ALLEGED GENOCIDE CLAIMS - 4

 

Focus of London Seminar http://www.gomidas.org/forum/af4kurds.htm

Sarafian, Fernandes Keynote Speakers

Princeton, N.J. (26 July 1999)—At an important seminar in London, scholars Ara Sarafian (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) and Desmond Fernandes (De Montford University, Bedford) presented papers on the impact of Turkish nationalism on Kurds and Armenians over the past 80 years. The panelists drew attention to the ideological continuity between late Ottoman and modern Turkish history. One manifestation of this continuity was the policy of turkification pursued both in the Ottoman period and later in modern Turkey.

The seminar was sponsored by the Peace in Kurdistan Campaign, United Kurdish Committee--UK, and the British Committee for the Recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

The Armenian Genocide

The first speaker, Ara Sarafian, argued that for Ottoman Armenians "turkification" meant physical annihilation. Over two million Ottoman Armenians were slated for destruction in 1915. The Turkish entry into World War I facilitated this process, as no outside powers could intervene on behalf of the victims. Over 2,000 towns and villages were emptied of their Armenian inhabitants who were subsequently destroyed. First the young men and community leaders, then the women, children, and elderly were murdered. Some were killed at the outset of "deportations"; others were killed from disease and malnutrition in concentration camps in the deserts of Zor in Syria; survivors of these camps were murdered outright at the end of 1916. There were no Armenians left to speak of in what became modern Turkey in 1923.

Sarafian pointed out that the Greeks of the empire was also slated for extermination during this period, but their destruction was averted probably because of the possibility that the (neutral) Greek state next door would declare war on the Ottoman Empire. The destruction of the Ottoman Greeks was implemented after 1918, when Greece had entered World War I. The destruction of Greeks started with the genocide against the Pontic Greeks on the Black Sea, then the murder and forced exodus of the remaining Greeks in Asia Minor. Well over two million Greeks were "ethnically cleansed" from their ancestral homelands between 1918 and 1923. The city of Smyrna was torched to force the exodus of its large Greek population. The common denominator in these Armenian, Greek, and (later) Kurdish cases was the intention to create an exclusively "Turkish" state with no minority populations.

The Kurdish Genocide

Desmond Fernandes, who has worked on the Kurdish Genocide extensively, continued the seminar with a powerful discussion of the persecution of Kurds in modern Turkey. Fernandes pointed out that the Turkish government adopted a much more sustained genocidal program against Kurds, aimed at the assimilation of this community as ethnic Turks. Often the engineers of the destruction of Kurds were the same people who destroyed Armenians a few years earlier. Fernandes outlined the Turkish genocidal policy under the following categories:

(1) forced assimilation program—banning of the Kurdish language in Turkey, denying the existence of Kurdish history, the forced resettlement of Kurds in non-Kurdish areas of Turkey for assimilation, the indoctrination of Kurds through the Turkish education system, radio and television channels;

(2) banning of any legitimate opposition to the Turkish government’s programs—e.g., Kurdish cultural organisations, political parties, media outlets, etc.; and

(3) the violent repression of any Kurdish resistance. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds have been murdered by Turkish state authorities over the past eighty years—the Sheykh Said and the Ararat uprisings in the 1920s, the bloody suppression of the Dersim in the 1930s, as well as the PKK campaign in recent years. The Turkish state has imprisoned Kurdish members of the Turkish parliament, various human rights activists, as well as many academics advocating Kurdish rights such as the Turkish sociologist Ismail Besikçi. The Turkish government has also assassinated scores of journalists and intellectuals over the years.

[For a detailed analysis by Desmond Fernandes--including a thought-provoking discussion of the definition of genocide--see "The Kurdish Genocide in Turkey, 1924–1998," Armenian Forum 1, no. 4 (Winter 1998–99), pp. 57–107.]

Western Complicity

Both speakers stressed the complicity of Western countries in the genocidal policies aimed at erasing the Kurdish identity in Turkey. Western arms and know-how have been instrumental in military campaigns, as has been the silence of Western governments in the face of atrocities. In some cases, Western military personnel have been known to have participated in killings. Turkish military and other personnel have also been trained in the United States, including in methods of torture and assassination.

Seminar Discussion

Several distinguished guests comment on the two papers. They included Dr. Kamal Miraweli (Kurdistan National Congress; National Council of Peace in Kurdistan; United Kurdish Committee-UK) , Gareth Peirce (a British lawyer who has defended Armenian and Kurdish prisoners in British courts), and Mizgin Sen (European spokesperson of the Kurdish liberation front, ERNK).

British Suppression of Kurds: Practical Advice

Gareth Peirce pointed out that the suppression of Kurds has not been limited to Turkey and the Middle East. The British and Turkish governments, under the rubric of "suppression of terrorism," have managed to criminalise the Kurdish community of Great Britain. Without engaging the legitimacy of a Kurdish struggle for national rights, the British police have deliberately worked to cast doubt on every Kurd in the United Kingdom as terrorist suspects. Supporters of Kurds have been pressured to desist in their aid to Kurdish refugees by being stigmatised as "terrorist supporters." Many organisations have been frightened into inaction, which has served the purposes of the British police. Kurds in the United Kingdom have thus been burdened with such external pressures from British authorities—in addition to their concerns for their kith and kin in the Middle East.

The recent closure of MED-TV, the independent Kurdish satellite television channel based in London--a voice to millions of Kurds throughout the world--is one case in point. This closure was implemented by British authorities reacting to pressure from the Turkish government, as well as other inducements, such as lucrative business contracts for British companies in Turkey.

Despite the political agenda of the British police in the suppression of Kurdish organisations, however, Peirce stressed that most Britons did not know the facts surrounding the Kurdish case and would be outraged if they did. In one legal case in the 1980s, when two Armenians were caught while planning a grenade attack on the Turkish Embassy in London, the two Armenians made their case to a British jury and were acquitted. Peirce stressed that at the political level there exists a great potential for support that can be tapped in favour of Kurds and Armenians in the United Kingdom--despite official misinformation and smear campaigns by opponents.

Kurds and Armenians

Several Kurdish discussants stressed the importance of pushing for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide on par with the Kurdish issue. Even if the Armenian Genocide has effectively run its course—as Sarafian argued at one point—there was a moral case that has to be made, and Kurds should be the first to do so. Furthermore, politically, the Armenian and Kurdish cases strengthen each other against the Turkish state. Indeed, Dr. Miraweli pointed out that the Kurdistan Parliament in Exile has made a point of including Armenians (and Assyrians) in its ranks, and has recognised the rights of these communities as an integral part of a future Kurdish state.

Several individuals commented that Kurds today are well aware that some Kurds participated in the genocide of Armenians in 1915. Even today the Turkish government has co-opted certain Kurds in its bloody campaigns against other Kurds. The use of Kurdish "village guards" against the PKK is one example. However, the legacy of Kurdish participation in the Armenian Genocide should not be allowed to become a rift between these two peoples. Otherwise they would be playing into the hands of their common executioners--Turkish nationalists and the state they created in 1923.

At a practical level, it was also pointed out that Kurds and Armenians face the same propaganda campaign from the Turkish state. Turkey today denies its crimes against both Armenians and Kurds. This denial is an essential element in the management of Turkey’s image abroad, and this image is essential to facilitate the flow of western aid to Turkish military and propaganda agencies. Without this soft image, Turkey would be hard pressed to receive these resources. Consequently, a common strategy to expose Turkey’s human rights abuses and genocidal record to a Western public could go a long way in undermining the Turkish government's capacity for repression. If such aid dries up, then Turkish authorities would have to allow more democratic solutions to their problems.

One Kurdish participant, obviously moved by the seminar, related how her life reflected some of the key issues discussed. Her immediate family was split and "resettled" in different parts of Turkey by Ankara. She grew up knowing where her ancestral home was, but never visited it until later in life. She never learned her native language. And she remembered her Armenian grandmother and the stories she had to tell. The latest stage in the Kurdish struggle awakened her to her identity and now, like millions of other Kurds, she is no longer a soft target for assimilation by the Turkish state. Indeed, she is now a fighter for Kurdish rights. The Kurdish people have awakened and the struggle for their national rights, as well as the rights of their neighbours, continues.

This seminar was the first of its kind in London, and the organisers agreed to hold similar seminars in the future.

Nora Vosbigian