By: Yasemin Çongar for Al-Monitor Turkey Pulse Posted on
August 23.
I learned what "khachkar" meant some years ago
in Egypt. I had always known the word, of course. All Turkish
school kids do. It is the mountain range in the northeast that we used to paint
in a dark shade of brown on our hand-drawn maps of Anatolia. We would even
leave a speckle of white in the middle to suggest a summit of never-melting
snow and write there on the top: Kaçkar. It was an undefined word, but in my young dreamy mind, I
associated it with glimmering ski slopes — an image doubtlessly fortified by
the literal meaning of the word’s two syllables, kaç (escape) and kar (snow). People take part in a commemoration ceremony to mark the
anniversary of the 1915 mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire at the
Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, April 24, 2011. (photo by
***
By: Yasemin Çongar for Al-Monitor Turkey
People take part in a commemoration ceremony to mark the
anniversary of the 1915 mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire at the
Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, April 24, 2011. (photo by
REUTERS/Tigran Mehrabyan)
People take part in a commemoration ceremony to mark the
anniversary of the 1915 mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire at the
Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, April 24, 2011. (photo by REUTERS/Tigran
Mehrabyan)
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By: Yasemin Çongar for Al-Monitor Turkey Pulse Posted on
August 23.
I learned what "khachkar" meant some years ago
in Egypt.
I had always known the word, of course. All Turkish
school kids do. It is the mountain range in the northeast that we used to paint
in a dark shade of brown on our hand-drawn maps of Anatolia. We would even
leave a speckle of white in the middle to suggest a summit of never-melting
snow and write there on the top: Kaçkar.
It was an undefined word, but in my young dreamy mind, I
associated it with glimmering ski slopes — an image doubtlessly fortified by
the literal meaning of the word’s two syllables, kaç (escape) and kar (snow).
That image melted away three decades later as I stood
before a green marble wall inside the St. Gregory The Illuminator Church on
Avenue Ramses in Cairo. There, fixed on the wall at eye level was a frame with
two bird icons facing each other and a stone carving of a cross above them.
“The khachkar is beautiful” said Garen Mouradian, an
Armenian-Egyptian colleague who had accompanied me to the church.
“Khachkar?” I asked, still looking at the frame.
“Come on, you must know the word,” Garen said. “Like the
mountains.”
Afterward, he explained to me what khachkar meant: a
cross-stone that was a typical form of sculpture in Medieval Christian art. I
realized then that my snow-capped mountains, like so many of the landforms and
old settlements in Anatolia, bore an Armenian name.
We Turks — at least those of us with curious minds — all
have our stories of initial awakening to our country’s Armenian past and the
consequent self-education trying to tear away the layers of ignorance instilled
in each of us by a school system that turned a blind eye to the crimes of our
ancestors.
My visit to the St. Gregory Church in Cairo was a step in
that effort. Having already read my way through several memoirs of the Meds
Yeghern or “the great tragedy” inflicted upon the Ottoman Armenians, I was
doing a series of interviews with members of the Armenian diaspora in the
region.
I went to the church specifically to see the monument
that was installed to commemorate the 1.5 million Armenians killed in 1915.
Garen translated for me the inscription which gave the date and the number of
the victims, but did not include the word “genocide.”
He believed — as do I — that the acts against Armenians
amounted to what was defined as genocide by the United Nations in 1948, but he
did not envision Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt ever recognizing that. “Turkey is way
too important to upset,” he said.
So, when the possibility of such a decision by Cairo —
albeit by another undemocratic government — was raised recently, I wondered
what had changed.
In a way, the context is obvious. On Aug. 15, Turkey’s
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan reacted with fervor to the brutal killings
in Egypt. Criticizing the military coup in the harshest terms, he called what
transpired on the streets of Cairo “a clear massacre.”
A translation of Erdogan’s words which appeared on
several news sites the next day misquoted him as having described the killings
as a “genocide.” Then, on Aug. 17, a statement reportedly by Egypt’s Interim
President Adly Mansour surfaced and was widely interpreted as a quid pro quo.
It was a message posted by what was assumed to be
Mansour’s personal account on Twitter. “Our representatives at the United
Nations will sign the international document that acknowledges the Armenian
genocide, which was committed by the Turkish military, leading to the deaths of
1 million,” the message stated in Arabic.
Soon, Turks, Armenians and Arabs of every stripe were
frantically tweeting on the news. Egyptian and Turkish newspapers also reported
the message — the latter mostly employing Ankara’s ludicrous official cliché,
“the so-called genocide.”
For their part, the Armenian news sites seemed to welcome
the development.
To me, the most striking denouncement of Mansour’s
message came from Rober Koptas, editor-in-chief of the Armenian weekly Agos.
“Those who intend to recognize Armenian genocide because
they are angry with Turkey are essentially showing a lack of respect for the
victims of genocide,” Koptas wrote in consecutive Twitter messages. “This means
the genocide was not recognized until today because relations with Turkey were
good. Could anything be more immoral than that?”
Ruben Melkonyan, the deputy dean at the Oriental Studies
Department of Yerevan State University, also took issue with Cairo’s reported
intention. He told the Armenian news site Tert.am that a decision by Egypt to
recognize the genocide earlier would have been more praiseworthy and honest.
“For us, it is naturally important for an Arab country
like Egypt to acknowledge and condemn the Armenian genocide, given especially
that the Armenians have played an essential role in the history of Egypt. But,
... the selection of timing gives ground for concern a little bit.”
Later, it all turned out to be a storm in 140 characters.
Turkish Foreign Ministry Spokesman Levent Gumrukcu was
the first to dismiss the news: “The Egyptian side reported to us that the
Interim President Mansour doesn’t even have a Twitter account.” Egypt followed
suit the next day with a statement from its permanent mission at the United
Nations.
Was all that arguing much ado about nothing then?
Hardly. What now seems a trial balloon by Egypt, if not
an outright attempt at intimidating Erdogan, clearly touched a sore spot in
Ankara and revealed a certain amount of panic.
Less than 48 hours after Turkey had recalled its
ambassador to Egypt, Turkish diplomats found themselves furiously working
through channels in Cairo and New York to prevent a possible move by the
Egyptian interim government at the United Nations. When the message was
eventually disowned by Mansour, the sigh of relief in Ankara was audible around
the world.
Turkey’s justifiably harsh criticism toward Egyptian
authorities was already viewed in the region as reflecting a double standard in
light of Erdogan’s endorsement of recent police brutality in Istanbul. The
impact of the Turkish position vis-a-vis Egypt further weakened as the international
community was reminded of Ankara’s inability to deal with a major crime in its
own history.
Rober Koptas is right. Not much can be as immoral as
treating the genocide issue as a political football.
Nonetheless, at a time when the countdown for worldwide
commemorations of the genocide centennial with the motto “Remember, remind and
reclaim” is about to begin, a “fake” tweet might have tempted international
players to do just that.
Before the tweet was refuted, I had emailed Garen — who
now lives outside Egypt — to ask if he heard of it. “Never mind the tweet,” he
wrote back, “Lately, Egyptian newspapers have been busy rediscovering the
genocide. The army wants to keep the Armenian minority on board, I suppose.”
Then he added: “Do you still remember what khachkar
means?”
Yasemin Çongar is the author of four books in Turkish,
among them Artık Sır Değil (No More A Secret), a detailed analysis of the US
diplomatic cables on Turkey first made public by WikiLeaks. A former Washington
bureau chief for Milliyet (1995–2007) and a founding deputy editor-in-chief of
Taraf (2007–2012), Çongar is currently based in Istanbul and is a columnist for
the Internet newspaper T24.
Read more:
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/08/egypt-turkey-genocide-armenia.html?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=8049#ixzz2d9w5DsS2
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