Time for Recognition

By Jennifer Gnana

What's in a name?

An identity, a legacy and remembrance, maybe?

What if something didn't have a name?

It is highly likely that the person or event will not be remembered, cherished or studied in the years to come.

The world community's refusal and hesitance in calling the brutal massacres of the Armenian people at the turn of the previous century, is tantamount to obliterating the horrible events for posterity.

Peter Balakian, in his book, The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response calls it "double killing" because it murders the memory of the event.

Even a country such as Israel, home to the Jews who bore the full brunt of the atrocities tested on the Armenians only a few years before are hesitant to acknowledge it as genocide.

The hesitancy on part of the global community is thanks to the power wielded by Turkey in Central Asia and the Middle East.

The country is viewed as the bridge between "the East and the West, between Islam and Christianity, a bridge between Asia and Europe, a bridge between energy resources and consumers" as Turkey's chief EU negotiator Egemen Bagis said recently in an interview with Al Jazeera.

As a former Islamic country that has successfully marched ahead, thanks to its secularist policies and reforms brought about by Mustafa Kemal who unified the Turkish nation, there is a new confidence in the stride of the nation.

One of the few nations in the Middle East that maintains relations with Israel, it is viewed as a strategic ally which cannot be condemned.

Moreover, as a base for US operations in Iraq, Turkey has become an indispensable friend of the West.

Do friends however, base their relationship on mutual admiration and tide over failings and atrocities?

In Turkey's case, they do.

Before assuming office, US President Barack Obama had vowed that he would see to it that he would put an end to genocides everywhere.

Now about to campaign for reelection, we may expect to hear that slogan again.

This is because in the term he has served in office, he has refused to term the massacres of Armenians as genocide.

In spite of the fact that the US House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Committee passed a non-binding measure calling on the Obama administration to call the killings, a genocide, the president has shied away from using the term.

The non-binding measure however, invited the wrath of Ankara which promptly recalled its ambassador to the US.

If Turkey can afford to act with such diplomatic impunity, what stops the United States from officially condemning Turkey's genocide of Armenians.

The only government so far, to recognise the Armenian genocide is France.

President Nicholas Sarkozy has been one of the vocal critics of Turkey and has continuously opposed Ankara's bid to join the European Union till it stopped denying the genocide.

A bill has been submitted to the French parliament which seeks to make it a criminal offence to deny the Jewish holocaust and the Armenian genocide.

This move has angered many in Turkey who see it as an unpleasant reminder of the past which does not suit a modern nation like Turkey.

While Turkey would not like to be clubbed along with cruel regimes of Cambodia's Pol Pot, Hitler's Germany and the genocide in Rwanda, it would do well to remember that normalising relations with its brutalised neighbour begins with calling a spade a spade.