Letter

Kerem Öktem (“Return of the Turkish ‘State of Exception’,” MER Online, June 3, 2006) uses the word “destruction” to refer to the relocation or exodus of the Armenian communities living in eastern Anatolia in 1915. Relocation is the English word corresponding to tehcir, the Turkish term for an exceptional measure applied against Armenians in complicity with the Russian army occupying the eastern part of Anatolia under Ottoman rule. The meaning of “destruction” is given in the dictionary as follows: “damage so severe that something no longer exists.” So far, there is no official document or any other reliable evidence showing any intention of the ruling political power in Istanbul to “destroy” these Armenian communities. Any responsible author or researcher should be objective and impartial in reporting historical facts.

Onder Ozar
Ambassador (retired)
Istanbul

Kerem Öktem responds: The authoritative Redhouse Turkish-English dictionary translates the term tehcir as “causing to migrate” or “deportation” -- not “relocation.” But that is beside the point. Without going into lengthy theoretical deliberations on the complex relationship between objectivity and historiography, I make no judgment in my article regarding the “intention of the ruling political power in Istanbul to ‘destroy’ the Armenian communities,” as Onder Ozar implies. Rather, I refer to the unfolding debate on this issue as an indicator of the liberalization of approaches to national historiography in Turkey. There is now a thriving discussion across a number of disciplines about whether the deportations and massacres during World War I were driven by genocidal intent. Recent publications by Ayhan Aktar, Halil Berktay, Donald Bloxham, Fatma Müge Göçek, Baskın Oran and Ronald Grigor Suny, to cite just a few, reflect the cutting-edge scholarship in this debate, and they do not agree on the question of genocidal intent. They have, however, established beyond a reasonable doubt that Ottoman Armenian communities within the borders of modern Turkey -- with the significant exceptions of Istanbul and Izmir -- were indeed damaged so badly that they “no longer exist.” Notwithstanding the questions of intent and terminology, there is a wide scholarly consensus, including the controversial demographer Justin McCarthy, that the events of 1915 resulted in the physical destruction of substantial parts of these communities and their social, cultural and educational institutions.