Historical reconciliation policies of The European Union a comparison: the Benes Decrees and the Armenian issue

Abstract

From the First and Second Balkan Wars, to the First World War and Second World War, and finally to the violent break-up of Yugoslavia, Europe has seen numerous expulsions and exchanges of populations that have not fit into the concept of the relatively homogeneous wholes sought to be created by the nation-states which had gone to war with each other. The forced population transfers are institutionalised at the level of states in some cases, they are forms of population cleansing. Turkey's history has some similarities to European history in this respect. At the beginning of the twentieth century, under the process of disintegration, the Christian minorities, particularly the Armenian members of the Empire, were viewed as one of the primary factors responsible for the decline and disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and it was decided they were to be the subject of a forced population transfers (tehcir) in 1915-16. As a result of this forced transfer, according to different sources, 300,000-1,500,000 Armenians died of several cause. There has been a continuing debate over the issue of that this decision was right or wrong, and continuing debate over the terminology ("genocide", "ethnic cleansing" or "forced population transport", etc.) that can be appropriate to apply to the events, for nearly 91 years. In that regard, the European Union (EU), announced several times, using the term of "genocide" to describe the Armenian deportation, that it would not accept a country which cannot or will not face its own. Under these circumstances, Turkey feels wrongly accused and it does not trust the EU and its good-will towards the solution. The main concern of my thesis is to outline a theoretical approach towards the analysis of the reconciliation policies in the EU to help Turkey overcome its fears and to help to ease the relations between the EU and Turkey. The other targets are to comprehend whether or not the European Union might be the ideal interlocutor in solving Turkey's longest and hottest historical problem and to find out that whether Turkey would play a positive role in developing and instutionalizing a theoretical approach towards the historical reconciliation policies in the EU.