Genocide by a one-vote margin

While the effects and echoes of the US Foreign Relations Committee's adoption of the Armenian Genocide bill by a single vote continue, the Swedish Parliament has been seen setting out on the same path. It, too, adopted the bill by a single vote.

We cannot say that the way a historical event is viewed will not change through the vote parliamentarians cast on a bill placed before them. But of course this does not mean that the change will in every case be a change in favor of justice. The bitter but true fact is that this is precisely how the view of history changes anyway. That is, it changes not through historical information and documents emerging in all their authenticity and the facts being proven, but through the effect of a stance taken today in one direction.

Therefore, it runs against the nature of the matter to expect an illuminating light from the information put forward by parliamentarians or today's historians about what happened in history. Otherwise, what meaning would the historical testimonies of people who have perhaps never seen an Armenian in their lives, who could not point to Armenia on a map, and who have no competence whatsoever in historical events, have? We must not shrink from asking. Let us admit that, in today's world, a strong perception or opinion has formed regarding the events of 1915 in favor of the Armenian claims and against Turkey. Whether this perception or opinion has anything to do with the truth, near or far, is beyond a certain point unimportant. The question to be asked is how this perception came to be formed.

Many people in the West think that Turks are terrible, that people in Turkey ride camels, and that every one of them has a harem. Still, one should not be surprised that this perception has a counterpart among Western peoples who have every means of communication and media, because there is no guarantee that advanced means of communication will correct distorted perceptions by themselves. On the contrary, it is a reality we live that even masses of people living side by side can develop extremely distorted information about one another. If you like, you can start testing it with the perceptions that those who carry the secular concerns expressed as "republican sensitivity" hold about the people they perceive as "reactionaries." What kind of perceptions, do you think, are behind the fears that, once they come to power, they will cut them up with a blunt saw and interfere with their way of life? What might the so-called "reactionaries" have done to produce these perceptions?

Truthfully, a significant part of what sets in motion concerns and perceptions, especially about nations, takes place inside people. Just as we are not innocent of one of the very basic value problems regarding the view of other people, neither is the whole world innocent. When the occasion arises, we too can be subjected by others to the same assaults of distorted perception and anxiety that we are capable of plunging into so recklessly.

The Armenian genocide bill, it must be acknowledged, is a very well-marketed campaign. This campaign draws support to a great extent from an image of Turkey or of Turkishness that is in circulation among the peoples of the countries in question. How this image of Turkishness came about needs to be studied separately, but an image of Turkishness that can subject its own young people to the cruelty of the coefficient, that blights the lives of hundreds of thousands of its headscarved girls by turning them away from the university gates, that can produce 17 thousand unsolved murders in 10 years, that could not tolerate even Hrant Dink, a friend who proclaimed defiantly that he would not give up his love for Turkey, and that stood by as he was knowingly dragged into a legal lynching, is a matter not of 1915 but of today.

One should not think that such an image of Turkishness belonging to today has no effect on the view of 1915. Therefore, to repeat on this occasion, history is a matter of the present, not of the past, and perceptions concerning 1915 can be corrected not by going back to the past but by managing the perceptions concerning today's Turkishness.

Undoubtedly, despite all this, the problem with the Armenian genocide bill cannot be reduced merely to the bad image of Turks today. An important part of it also concerns the successes Turkey has achieved, particularly in the international arena. These successes excite the peoples of many countries greatly, but they also upset and frighten many. The fact that genocide bills have begun to pass through parliaments one by one is also related to this success of Turkey. If more follow, one should not be surprised.

Of course the matter has nothing to do with history. One has to look at how, when the expression "Armenian genocide" was not uttered anywhere until 1956, it was suddenly brought onto the agenda. The issue was brought up by the Soviet Union as a project and, once America took it up in the sixties, was suddenly developed into a mechanism for political calibration against Turkey. Since then, the genocide question has become one of the most important adjustment knobs over all of Turkey's politics. What did the Soviets expect in this process, and what kind of international balance was achieved by America's adoption of the issue? One should look a bit at that too.