APPENDIX 20
Memorandum from Christopher Walker
TURKEY VIS-A-VIS SOME ARMENIAN ISSUES
My name is Christopher J Walker. I am the author
of two books on the history of Armenia, as well as co-author of
the report for the Minority Rights Group on Armenians.
The issue which strikes me most strongly, in
considering the possibility of the accession to the EU of Turkey,
is the need that Turkey's rulers appear to feel for enforcing
one view on Armenian matters, particularly on the Armenian Genocide
of 1915, and their consequent refusal to allow an informed discussion
on Armenian topics. A number of ordinary people in Turkey do dissent
from the official viewpoints, but at some risk. Not many years
ago a publisher was jailed for publishing a book which claimed
correctly that there had been an Armenian state in Cilicia (south-east
Turkey today) 800 years ago. Today Turkey spends millions of dollars
on denying, in Turkey and in the United States, that the Ottoman
Turkish authorities in 1915 executed a genocide on the Armenian
people in Anatolia, even though all foreign eye-witnesses at that
time concur in agreeing that genocidal acts everywhere took place.
What is particularly disturbing today is the
use of scholarship by Turkey as an extension of foreign policy.
It is no exaggeration to say that in this regard Turkey today
resembles the old Soviet Union. There, if you declared that the
Polish officers in Katyn Forest had been killed by Soviets rather
than by Nazis, you ran a risk. Intellect was not free. The same
occurs in Turkey today as regards the Armenians, Armenian history,
and particularly the Armenian Genocide of 1915. The standards
that Turkey observes concerning intellectual freedom and the impartial
search for truth are very far from those expected from a European
state. Turkey is more controlling of its own history today than
a number of third-world dictatorships, and the fact that some
European professors, lecturers and others are inclined to support
the Turkish government viewpoint does not alter this fact.
Turkey in general appears to harbour a grudge
that Armenia exists at all. The blockade that it has imposed on
Armenia since the early 1990s is reminiscent of the worst acts
of the early 1920s, and is motivated by little more than sheer
spite. At the same time Turkish government representatives have
been known to complain that Armenia is blockading the Nakhichevan
province of Azerbaijan, even though the border with that district
is open to both Iran and Turkey. (See a map). The limited capacity
that Turkey has in dealing with minorities is shown in Turkey's
treatment of its own Armenian community—who of course heartily
say that they have full civil and religious rights, until you
actually spend some time with them, and discover, inter alia,
that building permits for their community buildings are still
severely restricted by racist laws of 1936.
If Turkey were to exhibit a true spirit of democracy
and not appear, in the realm of the intellect, as a relic of dictatorship,
there would be a greater show of support for her accession to
the EU. As it is, Turkey's poor standards of directed knowledge,
and its threats to those who dissent, are in opposition to the
spirit of free enquiry which is the hallmark of the European tradition.
Christopher Walker
February 2002
|
