The effect of 100 years of amnesia on the Turkish population

By Doga Ulas Eralp, American University

The greatest obstacle for Turkey in coming into terms with the humanitarian tragedy of 1915 is not necessarily the recognition of events as genocide but rather the simple but complicated act of collective remembrance.

Following its inception after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish Republic has built its model of new Turkish citizenship around an imposed amnesia of events predating 1923. Accounts of Armenians’ sufferings in forced pogroms and violent ethnic cleansing by the Ottoman militia have been conveniently brushed under the carpet, as detailed by University of Massachusetts scholar Rezarta Bilali in “National Narrative and Social Psychological Influences in Turks’ Denial of the Mass Killings of Armenians as Genocide,” in the Journal of Social Issues.

A 1923 map of the Armenian Highlands

The areas where historically Armenians have lived in Central and Eastern Anatolia were subjected to a process of Turkification. Properties and wealth confiscated from the Armenians were redistributed between local Kurdish notables and Muslim refugees the Balkans and the Caucasus who were resettled in the vacant Armenian villages.

During the following decades the Ankara Government replaced the old Armenian names of towns and villages with Turkish ones while the now empty churches crumbled and fell into ruins.

Turkish society was forced to confront the issues of 1915 for the first time in the 1970s with the the militant violence of the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) when prominent Turkish diplomats were assassinated as described ) by historian Uğur Ümit Üngör.

However, the killings did not induce any cathartic awakening in Turkish collective memory. Turkish government responded by emphasizing the “treasonous” behavior of the Armenian revolutionaries during World War One in the Turkish public education system. The Armenian diaspora responded by launching a global campaign of recognition by 2015.

The diaspora’s recognition campaign has been successful as more governments across the globe recognize the events of 1915 as genocide. Yet such global political pressure only serves to make officials in the Turkish government more defiant and further strengthens the hands of Turkish nationalists who frame this campaign as proof of ongoing prejudice against Turkey.

A more fruitful avenue to pursue may be encouraging civil society initiatives that focus on public remembrance and recognition between the Armenian diaspora and Turkey rather than pushing for a political solution to a 100-year old human tragedy.

 

Editor’s note: Today, April 24, marks a day of recognition for the deaths of more than 1.5 million Armenians in what Pope Francis characterized as “the first genocide of the 20th Century.” As historians and scholars have noted, about two million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire in the years before World War One; there were fewer than 400,000 by 1922, the rest systemically killed or dying from starvation and forced relocation. Turkey has long denied that Armenian deaths constituted “genocide,” which is defined as “the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.” Turkey has insisted the Armenian deaths resulted from violence in a civil conflict. Turkey withdrew its envoy from the Vatican after the pope’s remarks about genocide. We asked scholars to examine issues raised by today’s anniversary.

Contributors include:

Alexander Hinton is Director, Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights & Professor of Anthropology, Rutgers University at Rutgers University Newark .
Doga Ulas Eralp is Professorial Lecturer at American University.
Noelle Vahanian is Professor of Philosophy at Lebanon Valley College.
Ted Bogosian is Instructor and Visiting Filmmaker at Duke University.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.