Cracking the wall of forgetfulness

Pax Ottomanica was based on the might of the Ottoman army. For most of the time during the Empire?s rule, the tribes in eastern Anatolia, or Arab sheiks of the southern deserts, knew that if they challenged Istanbul, men with guns would come knocking on their door. So once the Army was not strong enough to guarantee peace, all hell broke loose. That was World War I. Bad things happen when empires crumble, and this was an especially big one. Other than Kurds and Palestinians, every Ottoman group carved out a state of their own. Turks today are still awkward about what happened. For us, it was the end of a glorious era, and following a strange rupture, the start of a Republic.

While Pax Ottomanica was based on military might, Pax Turcica in Anatolia has been based on forgetfulness. It was too painful and too complicated for the would-be nation builders in Ankara to deal with the memory of a massive empire. 

That is where, as a veteran citizen of Turkey, I identify with Beatrice and Axl, the protagonists of ?The Buried Giant,? Kazuo Ishiguro?s latest novel. ?Be merciful and leave this country,? one of the protagonists says to the other, ?Leave this country to rest in forgetfulness.? The other answers vehemently, ?Foolishness, sir. How can old wounds heal while maggots linger so richly? Or a peace hold forever built on slaughter??? That makes for a good starting point for a discussion on the ethnic engineering policies of late Ottoman governments. Ethnic engineering did not just happen in 1915. We did it before and afterwards, too, in Anatolia and elsewhere. The legacy of World War I however, is that the late Ottoman governments were trying to create a nation state for Turks in Asia Minor. They succeeded, but only at an immense cost. 

The...