!ßÈÀ Certain Turks who used to take part in meetings held abroad on the Armenian issue are now obviously undertaking the task of staging similar meetings in Turkey. In order to rise to a position of respectability in the eyes of the general public they describe as excessive the Armenian and official Turkish views, stressing that they themselves take a middle-of-the-road stance.

   Certain Turks who used to take part in meetings held abroad on the Armenian issue are now obviously undertaking the task of staging similar meetings in Turkey. In order to rise to a position of respectability in the eyes of the general public, they describe as excessive the Armenian and official Turkish views, stressing that they themselves take a middle-of-the-road stance. Yet what they call the official Turkish view (which is, in fact, the view embraced by all segments and institutions of Turkish society) does not deny either that the Armenian incidents did happen. So there is hardly any room in the “middle” part of the spectrum.

  Furthermore, what the organizers of this meeting are saying hardly means anything but genocide. One of them says, “Although the Armenian incidents were different from the Holocaust, they still constituted a genocide according to Article 2 of the Genocide Convention.” Another one of them talks about the “destruction of the Armenians.” Yet another one says, “The Armenian incidents were a case of proto-genocide.” Making such statements is no different than saying these incidents were a genocide.

  According to these leftists-turned-liberals, as a requirement of intellectual ethics one has to acknowledge the facts regardless of how bitter they may be. They believe that the official view of the state hides the facts. They believe that the nation has the same tendency. In other words, these intellectuals see themselves as a bunch of people striving to persuade society to bravely admit responsibility for the mistakes of the past and the present and thus become more mature and to ensure domestic and external peace and progress on the path of democratization. They see themselves as heroes who endure all kinds of suffering as they strive to reform society. We, on the other hand, are supposed to represent the forces of evil that obstruct them because we do not know any better, or because we are seeking moral or material gains, or because we are not moral.

  If that is the case, this is so unfair to them. This is because they had encountered a similar kind of injustice in their youth. At that time, embracing a revolutionary ideology, they set out to save Turkey, opposing the imperialistic West and the Establishment in Turkey, its “lackey.” Yet, they were persecuted by the state and, on top of that, they were forgotten, even forsaken, by the people.

  The West, however, protected them in the name of human rights despite their anti-West ideology. This paradox has made them believe that they would stand no chance of surviving in this society unless Turkey became a fully “Western” society. They set out to transform the society by embracing an odd mixture of enmity towards the state and the nation, a mixture they call liberalism. In reality, this has enabled them to hold on to the basic elements of the ideology of their youth, which is no longer alive.

  Once the Ottoman intellectuals too had tried to save the realm by imitating the Western civilization that had beaten them. However, at that time, the West had been, at the same time, in the eyes of Ottoman intellectuals, the “opponent” of the Ottomans as a state and as a nation. The current generation of “liberals” is different in that the events of the past have played havoc with their personalities and, in their eyes, when it comes to dealing with the West, the “abroad” and one's own “country” are not any different from one another. When the West adopted a politically motivated kind of approach towards Turkey, these intellectuals saw that as an attempt aimed at reforming Turkey. This is why they supported the PKK and they blamed the Turkish side for the lack of a solution in Cyprus. This is why they ignored the EU's discriminatory stance. Furthermore, as Selim Deringil said during a TV program, Turkey was not only backwards but also quite powerless in the face of the West. In their eyes, it is as if Turkey is -- just as they themselves seem to be -- holding onto the world only slightly and not firmly entrenched in it.

  Meanwhile, the West says the Armenian incidents were a genocide.

  When defending the theses put forth by the West, intellectuals of this kind have kept stressing principles such as democracy, human rights and pluralism. Since it is a fact that not-fully-developed countries such as Turkey do have shortcomings in these areas, the intellectuals in question have failed to see that the West defends its foreign policy interests in indirect ways.

  However, by now, the objections being raised in EU countries (in France, for example) to Turkey's EU membership have begun shifting from historical prejudice to racist hatred. This is making it apparent that the problem goes well beyond Turkey's shortcomings in the field of democratization.

  In this context, the Armenian genocide claims are the last straw. The problem stems from the fact that those societies that committed genocide in the past are now projecting their racism onto Turkey. The path of seeking arbitration or going to court is being shunned. They refrain from conducting research, rejecting the documents in archives as “fetishism” with an incredible relativity. We are being asked to say we have committed a terrible crime such as genocide just because the West wants that. By using a highly “scientific” method such as quoting from memoirs, support is being given to the Western theses.

  These intellectuals must see that the Turkish nation can no longer tolerate this sickness. The road ends here. Nihilism has only one goal: self-destruction. It will be a nice change if, in this particular case, they fail to attain that goal.