The Lustful Eunuchs of History, or have new documents about 1915 been found?

For those who claim that history can be written independently of any political or ideological prejudice, this is the definition Nietzsche saw fit: "the voluptuous eunuchs of history." My aim is of course not to strike the German Parliament, which made a piece of historical knowledge absolute by parliamentary decision, with the words of the famous German philosopher. But it is only this apt.

What makes these chronicler historians, who suppose history to be nothing more than an objective record of events, ridiculous is that they are unaware of the ideologies and power relations under whose influence they stand. That is why, at the very heart of politics, they suppose they convey "as it is," without adding any interpretation, events they have recorded from a particular point of view. They have no ill intent. They truly suppose it is so. They are eunuchs, but there is not the slightest decline in their voluptuousness. (Yeni Şafak, 13 May 2006).

*

What is the result of the relatively more intense entry of genocide claims onto the world agenda recently? Have new documents never known before on this subject come to light, and did these support views in favor of the genocide claim? Or has the so-called Armenian diaspora found new and more powerful channels of expression and propaganda and recorded a serious success in this direction?

We need to understand that neither the first nor the second possibility applies in the adoption of the genocide claims as a bill first in the US and then in the Swedish parliament. Today we cannot be said to be any closer to historical knowledge than before. New information regarding the events of 1915 has not been found, nor has existing information entered the world agenda in a more convincing manner. In fact, the historical awareness that parliaments are not competent to evaluate a historical event can even be said to be stronger than before. Moreover, even if Armenian nationalists may be more organized than before, they can even be said to have lost quite a bit of ground in the face of the steps Turkey has recently been trying to take regarding Armenia.

Armenian nationalism, just like nationalisms elsewhere, does not want the problems with the adversaries that are its reason for being to end. The continuation of the problems is what keeps its legitimacy or psychological ground alive; their ending would finish it. Relations with Armenia have also received their share of the zero-problems pursuit that Turkey's foreign policy has been following for eight years, and as expected this was met with fierce opposition from Armenian nationalists, but this opposition also pushed them to a degree into isolation. Therefore it is not possible to establish a causal link between the adoption of genocide claims in the American and Swedish parliaments and a rise of Armenian claims.

Truly, it would be far more apt to associate this link with the strengthening of Turkey's foreign policy and the expansion of its sphere of activity. The foreign policy Turkey has followed over the last eight years has created effects that intensify relations in all of the geopolitical or historical regions to which it belongs, revive exchange, and in this way bring the sharing of peace and prosperity. The approach of mediation or taking the initiative in resolving problems may at first have been perceived as playing the bridegroom to oneself, or as a fantasy with no return, but over time it has been demonstrated in practice what an activity- and prestige-producing role it is.

That this role emerged with this kind of activity also fits sociological models quite well. There is no form of social relation in which mediators do not receive a share of social activity and prestige. Undoubtedly, to be able to play this role, being Turkey is an important possibility but not a sufficient one. The personal qualities and approach style of the President, the prime minister and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu are very favorable for such a role to be fitting and to be met with sympathy.

Not only with Arab countries but across all the Balkans, Turkey, especially Davutoğlu's style based on intensive, friendly face-to-face contacts, has accumulated serious diplomatic gains. Even with Serbia, relations have been established that, moreover, without offending the Bosniaks, gain them a great deal as well. It is known that he met the Serbian leader 11 times in a short time. It is possible to expect that these meetings have gone beyond the resolution of problems and woven a new level of relationship.

It can be said that this style and level of relations was about to determine relations with Armenia too and melt the ice between them. The problems are not few, of course, but they are not insurmountable either. Because of the Karabakh issue, Azerbaijan-Armenia relations form one of the most important barriers in front of the resolution of these problems.

The adoption of the genocide bill, in this respect, apart from constituting sabotage in front of Turkey's foreign policy focused on the zero-problems pursuit, has also constituted a serious attack on the resolution of the problems between it and Armenia. Bringing the issue to the fore by heating it up in this way has been inappropriate with respect to the context of the relations between Turkey and Armenia moving in a good direction, but it is also clear that this inappropriateness can only be made sense of as deliberately sabotaging these relations. (Yeni Şafak 22 March 2010)

SO THAT OUR SILENCE IS NOT TAKEN AS CONFESSION

In this column that I have been writing for 12 years, I have never republished an old piece until now. I ask my readers to excuse me this once. A campaign was suddenly launched on social media trying to create the perception that I defended the Armenian Genocide 5 years ago. The usual, ready-made customers of the cheap campaign, which I did not take seriously at first and which was based on a tweet from five years ago attributed to me, immediately entered the race to snatch the goods. I have no concern about proving myself to any of them. But starting from the fact that silence can mean confession, I wanted to present a small collage from pieces I wrote here only 10 years and 6 years ago. As someone who has never in any period of my life accepted the Armenian Genocide claims, and who has always tried to give the strongest response to these claims with my own professional knowledge, this view attributed to me is frankly very far from me. My book titled Tarihbozumu: Tarih Sosyolojisi Yazıları (History Spoiling: Writings on Historical Sociology), in which I explain that the genocide claims have nothing to do with the past, with the Armenians who died in 1915, but on the contrary are related to a certain political economy and are an Islamophobic and Crusader reaction to Turkey's rise today, was also published in 2010. I invite those who have squeezed all their intellectual performance into 140-character sentences to come out a little from these dungeons of ideas and read. A person's thought or political stance may also change and this is not shameful, but everyone should know that there is complete continuity between my writings on this subject that you have read in recent days and my position 15 years ago.