Genocide: - DIIS

The Turkish Media Debate on the Armenian Massacre
there are both radical secularists like Emin Cölasan, and radical sharia-advocates
like journalists and writers in the newspaper Akit. Likewise there
are also Islamists or people with roots in the Islamic movement who take
a critical stance on the offi cial Turkish line of denying any wrongdoing on
the Turkish side in the events of 1915. The moderate Islamist newspaper
Zaman has often taken a moderate stance on the Armenian issue and the
Islamist columnist Kürsat Bumin of the daily newspaper Yeni Safak has
been critical of the offi cial line and the secularist nationalists. When investigating
the different views among the Islamists one has to keep in mind
also that those who bear the main responsibility for the genocide, the Party
of Unity and Progress (Ittihat ve Terakki Partisi), was not an Islamist, but a
secularist party. 38 The secularism and nationalism of the Kemalist Turkish
Republic which was founded in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk builds to
a great extent upon the ideology of Unity and Progress. Some leaders of
the party were later incorporated into Atatürk’s Republican People’s Party.
The Armenians were not deported and murdered in the name of Islam, but
in the name of secularist ideologies like nationalism and pan-Turkism. 39
Dadrian writes that the Unity and Progress leaders “reli[ed] on the potential
of Islam to incite the masses against the targeted Christian Armenians
despite the irreligious stance of most of the Ittihadist leaders”. He thinks
that one can discern “a xenophobic nationalism nurtured by atavistic impulses
of Turkism” among the essential features in the conception, design,
and implementation of the massacre. 40
In the framework of this article it is not possible to compare the present
debate on the Armenian issue with former debates, or to assess to what
extent the taboo of the Armenian issue is broken. However, a researcher
on Turkish nationalism, Tanil Bora, who contributes regularly to Medyakronik,
a website which critically analyses the Turkish press wrote about the
changing tone of the debate:
38 Bernard Lewis (1966), The Emergence of Modern Turkey. London; Hugh Poulton (1997), Top
Hat, Grey Wolf and Crescent. Turkish Nationalism and the Turkish Republic. New York.
39 Akcam (1995); Akcam (2000a); Vahakn N. Dadrian (1999), Warrant for Genocide. Key Elements
of Turko-Armenian Confl ict. New Brunswick.
40 Dadrian (1999), p. 1.
239