Genocide: - DIIS

The Turkish Media Debate on the Armenian Massacre
one particular understanding of what history actually is: they have what
might be called a traditional empiricist view”. 53
It could be argued that proponents of the “we are the real victims” wing
are relativists. Let us look closer at what Cölasan writes: “Our ‘historians’
recognition of the so-called Armenian massacre will be used against us.
They will say, ‘Look, even your own historians concede that ‘genocide’ has
taken place… I wonder if there is anybody in Armenia or among the Armenian
lobby in the USA, who says, ‘Turks have not murdered us, a genocide
has not taken place’”. As can be seen the “We are the real victims”wing
operates with a concept of “national” truth, while recognisers of the
massacre operate with a supranational and empiricist one. If one once and
for all rejects that there can be certain knowledge about what happened to
the Armenians in 1915, one is at worst led to deny the massacre or at best
led to avoid taking any position. If a social scientist denies in the name
of relativism scientifi c historical methods such as control and comparison
of sources, and denies the necessity of putting one’s value judgements in
parenthesis, he or she loses a basis for criticizing nationalist propagandists
who distort the historical material and who interpret sources and documents
as they fi t into their nationalist discourse.
This view can be corroborated by looking at the use of the notion of “treason”
in this context. A typical accusation against “genocide recognisers”
amongst Turkish scholars is that they are “traitors” (hain) and “traitors to
the fatherland” (vatan haini). Commentators in Hürriyet like Cölasan and
Karakullukcu use this expression frequently. Cölasan wrote for example,
referring to Akcam and Berktay, “I do not think there is another country
which produces as many traitors as Turkey. We are a country full of traitors.
Treachery in Turkey is everywhere”. 54 Another commentator, Emin
Pazarci from Aksam, also attacked genocide recognisers as “traitors”. 55
53 Eaglestone (2001), p. 21. Eaglestone‘s unconvincing critique of Lipstadt and Evans is built
on a problematic and not well-argued difference between “objective“ and “reasonable“
History.
54 Emin Cölasan (2000a); Emin Cölasan (2000b), “Bizim enteller üzüldü“, Hürriyet, October
21.
55 Emin Pazarci (2000), “Icimizdeki ihanet“, Aksam, October 22.
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