Exactly 99 years. Next year, it will be its centenary and it seems that the “moral migraine” Turkey will continue as an “evil eternal head.”

I once asked Hrant [Dink] outright because I found this interesting: “I have not heard you use the word” genocide “until now. I have not heard you use in our private conversations or during your television appearances and conferences. Do you think it was a “genocide”? ”

Hrant looked at me with an expression of surprise and said: “My dear Cengiz, I’m Armenian.”

I continued to probe: “I understand, but do you think it was a” genocide “? “I wanted an answer with a single word.

Hrant gave a heavier response: “This is an” integrated knowledge “for us.

We are born with this knowledge. We never talk between ourselves. We never talk about it, but we know. ”

Indeed it was true. I knew it was true. Nearly a quarter of my classmates and school friends were Armenians in boarding where I was for four years near Kayseri, in the middle of Anatolia. I was with many of them in high school in the middle of the plain of Cukurova the next three years.

[Editor’s Note: Çukurova is the modern name of the ancient region of Cilicia or more precisely the plain of Cilicia (“Cilicia Pedia”) in the south of present-day Turkey. The region is divided by the modern provinces of Adana, Osmaniye and Mersin].

Therefore, I know that Armenians never speak of “the subject” or “genocide” them. They have never talked with us and they never discussed them.

“We” do not have either spoken, but we also knew – as “integrated knowledge” and not to mention “very bad things that have happened in the past.” Nobody had taught us that, but we knew that the Armenians had very bad experiences.

When we started to dig deeper into these “very bad experience” later, we started to deal with the “truth of 1915.” Initially, we used the “denial”. Then we turned to “treason they have committed.” “They” and “gangs who tried to stab him in the back our state” under the conditions of the First World War were used interchangeably. “Conditions of war” and “military necessity” began to settle in the minds as “mitigating circumstances”.

Thereafter, we began to adopt a more “equitable” approach. We started saying that there was “mutual murder.” In other words, the “sides” had killed each other. There was no [killings] “unilateral”. This was disturbing pages of history “on both sides” and, of course, the question “should be left to historians.”

When it became difficult to ignore the reality that the only “remnants of the sword” were the remains of an entire national-religious group that lived on the land throughout history, the assumption of ” mutual slaughter “- at the end of which one side won and one side lost – also began to weaken. The word “expulsion”, which is a condition of “involuntary exile” began to be used in the sense of a “great tragedy” “our neighborhoods” – sometimes with connotations of “massacre.”

For some, it is the farthest point was reached – for now.

Those who know that there is a thin “semantic line” between “genocide” and “great tragedy” or “great massacre” are [yet] saying: “I can not accept the word “genocide.” It was not a genocide. ”

For some, this is driven by the pressure of a sense of intolerable “shame”. For others, it stems from a sense of “shame” (mixed with some opportunistic pragmatism) that “we may have to pay compensation if we accept that it was a genocide. “We sometimes encounter those seeking to allay these fears by giving assurances that the provisions of the UN Convention on Genocide (1948) do not apply retroactively and that, therefore, no compensation shall be paid.

The question of “genocide” came to the point where everyone looks the voltage statement made by the President of the United States on April 24 each year, and if he uses the term “metz yeghern” [great calamity by Radikal newspaper but actually mean great crime] instead of “genocide” is a virtual national holiday as if a great political and diplomatic victory had been won. The reality is that “Yeghern metz” is the phrase [the Armenians] used for the events of 1915 until the United Nations Convention on Genocide was ratified in 1948 and even thereafter.

Turkey – especially government – welcomes shame simply because the U.S. president said that “we are engaged in a great slaughter in place of genocide.”

Let me be frank. I was also very confused about this issue until I read the book reference Samantha Power, “A Problem from Hell: America ant the Age of Genocide (2002).”

Power is the Permanent Representative edes United States at the UN today. It is also one of the closest confidants of President Obama. Born in 1970, this is an Irish woman who became a U.S. citizen later. She wrote her book to criticize the policy of the United States in “Age of Genocide.” The book, which has won 10 major awards, including the Pulitzer, discusses several examples of “genocide” in Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda to Kosovo, Iraq and the Kurds.

This incomparable book begins and ends with Raphael Lemkin. The first 84 pages of the book are devoted to Lemkin. Lemkin is an American to Polish-Jewish roots who drafted the UN Convention on Genocide. This is also the man who coined the word “genocide.” It is one of the founders of the law of human rights and an authority on criminal law. He became interested in these issues when he was a student at the University of Lvov and when he read a report on the assassination of Talaat Pasha in a local newspaper.

In other words?

Lemkin coined the term “genocide” by combining the Greek root “Geno” c with the suffix “cide”, which is derived from the Latin “caedere” [Massacre] word. Lemkin studied these questions after reviewing the events of 1915. Thereafter, he drafted the United Nations Convention on Genocide.

In other words, the “starting point” that did what became Lemkin was the great misfortune suffered Armenians in 1915. Consequently, it is useful to ask whether what happened was a ” genocide “?

Therefore, this issue should not be a discussion on the meaning of “semantics.” We can infer that it must be from the following lines written by a Turkish legal expert (Umit Kardas)

“The Armenian uprisings demanding some rights groups, actions [by Armenians] encouraged by foreign forces – none of these excuses can justify this human tragedy. Whether what happened was genocide, which is a legal and technical term is misleading. Atrocities and massacres are incompatible with humanity. Be condemned in the consciousness of humanity is more glorious than to be accused of genocide. A system that is based on the concealment and denial of truth makes you sick and corrodes the state and nation.

“To defend and enforce the measures taken by the leaders of the Union and Progress Party and its officers, gangs and marauders associated with them is not human or moral. Turkey needs to tell the world that recognizes the atrocities and massacres that took place, it respects the truth, justice and humanitarianism – the highest human values ​​- as a state and a nation, and it condemns the mindset and actions of those who have in the past. Once this is done, all the Armenians living in the diaspora should be able to receive citizenship [Turkish]. [All those who accept it] will be granted Turkish citizenship. A return of Diaspora Armenians on the land where their ancestors had lived for thousands of years and they were forced to leave abandon their properties, goods, memorabilia and history would alleviate their pain and anger. The border with Armenia should be opened without preconditions. If Turkey reduces pain Armenians, it will also become more free to get rid of his fears, his insecurity and anxieties. ” (“1915-2015” Taraf newspaper, April 15, 2014)

Enough said.

The “problem” for all of us is above all “moral” and “humanitarian.”

We will all perish if we seek an apology for what happened in 1915 rather than recognize.

We will be “free” if we recognize.

Today, the 99th anniversary [of these events], I respectfully bow to the memory of 1915.

Cengiz Candar

Radikal (Turkish), Turkey

April 24, 2014

Translation Radiolur