Originally Published in Turkish in Taraf on December 24, 2012 (Translated by Fatima Sakarya)

Torosyan and Cleaning House or Where do I stand in the Torosyan debates?

When the late Turgut Őzal was asked if there was a difference between Turkey and Europe in the culture of violence, he had answered, paraphrasing, “Of course there is! When a car accident occurs in Europe, the drivers step out and exchange IDs and insurance information. With us the drivers step out and start beating up on each other.” The debate over Lieutenant Sarkis Torosyan’s memoir that Ayhan Aktar produced for publication reminds me a bit of this difference. A debate that could have developed on the basis of common sense and reason, especially after daily national newspaper Hȕrriyet’s headline of December 16th, has instead devolved into a “fight between drivers”.

Even if I don’t represent a direct interest in this “car accident”, as a result of a paragraph in an interview that I gave to the newspaper AGOS over my newly published book “Kanunlarin Ruhu”^[1], I’ve been pulled into it. I feel compelled therefore, to express how I view the subject and where I stand in the discourse over it. What I’m going to do here is akin to giving over one’s identity and insurance information in an accident. First, I present the paragraph from AGOS.

“The Torosyan debate is nothing other than an effort by certain intellectuals who claim to be good historians, to pull the covers over this secret [Armenian genocide]. Those who are talking and those who aren’t, are working together to take this tiny door that Ayhan Aktar opened, and slam it in our faces. Despite the fact that Torosyan’s memoir deals directly with Christian soldiers in the Ottoman army and the annihilation of these soldiers and their families have you heard even one single word spoken, one debate over this? Nothing. Have you heard anyone asking what happened to these Christian soldiers? What happened to their families? It’s all about Çanakkale [Gallipoli war] and the ships. Did the ship sink or not sink? Was it on the 18th or the 19th? At this hill or that hill? Where ever you venture in this debate, that’s what you’re left with. It’s downright embarrassing and shameful when you take a look at the debate. In a country where even the intellectuals act like this, it’s no surprise then that the genocide is a secret and land registries are classified for national security reasons….”

I stand behind the views I expressed there. “Embarrassment” and “shame” are accurate descriptions of the condition of my own mindset. There were no personal insults to any particular person in that paragraph. By referring to “those who are talking and those who aren’t”, a criticism was being lobbed at a very widely defined group and the essence of this criticism is directed at the need to cloak the reality of Genocide. This represents my “identity” and my “insurance information” over this “car accident”. This position of mine rests on three important grounds.

1. The Torosyan book was introduced by Hürriyet newspaper with this headline, “Ottoman Army had an Armenian Lieutenant, No Jewish Lieutenants in the Nazi Army”. It stated that the book constituted a counterpoint to all those who claim that “everything that had been done to the Jews had been done to the Armenians” (http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/pazar/21362697.asp). It has to be one of life’s ultimate ironies, that the Torosyan book is being used for the purpose of denying what happened in 1915. But what is really interesting is that none of this seems to have bothered anyone… In fact, it is not true that there were no Jews in the Nazi army (around 150,000 “full”, “half” and “one quarter” Jews, in the racist terminology of that time, served in the Nazi army) and the fact that this was being used – particularly on the point over Torosyan’s memoirs – for the purpose of covering up what happened during 1915 was truly awful.
2. Despite the fact that what happened to Torosyan is directly relevant on the issue of the Christian soldiers in the Ottoman army and their annihilation along with their families, all of the other presentations and debates over the book completely passed over this subject. The most alarming example of this was the “Eskidefterler”^[2] program hosted by Cemil Koçak that aired on the “Ahaber” channel on October 6, 2012. During the entire 2.5 hours of this program, which I liked and viewed with great interest, the Torosyan book was discussed at length but at no time was one particular subject discussed. [The issue of] What had occurred to the Christian soldiers in the Ottoman army; the issue of the annihilation of these soldiers and their families…. In the end, four academicians managed to discuss a book that was directly about the destruction of one million people, without actually touching upon that subject.
3. Later Halil Berktay wrote exactly 13 different articles for TARAF newspaper. As far as I was able to count, in the 13 different articles, he discussed and criticized 26 different points from Ayhan Aktar’s preface and Torosyan’s memoirs; all were related to the battle in Çanakkale. Throughout the 13 articles he wrote in great detail about everything from the dimensions of the cannons, to the ships and the names of the hills but at no point did he mention what happened to the Christian soldiers in the Ottoman army nor did he talk about the annihilation of them and their families.

The views that I expressed in the AGOS newspaper were in the character of a response to the picture described above. Those who got involved in the debates over Torosyan were obviously quite sensitive over the technical information provided on Çanakkale; they were very disturbed over it. Somehow, however, the same level of sensitivity and discomfort wasn’t felt over the Christian soldiers who served in the Ottoman army, nor over their annihilation. In fact, the subject wasn’t even viewed as worth discussing.

The question that we need an answer to is actually quite simple. Why is it that in all of the presentations and debates over the book, did the subject of the annihilation of Christian soldiers in the Ottoman army and their families never come up? There’s a saying in Turkish “Everyone aches over their own troubles”. An Armenian friend told me that this saying is originally, in Armenian “Everyone aches over their own Garabet”. An Armenian woman who had lost her son Garabet had stated these words apparently. True or not, all I can say is that it is obvious that during these discussions we are all “aching over our own Garabet”. I wonder. Is it simply coincidence that the Garabet that everyone feels pain over is really the battle of Çanakkale and that no one seems interested in bringing up any other subjects? I don’t believe it. Couldn’t this be the outward manifestation of the Turkish state of mind? That’s how I see it. Because regardless of how true or exaggerated the incidents that Torosyan described are, they touch upon our Garabet, the sacred battle of Çanakkale. The heightened response seems to grow from this.

In one of his responses to me, Halil Berktay said “The whole world doesn’t revolve around the Armenian matter. There are more important and larger issues at stake, like protecting scholarly integrity and not lending support to lies.” Ever since I started working on the subject of the Armenian genocide, in Turkey I’ve been continually remonstrated with the refrain “There are more important issues than the Armenian matter”. The repeat of this grand reality, which has been thrown at me since 1990 and is now taken up by Halil Berktay, is rather meaningful. What I wonder is why this current sensitivity to “protect scholarly integrity” over the dimensions of cannons and the names of hills in Çanakkale hasn’t extended to the issue of the annihilation of the Christian soldiers who served in the Ottoman army and their families.

Meanwhile, there is a very important door that’s been cracked open by this book and Ayhan Aktar’s Introduction to it. It questions the place and image that Çanakkale plays in the Turkish national identity. The book reminds us that there were Arab units and Armenian soldiers fighting in the battle of Çanakkale. It states that the idea that the battle of Çanakkale was a “Turkish victory” must be questioned. One of the reasons that nationalist circles have attacked the book is because of the way it has shaken this image.
There’s another reason that this attack by these circles has been so strong. The government is trying to organize around Çanakkale as a counterpart to the Armenian genocide, as it faces the framework of a centennial anniversary of the Armenian genocide in 2015. We know for a fact that there are big plans in place around the idea that “If the Armenians have their claims about genocide, we’ve got Çanakkale 1915”. A very large celebration is in store, with Australia’s participation, where hundreds of thousands of attendees are expected. The plan is to memorialize Çanakkale as a “symbol of Turkish pain” and to plant it directly in front of the genocide of 1915. The book with its preface has beckoned some clouds over the horizon on these plans.

When I talk about Ayhan Aktar opening up a little door, this is what I have been referring to. Ultimately, based upon what I know, of course I can direct some criticisms towards the preface that Ayhan Aktar wrote. For example, a careful reader will see that the question of what happened to the Christian soldiers who served in the Ottoman army is never discussed in the 82 pages of its preface. The issue of gathering the Christian soldiers and annihilating them appears nowhere in the preface. Like this, the deportation of the families of soldiers was presented as an irregular implementation by local authorities, which was opposed by the Ministry of War. Additionally, the subject that was the basis of the entire memoir, in my opinion, ended up only being discussed in 10 of the 82 pages. A large portion of the introduction has been dedicated to Çanakkale. In other words, despite the fact that the book is about an Armenian soldier and how his family was annihilated along with other Armenians, the subject did not get the space it deserved in Ayhan Aktar’s introduction.

Still, in my opinion, there’s a very important reason why it gets short shrift. We have very limited knowledge about the issues that I speak of and there are practically speaking, no studies done on the subject. What should be done is not to heap blame on Ayhan Aktar for what he didn’t do, but rather to consider this work, limited as it may be, as an important start and to encourage new research and more discussion on the subject. Instead, what has been done is to take Çanakkale, a phenomenon that occupies a very small part of Torosyan’s memoir, tear it away from the whole and turn it into a kind of “fetish”, making Torosyan an expert in military history on the battles of Çanakkale and thereby rendering him vulnerable to an entirely unjust assault.

Can’t we debate the truth or the mistruths of what Torosyan had to say in particular about Çanakkale? Of course we can. Those involved in the writing of military history, particularly about the battle of Çanakkale, will engage in this debate but this isn’t a subject that draws a tremendous amount of my interest. In the end, whether a source is a memoir or an official Ottoman record, it goes without saying that it should be evaluated critically and should pass through a critical filter.

Since I work primarily in Ottoman documentation, I can say this with complete confidence. The Ottoman archives contain documents around the events of 1915 that are obviously false and based on bogus information. And some of these documents have been relied on quite heavily by some academicians. Based on this, it will take a lot to convince me that the extreme reaction shown by Halil Berktay and Hakan Erdem over the Torosyan memoir stems from “scholarly anxiety”.

If they felt such “scholarly anxiety” over this, they would have had to have written a few things filled with the same anxieties over publications on the events of 1915, especially the dozens of phoney books penned for so-called academic purposes. It becomes patently obvious that there’s something a tad too “extra” in my colleagues’ “scholarly anxiety” towards Torosyan that, if I may posit as a contrast, is lacking for example towards Halaçoğlu. The issue is in finding what this extra, what this difference is. The argument that “We don’t focus on the Armenian matter” isn’t very revealing because neither the works of Yusuf Halaçoğlu, nor those of Torosyan are directly related to the events of 1915. What then is this difference, this bit of extra something?

Could it be the fact that Torosyan has the potential to change the way we talk about Çanakkale, the way it’s described? Yes! It seems to me that Torosyan is going to make it increasingly difficult for us to continue to talk in the way we know how and the way we have memorized about not only Çanakkale, but about the events of 1915. As we continue to talk about Torosyan, we will begin to understand how many of the “truths” that we have never questioned thus far have been nothing more than ‘myths’. For example, let’s put Torosyan aside for a minute. We’re going to learn that there were many Kirkors and Artins fighting with the Ottoman army in Çanakkale. Moreover, when these individuals were fighting on the frontline, we are going to learn that during the same period, their families were being deported and killed. Also, if anyone cares to do a comparative historical analysis, we are going to learn that the Nazi army, which we claim to bear no resemblance to, conducted similar kinds of dramas.

In order for this to happen however, two things must absolutely occur. One is that the archives of the General Chief of Staff must be opened to all researchers and, like the Prime Ministerial Archive in Istanbul, should be made accessible to the general public and secondly, we academicians need to stop behaving like the Turkish drivers I described at the start.

1. “Kanunların Ruhu” published by İletişim Yayınları in Turkey, is a book that has not been published in English yet but the title translates into “Spirit of the Law” and it takes up the subject of the abandoned properties left by Armenians after 1915. ↩
2. Eskidefterler translates as “old notebooks” literally, but can connote “old issues” or “’dusty’ subjects”, i.e. things that have been forgotten. ↩