Beyond genocide, the Great Catastrophe

Developed in the West, the concept of genocide and its meanings are of great importance not only to Armenians but also to western public opinions. For them, the word "genocide" and what it stands for is beyond dispute, time and space. But I am not certain if the concept of genocide is adequate to the task of describing entirely what happened. To overcome the dilemma I propose to go back to those times of horror and the way Armenians themselves described it.

With due respect to the vast knowledge accumulated through genocide studies, I must point out that the notion of genocide remains, as far as the Armenian Genocide is concerned, confined to the understanding and the description of the act as well as the victims of genocide and the committers. The term "Great Catastrophe," which was shaped and used by the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire in those days to describe what was going on then and which we used in the apology campaign, however, is more evocative of the past events. In fact, the decision of the Committee of Union and Progress to eliminate Armenians, as one of the oldest groups of Anatolia, is a disaster that permanently affected the future of, not only the Armenians, but also all other entities living in the same land. Already torn apart by wars, Anatolia, which lost its Armenians, Assyrians and Roums (Greeks), has become a depleted piece of land that had to struggle with human, economic, social, political and cultural disintegration and decline.

In this sense, the Armenian Genocide is a common tragedy of Anatolia, and even today what is uttered in the villages of Anatolia as part of the old stories is the tally of an unprecedented catastrophe. Yet, I am not convinced that the "genocide" word is sufficient to accurately read the consequences of this irrational decision that Anatolia was subjected to. It is inadequate to explain what happened beside the genocide of Armenians and confines historic understanding of this horrible event. The Armenian history is then taken out of Anatolia and is being revived all around the world through the Diaspora. It doesn’t, however, tell about Anatolia after 1915.

Today the gap between the word "genocide," its cold, eerie and "distant" meanings on the one hand, and the "closeness" of words such as "çart" (massacre), disaster, catastrophe or slaughter on the other, is as deep as the gap between that awful decision of the state taken in Istanbul and the human drama that took place in Anatolia.

In fact, so many different grey areas subsist between the genocide victims and the perpetrators, so many people, including those who had to change their identity to survive, who were indirectly victimized, who saved lives, who simply remained to bear the consequences of the genocide. The Great Catastrophe is the great catastrophe for these people also. Native and individual stories of disasters that have been dug out through nascent historical research reveal the dimensions of the great catastrophe that Anatolia experienced, and witness a disaster that somehow goes beyond the genocide. From this perspective, the Great Catastrophe means more than the Genocide. Again in this sense, if the recognition of the genocide will be a punishment, the learning of the Great Catastrophe would be a virtue paving the way for living together again.

The debates that have started with the apology campaign on December 15, 2008 offer an immense opportunity for us to learn what happened to Armenians as well as their neighbors. Likewise, this year is the centenary of the takeover by the military wing of the Committee of Union and Progress and consequently the beginning of a special political mindset that still continues to hold Turkey in its grip. More centenaries to come, almost every year until 2023 and even beyond, will provide us the opportunity to learn and remember the fate of Armenians, as well as the consequences of that common catastrophe for people of Anatolia. Justice will rule as we learn about the dimensions of the process which has begun a hundred years ago and about what it has cost to all of us.