Turkey cannot escape issue of 1915 Armenian genocide

The German parliament's recognition today that the horrors perpetrated against Armenians a century ago amounts to genocide has again caused anger in Turkey.

Part of Turkey’s refusal to engage with its history or to address this charge is rooted in its founding fathers’ often bloody attempts to establish a single, united national identity. Turkey’s unwillingness to call the Armenian genocide for what it was runs deeper than a simple refusal to accept the wrongs of a century ago.

In the years before and during the mass killing of more than one million Armenians and other minorities in eastern Anatolia, the Ottoman empire was falling apart. Turks suffered an identity crisis, a dread that they could become a people without a fixed state.

Secular society

The founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, believed a secular society to be the best way forward for the emerging state. As a result, religious, conservative and minority elements of Turkish society, or anyone who questioned the idea of "Turkishness" or the Turkish state, suffered acutely.

In the same way that nationalist Turks today unite – sometimes violently – in opposition to demands from Kurds for self-governance, a century ago anyone attempting to portray the nascent Turkish state in a negative light was roundly ignored, vilified or worse.

Turkey counters that Armenian militias also carried out atrocities against Turkish troops and civilians. Its ministry for foreign affairs website states that while “Armenians indeed suffered a terrible mortality . . . one must consider the number of dead Muslims and Jews. The statistics tell us that more than 2.5 million Anatolian Muslims also perished.

“They, the years 1912-1922 constitute a horrible period for humanity, not just for Armenians.”

It furthers that “the evidence does not, however, constitute genocide.”

Turkey recognises that wrongs were committed by all side, as often happens, it says, in wartime, and in recent years there has been an effort to right some wrongs. Over the past decade authorities have returned church property to minority foundations seized by the state at various times during the 20th century.

Shared pain

When he was prime minister in 2014, current president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said said that Turkey and Armenia had a "shared pain" over the events of 1915.

“Having experienced events which had inhumane consequences – such as relocation – during the First World War, [it] should not prevent Turks and Armenians from establishing compassion and mutually humane attitudes among towards one another.”

But two years is a long time in Turkish politics, and those comments seem far removed from a politician who today is seemingly bent on silencing criticism wherever it appears.