Turkey talking Turkey
There is something absurd about Turkey initiating a conversation about Israel committing genocide. Knowing what was done to the Armenians, and Turkey’s historical denial of it, the only reason I can come up with for them to bother with this ‘investigation’, is to reinforce their support in the Middle East, which would then ennable them, hopefully, to become a more effective broker for peace down the road. While I do not support the recent war in Gaza (on the grounds that I don’t support any war anywhere), I don’t believe these sorts of accusations help in any way further the cause of reconciliation. As long as different actors push opposite and contentious narratives of events, there is little hope for peace. We need to get beyond the narrative to says this is an ethnic conflict, which denies the political realities at play. Sadly, the elections in Israel this week have emboldened those forces in Israel who see this in starkly ethnic terms, and believe in an inevitable clash of civilizations. As the history of the Jewish people demonstrates, there is nothing inevitable about civiliations clashing. We have survived the rise and fall of countless civilizations, lived peacefully with most of them for most of the time, and suffered the greatest violence not as a result of irreconcilable differences, but when those differences are exploited for political expediency. Sadly, it seems expedient right now for the right-wing in Israel and in the Arab world to exploit those differences yet again. I only hope that other voices, those that understand the peaceful narrative of our shared history, can speak louder than the current politics.
