The New York Review Abroad (69 page)

And yet the alleged Sabbataiism of
Efendi
is not based on any evidence; it is suggested by innuendo for the initiated. Yalcin does not say outright that the Evliyazades are Sabbataians; he only implies that they are. He does not flatly contradict the Evliyazades’ account that the family originally came from Anatolia, but he hints that they are descended from Jewish converts. Once this is accepted, everything else falls into place: the Evliyazades’ business partnerships with foreigners; their supposedly effete, Western style of life; their association with sinister institutions like the Rotary Club and the Miss Europe competition (the 1952 winner, Gunseli Basar, apparently married an Evliyazade). Yalcin’s point is that the Evliyazades and people like them deserve the honorific “Efendi,” a word meaning “gentleman” or “leader,” that was often used to refer to non-Muslims during the Ottoman period, and that Yalcin seems to be using ironically. These “white Turks,” he seems to be saying, can hardly be considered Turks at all.

In a recent issue of a left-wing Turkish magazine, Rifat N. Bali, a Turkish Jew, sees
Efendi
as part of the tradition of Turkish anti-Semitic writing.
⁶
He describes Islamist journalists who try to “out” famous Turks as being Sabbataian. He points out several passages in which Yalcin implies that Sabbataians have intervened during Turkish history to the benefit of their own (and Israel’s) interest, and to the detriment of Turkey’s. Without any factual basis for doing so, Yalcin ascribes a discriminatory tax imposed on the capital of well-to-do non-Muslims in the 1940s to a plot by pro-Israel Jewish converts in the Turkish government to persuade Turkish Jews to migrate to the new state. Whatever the reason for their departure, Yalcin concludes, the Jews who eventually left showed “disloyalty” to Turkey. In the eyes of Turkish nationalists, disloyalty and ingratitude are common traits among minorities.

4.

I arrived in Istanbul on Sunday, April 24, ninety years to the day since the Ottomans began arresting prominent Armenians in the city, an event that for Armenians marks the beginning of the genocide. A large Armenian church that I visited in European Istanbul was packed with worshipers who lit candles in memory of those who had died. Some local Armenians, along with a few liberal Turkish journalists and historians, had flown to Armenia to participate in a commemoration there and to support demands that Turkey recognize the events of 1915 as genocide.

Turkish newspapers had much to say about those events. Columnists and celebrities presented themselves in the press as experts on history. Could the deportations of 1915 have been avoided? No, argued
Sukru Elekdag, a handsome former ambassador turned politician, “the Ottoman government went to great pains” to protect the Armenians during the deportations, but “due to contagious diseases, severe weather conditions and limited resources there were losses on both sides.” On April 25,
Hurriyet
, Turkey’s most slavishly pro-establishment paper, announced that “today, for the first time, fully ninety years after the events of 1915,” Talat Pasha, the Ottoman grand vizier who ordered the deportations, “speaks, joining the debate with hitherto unpublished documents from his personal archive!” During the next few days, a series of articles taken from Talat’s journal purported to show that the chief vizier, who was assassinated by an Armenian in 1921, had been much concerned for the welfare of the deportees.

The evident purpose behind this display of opinion was to promote the Turkish version of events. The Armenians, so the Turkish argument goes, were deported because the Turks credibly feared that they would link up with the advancing Russians and seize parts of Anatolia. The deportations could not have been better managed because the Ottoman Empire was at war and in chaos. Most of the massacres were committed by brigands who acted without state sanction. And some of the worst massacres were committed against Turkish villages by Armenian gangs withdrawing from eastern Anatolia along with the Russians after the Bolshevik Revolution.

During the past two decades, several Turkish historians have made careers by developing this thesis, and also by dismissing as inflated claims that 1.5 million Armenians lost their lives during the deportations. These historians have been supported by Turkish diplomats, but they have had little success. Few foreign historians and, perhaps more important, no foreign countries feel confident defending the Turkish thesis. Turkish newspapers like
Hurriyet
carried triumphant headlines after George Bush avoided using the word “genocide” in a statement of condolence to the Armenians on April 24, but throughout
the world, the opinion of politicians and historians is decidedly against the Turks. The parliaments of more than a dozen countries have recognized the events of 1915 as genocide and a resolution has been submitted to the European Parliament demanding that “genocide recognition” be made a precondition for Turkish entry to the EU.

Many Armenians agree that Turkey must recognize the events of 1915 as genocide. Turkish officials vigorously resist a label that, they rightly fear, will result in their being associated with horrors comparable to the Holocaust and may expose them to class-action lawsuits. It is hard to argue that the writing and understanding of history have benefited from the bitter controversy over the word “genocide.” Many individual Turks accept that the Ottomans committed an appalling crime, but the same Turks violently react against suggestions that the crime was genocide.
⁷
The attitude of these Turks, in turn, enrages many Armenians, for some of whom it is the label of genocide that counts—more so than an appropriate show of contrition or even an honest appraisal of the past.
⁸
So a distorted “debate”
is taking place in the shadow of Turkey’s bid for EU membership.

Some Turks, many of them writers and academics, dare to put their heads above the parapet, and try to discuss the issue in a dispassionate manner, but they are not always allowed to do so. In May, academics at Istanbul’s respected Bosporus University felt obliged to cancel a conference on the history of the Armenian deportations after the Turkish justice minister obliquely referred to the event as “treason,” and “the spreading of propaganda against Turkey by people who belong to it.”

When Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s best-known novelist, made the unremarkable observation last year that one million Armenians were killed in Turkey, his words provoked a protest demonstration in the streets. Under Turkey’s new penal code, it is not clear that referring to Armenian genocide constitutes “anti-national activity”—a crime that is punishable by ten years’ imprisonment. (The law’s original footnote, which suggests that it does, has officially been erased, but this may not have much effect in practice; many copies of the new penal code that have been circulated contain the offending footnote, raising fears that lawyers and judges will apply it.) If saying the Turks committed genocide is a crime, this is surely as flagrant an affront to intellectual freedom as the recent decision by the Swiss judiciary to launch an inquiry into Yusuf Halacoglu, the head of the Turkish History Organization, on the grounds that his denial of the genocide during a speech he gave in Switzerland may amount to illegal racism. That court decision was denounced not only by members of the Turkish establishment, but also by pro-Armenian Turkish historians such as Sabanci University’s Halil Berktay, who says that the events of 1915 constitute a “proto-genocide.” Etyen Mahcupyan, a prominent
Turkish Armenian writer and journalist, also criticized the Swiss decision, saying that he agreed with “none of Professor Halacoglu’s views,” although he defended his right to express them.

In the offices of the weekly
Agos
, a paper published for Istanbul’s roughly 60,000 Armenians, Karin Karakasli, the newspaper’s general coordinator, told me that despite the controversy over official recognition of the killings as genocide, the conditions that Turkey’s Armenians live under are getting better. Only a few years ago, Karakasli recalled, the Armenian community was being accused of cooperating with the PKK; what the government calls “minority affairs,” including relations with Armenians, were supervised by the police. Until the cancellation of the Bosporus University conference, it had seemed as though Erdogan and his government were showing a softer and more tolerant attitude. The picture is now less clear—and members of the Turkish establishment, including top army commanders, have yet to show any sign that they would endorse such a softening. All the same,
Agos
has benefited from a relaxation in laws and attitudes concerning freedom of expression. Minority affairs are now supervised by the Interior Ministry. Karakasli told me that dozens of Armenian memoirs, novels, and history books are now being published in Turkish, part of a trend toward greater pluralism in publishing.
⁹
For the first time that she can remember, there is no general desire among Istanbul’s Armenians to emigrate.

Although Istanbul’s Armenians agree that the events of 1915 amounted to genocide, more immediate practical matters, such as Turkey’s continuing refusal to reopen its land border with Armenia, seem more important to many of them than the issue of whether genocide is officially recognized. Justifying its decision to keep the border closed, Turkey cites Armenia’s occupation of territory belonging to Azerbaijan, a Turkish ally, and Armenia’s claim to parts of eastern Anatolia. But Erdogan has said that he wants improved relations with Armenia and he recently called for a joint commission of Turkish and Armenian historians to review the events of 1915. Etyen Mahcupyan has advised the Turkish parliament that Turkey should reopen relations with Armenia; if it does, Turkish acknowledgment of the genocide will, he believes, become less important. He, Karakasli, and other prominent Turkish Armenians criticize the efforts of diaspora Armenians to persuade foreign parliaments to pass resolutions denouncing the genocide. “They seek to protect their identity by generating hatred,” Karakasli said, “and they end up poisoning themselves.… They have no contact with the Turks. We live among them.”

Of all Turkey’s minorities, recognized or not, Armenians have the most tragic past. They may also have the brightest future, since most of them live in Turkey’s only cosmopolitan city. In more remote and conservative parts of the country, such as Erzurum, it is harder to envisage a smooth accommodation of minority demands, still less the sharing of ideas that would help facilitate the transition. This is why a recent work on Turkey’s minorities, by Baskin Oran, a political scientist at Ankara University, is so important.
¹⁰

In his scholarly and exhaustive book, Oran examines the Treaty of Lausanne, the consequences of Atatürk’s exclusive conception of Turkishness, and the repressive laws that have been enacted in the name of both. He contends that Turkey’s foundations could be strengthened, and many inconsistencies resolved, simply by changing the official designation of the Turkish citizen from
Turk
, or Turk, to
Turkiyeli
, which means “of Turkey.” It is an ingenious answer both to Turkish nationalists and also to demands by Kurds that their special status be recognized, for it convincingly assumes that no one should have special status. In Oran’s Turkey, everyone is a
Turkiyeli
. Of course, Oran’s ideas amount to more than semantic invention. They challenge the way that the state regards its citizens. In the words of an EU diplomat based in Ankara, the state has hitherto organized itself in order to “protect itself from its citizens, rather than the other way around.”

Last November, a condensed version of Oran’s book was issued by a panel—of which Oran was a member—that had been asked by the government to examine minority questions. The result was an uproar of objections. To show his opposition to Oran’s views, another member of the panel snatched it from the jurist who was reading it aloud, and ripped it up. Later on, Oran’s suggestion was attacked by Turkey’s second most senior general, and denounced by Turkish nationalists. Startled by the reaction, the government disowned Oran’s ideas.