Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation

Recent weeks have seen ethnic strife between repatriated Crimean Tatars and Slavs in Crimea, an autonomous republic in Ukraine, reach a fever pitch. The Black Sea peninsula is the ancestral homeland of the Crimean Tatars, who were deported en masse to Central Asia by Stalin in 1944 for alleged collaboration with Nazi occupiers in World War II. As I explained in a previous post – which can be found here: http://www.salzburgseminar.org/ihjr/blog/index.cfm?mode=day&day=14&month=6&year=2007 – the notion that the Crimean Tatars were wrongly accused of treason and wrongly oppressed for decades has not seemed to reach some Ukrainians and Russians in Crimea. Today, the descendents of the Crimean Tatar deportees who have returned to the peninsula encounter consistent and concerted resistance from local authorities in their efforts to reclaim land, property, and respect. Many have been left with no other choice than to squat on land tracts and build settlements for their families.

On November 1, a makeshift brigade of so-called Sevastopol' Cossacks – nothing less than a vigilante group – stormed one such settlement in the capital Simferopol', destroying houses and reportedly beating women and children. When Berkut (Golden Eagle) special forces under the control of the Crimean directorate of the Ministry of the Interior arrived at the scene, they allegedly joined in on the destruction instead of protecting the vulnerable. On November 6, a secret deployment of approximately 1,000 Sokol (Falcon) and Berkut (Golden eagle) forces raided the plateau of Ai-Petri, a popular tourist site near Yalta on Crimea's southern shore, in order to carry out a court order to demolish seven cafés illegally built by Crimean Tatars. (The original court order called for the demolition of only one café; this number increased to seven apparently after the fact.) The raid was marked by violence at the hands of the Berkuty, video footage of which can be seen here: http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/67257.html. Lying down in front of bulldozers – in the spirit of nonviolent resistance that has characterized their movement for decades – Crimean Tatar men can be heard yelling that they are ready to die in defense of their property.

There is a cold economic side to these events: the property on the Ai-Petri plateau is a veritable gold mine for developers. But they nevertheless reek badly of ethnic discrimination: the cafés and stores built there by Slavs – likely outside the law, to varying degrees – were untouched and unaffected by the court order and the resulting Berkut raid.

This strife shows little signs of abating any time soon. As the video footage sadly demonstrates, this is an issue of a pacific minority seeking justice against an aggressive local state apparatus avoiding it at any cost. What is our role in such a scenario?

While Robert Musil may have written that “the most remarkable thing about monuments is that no one notices them,” this is not the case during times of political unrest or when there is a perceived (or desired) rupture in historical time. The creation (or destruction) of memorials and monuments is always intimately bound up in power relations, and battles over history, identity, and authority are often played out in the memorial landscape of a country.

This is the case that we are currently seeing in Estonia. A Soviet-era World War II memorial has been the symbolic source of diplomatic tensions between Estonia and Russia for months. The attempted removal of this memorial just over a month ago sparked violent protests on the streets that killed at least one person and severely disrupted diplomatic relations between Estonia and Russia. Estonia gained independence from Russia in 1991 and has been a member of both NATO and the EU since 2004. The monument was erected by Russians in 1947 to commemorate the end of World War II and Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany. The desire to remove the monument was, as the New York Times reported, seen by Russia and Estonians of Russian descent as blasphemous and even tantamount to the glorification of Nazism.

Estonia’s increasing integration into the EU and alignment with Western Europe and also the proposed American missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic has allowed Russia to use “the fate of the monument …as a proxy for broader grievances with the United States and NATO generally.” (New York Times April 28). As Russia’s parliament called for the severing of relations or the imposition of sanctions on Estonia, thousands of people began launching what is now being called the first full cyber war on Estonia. (New York Times article May 29th) The attacks began on April 26 and have since grown in intensity. Well-organized plans for attacks on May 9th, Russians “Victory Day” (celebrating the end of World War II) were carried out, increasing internet traffic flow in Estonia to over 1000 times its normal rate and shutting down government and financial sites. While the attacks have come from as far as the US and Vietnam, it is widely believed in Estonia to be an assault by the Russian government.

The political appropriations of memorials and commemorative dates show how intimately memorials are tied to power relations and the symbolic presentation of a country’s national narrative (even in this case, where the memorial stands in a different country). Why is this particular monument the source of such controversy? Internal debates, such as the Russian-speaking ethnic minorities’ place in Estonia certainly play a role. On another scale, it surely has a lot to do with Russia’s intention to assert what as seen as its moral victory in World War II and also justify their long-time presence in their former territory. Many Estonians wish to symbolically sever their country’s ties with its former occupier as they move ever closer to the New Europe. One of the most time-honored ways of doing this is to dismantle memorial sites belonging to the old regime.

This particular case makes strikingly evident the fact that the memory and narratives of both the Second World War and the Cold War still carry enormous significance in the politics of history and memorialization today.

Report from May 29, 2007: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/technology/29estonia.html?pagewanted=1&hp

An article appeared recently in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung (15 March 2007) on the occasion of German Chancellor Andrea Merkel’s planned visit to Poland and in light of the increasing tension between the two countries regarding historical issues. The author of this article, a professor of Polish and Ukrainian studies at the European University Viadrina, wrote: “For many years, misunderstandings and accusations have plagued the relationship between Germany and Poland…” The effects of these misunderstandings and accusations function on a number of levels, from high politics to handball matches (as was the example in the article). While it is of course important to combat problems on all levels (including dispelling simple myths and stereotypes about Polish car thieves) in order to help normalize relations between Germans and Poles, there are very serious historical issues which need to be confronted if the long and arduous process of reconciliation begun in the nineties between the two countries is to continue.

The author of the article feels that at this point the escalating situation threatens not only the political relationship between Germany and Poland, but also the future of EU integration and the creation of a European Constitution as well. The fact that many of the new member states in the European Union are not only seen but are also treated as “second class citizens” just adds fuel to the still-smoldering embers that remain in the ashes of World War II – causing “old” problems to flare in the face of new ones. But this is not surprising as many scholars have long argued that the debates over history and memory between the old member states of the EU and the acceding ones needed to be thoroughly played out before the new members joined the Union where the “fraternal atmosphere” of the bodies of the EU would make it more difficult to negotiate these histories. The illusion that these problems would somehow dissipate with increasing European integration has proven false. Quite to the contrary, the “old” issues seem not to be fading with the passing of time, but to be taking on new forms and growing in importance.

In both Germany and Poland, (as well as elsewhere in Europe) historical themes are being used as ammunition in political campaigns, bringing battles of history and memory into the arena of politics where contentious issues have an even greater chance of being distorted and manipulated to serve political purposes. A politician’s flippant use of past instances of injustice or violence as accusatory and pejorative cannon fodder leads only to the proliferation of many of the same myths historians and other academics have long been trying to dispel. Not only are these myths being perpetuated by the politicians, but political rallying cries for confessions of guilt for past crimes obscure the fact that so many of these past crimes have been and are currently being dealt with by academics in the respective country. The author of the article points out for example that many German politicians are currently calling on Poland to admit the unjust way the ethnic Germans were expelled from Poland even though Polish historians have long been working under this premise. This particular issue is much too complex to discuss here, but its presence in political discourse and the discussion about Polish-German relations in general shows the ever-increasing gap between the academic and political realms when it comes to the “shared histories” of countries in Europe today.

An interesting article in the New York Times of May 5, 2006, entitled, "In French Bid, Immigrant’s Son Battles Reputation as Anti-Immigrant," sheds light on one of the more polarizing figures of immigration in France. Nicolas Sarkozy, who is running for president this term has had a track record of stern, conservative political motions (a la Rudy Giuliani), and was universally reviled--and was an outright instigator of the riots that followed--by immigrant communities in France last year when he labeled the immigrants who were causing problems in the outskirts of the city "scum."

It's certainly easy to dislike Sarkozy.

But this article does well to point out that Sarkozy himself is an immigrant, and that his gestures toward the immigrant communities have not been as hard-line conservative as they immediately appear. The article states: "His record includes a number of efforts to improve the status of members of the country’s minorities, most of whom are Muslim. He encouraged the creation of the French Council of the Muslim Faith, which gave Islam a voice in France. He appointed the first prefect in France who is both foreign-born and Muslim. He has even argued for relaxing rules that restrict government support for building mosques." He even does something that his Socialist opponent does not: he supports affirmative action.

This record notwithstanding, immigrants have promised to riot in the streets if Sarkozy is elected. There is an extremely tenuous balance in France between Muslims and Christians, and it is one that is not made easier by the quick-tempered reactions by anyone who even associates passingly with either side. But it does make one wonder, too, how productive it would be for a man who--in spite of all the good he may want to do--has the potential to make judgments quickly, forcefully and without deliberation. Even if he himself at some level identifies with them. One thing is sure: France wants a new direction. The question is how much and how quickly--and this is exactly what we should be concerned about.

One of the positive effects of the growing tendency toward the universalization of Holocaust themes is the increasing recognition of other injustices based on racism, xenophobia and civil rights abuses. For example, it seems that it has recently become difficult to speak of the historical injustices committed against Jews in Germany without in the same breath also recognizing contemporary injustices committed against minorities, particularly Turks, in Germany today. However, when this equation is flipped – and the specter of the Jewish past in Germany is evoked as political and moral capital to be used to fight contemporary injustice against minority groups in Germany today – it becomes much more problematic. While these connections are certainly more imagined than historical, they are nonetheless shaping the nature of Turkish-Jewish relations in Germany (and abroad) as well as affecting the politics of integration and inclusion in Germany. While a growing awareness of contemporary injustice is of course something positive, when certain parallels are drawn between the situation of the Jews in Germany in the past and the Turks in Germany in more recent years, tensions rise and the potential for political and emotional fallout becomes high.

As one of the few scholars who work on the (albeit limited) interactions between Turks and Jews in Germany, Jeffrey M. Peck raises many of the complex issues regarding these groups in his recently published book Being Jewish In the New Germany (2006). In the chapter specifically covering this topic he writes: “In fact, to many Germans, the Turks have become ‘the new Jews’” (p.90). He then explores what this statement means through a discussion of the parallels and complexities of the Turkish-Jewish, Turkish-German, and German-Jewish relationships in Germany. While Peck for the most part objectively explores these relationships from historical and sociological perspectives, it is obvious that as the “Turkish Question” and the “Jewish Question” in Germany become more intimately intertwined in academic scholarship and popular media, problems arise that are potentially damaging to either or both groups. A recent example of a counter-productive coupling of the “Turkish/Jewish Questions” was at the otherwise productive conference entitled “Immigration and Cultural Exchange – German Jewish Presences in the U.S. and Post Cold War Germany” sponsored jointly by NYU and the Leo Baeck Institute (March 25-27, 2007).

The final panel of the conference was entitled “Jewish, Turkish, German: Cross-Cultural Perspectives” and was intended to be a forum to expand the themes present in the conference to encompass another minority group and to foster collaboration between people working on issues of immigration and integration in Europe and the United States. The panel was selected and chaired by Almut Wieland-Karimi from the Fredrich Ebert Foundation and included the journalist Cem Sey, anthropologist Koser Akcapar, and sociologists Göçe Yurdakul and Michael Bodemann. Each speaker presented, along with his or her own intended topic, many of the difficulties of attempting to broach this topic, especially in such a homogenous forum.

Most of the scholars on the panel quickly admitted that they “knew absolutely nothing about Jews” before being invited to the conference, and were strained to quickly find some sort of connection to talk about; an issue which led to bizarre (and for many members of the mostly Jewish audience offensive) historical and contemporary comparisons between Turks and Jews. These ranged from the direct comparison of the Turkish situation in Germany today to that of the Jews in 1938, to declarations of current Turkish solidarity with Jews because “the Jews are being attacked by Palestinian terrorists while the Turks are being attacked by Kurdish terrorists” as well as many other less-than-academic comments. The Turkish-Armenian issue was also never mentioned, which caused some members of the audience to immediately discredit the speakers and the other issues that had been raised. A full discussion of the panel is not possible here, but it is worth mentioning that the thread that seemed to run through each lecture was how the Turkish community in Germany directly instrumentalizes the Holocaust and the “shared Jewish-Turkish narrative of injustice” to achieve political goals – a blatantly taboo subject for most members of the audience but a candid declaration by the speakers.

The nature of this forum seemed to force the ahistorical comparison of victimhood and suffering of two very different groups, something Peck explicitly warns against in his book. In the context of the Turkish trend to compare the violent acts committed against Turks in Germany between 1989 and 1992 with Kristallnacht (and even the entire Holocaust) Peck wrote simply, “When comparisons are taken out of context, they threaten to overshadow the injustices of both historical epochs.” (p.105). This threat became a reality during this final panel of the conference. If it had been done differently, it could have been the perfect platform to increase the highly prestigious audience’s awareness of the difficult situation for Turks currently living in Germany. It could have created the unique opportunity to explore potential routes of cooperation in scholarship and/or society between Turks and Jews. It could have possibly even begun to forge some sort of solidarity between the American and German Jews (and other scholars and students present) and the Turks who are currently working on difficult historical and contemporary issues in a post-9-11 atmosphere that weighs so heavily on Jewish–Muslim (and American-Muslim) relations in general and is often hostile to collaboration and scholarship on such subjects. Instead, it proved the danger inherent in attempts to instrumentalize shared narratives of injustice, suffering, and victimhood instead of proving the possibilities that could come from such attempts.

This week marks the 60th anniversary of Akcja “Wisla” (Operation “Vistula”), the Polish Army’s forced resettlement of the Ukrainian, Boiko, and Lemko peoples (numbering nearly 150,000) from southeastern Poland to the so-called “Ziemie Odzyskane” (“Recovered Territories”) of northwestern Poland after World War II. While primarily intended to suppress the Ukraïns'ka Povstans'ka Armiia (Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA), which was waging war with the Polish communist government in 1947, Akcja “Wisla” had the broader aim of subjecting the Ukrainian, Boiko, and Lemko populations to a campaign of assimilation by dispersal. In this respect, as Philipp Ther recently remarked at a presentation at Columbia University, it appears to have been modeled on the Soviet deportations of the Chechens and Crimean Tatars (among many others) to Central Asia.

Like the massacres at Poryck/Pavlivka (where hundreds of Poles were killed at the hands of the UPA in 1943) and at Pawlokoma (where hundreds of Ukrainians were killed at the hands of the Polish Armija Krajowa [Home Army, or AK] in 1945), the legacy of Akcja “Wisla” continues to rouse considerable controversy and emotion among Poles and Ukrainians today. To their credit, both Warsaw and Kyiv have made significant overtures in recent years toward a historical reckoning of these events: in 2002, for example, Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski expressed regret over Akcja “Wisla” and called for its unequivocal condemnation. Yet while such gestures are indicative of healthy bilateral relations between the Polish and Ukrainian governments, it has been recognized that much more work needs to be done to promote reconciliation on the popular level in both countries – particularly in the border regions where memories of the tragedies of the 20th century have been prone to provoke mutual hostility.

Remarkably, a huge step in this direction was made less than two weeks ago, when the UEFA Executive Committee defied predictions and selected Poland and Ukraine as joint hosts of the 2012 European Football Championship. Poles and Ukrainians everywhere rejoiced in the decision, taking to the streets in euphoria and seizing on the occasion to highlight the brighter chapters of their entangled histories. In a month marking a difficult historical milestone, it was truly heartening to see a new, positive one being set for Poland and Ukraine. As Polish Football Association chairman Michal Listkiewicz remarked, “The friendship between our nations has a very long history. This big tournament will be an important milestone in the history of our two Slavic nations.”

A bevy of articles in The Times of London reported today on recent upheaval in Turkey.

One article reports on a number of protests that have sprung up in Turkey as the presidential election draws near. Turks are afraid that there may be a "secret" agenda to overturn Turkey's almost 90-year secular state:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1657904.ece

Two others--reminders of recent news--from November 29, and December 10, 2006, describe Turkey's slow-to-halted entry into the European Union.

Interestingly, 90 percent of Turks practice Sunni Islam, but the Turkish state remains secular--priding itself on what is now almost 90 years of separation between religion and the state. But it will be curious to see what happens as Turkey continues to make a bid to enter into the EU, especially with the recent antagonism toward Islam in Europe. Surely, Turkey won't be rejected for long, as it has one of the fastest growing economies in Europe. However, it is precisely over the issue of the (refused) trade with Cyprus that Turkey's application for entry into the EU has halted.

What to watch for in the next months and years will be the tension that develops as Turkey grows into one of Europe's economic superpowers, while remaining overwhelmingly Muslim, and with its continuing debate over the issue of Cyprus, and Turkey's rejection from the EU. (Turkey refuses to recognize Cyprus, while Cyprus itself has already gained entry into the EU.) We should all remain highly aware of the clash of both the religious, historic and economic factors between Turkey and the rest of Europe--and especially alert toward the attitudes of the European leadership with regards to Turkey and Cyprus as Turkey continues to apply for entry into the EU.

The Netherlands has recently stirred the immigration debate by pondering a ban on wearing the burqa in public. A New York Times article states that,“The government has raised the fear that a terrorist might wear such a garment to move beyond security checks and carry out an attack” (NY Times, “Dutch Consider Ban on Burqas in Public, Nov. 17, 2006). However, the article goes on to say that, “About a million Muslims live in the Netherlands, about 6 percent of the population, and only 50 to 100 women regularly wear a burqa here, Muslim groups say, making them a rare sight.” That makes the burqa a relatively small threat to the whole, and one wonders how essential it is to rid the entire nation of such an extremely small cultural adherents.

This is just another in a string of news articles about a fearful Europe as it stands at the threshold of Muslim immigration. However, an opinion article by Craig Unger of a much different stripe appeared in the New York Times a week ago (“Facing Reality on Europe’s Immigrants, November 12, 2006) about the plight of Muslim immigrants in Germany. Unger chronicles the weekly breakfasts of a group of immigrant women whose meetings were, “among the activities of an outreach program sponsored by the local government and the European Union. One goal is to help the project’s residents connect with one another and with local public services. That, in turn, is meant to reduce the sense of isolation many immigrants feel from the larger society they live in and from its political institutions.” Here we find an attitude of incorporation of the immigrant into the whole. The reduction in the sense of isolation is the key to the collaborative program between the immigrant community, Germany, and the European Union, and is almost a sigh of relief in the loud, sometimes extreme demands made on immigrants to conform.

The case of Germany is a compelling if not hopeful observation for what is to be done about immigrant communities in Europe. One reason why a country like France has had such difficulty with negative sentiment from immigrants is through the hard-line integrationist stance that it has taken with regards to foreigners. If people are told that they are allowed to immigrate, they take great offense at being told that they must give up all of the particulars that make them individual human beings in their own individual cultures. It’s as if they are being told that they are wanted, but not for any of the reasons that make them human. In this way, the host country both recognizes an immigrant as a being, but only a being-for-labor, while at the same time destroying what that person takes to be their particular qualities as a human being.

A softer integrationist approach, one that calls for some cultural integration but allows a wider space for different and distinctly “other” cultural traditions does something that the strictly integrationist stance does not: it allows for both sides—the host and the guest—to have a conversation around the table, so to speak. By at least leaving room for the immigrant to carry some of his or her divergining cultural practicies, the host nation is leaving some room for dialogue. There is a sense in this approach that the laws or cultural mores that regulate a country’s stance toward the immigrant are not immutable dictums, but rather a set of norms that are flexible precisely because of the dialogue they allow between two cultures as they continue (or discontinue) their shared lives together. In this way, if Islam begins to make serious roots in Germany, these more flexible laws already carry a sense of malleability, and can change as cultural conditions change. Indeed, Unger notes that “More than three million of these new Germans are Muslims — nearly two million from Turkey, with most of the rest from Bosnia, Albania, the Arab world, Pakistan and Iran.” With an open dialogue, the laws will also remain open as the border and the living conditions remain open for whatever economic opportunities the country as a whole hopes to achieve.

Later this month in the United States, Metropolitan Books will release a controversial new history of the Turkish mass deportation and slaughter of Armenians in 1915, Taner Akçam's A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility. It is a substantial revision of his Insan Haklari ve Ermeni Sorunu (Human Rights and The Armenian Question), which was published in Ankara in 1999.

A recent New Yorker article about A Shameful Act by Elizabeth Kolbert offers more of an historical overview of the atrocities than a review of the book itself. Since Akçam's work promises to provoke much-needed discussion in Turkey, Armenia, and beyond, it may be useful (in advance of scholarly reviews) to outline a few of the opportunities and challenges it presents to the project of historical justice and reconciliation.

As he stated at a recent appearance in New York, Akçam hopes A Shameful Act will help effect a paradigm shift in Turkish-Armenian relations. He dedicates the book to the memory of Haji Halil, a Muslim Turk who, at great personal risk, hid an Armenian family in his home for over a year during the worst of the forced displacement and killing. In effect, he poses the figure of Haji Halil as a crack in the edifice of two opposing historical narratives, which I admittedly generalize here: an Armenian one that tends to see little grey between the black and white of perpetrator and victim, and a Turkish one that tends to see neither black nor white, only the red of a bloody war whose violence claimed the lives of Armenians and Turks alike. Haji Halil bravely hid Armenians and saved their lives, but he had to hide them, Akçam implies: they were targets of genocide. Akçam uses various archival sources, including the accounts of post-war military trials held in Turkey, to argue not only that the party of power during the war, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), intended to destroy Armenians and led an organized campaign to do so (pace Guenter Lewy), but also that many of the (heralded) leaders of modern Turkey believed that the republic "could only have been established by eliminating the Armenians and removing their demand for self-determination in Anatolia" (p.10).

"The memory of Haji Halil," Akçam writes, "reminds us that both people [sic], Turks and Armenians, have a different story on which they can build a future" (p. 13). He is right to focus the reader's attention on a figure of reconciliation in a work that appears destined, at first at least, to spark considerable controversy in Turkey -- and for a number of reasons tangential to the book's content. First, Akçam is a former leftist radical from Ardahan, Turkey who fled to Germany as a political refugee in 1976, and his past is being trumpeted by Turkish nationalists who accuse him of a strong bias against the Turkish state. Before he spoke in New York, for example, leaflets were distributed to the audience charging him with participation in terrorist "attacks against the United States" while a member of Dev-Yol (Devrimci Yol, or Revolutionary Path) in the 1970s. (His name was bracketed on the leaflet by the image of the hammer and sickle on one side and of a menacing skull on the other.) Second, A Shameful Act is partially underwritten by the Zoryan Institute, an organization founded in the 1970s by a group of Armenian emigres in the United States. Third, although originally written in Turkish, the book is being released in English for a Western audience first, fueling conspiracy theories among some Turks that the West is out to humiliate Turkey and undermine its prospects for EU accession.

(Also, while it is heavily footnoted, A Shameful Act contains some oversights in citation in a few sensitive places. We must take Akçam at his word, for example, that a man named Haji Halil existed in the first place, as there seems to be no written record of him or oral testimony about him referenced in the book. The quote from Mustafa Kemal Atatürk that gives the work its title, furthermore, is mentioned only in passing on page 12 and not contextualized at all. Where, when, and to whom did Atatürk characterize the atrocities perpetrated against the Armenians as a "shameful act"? The answer is unclear.*)

It seems to me that a preemptive disclosure of the circumstances of the book's origins will help A Shameful Act fulfill its potential to break important new ground and clear the way for a considerate discussion of its claims. If these circumstances are overlooked -- as in Kolbert's article, to a great degree -- then the opportunity Akçam's work presents may be lost amid bitter rhetoric about vendettas and conspiracies.

*11/17/06 This is incorrect: the context of Atatürk’s "shameful act" comment, first cited in the opening pages of the book, is indeed made clear in the eighth chapter on page 346. (Atatürk referred to the killings of Armenians as "shameful acts belonging to the past" before a closed session of his party on 24 April 1920.) Many thanks to Professor Akçam for alerting me to this important reference.

In The Republic, Plato conceives of “war” as a confrontation between the Greek state and the non-Greek state, and of “faction” as fighting within the Greek state itself. Although he would hesitate to use the word “war” in the following sense, faction is a kind of civil war that comes when one part of the community grows larger than (or demands more resources than) is harmonious to allow for everyone to live together as a whole.

There is a sense, too, in Plato’s conception of faction, that reconciliation within the state is inevitable. Fighting within the family—with countrymen conceived of as brothers and sisters in a statewide kinship—is a temporary matter. In kinship there is a bond (blood is thicker than water, as the saying goes) that is stronger than bombs or the temporary inclination for one part to overtake the whole; everyone wants what is best for the rest of the family, and so eventually everyone will incline toward peace in order to preserve their way of life.

However, immigration and immigrant communities pose an enormous challenge to this idea of statewide kinship and reconciliation. Peace making is not inevitable in the Platonic sense precisely because the majority community doesn’t view the immigrant community as kin. The immigrants didn’t grow up in the same hillsides, celebrate the same holidays, share the same food or blood ties, and so on. And the characteristic in which we find these differences most pronounced is language. Indeed, Plato’s word for non-Greek foreigners was “barbarian”—an onomatopoeic term that describes the sound that foreigners made to the Greek ear when speaking to one another: “bar-bar-bar-bar.” Speech is no less primary when differentiating between same-ness and other-ness today: there was a brouhaha (another onomatopoeic gem) a while ago over making Hispanic immigrants sing the Star-Spangled Banner in English—not Spanish—in the United States. And we continue to see an uneasiness in Britain over the niqab, as Tony Blair now weighs in on the side of Jack Straw, echoing that the veil is a “mark of separation” when Brits speak to Muslim women. Romano Prodi, the newly elected Prime Minister of Italy, concurs: “You can’t cover your face; you must be seen. This is common sense, I think. It is important for our society.”

And it is. It is important. For the vast majority of Western Europe, language—communication—begins and ends with immediate, face-to-face contact. Unfortunately, the opposite is true in Muslim communities, at least with regards to women. But one important point to remember is that this is as much a confrontation of communicative heritages as it is religious heritages—if not more so—because Blair, Straw, Prodi, and the rest do not want to outlaw religious freedoms—not at all. In fact, Jack Straw has spoken against this. This is rather an issue of the way in which kinship (brothers, sisters, childhood, childhood homes, earth, food, etc.) is embedded into language as a part of community. And how vastly important it is for human beings to relate to one another in a language to which they are accustomed.

In a way Plato’s vision shows that with regards to immigration, tolerance and reconciliation can only happen as generations continue to grow in the country itself. As the next generation grows and matures, a native Briton will remember when he and his now native-born Muslim friend used to play football in their neighborhood streets. Later it will be harder—if not impossible—to deny his friend citizenship because while they may not share all of eachother’s traditions they’ve shared the experience of growing up together in a specific place. They’ve shared the same stories and friends and hillsides. And organically, at a young age, they discover how they feel most comfortable communicating with one another. They both adapt a little bit to accommodate the other. They continue to grow together, as does their community, and eventually the community can write the story (think Zadie Smith or Jhumpa Lahiri) of these two different people becoming one.

But what does it mean for reconciliation today if peace is only made through the bonds of kinship that can only be forged in the future? I wonder if for now it means that both sides have to agree to disagree—or agree to be uneasy in eachother’s presence. After all, isn’t that the extreme existential experience of tolerance? Agreed uneasiness of presence. And once we can agree to tolerate eachother then all we can do is keep telling eachother our stories—keep explaining where we come from, exposing our roots. By understanding each other’s heritages we create what can only be described as a kind of historical kinship; recognizing common elements of the human family through eachother’s stories, and so laying the foundations for peace.

Earlier this month, on May 18, the French National Assembly put off a vote on a controversial bill that would make the denial of the Armenian genocide a criminal offense punishable by a prison term and a $57,000 fine. Brought by the Socialist Party, the bill was vigorously opposed by Chirac and his allies in the Union for a Popular Movement Party, who considered it a threat to bilateral relations with a tense Ankara. As expected, the conservative UMP successfully stalled discussion on the bill, thereby postponing a vote until October at the earliest.

Prior to this episode, on May 10, a group of intellectuals (most, if not all, from Turkey) published a letter in the French daily Liberation strongly objecting to the bill. The authors -- Ahmet Insel, Baskin Oran, Halil Berktay, Murat Belge, Muge Gocek, Elif Safak, Etyen Mahcupyan, Hrant Dink, and Ragip Zarakolu -- are all opposed to Ankara's official position on the Armenian "issue" and have worked to facilitate an exchange between Turkey and Armenia about this dark moment in their history. In fact, Belge is currently charged under Article 301 of Turkey's criminal code for defending the conference "Ottoman Armenians During the Decline of the Empire: Issues of Scientific Responsibility and Democracy" held at Istanbul Bilgi University on September 24-25, 2005, a conference in which he was highly instrumental. Dr. Belge faces a prison term of six months to ten years.

An excerpt from an English translation of the letter: "When two different national memories start to perceive the same event in opposite ways, this polarization only strengthens monologues. France is a country which must know this situation very well. People instinctively support those with identical thoughts. We must overcome putting Turks and Armenians on opposite sides of a vicious circle and instead generate a humanitarian dialogue and a mutual history by sharing the two memories with each other. We can reach this goal only by way of freedom of expression and discussion and free movement of all information."

Publicity has focused on the drama that the bill prompted in parliament, but this appeal for "humanitarian dialogue" demands our attention. In the face of considerable pressure and hardship, in the midst of heated rhetoric on both sides, Dr. Belge and his colleagues are doing the hard work of confronting the past with a respect for openness and dialogue rather than with easy condemnations or proscriptions.

For further discussion: what purpose is served by criminalizing denials of gross human rights abuses? The David Irving case in Austria comes to mind here as well.

*Update 6/10/06: The Istanbul Bagcilar 2nd Criminal Court has acquitted Dr. Belge of the charges filed against him under Article 301 (described above).

This evening, PBS stations will air an hour-long documentary: "The Armenian Genocide" written, directed and produced by Andrew Goldberg. Following the documentary, PBS scheduled a panel discussion with experts, including two who defend the Turkish government's claim that the genocide never occured. As described in today's NYTimes article: A PBS Documentary Makes Its Case for the Armenian Genocide, With or Without a Debate as a result of protests waged by Armenian groups and some members of US Congress, about one third of PBS affiliates will not air the panel discussion. Last month, Michael Getler, the PBS Ombudsman presented the reasoning behind the airing of a panel discussion and described the ensuing debate.

How can the revisiting of such events use history and historical facts in a way that promotes reconciliation rather than further division?

Truth Commission Divides Bosnia, a recent article by Nerma Jelacic and Nidzara Ahmetasevic for Balkan Insight, reposted at the Insitute of War and Peace Reporting, traces the various attempts (three to this date) at creating a truth commission in Bosnia and the challenges and criticism faced each time. The primary concerns are what the mandate of the commission would be, who would serve on the commission, and how the commission would work in relation to the courts, and finally whether or not such a commission is even needed.

In addition to the controversy over whether or not there should be a truth commission in Bosnia and what its mandate should be, it is also interesting to note that so far, the proposed goal of such a commission is to focus exclusively on truth, omitting any mention of reconciliation. Previous commissions tasked with examining the past have often been called truth and reconciliation commissions (as in South Africa and most recently in Liberia) or have included the word reconciliation in their titles (as in Ghana’s National Reconciliation Commission).

Does the fact that reconciliation is not mentioned in the case of Bosnia highlight something specific to the Bosnian context or does it reflect a new trend in the theory on reconciliation? Given that reconciliation is such a long term goal some scholars have argued that it is better to leave the word reconciliation out of titles of historical commissions in order to avoid raising expectations that cannot be met.

It would be very interesting to hear form those who have been more closely involved in the debates over a truth commission in Bosnia on this question. Does reconciliation have unrealistic or even negative connotations in Bosnia, or does this distance from reconciliation reflect a more general shift in thinking?

The Polish government has made a written request to UNESCO - the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, to change the official name of Auschwitz-Birkenau to "Former Nazi German Concentration Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau". The camp became a UNESCO world heritage site in 1979.

"In the years after the war, the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was definitively associated with the criminal activities of the national socialist Nazi regime in Germany," Polish government spokesman Jan Kasprzyk told a Polish news agency.

"However, for the contemporary, younger generations, especially abroad, that association is not universal."

This move comes after an apparent increase in media references to Auschwitz as a “Polish Concentration” including Der Speigel, a German newspaper, calling the camp ‘Polish’ this week.

Source: BBC News Online

The unexpected death of Milosevic in his cell at The Hague raises questions about how the process of historical reconciliation will proceed in the former Yugoslavia. Will his death prompt a break from the past and the beginning of a new era, or will it further entrench nationalist feelings in Serbia?

In an opinion piece titled “What now for war trials after Milosevic?” Timothy Waters raises doubts about the effectiveness of trials in promoting peace and reconciliation.

In his view, “we expect too much of international justice. Tribunals have proliferated since the cold war, becoming the international community's tool of choice for responding to mass violence. In the process, law has crowded out other options.” The other options that Water explores in this article are somewhat limited in their scope and aggressive in their approach. Nevertheless, the question he raises warrants further attention. Does Milosevic’s death highlight the limitations of trails in contributing to reconciliation? If so, what other mechanisms could have been used either in addition to or instead of trials in order to promote greater reconciliation?

Given the deep historical roots of the conflicts in this region, what role could history play? Would there be space for a historical commission that would facilitate dialogue about creating a new historical narrative?

French President Jaques Chirac has announced that France will hold a national day of remembrance for the victims of slavery. Should other European countries follow suit in recognising their colonial pasts and what sort of remembrance activities would be suitable for this day? These questions are especially pertinent in the light of the recent overturning of a law requiring teachers to stress positive aspects of France's colonial past.

"France will hold a national day of remembrance for the victims of slavery every 10 May, President Jacques Chirac has announced.
The date for the annual holiday was chosen as it marks the day in 2001 when France passed a law recognising slavery as a crime against humanity.

He said children should be taught about slavery at primary and secondary school as part of the national curriculum.

He said UN figures suggest more than 20 million people were in slavery today.

"Slavery fed racism," he said. "When people tried to justify the unjustifiable, that was when the first racist theories were elaborated.

"Racism is a crime of the heart and the spirit... which is why the memory of slavery remains a living wound for some of our fellow citizens."

Mr Chirac said he would propose a "European and international initiative" to tackle any company still using slave labour.

"We must ensure that when western companies invest in poor or emerging countries they respect basic labour rules such as have been lain out in international law," he said.

Earlier this month, Mr Chirac said a controversial law on the teaching of France's colonial past would be overturned.

The law requires teachers to stress positive aspects of French colonialism, especially in north Africa."

Source: BBC News Online

On January 23, 2006 the Turkish government finally decided to drop all criminal charges it had brought against novelist Orhan Pamuk for his open statements about Turkey's role in the Armenian genocide. According to Daniel Goldhagen, author of Hitler's Willing Executioners, "the Turkish government and people should use the Pamuk affair as a spur to rethinking the wisdom of their historical cover-up of the Armenian genocide. And to do that, they should look for guidance to the center of Europe itself, to Germany."

While Germany did not immediately and easily accept responsibility for crimes committed during WWII, over the course of the past few decades it has begun to find different ways to address and confront the historical legacy of violations committed during the war. Currently in Turkey, for a variety of political and social reasons, the government is unwilling to accept responsibility for the Armenians Genocide of 1914. Goldhagen points out that despite fear of potentially negative repercussions of admitting respsonsibility for past human rights violations, "as many in Germany, particularly its political leaders, slowly and in the 1990s finally came to understand, being truthful about the past and acting to make amends with the victims as best one can - always principally done for pragmatic reasons - neither shames nor weakens Germany, but strengthens it and enhances its standing in the world,"

Source: NY Sun (1-23-06)