“It is inappropriate to explain the Armenian Genocide by religious, ethnic, and racial antagonism or economic and social rivalry between the Armenian and the Turkish peoples…. The Armenian Genocide was just a political program dictated by specific state interests of the Ottoman Empire.” This is an excerpt from the speech of Levon Ter-Petrossian, the first President of the Republic of Armenia, at an international conference dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide (April 21, 1995). I quote this statement neither to discuss the Genocide issue, nor to praise the first president. The issue here is the way of thinking, sober assessment of political realities, from which, by the way, Ter-Petrossian, has deviated many times after he returned to politics in 2007. This very example illustrates the difference in mentalities. If you say, “Turks have always massacred our nation, because Turks are cunning and bloodthirsty, but our long-suffering people will muster up their strength one day and will regain their historical fatherland, anyway,” it is a way of thinking, by which almost all of our intellectuals – one of the happy exceptions was Rafael Ishkhanyan – have been guided for the past 40-50 years, kindergarten teachers and teachers of the Armenian language at schools have been instilling that same mentality in the past decades. It is a different way of thinking when you try to understand what situation there was in the historical period in question, what superpowers there were at that time, what interests and possibilities Turkey and Armenians had, and why the government led by the Young Turks planned the physical extermination of the Armenian people. The first president did that very thing in his speech. This attitude, which was adopted in 1988 not only by Ter-Petrossian, but also by the Karabakh Committee, was efficient, at least, in the international arena, the struggle for national independence, and the relations with the neighbors. The opposite, emotional attitude can receive enthusiastic applause, can cause ecstasy, can make people cry, but from the state, national perspective, that mentality is inefficient, to say the least. Now let us talk about internal life. If the first president had stuck to his methods, he should have started all of his analyses of the “gang rule” and the “criminal regime” since 2007 with an answer to the following question: “Why were my friends and I not ready in 1995 and 1996 to conduct a fair election and hand over power, in case of losing the election.” I am not talking about regretting or repenting, the task is to understand the roots of the current situation. Otherwise, it boils down to that same first option from the series “Turks will always be Turks.” So when it is stated that this government is sly, illiterate, greedy etc., it doesn’t cast light on which the mechanisms, the engine of the current vicious system are. Otherwise, we will have to admit that Levon Ter-Petrossian and his supporters were also greedy and illiterate, which, certainly, does not correspond to the reality. When events are explained by people’s personal traits or by ethnic, religious and racial traits “given by God,” which is the same thing, those events remain unexplained, and the struggle often turns into a personal face-off. In the autumn of 1998, the late Rafael Ghazaryan, a member of the Karabakh Committee, said in an interview given to me at P.S., a TV show on A1+, that Abdul Hamid and Enver hadn’t inflicted as much damage on the Armenian people, as the Pan-Armenian National Movement (PANM). And I said: “Let me end today’s TV show with that optimistic claim.”
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
