Sait Çetinoğlu: It is Necessary to Refuse the Spoils of the Genocide

All of this that I heard, from start to finish, was injustice. And one of the core values I had picked up at an early age was that one has to fight injustice, as a matter of one’s debt to humanity itself.

- As a person, who lives in Turkey, can you describe the attitude of the Turkish society towards the Armenians, towards the fact of the Armenian Genocide?

- As I see it, maybe not everyone, but the majority is aware that there’s something odd going on, but their minds have been clouded by official ideology and official history to the point that they’re unable to ask questions. If only they could ask the questions, it wouldn’t take them very long to figure out what had happened. At that point this would become a matter of conscience.

For instance, people think they’re from a certain place, a village, a city, whatever. But their fathers, their grandfathers are not buried in the town’s cemetery. They don’t wonder why. If they did, they would discover that their grandfathers were murderers, thieves. And that’s the hard part. So what do you do? You conceal, you deny. 

Another bizarre thing: There are people with no relatives that they know of, and they don’t question why. It’s as though they were delivered by a stork. If they started digging, they would realize they’re descended from Armenian or Greek orphans. And that’s another sticky situation right there: You suddenly become what you looked down upon.

- How does the Turkish society see the perspective of the Armenian-Turkish relations?

 - In answer to this question I’d like to go over the Vartan Hotel incident, which took place in Van province. Victor Bedoian, a U.S. citizen, wanted to buy (via a firm called VK Express, of which he owned 20 percent) a hotel in Van and operate it as a tourism establishment. This led to campaigns decrying the unthinkable: Armenians were starting to take over Van. Bedoian did not speak Armenian. He was not married to an Armenian. The hotel was named after his son, Vartan. The company couldn’t find anyone to defend its rights in court; no lawyer in Van would accept it as a client. The U.S. Secretary of State at the time had to intervene with a request that this U.S. citizen’s rights be respected, the U.S. ambassador had to go to Van seven times to follow up, and in the end the matter was closed without further incident, the company having lost $1 million in the process.

As you know, Van today is a reliable voting bloc for the People’s Democracy Party (HDP) and the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which share power locally and centrally. HDP just introduced a bill in Parliament for the Armenian Genocide to be recognized. But the question is, what has really changed since 2001?

Erdoğan, who controls the ruling party on the national level, and Öcalan, who controls power locally, are united in their anti-Armenian sentiment. The former uses a figure of speech to indicate his disdain for the word Armenian when he utters it; the latter talks of the "Armenian lobby" and the "thousand-year brotherhood of Islam" (between Kurds and Turks, united against Armenians). I’m speechless, really, in the face of this converging rhetoric.

There’s talk of reviving the "spirit of the National Forces" these days, referring to the militia that was active in the founding of the republic. It casts an ominous shadow onto our future. I get the sense that everything is geared toward putting the centennial of the Genocide safely behind us.

And speaking of Van province and what happened there, I’d like to talk about the Van connection of Sevan Nishanian, the esteemed Armenian intellectual whose crime was to take an abandoned Hellenic village by the name of Çirkince (which can be translated as Ugly Place) and transform it with his self-taught architectural genius into Şirince (Cute Place) as it is now known. Sevan remains in prison today, we don’t know for how long, but his convictions approved by the higher courts now total 17 years. He and I traveled to Van in the winter of 2011 to start a project that he had been dreaming of: to bring back to life an ancient Armenian village in historic Armenia. He was going to rebuild the village using traditional Armenian architecture and he would reconstitute village life as it was 100 years ago. He had acquired the experience, not to mention the courage, that led him to this through all that he had accomplished in Şirince.

The location he had chosen for his dream was an old Armenian village (original name Kantsag), whose precise location was the small settlement of Mezır (38 25’ 11’’ N, 42 53’ 28’’ E) administratively connected to the village of Altınsaç (Kanzak) in the district of Gevaş in Van. We met with officials, members of the party. As Sevan put it: "We toured the village site. We went through the endless preludes of back and forth with the agha, the village chief." It seems everyone "approved" the idea, but we weren’t getting anywhere. The project’s mission was stated as follows:

For the Armenians: This would be a path to restoring their emotional connection to the homeland, allow the younger generations to get to know their ancestral origins, soften the entrenched prejudices about Turkey and Turks, and become a point of interest, a home away from home, for those who visited as tourists.

For the local population: This would give them the opportunity to get to know and communicate with Armenians, who had been known as the "enemy" for years. The conferences, workshops, concerts, plays and the like would enliven the cultural scene. Further, the extremely impoverished region might see significant economic benefits.

And for the Republic of Turkey: This would be an "elegant" way to come face to face with the Armenian question without actually losing face. A people that had been driven out would hear the message that "This is your homeland and you are welcome here." They would be symbolically given land, a home away from home. The whole world would see this as a major component of a "peace gesture," expected of Turkey for so long.

- What do you think, how will it be possible to reach to the rapprochement of the Armenian and the Turkish societies and to overcome the problem?

- First of all, it must be understood that modern Turkey was built on economic, political, military and other gains acquired (that is, stolen) during the Armenian Genocide. It must further be understood that the neighboring country of Armenia continues to suffer from a loss of its territory, status and strength, and that the resulting asymmetry in the relationship between Armenians and Turks has turned into a hegemonic relationship.

This relationship is abnormal and has become fixed in place through the Genocide. Turkey and the world have not made any effort to correct this situation in the intervening century.

Second, it must be understood that the culprits of this situation are not Armenians. The culprits are the warring parties of WWI, along with Turkey and its Muslim peoples. The injustice remains in place.

- It is obvious that the efforts directed to the process of denial of the Armenian Genocide and the steps done against its international recognition require quite a lot of material resources from Turkey and most probably will continue to require till Turkey has not recognized the Genocide. In your opinion, how can this problem be overcome? What can make Turkey at last recognize the Armenian Genocide?