Organized denial means the reign of lies. The denialist,
in order to sustain denial, has to resolutely and incessantly lie. Otherwise it
can’t go on. The truth, even bits of information that might hold the slightest
potential of undermining the lie, is the biggest and most merciless enemy of
denial. So the denialist, having created a whole world of lies, must fight any
manifestation of the truth tooth and nail to survive.
A scene from the genocide commemoration in Istanbul on
April 24, 2010. (Photo: The Armenian Weekly)
(Değerli yazar ve insan hakları aktivisti Ayşe Günaysu'nun 11 Mayıs 2012 tarihli bu önemli yazısını konunun güncelliği nedeniyle yayılıyoruz. HYETERT)
We in Turkey all live in this world of lies, so much so
that our textbooks, news agencies, official documents, literature, and even
surnames are likely telling us lies. Even our parents may have told us lies
about our family history. Our whole identity may be a fabrication.
And we, the Muslim majority in this country, believe in
lies. Some—a great many—of us prefer to believe in lies just to be
well-accommodated to our environment; some—again a great many—just for peace of
mind, avoiding asking questions that would upset our inner balance and make us
feel guilty (i.e., the punishment of one’s own self is worse than that by
others). And still some of us are paid to believe and make other people believe
in lies.
But lying is not just giving false information. Hiding
the truth is also a lie. So, some of us, even those who consider ourselves
almost totally immune to the official lies (including the writer of these
words), may well be the transporters of this type of lie—the concealment of
truth—thanks to the numbness we have inherited from our dark past, the numbness
that extinguishes our desire to search for truth.
‘You will be back home soon’
Lies were central to the Armenian Genocide right from the
start. On the April 24, 1915 arrests in Istanbul, the Armenian intellectuals
were taken from their homes by policemen who were extremely polite and, as Aram
Andonian recounts in his book Exile, Trauma and Death: On the Road to Chankiri
with Komitas Vartabed (Gomidas Institute, 2010), they were all told that it
would not take more than five minutes, that they would soon be back home, and
that there was no need to worry. Andonian understood why the policemen had
behaved with such refinement—to not alarm those who were yet to be arrested.
In other parts of the country, they lied to the people
who were being driven out of their villages and towns, assuring them that they
could come back and their property would be kept safe under government custody
until they returned.
The genocidal process unfolded for the coming months and
years on the basis of lies throughout each phase.
The denial of the evil—inconceivable, indescribable, and
irreversible—committed and its regeneration with lies corrupts the entire
system. Denial reproduces itself with lies.
The lie continued to be central in the foundation myths
of the Republic of Turkey. The notorious “war of liberation” of 1919-22 was
also built and sustained on deception. It was presented as a national uprising
for independence; yet, the declared war against the Allied powers served to
wipe out what remained of the non-Muslim communities of Asia Minor after the
Armenian Genocide and the Genocide of the Assyrians and Greeks.
The Kemalist leadership lied to the Kurds, as well. They
convinced the Kurdish notables to take part in the military campaign as the
only way to stop the Armenians and Greeks from coming back and reclaiming their
confiscated property.
The resistance of the Kurds upon realizing and facing the
truth was violently suppressed each time, and generations of Turks were taught
that the barbaric Kurds—the traitors—had threatened the state, and that the
government had no chance but to bring not only “peace” and “order” but also
“civilization” to the region where “savagery” once prevailed. This was the lie
about the extermination of the Dersim people in 1938.
Turks are the best of all nations!
An unprecedented series of lies was institutionalized by
the new-born state apparatus via pseudo-historians who were instructed to
rewrite the nation’s history—in the form of the famous Turkish History Thesis,
whereby it was “proved” that everything good in the world had originated from
the Turkish nation, and its people were the best in all categories: honesty,
courage, innovation, cleverness, etc.
Lies continued to be the essence of the system in Turkey,
a tool of repression used in every period of Republican history. It would take
volumes of books to mention them all. To give but one example: It was a lie
that Ataturk’s home was bombed in Salonika, a lie that led to the burning alive
of Greek priests, the rape of hundreds of women, lynching incidents, and the
desecration of sacred Christian places during the two-day pogrom in Istanbul on
Sept. 6-7, 1955—a replica of the Kristallnacht—which drove thousands of
non-Muslims, mostly Greeks, from their homeland.
Lies never ceased through the military coups and the
pseudo-democracies in between. Just like the lie that the mosque in Marash was
bombed by the “communists”; this was followed by mass attacks at the homes and
workplaces of Alevis. During the pogrom that lasted two days without any
effective intervention by the police or the military, around 150 Alevis,
including children, were butchered by fascist crowds in 1978 under a
“democratic,” “civilian” government.
‘We kill for your good’
The military coup of 1980 and the period that
followed—the reign of terror—was from top to bottom the embodiment of a lie.
The military had taken over power for the good of the nation. Executions,
people dying through torture, prisons full of people, these were all for the
good of the Turkish people.
The 1990’s were also dominated by lies. It was never
admitted that thousands of Kurdish villages were burnt and razed to the ground,
causing the forced dislocation of millions of Kurds.
Only after 20 years are bits of truth being revealed
about the deaths of a number of high-ranking officials who served in the hot
spots of the war against the armed Kurdish movement. These officers were said
to have committed suicide, but legal cases were opened by their families and
the deaths have undergone an in-depth investigation, with more lies brought to
light—in the form of false official documents drawn up by military units,
manipulated witness accounts, names of witnesses who were on duty elsewhere at
the time of the incidents, etc.
But the biggest lie unveiled that covers the others like
a huge invisible dome is the lie that the “Turkish people” did not commit a
genocide against the Armenians and other Christian people of this land, because
it is the foundation on which all other lies were built.
Preparations for 2015
The intensity of the lies is increasing nowadays as
Turkey ferociously prepares for the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide,
and for Armenian organizations across the world commemorating the tragedy.
The Turkish state has not, for the time being, directly
or officially taken the stage, but is employing “civil society”
behind-closed-doors to organize campaigns against the “Armenian lies.”
The recent and now-famous Khojaly rally on Feb. 26 was
the most visible one, the first massive public appearance of a new national
mobilization campaign against the Armenians. Although the sponsorship by both
the Turkish and Azerbaijani state was obvious, it was still presented as a
civil initiative.
Universities are leading this “civil” campaign. During
recent months, “scholarly” denialist performances were staged at Suleyman
Demirel University in Isparta, Dumlupinar University in Kütahya, Afyon Kocatepe
University, and Erzurum Ataturk University. This denialist campaign has even
adopted the strategy of infiltrating the social structure by making use of
popular culture, an extremely powerful medium for gaining control over the mind
of the man on the street.
TV drama series about ‘Armenian lies’
The majority of Turks, it seems, is addicted to TV
series—unending productions about love, hatred, deadly plots, defeat, and
victory. They are in the center of the daily lives of the most crowded stratum
in Turkey, the middle class. Now, a TV series on “Armenian issue” is being
prepared. On the internet, a description of the show maintains that it will not
be disseminating hatred and hostility between Armenian and Turkish people, that
instead it will tell the “truth.” But—surprise!—the “consultants” engaged for
the new drama series, from academia, are all renowned denialists who are taking
part in university conferences about the “Armenian atrocities” in Khojaly; who
are writing denialist books; who are acting as spokespersons of the official
state thesis. What’s more, the producer has long sat on the executive bodies of
the ruling AK Party and is a member of the city council of one of the most
densely populated districts of Istanbul representing her party. Lies about
Armenian history will, through popular culture, be much more easily and
convincingly injected into people’s than through scientific and academic
studies.
What about the ‘pro-Armenians’?
I mentioned, in the beginning, those of us “…who consider
ourselves almost totally immune to the official lies.” In the Feb. 27 issue of
the daily Radikal, considered the only “leftish” newspaper in the mainstream
press, an article by Onur Caymaz, a progressive, democratic-minded writer,
appeared. Caymaz in his piece wholeheartedly condemned the hate speech used in
the Khojaly rally in Taksim. So much so that his heading was, “We are all
bastards!” in answer to the banner at the rally, which read, “You are all
Armenians, you are all bastards!”
After expressing his disgust over such Armenian hatred
(quite impressively, I should confess), he provided an example to assure
readers that he was not siding with any one atrocity over another, no matter
who did it. For this purpose he quoted from a “book” said to be titled Revival
of Our Souls by Zori Balayan, “who personally took part in the Khojaly
massacre,” and depicted the torture he committed against a 13-year-old
“Turkish” boy in Khojaly. The quotation is quite long, with Balayan describing
with obvious pleasure and self-satisfaction the details of how he skinned the
abdomen and limbs of the boy, whose mother’s “cut off breast” was tucked into
his mouth to stop him from screaming with pain. The quotation goes on, with
Balayan explaining how he was “a medical doctor and a humanist by profession”
but still was not shaken to see the boy die of bleeding in seven minutes;
instead, he experienced a “revival of is soul” for “avenging one hundredth of
what Turks had done” to his ancestors.
Even if one didn’t know that there was no such book by
Zori Balayan, it should be quite obvious, from the language used in depicting
the torture, that the quotation was wholly made up. What was shocking is that
the quotation was repeated not by a Turkish ultra-nationalist, an Armenian
hater, but from a person who sincerely denounces racism and discrimination. A
couple of days after the publication of this article, Caymaz wrote in his
personal blog that he was wrong, that it was evident that Zori Balayan had not
written such a book, and that the quotation was false. He said he had heard
about the book from an Azeri physician in a panel discussion on TV. Caymaz
apparently didn’t have even the slightest inclination that a member of a warring
party might lie. But where did he find that quotation? I searched it myself,
and found that it appeared only on ultra-nationalist Turkish websites. Even
this did not give him a clue. And the Radikal newspaper’s editorial staff
didn’t find the outrageously cruel quotation doubtful either. Lies, thus,
easily found their way into the “progressive” media and their audience.
Lies for all of us
I also said in the beginning, “including the writer of
these words,” when talking about being the transporter of that specific type of
lie, i.e. hiding the truth. It was only a few months ago that I came across the
story of ASALA member Levon Ekmekjian, who was executed by hanging in 1983 in
Ankara under the military rule, on charges of being one of the perpetrators of
the “Esenboga massacre” in Ankara in 1982. We, the members or sympathizers of
Turkish socialist-revolutionary parties and groups of that time, some of us in
prison, some in hiding in Turkey, some political refugees in foreign countries,
took for granted the military rule’s account of the Esenboga attack. Even if
there were individuals who were exceptions, they have never been vocal. The
absolute silence about Ekmekjian in the memoirs of “revolutionaries” and books
compiling the stories of persons executed under the military regime of the
1980’s clearly indicate how we avoided questioning the official account about
ASALA’s Esenboga attack, and how we simply ignored the case of Ekmekjian.
A crack in the most fortified stronghold
But life incorporates in itself such dynamism, and
therefore is always exposed to such unexpected surprises, that no plan to hide
the truth can perfectly serve its purpose forever, as long as there is the
human element involved.
Nowadays in the social media articles are being
circulated about Levon Ekmekjian—his photographs, memoirs of his comrades—and
quite a number of Turkish and Kurdish people are eagerly exchanging the newly
absorbed information between them. This is especially important as the Armenian
Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia is perhaps the only single topic that
is still absolutely untouchable among all other topics related to the Armenian
Question in Turkey, even by the socialist movements, and remains an invaluable
tool of manipulation by the denialist apparatus.
With the Khojaly rally in Istanbul, the official lies
about the Karabagh conflict have also become vulnerable as people, at least
those who want to know the truth, gain more and more access to the Armenian
side’s account of events.
Yes, organized denial means the reign of lies. But even
the most fortified stronghold of lies is doomed to collapse no matter how long
it takes for a crack to branch out and spread through, undermining the whole
structure. It only needs the human mind to question, refuse to be convinced,
need more to learn, and tell others. And Turkey is no exception to this general
rule.
About Ayse Gunaysu (34 Articles)
Ayse Gunaysu is a professional translator, human rights
advocate, and feminist. She has been a member of the Committee Against Racism
and Discrimination of the Human Rights Association of Turkey (Istanbul branch)
since 1995, and is a columnist for Ozgur Gundem. Since 2008, she writes a
column titled "Letters from Istanbul," for the Armenian Weekly.
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