Honorable Mr Prime Minister,
Excellencies, distinguished participants,

A restless quest for historical truth and justice, and political pragmatism are by no means antidotes. Genocides, holocausts and other crimes against humanity will always remain unabsolved until and unless there is an understanding that, on the one hand, denial is not only a great deception, but also a self-deception and therefore, a self-denial. On the other hand, a realization should come that forgiveness is a means to heal not only for the executioners and perpetrators but also for the victims and their descendants.
The pendulum of historical justice and veracity oscillates between the will and courage to admit the terrible crime, the outrage against humanity, and the will and courage to forgive. The deviations of the pendulum could lead to untold disasters in a nation’s quest for future development and a new identity. The grievances and scars of the last century will make a venomous vaccination into the new millenium. We already witness the impact of this deadly bane in what was once called the Middle East peace process.
Is reconciliation possible without repentance and recognition of the crime? In societal, moral realm the answer is “no”. In politics it is better to reckon on other categories. Political dialogue between the parties in question both presupposes and indicates by itself, that a reconciliation process should be under way between the societies.

Professor Alexander Boraine, one of the first and the best speakers of this conference gave a few definitions of reconciliation. I will add another one. Reconciliation is the moment of balance and truth between repentance and forgiveness on the scale of justice, i.e. the overcoming of denial.

It is quite symbolic that I have a chance to address this high forum on April 24, the first September 11 of the last century, when 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered in the Ottoman Empire. The 1915 Armenian grief is the one that grieves on universal bones, the one that left horrible scars on the soul and body of the nation, as well as the soul and body of humanity at large, including Turkey. The scars of the genocide cannot be smeared with forgetful ointment for they need a more serious medication not only in the Turkish–Armenian context but also in a wider international sense.

Since holocausts and genocides are crimes against humanity, all nations share the pain, but they should also share responsibility and guilt. Yet it is not the nations but the outstanding individuals who time and again make a difference, who keep the pendulum of justice between repentance and forgiveness. And while their heroic effort saves the day, if it is not actively backed by the society, they fall short of saving the century or the millennium. Raoul Wallenberg saved more than a day and it is no accident that today’s Sweden, as a state and as a nation, alongside the other Scandinavian countries leads the noble fight for human rights and democracy world-wide. This fight claimed another sacrifice, Prime Minister Olof Palme, but his effort was no more as individual and lonely as the one made by Raoul Wallenberg, because the whole social organism of his country has matured and graduated beyond the bitter experience of WWI and WWII.
The future of the Turkish–Armenian relations will heavily rely upon great individual efforts, but it is also the social organisms of the two countries that need to change and make a difference. The first step should be the transition by Turkey from the policy of denial to repentance, which is not a political but a moral category. The second step should be forgiveness, which also belongs to the moral realm. The social pendulum must oscillate between the two. This should be the modus vivendi of the relations between the two societies.

As far as the political and economic realms are concerned, they should constitute the modus operandi of the dialogue between the two states by establishing relations without any preconditions. The government of Armenia since the country regained its independence has repeatedly stated that it doesn’t make the recognition of the 1915 genocide by the government of Turkey a precondition for the establishment of bilateral relations with Ankara. Unfortunately, the denials rooted in the social and moral realm in Turkey overgrew into the field of politics as well.

September 11 changed the world, but it also changed our region. Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan face new challenges today. We all need to be guided by political pragmatism and a new regional identity.We should never forget the past, having the courage to face it without prejudice, and we must build the civilized future in all the realms of our relations. This future should be based upon legal verisimilitude, historical veracity and political pragmatism.