I don't feel close to the policies of the Committee of Union and Progress, yet I cannot willingly accept incriminating them with intentionally committing genocide and having them wiped out of our history like a rotten tooth. Especially after coming to learn that an intellectual like Sait Halim Pasha (he was martyred by gangs) whom I admire was on the same side as them. Despite having many objections, my hesitation increased. If I were a grown up in the 1915s, part of me would be at the East Front in Çanakkale, which we shouldered with all our might after the Balkan Defeat, and the other part would be thinking about what could be done to prevent a civil war in the face of the Armenian Revolt that broke out in Van. Yet, I could not approve the deportation decision in a heartbeat. My state would be most similar to that of the Ottoman civil servants who were greatly perturbed about carrying out the deportation decision.

When we view every moment of the incidents that took place in 1915-1918, our inner world becomes topsy turvy, and if we had to give a name, we would make do by calling it a “tragedy.” It is true, the deportation decision seems neither rational nor conscionable, but we need to take into account that we think this way because we are looking at the incidents from the comfort of today. War contains great chaos, a fight for life or death, the ruthless attack of contagious diseases, especially malaria, and horrific views of one's mind and conscience, body and spirit are scattered out everywhere. Regardless of how much hatred you feel toward the Committee of Union and Progress, once you slightly free your views from phantoms and look at the facts with an effort to be objective, you will see that the deportation decision was not reached easily, that government forces were not endeavoring for the holocaust of the migrant convoys within the scope of a certain deliberate plan. The rational and conscientious cannot ignore the activities of Armenian gangs prior to the deportation decision, especially their revenge murders against Muslims in 1918.

And yet, nevertheless, what is the reason for the zealotry that became more intense after 1980, for the wide spreading of an understanding that sees the Turks one and the same as the Nazis who mercilessly, intentionally planned and carried out the Holocaust? The answer is in the way the Western Christian psychology works… With the “Jewish Holocaust”, the entire Western Christian conscience, and particularly the German society, was taken over by a serious feeling of guilt. They were already very inclined towards feeling guilt for failing to save Jesus from the Jews, the Inquisition atrocity and the bloodiest sectarian wars of history. The guilty feeling of the Christian conscience was further boosted with thousands of broadcasts, movies, etc. against the Holocaust, filling the consciences of generations that had nothing to do with these incidents. The Christian conscience filled with guilt would find the chance to escape the heavy burden of history only if it could find a victim from among its own kind. The influence of the guilty conscience of the “Holocaust” has a great role in why they cherished the Armenians for whom they opened missionary schools on Ottoman lands to teach them the true (!) Christianity, which they belittled for centuries, and held onto a setup as childish as “we really don't do such thing, but we learned it from the Turks.”

The guilty conscience we mentioned and the new theopolitics have an influence on the Vatican's suddenly increased interest in its Eastern Christians and its voicing of the “first genocide of the century” talk. Catholicism which is constantly regressing and losing power against atheism, secularism and “new age” beliefs, is trying to make room for itself.

One other reason why there is an effort to unjustly identify Turks with the Nazis, is directly in relation to the psychology of the Armenian diaspora. Because they are having a serious identity crisis. The majority of them lost their ethnic identity characteristics in the countries to which they migrated, and abandoned Gregorianism, which was the national denomination of the Hayk tribe. They know there are Armenians living in Turkey and that they have better means than themselves in terms of their Armenian identity. They see that there is a country called “Armenia,” but they are well aware that they will never be able to go and settle in this poor country or the Anatolian soils they call their homeland. The thing they know best about their history is what they have heard about the things done to them by Turks. As the painful memories of the 1915 deportation move away from the date of the incident, they mix with the endlessness of the imaginary world, increasing in folds in every new generation. And since there is no “symbol of victory” that could be the foundation of building common memories and identities, they hold on firmly to the memories of the trauma and create an identity cover from the sorrows. “Enmity of Turks” is the building stone of their individual identities in their early childhood years, as they are being raised. In fact, it's a building stone that acts like a reservoir into which all the negativities regarding them is dumped…

Us Turks and Armenians, who are by history and geography destined to be neighbors, have seen what tension and hostility policies are, and that no result can ever come from this for future generations other than new enmities. It is now time to turn to dialogue, peace and friendship. As Davutoğlu said: “As descendants of two ancient peoples who a hundred years ago shared the same destiny whether in joy or in sorrow, our common responsibility and calling today is to heal century-old wounds and re-establish our human ties once again.”

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