7/30/2019 Zaman Turkce

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hat is Turkeys plan for April 24, 2015?Another April 24 has passed, and this year everything went relatively smoothly.Of course, the Turkish government did not like US President Barack Obamas address on the occasion of Armenian

Remembrance Day and reacted with the usual outworn accusation of one-sidedness. The only special feature of this years

commemorations in Turkey was the presence of foreign human rights activists including some representatives of the Armenian

diaspora community. Apart from some ultranationalist grumbling, most Turks seem to have accepted the fact that, for the fourth

consecutive year, ceremonies were organized in Istanbul and elsewhere to mark the start of the operation of destruction of the

Ottoman Armenians on April 24, 1915.

It would be a big mistake, however, to think that things could gradually develop into some state of normalcy along these lines of

bureaucratic denial and societal recognition. That is not going to happen, and the main reason is April 24, 2015.

One does not need to be a fortune teller to know that in the run-up to the centenary of the Great Tragedy, the translation of the

word used in Armenian for the 1915 horrors, there will be a new wave of activities to draw world wide attention to the

deportations and massacres and to put pressure on Turkey to recognize these tragic events as a genocide. Books will be

published, conferences will be organized and parliaments across the world will be urged to come up with resolutions.

How will Turkey react to this campaign? A report last week by Barn Yinan in Hrriyet Daily News suggested that the currentTurkish government does indeed have a plan for 2015. The problem is that it looks like more of the same: An old-style and

unimaginative approach that did not wield any positive results till now. As Yigal Schleifer put it in his blog on EurasiaNet: The

triple-track approach Yinan lays out -- fight Armenian genocide recognition efforts while at the same time pushing Yerevan

towards normalized relations with Turkey and resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh issue -- seems like one that will likely bear little

but bitter fruit.

Or should we take the remarks of Culture and Tourism Minister mer elik seriously when he said last week that Turkey should

try to establish tighter dialogue with the descendants of Armenians who left Turkey in 1915 when they were being massacred en

masse?

What will it be? Will Turkey opt for the familiar combination of diplomatic pressure and blackmail, positioning itself as the eternal

victim of a treacherous anti-Turkish campaign? Or is a more confident Turkey, one that is trying to overcome the Kurdish taboo,able and willing to choose an alternative strategy for handling the Armenian issue? Ten years ago the answer to this question

would have been simple: option number one. Fortunately, nowadays, one cannot exclude the possibility that even some of the

Ankara institutions have come to realize that there are better and more constructive models around to deal with historic traumas.

Unlike ten years ago, there is a lot to build on. Turks with opposing views have started discussing the 1915 events openly, at

least in some media. The book 1915: Genocide by Hasan Cemal is a bestseller, and other publications that contradict the

official Turkish version of history are freely available. The shock of Hrant Dinks murder has forced many to realize that Turkish

society cant continue denying some of the darkest pages in the countrys past.

It is true that we are talking here of a relatively small group of educated middle and upper class Turks. I am convinced, though,

that there is a much bigger group of Turkish citizens that knows deep down that awful things happened, and the time has come

to face these unpleasant truths.

What they do not want, however, is to be forced by the Armenian diaspora or European parliaments to recognize, without further

debate, that what happened then should be labeled as genocide. Turkish society seems to be ready to enter into a long process

of soul searching about 1915 that should be supported by a creative and balanced line of action by the government. The big

question is whether Ankara will reach that conclusion as well before 2015.