Chelsea Fink is a senior at UC Davis completing her B.A. in English Literature with an emphasis in literary criticism and a minor in Human Rights. She has worked on SCC’s award winning literary journal, Susurrus, as editor, contributor and event coordinator. She is currently co-editor in chief of Making the Case. Human Rights can be a vague notion for many and I hope through Making the Case and other such endeavors, that an honest conversation can begin to take place about what human rights are, and how further awareness, insight and compassion can lead to more active and engaged members of our communities.
RUGGED TERRAIN: TRACING RESILIENCY, RESISTANCE AND ERASURE THROUGH CULTURAL IDENTITY
“A deep-seated feeling of belonging and pride in one’s culture can imbue a sense community, kinship and resolution to endure. The paradox of this seemingly positive identification with individuals sharing the same cultural identity is the adverse issues that can emerge from an exaggerated sense of similitude.”
From resistance to surrender in the midst of overwhelming starvation, to resilience and perseverance in the face of harrowing threats, there are various forms in which a strong cultural identity can manifest. A deep-seated feeling of belonging and pride in one’s culture can imbue a sense community, kinship and resolution to endure. The paradox of this seemingly positive identification with individuals sharing the same cultural identity is the adverse issues that can emerge from an exaggerated sense of similitude. These issues can manifest in various ways, such as denigrating others outside of one’s own culture, which, in the country of Turkey, has resulted in a habitual marginalization of minorities, and a collective endeavor at erasure of a nationally sordid past.
The main concept I will be looking at in my argument is the constructive and destructive expressions of a shared cultural identity. I will argue that a common thread of resilience, resistance and erasure is present throughout the texts I will be consulting, and are born out of a common cultural identity. These threads manifest in the resolution to retain one’s cultural identity, such as Karnig Panian, in his memoir Goodbye, Antoura; colored by personal loss and tragedy, and in the meticulous examination of both sides of the genocide, such as Thomas de Waal’s contemplative book The Great Catastrophe, seeking out the potential root causes, while speculating on possible outcomes for the future, and Fatma Müge Göçek’s article “Turkish Historiography on 1915”, illuminating the resoluteness with which the Turkish government mythologizes its own past, consequently subjugating its religious and ethnic minorities in doing so. Whether it is the resilience of spirit in Panian’s tale of survival, or the resilient obstinacy of a deep-rooted prejudicial position of the Turkish government as presented in Göçek’s article, a capacity to endure against staggering odds is evidenced throughout the texts in diverse capacities, through a common underlying thread of stalwart association with cultural identity.
In Karnig Panian’s memoir, Goodbye, Antoura, Panian relates how his family and everyone he knew was evicted from their homes in Gurin, and sent on a journey of intentional deprivation, separation, and ultimately death for many of his family members, friends and fellow orphans. For some, such life altering and scarring events would lead to despondency and surrender, however, Panian reveals a strong affinity with his cultural identity, which helped reinforce his defiance to renounce it, as ordered by the Turkish representatives attempting to indoctrinate him and his fellow orphans. Displaying some allusions to ethnocentric viewpoints, Panian’s tale reflects a stubbornness to capitulate to the Turkish identity forced on him, by adhering to his Armenian one. What is unmistakable throughout is the innate impetus to resist against all odds, both in body and mind. Following his grandparents’ life-saving choice to relinquish him to the orphanage, Panian recounts the challenges he and his fellow orphans faced in the hands of Turkish authorities, “we had spent two formative years in hunger, misery, fear and pain. But we had not yielded a single inch. We had kept our faith, our language, and our identities intact.” This pertinacity of character is remarkable considering the relentless persecution and psychological trauma they had endured up to that point. As Dr. James Reid discusses in his studies on the effects of individuals experiencing such suffering, “one reason many collapsed and died during the death march, aside from murder and physical torture, was that they could not endure psychologically after a certain point in the ongoing trauma of the death march.” The essence Panian captures is not focused on suffering, but instead the determination of himself and his fellow orphans to survive. Through the unflagging strength of shared values and attachment to their Armenian identity, they persevered through circumstances both disturbing and bleak, intended to break the human spirit and eradicate the Armenian culture. Instances of forming teams, raiding gardens together, and grinding the bones of their former playmates for sustenance, conveys the magnitude of their conditions. The memory in which Panian recalls a traitor in the midst of the orphans, and his subsequent fate, is chilling in its frank recounting, “He had sold out his own brothers for the sake of an extra bun of bread or gruel, and he paid for his crimes with his life. One morning his body was found right outside the walls, beaten beyond recognition. Nobody ever knew what had happened to him or who had killed him. He was buried in the cemetery and left to the jackals.” This unity among the survivors, and the reckoning of the defector in their midst, speaks to the resistance and national pride innate even in young the Armenian boys far from their homes and families.
Karnig Panian’s memoir is notably a partisan perspective, and it is important to bear this in mind when reading his all-encompassing report of “Turks”. Panian’s memoir is largely about his experiences as he recalls them, and much of these events transpired decades before they were recorded. It also crucial to note that though Panian’s experience is overwhelmingly brought about by Turkish instigators, not all Turkish people were involved, or even supportive of the deportations and subsequent killings of the Armenian people. Defying “Turkification”, or the indoctrination into Turkish culture through the erasure of his own cultural identity, Panian and others clung to their Armenian one, which resonates in his memoir. Social identity theory, in which social categorization is used to demean and ultimately discriminate against another group appears in instances of Panian’s narration of events, explicitly during acts of retribution, where his recounting seems almost gleeful as he relates, “Armenians began making forays into the Turkish neighborhoods. They looted and set fire to homes and stores. Some of the loot was given to the orphanage administration and helped the Armenian refugees survive.” Given his perspective, the joyous acquisition of much needed resources for one’s people from the enemy is an understandable and natural feeling, and another instance of resilience on the part of a perpetually assaulted group; however, it is the conviction of entitlement and impartial vindication that are reflective of a widely felt antipathy towards “the other” that has produced an ongoing inability to mediate, resulting in further conflict. A similar social identity classification, which bled into extreme nationalistic attitudes, helped spawn the atrocities that ended in the 1915 genocide perpetrated by the Young Turks.
The place that Panian’s tale takes in the ongoing debates has a twofold character; recounting his horrific experiences without triteness allows the reader to comprehend the actions perpetrated by the Young Turks, without the innate skepticism accompanying an overly sentimental portrayal. It also reveals a thought process evident in both Armenians and Turkish people, the “us versus them” mentality deleterious to progress. Panian’s memoir is evocative of the complex dialogue into which it fits; a personal narrative revealing a strong cultural identity responsible for both the resilience of its people and its resistance to bend to their oppressors, yet it also reflects underlying elements of nationalism and ethnocentrism, while demonstrating a troubling lack of introspection regarding ongoing cultural disparities and tensions. This allegiance to one’s identity is a strong and uniting factor among people; it also has the secondary effect to alienate and mitigate the needs or desires of peoples from differing and often misunderstood cultures, or in the case of the Turkish government, adopt a policy of erasure that not only erases its country’s Christian past, but the Armenian presence, and particularly the genocide. The persisting hostility between nations has been critiqued in both the Armenian and Turkish population, yet due to an obstinate disdainfulness and nationalistic motives on both sides, tensions linger.
When Panian relates stories of looting, it is not simply the acts perpetrated, but the dehumanizing of the victims as well. Acts such as looting only further the cycle, as author Thomas de Waal relates through an eye witness account of Armenian revolutionaries engaging in acts of willful and sweeping destruction 20 years prior to the 1915 genocide, “they were few in number but they had not scruples, counting as lawful all means by which they might attain their ends. They terrorized the better part of the community into silence when they could not secure their support. These acts enraged the Turkish population and increased the danger of massacre.”[7] de Waal’s account of the events that lead up to 1915, throughout the atrocities and afterward, convey an effort at neutrality and observation of the brutality that took place, in order to reveal the circumstances in their entirety and highlight the pervasive impact of debasing another culture. It is through de Waal’s neutrality that the continual struggle to overcome the deep-rooted prejudices cultivated in both cultures against one another becomes evident.
While de Waal refrains from making personal attacks and pronounced judgments, it is clear that some of his observations have led him to note that one of the enduring qualities in many Armenian factions today, is the resilience with which many individuals within the Armenian diaspora cling to their long standing blood debt they feel is owed to the descendants of those responsible for the Genocide. As de Waal notes, “In the foyer of Turkey’s ministry of foreign affairs in Ankara is large black marble plaque etched with 39 names in gold letters. It is a memorial to “martyrs,” diplomats and members of their families who have been killed while on foreign service. Thirty-one of the names (…) were victims of Armenian assassins. Four of the names are wives of diplomats, and two of them are children.” Like Panian, de Waal denounces the crimes committed by the Young Turks, but unlike Panian, De Waal accounts for and censures atrocities against all peoples. A resistance to the acceptance of Turkey’s policy of erasure toward the Armenian genocide has exacerbated an extremely divisive sense of justice for the victims, leading to descendants perpetrating crimes against Turkish diplomats, and deepening the schism between the two nations. Through close examination of the events, and the tense relations preceding the instigation of the initial actions taken in 1915 against the Armenians, de Waal dispels any ideas that this was the same type of genocide as the Jews were subjected to in Germany during WWII. Citing a quote from one of the genocide’s engineers, Talat Pasha, de Waal includes an instance of Talat stating that the involvement by some Armenians in Russian interests served as provocation for later extreme actions, as quoted in a meeting with US ambassador Henry Morgenthau, “In the first place, they have enriched themselves at the expense of the Turks. In the second place, they are determined to domineer over us and to establish a separate state. In the third place, they have openly encouraged our enemies.” Laying out the complicated history of the events and present day ramifications, such as vigilante justice seekers and ongoing friction between borders, de Waal highlights the persistent complications still issuing forth from nearly one hundred years ago generated out of a tendency to reduce entire cultures into oversimplified and abstract constructs, developed out of a proud cultural identity that will not concede and an inability to see beyond “otherness”.The resilience of the animosity that has been festering between nations paints a picture of the aftermath of a catastrophe that, to this day, its descendants have received no closure for. At times de Waal’s tone can best be described as frustrated. The persistence of both nations in their effrontery to the others’ appeals and inability to overcome prejudgment has culminated in closed borders and sluggish progress in the repairing of diplomatic relations. Turkey’s unwillingness to acknowledge their part in the Armenian Genocide, let alone apologize for it, has left most Armenians feeling the two nations are so diametrically opposed that nothing can ever be accomplished. Recent incidents, such as President Tayyip Erdogan’s faux pas, when he was quoted remarking that a monument by sculptor Mehmet Aksoy, which is intended to symbolize the burgeoning friendship with Armenia and Turkey, is “ucube”, or “very strange and ugly”, do nothing to lessen tensions.
With the resilience of such underlying feelings of contempt still bubbling so close to the surface, despite repeated attempts by groups on both sides, it is not hard to see why de Waal’s chagrin is palpable. Succinctly put by the late Turkish-Armenian Journalist Hrant Dink, “Turks and Armenians and the way they see each other constitute two clinical phases: Armenians with their trauma, Turks with their paranoia (…) it is evident that the ‘Turk” is both the poison and the antidote of the Armenian identity.” de Waal’s overwhelming and thorough research into this, though in some instances reading like a history text in its regurgitation of dates and events, does not end as one. Ending in a general proposition, de Waal suggests that by the Turkish people accepting the term “genocide”, Armenians and Turks can then begin to move past their discordant history into a shared future. This, he postulates, can only be done through increased dialogue through confrontation, however as evidenced by his own meticulous research, this is challenging due to persistent and near fanatical unwillingness to capitulate present in both Armenian and Turkish contingents.
Though different cultural identities, the Armenians and Turkish people share a legacy, which, through continued negotiations and a relinquishing of discriminating and self-promoting historiographies and regulations, can be celebrated rather than erased.
Changing the historiography that has been perpetrated for centuries is key to changing the future relationships of these two nations, as Fatma Müge Göçek explains; “When the current Turkish historiography pertaining to the Anatolian Armenians is analyzed in detail, it is particularly the element of Turkish nationalism that needs to be critically examined and deconstructed. The domination of the ideology (Turkish Nationalism) that has diffused into much of the existing scholarship on Turkey at the moment remains unexamined (…) such histories epistemologically manipulate the role and significance of certain social groups” This resonating theme throughout all of the texts reflects the intrinsic nature of nationalism as born out of an exaggerated pride in one’s cultural identity at the expense of another. In some cases, this sense of community can unite individuals under extreme duress, but a common secondary effect of an “us versus them” mentality is a diminishing and stigmatizing of other groups, “In order to increase our self-image we enhance the status of the group to which we belong (…) We can also increase our self-image by discriminating and holding prejudice views against the out group (the group we don’t belong to)”
In Karnig Panian’s memoir, the loyalty he felt to his Armenian heritage invoked pride, and determination which fueled a resilience to survive and resist the genocidal crusade the Young Turks embarked on against the Armenian people. However, the attempted annihilation of cultural identities perpetrated by the Young Turks, that fundamentally violated the Armenian people’s most basic human rights, and persists in its denial of the genocide, is rooted in similar principles; they are two sides of the same coin. Fatma Müge Göçek’s article analyzes the evolution of denialism through nationalism within the Turkish government, and in laying out the time frames in which the Turkish government has gone from denial, to vague reconciliation efforts and back to denial, Göçek reinforces the argument that has afflicted the advancement of diplomatic relations between Armenia and Turkey: Turkey’s inability to reconcile between national pride and national responsibility.
Whether resulting from a combination of cultural discrimination, splinter groups of Armenians working against Turkish interests, a deep-rooted sense of resentment at the success of many Armenians throughout the Ottoman Empire, or a combination of these components, as suggested by Henry Morgenthau’s recounting of Talat Pasha’s explanation for the actions taken against Armenians, it is only by stepping beyond prejudiced cultural distinctions that future catastrophes can be avoided. Conversations have begun among academics and groups within Armenian and Turkish populations suggesting that, by deposing the ingrained exclusionary attitudes, in favor of an inclusive one, harmony between nations can be achieved. Articles such as Fatma Müge Göçek’s “Reading Genocide: Turkish Historiography on 1915” are integral to formulating an understanding of the societal implications and continuing negative impact which result from a resistance to overcoming differences. Thomas de Waal’s book The Great Catastrophe, also lays out how counterproductive extreme allegiance to national pride over responsibility, and progressive actions takes their toll. Karnig Panian’s Goodbye, Antoura, a one-sided presentation of events that occurred during the genocide, is vital to remember the human element of every culture, despite superficial disparities. Together these texts show a common thread of cultural identity as a complicated and multilayered notion, capable of enabling great acts of resilience and resistance in the face of hardship, on the one hand, and great catastrophes if taken to extremes, on the other.
Work Cited
De Waal, Thomas. Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
“Erdogan Fined for Statue Insult.” BBC News. March 4, 2015. Accessed March 6, 2015. http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-31728741.
Ghafadaryan, Karo.[Ani].Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia. Yerevan: Armenian Academy of Sciences, 1974, vol. 1, pp. 407–412.
McLeod, S. A. (2008). Social Identity Theory. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/social-identity-theory.html
Panian, Karnig. Goodbye, Antoura: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015.
Reid, Dr. James. “Dr. James Reid Discusses Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Armenian Genocide Narratives.” Hye Sharzhoom. May 1, 2005. Accessed March 4, 2015. http://armenianstudies.csufresno.edu.