Kemal, Letters and Campaigns

Well, it just keeps happening. We're nothing if not consistent. A
recent editorial in ”The• ”GreekAmerican• ("Questionable Tactics,"
July 11, 1998) was critical of a letter campaign organized by
Greek Americans to convince actor Antonio Banderas to withdraw
from a British©Turkish film project based on the life of ”•Kemal
Ataturk. The response to the editorial was the usual and very
predictable one. We received a barrage of letters that consisted
of amateur historical texts in a typical martyrological tone,
laying out once again how much Greeks have suffered at the hands
of Ataturk and of Turks generally. We received letters and phone
calls that criticized us for being anti©Greek, for sowing
disunity, and for defending a "monster" comparable to Hitler,
Stalin, Pol Pot and others. We were threatened with a range of
things, from the cancellation of subscriptions to being defamed
in the community ©© "I'll use your names very well," is the exact
quote. Finally, there was the usual paranoid suspicion voiced,
that someone was behind us or that we were in the service of some
dark, anti©Greek power (let's think about that ©© if Ankara or
Skopje or evil Jews or any other real or imagined foe is wasting
its resources and energy to infiltrate the Greek community on
such a micro©level, we really have nothing to worry about). Now
there's apparently a signature campaign being conducted against
the paper ©© populist hysteria at its most surreal.
It's clear that many of those that responded had not even read
the editorial”•. In the first place, the piece was not a defense of
Ataturk. It emphasized quite precisely all the reasons that
Ataturk is a politically and ideologically problematic figure and
why his legacy to modern Turkey is also problematic. What the
editorial did object to was the tone and attitude of the letter
campaign, and that for several reasons.
The primary objection was to a prevalent way of treating our past
that the campaign typifies, especially in regards to Turkey. The
history lessons we received (sometimes it seems we're all
historians since the Macedonian issue) were redundant and
unnecessary. At no point did the editorial or ”The GreekAmerican•
deny that huge numbers of Anatolian Greeks were killed in the
conflicts of the first decades of this century ©© yes, many by
Kemal's forces. Nor did it deny that an even larger number of
Armenians were killed, in a probably more systematic manner that
does have huge repercussions for our century ©© though we should
be ”extremely •careful about using certain terms lightly and making
irresponsible comparisons between certain historical tragedies.
The Asia Minor "catastrophe" was not only real, it was the single
most calamitous event in modern Greek history. It displaced some
of the most dynamic parts of the Greek people out of lands of
enormous historical and cultural significance, which they had
inhabited on and off for millennia. But the only way to give that
event and its victims their due respect, and understand it in a
way that'll prevent the repetition of similar episodes, is to see
it as part of a larger historical process. That process is the
break up of the Ottoman Empire, a state of which Greeks were an
organic part ©© second©class subjects in certain ways, withÜj     Üprivileged access to power in others. That break up was effected
by the forces of modern nationalism, which holds that ethnicity
and state boundaries have to be coterminous, no matter how
enormous the human cost of making them so. Almost everyone on all
sides of the conflict held that belief and acted accordingly. It
was a long, protracted, painful process that involved
unimaginable reciprocal violence ©© a 'bad divorce' that is still
not over (Yugoslavia), and that has caused the death and
displacement of millions ©© Christian and Muslim. It is useful to
examine the details of the process' brutality. There were
qualitative and quantitative differences in that brutality, and
studying comparative extent and methods is not irrelevant for
what teaches us about political behavior. But if we're looking
for understanding of events of such magnitude, and not villains
for narrative's sake, we have to look at larger ideological
frameworks.
Psychologists John Mack and Rita Rogers have suggested that
"historical hurts are transmitted from generation to generation
and are thus kept alive to generate new situations of continued
rancor." This is the process that the letter campaign serves. It
does not serve the cause, as it claims, of understanding ©© or of
criticism, for that matter ©© of either the past or of Ataturk.
Instead of looking at the larger dimensions of both the person
and the events, it went for the usual anti©Turkish discourse, a
discourse that has to be abandoned for the plain reason that it's
simplistic and racist, and because it complicates a relationship
that needs all the help it can get. This is not hip relativism or
”Mes©stou©Vosporou©ta©Stena• sentimentality. It's a blueprint for a
more productive way for Greeks and Turks to talk about their
shared past, a way that will replace the narcissistic rehashing
of our victimhood and that will stop alienating at least those
Turks who are also interested in more functional directions for
our ©© again, of necessity, ”shared• ©© future.
A further reason for objecting to the Banderas letter campaign
has to do with our image in the larger world. During the recent
war in the former Yugoslavia, Western observers did their best to
make the region look like a primitive backwater, and to reduce
the complex geopolitics of the conflict to inscrutable ethnic
hatreds that no busy citizen of the West should even bother
trying to understand. When we ourselves use a dehumanizing
language of mythic, evil enemies and eternal warring, we open
ourselves up to precisely that same stereotype. Then even our
legitimate concerns about Turkey's foreign policy and internal
political culture get stuffed into the 'ancient tribal hatreds'
rubric and ignored.
The final point is the accusation that we've done damage to the
”homogeneiako• agenda. To attack a dissenting voice by immediately
accusing it of subversion is the oldest way to impose mediocrity
and group©think. Encouraging open, plural discussion, not using
enemies to enforce a party line, is the most fertile way for any
culture to go. And it's the only way to transcend the borders of
our parochialness ©© as important as some of us might feel within
those borders ©© and speak to the rest of the world. ”The
GreekAmerican• intends to foster such discussion in any way    
<BR>possible, and the paper's editorial staff ”•resents the implication
or straight out accusation that that's anti©Greek.
Anyone who wants to write a letter of apology to ”The
GreekAmerican• knows where to find us.