Zizek: West also guilty for Armenian 'genocide'

CANSU ÇAMLIBEL ISTANBUL – Hürriyet

HÜRRİYET photo, Levent KULU

Prominent philosopher Slavoj Zizek advised Turkey to “apologize for the horrible things happened in 1915” in an ironic way by saying “this was part of us becoming a modern European nation state.”

“Why is it wrong for Turkey to apologize but also put the blame on Europe? By apologizing, do not fall into the trap of apologizing to Europe. These were wild times. What were the Western powers doing at the same time in their colonies?” said Zizek in an interview with daily Hürriyet yesterday.

He said Turkey could admit that “something horrible happened to Armenians” without isolating itself.

He also said he did not like Europe stigmatizing Turkey as an exception on these issues and the killings of Armenians in 1915 and 1916 were not the same as the Jewish Holocaust of World War II. “It was a little-planned, chaotic operation, rather than an industrial decision to clean out Armenians,” he said.
Zizek also criticized the recent bill adopted by the French Senate penalizing Armenian genocide denial for falling into the mistake of political correctness, which only served to reproduce racism.

“The problem with political correctness is that if you legalize things that are already in your habits […] it is counter-productive in the long term. Even with the Holocaust it is problematic in this sense. Some even wanted to regulate the numbers. Five million were killed, but if you said 4,900,000 Jews were killed you would get penalized. For me, this is the big fiasco of political correctness,” said Zizek.

Ottoman model for Kurds

Ziziek also said the Ottoman model may be ideal for the situation of the Kurds in Syria and Iraq.

“Wouldn’t it be an almost ideal solution to have an autonomous Kurdistan containing part of northern Iraq, part of Syria and still a part of Turkey?” he asked, adding that the current situation would only lead to permanent tensions.