Turks, Armenians, and the “G-Word”

Abstract

History has its long-buried minefields posted with warnings that trespassers can enter only at their peril. Given the risks, it is heartening that a new generation of Turks and Armenians are looking afresh at a major historical event that has divided them for decades—the mass killing of Armenians that occurred in the crumbling Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1920. The Turkish Republic that arose from that empire has adamantly refused almost from the start to admit responsibility for the massacres, characterizing them as the result of Armenian efforts to aid Turkey’s enemies during and after the First World War. Yet historians elsewhere consider the killings the first genocide of the twentieth century; indeed, the term itself was inspired by the bloodletting in Anatolia. The argument has never been purely academic for the two peoples themselves: Turkish intellectuals who question the official version of the Armenian genocide face censure, and the Turkish government has gone to great lengths to fight foreign governments’ adoption of resolutions acknowledging the genocide, while Armenians in a large worldwide diaspora have long made Turkish accountability a touchstone for improved relations between the two peoples. Turkey’s bid to join the European Union has brought fresh attention to the ongoing dispute. To many Europeans, the Turkish refusal to address the Armenian genocide has called into question Ankara’s commitment to civil and human rights. At the same time, some Europeans have seized on the dispute as an excuse to block or delay the accession of a nation with a Muslim majority. Fortunately, the end of the Cold War not only stirred up forces pushing Turkey toward a confrontation with its past but also provided a fresh context in which to view it, and therefore new possibilities for resolution. In the past two decades, the experiences of numerous countries moving out of periods of violent conflict or dictatorial rule have spawned the new field of “transitional justice.” Activists and scholars alike are interested in the ways in which countries deal with the legacies of past injustice and how this process relates to the development of peaceful, democratic societies. Transitional justice provides a useful conceptual framework within which to locate the conflict between Turks and Armenians. From this perspective, Turkey—like postwar Germany, post-Soviet Eastern Europe, or post-apartheid South Africa—must wrestle with, and ultimately come to terms with, the dark spots in its history before it can move forward into a more democratic future. In the process, Turks’ and Armenians’ perceptions of one another will be able to emerge from a frozen hostility stemming from events that took place nearly a century ago.