Leylekian: Armenian Genocide Denial: The Turkish Vietnam

By Laurent Leylekian

Once again, Turkish diplomacy is facing a dead-end. Once again, they thought they could succeed by throwing the Armenian Genocide into oblivion with the notorious protocols process. But their own inconsistency and lack of sincerity prevented them from blocking—through the final ratification of these protocols—the course of genocide recognition and the issue of what Turkish-occupied Western Armenian territories.

Thus, once again, platoons of Turkish diplomats will have to go to Washington, D.C., Stockholm, Switzerland, or elsewhere to try to prevent new resolutions, new momentum, new TV broadcasts, or any kind of new genocide-related initiative somewhere in the world.

Turkey is sending its massive PR artillery with the same lack of discernment with which the U.S. used its B52s in Vietnam. Through huge napalm-like injections of money, through nauseous orange agent-like corporate lobbying, through special operations and despicable briberies, they have generally succeeded in temporarily putting out the fire. But as soon as a blaze is supposed to be cooled down, another one appears somewhere else. Italic text is (of course) the lyrics of “The End”–The Doors.

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I’ll never look into your eyes…again

And the brave Turkish diplomats are more and more in despair on the diplomatic front. Year after year, young inexperienced envoys are sent by Turkey to the front—a front of disenchantment Turkey has created for itself—to fight for a cause they don’t share nor care about. They sometimes win certain rearguard battles with the help of their superior diplomatic and political equipment. But it is becoming harder and harder for them to win the hearts and minds of the people they intend to free from “genocide allegations.”

Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need…of some…stranger’s hand
In a…desperate land

Lost in a Roman…wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah

And increasingly, they can see the contempt in their interlocutors’ eyes. And more and more often, Papa Erdogan has to be sent here or there, as a Bell “Huey” helicopter, to save doomed squadrons of private Mehmets from ambush. And actually, Huey Erdogan often succeeds but it doesn’t change the fact that those Turkish commandos who are supposed to bear the denial gospel are less convinced than the ones they are supposed to convince.

And they bitterly realize that without any money, without uniform, without counting on blackmail, but with sincere commitment and with the incomparable weight of Truth and Morality—like a rice bowl they are fed daily—the Hay-Minh from Armenia and the Hay-Congs from the Armenian Diaspora are far more credible. That their special operations trying to split the Western Hay-Congs from the Eastern Hay-Minh is totally failing.

There’s danger on the edge of town
Ride the King’s highway, baby
Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway west, baby

Ride the snake, ride the snake
To the lake, the ancient lake, baby
The snake is long, seven miles
Ride the snake…he’s old, and his skin is cold

And some young Turkish citizens who were supposed to be “good patriots” are now wondering why they have to support hatred ideologies. Why they have to affirm with such suspicious insistence that they are “truly Turks” and hate Armenians. Why they have to use the word “Agri” instead of “Ararat.” Why some of their old grand-aunts sometimes seem so sad and prudishly look away when Armenians are mentioned. And why they start feeling some sympathy for Hrant Dink, for Armenians, for Assyrians, for Alevis.

The west is the best
The west is the best
Get here, and we’ll do the rest

The blue bus is callin’ us
The blue bus is callin’ us
Driver, where you taken’ us

And polls are now showing that more and more Turkish citizens are fed up with this insane denial policy and would like their country to be normal, to be democratic, to be open, to be hate-less, to be Susurluk and Kizil Elma and Ergenekon and Bozkurt-less, while their political leaders keep on burning millions of dollars. But now, even some of these leaders are wretchedly looking for unlikely B-plans. Today, after so many years of useless denial, they can’t confess that their state ideology is based on heinous lies.

The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on

He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived, and…then he
Paid a visit to his brother, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door…and he looked inside
Father, yes son, I want to kill you
Mother…I want to…f*** you

C’mon baby, take a chance with us
C’mon baby, take a chance with us
C’mon baby, take a chance with us
And meet me at the back of the blue bus
Doin’ a blue rock
On a blue bus
Doin’ a blue rock
C’mon, yeah

And the mask of respectability is now falling apart. Turkey’s leaders still try to appear as honest brokers in the Caucasus, in the Middle East, with Iran. But with their own rogue reputation, with their country’s poor record, and with their inability to put an end to the cycle of violence and impunity, they are simply failing. They cannot even appear as honest brokers for their own Turkish society, a society that is increasingly shaken by riots, violence, and rumors of plots, of conspiracies, of “balyoz” plans.

Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

And the time is probably not so far away when, after countless Hué, Khe Sanh, and Tet offensives, ultimately Turkish “Hueys” will have to evacuate their left-behind credibility from the rooftops of ideological embassies—surrounded by Hay-Congs, Hay-Minhs, and allied genocide recognitions, motions, calls, demonstrations, and sittings—to carriers overcrowded with genocide deniers, retired ambassadors, crooks and crooked lobbyists, losers, and wheeler-dealers.

It hurts to set you free
But you’ll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die

This is the end

And the time is probably not so far either, when Turkey will collapse as did other people’s prison houses, under the unbearable weight of its own contradictions between what it ought to be and what it is, under the intolerable curse of hate against anyone and everyone, against others and itself, under the insupportable actuality of a genocide and of its denial. And this will be the end.

Laurent Leylekian is the editor of the biweekly France-Arménie(www.france-armenie.net). From 2001 to December 2009, he was the executivedirector of the European Armenian Federation for Justice and Democracy(www.eafjd.eu). He is married, with two children. The author thanks Jirair Momjian for copyediting the article.

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