Gönül’s remarks defending the deportations of Greeks and Armenians from Anatolia at the beginning of the 20th century have been met with harsh criticism from intellectuals and civil society organizations. Some academics, such as Professor Doğu Ergil, a Sunday’s Zaman writer, have argued that if these ethnic groups were still living in Turkey people, like Gönül could never become state ministers. In his speech Gönül claimed that reform efforts during the last years of the Ottoman Empire had been ineffective and unable to “save the country.” He suggested that the “success” of the republic lay in the nation-building process. “If there were Greeks in the Aegean and Armenians in most places in Turkey today, would it be the same nation-state? I don’t know what words I can use to explain the importance of the population exchange, but if you look at the former state of affairs, its importance will become very clear,” Gönül said. He added that in those days Ankara was composed of four neighborhoods -- Armenian, Jewish, Greek and Muslim -- and claimed that after the nation-building process it became possible to establish a national bourgeoisie.
The Lausanne Treaty, signed in 1923, called for a population exchange between the Greek Orthodox citizens of the young Turkish Republic and the Muslim citizens of Greece, which resulted in the displacement of approximately 2 million people.
The Armenian population that was in Turkey before the establishment of Turkish Republic was forced to emigrate in 1915, and the conditions of this expulsion are the basis of Armenian claims of genocide.
Although the numbers are not clear, according to a census in 1914, approximately 20 percent of the population living within the borders of today’s Turkey were non-Muslims, while others claim that the number was around 25 percent.
Academics such as Soli Özel, Ferhat Kentel, Baskın Oran and Ayhan Aktar stress that if the minorities had not been expelled, Turkey would be a different place in terms of the Kurdish question, the economy and secularism.
Aktar says there were two nations that eradicated their own bourgeoisie, the Russians in the 1917 revolution and the Turks, first by killing them and second by exchanging them. “This means that during the 1923-1934 period the bourgeoisie was liquidated. It was not possible to reach the export level of the Ottomans until 1928. Then there was the 1929 crisis, which introduced statism to Turkey,” he says.
According to Kentel, statism created the bureaucracy and the new capitalist segment supported by it got richer but, because they didn’t know how to invest, they fed off of the resources of the state. This attitude brought all kinds of evils: corruption, a tolerance for mafia-style business and the legitimization of all types of immoral trade rules.
Oran stressed that the ability to invest, produce, export and find markets totally disappeared in 1915 and 1923. In an article published in the Agos newsweekly and the Radikal daily this week, industrialization was set back by at least 50 years. Özel argued that, after losing its minorities, Turkey had to spend 60 years creating sufficient human capital. Ergil notes that the locals in Anatolia asked state officials to bring back some of the minorities because it was not possible to find professionals and artisans, such as stove makers, mechanics and construction experts.
According to many academics, Turkey would also be a better place culturally, too. In his article Oran cited some examples and asked his readers to imagine what Turkey would look like if the cultural developments spurred on by minorities had not be ceased. “Anatolia before it was cleansed was a very civilized place. In Harput alone there were 92 schools, and there was a theater there a year before Atatürk was born. The Sasuryan brothers introduced photography in 1890,” he points out. Özel agrees, adding that if the Greeks and Armenians were still living in Turkey, Anatolia would not be a place of tensions.
Academics also say some of Turkey’s other problems would be different. For example, since there would be different cultures, tolerance would be learned naturally and secularism would not be a problem for Turkey. Ergil argues that Turkey would definitely be a pluralistic country. He also recalls that before the forced emigration of the Armenians, no one was talking about extreme poverty in eastern Anatolia.
They all also agree that the Kurdish question would be different. Kentel says there would be many languages spoken and that this would help the development of tolerance for different cultures. Aktar underlines that Turkey cannot have a population exchange or force Kurds to emigrate but, at the same time, it is not able to develop a culture of cohabitation. “If even only 5 percent of the population was composed of minorities, Turkey would have a culture of cohabitation and the Kurdish question would be at a different level.”
National
