Yesterday I read a column at Trakya Net Haber which made me really sad. I was not sad because of its content, the article was full of baseless claims with the hope of creating an illusion of a big conspiracy theory against Turkey. Frankly, the author did not write anything that is worth reading or even thinking about for 2 minutes. However, that column reminded me of our, Turkish people’s, tendency to believe in conspiracy theories. When you ask people on the street, most of them think the majority of the world is out there to get us. As a matter of fact, about 10-12 years ago I was one of those people. This may seem like an insignificant thing, however, I think at the aggregate level this tendency creates a lot of problems for Turkey.

When people are willing to believe in claims not based on any sort of fact or information but solely on artifacts, they are also willing to elect politicians who claims to protect people’s interest from these “evil powers”. In fact, all of these problems can easily be solved if we only put some effort into learning about the reality. Once a person starts reading about political history, understanding international relations, at least at a very simple level, becomes quite easy. The one thing we need to do is:

- Stop thinking that there is one giant conspiracy against Turkey, and western powers have nothing better to do but to sit and think about how to take Turkey down. Instead start realizing that international relations is a purely self-interested area where every country is simply trying to protect its own interest. Sometimes there are positive sum games where all the participants can benefit from a common agreement. Some other times there are zero-sum games, meaning one country’s gain is the other one’s lost.

If we can accept this simple platform, try to learn the rules and the players of the game instead of refusing to understand the game at all, we can move so much further and faster.

My hope for 2010 and beyond is an increasing desire to learn the truth and not let ourselves be used by manipulative agendas. We, as Turks, do not need to be afraid that the world is out there to get us. Turkey is an incredible country with enormous potential and we can deal with REAL problems at the international level without falling prey to conspiracy theories.

It is clear that special interest strong-arming of politicians not only hurts the American people, but also constitutes a threat to US relations with its allies It has been several decades that Armenian special interest groups have been lobbying Congress to convince to pass a resolution labeling what happened between Ottoman Turks and Ottoman Armenians in 1915-1919 as “genocide”—a topic still widely debated among historians. Legitimacy of the strategies used by these Armenian groups has been questioned— on February 18, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a complaint with the Department of Justice, the IRS, the Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the Senate urging an investigation into whether the Armenian National Committee of America-Western Region (ANCA-WR) and the ANCA Endowment Fund violated their status as charitable organizations by actively participating in political campaigns, publicly endorsing political candidates (including the Obama-Biden ticket), and lobbying for the Armenian agenda in Congress.

According to the first nationwide public opinion survey of Turkey on this issue that the ARI Foundation conducted in 2007 in partnership with Terror Free Tomorrow of Washington DC, congressional passage of such a resolution would actually set back the cause it purports to achieve—namely shedding light onto the historical events and promoting Turkey’s reconciliation with Armenia. According to the poll, 78% of the Turkish public opposes a resolution by the U.S. Congress on the issue of the Armenian allegation of genocide, irrespective of the wording of the actual resolution. More importantly, 73% think the effect of passage would worsen relations between Turkey and Armenia.

A very significant finding was also uncovered during this survey– 74% of Turkish people believe that the most important reasons that the U.S. Congress would approve an Armenian resolution are anti-Muslim feelings and American domestic politics. Yet another Armenian Resolution was introduced in Congress last week. Is this the message that the new Congress wants to give to one of its most important allies and the country that President Obama will visit in early April?

Washington must understand that the Turkish people are not afraid of facing what happened in their history—as long as it is done fairly and by experts, not politicians. In fact, hardly a day goes by where a news article or television program does not address this issue from one angle or the other. Debate on this issue is now wide open in Turkey, where books by the most ardent supporters of the Armenian historical narrative are available everywhere. Contrast that to Armenia, where hardly any publication that contrasts their views is available. While most Turks are opposed to an American political judgment on this historical issue, 75% of all Turks favor unbiased scholarship by independent historians on what occurred between Turks and Armenians during the demise of Ottoman Empire. How many countries in the world would have such courage and open-heartedness in the face of a topic that hangs over their head like the sword of Damocles? This public response is quite in line with the repeated invitations from both President Gul and Prime Minister Erdogan to initiate a joint historical commission constituted of Turkish, Armenian and international experts.

When I was invited to Armenia in August 2007 to meet with high-level state officials (including the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs), former prime ministers, political party leaders, NGO representatives and journalists, I realized that Armenians living in Armenia stand quite differently on this debate in comparison to the Armenian Diaspora living in the US, Europe and other parts of the world. The message that they repeatedly gave me was that the ordinary Armenian people want to look forward and improve relations with their neighbor Turkey at many different levels, including social, economic and cultural. They also seemed quite puzzled and irritated as to why a foreign government’s legislative body would dwell into history and even attempt to use it as a foreign policy lever.

Will President Obama keep his promise and have the courage to take special interest out of legislation and encourage direct reconciliation between Armenia and Turkey? Or will he give in and allow Congress take an unjust, one-sided action to satisfy the Armenian Diaspora at the expense of alienating Turkey and Armenia by undermining their ongoing rapprochement? The Turkish people are not asking for a favor— we are asking for justice.

Yurter Ozcan
ARI Foundation, President
Washington D.C.
March 24, 2009
www.arifoundation.org

Armenia: Obscure issue could challenge a President Obama

Michael Doyle | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The two major presidential candidates differ sharply over an Armenian genocide commemoration, with Republican John McCain opposing it and Democrat Barack Obama supporting it.

It is so hard to even start talking about the Turkish-Armenian conflict; so, I am just going to talk about my personal take on it.

As a Turk living in the US, it saddens me to see people from other countries recognize my country and Armenia only through our conflict. They do not know much about each of the countries but they know that we have been in conflict since the early times of this century.However, what saddens me most is to actually see these two countries with such similar history and culture to be in conflict and closely observe my generation grow up not recognizing our commonalities. Today, I read an article from Dr. Stepan Grigoryan, the chairman of the board of the Analytical Centre on Globalization and Regional Cooperation in Yerevan, who in his article pointed out that people are closer to each other than their governments. He claims that people of both countries want reconciliation and end of the conflict; however, political realities do not represent this view.

Armenia and Turkey are so similar to each other, our histories are so intertwined that it is amazing to see this conflict persist this long. We don’t need to put much effort into confirming this hypothesis, just search Wikipedia for Armenian Cuisine. Almost 90% of Turkish cuisine and Armenian cuisine overlaps. Or look at our habits, the games we play, etc. Thousands of things I cannot even count. Even the way we raise new generations is similar. The only difference is Turkish side finds Armenian side in fault and Armenian side claims Turks are to blame. In the mean time, generations are growing up, not knowing each other, not realizing the past is out there to hunt their future, and only learning how to perpetuate this fight where there are only losers!

I do realize this writing sounds like a pep talk and does not seem to contain any substantive facts. Yes, I do know there are complicated things involved, yes I do know it is hard to reconcile when both parties had lost so many people, and yes I do know there were dramatic events the survivors of which still cannot let go (from both sides). However, I do also know if people were to hold on to these complexities and never reconcile, today there would not be a Vietnam with strong relations with the US, there would not be an Austria, who faught againts Britain and France in the World War I, with close relations to them now, or there would not be a Latin America, which had to faught for its independence, trading with Portugal or Spain now.

My point is I think it is time for the people of Turkey and Armenia to get to know each other and to demand reconciliation from bottom up, not top down. We, as neighbors, do need to strengthen each other, not weaken!

One of the natural human instincts, when one meets a new person, is to place that person in a little box in their minds to be able to identify to where they belong in this complicated world. Although, this is a helpful shortcut in simplying life and being able to identify with whom you would get along well, it is very limited in its ability to capture something real about the other person. Once you identify the “right box” in your mind for someone it takes a lot of effort and counter argument to change their mental location, even though sometimes that is necessary.  One of these short cuts we use to mentally place people is their econo-political view. Thanks to Chris Blattman’s blog I learned about this new ideological test which positions you on a cartesian coordinate system with social and economic ideological extremes on the axes.

They also placed some of the world known leaders on this compass (below).

I am not going to write where I ended up on the compass (though it was close to reality); however, no matter how we use these categorizations we need to keep in mind that these are very rough drawing of people’s outer contours…

Presidential Candidate Obama continues to take a clear stance against Turkey and side with the Armenian allegations. In a letter to ANCA Chairman Ken Hachikian, Sen. Obama wrote “I share your view that the United States must recognize the events of 1915 to 1923, carried out by the Ottoman Empire, as genocide. . . We must recognize this tragic reality. The Bush Administration’s refusal to do so is inexcusable, and I will continue to speak out in an effort to move the Administration to change its position.”
http://www.anca.org/press_releases/press_releases.php?prid=1513

In July 2006, Obama had also written to Secretary of State Rice and opposed the decision to recall Ambassador Evans from his post to Armenia after he used the term genocide. (http://www.anca.org/press_releases/press_releases.php?prid=1513

This is in response to Washington Post Article on 03/07/2008:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030703528.html

The effort to label PKK as freedom fighters continues. In 2008, when US is still deciding whether it is ready for an African-American president, they are forgetting that Turkey had many Kurdish presidents, prime ministers and ministers. How can they still argue that Kurds in Turkey have no political rights?

Turkey lost over 40,000 people because of PKK. US casualties caused by Al-Qaida is less than ten percent of this figure. How can you justify the cause of PKK when you take such a hard stance against Al-Qaida?

In Washington D.C., there are many think-tanks and media organizations that are part of this concerted effort. We will never give up and continue to fight them in every opportunity. We will always be loyal to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the forefathers of our country.

Turkish nation will never sit at the table and negotiate with terrorists. If it means more war, so be it.

I posted the blog below on Washington Post in response to an article on that newspaper titled “Turkey Bombs, the U.S. Applauds,” which criticizes Turkish operations in N.Iraq:

It is important to remember that Turkey has been calling on the US, the Iraqi government as well as the regional Kurdish authority in Northern Iraq to take stance against PKK terrorists numerous times. The regional Kurdish authority in Northern Iraq has repeatedly said that it has no control over the camps in mountains where PKK terrorists are hiding and launching attacks to kill Turkish civilians and military forces. If Iraq is the sovereign country as it is argued by the author, how could it say that it has no control over its own borders, which has been repeatedly stated by Barzani and Talabani? It is absurd to think that a country (Turkey) should not take such situation into its own hands and protect its people. All the stakeholders should stop using PKK as a gambling chip and treat it no different from any other terrorist organization in the world. Turkish people will never forget or forgive anybody who makes up excuses and chooses inaction against the PKK terrorists.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2007/12/turkey_bombs_iraq_and_the_us_a.html

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