THE NEWYORK TİMES
News Analysis
Inside the Turkish Psyche: Traumatic Issues Trouble a Nation’s Sense of Its Identity
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By Sabrina Tavernise and Sebnem Arsu
Oct. 12, 2007
BAGHDAD, Oct. 11 To an outsider, the Turkish position on the issue of the Armenian genocide might seem confusing. If most of the rest of world argues that the Ottoman government tried to exterminate its Armenian population, why does Turkey disagree?
The answer is hidden deep inside the Turkish psyche, and to a large extent, printed on the pages of Turkish history books.
But with the changes to promote democracy in Turkey in recent years, opinions are slowly changing.
Turkey began as a nation just 84 years ago, assembled from the remains of the Ottoman Empire. Western powers were poised to divide it. The Treaty of Sèvres spelled that out in 1920. It was never ratified, but the intent remains deeply embedded on the minds of Turks, many of whom fear a repeat of that trauma.
To protect against encroaching powers, and to accomplish the Herculean task of forging a new state, Turkey’s founders, led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, set ethnic and religious textures aside to create a new identity the Turkish citizen.
The identity was needed to become something new but eclipsed the region’s cultural richness.
“In many ways, Turkey today is comprised of the remnants of the Ottomans,” said Ali Bayramoglu, a writer in Istanbul. “It hasn’t become a real society yet. It is not at peace with the diversity it has inherited from the Ottoman era.”
“The identity of a Turk was very much an engineered one in order to form a unified nation,” he added.
That identity was built on a painful foundation. Beyond the Armenian genocide, in which 1.5 million Armenians in eastern Turkey were killed, there were mass deportations of Greeks and executions of Islamic leaders and Kurdish nationalists.
“The Turkish state and society both have traumatic pasts, and it’s not easy to face them,” said Ferhat Kentel, a sociologist at Bilgi University in Istanbul.
Mr. Kentel compared Turkey’s beginnings to a tenant who realizes that the house he has just rented is not new, but instead “has all kinds of rubbish and dirt underneath.”
“Would you shout it out loud at the risk of being shamed by your neighbors,” he asked “or try to hide it and deal with it as you keep living in your only home?”
The highly centralized Turkish state has chosen the latter. To do anything else would be to invite divisions and embolden independence-minded minorities, the thinking went. Textbooks talk little about the events that began in 1915, and they emphasize defensive action taken against Armenian rebels sympathetic to Russia, Turkey’s enemy at that time.
“The word ‘genocide,’ as cold as it is, causes a deep reaction in the Turkish society,” Mr. Kentel said. “Having been taught about its glorious and spotless past by the state rhetoric for decades, people feel that they could not have possibly done such a terrible thing.”
Fethiye Cetin, a lawyer and the author of a book about her family’s history, said it was not until she was 25 that she learned that her grandmother was an Armenian adopted by a Muslim family after being separated from her parents in 1915.
“We grew up, knowing nothing about our past,” said Ms. Cetin, who now helps represent the family of Hrant Dink, a Turkish newspaper editor of Armenian descent who was shot dead in January, at the trial of the teenager and suspected accomplices accused of the killing.
“It was not talked about in the family environment,” Ms. Cetin said. “It was not taught at schools and one day came when we suddenly faced facts telling that there has been an Armenian genocide on this land.”
But while the Turkish state has kept this history closed, a growing number of intellectuals and writers are working hard to open it. Changes carried out by the Turkish government to enter the European Union have also helped open debate in society.
A further step was taken by the current government this year when it called for a joint international commission to review the events, including opening up long-closed state archives.
Mr. Kentel participated in a conference this year on the subject that caused much tension and debate but brought the topic into the public realm. The event drew a few noisy protesters but the broader reaction was muted.
In a sign of just how far the Turkish state still has to go, in Istanbul on Thursday, a court convicted Mr. Dink’s son, now the editor of the newspaper Agos, and the paper’s publisher on charges of insulting Turkish identity for reprinting Hrant Dink’s comments about the genocide. Their sentences were suspended.
Measures like the genocide bill in the United States Congress serve only to complicate the work of those trying to open society, Ms. Cetin and Mr. Ke
Историкът проф. д-р Стоян Динков каза: „Защо да се разделим с турците? Защо трябва да се разпадаме? Всички находки в нашата история показват, че и ние сме от турски произход.” използва фразите. „ОСМАНСКАТА СПАЗИ БЪЛГАРИТЕ ОТ ИЗНИЩЕНИЕ” „Османците спасиха българите от изчезване със своите административни и социални практики“, каза проф. д-р Динков дава урок по история на онези, които напоследък са се опитвали да насилствено насилват български български граждани от турски произход. Професорът по история, който твърди, че коренните българи са от турски произход, разкрива с документи, че някои от българските царе са от турски произход и езикът, който са използвали е турски. Твърдейки, че турците и българите произхождат от един род, проф. д-р Динков заявява, че турско-българските отношения трябва да се преструктурират от гледна точка на искреност. Според Динков отражението на това върху Европейския съюз също ще бъде положително и в същото време ще осигури по-силно участие в ЕС. „БЪЛГАРСКИТЕ...
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