Down in Turkey Not Too Far Away; Lecture by Margaret Lavinia (Fall 07)

by Sarin Kodchian

“Down in Turkey Far Away,” a lecture sponsored by the UCLA Department of History, Armenian Studies Program, and the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR), took place on November 2.

German Historian Margaret Lavinia Anderson of University of California, Berkeley, shared her views on human rights, including the German response to the Armenian genocides of the 19th century.

Anderson’s title, “Down in Turkey, Far Away”, was inspired by a scene in one of her favorite books, Gurtis Faust’s Easter Stroll. Characters struggle to establish a moral connection and acquire a sense of obligation for someone they will never see, which correlates to the Armenian victims of massacre in Ottoman Turkey.

This obligation to “alleviate distant suffering” through commitment and action is the same contemporary issue facing human rights groups today, according to Anderson. The earliest attempts in Germany to expand moral commitment, inspired by cultural relativism and the sense of identifying with one’s oriental counterpart, was following the death of over 200,000 Armenians throughout the Ottoman Empire from 1895-1896.

The efforts of Germans to stop the massacres and help survivors first required them to establish an oriental counterpart that Germans could identify with. However, as explained in the lecture, the discourse of advocacy opened opportunities for a counter discourse, as Turkey’s advocates succeeded in shifting sympathy from Armenian victims of massacre to the perpetrators, the Ottoman Turks.

Switzerland depicted Armenians as a small mountain people surrounded by largepowers (much like themselves), and the English speaking world described Armenians as “Carriers of Progress;” an intellectual and civil people who stood out especially from the Muslim, Arab world.

Meanwhile in Germany, social democrats remained detached seeing as they “did not have a dog in the fight.” The consensus was that European standards of immorality were “unsuitable” to judge Turkish relations, seeing that they were so different from the Western world and that history should be allowed to run its course, free of any distorted judgments.

Germany began surreptitious support for the Armenians, as Born Again Evangelicals committed to missionary activities in anticipation of Christ’s second coming.

At the time, Germany was in turmoil over the relationship between religion and state. The Bible Christian’s vision of Armenians stirred bitter observation on the left, as it was difficult to separate the victims from the sympathizers, their current enemy in Germany’s struggle.

For every fact presented on behalf of the Armenian genocides, there was a myriad of twisted words and slanderous campaigns against them. The outcry for the mass killings was seen as a double standard manipulated by the Christians, and was silenced.

A malicious strategy was adopted by the Turkish counter campaign which attacked pro-Armenians, celebrated the Turks and defamed the Armenian character. “Those Christians are at it again...” The Armenian campaign was being called a crusade, and this time Turks were presented as the victims.

This manipulative twist on the past and present struggles between Muslims and Christians turned out to be rhetorically brilliant; as the theme of self-righteous, self-serving Christians tapped into the deepest and long running issue in Germany. The Turks were conceived to be a people of tolerance, a cultured folk, a civilized people, and Abdul Hammid, the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, the guiding light in a social reconnaissance. As for the Armenians, they were characterized as being rebels and tools.

What was said of the hundreds of thousands of slaughtered Armenians? It was a well deserved misfortune.

Even until 2004, the character of all Armenians was exploited through this mass propaganda machine. Siding with the Turks was in fashion as the Fez was worn by the Berlin Bourgeois.

In the end we hope the conscious will prevail, but that presumption is overshadowed by the cynical reality that the idea of humanity alone is no basis for action. Anderson points out that we like to think of the good for all humanity, when in reality humanity is defined by cultures and colors.

“Love thy neighbor” is a commandment most live by, but Anderson
reminds us that the question of “who in fact is my neighbor?” Mobilization of action is simply a preference, a hypocrisy, a choice of one good over another: the preference of certain evils over others.