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Sonntag, den 18. April 2010 um 01:00 Uhr |
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Was ist der Unterschied zwischen der Obama- und der Busch-Regierung? Nichts, so scheint es, wenn man die Geschichte und die Anerkennung historischer Missetaten anschaut. In beiden Fällen ist es dieselbe alte Leier.
Das Weiße Haus scheint an der Ablehnung des Beschlusses 252 festzuhalten, welcher aber vom Gremium des Auswärtigen Amtes in der letzten Woche (4. März) genehmigt wurde; ein ungewöhnlicher Schritt in der langen Geschichte der gescheiterten Beschlüsse in der Anerkennung des Armenischen Völkermordes. Nach Parlamentarischen Anhörungen, Resolutionen in Unter-Ausschüssen, kühnen Wahlkampfversprechen und unter der Hand gegebenen Zusicherungen kommt immer dasselbe heraus: sobald die Türkei die Muskeln spielen lässt und öffentlich droht fühlen sich die Amerikaner in ihren Interessen eingeschüchtert. Kongressabgeordnete kündigen ihren Rücktritt an, nicht, weil sie nicht glauben, dass die Armenier Opfer des Völkermordes waren, sondern weil ein zu großes Interesse am Mittleren Osten besteht, das sonst in Gefahr gerät.
Wie ein altes Lied sagt, ist die Auseinandersetzung mit der Geschichte eher eine moralische Verpflichtung und beruht weniger auf der Einsicht, dass die Auseinandersetzung mit den Fehlern der Vergangenheit im wahren nationalen Interesse einer Region liegt. Zwei Argumente scheinen hier einen ewigen Konflikt zu bilden: Nationale Sicherheit gegen Verantwortungsbewusstsein – oder mit anderen Worten: Realisten gegen moralische Fundamentalisten.
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Dienstag, den 16. März 2010 um 01:00 Uhr |
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There is something I have difficulty understanding. You, who have put an end to ninety-five years of the “there are no Kurds, they’re just Turks who wander around the mountains” lying policies by the state; who have removed the military’s guardianship over politics, the same military that since the beginning of this Republic has decided who lived and who died and that initiated coups at the drop of a hat; how is it that you who have made such important inroads into this democracy insist on continuing the ninety-five years of denialist policies when it comes to the subject of 1915?
All of us believed that when you signed those protocols with Armenia in October 2009, the ninety-five years of lies surrounding 1915 were coming to an end, just as they had on the Kurdish issue. Could it be that when you signed those protocols you believed that you were going to come to a resolution while you continued the ninety-five year old policies of denial? Doesn’t seem possible….Could you have found a way out of the Kurdish problem by continuing to insist that “There are no Kurds, they’re just Turks who wander around mountains”? If you had stayed loyal to the logic of the problem solving methods of the military when it came to the Kurds, whereby they were equated with terrorist organizations, treating the Kurds as “nails” and the military as the “hammer,” would you have found a way out of the impasse?
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Dienstag, den 14. April 2009 um 01:00 Uhr |
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In September 2005, Turkish intellectuals who questioned the Turkish state’s denial policy on the deportation and killings of Armenians during World War I gathered for a conference in Istanbul. Outside, in the streets, demonstrators also gathered in protest against the conference. One of the placards read: “Not Genocide, but Defense of the Fatherland.” Two parallel convictions are at work here, one referring to the past, the other to the present. Both the events of 1915 and the denial policy nine decades later are framed in terms of Turkish national security and self-defense.
In 2009, in a raid against the ultra-nationalist shadowy terror organization Ergenekon, which is composed of mostly army and police officers and bureaucrats, Turkish police confiscated some documents. Among those documents was a file listing the names of five people along with their photos; they were targeted for assassination. My name was among that group. Turkish Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk and the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who was assassinated in January 2007, were two other names. The title of the document was “Traitors to National Security.” All of the people listed were known for having spoken out on the Armenian Genocide and for asking the Turkish government to face this historic reality honestly. One can therefore draw the conclusion that to be outspoken about the genocide is to be considered a threat, by certain groups, to Turkish national security.
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Taner Akçam
