Talk in Athens, Sept 08 The Henry Morgenthau Remembrance, Athens, 25-28 September 2008
From: "Nikolaos Uzunoglu"
"Healing and Reconciliation For All Peoples of Asia Minor and Istanbul" by Pamela Steiner, Ed.D., Great Grand Daughter of Ambassador Morgenthau and Senior Fellow, The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative presented at "An Honest Voice in History: Henry Morgenthau in Constantinople and Athens" 27 September 2008
**** Tonight I will speak about the possible healing of Armenian and
Turkish communities stuck in the painful, unresolved relationship of nearly 100 years -- Turkish and Armenian because those are the communities with which I have worked. The stuckness of the painful, unresolved conflicted relationships, is I think, in part, due to unhealed trauma -- both in those who underwent the terrible events or often their children and grandchildren. Unhealed trauma constricts life's possibilities, while healing from trauma opens
1 things up. Lack of resolution and lack of reconciliation is painful for all. I have learned much from my work as a psychotherapist about human dynamics and healing that reveals the effects of unhealed trauma on the work of reconciliation, but that work also suggests a way to break through some of the stuckness.
Tonight I will lay out four themes. First I will describe the reconciliation work that my colleagues and I practice. Second, I will discuss the reactivity that individuals often develop after traumatizing violence -- "reactivity" is an automatic, instinctive, neurological and emotional response that stays stuck on on stuck. I will show how reactivity interferes with taking steps for reconciliation, and perpetuates what is often described as the cycle of violence. I will point to a psychological capacity that individuals seeking reconciliation must, if they do not already have it, learn and develop to substitute for their reactivity-- in a word, it is
"responsiveness."
2 This is the core of my presentation intellectually. But behind this work is my belief that if today's violent or conflicted inter- communal relationships are not to continue to dominate tomorrow's, influential, leading members of the respective communities must lead the way for others: they must use and demonstrate responsiveness to each other. For example, they must listen to and acknowledge the other's truth rather than being reactive towards each other by not listening and by rejecting the other's truth.
Third theme, I will next name specific steps that I believe can lead to reconciliation between communities. Taking these steps is a two-way street. Taking these steps requires individuals from both communities to be able to interrupt their own reactivity with developed responsiveness.
And fourth and last theme, I acknowledge those Turks who are responding, while simultaneously supporting the development of
3 their democracy. Even though I will describe opportunities that were unknown and perhaps undreamt of in my great-grandfather's time, I believe that I will speak in the humanitarian spirit of
Ambassador Morgenthau.
First the reconciliation work my colleagues and I practice. Our approach is also known as Track 2 diplomacy. We hold workshops for individuals who have some influence within their communities.
At times the workshops can be directed toward supporting and enhancing official diplomatic efforts -- before, during, or after them. Choosing the right participants is our first task. We do our best not to include individuals wedded to their own party line. We choose participants from both sides who we believe can potentially manifest responsiveness as well as potentially manage their instinctive reactivity. They must be open to filling in the gaps in their own understanding and knowledge, and possibly to revising aspects of their own community’s narratives.
4 At the start of this reconciliation work, we aim for each party to understand the other community's narrative or perspective on history, and that the other's narrative is a different perspective than their own. If workshop participants expand or change their attitudes because of new understanding, they do so genuinely, not because decided by someone else for them. Greater understanding among workshop participants will in turn enable these participants to enable their communities to find ways to respond to each other and to improve the situation between them.
Members of a facilitation team, such as myself, do not express our own views on issues that are controversial between the communities with whom we work. Thus, in our work with
Armenians and Turks, we do not express our views on whether there was genocide. Although I shall often speak about “Turks” and about “Armenians,” please know that I am aware that there are and were many subgroups with different perspectives in each community. Our approach does not mean that we, the facilitators,
5 approve or condone or believe that mass violence can in any way be excused or explained away. It does not mean that we agree with either party’s narrative in whole or in part. My colleagues and I are motivated to see past hurts and wrongs responded to and thereby help to halt the cycle of reactivity and violence.
Now let's move into my second theme, that of reactivity and responsiveness. My understanding is that many of you here this evening are children or grandchildren or great grandchildren of survivors of the violent events, particularly of the early part of the last century. I have been informed that silence about this past has characterized your homes and community groups, and in recent years also the public conversational space of Greece. Silence is not only a symptom common to homes in which family members have experienced traumatic stress. It also characterizes public space when the traumatic experiences remain raw, and where reactivity rather than responsiveness is predictable.
6 Another symptom of traumatic stress often occurs when the silence is broken through. It is loss of our full cognitive capacities. When we react with emotions charged with raw memories, we cannot think. We cannot use our minds to "read" the present situation accurately or fully. Rather, when a trigger takes us back to the past, we are reacting instinctively, as we did in the past situation. So, we react rather than respond. If you hit me, I react. I hit you, if I can.
Or if I cannot, I get you later -- or I get someone or something else.
Then you react, and so on. Violence begets violence, against others or against the self, meaning that violence or its threat triggers automatic instinctive reactions.
My primary purposes here are to describe the negative role of reactivity in preventing forward movement in the
Armenian/Turkish relationship and to offer some thoughts about how to have more productive, responsive conversations that could help with reconciliation. Turkish historian Prof. Halil Berktay, in an interview done by Armenian journalist, Khatchig Mouradian,
7 spoke about this phenomenon as it often plays out in meetings at which both Turks and Armenians are present:
…[I]t is very unfortunate that what happened in 1915-16 and the fate of the Ottoman Armenians during the demise of the Empire boils down to “Was it genocide or not?” This is an extreme case of reductionism. If you have a mixed audience of Turks and Armenians…if you say yes it was genocide, the Armenians cheer you and the Turks boo you, and everybody stops listening, because they heard what they came to hear. And if you say no, it was not genocide, exactly the reverse happens: the Armenians boo[,] the Turks[,] cheer and again, everybody stops… listen[ing]. …
Prof. Berktay adds this question: My question, as a historian, is: How can we liberate the present from being captive, in bondage, to the ghosts of 1915? 1
Let us focus a moment longer on the words used in the interaction
Prof Berktay described. The Turks will hear the statement, "Yes, it was genocide," as an attack against Turks, while Armenians will hear the statement, "No, it was not genocide," as an attack against
1 Aztag daily, Lebanon, Nov. 12, 2005. The English, Turkish and French translations appeared the following week in several other publications. Link to the English version: http://www.aztagdaily.com/interviews/berktay.htm
8 Armenians. Each group feels attacked by the other. When we feel attacked, we not only do not listen anymore; we cannot. Our emotions swell up instead. We do not respond to each other's community's needs and concerns and fears and hopes because we are only defensive. When the past is in the present like this, the present, then, stays hostage to the past. We lose our ability to deal with the past and the present in their own terms.
The problem of dealing with the present in its own terms is, however, made much more difficult if the violence continues in the present, even in a much less intense form.
Violence in the present makes it harder to deal with the past in its own terms because present violence not only triggers reactivity from past hurts that remain raw. It adds to it. In this complex but common situation the central questions remain, Can we interrupt the cycle of violence? Can we find or make opportunities to interrupt our own reactivity and instead respond?
9 Now let us move to my third theme. In the film we will view together in a few minutes, you will hear me name the following steps to reconciliation. These are steps that I believe can help interrupt cycles of reactivity and foster reconciliation:
1) Truth telling;
2) Acknowledgment of the truth;
3) Apology for the harm done;
4) Promise not to repeat;
5) Restitution where possible;
6) Reparations where restitution is not possible;
7) Memorialization and textbook rewriting.
Each conflict is unique and each reconciliation effort different.
Sometimes all seven steps would need to be completed by both sides, but sometimes there are asymmetries between communities with regard to the need to fulfill the steps, especially the last five.
These steps need not be addressed in any particular order, but
10 taking the first two provides a solid, potentially enduring basis for the others.
Truth telling is step one. In our workshops participants offer their truths, their narratives, to each other. At conflict resolution and reconciliation workshops, each side implicitly tests to see if the other side can be trusted to listen with an open mind. Each side does this by speaking about what is its truth to their members to see if, in effect, the other side reacts or if it responds. Concern about the negative stereotyping of participants' communities is one way in which this important testing is done. For example, Turks might describe how it was politically correct in Europe in the early
1900’s at the highest levels to characterize Ottoman Turks as
"inhuman" or racially inadequate. They might cite passages from
Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, such as the chapter entitled, "The
Turk Reverts to Ancestral Type." Morgenthau, in addition to his own genuine observations, attributes what he sees as negative characteristics of Turks to their race. Although in other places in
11 his book he showed both grounded criticism and empathy for
Turks he encountered, he did not escape the racial paradigm of the time, one that of course was and still is manifested in many places worldwide.
Another Turkish workshop participant might then cite the
American Pulitzer Prize winning The Guns of August in which the author reminds us of the widespread contempt and prejudice in the west against Turks as a whole, quoting words that today understandably remain hard for Turks to hear:
The Liberals, who had governed England since 1906 were the inheritors of Gladstone’s celebrated appeal to expel the unspeakable Turk, ‘the one great anti-human specimen of humanity,’ from Europe.2
One way or another, our Turkish workshop participants would want to know if the Armenian participants held all Turks, today, including themselves, in contempt as "Terrible Turks." Armenians
2 Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August, New York: MacMillan, 1962, p139. The footnote in her book appears to attribute these words to Churchill describing Gladstone.
12 might respond that such dehumanization was used by the Ottomans to justify their elimination of Armenians. This could be the start of a long, productive conversation.
Now we are ready to move into my fourth, final theme. In this talk,
I have spoken a little more about the Turkish perspective than the
Armenian. I assume that you here are familiar with the egregious violence against, hurt, losses, and humiliations suffered by
Armenians. Whether it is called "genocide" or not, independently of the word, the Armenian suffering and losses were monumental and overwhelming. Armenian suffering is doubted by no one we would have in a workshop, though unconditional acknowledgment of it can at times be hard to achieve. Many in the West, however, do not know of the violence against, hurt, humiliation, and losses suffered by Turks, though not caused by Armenians.
By speaking more of the Turkish perspective, as I have been, I am thereby providing a little more historical background about the
13 Turks in order better to pose some questions: Should Armenians acknowledge the reality of Turkish suffering or that Turks had been negatively stereotyped and held in contempt in the west before and during World War I? If they did, could that potentially make a difference to the relationship between Turks and
Armenians? Are the other people worth talking to? What is needed to get a true conversation going?
My understanding is that the recent changes in Turkey are particularly relevant to greater public exploration of the past. Many of us in the West know little about these changes, too. Here are just a few examples. The silence that has been present both in Turkish homes and in the unofficial public realm for nearly 100 years is giving way.
In public in recent years, often at immense risk to themselves,
Turks are speaking out, after which, in a few important instances, they must leave Turkey. Orhan Pamuk may be the most famous,
14 but most certainly not the only distinguished Turk to address the presence of the tragic past in the present. A well known Turkish dissident and human rights activist, Ayse Gunaysu, writes from
Turkey a regular column in The Armenian Weekly, a leading
Armenian American paper. Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story was published in Turkish in Turkey in 2005. A handful of Turkish historians and others with international reputations, some living in
Turkey, some not, publish, speak, and participate in conferences, taking risks themselves in using language that is illegal in Turkey.
If there are many Turks who have spoken, there are many others who are listening but have not yet spoken. The murder of Hrant
Dink certainly reflects a dangerous and destructive element in
Turkish society, but the multitude of Turks, of all backgrounds and ethnicities and perhaps different party affiliations, who marched in protest of his murder, surprised observers worldwide in a very positive way. All should be acknowledged for their efforts to strengthen democracy in their country. Among the things we should remember at this commemoration is that Henry Morgenthau
15 enormously valued the privilege of living in a democracy guaranteeing him the right to bear witness and speak out.
Democracy remains the guarantor of free speech but also of the opportunity for the kind of dialogue I have been describing, dialogue that can improve understanding and guide responsive, responsible action. It might help break the cycle of reactivity.
It is time to get real.
Bottom line is that the human species cannot afford not to get together.
Members of communities who have suffered in a bitter relationship can lead the way for the world about how to break out of the past.
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