They only bring it up in hushed voices, if at all. You're not really supposed to talk about it, and someone might say one thing in front of one group of people and then admit an entirely different opinion to you over tea in their office, behind a closed door. There's one word that you don't mention around here outloud, and that's the word "genocide." You don't talk about the fact that in 1914, many historians say that there were approximately two million Christian Armenians living in Turkey, and that by 1922 there were fewer than 400,000. Were 1.5 million Armenians murdered in Turkey from World War 1 (1914-1918) through the early 1920s? Armenians want Turks to finally accept the blame.
A House panel is voting today on whether or not the death of those 1.5 million Armenians will be referred to as a genocide by the U.S. If the vote passes then it'll go to a full House vote, meaning it could be implemented into American foreign policy. Turkey has warned the U.S. that if this vote goes through, already weakened ties will be further strained with the U.S., a threat that has defeated the measure when it's gone to the House in the past. But Obama's silence on the issue (unlike Bush and Clinton who did not support the label) confuses Turks and Americans alike--will he support the measure or will he refute it? Is it possible that the U.S. would be willing to weaken its ties with Turkey over a simple word?
I'd understand if you thought as I did before I came to Turkey: What's the big deal? It's just a word. It was during an atrocious war and the dissolution of the Ottoman empire--it occurred even before Turkey, as we know it today, was an official nation. (Or maybe you don't know even that much, and your protests stop after "It's just a word.") But the fact is that Turks are very proud of their heritage and don't want such a horrifying historical act--a genocide--applied to them. Who wants to be compared to a Nazi?
What is genocide, exactly? According to Oxford (and it's all about semantics in this argument), genocide is the "deliberate killing of a very large number of people from a particular group or nation." So the question everyone is asking is, was the death of those 1.5 million Armenians deliberate or not? Was there a planned attempt to wipe Armenians off the Turkish map? Or was it the unfortunate, but accidental result of a devastating European war and the dissolution of an Empire?
A New York Times article says that it's considered a crime in Turkey to "even raise the issue of what happened to the Armenians" because it "insults Turkishness." I can't verify the legality for sure, but it is certainly an offense of the highest order here in Turkey, and an issue that (as a foreign teacher) you really don't want to bring up to anyone, unless you want all of your university to know.
What remains in question: Were there actually over two million Armenians in Turkey before WWI? Is that number correct? Some historians say there were many less Armenians in Turkey than that at the time. And how can one prove if it was systematic, or the fault of a destabilized country, the masses acting separately from any premeditated dictate from above? And does Armenia deserve that moral high ground when they drove one million Azeris (residents of Azerbaijan) out of its disputed region Karabagh? Will the U.S. also pressure them to budge on that issue? Azeris are closely tied to Turkey (they call themselves a sister country) and the Azeris I know refuse to do anything but spit out the word genocide like a swig of bad tea.
But the facts are recorded in history, label or not: Women were raped and murdered. Armenians were driven into the mountains and left to starve. Dissenting Armenian intellectuals were rounded up and executed. Members of the army were disarmed and transferred into labor batallions where they were either killed or worked to death.
This is no easy deicsion. If the House of Reps votes yes on this bill, it severely threatens its relationship with an important ally, and bows down to a claim in a way that may be overtly politically motivated since historians are not all in agreement on this issue. I honestly think it would be a foolish decision, despite what I might think about whether or not it was a genocide. The event happened in the past, before Turkey was an established nation, and I'm not sure I see the point in the U.S. getting so intimately involved.
Yet to vote that the deaths were a genocide would also provide a vindication for millions of Armenians, who have a very strong lobby in the U.S., and who still feel pain over the suffering their ancestors went through.
It will be interesting to see what Washington decides...and how the results trickle down to my little university. Until then, I had better stop writing about the issue from my office...it makes me a little uncomfortable, if you know what I mean.
For more info, you can read a historical account (I'm not saying it's unbiased though) from the NY Times here.
Here's a more recent account of the decision in the Wall Street Journal.
And more articles in a Turkish online paper here and here.
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