of Jews under the German Nazi regime in World War II.

— ORIGIN from Greek kaustos ‘burnt’.

Now tell me one thing. Is the blood of Iraqis too cheap to be included in this term........

Kulharee goes off on another tangential rant. Kulharee sahib, just a gratuitious spray of profanities at Arabs does ot make you either smart or enlightened. I did not give out a ranking list for genocides. I do not see the article equating the Armenian genocide to the Holocaust. All that the author did was to draw a parallel, at which you started getting bent out of shape. This is not a rational reaction; it is the reaction of someone with an agenda, like ADL office-bearers.
No one mentioned anything about the raid of Badr (your reference to the 300 whacked). Going off on tangents about Arabs and Islam is not going to serve a purpose here. Please leave that aside. (By the way, people thump their chest at the 72 killed in Karbala, not the 300 killed in Badr.)

Your mendacious accusation that I belittled the Holocaust does not deserve the dignity of a response. It'd suffice to say that all you have is a ghissa piTa dried out brush, with which you paint everyone who disagrees with you. It shows the shallowness of your intellect.

Finally, "holocaust" was a common noun before it became a proper one. So no, the word "holocaust" is not DEFINED as the genocide of the Jewish people by Nazis. The fact that "Holocaust" as a proper noun is used to refer to the largest genocide (deliberate, systematic destruction of a particular race) in recorded history, does not vitiate the use of "holocaust" in its pre-Holocaust context.

a very cheap and shallow piece , the author appears to be jewish or christian,may be her grandmother was armenian,armenian genocie is as big a lie as jewish genocide

Bhatti, holocaust is defined as the genocide of European Jews and others by Nazis. The next is the genocide of Cambodians; the next is Rwandan, followed by what is going on in Darfur. The term Holocaust should be used with caution. What is going on in Iraq is neither a Genocide nor a Holocaust. There is no systematic killing going on in Iraq. People slipping on banana peels is not genocide.

#17

[Bhatti, holocaust in Iraq?? What have you been smoking?]

Kulharee, so how you define holocauste..........

Nembus, as usual it wasn’t addressed to you.

kunkil,

as usual you are missing the point.

Re: # 17

kulharee,

... the jewish holocaust was sanctioned by mo of mecca at khandaq - that's why muslims fail to condemn it .....

Take your head out of sand and arbi backsides, no one is denying anything about the Armenian genocide, but its not the same as the Jewish holocaust, 20 million Russians also died during the WW2, about same number of Chinese, but those were not Russian or Chinese Holocausts either. There is a big difference. What’s funny is that only 300 were whacked and a new frigging religion was started and people thump their chests to keep the memories of just 300 alive that died some 1400 year ago.

It’s comical that Muslims who are always declaring victim-hood would try to belittle suffering of the Jews. Shame on them. Just as some Pakis are building monuments to Alexander in Punjab where his army defeated “Hindu” king. Get a friggin life.

Bhatti, holocaust in Iraq?? What have you been smoking?

"Etymology and use of the term
Main article: Names of the Holocaust
The term holocaust originally derived from the Greek word holókauston, meaning a "completely (holos) burnt (kaustos)" sacrificial offering to a god. Since the late 19th century, it has been used primarily to refer to disasters or catastrophes.

The biblical word Shoa (שואה) (also spelled Shoah and Sho'ah), meaning "calamity," became the standard Hebrew term for the Holocaust as early as the 1940s.[8] Shoa is preferred by many Jews for a number of reasons, including the theologically offensive nature of the original meaning of "holocaust."


Definition
The word "holocaust" has been widely used since the 17th century to refer to the violent deaths of a large number of people. Winston Churchill, for example, used it before World War II, and others use it to describe the Armenian Genocide of World War I. [5] Since the 1950s its use has been increasingly restricted, and it is now mainly used to describe the Nazi Holocaust, spelled with a capital H. The word was adopted as a translation of "Shoah," which appeared for the first time in 1940 in Jerusalem in a booklet called Sho'at Yehudei Polin (The Holocaust of the Jews of Poland). In the spring of 1942, the Jerusalem historian BenZion Dinur (Dinaburg) used the term "Shoah" to describe the extermination of Europe's Jews, calling it a "catastrophe" that symbolized the unique situation of the Jewish people.[9][10] By the 1950s, its translation, "Holocaust," had come routinely to refer to the genocide of the European Jews.[8]

The usual German term for the extermination of the Jews during the Nazi period was Endlösung der Judenfrage (the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question"). In both English and German, "Final Solution" is widely used as an alternative to the Holocaust.[11]

The word "Holocaust" is also used in a wider sense to describe other actions of the Nazi regime. These include the killing of around half a million Roma and Sinti, the deaths of several million Soviet prisoners of war, along with slave laborers, gay men, Jehovah's Witnesses, the disabled, and political opponents. The use of the word in this wider sense is objected to by many Jewish organizations, particularly those established to commemorate the Jewish Holocaust. Jewish organizations say that the word in its current sense was originally coined to describe the extermination of the Jews, and that the Jewish Holocaust was a crime on such a scale, and of such specificity, as the culmination of the long history of European antisemitism, that it should not be subsumed into a general category with the other crimes of the Nazis.

Even more hotly disputed is the extension of the word to describe events that have no connection with World War II. It is used by Armenians to describe the Armenian genocide of World War I. The terms "Rwandan Holocaust" and "Cambodian Holocaust" are used to refer to the Rwanda genocide of 1994 and the mass killings of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia respectively, and "African Holocaust" is used to describe the slave trade and the colonization of Africa, also known as the Maafa."

-Wikipedia
Search term: The Holocaust

Elif Shafak, the Turkish writer, provides an overview of the range of Turkish perspectives on Turkish-Armenian history. Read the piece I posted in the first interact.

mzehra,

Conflict is part of human nature. Its hardwired in our genetic makeup. No matter how many Budhas, Gandhis and other saints have shown up, we will always have the tendency to indulge in mayhem and regretting it later. Just look at how hindus and muslims butchered each other in 1947, even though they had really nothing to fight over. Now when Indians and Pakistanis meet, especially Punjabis, they cant believe that their previous generation was so stupid and barbaric. They start giving each other jhappies/pappies and extend utmost hospitality to each other. Go figure!!

The only thing that can control this human tendency to indulge in butchery is economics. As they say - baap bada na bhaiyya, sabse bada rupaiya. Look at the Europeans today, behaving like one happy family. Who would believe that they loved to slaughter each other for millenia? Its all because of economics. They realized that it is more profitable to join hands than kill each other. Perhaps the same realization will sink in among other people in this planet, hopefully including Indians and Pakistanis as well.

A good article, especially with the point of view of spreading awareness. Further, I also agree with the author regarding the use of term for holocaust for all the acts in which humans are killed by other humans. So, the attila the hun, chengiz khan, and others are all responsible for holocaust in their own times.

The most current holocaust going on is in Iraq. When US could have easily dislodged Saddam in 1991, they chose to punish people of Iraq instead. Further, they attacked Iraq on false intelligence knowingly. The civilian death toll in Iraq is:

Since Invasion in 2003 to 2006 - 655,000

(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10 /10/AR2006101001442.html)

Due to sanctions on Iraq from
1991 till 2000 - 350,000

(http://www.thenation.com/doc/20011203/cortright)

Total - 1,005,000

These figures do not include period from 2000 till invasion. It also does not include figures for 2007.

Now, should we not call this holocaust. The author of the article rightly said that the purpose is to learn the lesson so that it does not happen again. Well; its happening again, and happening right under our nose...

Regards,

Khalid Bhatti

I propose that the term 'holocaust' not be exclusive to the Jews, it should be used for any mass killings of humans by humans. All other acts of mass killings should be given the same importance as the Jewish holocaust. This would include all similar events throughout history, not just the Armenian one, but i believe it is important to start somewhere.
If we do not concede to the mistakes of the past, then we are as worse as those perpetrating the crimes or standing by. I believe that is very important to ensure those events do not repeat themselves.
The comparison with the Jewish holocaust is drawn only in terms of the suffering meted out, not due to any similarities between the victims themselves.

Re: # 4

mzehra,

I agree with you on the basic principle but disagree with you on the linear approach to historical events. Life has very few linear relationships, most of the vents are random but what is consistent is human nature which has yet to change and has shown traces of barbarity unseen in other living beings in form of genocide.

We should highlight genocides but need to be fair in our approach so that we do not compartmentalize atrocities to a single entity or civilization. Mankind has a long history of crimes committed against humanity starting from Kane and Abel right down to the Rwandan massacre. During this long spell, we humans have the distinction of destroying each other and other living forms.

Re: # 9

I am not protecting anyone. If Turks did it then damn them, but before we damn them Americans must also take blame for the genocide of 1 million Iraqis; Russinas must take blame for the genocide of 1.6 Afghanis and so on and so forth. Who the guck are americans to be the chacha khamkha of the world. One day Turks will regret it, why didn't they rub it in Americans face when they could.

I was almost completely ignorant of this issue until recently when I read Robert Fisk's "War for Civilization". He provides graphic accounts of massacres, and is firmly convinced that was genocide, and should be acknowledged as such. I would love to read the Turkish point of view.

Kulharee of course is parroting the ADL line, that the Jewish people are khuda of suffering; even mentioning another people, let alone comparing their plight with the suffering of Jews is blasphemy. ADL types get particularly angry when the Armenian "genocide" is discussed with the Holocaust. Part of it is because they seem to covetiously guard the exclusiveness of their victim status; part of it is also because Israel has good ties with Turkey.

Urstruly is the other extreme, going off on a rant in favor of his Musalman bhai. Americans, by the way are firmly on the Turks' side on this. The resolution in the House of Representatives did not pass the Senate, thanks to vociferous protests by Turkish officials, tacitly backed by their Israeli friends in Washington.

Turks should have imposed absolute restriction upon US to use Turk air and land passage to Iraq and forced US legislature to pass a resolution that Armenian Holocaust is a lie and it never happened. That should have put the matter to rest for good. Now couple of years down the road a bug will again crawl up Americans'.....

luleeman...you need to take couple of history 101 classes at your local community college.

Actually, the author correctly proposes the term "holocaust" in the genocide of Armenians. Mahvish, could you discuss why you chose to use this term?

Btw, a psychologist of Russian Jewish heritage whom I know refers to the Partition as a "holocaust".

Dear Mahvish, Armenians and Jews are two different people, hence the discrepancy in the outcry. Jews have been persecuted for hundreds of years, while the end of Ottoman Empire Armenian Genocide was the only atrocity ever to be committed against the Armenians. Trying to draw comparison about the two is like comparing apples to potatoes. That’s why you will see more Turkish (the oppressors, rather than the victim) literature about the Armenian Genocide. The Armenians are very different people. I think the world should pay more attention to what is going on in Darfur. Today.

Re: # 3

I believe that due to the nature of the crime, no matter what the Turkish reasons were, they cannot possibly come close to justifying it.
It was the purpose of this article to only create awareness of the issue. It is ofcourse important to note both sides of the event for any in depth discussion.
The Armenian genocide set an important and noted precedent for mass killings of a population. Historians believe the international community's muted response may have given Hitler confidence to carry out his own holocaust.

Dear writer,

Good initiative but article fails to present the Turkish viewpoint and implies German (Hitler) atrocities had their roots in the Armenian massacre.

sigh...mahvish mahvish mahvish...

don't you know the rules

Conquests of non-islamic lands by muslims is part of the glorious history of islam.

conquest of islamic lands by non-muslims is a crime to be condemned until time ends

When muslims killed non-muslims in the past, it's part of the glorious warrior history of islam

When non-muslims killed muslims in the past, like during the crusades hundreds of years ago, that event needs to be mourned by muslim and non-muslim alike forever...

Thanks for this piece, Ms. Zehra!

Elif Shafak is another writer challenging dominant narratives:


Elif Şafak
From Armeniapedia.org
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ELIF ŞAFAK (aka Elif Shafak) was born in Strasbourg, France in 1971. She spent her teenage years in Spain before returning to Turkey. She has published five novels, including, The Saint of Incipient Insanities, which is her first novel in English and which was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the fall of 2004. Her latest novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, has caused an uproar in Turkey as it may be the first Turkish novel to explore the emotional realities of the Armenian Genocide through three generationals of women in a Turkish family in Istanbul and an Armenian American family in the United States.

Şafak is also a social scientist, graduated from International Relations at Middle East Technical University. She holds a Master of Science degree in Gender and Women Studies, and earned her PhD from the Department of Political Science. Her major in Contemporary Western Political Thought and her minor in Middle Eastern Studies, Shafak's academic background has been nurtured by a critical, interdisciplinary, and gender-conscious rereading of the literature on the Middle East & West, Islam, and modernity.

Elif Şafak's master’s thesis on Islam, women and mysticism, titled "The Deconstruction of Femininity Along the Cyclical Understanding of Heterodox Dervishes in Islam" was awarded by Social Scientists Institute. Shafak has taught “Ottoman History From the Margins,” “Turkey & Cultural Identities,” and “Women and Writing” in Istanbul Bilgi University.

In summer of 2002, Şafak came to the United States for the first time as one of the fellows chosen from different parts of the world by the Five Colleges Women’s Studies Research Center. During the academic year 2003-4, she was a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan, where she taught courses such as “Women Writing on Women: East-West Encounters” and “The Queer in the Middle East.” Currently, Şafak is an Assistant Professor in the Near Eastern Studies Department at The University of Arizona. Her courses include “Literature and Exile,” “Politics of Memory,” and “Sexualities and Gender in the Muslim World.”

An outspoken intellectual and activist, Elif Şafak continues to write for various daily and monthly publications in Turkey.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------

Turkish Daily News
Sept 25 2005

Istanbul conference on Ottoman Armenians
Sunday, September 25, 2005

Opinion by Elif ŞAFAK

On May 23, 2005, I arrived in Istanbul from Berlin to participate in an event that was going to happen for the first time in Turkey: A conference on the Ottoman Armenians. Having thus arrived at Istanbul airport, I grabbed my bags and hailed the first cab waiting in line.


`Look at this mess! Traitors!' remarked the cab driver as soon as we took off. He was listening to national radio and when he realized I had no idea what he was talking about he turned the volume up. All of a sudden a fuming voice thundered inside the cab that belonged to Cemil Çiçek, Turkey's justice minister. He was delivering a speech about the upcoming conference. I flinched in my seat as I heard him declare that such a malevolent gathering could not possibly be permitted since it was tantamount to "treason." Then he added: `These so-called intellectuals are stabbing our nation in the back. If only I had the authority to prosecute them I would do so without any hesitation whatsoever. I urge the Turkish nation to watch the conference proceedings closely...'

`Could you please turn that thing down,' I asked the cabdriver when I could muster my courage and voice. `Actually, why don't you turn it off completely? The minister is talking nonsense.'

The driver, a young, hefty man with astute eyes looked at me in the rear view mirror from which a glittering Turkish flag, a miniature Koran and the picture of his baby boy were dangling side by side. His face was marred with incredulity and disappointment. `How would you know? You just walked off the plane?'

`I know because I am one of those traitors he just mentioned,' I heard myself mutter, as if that needed to be revealed. A deep silence ensued in the cab as we inched our way through the snaky side streets of one of the most beautiful cities in the world. For more than 10 minutes we did not exchange a single word. I sat there uncomfortably fearing being kicked out of the cab with my suitcases.

Finally, at a red light, he said to me: `You guys are playing with fire. What you are doing is detrimental to the interests of the Turkish state. If you accomplish this meeting it will mean you accept the Armenians' allegations of genocide. Is that what you want? You guys are educated thanks to our tax money. We expect you to help this nation. However, what do you do instead? You ruin it!'

He uttered these words as effortlessly and easily as if we were having a chat about the weather. It took me some extra seconds to fully sense the fury buried within.

`We want to organize this conference because we believe it is essential for the development of Turkish democracy,' I replied, trying not to sound either patronizing or enervated but failing in both, adding: `What does the minister know about this conference? We never circulated our papers. I myself do not know what the other participants are going to say. How can you call something a crime that has not as yet even occurred? Why is it such a taboo to talk about the deportation and killing of Armenians in 1915? Did it not happen?'

The driver softened a bit. `Look, you intellectuals are famous for being naïve. You live in your books. Nevertheless, the real world is different. You will be exploited by the great powers, the capitalist media, the CIA and all that,' he said.

It was precisely then that I received a call on my mobile phone. It was from a colleague in the conference organizing committee. The cab driver became all ears without even pretending not to overhear. `We should all draft a petition to protest at this infamous attack on academic and intellectual freedom,' my colleague and I agreed before I hung up.

`Intellectual freedom! I'll tell you what boils my blood,' the cab driver said, adding: `You are free to say whatever you want as long as you say it here in your motherland. However, our writers and scholars always do the exact opposite. They keep quiet here in Turkey and talk a blue streak abroad. Why is that?'

`Well, if that's what you think then isn't it better that we have this conference here in the heart of Istanbul,' I asked as we pulled aside, having arrived at the address.

There came no answer. I reached out for my purse getting ready to pay.

`I have decided I am not going to take your money,' the driver said calmly.

The rest is history. As everyone interested in the subject now knows, the conference was postponed.

---

On Sept. 23, I came to Istanbul again. On the same day at 5:00 p.m. we learned about a legal maneuver to stop the conference. Back to square one! As in every state mechanism within the Turkish state, there is a reactionary line against every endeavor that might disturb the status quo. Challenging the official historiography is a struggle and it is not an easy one. Nevertheless, thank God things are not as black and white as Westerners tend to think sometimes; there are other shades in Turkish civil society, and other cab drivers in Istanbul...

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The Washington Post
September 25, 2005 Sunday
Final Edition

In Istanbul, a Crack In the Wall of Denial;
We're Trying to Debate the Armenian Issue

by Elif Shafak

ISTANBUL

I am the daughter of a Turkish diplomat -- a rather unusual character in the male-dominated foreign service in that she was a single mother. Her first appointment was to Spain, and we moved to Madrid in the early 1980s. In those days, the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia, known as ASALA, was staging attacks on Turkish citizens -- and diplomats in particular -- in Rome, London, Zurich, Brussels, Milan and Madrid; our cultural attaché in Paris was assassinated in 1979 while walking on the Champs-Elysees. So throughout my childhood, the word "Armenian" meant only one thing to me: a terrorist who wanted to kill my mother.

Faced with hatred, I hated back. But that was as far as my feelings went. It took me years to ask the simple question: Why did the Armenians hate us?

My ignorance was not unusual. For me in those days, and for most Turkish citizens even today, my country's history began in 1923, with the founding of the modern Turkish state. The roots of the Armenians' rage -- in the massacres, atrocities and deportations that decimated Turkey's Armenian population in the last years of Ottoman rule, particularly 1915 -- were simply not part of our common historical memory.

But for me today, and for a growing number of my fellow Turks, that has changed. That is why I am in Istanbul this weekend. I came to Bosphorus University to attend the first-ever public conference in this country on what happened to the Ottoman Armenians in and after 1915. As I write, we are fighting last-minute legal maneuvers by hard-line opponents of open discussion to shut the conference down. I don't know how it will turn out -- but the fact that we are here, openly making the attempt, with at least verbal support from the prime minister and many mainstream journalists, highlights how far some in my country have come.

Until my early twenties, like many Turks living abroad, I was less interested in history than in what we described as "improving Turkey's image in the eyes of Westerners." As I began reading extensively on political and social history, I was drawn to the stories of minorities, of the marginalized and the silenced: women who resisted traditional gender roles, unorthodox Sufis persecuted for their beliefs, homosexuals in the Ottoman Empire. Gradually, I started reading about the Ottoman Armenians -- not because I was particularly interested in the literature but because I was young and rebellious, and the official ideology of Turkey told me not to.

Yet it was not until I came to the United States in 2002 and started getting involved in an Armenian-Turkish intellectuals' network that I seriously felt the need to face the charges that, beginning in 1915, Turks killed as many as 1.5 million Armenians and drove hundreds of thousands more from their homes. I focused on the literature of genocide, particularly the testimony of survivors; I watched filmed interviews at the Zoryan Institute's Armenian archives in Toronto; I talked to Armenian grandmothers, participated in workshops for reconciliation and collected stories from Armenian friends who were generous enough to entrust me with their family memories and secrets. With each step, I realized not only that atrocities had been committed in that terrible time but that their effect had been made far worse by the systematic denial that followed. I came to recognize a people's grief and to believe in the need to mourn our past together.

I also got to know other Turks who were making a similar intellectual journey. Obviously there is still a powerful segment of Turkish society that completely rejects the charge that Armenians were purposely exterminated. Some even go so far as to claim that it was Armenians who killed Turks, and so there is nothing to apologize for. These nationalist hardliners include many of our government officials, bureaucrats, diplomats and newspaper columnists.

They dominate Turkey's public image -- but theirs is only one position held by Turkish citizens, and it is not even the most common one. The prevailing attitude of ordinary people toward the "Armenian question" is not one of conscious denial; rather it is collective ignorance. These Turks feel little need to question the past as long as it does not affect their daily lives.

There is a third attitude, prevalent among Turkish youth: Whatever happened, it was a long time ago, and we should concentrate on the future rather than the past. "Why am I being held responsible for a crime my grandfather committed -- that is, if he ever did it?" they ask. They want to become friends with Armenians and push for open trade and better relations with neighboring Armenia . . . . as long as everybody forgets this inconvenient claim of genocide.

Finally, there is a fourth attitude: The past is not a bygone era that we can discard but a legacy that needs to be recognized, explored and openly discussed before Turkey can move forward. It is plain to me that, though it often goes unnoticed in Western media, there is a thriving movement in Turkish civil society toward this kind of reconciliation. The 50 historians, journalists, political scientists and activists who have gathered here in the last few days for the planned conference on Ottoman Armenians share a common belief in the need to face the atrocities of the past, no matter how distressing or dangerous, in order to create a better future for Turkey.

But it hasn't been easy, and the battle is far from over.

Over the past four years, Turks have made several attempts to address the "Armenian question." The conference planned for this weekend differed from earlier meetings in key respects: It was to be held in Istanbul itself, rather than abroad; it would be organized by three established Turkish universities rather than by progressive Armenian and Turkish expatriates; it would be conducted completely in Turkish.


Originally scheduled for May 23, it was postponed after Cemil Cicek, Turkey's minister of justice, made an angry speech before parliament, accusing organizers of "stabbing their nation in the back." But over the ensuing four months, the ruling Justice and Development Party made it clear that Cicek's remarks reflected his views, and his alone. The minister of foreign affairs, Abdullah Gul, announced that he had no problem with the expression of critical opinion and even said he would be willing to participate in the conference. (As it happens, he has been in New York in recent days, at the United Nations.)

Meanwhile, the Armenian question has been prominently featured in Turkish media. Hurriyet, the nation's most popular newspaper, ran a series of pro and con interviews on this formerly taboo subject, called "The Armenian Dossier." The upcoming trial of acclaimed author Orhan Pamuk, charged with "denigrating" Turkish identity for talking about the killing of Kurds and Armenians, has been fervently debated. Various columnists have directly apologized to the Armenians for the sufferings caused to their people by the Turks. And stories have been reported of orphaned Armenian girls who saved their lives by changing their names, converting to Islam and marrying Turks -- and whose grandchildren are unaware today of their own mixed heritage.

All this activity has triggered a nationalist backlash. That should be expected -- but organizers of the Conference on Ottoman Armenians were nevertheless surprised last week by a crafty, last-minute maneuver: a court order to postpone the conference pending the investigation of hardliners' charges that it was unfairly biased against Turkey. The cynicism of this order was clear when we learned that the three-judge panel actually made its decision on Monday; it was not made public until late Thursday, only hours before the conference was to begin.

Organizers said they would try to regroup by moving the site from Bosphorus University, a public institution, to one of the two private universities that are co-sponsors. We were encouraged by the immediate public reaction: Not only did some normally mainstream media voices denounce the court order, but Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in televised interviews, repeatedly criticized it as "unacceptable." "You may not like the expression of an opinion," he said, "but you can't stop it like this." Foreign Minister Gul, in New York, lamented what effect this would have on Turkey's quest to join the European Union: "There's no one better at hurting themselves than us," he said.

Whatever happens with the conference, I believe one thing remains true: Through the collective efforts of academics, journalists, writers and media correspondents, 1915 is being opened to discussion in my homeland as never before. The process is not an easy one and will disturb many vested interests. I know how hard it is -- most children from diplomatic families, confronting negative images of Turkey abroad, develop a sort of defensive nationalism, and it's especially true among those of us who lived through the years of Armenian terrorism. But I also know that the journey from denial to recognition is one that can be made.

Author's e-mail: elifshafak @ yahoo.com

Elif Shafak is a novelist and a professor of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona. She commutes between Tucson and Istanbul.




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Bastard Out of Istanbul of Istanbul

Free speech runs afoul of Turkish authorities

Publishers Weekly 10/3/2005

By Michael Scharf

On December 16, Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, whose memoir Istanbul: Memories and the City was published in June, will go on trial for remarks he made recently to a Swiss newspaper regarding the 1915 Armenian genocide: "thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it."

Currently at home in Istanbul, Pamuk is being charged with "insult[ing] the Republic," and faces up to four years in prison. Pamuk may be the best known, but he is far from the only writer in legal trouble for demanding that Turkey face up to its violent past. According to PEN International, there are more than 50 cases on similar charges pending in Turkish courts. Seen in this context, novelist Elif Shafak is either very brave, a little reckless, or both.

On Sunday, September 25, on the occasion of a repeatedly scuttled, finally consummated conference in Istanbul on recognizing the genocide, Turkish novelist Shafak, 34, published an op-ed in the Washington Post that refers to "the massacres, atrocities and deportations that decimated Turkey's Armenian population in the last years of Ottoman rule, particularly 1915." While there has been no official reaction yet, Pamuk's case suggests that Shafak's writing could provoke the government to bring charges against her. It's a possibility that Shafak acknowledges, but does not seem to dwell on. Even before her op-ed, the literati in Istanbul and elsewhere had been bracing for a widening of the controversy in the form of her sixth novel, The Bastard of Istanbul.

The novel, written in English and recently delivered to agent Marly Rusoff, features an Armenian woman who grows up in Turkey during the deportations, and later decides to emigrate to the U.S. with her brother, leaving her son behind. The consequences of those decisions drive the book. Moving back and forth between the U.S. and Turkey, the novel covers four generations of women in two families: the descendents of the mother's son, who converts to Islam and lives as a Turk, and the Armenian-American family of which the émigré becomes the matriarch.

"It looks at how the situation of women intersects with the sort of nationalist amnesia-the things we choose not to remember-that has taken hold," Shafak says. "It's a feminist book, and it's very critical in terms of talking about the sexist and nationalist fabric of Turkish society."

While the genocide is accepted as fact in the West (one made vivid in books like Peter Balakian's Black Dog of Fate), the Turkish government continues to enforce its denial. The efforts to suppress speech continue despite Turkey's aspirations of being admitted into the European Union. Pamuk was unavailable for comment, but has issued a statement that turns on two points: "1. What I said is not an insult, but the truth. 2. What if I were wrong? Right or wrong, do not people have the right to express their ideas peacefully in this Turkey?"

International attention surrounding the charges against Pamuk and other Turkish writers could ultimately help sales of Shafak's novel. But for the moment the book's publication status in the U.S. is uncertain. FSG's John Glusman, who edited Shafak's previous novel, had right of first refusal on the project. Glusman rejected an earlier version and is expecting to see another. Rusoff says she will submit the latest version to Glusman, but is also preparing to show it to other publishers.

Shafak, who is seen as a sort of heir to Pamuk, believes that she is the first Turkish writer to deal directly with the genocide in a novel, and hopes The Bastard of Istanbul will speak to all sides of the controversy over recognizing the atrocities. Partly for that reason, she wrote the novel in English, which Shafak says helped her move beyond the polarizing terms of the debate. But the choice has political implications as well, ones with which Shafak is already familiar.

Shafak also wrote The Saint of Incipient Insanities, her previous novel and U.S. debut, in English. (FSG published the book to mixed reviews in 2003.) When it was translated and published in Turkey, reviewers generally ignored the merits of the book and concentrated on the language of its composition: "because it had been written in English and come out first in America, they saw it as a cultural betrayal," says Shafak. The Bastard of Istanbul is set to push things much further due to its content, but the "betrayal" runs deep: Shafak's use of English also reads, in Turkey, as a refusal of the "Turkification" of the Turkish language-the purging of borrowed words and expressions from Arabic, Persian and other languages. Turkification has been going on since the time of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (who came to power in 1923); the nationalist position is that the borrowed language came in as an imperialist result of the polyglot Ottoman empire. Shafak's use of Ottoman Turkish in her other novels has already brought her criticism, to which she responds: "I find linguistic cleansing as dangerous as ethnic cleansing." She also finds old words beautiful. The Turkish translation of The Bastard of Istanbul will make generous use of them.

Meanwhile, Shafak, who divides her time between the U.S. and Istanbul, has returned from the Istanbul conference to the University of Arizona (where she is a professor of Near Eastern studies) with a surprisingly favorable report. Although there were conservative protests, the conference, which came out of a working group of more than 50 Armenian and Turkish scholars of which Shafak is a part, and which was titled "Ottoman Armenians During the Demise of Empire: Responsible Scholarship and Issues of Democracy," took place without major incident. Shafak sees it as one of a growing number of signs of a government divided against itself: "elected officials did not condemn the conference. It's the old state machinery-the bureaucracy, the military, the courts-that is so difficult to change."

The conference's success, however, has not changed the fact of Pamuk's court appearance, or the possibility of charges being brought against Shafak. "You never know, some bureaucrat gets angry, and decides to take someone to court, and it gets bigger and bigger from there," Shafak says "We all deal with that danger. There are no guarantees. But all I know is that things are changeable in Turkey, and that they are changing." Talks on Turkey's candidacy for entry into the European Union are scheduled to begin October 3.