The political economy of genocide discourse

The reaction the Turkish public displayed to the adoption of the Armenian genocide bill by a single vote in the US Foreign Affairs Committee shows that a unity of reflex, if not a consensus, in politics is by no means impossible. So no matter how deep the debate runs, no matter how far the tension rises and makes politics impossible, a new situation emerging somewhere can wake us into another state.

Of course, how far whatever wakes us keeps us awake is a separate matter. Moreover, whether what wakes us, rouses us and triggers our reaction came to us like good news, one that holds a heaped-up opportunity against our adversaries, or whether we met it with genuine sorrow, is an entirely different but certainly important matter.

On the Armenian question, things are truly tangled. Even if we genuinely needed a historical reckoning, it is neither fitting nor useful to be reminded of it by America, whose own history is full of a thousand kinds of massacres and war crimes. But, truth be told, nobody feels the pain of the Armenians, or of any other child of Adam, of a hundred years ago. It is a right to expect those who set out to feel and make others feel the sufferings of the Armenians of a century ago to show at least a similar sensitivity toward events taking place right under their noses today. If this much sensitivity is shown so that worse may not happen, it could be an attitude deserving respect, but then this attitude should have been able to stop today's atrocities.

Undoubtedly, this logic too is an assessment to be received with caution. A claim of justice about the past cannot, of course, be held responsible for present-day atrocities. But when it comes to countries like America, France and the Netherlands, their attempt to record Turkey's historical record is, in the full sense of the word, impertinence.

Determining a historical event by parliamentary decision actually lays bare the naked truth of what we call history. History is never a matter of objectively knowing past events. If there is no side of a historical event that connects us to it from today, the event is not even history. And from the moment we are "interested" in the event, we have approached not the truth of the event but our own claim. If there is an objective history in the full sense of the word, it must be a history possible only to the extent that we are "disinterested." Yet "interest," as a key word, is a process that leads a person away from being objective toward becoming a "party with a stake" (the English word: interest) in the matter.

For that reason, we possess neither the cognitive means nor a just judicial authority to establish, from today, a justice regarding what happened in 1915, or before, or after. Courts set up while the events are still fresh generally have more of these means of evidence, but then it is also an unavoidable historical fact that the party that sets up the court, usually the victor of a war, gets from the court the decision it wants. History is written by the victors. As long as the history written by the victors does not satisfy pure consciences, a revolt against it develops in small or large waves.

In this respect, the expectation that history will sooner or later find and bring out the naked facts is an empty expectation. If possible, one should keep the record of historical events at the time, and, if possible, see to it that justice is done without delay.

Justice delayed is not justice. In the field of history, the situation is no different. It is clear that a reckoning that takes place after those with historical responsibility have departed this world, or the justice that would come out of it, is not justice but concerns the political calculations of our day.

That those who seek justice on the grounds that they were persecuted in some period of history enter alliances today with the chief oppressors of the world to establish this justice openly shows that what they seek is not justice but revenge or power. Frankly, in this case "past sufferings" come to mean nothing more than a literature put on the market for the sake of a claim to power or interest.

Understanding whom this reckoning would benefit, a reckoning that is of no use to those who suffered the pains nor likely to bring any sanction on those who inflicted them, now requires a kind of political economy.

Genocide discourses are a matter of political economy and may be a breaking point for the optimism felt today toward Turkey's rising trend. They can be read as a warning that Turkey's foreign policy activity, which is rapidly increasing its influence, is not being received without problems all over the world. This warning is of course not one to be heeded in a way that would dissuade Turkey from the path it has undertaken. But it is an example showing that a strong, independent Turkey that is active in its surroundings, if it is possible at all, will of course not always be met with applause and cheers. Indeed, even as Turkey takes this more general perspective into account, in particular the time has come for it to display a different, again convention-breaking new approach to this issue that catches Turkey at this time every year. If America is going to recognize the genocide, let it recognize it; evidently it is trying to hold Turkey hostage with this issue, and unfortunately it has so far succeeded, but it is in Turkey's hands to put an end to this and to take the issue out of being a matter of complex.