Turks and Armenians in shadow of genocide

A century ago yesterday, at the height of the first world war, a crumbling Ottoman Empire fighting for its existence began the extermination of a people: the Ottoman Armenians of Anatolia. For almost a century, the republic of Turkey that emerged from the ashes of empire has denied that this was genocide. But that is what it was.

For its own sake, for the sake of the Armenians and for the sake of decency and humanity, it is time Turkey comes to terms with this. Leaders of the Anatolian Kurds, who were among the perpetrators and beneficiaries of the annihilation, already have.

There has been a marked change in Turkey's attitude over the past decade after Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his neo-Islamist Justice and Development party (AKP) came to power. In 2005, Mr Erdogan, then prime minister and now president, called for an international panel of scholars to determine the truth of these atrocities. He repeated the offer a year ago, when he offered "condolences" to the Armenians in a cautious but unprecedented statement that situated what happened to them within the "shared pain" of hundreds of thousands of Muslims killed before and during the war. Yesterday, too, he expressed his sorrow for all Ottoman citizens who died "under similar conditions during this war".

Scholarship, however, has already established irrefutably that this was a centrally directed extermination of a people, ordered and efficiently executed by the Young Turk government of the late Ottoman Empire. The testimony of perpetrators, survivors and witnesses, not to mention the telegraphic evidence of the principal organiser, then interior minister Talat Pasha, leads to one verdict. This was genocide, even if the word would not be coined until a generation later in light of the Nazi holocaust of the Jews. Up to 1.5m Armenians, as well as hundreds of thousands of Assyrian Christians, perished.

Mr Erdogan has reacted aggressively to public acknowledgement of genocide, whether by the Pope or the German Bundestag, retreating into denialism and blaming an international conspiracy he discerns against Turkey.

Partly, this is because Turkey faces a defining general election in June. Mr Erdogan is trying to outbid xenophobic Turkish nationalists with increasingly shrill dog-whistle sectarianism, directed primarily against minority Kurds and Alevis, which each account for up to a fifth of the population. In light of Turkey's past record on minorities, and in the midst of the sectarian mayhem roaring across the region, this is a toxic cocktail and paints Mr Erdogan and the AKP as Sunni supremacists.

Western governments should beware of using the Ottoman Armenian question as a stick with which to beat the republic of Turkey for a crime committed by its Ottoman predecessor. Europe, in particular, has little to be proud about when it reflects on its own imperial past, one that saw millions enslaved. The term genocide, moreover, though justified, arguably does not help. It stirs up nationaloutrage rather than the sort of ruthless examination of the record the country needs.

President Erdogan deserves credit for breaking long-standing taboos on the Armenian polemic and for his stuttering peace initiative towards Kurdish insurgents. But Turkey's future, especially its relations with the EU, will always be overshadowed until there is a full accounting with history. Only through such an exercise, moreover, is it ever likely to reach a modus vivendi with the minorities inside its borders, and offer an encouraging example in a region riven by sectarian strife.

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