Armenian Genocide denial built on Turkey’s lost sense of reality: scholarFebruary 12, 2016 - 11:40 AMT PanARMENIAN.Net - Turkish historian Ümit Kurt gave a lecture at Fresno State’s Alice Peters Auditorium that probed why Turkey still denies the Armenian Genocide, the Fresno Bee reports. The free lecture was organized by the Armenian Studies Program. This was the third lecture hosted by the program during the spring 2016 semester. Kurt recalls how he first heard in his early 20s of the Armenian historical presence in his country – a presence the Turkish government has spent decades trying to erase. Some societies are capable of openly discussing their history, Kurt said. Others struggle “because their past and present is intertwined in a way that causes them to lose their sense of reality,” Kurt said. “In Turkish society, this (lost) sense of reality is most obvious in the case of denying, or not acknowledging, the Armenian Genocide. “Confronting the past is a societal problem, rather than an individual one,” Kurt said. During 1915, the Ottoman Turkish army committed massacres of Armenians, Kurt said, and deported many under harsh circumstances that constituted an intentional effort to rid the country of Armenians. After the events of World War I, the modern Turkish republic wanted to create a new national identity, Kurt said. In the creation of that new identity, government leaders sought to forget the past and construct a new past, in which “we Turks did not murder Armenians – Armenians murdered us,” Kurt said. “Because Turkey founded its existence on the absence of “the other,” every conversation on its existence inspires fear and anxiety,” Kurt said. “The chief difficulty in speaking on the Armenian issue in Turkey lies in this existence-absence dilemma.” Kurt added that the government of Turkey is also afraid of the reparations and restitution they would have to pay if they accepted that the Turkey’s actions in 1915 constituted genocide. In response to an audience question, Kurt said it was unlikely the government of Turkey would ever admit to the genocide. “Of course, I hope I’m wrong,” he said. Kurt is a doctoral candidate at Clark University in Massachusetts and was a Kazan Research Scholar at Fresno State during the fall 2015 semester. The Armenian Genocide The Armenian Genocide (1915-23) was the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was characterized by massacres and deportations, involving forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of deaths reaching 1.5 million. Top stories The EU does not intend to conduct military exercises with Armenia, Lead Spokesperson for EU Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Peter Stano says. Hikmet Hajiyev has said that there is no place for USAID operation in Azerbaijan any longer. A telephone conversation between Putin and Pashinyan before the CSTO summit is not planned, Peskov says. London’s Armenian community has been left feeling “under attack” after the city’s Genocide monument was vandalised. Partner news | Armenia to participate in key EU meeting for the first time ever National Assembly speaker Alen Simonyan has said that Armenia will for the first time participate in the Conference. Russia clarifying reports on Baku’s alleged arms supply to Ukraine Russia says is carefully working to verify reports about alleged arms supplies from Azerbaijan to Ukraine CSTO: Armenia has not participated in secretariat’s work recently Recently Armenia has not participated in the work of the secretariat of the CSTO, Imangali Tasmagambetov said. Meeting with U.S., EU not against third parties, says Armenia The meeting scheduled for April 5 is dedicated to strengthening of the Armenia-EU-US cooperation, Yerevan added. |