So in a debate over Western culture even in London it is not at all surprising to hear speakers telling their audiences that ‘we’ – not only in Europe but across the West – bear responsibility for Nazism and the Holocaust.16 The fact that a London audience is more likely to be descended from – and may well include – people who fought against Nazi Germany (rather than bearing any complicity or responsibility) becomes background detail if not overlooked altogether. The world can generalise away about the West, and Europeans in particular, so long as the generalisation relates to the lowest points of the West’s history. And while any honest student of history must conclude that every community, race and group of humans is not only capable of doing terrible things but has managed to do such things, what a particular entity or era decides to focus on tells you a great deal. Just as telling is what is not focused on and what does not get much meaningful attention.

DOUBLE STANDARDS AND THE TRIUMPH OF THE MASOCHISTS

The Ottoman Empire was one of the largest and longest sustained empires in world history. For more than six hundred years it ruled a vast swathe of land, imposed Islamic religious and cultural ideas on those whom it governed, and by its own system of laws punished those who stood against it. It pushed into south-east Europe, the Middle East and North Africa by military force, and only because of the strength of a coalition of European armies at the battle of Vienna in 1683 did Europe avoid Ottoman rule.

In the wake of the First World War, of course, the empire fell apart. But while it did so it committed one of the worst atrocities in history and the first actual genocide of the twentieth century. The destruction of the Armenian population of Anatolian Turkey saw the massacre of more than a million people in a couple of years. Hundreds of thousands more were made stateless. In 1973, five decades after Turkey’s empire fell apart, Turkey invaded a European nation state, Cyprus. Occupying half of the island, its armies slaughtered Greek Cypriots and drove others from their homes. The occupation continues to this day, despite Turkey being a member of NATO and the southern Greek portion of Cyprus being a member of the EU. One might concede that Turkey, as a historical force, has been no worse, if certainly no better, than any other country in the world. Who has not carried out an actual genocide, run an empire for twice as long as the British and invaded a sovereign nation in recent decades? This is not what is striking. What is striking is that so little of this is ever raised and Turkish people are rarely if ever made to feel guilt for Turkey’s historic role in the world.