From: "Executive Director, Zoryan Institute"
<gshirinian@zoryaninstitute.org>
George Shirinian, Executive Director Zoryan Institute
255 Duncan Mill Rd., Suite 310
Toronto, ON
Canada M3B 3H9
Tel: 416-250-9807 Fax: 416-512-1736
The Centennial Commemoration Is About Truth, Memory and
Justice, Not Hatred
K.M. Greg Sarkissian, President, Zoryan Institute
January 5, 2015
It is 2015. Soon, we will start commemorating the
centennial of the Armenian
Genocide and pay tribute to the memory of some 1.5
million victims of the
Young Turk regime of the Ottoman Empire. We will also pay
tribute to the
memory of those few Turks, Kurds, Arabs and others who
risked their own
lives to help Armenians escape certain death.
There are several reasons why we should remember
especially those courageous
Turks who, first and foremost, objected to the mass
deportation and murder
of their Armenian neighbors by their own government and
countrymen. Second,
they did not become by-standers, and swayed by religious
piety and their
respect for human life and dignity saved some of the
Armenians, with
compassion and care. Third, it gives a more positive
basis for Turks and
Armenians to look together at 1915 as part of their
shared history.
No one knows how many individual acts of courage and
humanity occurred
during that period of horror and death. One such person,
Haji Khalil, a
devoted Muslim and a righteous Turk, was my grandfather's
business partner.
He had promised my grandfather he would care for his
family in case of
misfortune. When the disaster greater than anything
either of them could
have imagined struck, my grandfather, Krikor, was hung
just for being an
Armenian. But Haji Khalil kept his promise. He hid my
grandmother, her
sister and their seven children in the attic of his house
in Urfa for almost
a year. He fed and cared for them and saw them to safety
to Aleppo. He did
this knowing well that whoever saved Armenians could have
shared their fate
of death and destruction.
Some twenty years ago, in April of 1995, I shared the
story of Haji Khalil
from the podium at an International conference entitled,
"Problems of
Genocide" in Yerevan, which the Zoryan Institute had
co-sponsored with the
Armenian government. I concluded my speech by saying,
I want to extend my hand to the people of Turkey, to ask
them to remember
that though at one time their state was led by mass murderers,
they also had
their Haji Khalils, and that it would honor the memory of
the latter to
acknowledge the overwhelming truth of the Genocide, to
express regrets, so
that the healing process may begin between our two
peoples.
As a result of my speech, one of the scholars
participating in the
conference, Taner Akçam, approached me with tears in his
eyes, hugged me and
started telling me things in Turkish that I could not
understand. But, I
could feel his warmth and his sincerity in trying to tell
me that he
acknowledged and shared the trauma and the pain that I
was experiencing at
that moment. The next day we attended a memorial service
in Etchmiadzin, the
Holy See of Armenian Church. There, I took him by the
hand and asked him to
join me in lighting two candles, one in memory of my
grandfather lit by him,
and another, which I lit in memory of Haji Khalil. Then
we embraced and
promised each other that we would do everything possible
to bring our
peoples together by preserving the legacy and the memory
of that righteous
human being, Haji Khalil, and through him, undermine
denial and promote
truth and justice.
Since that encounter in 1995, Dr. Akçam has written many
well respected and
influential books and articles, published in several
languages, about the
Armenian Genocide and the violence perpetrated by the
Ottoman Turks. His
works demonstrate how the Ottoman Government, led by the
Union and Progress
Party, inspired by the ideology of pan-Turanism and
dreams of imperial
expansion, carried out the planned destruction of their
own fellow citizens,
the entire Armenian population in its ancestral homeland
for three
millennia.
During the next ten years, from 1995 to 2005, numerous
tentative contacts
were made between Turks and Armenians. Some on an
individual basis, some in
academic forums, where research and scholarship was
shared and exchanged
between Turkish and Armenian scholars. Some, such as the
Workshop on
Armenian-Turkish Studies or WATS, used virtual
communication to facilitate
dialogue between Armenians and Turks. Some Turkish
scholars visited various
research centres, such as the Zoryan Institute and the
Armenian Studies
Chairs, to learn about the research conducted and/or to
view oral history
testimonies of the survivors of the Genocide. Some 15
Turkish students have
attended the Comparative Genocide Course run by the
Zoryan Institute with
the University of Toronto some continued their studies to become recognized
specialists of the Armenian Genocide.
Some businessmen organized official forums, such as the
Turkish Armenian
Business Development Council, to promote trade between
the two countries,
hoping that trade would be the best way to bring these
two peoples together.
Attempts were made even by the Armenian government a few
years ago, through
the so called `football diplomacy' for rapprochement with
the Turkish
government. This was followed by the signing of the as
yet unratified
"Protocols."
All of these efforts were attempts to bring about a change
in the attitudes
of these two peoples, who continued to see each other
through the prism of
the events 1915 as unchanging and monolithic enemies.
Unfortunately, more
work is needed by both Turkish and Armenian civil
societies to raise
awareness about the events of 1915, to encourage the
Turkish state to change
its narrative.
There were strong voices that wanted to reclaim history
as a legacy that
needed to be recognized, and thus pressed their
government to abolish all
obstacles to this process. For example, the series of
events since 1995,
described above, led to the first public conference on
Armenian issues which
was organized by Turkish academics and intellectuals and
took place in
Istanbul on May 25, 2005, entitled "Ottoman
Armenians during the Decline of
the Empire: Issues of Scientific Reasonability and
Democracy." Some of the
participants at this conference were scholars and
intellectuals who were in
continuous contact with their Armenian counterparts. The
conference was
condemned and criticized by the Turkish authorities. Just
one day before the
conference, then Turkish Justice Minister Cemil Cicek
accused those who
organized and participated in the conference of treason,
calling them
traitors to their country, condemning the initiative as a
blow to the
government's attempts to counter a mounting Armenian
campaign to have the
killings recognized internationally as genocide. He went
as far as stating,
"This is a stab in the back to Turkish
nation..." As a result, some of these
Turkish scholars, intellectuals and media representatives
were charged,
persecuted and even jailed by Turkish authorities.
Since 2005, the Turkish government has continued its
unrelenting denial
policy in spite of civil society wanting to know more
about their own
history. The denial policies of the deep state, continued
by the current
Turkish government, have led to hatred, discrimination
and incitement of
violence towards the remaining Armenians in Turkey. This
policy culminated
in the killing of Hrant Dink, the editor of AGOS
newspaper, who had openly
challenged the narrative of the government as an obstacle
to democracy in
Turkey. Hrant Dink's murder by a Turkish ultranationalist
impacted not only
the Armenian community in Turkey, but also the Kurdish,
Yezidi, Alevi and
other minorities, who saw the assassination as a major
blow to freedom of
thought and speech and to their aspiration for cultural
and religious
freedom.
Those who fear that Turkey will succeed "to
neutralize the effect of the
Armenian side's preparations for the centennial of the
Armenian Genocide,"
do not sufficiently believe in the power of historical
truth. No matter what
Turkey does through its policy of denial, it cannot avoid
the facts of
history. Fear of Turkish "penetration" of
Armenian society, in the Diaspora
and/or in Armenia, concern about causing "domestic
disagreements" to "take
control of society" reduces Armenians and Armenia to
hapless victims rather
than aware, independent adults who are able to articulate
and defend their
national interest.
All denial attempts, whether that be by distorting
history or cajoling
certain members of Armenian society to cooperate with
them, have not helped
Turkey in controlling Armenian society. On the contrary,
they have only
strengthened the resolve of Armenians worldwide to
mobilize for
acknowledgement and restorative justice because Armenians
collectively are
fully aware of their history and the profoundly
devastating effects of
genocide on their nation.
"To speak well of the Turks that saved
Armenians" actually helps
contextualize and bring home for Turks what the Armenian
Genocide was all
about. One cannot talk about Turks who saved Armenians
without explaining
what it is they saved the Armenians from. This can only
help promote shared
knowledge of history and a past that both societies can
talk about to each
other, on a common basis of understanding and without any
fear of
persecution. Hopefully this can lead to dialogue and
eventually
reconciliation.
We must have hope that the human values, fortified with
the knowledge of
historical truth, will eventually empower Turkish civil
society to demand
its government more effectively to embrace the facts of history.
Without
that, there will be no true democracy and therefore no
security for any
individual or collective in that country.
Such empowerment is already evident by the fact that
currently, two Turkish
human rights organizations are partnering with the
International Institute
for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, (A Division of the
Zoryan Institute)
to jointly submit a brief to the European Court of Human
Rights in the
Perinçek case - a matter of genocide denial - documenting
his discriminatory
and racist activities and statements against Armenians in
Turkey and
Switzerland. Such instances of co-operation strengthen
contacts between the
two societies and serve as evidence of the power of
shared universal human
values.
We cannot be oblivious to the changes happening in
Turkey. Armenians have a
role in helping Turkish society learn and understand the
indisputable facts
of the Armenian Genocide through education, dialogue and
contacts on all
levels of Turkish society. This is a critical process in
order to emancipate
both societies from this problem of enmity, prejudice and
hatred.
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