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The Mythical Interface of Turkish Intellectuals' Orientation toward the Armenian Genocide

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2015

Burcu Gürsel
Burcu Gürsel*
Affiliation:
Department of English Language and Literature, Kırklareli University, Kırklareli, Turkey; e-mail: burcugursel@gmail.com
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Extract

Still prefaced in many commentaries as a taboo, the topic of the genocide in Turkey has ironically become a talking point de rigueur for anyone who is visible in the public sphere and who lays claims to an identity as an intellectual. “Anyone,” then, will momentarily serve as the working definition of the intellectual, for all intents and purposes, in this inquiry into the grammar among Turkish and Armenian intellectuals both within and outside Turkey. The litany of self-proclaimed firsts in addressing the topic of genocide in any given genre in Turkey is better understood in the light of Barthes' notion of the “inflexion” in myth. Such vocabulary of self-advertisement, of being a historic “first,” creates a curious hierarchy when it comes to the all-important topic of a foundational and denied genocide: it is not that the intellectual brings herself to the service of the topic, but that the topic serves up to the rejuvenation of the intellectual's prominence and controversial value in the public sphere. The emphasis is not on the quality, characteristics, or commitments of the works in question, but on the fact of the intellectual being a “first,” and thus, implicitly, a mythical figure above critical inquiry.

Type
Roundtable
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 4 , November 2015 , pp. 791 - 795
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

NOTES

1 Çetin, Fethiye, Anneannem (Istanbul: Metis, 2004)Google Scholar; İmparatorluğun Çöküş Döneminde Osmanlı Ermenileri: Bilimsel Sorumluluk ve Demokrasi Sorunları, Conference at Bilgi University, 23–25 September 2005; Shafak, Elif, The Bastard of Istanbul (New York: Viking, 2006)Google Scholar. The latter was published first in English.

2 Temelkuran, Ece, Ağrı'nın Derinliği (Istanbul: Everest, 2008)Google Scholar; Cemal, Hasan, 1915: Ermeni Soykırımı (Istanbul: Everest, 2012)Google Scholar. Both are available in English translation. Akın, Fatih, The Cut (2014)Google Scholar.

3 Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Noonday, 1991 [c. 1957]), 131 and 113, respectively. Often language thus leaves its place to silence (in this case, then, a secondary silence).

4 For the text on “This is Our Common Pain,” which marked previous commemorations organized by the activist group Dur-De, see for instance, “Kimse Durdurmaya Kalkmasın Lütfen” (Please Nobody Try to Stop It), Taraf, 20 April 2010, accessed 15 June 2015, http://arsiv.taraf.com.tr/haber-kimse-durdurmaya-kalkmasin-lutfen-48851/. For the English version of the (variously translated and modified) online petition, see the extended text below the signature box in “Our Common Dream Initiative,” accessed 15 June 2015, http://ourcommondream.org/hello-world/.

5 For arresting examples of critical inquiries into the ambiguous entanglement of sentimentality and affect in literature against slavery or against social inequality, see Festa, Lynn, Sentimental Figures of Empire in Eighteenth-Century Britain and France (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; and Berlant, Lauren, ed., Compassion: The Culture and Politics of an Emotion (New York: Routledge, 2004)Google Scholar.

6 Cemal, 1915: Ermeni Soykırımı. The book has also been translated into English and French; references are to the Turkish edition.

7 Ibid., 3.

8 Ibid., 127.

9 Ibid., 140–41 and 122, respectively.

10 Insel, Ahmet and Marian, Michel, Dialogue sur le tabou arménien (Paris: Liana Levi, 2009)Google Scholar. The book is also available in Turkish translation.

11 “Controversy and Debate,” Armenian Weekly, 24 April 2007 (Special Publication), 4–8; 26. Berktay repeated the same split conviction in his column, “Tarihçinin Özgürlüğü” (The Freedom of the Historian), Taraf, 13 March 2010, accessed 15 June 2015, http://arsiv.taraf.com.tr/yazilar/halil-berktay/tarihcinin-ozgurlugu/10437/.

12 “Controversy and Debate,” 7.

13 To state the obvious, Aktar is also a coauthor of the apology text. The event took place on 17 May 2010. Aktar's book was originally written in French but also translated into Turkish. For an example of Aktar's discussion of his own book on the apology campaign, see “L'Appel au pardon: Des Turcs s'adressent aus [sic] Arméniens,” Philosophie Magazine 27 May 2010, accessed 10 June 2015, http://www.philomag.com/lepoque/lappel-au-pardon-des-turcs-sadressent-aus-armeniens-2582. Marc Nichanian's Littérature et catastrophe has only been published in the Turkish translation, Edebiyat ve Felaket, trans. Ayşegül Sönmezay (Istanbul: İletişim, 2011), 19–20.

14 Oran routinely misrepresented in the press the restricted, in-group exchanges on Workshop on Armenian/Turkish Scholarship (WATS). See, most strikingly, Oran, Baskın, “İğneli Fıçı Nöbeti ve Onuru,” Radikal, 8 February 2009, accessed 15 June 2015, http://www.radikal.com.tr/radikal2/igneli_fici_nobeti_ve_onuru-920692Google Scholar.

15 The panel was part of the annual Hrant Dink Memorial Workshop at Sabanci University in 2010. The email is dated 19 May 2010 and was sent to thirty-nine addresses; there could be more such dispatches. On the panel, see Ayse Gunaysu, “Silenced but Resilient: A Groundbreaking Panel Discussion in Istanbul,” Armenian Weekly, 3 August 2010, accessed 15 June 2015, http://armenianweekly.com/2010/08/03/gunaysu-silenced-but-resilient-a-groundbreaking-panel-discussion-in-istanbul/.