ELI5: Why is Turkey so sensitive to every mention of any possibility of their historical wrongdoing towards the Armenians?
And don't EVER mention "genocide"!
Posted Dec 23, 2011, 8:53 AM UTC
2431
Okay lemme give this a shot.
Turkey is a relatively young nation, having severed from its imperial past less than a century ago with a traumatic experience. Its painful process of nation-building and rapid modernization included indoctrinating generations into believing in a mythical history where Turks are the protagonists with a manifest destiny of ruling others who are always out to get them from schemeing europeans to the barbaric arabs. Against these adversaries, the story goes, Kemal Ataturk, ("the Father of the Turks") founded the modern the republic and showed us the path of modernism. Every classroom must hang his picture above the blackboard, every day begins with a pledge of allegiance to Him.
As such, Turks feel personally insulted whenever those meddling europeans (whom they secretly envy) accuse their grandfathers of such non-sense. There was no genocide. And, you know, it was wartime, and things happen. Oh and armenians during the post-WWI chaos were aided by the Russians to steal our lands to the east, so they got what they deserved. And they massacred a lot of innocent muslims too. It was unfortunate but necessary. But it was all about expulsion, not a genocide... That's how most turks react anyway: in contradictory "justifications" and denial.
For Turks, it's not a question of "facts" but a question of Honor.
18
Turkish people prise themselfs on being Turkish. For many Turks just being Turkish is one of their main qualities because there is belief that "Turks are honest", "Turks are fair", "Turks are hospitable" and et.
So when you point out that their ancestors did something horrible, they take it as offence to the Turkishness and this could mean that being turkish may not be such an awesome thing.
Genocide is an offence that Turkish people can't accept being done by the Turks, because, you know Turks are supposed to be very good people and good people don't do genocide. That's why, the general acceptance about that issue is that the mass killings were not intended to be a genocide, but it was because of the conditions at the time. They did not want to kill all the armenians just because they are armenians, they just wanted to move them to another place for the sake of the country but unfortunately many armenians died on the way.
If you blame them for incompetence, there is high possibility that they would accept that and apologize and would tell you how incompetent are the Turks at governance and how they also suffer from that.
9
Btw, offending Turkishness is a punishable crime by constitution. I beleive all this outrage is based the very strong national pride. People just don't want to be lebeled as baddies.
2
Is "accidental genocide" a term accepted by anyone? That just seems a bit of an absurd way to play off such an occurrence.
2
when you do something bad unintentionally, you are not a bad person. it's the same logic here.
Genocide is by defitinion deliberate systematic killing of a group of people. Therefore denying genocide and accepting mass deaths is much lighter offence. Widely accepted theory in Turkey is that both Armenians and Turks killed each other and the state decided to move Armenians to another place, not killing them. Unfortunately many people died on the process.
Turks hate the label, nobody is arguing about potential fines to be paid or so. Just don't accept their ancestors being bad people since Turkishness is big thingç. Even offending Turkishness is punishable by law and is a serious crime. Youtube remained blocked in Turkey for years because of videos offending the founder of the republic and offending the Turkishness.
Edit: in 2005 The law about offending Turkishness changed to insulting Turkish nation. This was to comply with european union conditions, but how people feel about it is still the same.
2
This is the most succinct answer. You must be a Turk. All these "young nation" answers make me laugh because I've never met a Turk who thinks Turkish history is relatively young. The Ottoman Empire anyone?
1
Exactly :) Even modern Turkish Army's foundation date is officially 209 B.C.
look here, this is the army seal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kkbrove_yeni.png
M.Ö. is for Before Christ.
Nobody in Turkey thinks that its a young nation.
0
[deleted]
2
[deleted]
1
So you're saying that Turkey is in its rebellious, headstrong teen years?
2
This is off topic but every time someone talks about turkey I always think of that video of that one guy fighting like five others in a traffic dispute and kicking all their asses.
0
Turkey is not viewed as a young nation by Turkish people. It's viewed as the remains of the Ottoman Empire and many Turks see the Turkish nation date back to much earlier. Even the official date of foundation of the Turkish Army is 209 B.C. . Look here: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=tr&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Ftr.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FT%25C3%25BCrk_Kara_Kuvvetleri
And on the official site of the army, it is claimed to date to 4000 years before: http://www.tsk.tr/eng/1_ABOUT_THE_TAF/1_1_History/History.htm
Turkish people even claim that American Indians are Turkish people that went from Asia to America many many years ago.
2
[deleted]
1
We have our own case for I think, the Turkish exceptionalism. (just like other countries, France raped Africa for years, etc)
1
Guilty conscience
1
Why are Americans so touchy about the genocide of the Native Americans? Or slavery? We all have ugly histories we don't want to be reminded of.
1
Are we? I think we tend to like to wallow in the evilness of our ancestors. Our ancestors were more evil than yours, but now we are all better.
3
Just chalk it up to old school warfare. It's not like they were the only country to wage total war. Some leaders have killed more of their own people than the turks did enemies in their whole career.
1
[deleted]
1
[deleted]
1
It's worth mentioning that Turkish government doesn't deny hundreds of thousands of Armenians perished. The official claim is that this wasn't a systematical massacre, but it was the result of harsh measures taken by the Ottoman government. Since modern day Turkey is regarded as a direct descendant of the Ottoman Empire, this implies that the founders of today's republic would be responsible for the genocide. 1915 is a sensitive year where the transition from Ottoman Empire to modern day Turkey was somehow underway.
As a Turkish, I believe if the events took place much longer ago, such as mid 19th century rather than in 1915, it would be easier for Turks to accept the fact and at least apologize from the Armenians once. But it's a difficult situation: the genocide was certainly not committed by the Turkish Republic but by the Ottoman Empire; yet it is just not possible to say that modern day Turkey has no relationships with the Ottoman Empire either.
1
The 99% of the world people is nationalist, so every mention to a wrong things made by their military, or whatever that makes them feel their country is not as amazing as they believe is hard to manage for a nationalist.
But is also important to separate people's acts from state's acts.
0
General Turkish culture is still very primitive. They think "Turkey big" and "Allah big", and actively oppose anything that hurts this idea. I have Turkish colleagues who were born and raised here (in NL) who think the Armenian genocide never happened and that Turkey can beat Israel in a war.
Basically, the same old dumb-ass nationalism that has lost much of its sway in Western countries because of the two "World" Wars.
-1
It's pretty simple I think, nobody likes being accused of genocide. Especially when it actually happened.
In Germany it's illegal to publicly deny the genocide which happened in Nazi Germany.
Yes, that's what happens when you lose, you have to fake contrition.
For Turkish people it is not important if really happened or not, they just don't like the idea of their ancestors being bad people like those nazi's because being a Turk is a very bir pride for them.
Saying Turks did genocide is like saying to a German person that German automobiles suck and even US cars are better. It is really offencive.
It's o.k to say that Turks killed millions of people as long as it can be rationalized but rationalization of genocide is not easy.
[deleted]
While English is obviously his second language, his answer pretty much sums up how a lot of Turks feel. They are generally nationalistic and prideful people. Especially in regards to Turkish history. I've traveled to Turkey and have Turkish friends and icankillpenguins response is spot on. Seriously, it blew my mind how much pride the average Turk has in his country and his history. The Turks are very, very proud of their history and don't take kindly to the genocide label. Every ancient civilization has engaged in mass slaughter, but the term genocide was reserved for the monsters of history (NAZIs) and now it's being applied to what the Turks did. They are not ok with Turks being "equated" (in their minds) with NAZIs.
...and I guess you're the playground bully.
So why you don't explain like I'm five the reason you think its a bad argument?
probably since your argument can be reduced to "I(we) dont like it!"
and the german car example doesnt apply, since germans have a reason to be pissed, since your claim "german cars suck, us cars are better" is objectively wrong.