By:  Orhan Kemal Cengis

Around three or four years ago, when watching a presentation at Toronto University in Canada, I felt some emotions that are still now very difficult to describe. It was as though someone had asked Salvador Dali to draw some images of the whole Armenian issue, which were then used by this young man to make a presentation to us.

It is somewhere in the middle of the desert in Mexico. They are moving forward, passing between gigantic cactuses. Each man wears an enormous sombrero on his head, and each is heading towards a giant monument. We see that they stand in silent respect when the reach the front of the monument. Speaking a strongly-accented English, this young Mexican-Armenian’s presentation is about the “Armenian Genocide Memorial Ceremonies.” The photographs are somehow surreal; the young man points to the sombreroed men in one image, and says “These men are mostly Armenians who originated from places like Van and Muş in Turkey.” When he says this, I am completely blown away.

There are so many things in life that we finally understand on first encountering them. … Just at the moment when you are most unprepared, when you are not really focused on anything, some reality or deep truth transcends your internal walls of defense and sits deep in your heart. For me, when it comes to Armenian issues, there is this instance of the sombrero-wearing Mexican-Armenian men or the young Armenian working at the reception desk of a hotel in Yerevan, a youth who had never even been to Turkey, but who described himself as being from Van. Or the 100-year-old woman I met in Boston whose eyes misted over when talking about her love for her Turkish neighbors, but also about the terrible deeds done by some thugs way back when.

One of the most important things I have realized in between all of these encounters I have had with the Armenian issue is that we have cut all of our emotional ties when it comes to facing the “Armenian tragedy.” Just as we are completely disinterested in what the truth about 1915 really is, we also reject the option of actually encountering emotionally that event we prefer to label “relocation.” Even in the “officially-accepted” version of events, we do not want to accept or grasp that people were forcibly removed from their homes, made to wander hungry in the streets and pushed from their country. We thus in no way are able to feel what it must have been like for an elderly Armenian woman to be pulled by her arms from the home where she had spent her life, forced onto the street and watch as nearly half of her family perishes on the road, while the other half has to put down roots in places where the language and culture are completely foreign to them.

There is no doubt a price to be paid for all this lack of feeling and this constant state of denial. What this denial really does is to prevent our own maturation. It also creates a false sense of pride. And in our attempts to defend this false pride, we wind up belittling ourselves, retriggering over and over our “defense mechanisms.”

With its arms wrapped tightly around this neurosis centering on a refusal to confront the past, Turkey is easy to manipulate due to this neurosis. No matter which of its buttons are pushed, it is always clear what Turkey will do on this front, and it is always known that it will inevitably do the same thing. The option of behaving any other way does not exist. Turkey pays millions of dollars to lobbies every year to convince parliaments of other countries — countries that are convinced that what occurred was a clear genocide — not to pursue the matter. And since our budget is not transparent, we are actually unable to see the true proportions of this “diet of shame.”

According to the Armenpress news agency, Elizabeth Chuljyian, the media secretary of the Armenian National Committee of American (ANCA), sends regular letters to members of the US Senate, as well as holding frequent meetings with them, in order to increase support in this important governmental body for ANCA’s cause.

With Syria and Iran looming large on the agenda this year, it is most likely that once again, the US Senate will not put forth a decision on the Armenian issue. But what about later, a few years from now? I do believe that in the long run, the policy of denial on the part of Turkey will wind up — especially when certain international balances shift — being derailed. If only we could shoulder the idea and the reality of a sincere encounter and perhaps just listen to the story of a Mexican-Armenian whose origins were in Van. If this could happen, so many things could change. Not only would we as a society mature, but Turkey as a whole would be rescued from the very real danger of slamming up against the rocks as a result of the inevitable international winds.

In this particular arena, Turkey is so strongly guided by its fears that it does not dare even consider thinking about the real problem and some of the real solutions at hand. This being the case, my personal hope is that Turkey’s ever growing sense of self-confidence be used to take some steps towards lasting and effective solutions on this front.