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http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/denial-of-an-ugly-past-is-holding-turkey-back-20101108-17k8f.html?comments=18#comments

Denial of an ugly past is holding Turkey back

Colin Tatz

November 9, 2010 - 6:42AM

Comments 16

Turkey must acknowledge the Armenian genocide if it wishes to move forward as a modern. democratic country.

The idea that Australia was born as a nation on Gallipoli's shores is now deeply cemented in our history books and national psyche. We are about to see the annual holding of hands by the former combatants on Armistice Day, when thousands will visit the "sacred site".

Turks and Australians will join in understandable commemoration but less comprehensible celebration; and friendship societies will become tearful and lyrical during this anniversary of the shedding of brotherly blood.But intruding on this mourning ritual is the growing world recognition of the Ottoman (and, later, Kemalist) Turkish genocide committed between 1915 and 1922.
Some 26 nation states and more than 50 regional governments, including NSW and South Australia, formally recognise the Turkish attempts to annihilate 3 million Armenians and possibly 1 million Pontian Greeks and Christian Assyrians.

At least 1.5 million Armenians were killed by bayoneting, beheading, bullets, butchering, crucifixion, drowning, elementary gas chambers, forced death marches, hanging, hot horseshoes, medical experiments, and other unprintable atrocities.

Turkey is totally dedicated, at home and abroad, to having every hint or mention of an Armenian genocide contradicted, countered, explained, justified, mitigated, rationalised, relativised, removed or trivialised.

The entire apparatus of the Turkish state is tuned to denial, with officers appointed abroad for that purpose.

Their actions are spectacular, often bizarre, and without distinction between the serious and the silly, including: pressures to dilute or even remove any mention of the genocide in the Armenian entry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica; threats to sever diplomatic relations with France over the latter's parliamentary declaration that there was such a genocide; replacing the Turkish Prime Minister's Renault with an inferior Russian limo; Sydney Turks demanding that the broadcaster SBS pulp its 25th anniversary history for twice making passing reference to an event they claim "never happened"; and, more recently, frenetic Turkish efforts to stop a memorial to the dead Assyrians in the western Sydney district of Fairfield.

Story continues belowExplanations abound. One is that Turkey is the victim of the single greatest conspiracy in world history, with states such as Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Northern Ireland, Poland, Russia, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, the Vatican and Wales conniving to falsely brand Turkey as a genocidaire.

Another is that somehow 11 million Armenians around the globe have subverted the truth, history and dozens of nations to "frame" innocent Turkey.
Yet another is that witnesses
— such as British historians Arnold Toynbee and Viscount Bryce, German missionary Dr Johannes Lepsius and German medico Armin Wegner, the American ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau and his Swedish diplomatic colleagues
— invented their sometimes daily conversations with the major perpetrators, Talaat Pasha and Enver Pasha, and lied to besmirch Turkish honour. Another is that the dozens of Australian PoWs, isolated and often grossly maltreated in remote villages rather than in camps, deliberately faked the photographs and invented the atrocity stories they brought back home.

They assert that the special Turkish military courts-martial held in Istanbul in 1919 only sentenced several perpetrators to death in absentia and imprisoned some 30 others for war crimes only because of duress from the Allies.

The best explanation is that the Turks did precisely what they were recorded and filmed as doing, for which their own tribunals convicted them.We are approaching a serious junction: the path to Gallipoli grows in scale and traffic each year, but so does the avenue to official recognition that what occurred was genocide, one in so many ways the prologue to, and template for, the Holocaust less than 20 years later. Sooner rather than later the US Congress will find the numbers for the two-thirds majority needed for recognition.

The British government won't be far behind. More Australian states will follow and, inevitably, an unwilling (and very unhappy) federal government will have to do so. Our dilemma will be profound.There is, of course, a way forward: an admission of truth about the events; a genuine opening of all the Ottoman archives to obviate the old Turkish chestnuts about "awaiting the verdict of historians" and "Armenian revolutionaries engaged in civil war"; an offer of regret, or apology, even one leavened by a limitation on reparations.

That way Turkey can more readily enter the European Union and the comity of nations. But the hysterical and obsessive denialism of the Batak massacres in Bulgaria in 1876, the 200,000 Armenians dead at the hands of Sultan Abdul Hamid II between 1894 and 1896, the 1.5 million dead at the hands of the Young Turks from 1915, will always get in the way of "normal" relationships.

Even if today's Turkey decided to become more rather than less secular, more West-oriented, less cosy with Syria, Iran and Hezbollah in a jihadist worldview, more willing to address its past in relation to Christians generally, the juggernaut of the denialism industry is such that it simply cannot stop.
The machine has developed its own mind, its own convulsive and reflexive responses.
Turks see genocide as a blot on their escutcheon and honour; they see themselves as decent people, and decent people don't commit genocide. Wrong. "Decent people"

— like Americans, Canadians, Belgians, Italians, Germans, Austrians, Spaniards and Australians
— have all done just that.Colin Tatz is a visiting fellow in the College of Arts & Social Sciences, Australian National University.

He is the author of With Intent to Destroy: Reflecting on Genocide.http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/denial-of-an-ugly-past-is-holding-turkey-back-20101108-17k8f.html

COMMENTS:

Ambassador to Australia Oguz Ozge responds to Professor Tatz

November 16, 2010What really happened to Armenians living under the Ottoman Empire in 1915, during the First World War is a matter of controversy.

Armenian diaspora claims that the events of 1915 come within the realms of "genocide", whereas Turks argue that in no way can those events be considered as such. Until the events of 1915 are legally determined by a competent international court under the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide or the Armenians and Turks come to a reconciliation over the controversy, the issue will remain a contentious one.

In a recent National Times article Professor Colin Tatz apparently sides with the Armenian diaspora against Turkey as far as the events of 1915 are concerned.

I do not intend responding to all the spurious arguments by Professor Tatz except for getting one important fact right.

Professor Tatz's claim that "some 26 nation states and more than 50 regional governments, including NSW and South Australia, 'formally recognise the Turkish attempts to annihilate . . ." is misleading.
It is a fact that 21 national parliaments and some regional assemblies have so far adopted resolutions favouring the Armenian arguments.

The resolutions by legislative bodies are of a political nature and not binding on the governments.
Consequently the claim of "formal recognition" by national states is not true and no single government has so far done so.
Under what circumstances of wheeling and dealing those resolutions are passed in parliaments need not be elaborated here.
We are convinced that the events of 1915 are not a matter for legislators to consider because we take "genocide" very seriously.

That is why we believe that historians from Turkey, Armenia and third countries should come together to ascertain the facts.

Last but not least, I wish to point out that in the past few years new claims have emerged whereby Greeks and Assyrians were also included in the list of victims by the Ottoman Empire.

The scope of the so-called "genocide" list has now been further extended so as to cover the Christian population living under the Ottoman Empire.

As an extension of that line of thinking it would have been misleading to exclude Anzac soldiers from such list, if the Christians had fallen victim to the so-called "genocide".

That is why a number of persons have very recently started alleging that Anzac prisoners of war were subjected to ill-treatment in camps around Gallipoli.

We should not let those ill-founded arguments damage the long relationship that has been forged between Australia and Turkey out of adversity in Gallipoli.


Open Letter to SMH/National Times of Australia on Prof Colin Tatz
17 November 2010

Dear Editor,Prof. Colin Tatz, a visiting fellow at Australian National University, like many others who write about the Armenian issue with a totally biased view and to further their own agenda, has made many erroneous statements in his recent article, ‘’Denial of an ugly past is holding Turkey back’’, (Nov 8, 2010.)

First of all, Turkey is already a modern democratic society and the fact that Turkey has played a role in the establishment of Australia as a nation at Gallipoli’s shores is accepted by many Australians and others.

This is being demonstrated at an exhibition in Ankara, focusing on Ataturk and the Gallipoli Campaign, as part of a 10 year program to celebrate this affirmation on the 100th anniversary of this in 2015.

Second, Tatz ignores the fact that the Armenian issue was created by the west in order to break up the Ottoman Empire which harmed both the Armenians and the Turks.

It is not only the Turks, as Turkish Amb. Oguz Ozge, stated in his letter to the Times, (Nov. 16, 2010) object to the labeling of massacres as genocide, since many Armenian Turks, foreign academicians and students in many countries, such as Prof. Justin McCharty, in America, many university students such as Maxime Gaugin in France, and others, have expressed views which support the Turkish thesis.

The enlightenment of Armenians along with other minorities in Turkey began with the establishment of schools by the Missioners all over the Ottoman Empire where the education was minimal. It is a fact that many Armenians educated at these institutions migrated to Europe and America and came back to fight with the rebellious Armenians who only wanted to establish an Armenian state on lands where they were not the majority, which the West promised them.

The Armenians and foreigners who support the genocide claim base this on several books published as either war propaganda or anti-Turkish material. Among these are Toynbee’s shameless ‘’Blue Book’’ and US Amb Morgenthau’s ‘’Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story’’, Both, although translated into Turkish, have been proved to be written based on fabricated, false and forged documents and hear-say, especially those invented by some Christian missionaries to bad-mouth the Moslems.

The resolutions passed by 26 nation states and 50 regional governments (and countless NGOs that Tatz does not mention) are as a result of support received from the Armenians for various reasons and not the nationals of each country and the influence of the above books and many others like them..

Third, the Armenians in Australia and all over the world should should start looking at the Armenian issue with an open mind and recognize the fact that the Armenians revolted and massacred many Turks going back to the 19th century.

These have been all documented in many books and articles, which Tatz seems to ignore. Turks retaliated and massacred Armenians. Armenian rebels attacked Turkish villages while the men were fighting in four corners of the empire and were in the army.

Many Armenians joined the Russian forces during the First World War, well over 150,00, and fought against their own government. The Ottomans were forced to re-locate the Armenians due to war conditions. Many returned and joined the French forces during the occupation of Clicia after the First World War and fought against the Turks. And of course, many Armenians in İstanbul, Kayseri and other cities continued with their lives, which is not mentioned by Tatz.

Finally, I would like to make a proposal to all concerned Armenians and Turks and to all NGOs, including the Hrant Dink Foundation, to begin the preparation of a parade across Turkey to commemorate the death of both the Turks and the Armenians before, during and after the First World War, together in 2015, and perhaps together with the Australians.

We should stop writing endless articles on a subject that is not fully known according to the experts and politicized and get together to work on building friendship, as some are already doing.

Perhaps we can call the parade, ‘’The Parade for Friendship and Peace’’, which can take place in major cities across Turkey and on to Baku and Erivan.

Once the friendship is established, than everyone can talk about the issues and help each other to reconcile the differences as friends and not enemies.

As ‘’Hopeful’’ commented on the article on Nov 9, ‘’The foreigners should get out of the away and let the Turks and Armenians work out their differences as ‘’neighbors.’’

Yüksel Oktayİstanbul


Turkey said...
To Daniel
(the writer of the last comment published in Sydney Morning),

Your sentence claiming that the establishment of an inter-allied tribunal never eventuated because of the political changes which occurred in the Near East, and NOT because the Turkish deportees were innocent, is totally wrong.

See the following letters exchanged between the Attorney General of Malta and Mr WS Edmonds, as the last words:

The letters written by H.M. Procurator-General’s Department to Mr Lancelot Oliphant (directed by Earl Curzon of Kedleston) dated July 29th, 1921 read:‘It seems improbable that the charges made against some of the accused will be capable of legal proof in a Court of Law.’(F.O. 371/6502/E.5845: L.Olipant (F.O.) to Mr Woods (Procurator-General’s Department)5845/132/44 of May 31st,1921)

‘Until more precise information is available as to the nature of the evidence which will be forthcoming at the trials, the Attorney General does not feel that he is in a position to express any opinion as to the prospect of success in any of the cases submitted for his consideration’

(F.O. 371/6504/E.8745: Woods (Procurator-General’s Department) to the Under Secretary of Stat efor FO., of July 29th, 1921)Upon the receipt of Attorney General’s opinion Mr WS Edmonds minuted:‘From this letter, it appears that the chances of obtaining convictions are almost nil…‘

The American Government, we have ascertained, cannot help with any evidence…‘In addition to the ABSENCE OF LEGAL EVIDENCE there is the extreme unlikelihood that the French and Italians would agree to participate in constituting the court provided for in art.230 of the Treaty (of Sevres)….
‘ON THE OTHER HAND WE CERTAINLY CAN NOT RELEASE ANY TURKS UNTIL OUR OWN PRISONERS ARE RETURNED…. THE PROPER TIME FOR THE RELEASE OF THE TURKS SEEMS TO BE WHEN IT CAN BE DONE AS PART OF A GENERAL SETTLEMENT WITH TURKEY.’‘IT IS REGRETTABLE THAT THE TURKS HAVE BEEN CONFINED AS LONG WITHOUT CHARGES BEING FORMULATED AGAINST THEM….’
(PRO-F.O. 371/6504/E.8745: Minutes by Edmonds of August 3rd,1921)

From: Şimşir, Bilal. Malta Sürgünleri. Bilgi Yayınevi, Ankara, 1985