Perpetrators and Victims: Destinies Intertwined

The views expressed in this op-ed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of SyriacPress.

By Marcus Yalcin Beth Shao

Someone once asked me: why don’t you just forgive the Turks? It’s history and happened more than a century ago? But is that possible … Isn’t forgiveness a mutual process? Can you forgive someone unless they say: I’m sorry, I did wrong. Forgiving always comes with the feeling of the need to be pardoned. To forgive means there needs to be a request for forgiveness. And for a request to forgive, one needs to recognize their own past.

There is a paradox here because there was a time when Turkey frankly admitted the genocide of the Syriacs, Armenians, and Pontic Greeks. Just after the First World War, in 1919 and 1920, the incumbent Turkish government held trials and convicted some of the culprits. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder and “Father of the Nation” of the Turkish Republic, was not a denier of the genocide and even called it a shameful act (Akçam, 2011).

The trials had very practical reasons: the new Turkish government wanted to show its good will and prevent Anatolia from being divided by the Allied powers. The three architects of the genocide, Enver, Talaat and Djemal Pasha, were sentenced to death but managed to flee the country – Talaat was assassinated in Berlin in 1921 by Soghomon Tehlirian of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, an Armenian group targeting political and military figures for their role in the Armenian genocide.

At the beginning of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, the Turks firmly believed that through the Constantinople trials they would be able to keep the remaining territories of the Ottoman Empire. After the Turks learned about the partition plan of the Allied powers, the interest and will of the Ottoman government to continue the genocide trials against the perpetrators ceased and they stopped the trials.

According to historian Taner Akçam, there is a strong connection between the Turkish attitude today in that respect. The attempted dismemberment and partitioning of the Ottoman empire as a form of punishment for the atrocities committed during the war years, and the proposed punishment of its national leaders for seeking to maintain the territorial integrity of their empire, created the mindset in Turkey today which frames the perpetration of historic wrongdoings as a matter of national security. Akçam believes that in today’s Turkey, a product of this mindset is the belief that democratization, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and an open and honest debate about history and acknowledgement of the past and historic misdeeds is a threat to national security. And it was this mindset that let to the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink (Akçam, 2011).

Perhaps if Great Britain had linked the acknowledgement of the national boundaries of Turkey on the precondition that the Constantinople trials move forward, the Turks would have continued with the trials of the perpetrators of the genocides and we would be speaking of a modern Turkey that has addressed its past.

Would an apology from Turkish and Kurdish individuals help the Syriac people to forgive?

A lot of Syriacs, as well as Armenians and Pontic Greeks, believe an apology is not enough and that compensation must be given for the hundreds of thousands of martyrs, lost land, stolen property, and the attempt to annihilate their ancient civilization and nation. The current Syriac generation, descendants of the victims of the genocide, are stuck in rancor. The main question here is whether we Syriacs are ready to forgive if the Turks and Kurds (officially) recognize the genocide?

In my opinion, Syriacs, collectively, are still not ready to accept an apology. And the reason is psychological. We still see ourselves as victims. We feel ashamed because we could not defend ourselves and our Syriac heritage and could not protect our women and children from Turkish and Kurdish swords. We have conceptualized ourselves as the losers and externalize our grief through constant talk about the Turks and the Kurds.

Are Syriacs still traumatized 105 years later?

Akçam (2015) said that, “acceptance of this crime against humanity is the beginning of the healing.” Without acceptance, we cannot speak of healing for the traumatized Syriac nation. Syriacs need this acceptance of the perpetrators. This is crucial. The current Turkish generation is not to blame directly for past genocides, but as successor of the Ottoman Empire and the collective beneficiaries of its crimes, they do have a responsibility to, at the least, acknowledge the past. There are many segments within contemporary Turkish society that are willing to apologize and to recognize past darknesses, such as Turkish and Kurdish intellectuals and, generally, the Kurds of southeastern Turkey.

Me, I don’t feel the trauma myself, in part thanks to violence psychologist Ervin Staub’s work on genocide. He said, “It would be in our benefit to turn towards each other and engage in healing internally. Because by focusing so much on the denial, we allow Turkey to re-injure ourselves.” (Straub, 2015).

However, as Syriacs, we are collectively traumatized and continue to suffer from what happened 105 years ago. We are suffering from the many frustrating attempts to get recognition for the “Sayfo” or “Year of the Sword”. The pain we feel as the victims of the Genocide of 1915 is unforgettable. But I believe Syriacs are willing to forgive and reconcile. That is precisely why an apology — as a start of a reconciliation process — would be helpful. The Turkish government, however, remains obstinate and refuses to apologize, even going so far as to antagonize. Some Kurdish organisations and politicians such as Ahmet Turk have apologized to Syriacs and Armenians for the Kurdish involvement in the 1915 genocide. Although this can be seen as a good beginning, it is by far not enough for the Syriac people.

What is the responsibility of later Turkish and Kurdish generations?

Turkish society has long denied that a genocide had taken place and engages in the issue only to issue denials or whataboutisms. So, what are Turks and Kurds to say as individuals? ‘Okay, I accept individual responsibility for my whole society?’ How do we construct the discourse in such a way that Turkish society acknowledges the past, engages with it, takes responsibility for it, accepts sorrow and regret, while at the same time avoid blaming individuals who are now part of Turkish and Kurdish society who played no direct role in historical crimes?

We can look to the experiences of other countries in reconciliation for ways forward. Most countries, large ones in particular, have similarly dark pages in their history. I think you cannot healthily move forward as a society unless you find a way to deal with the skeletons in your collective closet. In 2008, the Parliament of Australia issued a formal apology to Indigenous Australians for forced removals of Indigenous children (often referred to as the Stolen Generations) from their families by federal and state government agencies. The apology was delivered by then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. In the Netherlands, the Dutch King offered his royal apology to the Indonesian president for the Dutch military regime in Indonesia following the Second World War.

Not dealing with our pasts affects our futures. It creates taboos. A member of Turkish society who thinks differently about past events or acknowledges the reality of a genocide is immediately seen as a traitor, often condemned a labelled with the contemporary Turkish pejorative “Armenian”.

Building Bridges

It is my firm belief that Syriacs must build bridges to different segments of Turkish society undergoing similar processes of exclusion and “othering” as Syriacs themselves have experienced in order to achieve acceptance and recognition. One example is the Alevi community in Turkey. Historically, Alevis have suffered from national and religious extremism from within broader Turkish society. In 1993, 37 people, mostly Alevi intellectuals, were burned alive in the Sivas massacre when a mob set fire to a hotel where an Alevi group had assembled. Each year on the anniversary of the massacre, demonstrators hold protests and vigils to commemorate the victims of the fire. Many wish to see the hotel, which has since re-opened, be declared a memorial and turned into a museum as a recognition of their pain.

Another bridge we can build is with Muslim Syriacs. These Muslims, predominantly living in Turkey, are the stolen descendants of Syriacs who were forced to accept the Muslim religion by their attackers during the last century. A few of them have come out and accepted their Syriac roots and identity in recent years. They even established a Syriac association in Diyarbakir. According to these individuals, Muslim Syriacs potentially number in the tens of thousands and are the living evidence of the Syriac genocide of 1915. Denying these Muslims as part of the Syriac nation is to deny the Sayfo ever happened.

Syriacs may not like Turks and Kurds because of the genocide and have difficulties with reconciliation. But if one survivor of the genocide were able to forgive one Turk or one Kurd, wouldn’t that help the Syriacs to forgive? Wouldn’t that help Turkey to acknowledge what happened?

As Nelson Mandela said: We can only heal each other. If they won’t recognize, we can’t forgive. And if we do not forgive, they can never absolve themselves. We are condemned to each other. Our destinies are entwined.