SAYING THE TRUTH ABOUT THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE MADE TURKISH WRITER ONE OF THE WORLD'S MOST INFLUENTIAL May 9, 2006 By Appo K. Jabarian Executive Publisher/Managing Editor USA Armenian Life Magazine Hye Kiank Armenian Weekly TIME Magazine recently published a special issue featuring the world's 100 most influential individuals. TIME included a Turkish writer who has gained substantially more popularity simply because he dared to raise the Armenian Genocide issue in Turkey and elsewhere. As a result, the Armenian Cause gained new sympathizers in the international arena. The world-famous Turkish novelist and writer Orhan Pamuk made history when in February 2005, during an interview with Das Bild Swiss Magazine, courageously stated: "Thirty thousand Kurds and one million Armenians were killed in these lands (Turkish-Occupied Armenia)." Ever since he uttered these words, life ceased being the same for Pamuk. Immediately after his statement on the Armenian genocide, Pamuk was subjected to legal harassment by the denialist Turkish leadership. He faced imprisonment for having "denigrated" Turkey and Turkishness. The case was eventually dismissed. TIME staff writer Howard Chua-Eoan wrote: "Pamuk, already the most famous author in contemporary Turkey (Snow; The Black Book), became a global cause célèbre early last year after he pointedly criticized his country's all-too-willful historical blind spots: the genocide of Armenians in 1915 by the Turkish military and a similar suppression of the country's Kurdish minority. ... Human-rights organizations and writers' unions around the world lined up in Pamuk's support even as Turkish 'patriots' lobbied for punishing him to the full extent of Turkish law—up to three years in prison. The charges against Pamuk were dropped, officially because of a technicality but perhaps because of Ankara's impending talks on Turkey's admission to the European Union, an impossibly sensitive discussion that touches on money, ethnicity, history, modernity, Islam and secularism. In the end, Pamuk's name has become even more recognized and his words even more influential. In the confrontation of rock-hard reality and paper-thin artistry, sometimes, as in the children's game, paper overcomes stone." Pamuk's righteous stand vis-a-vis the Armenian Cause is an important part of a growing movement in Turkey that seeks recognize the dark chapters of a turbulent history that was systematically erased from the school textbooks for over 90 years. Succeeding denialist Turkish governments made the suppression of the Armenian Genocide issue a centerpiece of its fiscal activities. According to several sources, Turkey continues to allocate a sizeable chunk of its annual budget to its desperate efforts to discredit the facts of the Armenian Genocide. By doing so, the denialist Turkish leaders are unwittingly helping the Armenian Cause. They are further fueling the Turkish public discussion of the genocide issue. And by harassing writers like Pamuk for having brought up the genocide issue, the denialist Turks are enhancing his already developed popularity. In turn, individuals like Pamuk help the Turkish public break away from negative effects of the government-sponsored propaganda to suppress the truth. Concerning the Turkish automatic reaction to the Armenian Genocide, Turks may be categorized into three distinct groups: - Group A: Turks who have been -and continue to be- misinformed about the facts of the Turkish history chapters regarding the Armenian genocide of 1915-1923 at the hands of their ancestors; - Group B: Turks who know the truth about the veracity of the Armenian Genocide, yet knowingly choose to deny it for fear of being held liable on state level for financial and territorial compensations to the Armenians. - Group C: Turks who have been misinformed about the facts of the Turkish history of 1915-1923 and have discovered the truth, demonstrate righteousness and courage by acknowledging the veracity of the Armenian Genocide; According to various reliable sources, as the genocide-related public discussion in Turkey evolves, the first and the second groups continue loosing ground in favor of the third group. No one knows for sure the intensity and the speed of the exodus from the ranks of the misinformed and the denialists. However, the common wisdom says it's not a question of "if", but a matter of "when" the justice will be served by way of honest recognition of the Armenian Genocide and rendering of financial and territorial restitution to the Armenians by Turkey. Otherwise, no matter how long more the denialists come up with new ploys to hijack the just Cause of the Armenians, the title of land ownership of the presently Turkish-occupied Western Armenian lands will continue to be clouded by the innocent blood of the one and one half million Armenian victims.

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