Looking at Kars through the Monument of Humanity
Pelin Başaran[1]
In 2009, the Erzurum and Diyarbakır Councils of Cultural and Natural Conservation halted the construction of the Monument of Humanity in Kars, which had begun in 2006 in the Üçler Neighbourhood near Kars Castle, on the grounds that the monument was being built in a conservation area; supposedly, the monument was to represent humanity and peace in contrast to genocide monuments.
At present, the monument, which was to be completed by the sculptor Mehmet Aksoy, and which was originally proposed by Naif Alibeyoğlu, the mayor at the time from the AKP (Justice and Development Party), consists of two human figures facing one another. One of these figures offers its hand to the other. But due to the decision to halt construction, this hand-to-be-offered lies on the ground still unassembled.
If the monument were to be completed then a weeping eye from which water would flow continuously would be placed at the foot, a laser-beam would be installed at its top so that the statue would be seen from the Caucasus, and in addition, an amphitheatre would have been built in front of it to host events. With a height of thirty-five metres, it was designed to be the tallest statue in Turkey.
As I began to ask questions about the monument in my many visits to Kars,[2] I realized that perceptions of the monument differed markedly, that its story was told in various ways, and finally, as is everywhere and always the case, that a statue is never just a statue, never just a work of art. For this reason, I wanted to research further into why this sculpture was planned in Kars, a border city with growing poverty that has been losing much of its population to internal immigration, and why it was later decided not to complete it. As part of this research, I conducted interviews with local civil society representatives and artisans, and with other individuals who had influenced this process directly and indirectly. In addition, I researched the national and local newspapers. What follows are the preliminary findings of this exploration, along with a discussion on the meanings and perceptions of the monument.
The first part focuses on the reasons behind the initiative to construct the monument in Kars, while the second analyzes its meaning, representation and perception. I aim to answer questions such as, what this statue reminds us of, what it makes us forget, and how a city’s memory affects the practice of cultural arts.
Kars: A Border Town
…why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly, everyone going home so lost in thought? / Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come… / And some who have just returned from the border say there are no barbarians any longer. / And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians / They were, those people, a kind of solution (Kayafis, 1997).
Deriving its title from this poem by Cavafy, Coetzee’s magnificent novel ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’ is set in a small border town of a nameless empire. The law and order installed by the judge, the novel’s protagonist, breaks down as a special army of the empire is stationed in the border town with the excuse that the barbarians across the border are about to invade. The army brings the supposed barbarians into the city, uses torture to render them ineffective, and terrorizes the public as well as the ‘Others’. The judge’s fetishistic relationship with a tortured barbarian girl is the last vestige of humanity. After all this cruelty, the barbarians fail to arrive and the army abandons the city.
This story is based on a threat presumed to come from across the border. In order to cope with this threat, the powers that forcibly take control over the life in the city, wrongfully accuse the people who cross the border and try to subjugate them with torture.
The reason for my trying to approach Kars with the somewhat exaggerated example of this story is to emphasize the strategic importance of border towns for a nation-state as well as the tensions rooted in the memories of the cities. It is also to show the link between the reason behind the building and abandonment of the monument in Kars and the relationship that the city has established with what lies beyond the border and the ‘Others’ who live there.
Kars, known in history as ‘the city where Turks entered Anatolia’, changed hands many times before and after this entry. This city, which had been ruled by Arabs, Byzantines, Seljuks, Akkoyunlus, Urartians, Persians, Ottomans and Tsarist Russia, is located on the Silk Road, a trade route of strategic importance. For this reason, Georgians call this city, where merchants and travellers stay, ‘Karis-Kalaki,’ meaning ‘Gate City’. Kars, which had been under attack by the Russians and the Persians until the 19th century, remained under Russian rule for forty years between 1877 and 1918. Numerous buildings and monuments that are to this day a part of the city’s architecture were constructed during this long period; hundreds of public buildings and residences were built, along with wide, straight and perpendicular streets. The Russian administration that for forty years had been moving the northern population to Kars built the city virtually anew. With the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of 1918 the city came first under Ottoman and then under British rule under the terms of the Armistice of Moudros, declaring itself a republic in 1919. Replacing the short-lived republic, the British appointed the Georgians and the Armenians to rule the city. Towards the end of the same year, Kâzım Karabekir took over the city, and its new borders were drawn with the Treaty of Kars in 1921 (Arkitera, 2007; Kars City Guide, 2010; Wikipedia, 2010).
In the historical narrative of our school-days, Kars was a city that the Russians wanted to reclaim as part of their westward expansion. This period, which the official state history described as the ‘dark days’ and which Ayman called ‘the 40-year syndrome’ would be told and remembered together with disasters, migrations and cruelties such as the Sarıkamış Disaster (Ayman, 2006: 145-190).
In the interviews, Kars was often described as a place ‘that suffered a lot from wars’,[3] ‘where the winter is harsh and where there is poverty, loneliness, fighting and wars’,[4] as well as ‘a region on the eastern point of Turkey that is under constant threat of war due to having Iraq to the south and Iran to the east, where cold wars are lived with intensity’.[5] According to Alibeyoğlu:
Being a border city destroyed Kars. It was its biggest misfortune. Having a Soviet border caused the militarization of Kars during the Cold War. Kars was treated as if it could be lost at any moment. A militaristic community was created. It is the only city with an Armenian border in Turkey that was not able to benefit from border trade.[6]
The Monument of Humanity therefore had a mission in Kars, and with the monument ‘a message would be sent to the world from this city under constant occupation that in Sarıkamış 90,000 were martyred in the snow storms of the Allahüekber Mountains’.[7]
Being a border city with constant wars and occupations makes it a testing ground of governmental powers. For this reason, Kars, like other border cities that help to create and develop the state and the nation, is a part of the discourse of nation and identity (Donnan and Wilson, 1999: 5). ‘With its sand, dust, winter, summer, storm, which thousands of tribes endured – natives, Terekemes, Kurds, Azeris and Turkmens fighting the enemy – Kars, the veteran city, never lowers its head; Kars Castle is the shield of the country.’ Sources that exalt Kars in such language use a discourse of protecting the country founded on a Turkish nationalist state against the unreliable ‘Other’ coming from across the border (Ayman, 2006: 145-190). That the cultures of border cities go beyond political boundaries and become a part of the larger political, economic and social web both inside and outside of the country (Hastings and Wilson, 1999: 12) can be seen as one of the reasons for the anxiety and fear felt vis-à-vis the ‘Other’. Despite the claim that the nation-state is losing its force and that its borders are slowly disappearing, this worry continues to be present in various discourses, especially in the cultural realm.
Nevertheless, many believe that the economic stagnation of Kars will be resolved only when the closed border with Armenia is opened again. This belief exists despite the feeling of mistrust against what is beyond the border entrenched in the collective memory. This contradiction is peculiar to Kars following the closure of the Armenian border in 1993, two years after Armenia’s declaration of independence. The reason for the closure was the invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh during the Armenia-Azerbaijan War. Due to this closure of the border, the situation in which Kars finds itself is different from that of other border cities. One can say that the common problems of border cities such as migration, drug-trafficking, smuggling, and clashes due to migrations and displacements are experienced to a much lesser extent in Kars. Despite having many ethnic identities, Kars has a static social structure. There is no trade due to the border closure and the embargo against Armenia, and this restriction has a negative effect on the economies of the border cities. In other words, the economic tensions created by the border closure determine the character of the city along with the depression of the farming and animal husbandry sectors. Due to the fact that this economic stagnation hinders the city’s development prospects, a large majority of Kars residents see the opening of the borders as an opportunity, and are in favour of it.
Even though the border is closed, it is impossible to think about a monument that is supposed to represent peace without also thinking of Armenia and the Armenians. The ruined Armenian buildings in the city-centre as well as the ancient city of Ani which lies within Kars’ borders and is separated by a river from Armenia and renamed by those who refuse to accept this cultural heritage, remind one of the existence of Armenians, who, for a long time, inhabited the city. The attempt to forget the existence of Armenians in the city involves Ani, a very valuable cultural heritage site, being closed to visitors, inadequately conserved and rejected as a symbol for the city. This is because, accepting this heritage would mean remembering and talking about why the Armenians no longer (are able to) live in this city/country in numbers that correspond to their historical presence.
Consequently, even though the monument does not refer directly to Armenia, one needs to think about it within the framework of recollection and historical narrative interwoven with the narrative of Armenia as ‘the source of mischief’.[8] On the other hand, despite their desire to ‘minimize the Armenian problem’ in the debates about the monument,[9] Mehmet Aksoy and Naif Alibeyoğlu make the technically impossible claim, with contradictory references, that the monument can be seen from Armenia; a fact that reveals how this subject cannot be fully talked about, how they do not have a clear discourse and that the beneficiaries of the monument remain vague.
Oktay Aktaş, himself, answers the question he poses as to why the monument was made so as to be seen from Armenia: ‘So that Armenians can be happy. So that they can say we had built for them a monument that we want on Turkish soil. Armenians are bothered when they see the monument in Iğdır province[10], thus this kind of monument was needed in Kars.’[11] Aktaş sees the project of the statue as forming part of the Armenia projects common in Kars. He describes the Armenia project as follows:
Kars became Russia’s backyard and was subject to the Soviets’ policy of implementing ethnic separation. Though the Soviets always tried to keep ethnic identities alive, this ethnic separation was never successful, and they kept trying for this reason. The US believes within the Greater Middle East Initiative that the nation states are gone. The small states should be taken out. Turkey should be divided into seven or eight geographic regions. They want to implement the Great Armenia project through ethnic division. [...] In its creation, Armenia suspended the Kars Treaty, which drew its first eastern borders. In this way, Armenia declared Kars to be Armenian land. [...] The Diaspora that targets 1915 thinks that it can bring about the three ‘T’s (toprak-land, tazminat-recuperation, tanıma-recognition) by 2015. [...] These statues are being prepared for 2015. The project of preparing Kars and Eastern Anatolia is for 2015.[12]
Once again, this claim reminds me of a movie scene. Reha Erdem’s film Kosmos, which we know was shot in Kars, takes place in an unnamed border town. Despite its surreal context, it shows us the reality of Kars through the petition to open the borders. Someone who was asked to sign the petition objects on the grounds that there would be more crime and theft if the borders were to be opened. Apparently, according to him, the ‘barbarians’ are ready and waiting beyond the border.
Kars, the Davos of the Caucasus
According to Alibeyoğlu, Kars, where unemployment and poverty are constantly rising, should become a centre of attraction, and emigration should be decreased. With a population below 150-200,000, inhabitants, who earn a fair share of the national income and benefit from the services of the city, and known for its cultural activities and peace initiatives that shape the country and the world like Geneva, Lausanne and Davos, Kars is a city with a vision and a mission. In order to fulfil this, the city should aspire to have a professional football team, a modern movie theatre, an arts centre, an international festival and a five-star hotel. The city would prosper if it became a free region like a door opening to Armenia, if winter-, cultural- and religious-tourism was developed, and if it increased its livestock rearing potential. For this reason, cultural activities are more important than a road or a waterway, and though the primary duty of a municipality is to provide infrastructure, one should first develop people’s minds.[13]