by Vincent Lima*     

Some of the most prominent scholars of Turkish history and society gathered from 17 to 19 March 2000 at the University of Chicago for a workshop on the Armenian Genocide. The workshop represented an important if tentative step forward in the effort to end the exclusion of the Genocide from the mainstream of Turkish historiography. It was organized by the distinguished historian and political scientist Ronald Grigor Suny.

The central project was best articulated toward the end of the workshop by Professor Geoff Eley of the University of Michigan, a historian of the Third Reich. Professor Eley noted that until some twenty years ago, historians of Nazism generally avoided dealing with the Holocaust, but today the Holocaust is seen as the central event of mid–twentieth century German history. Likewise English history used to be silent about the Irish famine; the breaking of that silence has had important consequences for political life and culture in England.

Professor Eley saw the Chicago workshop as an important step in the direction of a similar integration of the Armenian Genocide as a central event in the formation of the Turkish state.

Background

The first important cracks in the wall of silence came with the work of Taner Akcam and of Fikret Adanir. Dr. Akcam, a sociologist based in Germany, wrote a book about the Armenian Genocide and argued that Turkish society must face its demons to heal itself. (The argument, it should be noted, is primarily an appeal to self-interest.)

Professor Adanir, who holds the chair in Ottoman history at Bochum University, Germany, included the Armenian Genocide in his textbook on Ottoman and Turkish history. At a conference on the Armenian Genocide held at the Sorbonne in April 1998, Professor Adanir spoke movingly of his journey from denial to acknowledgement of the Genocide.

The fundamental move from individual acts of courage to an organized engagement of the two fields of Turkish history and Armenian Genocide studies came in an exchange in the journal Armenian Forum. Ara Sarafian and the author of this report, as editors of the journal, invited two prominent historians of the Ottoman Empire to respond to an article on the Armenian Genocide.

From the Armenian studies field, Professor Suny and Aram Arkun (Zohrab Center, New York) presented papers. Dr. Gerard J. Libaridian and Professor Kevork Bardakjian (University of Michigan) also made presentations.

Discussants included Professor Eley, Professor Cornell Fleischer (University of Chicago), Professor Robert Melson (Purdue University), and Professor Rashid Khalidi (University of Chicago).

The workshop, regrettably, was closed-door. Thus it would be unfair to report in great detail who said what. A conference report is being prepared by the organizers, however, and many of the papers will appear in print before long.

Everyone spoke against "essentializing," i.e., taking a phenomenon out of the context of time, place, and circumstances and treating it as if its characteristics hold universally. An example is speaking of Islam as if every Muslim can be expected to act in similar ways whether in seventh-century Arabia or twenty-first century Spain.

The same goes for looking at history as if nations have always existed and always commanded the primary loyalty of members of national groups. They have not. It is important to avoid projecting backward and imagining that people have always thought of themselves as Armenians and Turks, that these words have always meant the same things to people, and that people have had the same hostilities, loyalties, and motives across time.

The founding myth of the Turkish state denies not only the Armenian Genocide but the very existence of non-Turks in Asia Minor. The official history establishment in Turkey tries to reproduce the national myth. The job of honest scholars is to question and correct and debunk. A question with which the participants grappled is how to move from academic tracts to popular consciousness. Here, again, the workshop had no answers; but the participants did have a commitment to move beyond the ivory tower.

Professor Keyder made the point that people have a vested interest in adhering to the nationalist myth; it is not only a question of identity but also of the dubious inheritance of material goods.

Another important point in this regard was made by Professor Akarli: confronted with irrefutable facts, people sometimes make excuses. Present the Turkish public with overwhelming evidence of the mass destruction of Armenians and the response could well be, "Someone was going to be squeezed out of Asia Minor and if 'we' hadn't pushed them out, they would have pushed 'us' out." This possibility (which has always been part of the official line) must be addressed in the effort to incorporate the Armenian Genocide into Turkish national consciousness.

A corollary of this point is that confronting the denial of the Armenian Genocide has become central to diaspora-Armenian identity. An unhealthy situation holds in which, Dr. Libaridian noted, some people have a vested interest in the continuation of denial.

Other issues that were discussed were less historiographical and more historical. Here, in fairness to participants, it is probably best to let their papers speak for themselves when published. Some highlights: Professor Shissler made a credible case that Young Turk leaders were not all that certain about the extent of their territorial ambitions; Professor Keyder made a fascinating argument on the question of popular participation in the Genocide; and Professor Berktay brilliantly analyzed popular literature (rather than the work of remote theorists like Gökalp) as agent of nationalist mobilization.

The workshop was excellent and Professor Suny and his committee are to be congratulated for an important contribution to scholarship and society.

In the interests of keeping the project on track, I will allow myself a few words of constructive criticism. The organizers appeared to view the workshop as a revolutionary step, an unprecedented first, tentative meeting of "Turkish and Armenian scholars." Unlike, say, the exchange in Armenian Forum, the workshop was not organized around questions to be explored—whatever the nationality of the scholars; rather it was organized to raise questions for future research.

A consequence of this misunderstanding was that the workshop did not fully live up to its potential.

Scholars in the field have been meeting and reading each other’s work for years and know each other. For them, this was not a fragile first step.

The fact is that every major scholar there was already on record as having condemned Turkish nationalist historiography. Every one (except to my knowledge Professors Deringil and Goçek) was on record as having spoken openly about the Armenian Genocide. Thus it should have come as no surprise that the conversation moved quickly to a condemnation of Turkish nationalist mythmaking and a condemnation of the denial of the Genocide.

To those unaware of the background, the workshop seemed at that moment like a big success—one that ought not be squandered. And thus there was more timidity than appropriate gusto in exploring the questions that arose.

The next steps need to be focused around specific questions. The most important theme that arose was that of history and memory. I would like to see textbook analysis (which some people, including at least one of the participants in the Chicago round, have worked on); more on popular culture (Professor Berktay's work on Turkish literature was mentioned above; Professor Goçek dealt with contemporary Turkish-Armenian literature; I would like to see a more representative sample of works placed carefully in the broader context of Armenian as well as Turkish literature); the matter of "dubious inheritance" needs further exploration—and there are scholars in Turkey engaged in such exploration.