M IXING POLITICS and history is perilous. David Rieff, the author of “In Praise of Forgetting”, argues that the commemoration of past wrongs can become a moral cudgel, cynically weaponised over and over again for political ends. That is certainly how Turkey’s government sees it when foreigners refer to the deaths of over a million Armenians at the hands of Ottoman forces in 1915 as genocide. On October 29th America’s House of Representatives voted to do just that. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was furious. “Countries whose history is stained by genocide, slavery and exploitation have no right to give lessons to Turkey,” he fumed. He suggested he might call off a trip to Washington planned for November 13th, but as The Economist went to press the trip appeared to be back on.

The vast majority of scholars, as well as nearly 30 countries, agree that the massacres and forced deportations of the Armenians did amount to genocide. But the House resolution seemed to be motivated less by a commitment to historical truth than by the desire to reprimand Mr Erdogan. For decades American lawmakers had stopped short of recognising the genocide to avoid damaging relations with Turkey, a crucial NATO ally. This time relations are already at rock bottom. Earlier this year Turkey bought a Russian missile-defence system, which could allow Moscow to spy on American warplanes. Last month its army invaded northern Syria to attack Kurdish fighters there who have been close American allies in the battle against Islamic State. Small wonder American attitudes to Turkey have hardened. Less than an hour after the genocide bill passed, the House voted in favour of economic sanctions against Turkey. (To become law, these would have to clear the Senate and Donald Trump’s desk, which is unlikely.) Politics was the main reason why America did not recognise the genocide in the past, and why it has done so today.

Turkey has always denied the genocide, insisting that the number of Armenians who perished is much lower than most records suggest, and that far more Ottoman Muslims were killed during the war. Mr Erdogan’s government has occasionally referred to 1915 as a tragedy, but has never cared to distinguish between perpetrators and victims. Turkey today is home to about 50,000 Armenians, practically all of whom live in Istanbul, which was mostly exempted from the mass deportations. Few of them dispute the basic facts of the genocide. But many have been reluctant to enlist in the global recognition campaign.

Starting in the early 2000s, a series of seminars in America and Europe brought together diaspora Armenians and Turkish Armenian intellectuals. The former tended to focus entirely on the past and on the genocide. The latter preferred to discuss the present, and the challenges facing Turkey and its minorities. One of the Turkish Armenian participants, a journalist named Hrant Dink, argued that genocide resolutions by third countries have done more harm than good, provoking a nationalist backlash and hindering Turkey’s democratisation. “We must separate history from politics,” he wrote at the time. “Let us not try to resolve our historical disputes before resolving our political ones.” A few years later, Mr Dink was gunned down outside his office in Istanbul by a teenage Turkish nationalist.

Remembrance may be fraught with risks; but the dangers of forgetting are higher. Taner Akcam, a Turkish historian, once wrote that the genocide has become his country’s “collective secret”. Schoolbooks in Turkey continue to teach that the death marches were a necessary and proportionate response to attacks on Turkish villages by Armenian rebels. Those Armenians who died during the war, one claims, died as a result of “transportation difficulties, adverse weather conditions and epidemic diseases”.

Turkey’s rejection of the genocide label is only part of the problem. A bigger worry is its refusal to accept any responsibility for what happened. For successive governments, condemnation of the events of 1915, whether as genocide, a war crime or ethnic cleansing, has been out of the question. The past has been sanitised. “There have been no massacres and no slaughters in our history,” Mr Erdogan said a few years ago.

The notion that the Turkish state can do no wrong has also left a mark on the present. No major Turkish news outlet can report on the dozens of civilians killed during the country’s Syrian offensive. Turks who openly oppose the invasion risk prosecution. This is largely because Mr Erdogan seeks to stifle most forms of dissent, but also because the legacy of 1915 has made some topics especially taboo. The Turkish state and army are beyond reproach; suggestions to the contrary border on treason. Mr Dink believed Turkey needed to become a fully-fledged democracy before it could face up to the genocide. But perhaps Turkey needs to own up to the genocide before it can become a democracy.

Reversion to type

Ironically, it was Mr Erdogan who once offered the best chance of progress. Turkey and Armenia launched talks to renew diplomatic relations and reopen their borders in 2009. Five years later Mr Erdogan made history by offering condolences to the victims of 1915 and their descendants. But the talks have since collapsed, and the government is now as snarlingly nationalist as any of its predecessors. Two years ago parliament passed a law to punish lawmakers who mention the genocide. Last month the authorities banned a conference on Armenian culture in Anatolia. Since a coup attempt in 2016, many of the liberals who encouraged Turkey to come to terms with the genocide have been silenced or forced into exile. Exposing or dwelling on another country’s past wrongs is bound to create friction, and might even be counter-productive. But covering them up is an offence to the dead and a disservice to the living. As Turkey may realise one day, the genocide is not the only stain on its history. So, too, is the century of denial that has followed. ■