The intellectuals' "disabled" dispute

When I first heard of the apology campaign launched by a group of intellectuals over what happened in 1915, I said "oh no!" with a somewhat mischievous reaction. Oh no, oh dear... These intellectuals will have hastily settled a debate that has been conducted for years around the questions "was there genocide or not; if so, who did what; who were its direct or indirect culprits," and moreover will have voluntarily taken all the blame upon themselves.

Once all the blame for the event has been assumed by some people and an apology offered for it, what meaning will any historical research into what happened in 1915 have from now on?

Yet whatever profound philosophical consideration the intellectuals may have for assuming this event and apologizing for it, have no doubt that those who stand to profit are the real perpetrators of the event (of course, since they are no longer alive, their political heirs today), whether on the Turkish side or on the side of the Armenian diaspora. Thus everyone who was actually and truly involved in the event will be exonerated, the unknown perpetrator sought for years will have been found, and all the guilt will fall on those who apologize for these events.

Indeed, Prime Minister Erdoğan's reaction to the apology campaign took the form of an extremely cold joke: "These intellectuals must have committed genocide, since they are apologizing. I did not commit such a crime, so I see no situation requiring an apology. Let whoever committed the crime apologize!"

That the accusatory, judgmental, even scolding tone of this cold reply toward the views and attitudes of the intellectuals who signed the declaration is surely serious is another problem. An attitude that singles out intellectuals as targets is no different from adding fuel to the fire.

Of course everyone's view binds only themselves. On such a thorny subject in particular, one cannot expect everyone to think the same. Moreover, to ignore the thorniness of the matter, and to ask of everyone "how come you cannot see it as I do," is another kind of despotism of intellectuals. The matter is not as clear, nor as easy to decide, as any side supposes. First of all, there is a serious problem of historiography. Historiography has never been a matter of objectively illuminating the past; on the contrary, it has always been about the political positions of the present. That is why history is rewritten at every moment. That today we turn to what the Armenians experienced in 1915, rather than to a series of other massacres, genocides or catastrophes in history, is very closely related to the successful lobbying of the Armenian diaspora, to the distance Turkey has covered in the EU process, or to the course of Turkey's democratization today. Even the field of history is not a field of objective science, as is supposed, but the field of politics itself, and turning this field into a source of political profit is a serious art.

In the geography on which Turkey sits, a series of wars, a series of massacres and a series of sufferings have taken place throughout history. All the generations that came afterwards either built new lives on top of all these sufferings by remembering them, or perhaps lived by forgetting many of them, even all of them. It is not possible for later generations to live feeling upon themselves all the burdens of earlier generations, and thank God it is not possible. Otherwise, like an "eternal sin" syndrome, everyone would somehow go on bearing responsibility for, or serving the sentence of, something they did not do. In that case a universal legal principle that holds a person responsible only for his own deeds would have no place at all.

This point alone requires entering into a serious discussion about the sphere of responsibility of "the human being," "the state" or "the nation." Although the historical reality of what happened in 1915 is a separate matter, it is for some reason not seen that a debt of apology can be imposed on today's people, who have nothing to do with what happened, only within a definition or assumption of a "nation" or "state" that has metaphysical continuity.

Since it is known that those who assume this burden generally also have serious problems regarding nationalism, has it been sufficiently calculated what kind of nationalism this apology campaign may have served? The writings of Murat Belge and Nuray Mert on this subject were extremely cautionary and drew the limits very well.

Indeed, both in timing and in tone, contrary to what was expected, the declaration seems to have had an effect that stirs up popular or general nationalism in a way that works against this process, rather than a confrontation with the past or an acceleration of the positive developments recently recorded in Turkish-Armenian relations. Those who signed the declaration seem to have filled with winds of anger the sails of nationalism, which had been drifting in still waters for some time.

Meanwhile, the reaction displayed by the President is extremely appropriate and befits the president of a country with democratic maturity. An attitude that regards disagreement as permissible in this debate, and that, even if it does not share the intellectuals' ideas on these matters, accepts it as an opportunity, is the most correct approach.

Because he was seen as not acting with a state reflex against the intellectuals, Gül's stance has angered CHP members. Unable to restrain herself, Canan Arıtman went so far as to try to link Gül's democratic stance to his ethnic origin.

What happened in 1915 is indeed largely a matter of history. But this mindset, which went as far as proposing "investigating the origin of Gül's mother," is a reality of our day, and the existence of this reality is truly frightening.