Communicating Arts - Main Web SiteIn what amounts to Congressional grandstanding, the U.S. House Foreign Relations Committee voted this week to send to the floor a bill recognizing an event of war now 92 years old and taking place in the Ottoman era of Turkish history as a "genocide." (Even Wikipedia, ever the free wheeling source brief for breaking news notes that various terms applied over time: "Armenian Genocide", "Armenian Holocaust", "Great Calamity", and "Armenian Massacre").
If grievance is a mainstay of politics, "old grievance" is its bugbear.
How far back goes the clock for reparation or retribution?
What should the U.S. now do for the children of its antebellum slaves?
How much more should be done for us Jews on account of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany?
For how long and what kind of compensation would seem due in Rwanda, Bosnia, and elsewhere?
How long would you choose to perpetuate the "Us vs. Them" mentality and clinging that drives and perpetuates exactly the process of atrocity one would wish to redress?
The left side of politics in the U.S.--and how cannot I not be on that as a writer, musician, and photographer--leans quickly to mea culpa. Apology defuses all: build a monument; offer a moment of silence; produce a non-binding resolution (what the hell is that?); shed a tear; give a group hug; say, "there now, all is acknowledged, forgiven, and forgotten."
Among the affluent, among the comfortable, that sort of thing has charm.
One may not expect it, however, to work as well elsewhere.
On the other side of the seasaw: tribal nationalist movements--the Balochs in Iran and Pakistan, the Kurds, of course, spread across their portion of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.
Prior to U.S. intervention in Iraq, one may comprehend, some (I think the will to violence and excuse of it so personal that if one does not actually interview the guerrilla, the true motivating story goes missing) the relevance of the PKK to Kurdish interests at the fringe of its politics.
Things have changed.
The violence that tears at the civic heart and flesh of Iraq in Baghdad has not driven up the road and made itself nearly as ubiquitous in the Iraqi (nominally and expediently, admitted) Kurdish state, which now enjoys development money, an evolving (looks it to me) contemporary culture, and a relatively safe international airport. How much and to what end do its young men need to raid against Turkish civilians on behalf of the cultural region?
I don't think any society fully cuts its children loose, however unruly or misguided or, one might say, unusually patriotic and zealous in their discovery of authentic cause, but if they're strong they rein them in or make them part of the national guard and bring them into the state's discipline as a state: greater responsibilities--fewer loose canons, please.
This may be a good time for the Kurdish government to offer the PKK a period of amnesty before either turning on its own, who will have then defined themselves as state-opposed rebels, or, through inaction, persisting in sending small stingers against the Turks who are bound to defend their turf (as drawn today) and, of course, their people.
1. "U.S. condemns Kurdish rebel attacks in Turkey." Reuters, October 8, 2007.
2. Demir, Ferit. "Turkey plans incursion, PKK says ready to attack." Reuters, October 12, 2007.
3. AFP. "White House disappointed by Armenian "genocide" bill." October 11, 2007.
4. AFP. "US House panel backs Armenian genocide bill." France24, October 10, 2007.
5. Arsu, Sebnem. "Turks Angry Over House Armenian Genocide Vote." The New York Times, October 12, 2007.
6. "Armenian Genocide." Wikipedia, as experienced October 12, 2007.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
Comments