Op-Ed
Turkey and Iran, So Far Away: A Broadcast
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Cosmology on the Rocks
Cosmology on the Rocks
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Good evening, Cornell, and welcome to the news. I’m your well-dressed anchor, Jeremy, and I’ll be manufacturing truth for you tonight. But folks, I’m not the only one! We’ve got all kinds of actors on the world stage in the past week who have been hard at work shaping truths, shaping opinions and shaping reality with the words they choose to use.
Our first story takes us to the lovely capital city of Washington, D.C., where on Wednesday, the House Foreign Relations Committee decided that there was an Armenian Genocide. The controversy over this 27-21 vote comes even though most scholars agree that during World War I, somewhere between 200,000 and 2 million Armenians were deported and massacred under the Ottoman Empire. So why are we still arguing about it after 90 years? Let’s go to our brave reporter in Ankara who is reporting outside in the rain for no reason but to wear his nice new North Face raincoat. Brave Reporter?
Thanks Jeremy. I don’t know if you can tell, but it’s raining here.
It’s raining here too. This is Ithaca.
Yea. I’m actually in Ithaca too. We just planted a Turkish flag behind me. Those suckers at home will never know. Um, did I just say that out loud?
That’s right Brave [toothy smile], we’re on the air. So … let’s get to it, yea?
Of course. Well, the Turks are really quite upset about this decision by the House committee to call the events of 1915-1918 a genocide. Of course, President Bush urged the House not to do this. The U.S. military is relying heavily on Turkish supply routes for the floundering war in neighboring Iraq.
Turkish president Abdullah Gul called the House decision “unacceptable,” and protesters waved banners yesterday calling the Armenian Genocide “an imperialistic lie.”
An imperialistic lie. That’s quite interesting. They must mean that Americans are imperialists, and since they said it, it’s a lie — an imperialist lie.
I sense some irony coming on.
Yes, Brave, irony indeed. For the perpetrator of these massacres in Turkey was none other than the Ottoman Empire. So if the perpetrator was quite literally imperialist, then the Genocide itself was an imperialist genocide, much more literally than any lies about it could be.
Hold on, Jeremy, I have a young Turk here who would like to tell you something.
[A Turkish man grabs the microphone]
He says, “You know what we resent? It’s that you’ve never owned up to your genocide of the Native Americans, but you reserve the right to accuse us.”
Understood, sir. Now, Brave, was that a real Turk you just interviewed, given that you aren’t really in Ankara?
Yes, Jeremy, it’s called globalization. There are many Turks in the U.S. Which means lazy Americans don’t have to go anywhere to learn about Turks.
Understood. But his defensiveness is perplexing. It was the Ottoman Empire that perpetrated this genocide, and yet the Turkish Republic — a different political entity altogether — gets so defensive, as if the genocide were perpetrated under Ataturk himself.
Maybe it isn’t that perplexing. After all, our Turkish friend’s mention of the Native American genocide will be completely censored from this conversation, if not by censors, then by the viewers themselves. No one likes to be guilty.
Well, I guess we’ll have to switch stories then. Ladies and gentlemen, I profusely apologize for such a morbid topic this evening, but it seems that there is quite a funny Saturday Night Live video about Iranian President Ahmadinejad circulating on YouTube. It’s called “Iran So Far.” So in order to gratify you, we’ll talk about President Ahmadinejad. It’s called spin; you’re interested, so we report it, so you’re interested, and this cycle of hype spins out of control so that we are really just selling our station to you, rather than reporting the news. Ehem! Sorry, my bureau editor just kicked me in the chest. Ehem! Ouch. What an imperialist.
Well, since we certainly don’t have a reporter in Iran — it’s so far away — I think I’ll have to tell you my thoughts on the matter from right here in my apartment — er, studio.
As the mock pop singer says to a sparkling Ahmadinejad in the homoerotic spoof video, “You can deny the Holocaust all you want, but you can’t deny that there’s something between us.” This is funny because a homoerotic overture is juxtaposed with what is precisely the most serious transgression in the West: denying the Holocaust. And if you want to challenge Western hegemony, you challenge one of its most serious discourses.
If we’d like to test the thesis that humanity is developing common values and enforcing them — that “never again” will become a historical truth and not just a vexed sigh — we don’t have to go too far. We don’t have to go to Turkey or Iran or Sudan or Cambodia. Or Bosnia. The terminology of “genocide or not” would tell us all we need to know: people would still rather have semantic disagreements than come clean and actually help.
But if we’d like to actualize that thesis — to actualize a global humanism — it would probably require an opposite strategy. It would require using globalization for humanization — getting on a plane and going to the Holocaust memorial in downtown Berlin to learn from the Germans’ honesty. And from there, to Darfur. And if my mock reporters did that, and other people did too, then we’d break the discourse curse, stop the petty disagreements and instead become human witnesses.
Perhaps we could start by electing a president who’s been out of the U.S. before, and who, of all things, understands that his word choice matters.
We close with a quick message from our station: “Please forgive the honesty of this broadcast: it won’t happen again.” And now, Cornell, good night, and a pleasant Homecoming weekend.
Jeremy Siegman is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at jsiegman@cornellsun.com. Cosmology on the Rocks appears alternate Fridays.