Is Turkey about to get its second Nobel Prize winner? There was a very earnest recommendation made at a formal evening I attended in London this week hosted at the headquarters of Amnesty International UK but sponsored by many of the country’s other human rights organizations, including Index on Censorship, Open Democracy and English Pen. “A Turkish patriot” is how one speaker described the hoped for recipient. “A Martin Luther King,” said another. “A symbol that there is a way out of the current impasse,” said a third. The award would have to be made posthumously since Hrant Dink is dead.
The gathering I attended was a tribute to the murdered journalist at the end of what is, by Armenian custom, a period of mourning. That same custom holds that the soul of the deceased lingers for 40 days on earth and that it is incumbent on friends and family to wish it Godspeed as it finally departs. Of course Hrant Dink was a determined iconoclast, and I have a feeling that his spirit will hover far longer than the statutory 40 days.
Interesting about Wednesday night’s tribute was not just how many people managed to brave a blustery wet London night to attend (there were similar events in Istanbul and cities throughout the world) but the spirit in which it was conducted. I had been warned by a colleague that there was a feud going on over who “owned” Hrant Dink’s memory -- the assumption being that there would be an effort to appropriate the grief and outrage over his death to push for different political agenda including that of genocide recognition. However, there was no unseemly squabbling over his memory. Ronald Suny, an extraordinarily well-respected American political scientist of Armenian ancestry, made a point of stressing how Hrant’s greatest ambition was to see Turkey as a modern, fully democratic country and how this had often brought him into conflict with those in the diaspora motivated by the need if not for revenge then at least satisfaction.
The mood of the evening was that if Hrant Dink’s life symbolized anything, it was that there had to be a reconciliation between Turk and Armenian other than through silence and between Turkey and Armenia.
This is how I interpreted, at any rate, the tens of thousands who marched in his funeral cortege saying that “we are Armenians,” “we are all Hrants.” This is not everyone’s stated view. I read recently of an accusation (Feb. 26) by the head of the Turkish Historical Society, Yusuf Halaçoğlu that large segments of the crowds were organized subversives. They would not succeed in their aims, he said, because the march had the reverse effect of what they intended. Public opinion has hardened against them and “it is impossible to make anyone accept the genocide.”
It is odd in the extreme that a gathering organized by civil libertarians in London avoided turning Hrant Dink’s death into a parody of the genocide issue where the head of an august body like the Turkish Historical Society failed. I am shocked that a man of Professor Halaçoğlu’s education could be so insensitive. No doubt in the unlikelihood of Hrant Dink being given a Nobel Peace Prize, this too would be interpreted as an attempt by Scandinavian subversives to divide Turkey.
My own reading of these remarks, of those of some editors-in-chief of newspapers, of some hard-line nationalist politicians and even ministers, is that they are afraid. Just as others fear a wave of ultranationalism in Turkey, others fear that some people in society have slipped under the ropes used to corral them in. They fear they might lose the power of control.
I don’t want to exaggerate. What happened in 1915 is still a highly emotive issue in Turkey. But just for a moment, imagine a world in which Turkey, upon being told that the US Congress (or the Icelandic Althingi or the Japanese Diet), was thinking about recognizing a genocide did not 1) spend millions on expensive lobbyists; 2) boycott McDonald’s except on grounds other than health; 3) otherwise threaten to hold its breath until turning blue. Instead as a nation Turkey would shrug its shoulders, raise its eyebrows in exasperated fashion and say ,”Oh yes, once upon a time we used to think it was important to have an official history, to tell people what to think, but that was before we decided it was much less trouble to let them do so for themselves.”
The gathering I attended was a tribute to the murdered journalist at the end of what is, by Armenian custom, a period of mourning. That same custom holds that the soul of the deceased lingers for 40 days on earth and that it is incumbent on friends and family to wish it Godspeed as it finally departs. Of course Hrant Dink was a determined iconoclast, and I have a feeling that his spirit will hover far longer than the statutory 40 days.
Interesting about Wednesday night’s tribute was not just how many people managed to brave a blustery wet London night to attend (there were similar events in Istanbul and cities throughout the world) but the spirit in which it was conducted. I had been warned by a colleague that there was a feud going on over who “owned” Hrant Dink’s memory -- the assumption being that there would be an effort to appropriate the grief and outrage over his death to push for different political agenda including that of genocide recognition. However, there was no unseemly squabbling over his memory. Ronald Suny, an extraordinarily well-respected American political scientist of Armenian ancestry, made a point of stressing how Hrant’s greatest ambition was to see Turkey as a modern, fully democratic country and how this had often brought him into conflict with those in the diaspora motivated by the need if not for revenge then at least satisfaction.
The mood of the evening was that if Hrant Dink’s life symbolized anything, it was that there had to be a reconciliation between Turk and Armenian other than through silence and between Turkey and Armenia.
This is how I interpreted, at any rate, the tens of thousands who marched in his funeral cortege saying that “we are Armenians,” “we are all Hrants.” This is not everyone’s stated view. I read recently of an accusation (Feb. 26) by the head of the Turkish Historical Society, Yusuf Halaçoğlu that large segments of the crowds were organized subversives. They would not succeed in their aims, he said, because the march had the reverse effect of what they intended. Public opinion has hardened against them and “it is impossible to make anyone accept the genocide.”
It is odd in the extreme that a gathering organized by civil libertarians in London avoided turning Hrant Dink’s death into a parody of the genocide issue where the head of an august body like the Turkish Historical Society failed. I am shocked that a man of Professor Halaçoğlu’s education could be so insensitive. No doubt in the unlikelihood of Hrant Dink being given a Nobel Peace Prize, this too would be interpreted as an attempt by Scandinavian subversives to divide Turkey.
My own reading of these remarks, of those of some editors-in-chief of newspapers, of some hard-line nationalist politicians and even ministers, is that they are afraid. Just as others fear a wave of ultranationalism in Turkey, others fear that some people in society have slipped under the ropes used to corral them in. They fear they might lose the power of control.
I don’t want to exaggerate. What happened in 1915 is still a highly emotive issue in Turkey. But just for a moment, imagine a world in which Turkey, upon being told that the US Congress (or the Icelandic Althingi or the Japanese Diet), was thinking about recognizing a genocide did not 1) spend millions on expensive lobbyists; 2) boycott McDonald’s except on grounds other than health; 3) otherwise threaten to hold its breath until turning blue. Instead as a nation Turkey would shrug its shoulders, raise its eyebrows in exasperated fashion and say ,”Oh yes, once upon a time we used to think it was important to have an official history, to tell people what to think, but that was before we decided it was much less trouble to let them do so for themselves.”
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