304) The Psychological Background of the Armenian Genocide Claims

 

 

When social sciences are considered as a unified whole, an on-going debate is noticed: the problem of the writing of history. Even the title of this debate is problematic in itself. Of course, a discipline which claims to be scientific in nature must be, because of this quality, unfamiliar with the problem of the writing of history. The scientific quality of any academic discipline epistemologically guarantees its claim to objectivity.

 

However, where history is concerned, the problem cannot be limited to this frame. As a matter of fact, it can still be discussed whether history is a science or a story. That history cannot be abstracted from the representations related to individuals themselves, to the events of which they are the actors or witnesses, to the medium or ages in which they exist, or even, to a certain extent, that it is made of these representations, and, therefore, it is the history of historians, are some of the assertions which shake the scientific status quo of history.

 

From such a stand-point, the discourse of the historians always consists of a constructed story. In this case, the concepts of historical objectivity and historical fact turn out to be debatable. When history is regarded as a story or fiction, no claim about historical events can be considered superior to any other, and in history books, there might appear a great variety of views about the same events. As a result, there might be different histories varying according to their writers' perspective.

 

This epistemological problem which has greatly busied the historians' minds, especially at the last quarter of the 20th century, now constitutes, though in a different shape, the agenda of Turkish society regarding the Armenian genocide claims. Still, the attempt to write about the events which took place some 85 years ago on a political platform, rather than within the discipline of history, compels even those who do not agree with that notion (or at least those who are unwilling to share it) to consider the fictionality of history as a serious hypothesis. The process of constructing an Armenian genocide history by a certain diaspora and its collaborators in various countries of the world points to an unusual way of writing history, or rather practising science. In this heretical way of thinking, the genocide myth that is imagined replaces the factual reality, and there is no possibility of doing research even, or of going through the documents and archieves.

 

Of course, social events are mostly non-transparent; they do not openly reflect their meanings. They should be read, perceived, and certain meanings should be attributed to them. Yet, this process of  attributing meaning cannot be arbitrary. The hypotheses and claims that are put forward should be analyzed, and their validity should be tested according to the general research methods accepted by the historians. However, on a different dimension, we are here face to face with the thesis of the fictionality of history that is covertly wrought in the negationist approaches related to the Jewish genocide whose factual reality has been determined; yet, it is used this time to write a false history, rather than distract the factual reality. In accordance with the notion that history is anyhow a story, those who could make others listen to their own versions have  tended to label the pathetic events experienced during the 1915 Armenian deportation as genocide, or rather to construct an Armenian genocide. According to human psychology, being accused of an invented and constructed genocide is more painful than being the real actor of any genocide. The most touching point about the resolutions of various foreign political authorities is just the perception of this fictionality, the staging of this construction process in different countries as consecutive acts of the same scenario.

 

Layman's Writing of History

 

Though it surprises those who are devoted to democratic ideals, the welcoming of such attempts at writing history in various parts of the Western countries is, within the frame of socio-psychological findings, an understandable fact. The Western layman is not, contrary to the suppositions of the theories of democracy, someone who thinks rationally, collects data prior to his decision, filters the information obtained, and is sensitive to the documents and proofs. Even these laymen whom socio-psychological research focus on, that is, those who do not have any expertise in the topic under discussion, directly produce theories themselves about the issues that preoccupy their minds, without systematically acting to consult the experts on related matters. These theories remind us of mosaics of randomly collected bits and pieces of information stuck together without any consistent relation among them. This mosaic culture, which has neither consistency nor logical principles, is the culture of a world nourished by mass communication, and consequently shaped by the media to a great extent. The loss of the necessity for arguing and reasoning within a frame of logic, in addition to the lack of a sufficient accumulation of data and information, creates a medium which enables everyone, concerned or not, to speak. Of course, from the stand point of democratic practices, it is significant that everybody has a right to speak; yet it should not be also disregarded that this process might end up with some short-cut theories to explain events.

 

The human mind does not sympathize with idleness. Our tendency to understand the world mentally, and to dominate it, leads us to search for some causal explanation of the events, the people and the situations that we observe. This search reveals itself in the attempts to find answers to such questions as "Who did it?" and "Why did he do it?" about any event within the scope of our perception. Finding a doer for every event and attributing a reason for it, comfort man and finalize his mental tensions.

 

Such socio-psychological results can help us understand the way of thinking in Western societies, and consequently the formation of public opinion. In regard to this process, the major point to be considered is the motivation of the general public of these countries to be concerned with what happens outside the Western world. One should really understand the reasons why the man in the street is interested in such universal issues as democracy and human rights in distant countries.

 

Such a concern might be generally an outcome of the leading of public opinion by various influence mechanisms. It is an understandable fact that national governments, to make their policies legitimate to the public, direct public opinion in parallel with their own way of thinking. A second reason might be the good will of the international decision-making authorities for the promotion and domination of human values, to make the world more livable and appropriate for co-existence. Yet these reasons are not sufficient.

 

Social Usage of Genocide, and Search for a Scapegoat

 

It is more significant to figure out the psycho-social reasons for the interest we try to understand for human beings. It seems unplausible at first sight that the average Western man has a deep concern for the fate of the people in a distant country of Africa or Asia. Because such a man is generally accustomed to living within the frame of subway, job and sleep, and has rather little anxiety for the future. He is mostly fond of dining and entertaining himself, and does not read much. He is content with casually skimming through the pages of the papers, and has almost no intellectual concern. This is the layman with whose different versions we are familiar in our society as well (e.g. the man that fits to the pattern of pyjamas-sleepers and TV). Of course, we did have an explicatory scheme for such a problem: These people, with a high level of consciousness, extremely cultivated etc, etc, etc, are models for others. Yet, such a pattern which no longer satisfies anybody is out of fashion. Now, it is possible to find some new explanations.

 

The first component of interpretation comes from the field of communication. It is well-known that a large variety of news items such as disasters, murders, fatal accidents and improprieties always find place in the media. From a socio-psychological perspective, all these observations point to the same result: man takes an odd pleasure in reading about or watching the misfortunes that the others experience. Displaying other people's negative experiences causes some kind of comfort. What can be more comforting than seeing ourselves on the good side, or acting the good roles, with all the vices that occur in this world being committed by the others. A further step of this consideration is to find an actor, preferably a wicked one, for the incidents because the vices without any agents would be the conduct of some blundering forces and irrational powers; and in such a world it would be impossible for man to feel safe. In the operation scheme of the world biased and tailored according to our own needs, there is no place for coincidental vices, or even for negative experiences caused by some situational factors, that is, by some external forces acting free from human will. Wicked strangers are the most appropriate agents for this scheme, which requires the presence of a guilty person who is not one of us. (Didn't the authoritarian men of Adorno think that way?).

 

The second component of interpretation is related to rulers rather than the public, and depends on the strategy of maintaining some kind of social order, and preserving group cohesion by finding a scapegoat, which is also valid for Turkey as well. The most extreme examples of such strategies are the invention of scapegoats by medieval communities during the outbreaks of plague, or still closer to our date, by the Nazis of the 1930s. The search for a scapegoat which becomes concrete in overcoming a crisis by making a sacrifice in various communities throughout history, has never, at the moment of its appearance, revealed itself in its total nakedness, but has always appeared in a legitimate disguise. While a great majority of the world is suffering from famine and poverty, the attempts of the Western countries, which always result in the reinforcement of their superiority over the other countries, are formed on the basis of democracy, human and cultural rights. Such activities might also have some strategic dimension. Thus, during the age of exploration and colonization of new continents, soldiers and merchants colonized new lands by following the path paved by the Christian missionaries who were there to reveal and spread God's message. Similar to that act of colonization, it is still possible today that the process of globalization aims at almost entirely dominating the countries outside the Western world.

 

The target countries chosen as scapegoat are generally the ones which have rather a weak capacity of responding and retaliation. However, the faults and offenses of these target countries in the past, seem, as is well described in Lafontaine's fable "Plagued Animals", to be small in scale compared to the past deeds of the judging countries. From an individualistic perspective, such a strategy results rather in a contentment of Western man with his own situation, country and government (This second point is, from the perspective of the Armenian diaspora, an attempt to construct an ethical collective identity by inventing an enemy, an "Other").

 

The third component of interpretation is related to the theme discussed in Sarte’s La Nausee/Motif of Nausea (1938). Those who have committed a crime, this or that way, in the past, feel a strong urge to comfort their guilty consciences. This human sentiment is an expression of a deep-rooted tendency related to the ritualistic practice of great religions. Almost all religions have developed a method of expiation for sins. The conscience-comforting method either depends on compensating for the committed sin, or becomes concrete as acting in the reverse direction to the crime like becoming more pious, virtous, patriotic, zealous for human rights, etc. This third point is functional for the citizens of the colonizing countries, as well as their governments.

 

As a conclusion, it can be said that the act of writing history produces naive explanations, myths and legends when left in the hands of laymen instead of specialists. It is obvious that such short-cut theories produced by laymen may not have an objective to search for truth. These are not mental products with no profit-making concern, but rather, consciously or unconsciously, serve certain purposes. Therefore, people are more interested in embellished or even gilded myths, rather than a totally naked reality. When such theories, which seem like an innocent discussion topic within the narrow scope of daily life, are imposed as reality, they inflame inter-group hostility by nourishing prejudices. In democracies, the domains left to the preferences of individuals are limited; verities are not voted, but opinions; and the resolutions represent a shared opinion, rather than truth. If history is allowed to be a matter of individual opinion or vote, it becomes story rather than science.

 

Nuri Bilgin

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