Turkey’s Armenians: Beginning to face up to a terrible past

At least the Turks now allow the Armenian tragedy to be talked about

ZEKAI YILMAZ, a Kurdish health worker, was 12 when he found out that his grandmother was Armenian. “She was speaking in a funny language with our Armenian neighbour,” he recalled. “When they saw me they immediately switched to Kurdish.” Pressed for an explanation, his grandmother revealed an enormous scar on her back. At 13 she had been stabbed and left for dead together with hundreds of fellow Armenians in a field outside Diyarbakir. Mr Yilmaz's grandfather found her, rescued her, converted her to Islam and married her. “But in her heart she remained an Armenian and I sort of feel Armenian too,” said Mr Yilmaz .

Similar accounts abound in Turkey's mainly Kurdish south-eastern provinces. The region was home to a thriving community of Armenian Christians until the first world war; traces of their culture are evident in the beautifully carved stone churches that lie in ruins or have been converted into mosques.

But the first world war was when, according to the Armenians, 1.5m of their people were systematically murdered in a genocide perpetrated by Ottoman Turks, a massacre that went on even when the war was over. Millions of Armenians worldwide are set to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the start of the violence on April 24th.

The Turks deny there was genocide. Though they admit that several hundred thousand Armenians perished - the figures vary from one official to the next - they insist that it was from hunger and disease during the mass deportation to Syria (then also Ottoman) of Armenians who had collaborated with the invading Russian forces in eastern Turkey.

Some Kurds dispute this version saying that their forefathers had joined in the slaughter after being promised Armenian lands - and a place in heaven for killing infidels - by the Young Turks who ruled Turkey at the time. “You [Kurds] are having us for breakfast, they [Turks] will have you for lunch,” an Armenian proverb born in those days, was “eerily prescient” says a Kurdish journalist, referring to the violence between Turkish forces and separatist Kurds that later racked the south-east.

Until recently such talk would have landed these Kurds in jail on charges of threatening the integrity of the Turkish state. But as Turkey seeks membership of the European Union, its repressive laws are being replaced by ones that allow freer speech. Calls are mounting within Europe, and much more encouragingly among some Turks themselves, for the country to face up to its past. As a result, unprecedented debate of the Armenian issue has erupted in intellectual and political circles and the mainstream Turkish press.

Some of the reaction has been ugly. Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's best-known contemporary novelist, received death threats when he told a Swiss newspaper that “One million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in Turkey.” One over-zealous official in a rural backwater went so far as to issue a circular calling for all of Mr Pamuk's books to be destroyed - only to find there were none in his town. His actions were applauded by a vocal and potentially violent group of ultra-nationalists, who claim that the Europeans are using Armenians, Kurds and other minorities to dismember Turkey.

Yet there are hopeful signs that the Turks are willing to listen to other opinions as well. Halil Berktay, a respected Ottoman historian long ostracised for his unconventional views, survived telling the pro-establishment daily Milliyet recently that the Armenians were victims of “ethnic cleansing”. After decades of wavering, Fethiye Cetin, a Turkish lawyer, roused the courage to publish the story of her grandmother, another “secret Armenian” rescued by a Turk. Published in November, the book is already into its fifth edition.

In Istanbul members of a newly formed ethnic Armenian women's platform have vowed to shatter negative stereotypes by publicising the works of their successful sisters. “We are fed up with Turkish movies that portray us as hairy, morally promiscuous and money-grubbing creatures,” explained one.

In a groundbreaking if modest gesture, Turkey's mildly Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, made a joint call last month with the main opposition leader, Deniz Baykal, for an impartial study by historians from both sides of the genocide debate. His reason, he said, was that he did not want “future generations to live under the shadow of continued hatred and resentment.” He believes that the findings will show there was no genocide.

The move has been shrugged off by Armenia as a ploy to quash attempts in various EU quarters to link Turkey's membership with recognition of the genocide, as well as deterring America's Congress from a possible resolution mentioning “genocide”. Turkish officials retort that the prime minister's call marks the first time any Turkish leader has invited international debate of Turkey's past, albeit a purely academic one. If the government were insincere, they ask, why did the Turkish parliament ask a pair of ethnic Armenian intellectuals to brief it on April 5th?

Hrant Dink, the publisher of Agos, a weekly read by Turkey's 60,000-member Armenian community, was one of the questioned intellectuals. He offered plenty of sensible advice. He says that Turkey, rather than getting bogged down in endless wrangles over statistics and terminology, needs to normalise its relations with neighbouring Armenia. As a first step, it should unconditionally open its borders with the tiny, landlocked former Soviet republic. These were sealed in 1993 after Armenia occupied large chunks of ethnically Turkic Azerbaijan in a bloody conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave.

Make friends with Armenia, first

Not only would Turkey score valuable credit with the EU and the United States, but mutual trade would blunt the influence of the hawkish Armenian diaspora. A recent survey carried out jointly by a Turkish and Armenian think-tank showed 51% of Turkish respondents and 63 % of Armenians in favour of opening the borders.

Even so, mutual hostility prevails. Among the Armenians, 93% said it would be “bad” if their son married a Turkish girl, while 64% of Turks said the same of an Armenian bride. This does not worry the irrepressibly optimistic Mr Dink. “Let's first get to know one another,” he declares. “Love will follow.”

Article examines Turkey's willingness to now allow the Armenian tragedy to be discussed.