To save history from the grip of the blood feud

Prime Minister Erdoğan's message of condolence, published on 23 April for the Armenians who lost their lives in what happened in 1915, as might be expected, had a rote-breaking effect in every quarter. In an environment where the debate is conducted entirely by rote, naturally there is no trace of politics.

While everyone seeks to reinforce and fortify the position they have fixed with their rote formulas, this has no effect whatsoever on the other side. Perhaps the only effect arises not from whoever's rote is stronger but from the sanctioning power over others of those whose political or material position is strong, independently of their rote.

Today Turkey is far from being a country that can be subjected to sanctions on the basis of such rote formulas. The other parties to the matter, since they have already produced a kind of comfort for themselves from this rote, are relatively exempt from any development that would ultimately affect their position.

Yet there are also certain feelings that these rote formulas produce, and these feelings poison the human being. One cannot live long with this poison. The words Hrant Dink uttered precisely to warn his compatriots in the Diaspora on this matter, the words to the effect that hatred of Turks had turned into a poison in their blood, unfortunately, before making any impact on their target audience, were caught on the sentinel radars of our judiciary members who "know Turkish too well" and were neutralized. Yet Hrant Dink, too, at a moment when everyone was caught up in their own poisonous comfort, was inviting people to begin a dialogue between peoples and to be freed from the rote formulas that poison the human being.

That Erdoğan's invitation today is rote-breaking is in fact only because such a message of condolence had never before been made from an official position. Otherwise, neither Erdoğan nor the AK Parti community he leads has in general had a different approach on this matter from the beginning.

The Armenians who lost their lives in the events of 1915 were citizens of the Ottoman state. The place where they were settled in the deportation measure that led many of them to lose their lives was also, at that time, Ottoman land. Had the Ottoman state not been dismembered after the First World War, those deported Armenians today (except those who went to Europe or America) would have remained within Turkey's borders. Thus they would have continued to be citizens of Turkey, and would probably have sought to redress their grievances over what they lived through directly from their own state.

Indeed, we also know that an account was taken of many of the things that happened when the state was still Ottoman, and that in the courts many people were executed in Istanbul for behavior that exceeded the intent of the deportation measure. (By the way, while on the subject, let us recall that Armenian organizations, through their own one-sided trials, assassinated all the Ottoman state notables whom they held responsible for the event.)

The most striking aspect of the message Erdoğan published, in my view, concerns the inherent injustice of passing judgment on events that belong to history on the basis of today's calculations. That the Muslim Turks who were deported, or directly massacred, in a far more terrible manner in the Balkans just before and after the First World War are not remembered at all today is not because what they lived through was less tragic. In the sum of similar events across the whole Balkan geography, millions of people were massacred in the same way, but no one champions their cause. No one even remembers properly the people deported or massacred on the spot from Bulgaria, Greece or Macedonia. But looking back, everyone will recognize that the same kinds of things took place there.

This reminder, which of course does not require belittling or ignoring the pain the Armenians lived through, I make in order to draw attention to the nature of historiography. History is of course always something written from the present. It generally has no function of illuminating the past. It is about supporting political positions taken in the present. That, out of all the massacres, only what was done to the Armenians has been taken today outside even historical debate and turned into an absolute verdict has to do not with history but with political struggle.

One of the guiding principles on this subject is that no one can be made to bear another's sin. Because of this principle, Muslims, since they follow the advice of a prophet who trampled the blood feud underfoot, have turned not bequeathing to later generations the cause of what was done to them into an aptitude.

The Prime Minister's following words were uttered also with a consciousness that regards the blood feud as a custom of jahiliyya: "In today's world, to make enmity out of history and to produce new quarrels is not acceptable, nor is it in any way beneficial for building our common future."

In particular, the officiousness that tries to close discussion of what happened on this subject by parliamentary resolutions is impossible to understand. They cannot convince anyone that this officiousness feels pain today over what the Armenians lived through in 1915.

Events that took place 100 years ago, whatever evidence anyone may present, are a matter for history, not a court. And history is always a field open to debate. The moment it is closed to debate, what is there is not history but either a one-sidedly absolutized creed or a blood feud derived from it. Each is as poisonous as the other.

In any case, the Prime Minister's offering condolences to the living grandchildren of the Armenians for those who lost their lives is an important step on the road to being freed from this poisonous creed.