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ABSTRACT
Kasbarian and Öktem explore the extent to which ‘political friendships’ between Armenians, Turks and Kurds—members of communities antagonized by the traumatic experience of genocide—can subvert hegemonic power arrangements of denial and nationalist mobilization. Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews with a group of Armenians and Turks in London, their paper explores how the members of this group experienced a transformation of their subject positions by facing each other's stories, gradually overcoming insecurities and fears of the Other. This dynamic process precipitated a shift of position, individually and collectively, enabling the formation of a community that acted beyond the confines of the reigning logics of nationalist projects. They argue that, in the relatively level playing field of the transnational, political and other friendships can develop to the point of becoming ‘moral communities’ that challenge established status quos and unequal power relations. Friendship and interpersonal relations that transgress these boundaries undermine reigning discourses and are, ultimately, political acts. However, these ‘low’ politics interactions still face the reality of ‘high’ politics, structured by the actions of an overbearing and semi-democratic Turkish state, the political expedience of third countries and a factious Armenian diaspora.
We would like to thank our colleagues and friends who have supported us in this project, especially Susan Pattie and Theo van Lint, as well as all members of the Project of Armenian and Turkish Studies (PATS). We are also grateful to the Hrant Dink Foundation, Sabancı University, Anadolu Kültür and the convenors of the Hrant Dink Memorial Workshop, ‘Coming to terms with war, genocide, and political violence’, 31 May–2 June 2013, where we presented a draft of this paper, as well as two anonymous reviewers of this journal.
We would like to thank our colleagues and friends who have supported us in this project, especially Susan Pattie and Theo van Lint, as well as all members of the Project of Armenian and Turkish Studies (PATS). We are also grateful to the Hrant Dink Foundation, Sabancı University, Anadolu Kültür and the convenors of the Hrant Dink Memorial Workshop, ‘Coming to terms with war, genocide, and political violence’, 31 May–2 June 2013, where we presented a draft of this paper, as well as two anonymous reviewers of this journal.
Notes
1 For a brief introduction to the ASALA as a third-world liberation movement attempting, above all, to change the politics of the Armenian diaspora, see Khachig Tölölyan, ‘Armenian terrorism’, Conflict Quarterly, vol. 8, no. 3, 1988, 101–5; for a detailed discussion, see the following sections of this article.
2 Fahri Aral (ed.), Imparatorluğun Çöküş döneminde Osmanlι Ermenileri: bilimsel sorumluluk ve demokrasi sorunlarι (Istanbul: Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayinlari 2010). For the first commemorative event in Turkey, see Ayse Günaysu, ‘Commemoration of the 93rd anniversary of the genocide of Armenians in Istanbul’, Keghart.com, 24 April 2008, available at www.keghart.com/node/99 (viewed 10 February 2014).
3 For a critical rendering of this campaign, see Ayda Erbal, ‘Mea culpas, negotiations, apologias: revisiting the “Apology” of Turkish intellectuals’, in Birgit Schwelling (ed.), Reconciliation, Civil Society, and the Politics of Memory: Transnational Initiatives in the 20th and 21st Century (Bielefeld: Transcript 2012), 51–94.
4 Hasan Cemal, 1915: Ermeni Soykirimi (Istanbul: Everest Yayinlari 2012). This book was particularly influential not only because of its programmatic title and cover photo that shows Cemal kneeling at Tsitsernakabert, the genocide memorial near Yerevan, but also because of his family history. Hasan Cemal is the grandson of Cemal Paşa, one of the three leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress, which bore ultimate responsibility for the genocide.
5 Cengiz Aktar, quoted in Gayane Abrahamyan, ‘The taboo breaker: Turkish scholar speaks of cracks in the wall of genocide denial’, ArmeniaNow.com, 6 May 2011, available at http://armenianow.com/genocide/29509/turkey_armenian_genocide_cengiz_aktar (viewed 10 February 2014).
6 The diaspora has undergone huge upheaval in recent years, as it reflects on and negotiates its relationship with the Republic of Armenia, independent since 1991, navigating through complex and multilayered political, cultural, economic and ideological differences. See, for example, Razmik Panossian, ‘Between ambivalence and intrusion: politics and identity in Armenia-diaspora relations’, Diaspora, vol. 7, no. 2, 1998, 149–96; Susan Paul Pattie, ‘New homeland for an old diaspora’, in André Levy and Alex Weingrod (eds), Homelands and Diasporas: Holy Lands and Other Places (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 2005), 49–67; Khachig Tölölyan, ‘Elites and institutions in the Armenian transnation’, Diaspora, vol. 9, no. 1, 2000, 107–35; and Sossie Kasbarian, ‘The myth and reality of “return”: diaspora in the “homeland”’ (forthcoming).
7 For a concise overview of denialist theses, see Ugur Ümit Üngör, ‘Lost in commemoration: the Armenian genocide in memory and identity’, in these pages.
8 For the concept of ‘just memory’, see ‘A conversation with Ahmet Davutoğlu’, 14 April 2010, available on the Council of Foreign Relations website at www.cfr.org/turkey/conversation-ahmet-davutoglu/p21916 (viewed 10 February 2014).
9 The most symbolic of these projects was the restoration of the Sourp Hatch Church in Akhtamar in Eastern Turkey. See Aybars Görgülü, ‘The litmus test for Turkey's new foreign policy: the historical rapprochement with Armenia’, in Kerem Öktem, Ayşe Kadιoğlu and Mehmet Karli (eds), Another Empire: A Decade of Turkey's Foreign Policy under the Justice and Development Party (Istanbul: Bilgi University Press 2012), 281–95. For a critical discussion of the domestic reception and international promotion, see Bilgin Ayata, ‘Tolerance as a European norm or an Ottoman practice? An analysis of Turkish public debates on the (re)opening of an Armenian church in the context of Turkey's EU candidacy and neo-Ottoman revival’, KFG Working Paper No. 41, Free University Berlin, 2012, available on the Freie Universitat Berlin website at www.polsoz.fu-berlin.de/en/v/transformeurope/publications/working_paper/wp/wp41/index.html (viewed 10 February 2014).
10 A leading actor in this field is the Economic Research Policy Foundation in Turkey (TEPAV), which has embarked on a sophisticated project to bring together Turkish and Armenian NGOs in order to engage in reconciliation without recognition, through the publication of ‘reconciliation field guides’. See ‘“Reconciliation Field Guide” for Turkish-Armenian partnership prepared by TEPAV …’, 11 January 2012, available on the TEPAV website at www.tepav.org.tr/en/haberler/s/2612 (viewed 10 February 2014).
11 The murder of Private Sevag Balιkçι while on duty on genocide memorial day in 2011 and the subsequent whitewash of his murderer by a local court in March 2013 was the most recent symbolic and well-reported attack against a Turkish Armenian. See also Ekin Karaca, ‘Sevag Balιkçι was shot by mistake, court rules’, Bianet.org, 27 March 2013, available at www.bianet.org/english/minorities/145402-sevag-balikci-was-shot-by-mistake-court-rules (viewed 10 February 2014).
12 For an overview of other low-politics initiatives between Armenians and Turks, particularly the scholarship-based Workshop for Armenian and Turkish Studies (WATS), see Anna Ohanyan, ‘Transfer up or down? Dialogue groups between Turkish and Armenian communities in the United States’, Conflict Resolution Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 4, 2012, 433–60.
13 ‘Konferansta “soykιrιm” bile denildi, dünya hâlâ dönüyor, Türkiye hâlâ yerinde duruyor’, Radikal, 25 September 2005, available on the Radikal website at www.radikal.com.tr/index.php?tarih=25/09/2005 (viewed 11 February 2014). All translations, unless otherwise stated, are by the authors.
14 The Armenian-Kurdish relationship is a complex and hitherto understudied subject that has been largely neglected in the discourse of Armenian diasporic organizations. The Kurds’ role as the principal agents of genocide as well as of the assimilation of survivors is an exciting burgeoning field of study led by contemporary descendants of those who embodied this encounter, Islamicized Armenians. The first conference on Islamized Armenians was organized by the Hrant Dink Foundation, with the cooperation of Bogaziçi University History Department and Malatya HAYDer, in Istanbul, 2–4 November 2013. See Raffi Bedrosyan ‘The Islamized Armenians and us’, Armenian Weekly, 15 November 2013, available on the Armenian Weekly website at www.armenianweekly.com/2013/11/15/the-islamized-armenians-and-us (viewed 11 February 2014).
15 One of the authors present at the conference recorded this statement, while there are other versions of it circulating online.
16 Fethiye Çetin, Anneannem (Istanbul: Metis Yayιnlarι 2004); in English, Fethiye Çetin, My Grandmother: A Memoir, trans. from the Turkish by Maureen Freely (London: Verso Books 2008).
17 For an overview of the scholarly work of WATS, see Gerard Libaridian and Fatma Müge Göcek, ‘A unique experiment on understanding Turkish/Armenian relations’, Journal of the International Institute, vol. 15, no. 1, 2007, 1–6. See also Ronald Grigor Suny, Fatma Müge Göcek and Norman M. Naimark (eds), A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press 2011).
18 One such initiative was a petition against the decision of King's College London to make available its premises for a lecture by the Turkish denialist Türkkaya Ataöv and the British historian Norman Stone only a couple of weeks after Hrant Dink's assassination. See ‘Invitation to “Turkish-Armenian relations & terrorism” London Conference by Ataov, Cekic & Stone’, 18 January 2007, available on the denialist website Armenians 1915 at http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2007/01/1367-invitation-to-turkish-armenian.html (viewed 11 February 2014).
19 For an overview of the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA), see Laura Dugana, Julie Y. Huang, Gary LaFree and Clark McCauley, ‘Sudden desistance from terrorism: the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia and the Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide’, Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict: Pathways toward Terrorism and Genocide, vol. 1, no. 3, 2008, 231–49; and Anat Kurz and Ariel Merari, ASALA: Irrational Terror or Political Tool? (Boulder, CO: Westview 1985). See also Baskin Oran, ‘The reconstruction of Armenian identity in Turkey and the weekly Agos’, Nouvelles D'Arménie, 17 December 2006, available on armennews.com at www.armenews.com/article.php3?id_article=27696 (viewed 11 February 2014).
20 Hürriyet is a centre-right establishment newspaper and was the largest newspaper in the 1980s with a circulation of over 600,000 copies.
21 Unlike in France and much of continental Europe, British political and academic elites tend to be more sympathetic to Turkey and are more likely not to take a stance on the genocide.
22 Halide Edip Adivar, The Turkish Ordeal: Being the Further Memoirs of Halidé Edip (London: John Murray 1928).
23 Sami Zubaida and Richard Tapper (eds), A Taste of Thyme: Culinary Cultures of the Middle East (New York and London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks 2001).
24 We are indebted to Susan Pattie for her thoughts and insights on the role that shared cuisine and hospitality played in the PATS experience.
25 Gisela Welz, ‘Halloumi/hellim: global markets, European Union regulation, and ethnicised cultural property’, Cyprus Review, vol. 25, no. 1, 2013, 37–54; Gisela Welz, ‘Contested origins: food heritage and the European Union's quality label program’, Food, Culture and Society, vol. 16, no. 2, 2013, 265–79.
26 Kim Willsher, ‘France's Muslims hit back at Nicolas Sarkozy's policy on halal meat’, Guardian, 10 March 2012.
27 In the case of the United Kingdom, most often from Lebanon, Cyprus, Syria or Iran.
28 Anny Bakalian, Armenian-Americans: From Being to Feeling Armenian (New Brunswick, NJ and London: Transaction Publishers 1993).
29 Aida Alayarian, Trauma, Torture, and Dissociation: A Psychoanalytic View (London: Karnac Books 2011).
30 Vassos Argyrou, Tradition and Modernity in the Mediterranean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996).
31 One such case concerns the mailing list of the Workshop for Armenian and Turkish Studies (WATS) initiated by members of the Armenian and Turkish Studies departments at the University of Michigan. A groundbreaking first attempt to create a common, if virtual, space for academic debate, the list eventually turned into a highly polarized forum that was repeatedly hijacked by provocateurs. For an overview of the scholarly work of WATS, see Libaridian and Göcek, ‘A unique experiment on understanding Turkish/Armenian relations’.
32 This fear reflects wider concerns in many social movements of being infiltrated by police or other informants, a subject that has received much media attention since the spread of the Occupy movement.
33 A special issue of Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy focused on friendship as a dimension of both national and international politics. It addressed normative questions about the important role friendship could play in politics, with views ranging from crucial to irrelevant (see Preston King and Graham M. Smith, ‘Introduction’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, vol. 10, no. 2, 2007, 117–23). A recent special issue of International Politics sought to consider friendship as a constitutive element of international politics. Of the four conceptual relations of international (and hence state-focused) friendship identified by the editors, our case relates only to the fourth one: ‘friendship as the basis of mutual recognition and the promotion of global society’ (see Andrea Oelsner and Antoine Vion, ‘Special issue: Friendship in international relations’, International Politics, vol. 48, no. 1, 2011, 1–9).
34 Jacques Derrida, The Politics of Friendship, trans. from the French by George Collins (London and New York: Verso 1997).
35 Stijn Van Impe, ‘Kant on friendship’, International Journal of Arts & Sciences, vol. 4, no. 3, 2011, 127–39 (133).
36 Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics (1793–4), LE Vigilantius 27:677, quoted in Kant on friendship.
37 Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics (1793–4), LE Vigilantius 27:677, quoted in Kant on friendship.
38 Nina Witoszek, ‘Friendship and revolution in Poland: the eros and ethos of the Committee for Workers’ Defense (KOR)’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, vol. 10, no. 2, 2007, 215–31.
39 Jacques Derrida, Aporias: Dying—Awaiting (One Another at) the ‘Limits of Truth’, trans. from the French by Thomas Dutoit (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 1993).
40 See, for example, Gabriel Sheffer, Diaspora Politics: At Home Abroad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002); Yossi Shain, Marketing the American Creed Abroad: Diasporas in the US and Their Homelands (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999); and Eva Østergaard-Nielson (ed.), International Migration and Sending Countries: Perceptions, Policies, and Transnational Relations (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2003).
41 Hazel Smith and Paul Stares (eds), Diasporas in Conflict: Peace-Makers or Peace-Wreckers? (Tokyo and New York: United Nations University Press 2007).
42 See, for example, Feargal Cochrane, Bahar Baser and Ashok Swain, ‘Home thoughts from abroad: diasporas and peace-building in Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, vol. 32, no. 8, 2009, 681–704; and Smith and Stares (eds), Diasporas in Conflict.
43 There have sprung up a number of NGOs and initiatives working with Turks and Armenians (in Armenia), along ‘dialogue’ lines, often using culture as the medium. The most prominent include Anadolu Kültür and the Armenia-Turkey Cinema Platform. They are often at least partly supported by third-party sources encouraging this burgeoning movement, such as the Open Society, USAID, Global Dialogue, British Consulate in Yerevan, United Nations Representation in Armenia, Eurasia Partnership Foundation and Chrest Foundation, as well as by German foundations (especially Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and Heinrich Böll Stiftung).
44 Similar initiatives in the United States have floundered or struggled when this was not the foundation of the group. See Ohanyan, ‘Transfer up or down?’.
45 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1958).
46 Gayatri Spivak, ‘Can the subaltern speak?’, in Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (eds), Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory: A Reader (New York: Columbia University Press 1994), 66–111.
47 For an analysis of the impact of the mass grief expressed in Turkey following the murder of Hrant Dink, and its connection to the continuing denial of the genocide, see Gülay Türkmen-Dervisoglu, ‘Coming to terms with a difficult past: the trauma of the assassination of Hrant Dink and its repercussions on Turkish national identity’, Nations and Nationalism, vol. 19, no. 4, 2013, 674–92.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Sossie Kasbarian
Sossie Kasbarian is Lecturer in Middle East Politics at the University of Lancaster. She is co-editor (with Anthony Gorman) of Contextualizing Community: Diasporas of the Middle East (Edinburgh University Press 2014), as well as several articles relating to the Middle East and Diaspora Studies. Email: [email protected].
Kerem Öktem
Kerem Öktem is Research Fellow at the European Studies Centre at the University of Oxford. His research interests include the study of nationalism, political violence and minorities, the politics and international relations of Turkey as well as Muslim networks in the Balkans and Western Europe. He is author of Angry Nation: Turkey since 1989 (Zed Books 2011) and co-editor (with Ayşe Kadıoğlu and Mehmet Karlı) of Another Empire: A Decade of Turkey's Foreign Policy under the Justice and Development Party (Bilgi University Press 2012). Email: [email protected].