‘Death Wells’ and the Suppression of Truth

All suppressed truths become poisonous.
— Friedrich Nietzsche in his Thus Spoke Zarathustra

The Armenian Weekly
April 2009 Magazine

Suppressed truth poisons the suppressor; it also poisons those who are deprived of the knowledge of the truth. Not only that, but suppressed truth poisons the entire environment in which both the suppressor and those who are subjected to that suppression live. So, it poisons everything.

Nearly a century after the genocide of the Armenians and Assyrians/Syriacs, as well as other Christian peoples of Asia Minor, Turkey is still being poisoned by the suppression of the truth. And because the suppressed truth concerns a crime, because the suppressors are those in power, and because those deprived of the truth are the whole nation, it is the very future of that nation that is also poisoned.

If you are a ruler suppressing a truth, you have to suppress those who seek the truth as well. The poison feeds you with self-glorification in order to evade guilt, hatred to justify your lying, and cruelty to sustain the lie at all costs.

Bits of truth may be known to some of the people you rule. So you either have to make them join your self-deception—by offering excuses for the crime you committed to persuade them that there was no other choice—or declare them traitors and carry on an endless war against those who resist persuasion.

But people tend to be persuaded. In Turkey, the great majority of people sincerely believe that if it is a question of life or death for the “fatherland,” then the state machinery may rightfully resort to unlawful methods—that the so-called “national interests” justify all means. This is how the suppressed truth and the methods of that suppression poison minds, generation after generation; and how in the referendum two years after the military takeover of 1980, 92 percent of the voters endorsed the new constitution legitimizing the military dictatorship and elected the leader of the coup, Kenan Evren, as president. 

Very recently, excavations began in Silopi, Sirnak (at the facilities of Turkey’s national pipeline corporation, Botas) to investigate allegations that in the 1990’s the bodies of those who went missing while under the custody of security forces had been dumped there. So far, some bones, hair, and pieces of clothing have been found—what was left after the clean-up—and sent to a forensic laboratory for analysis. The excavations continued in Cizre, again a district of Sirnak. In connection with the findings, several people were arrested, including a colonel, which is a very extraordinary case in Turkey.

Sirnak is one of the places that has suffered the most from the suspension of rule of law for the sake of the “unity of Turkey.”

And it is the same place where, 94 years ago, masses of mostly Assyrians/Syriacs, but Armenians as well, though in smaller number, were either massacred outright or driven on foot to the mountains, where death was certain as a result of starvation, destitution, and exposure to harsh weather without any shelter. This was what happened in many places to the Armenians throughout Asia Minor during that reign of terror.

Now the “death wells” represent the continuation of the bloodshed and suppressed truths. After 94 years there are still unburied dead bodies to be searched through excavations.

There is a case in Turkey, popularly known as the Ergenekon case, where suspects of plotting in favor of a military coup are being tried. The defendants include ultra-nationalist retired military officials such as Veli Kucuk, whom Hrant Dink had pointed out as a threat to his life, and activists such as Kemal Kerincsiz, a leading figure in violent public protests against people contradicting anti-Armenian sentiments.

However, the investigation seems to focus more on the illegal organizations acting against the government than on the crimes committed in the Kurdish provinces in the southeast—which represents the direct legacy of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide.

Besides, to a great extent we owe this breakthrough in the prosecution of criminals within the state machinery to the AKP Islamist government’s struggle for survival in the face of the military’s longstanding power—which has as its ideological foundations authoritarian, anti-democratic, and racist secularism. This struggle between two powers, neither of which can have anything to do with the ideals of a really pluralistic way of life, leaves true dissidents in a position of continuously wavering between supporting the AK Party’s steps for relative transparency and resolutely opposing its display of typical Turkish-Islamic synthesis ideology. So, within the context of the Ergenekon case, although every little step to throw light on the antidemocratic, ultra-nationalist, and militaristic schemes in Turkey deserves full support, there is still very little to rejoice.

That may sound overly pessimistic, but as long as Turkey goes on suppressing the truth, no real progress can be made.

The genocide of the Armenians and Assyrians in 1915 in the Ottoman Empire is the foremost truth that should be acknowledged; and it will be the key for the denial, for the renouncement of a system, that presupposes and imposes presupposition of this country to be the homeland of Sunni Turks only. However, in reality, it’s simultaneously the other way round: As long as this system prevails, no acknowledgement of genocide is possible. Here we reach a point representing all the complexity and potentiality of life—a point where any progress towards shaking the ideological and ontological foundations of the system will be a step forward in the long, stumbling process of approaching the acknowledgement of the genocide by the state and by the Turkish public.

Yes, “All suppressed truths become poisonous,” said Nietzsche many, many years ago, but he continued: “—And let everything break up—which can be broken up by our truths! Many a house is still to be built!”

This is the only way that will bring justice to our lives—I mean recognizing the damage done and making amends; I mean honoring the memory of the victims and at least try to share the unsharable pain inflicted on the grandchildren of the victims; I mean displaying a will, a willingness, a readiness to conceive the unconceivable catastrophe that in 1915 fell upon the most talented, most skilled, most enlightened, and most industrious nation in Asia Minor.

Ayse Gunaysu

Ayse Gunaysu

Ayse Gunaysu is a professional translator, human rights advocate, and feminist. She has been a member of the Committee Against Racism and Discrimination of the Human Rights Association of Turkey (Istanbul branch) since 1995, and is a columnist for Ozgur Gundem. Since 2008, she writes a column titled "Letters from Istanbul," for the Armenian Weekly.

6 Comments

  1. I don’t think any use in defending the Turks here in an Armenian biased online publication. Talking about truth, but truth cannot be farther than you state here on your essay. If the governing leaders did not have the obligation to justify the sacrifices for the greater good of a nation where would we all be today. You must understand it is not a perfect world we live in. To your example there are over two dozen examples within the last 50 years, and a few present events in progress. One has to ask why the US killings of 20,000 innocent civilians in Iraq recently, Armenian killings of 60,000 people of Azerbaijan in early 90’s doesn’t constitute to a genocide. How about Rwanda, Morocco, Darfur etc. What about all the Turks who were slained by the Armenians and Greeks, and yet how about the assassination of Turkish Officials, their wives and kids by the Armenian Terrorists in 38 cities and 21 countries worldwide, and how about 40,000 Turks who got killed by the Kurds last 25 years. At one point I really did feel for the people of Armenia and there is nothing wrong with you trying to get recognition for so-called genocide, but the deceptive, back stabbing way you people are doing it really started to work against you. This look at me, please pity me and, help me attitude, trying to get unrelated third fourth and fifth parties involved is not working. So stop wasting your countries tax dollars and start feeding your people. One has to ask, Why would Turkey would be the only country to acknowledge and face their past. Who is out there setting an example?

  2. OCDevin — 60,000 in early ’90s Azerbaijan? Really? Can I ask where you got that figure from?

    Otherwise, there is truth in what you are saying, and I agree that Armenians who often play the victim, are at many times the victimizer. Observe Arpi Haroutounian’s insulting comment, for example.

  3. Heaven forbid an Armenian “insult” a turk. Yeah, we’re victimizers. Wake up Hagop.

  4. And yet Nazi Germany had to be defeated and destroyed militarily and the racist ideological and educational underpinnings of the Nazi state dismantled and wiped out through a long process of de-Nazification, all of which WAS IMPOSED. And it was imposed from OUSIDE. It is highly unlikely that Nazi Germany would have been able or willing to reform itself, even partially. The assasination attempt on Hitler and a few of  his top Nazi party leaders in early 1944 could have been the catalyst for some radical changes but without the Allied military pressure (pounding the system to smitherins) it would have petered out into another variant of racist Nazism. Ironically we could well have been witnessing official Nazi-German history, for example denying the Holocaust and even insisting that “the Jewish traitors tried to stab us Germans in the back… etc. etc.”!
    In other words exactly what we have in Turkey vis-a-vis the denial of the Armenian Genocide and the manufacture of fantesy history in general, based on racist ideology of Turkism. The squabbles the various sections (AKP Islamists  v CHP and other Kemalist Nationalist) are having with each other in present day Turkey are essentially for the PRESERVATION of the fundamentals of the system not for its radical democratic reform towards European/international civilised values. This has been consistent despite some ups and downs, a coup here and a coup there, over the past eight or so decades: Turkey for Turks underpinned by the racist nationalist ideology of Turkism. And this has been due to the failure of Allied intervention or rather its abortion before it achieved its results, due to the trechery of certain Allied countries and loss of nerve to finish the job of dismantling of the Ottoman state, initiated by the Ataturk-Stalin pact which helped to revive the former’s nationalist movement in Ankara, attracting all the former Young Turk criminals round him. So a state that was prostate and ready for dismantlement (the defeated Ottoman government after the Modros treaty and the occupation of Istanbul by he British and the French in Nov 1918) for all the crimes that it had committed against millions of its Christian population – Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, etc. – ended up revived and restated in Ankara under Ataturk’s leadership.
    Its racist Turkist ideology which has been constant and consitent must be destroyed through joint international intervention by EU, US and Russia, militarily, if necessary. It is incapable of reforming itself – as for example the post by OCDEVIN and millions of other victims of official racist history and ideology proves beyond any reasonable doubt.

  5. And yet Nazi Germany had to be defeated and destroyed militarily and the racist ideological and educational underpinnings of the Nazi state dismantled and wiped out through a long process of de-Nazification, all of which WAS IMPOSED. And it was imposed from OUSIDE. It is highly unlikely that Nazi Germany would have been able or willing to reform itself, even partially. The assassination attempt on Hitler and a few of  his top Nazi party leaders in early 1944 could have been the catalyst for some radical changes but without the Allied military pressure (pounding the system to smithereens) it would have petered out into another variant of racist Nazism. Ironically today we could well have been witnessing official Nazi-German history, for example denying the Holocaust and even insisting that “the Jewish traitors tried to stab us Germans in the back… etc. etc.”!
    In other words exactly what we have in Turkey vis-a-vis the denial of the Armenian Genocide, and the manufacture of fantasy history in general, based on the racist ideology of Turkism. The squabbles the various sections (AKP Islamists  v CHP and other Kemalist Nationalist) are having with each other in present day Turkey are essentially for the PRESERVATION of the fundamentals of the system not for its radical democratic reform towards European/international civilised values. This has been consistent despite some ups and downs, a coup here and a coup there, over the past eight or so decades: Turkey for Turks underpinned by the racist nationalist ideology of Turkism. And this has been due to the failure of Allied intervention or rather its abortion before it had achieved its results (1918-23), due to the treachery of certain Allied countries and loss of nerve to finish the job of dismantling of the rotten Ottoman state, first and foremost by the Ataturk-Stalin pact which helped to revive the nationalist movement in Ankara, attracting all the former Young Turk criminals round Mustafa Kemal. So a state that was prostrate and ready for dismantlement (the defeated Ottoman state after the Mudros Treaty and the occupation of Istanbul by the British and French forces in Nov 1918) for all the crimes that it had committed against millions of its Christian population – Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, etc. – ended up revived and restated in Ankara under Ataturk’s leadership.
    Its racist Turkist ideology which has been constant and consistent must be destroyed through joint international intervention by EU, US and Russia, militarily if necessary. It is incapable of reforming itself – as for example the post by OCDEVIN and millions of other victims of official racist history and ideology proves beyond any reasonable doubt.

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