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CHILD PORNOGRAPHY AND ARMENIAN ISSUE IN THE NETHERLANDS POLITICS
Sedat Laciner
Journal of Turkish Weekly, Turkey
Sept 27 2006
It is really strange. The Armenian issue has become an issue in the
run up to the Dutch elections. The two leading Dutch parties in the
opinion polls have kicked out prospective Turkish MPs because they
do not accept the Armenian claims are true. The candidates, one from
the opposition Labor Party and two from the biggest coalition party -
the Christian Democrat CDA - are Dutch/Turkish politicians who have
worked for integration of the Turkish and Muslims in the country.
There are strong Armenian communities and lobbies in many countries
including Armenia. Armenians are actually a nation of diaspora. The
diaspora population of the Armenians is higher than the population
of motherland. The diaspora Armenians are very keen on to make all
world governments to recognize the so-called Armenian genocide. The
Armenians believe in that the 1915 Events Under the Ottoman Rule was
a genocide although even the term of 'genocide' was unknown at that
time. Turkey has never accepted the Armenian claims and accused the
Armenians of massacring more than 520.000 Muslim Ottoman citizens,
namely Turkish and Kurdish people. Turkey's so-called 'deny' made the
nationalist Armenians crazy and they started a revenge campaign. The
Armenian fanatics murdered many former Ottoman ministers after the
First World War and made great pressure on the parliaments where
they live in against the Turkish interests. In 1970s, the Armenian
reaction against Turkey transformed into Armenian terrorism. ASALA
and other Armenian terrorist organizations assassinated more than 40
Turkish diplomats and civilians. The Armenian terrorists made armed
operations in many countries, including France, Greece, United States,
United Kingdom, Austria, Spain, Iran, Switzerland etc. Many people
were also wounded. The bombs were put in the Turkish bank branches,
airway offices and embassies. The Armenian terrorist organizations
were backed by the Communist intelligence services and Palestinian
terrorist organizations. They were trained in Lebanon and Syria. The
most dramatic fact for Turkey was that the military alliances in
NATO, notably France and Greece, ignored the Armenian terrorists. The
terrorists even found safe haven in Greece and Greek Cyprus.
When the terrorist attacks hit Western targets and killed some
Western citizens, the United States and Western European states
put great pressure on the Armenian groups and the Armenian terrorist
organization strangely vanished. Some of the Turkish academicians argue
that the Armenian groups handed their arms and terrorism facilities
to the Kurdish separatist terrorist organization PKK. The PKK and
ASALA made agreements in London and Beirut. The end of the terrorist
attacks was actually a fresh start for the parliament lobbying for
the Armenian communities. The Armenian Church and Armenian extremist
groups aimed to persuade at least 100 foreign parliaments to recognize
the Armenian historical claims as truth. The Armenian activists never
applied a court for their cause although they claimed that more than
1,5 million Armenians were massacred by the Ottomans. Strangely the
Armenian figure has changed a lot:
Some Armenian books claimed about 750.000 Armenians were killed,
while some others were speaking about 1,5 million. Even some
Armenian activists in Wales argued more than 2,5 million Armenians
were slaughtered by the Turks. According to the Ottoman archives the
total Armenian population was less than 1,5 million.
Armenians started campaigns and lobbied to issue Armenian bills against
Turkey in almost all countries in the world. They focused on the North
American and Western European parliaments. The Armenians hoped that
if the West recognize the Armenian claims, they would force Turkey
recognize the Armenian cause. But they were simply wrong. Turkey has
never been persuaded in any issue like this. How Armenians harmed
Turkish interests abroad, Turkey became more hostile towards the
Armenians. The Armenian attacks abroad made the Turkish people crazy.
Netherlands was not an exception. The Armenian lobbying has always been
strong in this country. Armenian community concentrated in Amsterdam
during the 17th and 18th centuries, and the Armenian Dutch citizens
became very influential despite their relatively small population. The
exact number of Armenians in the country now is unknown, but it is
unofficially estimated that about 4,000 to 6,000 Armenians live in
the Netherlands. However the Armenian influence on Dutch politics is
still strong, particularly on the Turkish issues.
One of the reasons for this is the Armenian global solidarity. The
Armenian lobbying parties in Western Europe unite in each cases and
make lobbies. For example, about 300.000 Armenians live in France
and they have MPs, businessmen, authors etc. in France and all these
strong people join in any lobbying activities in EU countries. Thus
the Armenian cause become strong in the countries where the Armenian
population is really small, like United Kingdom, Netherlands and
Belgium. Second reason is the strong anti-Turkish circles in these
countries. Many in the Netherlands believe that the Turkish people
are not European and Turkey's EU membership must be prevented. The
EU summits however confirmed that Turkey's EU membership cannot be
stopped in terms of economic and political criteria. Turkish economy is
better than Bulgaria's, Romania's, even some of the EU members right
now. Under these circumstances, the Armenian issue with the Cyprus
issue provide perfect tools to keep the Turks outside. Third, there are
traditional anti-Turkey groups in the Western European countries like
the Greeks, Greek Cypriots, racist and religionist European groups,
Marxist Turks and PKK supporters. All are natural partners for the
Armenian lobbying groups against Turkey. None of these groups lose
any opportunity in damaging Turkish interests in Europe. Thus an
anti-Turkish coalition emerged, and when the Armenians attempted
to push the Dutch or any other parliament to accept the Armenian
claims as truth, all the mentioned anti-Turkey groups unite behind
the Armenians. It was the case when the Dutch Parliament accepted the
Armenian 1915 allegations. The Dutch Parliament adopted a resolution
recognizing the 1915 events as genocide in 2004. According to the
accepted resolution the Dutch government had to push for recognition
of the so-called genocide as part of the negotiations for Turkey's
desired accession to the EU.
Tineke Huizinga from the Christian explains the official Dutch
position:
"More than one and a half million people were murdered during the
time of World War I by Turkey and this was a genocide and you can
absolutely compare this with the Holocaust."
It is really strange and non-based because there was no country
named Turkey in 1915. Turkey was established in 1923. The country
at that time on Anatolian territory was the Ottoman Empire. Dutch
politicians compare the 1915 Events with the Holocaust but Israel
reject any comparison between Holocaust and 1915 Events. The following
quotation from a Nobel Prize winning Israeli statesman, Shimon Peres,
closes the discussion:
"We reject attempts to create a similarity between the Holocaust and
the Armenian allegations. Nothing similar to the Holocaust occurred.
It is a tragedy what the Armenians went through but not a genocide...
Israel should not determine a historical or philosophical position
on the Armenian issue. If we have to determine a position, it should
be done with great care not to distort the historical realities."
(Peres: Armenian Allegations are Meaningless', Turkish Daily News, 10
April 2001; Haig Boyadjian, 'Peres Claims Armenians Did Not Experience
Genocide', Asbarez, 10 April 2001).
Turkey has rejected all accusations and blamed the Dutch politicians
of undermining Turkish-Armenian reconciliation. Turkish Prime
Minister Tayyip Erdogan call the Armenian side to establish a joint
commission to discuss the historical disputes instead of foreign
involvements. However the Armenians rejected all good will offers
and continued to their anti-Turkish efforts in the Western parliaments.
Strangely Armenia does not recognize Turkey's eastern borders despite
the written agreements, like Kars Agreement. Second, Armenia has
occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan and about 1 million Azeris have
been refugees since the occupation. The genocide-like massacres
in Hocali town (Azerbaijan) was pictured and documented well by
the Western media. However none of the European or North American
Parliaments mentioned all these issues but discussed the disputes
happened almost a century ago. I personally do not believe that the
Western parliaments love the Armenians and give great importance to
history. If so, they should first recognize the Algerian genocide
committed by France after the Second World War. Genocides committed
by the Belgium, Germans or Russians should have been on the list. If
these parliaments give so importance to the massacres and genocides,
they should have mention the war crimes and massacres committed by
the Armenians during the Ottoman time, after the First World War
and Karabakh War. All of us know that all these things are dirty
politics. The Armenian issue is being abused, and the Armenians are
happy with abused by the Western politicians.
DUTCH POLITICAL PARTIES AND RACIST DISCRIMINATION
Armenians saw the Ducth elections as another opportunity to raise
their arguments and to harm the Turkish interests in this country in
2006. It made the headlines after questions were raised by the Armenian
community in the Netherlands when the names of the candidates were
made public on the party lists for the November elections, and a
heated discussion soon followed.
The Turkish-Dutch candidates in question had clearly stated in the
past that, in their view, the 1915 events were not genocide but
communal calashes. They said the so-called genocide not taken place.
This view is contrary to the official policy of some of the Dutch
political parties.
It was a clash with this position that brought the CDA candidates
Ayhan Tonca, Osman Elamci and Labour Party candidate Erdinc Sacan
into problems with their parties. Ayhan Tonca has constantly denied
the genocide occurred: "The genocide that people talk about never
took place" he said.
Although Mr. Tonca doesn't deny that hundreds of thousands of people
died, he argues that there needs to be further investigation to see if
the killings were consciously carried out by the Ottoman government at
that time. Many Turkish people and even the current Turkish Government
think in this way. Turkey accepts that thousands of people were killed
and died during the 1915 Relocation. Turkey says that it was difficult
times, and the war circumstances with poor economic conditions caused
epidemics and famines in Anatolia.
According to the Turkish historians many Armenians died due to the
famine, bad weather conditions, epidemics and lack of health etc.
facilities. Turks also accept that many more Armenians were killed by
the armed gangs, mostly Kurdish. The previous Armenian attacks against
the Kurdish tribes caused revenge attacks and some Kurdish gangs also
attacked the Armenian immigrants hoping to get their valuables. What
is obvious that the Ottoman soldiers could not protect the Armenian
civilians and thousands of Armenians were killed or died due to the
'natural reasons'.
Turkish candidates explanation was not in line with the CDA's and
Labour Party's official policy, and events that followed the initial
uproar made things even harder for the CDA to accept. As a matter
of fact that these Turkish candidates do not accept some other
CDA policies, like Turkey's full EU membership. The Armenian and
anti-Turkey lobbies' pressure left the CDA with little choice but
to remove them from the list of candidates. The Dutch Labour Party
decided to scrap its candidate from the list after the Turkish-Dutch
candidate refused to stand by the so-called official party policy
recognizing the Armenian claims. According to the candidates removed
from the list, this was unacceptable, because the political parties
are known as the symbol of different ideas and freedom of speech. If
a politician cannot think in different ways in political parties,
where does he/she can do so?
The Netherlands has been known for its liberal laws and political
system. Dutch even allow paedophile group. A Dutch court turned down
a request to ban a political party (the Brotherly Love, Freedom and
Diversity Party, PNVD) with a paedophile agenda. Dutch PNVD seeks
to lower the age of sexual consent from 16 to 12 and legalize child
pornography and sex with animals. "Freedom of expression...including
the freedom to set up a political party can be seen as the basis
for a democratic society," Judge Hofhuis told the journalist after
the verdict.
As a result, you can defend child pornography and sex with animals
in the Netherlands but you cannot have different opinion on Armenian
issue.
If you are Turkish you have to obey what the imposed on you. Shut up,
and accept it!
You have no choice but recognition of what you did not commit.
Thanks God, the Netherlands is a liberal and democratic country.
Sedat Laciner
Journal of Turkish Weekly, Turkey
Sept 27 2006
It is really strange. The Armenian issue has become an issue in the
run up to the Dutch elections. The two leading Dutch parties in the
opinion polls have kicked out prospective Turkish MPs because they
do not accept the Armenian claims are true. The candidates, one from
the opposition Labor Party and two from the biggest coalition party -
the Christian Democrat CDA - are Dutch/Turkish politicians who have
worked for integration of the Turkish and Muslims in the country.
There are strong Armenian communities and lobbies in many countries
including Armenia. Armenians are actually a nation of diaspora. The
diaspora population of the Armenians is higher than the population
of motherland. The diaspora Armenians are very keen on to make all
world governments to recognize the so-called Armenian genocide. The
Armenians believe in that the 1915 Events Under the Ottoman Rule was
a genocide although even the term of 'genocide' was unknown at that
time. Turkey has never accepted the Armenian claims and accused the
Armenians of massacring more than 520.000 Muslim Ottoman citizens,
namely Turkish and Kurdish people. Turkey's so-called 'deny' made the
nationalist Armenians crazy and they started a revenge campaign. The
Armenian fanatics murdered many former Ottoman ministers after the
First World War and made great pressure on the parliaments where
they live in against the Turkish interests. In 1970s, the Armenian
reaction against Turkey transformed into Armenian terrorism. ASALA
and other Armenian terrorist organizations assassinated more than 40
Turkish diplomats and civilians. The Armenian terrorists made armed
operations in many countries, including France, Greece, United States,
United Kingdom, Austria, Spain, Iran, Switzerland etc. Many people
were also wounded. The bombs were put in the Turkish bank branches,
airway offices and embassies. The Armenian terrorist organizations
were backed by the Communist intelligence services and Palestinian
terrorist organizations. They were trained in Lebanon and Syria. The
most dramatic fact for Turkey was that the military alliances in
NATO, notably France and Greece, ignored the Armenian terrorists. The
terrorists even found safe haven in Greece and Greek Cyprus.
When the terrorist attacks hit Western targets and killed some
Western citizens, the United States and Western European states
put great pressure on the Armenian groups and the Armenian terrorist
organization strangely vanished. Some of the Turkish academicians argue
that the Armenian groups handed their arms and terrorism facilities
to the Kurdish separatist terrorist organization PKK. The PKK and
ASALA made agreements in London and Beirut. The end of the terrorist
attacks was actually a fresh start for the parliament lobbying for
the Armenian communities. The Armenian Church and Armenian extremist
groups aimed to persuade at least 100 foreign parliaments to recognize
the Armenian historical claims as truth. The Armenian activists never
applied a court for their cause although they claimed that more than
1,5 million Armenians were massacred by the Ottomans. Strangely the
Armenian figure has changed a lot:
Some Armenian books claimed about 750.000 Armenians were killed,
while some others were speaking about 1,5 million. Even some
Armenian activists in Wales argued more than 2,5 million Armenians
were slaughtered by the Turks. According to the Ottoman archives the
total Armenian population was less than 1,5 million.
Armenians started campaigns and lobbied to issue Armenian bills against
Turkey in almost all countries in the world. They focused on the North
American and Western European parliaments. The Armenians hoped that
if the West recognize the Armenian claims, they would force Turkey
recognize the Armenian cause. But they were simply wrong. Turkey has
never been persuaded in any issue like this. How Armenians harmed
Turkish interests abroad, Turkey became more hostile towards the
Armenians. The Armenian attacks abroad made the Turkish people crazy.
Netherlands was not an exception. The Armenian lobbying has always been
strong in this country. Armenian community concentrated in Amsterdam
during the 17th and 18th centuries, and the Armenian Dutch citizens
became very influential despite their relatively small population. The
exact number of Armenians in the country now is unknown, but it is
unofficially estimated that about 4,000 to 6,000 Armenians live in
the Netherlands. However the Armenian influence on Dutch politics is
still strong, particularly on the Turkish issues.
One of the reasons for this is the Armenian global solidarity. The
Armenian lobbying parties in Western Europe unite in each cases and
make lobbies. For example, about 300.000 Armenians live in France
and they have MPs, businessmen, authors etc. in France and all these
strong people join in any lobbying activities in EU countries. Thus
the Armenian cause become strong in the countries where the Armenian
population is really small, like United Kingdom, Netherlands and
Belgium. Second reason is the strong anti-Turkish circles in these
countries. Many in the Netherlands believe that the Turkish people
are not European and Turkey's EU membership must be prevented. The
EU summits however confirmed that Turkey's EU membership cannot be
stopped in terms of economic and political criteria. Turkish economy is
better than Bulgaria's, Romania's, even some of the EU members right
now. Under these circumstances, the Armenian issue with the Cyprus
issue provide perfect tools to keep the Turks outside. Third, there are
traditional anti-Turkey groups in the Western European countries like
the Greeks, Greek Cypriots, racist and religionist European groups,
Marxist Turks and PKK supporters. All are natural partners for the
Armenian lobbying groups against Turkey. None of these groups lose
any opportunity in damaging Turkish interests in Europe. Thus an
anti-Turkish coalition emerged, and when the Armenians attempted
to push the Dutch or any other parliament to accept the Armenian
claims as truth, all the mentioned anti-Turkey groups unite behind
the Armenians. It was the case when the Dutch Parliament accepted the
Armenian 1915 allegations. The Dutch Parliament adopted a resolution
recognizing the 1915 events as genocide in 2004. According to the
accepted resolution the Dutch government had to push for recognition
of the so-called genocide as part of the negotiations for Turkey's
desired accession to the EU.
Tineke Huizinga from the Christian explains the official Dutch
position:
"More than one and a half million people were murdered during the
time of World War I by Turkey and this was a genocide and you can
absolutely compare this with the Holocaust."
It is really strange and non-based because there was no country
named Turkey in 1915. Turkey was established in 1923. The country
at that time on Anatolian territory was the Ottoman Empire. Dutch
politicians compare the 1915 Events with the Holocaust but Israel
reject any comparison between Holocaust and 1915 Events. The following
quotation from a Nobel Prize winning Israeli statesman, Shimon Peres,
closes the discussion:
"We reject attempts to create a similarity between the Holocaust and
the Armenian allegations. Nothing similar to the Holocaust occurred.
It is a tragedy what the Armenians went through but not a genocide...
Israel should not determine a historical or philosophical position
on the Armenian issue. If we have to determine a position, it should
be done with great care not to distort the historical realities."
(Peres: Armenian Allegations are Meaningless', Turkish Daily News, 10
April 2001; Haig Boyadjian, 'Peres Claims Armenians Did Not Experience
Genocide', Asbarez, 10 April 2001).
Turkey has rejected all accusations and blamed the Dutch politicians
of undermining Turkish-Armenian reconciliation. Turkish Prime
Minister Tayyip Erdogan call the Armenian side to establish a joint
commission to discuss the historical disputes instead of foreign
involvements. However the Armenians rejected all good will offers
and continued to their anti-Turkish efforts in the Western parliaments.
Strangely Armenia does not recognize Turkey's eastern borders despite
the written agreements, like Kars Agreement. Second, Armenia has
occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan and about 1 million Azeris have
been refugees since the occupation. The genocide-like massacres
in Hocali town (Azerbaijan) was pictured and documented well by
the Western media. However none of the European or North American
Parliaments mentioned all these issues but discussed the disputes
happened almost a century ago. I personally do not believe that the
Western parliaments love the Armenians and give great importance to
history. If so, they should first recognize the Algerian genocide
committed by France after the Second World War. Genocides committed
by the Belgium, Germans or Russians should have been on the list. If
these parliaments give so importance to the massacres and genocides,
they should have mention the war crimes and massacres committed by
the Armenians during the Ottoman time, after the First World War
and Karabakh War. All of us know that all these things are dirty
politics. The Armenian issue is being abused, and the Armenians are
happy with abused by the Western politicians.
DUTCH POLITICAL PARTIES AND RACIST DISCRIMINATION
Armenians saw the Ducth elections as another opportunity to raise
their arguments and to harm the Turkish interests in this country in
2006. It made the headlines after questions were raised by the Armenian
community in the Netherlands when the names of the candidates were
made public on the party lists for the November elections, and a
heated discussion soon followed.
The Turkish-Dutch candidates in question had clearly stated in the
past that, in their view, the 1915 events were not genocide but
communal calashes. They said the so-called genocide not taken place.
This view is contrary to the official policy of some of the Dutch
political parties.
It was a clash with this position that brought the CDA candidates
Ayhan Tonca, Osman Elamci and Labour Party candidate Erdinc Sacan
into problems with their parties. Ayhan Tonca has constantly denied
the genocide occurred: "The genocide that people talk about never
took place" he said.
Although Mr. Tonca doesn't deny that hundreds of thousands of people
died, he argues that there needs to be further investigation to see if
the killings were consciously carried out by the Ottoman government at
that time. Many Turkish people and even the current Turkish Government
think in this way. Turkey accepts that thousands of people were killed
and died during the 1915 Relocation. Turkey says that it was difficult
times, and the war circumstances with poor economic conditions caused
epidemics and famines in Anatolia.
According to the Turkish historians many Armenians died due to the
famine, bad weather conditions, epidemics and lack of health etc.
facilities. Turks also accept that many more Armenians were killed by
the armed gangs, mostly Kurdish. The previous Armenian attacks against
the Kurdish tribes caused revenge attacks and some Kurdish gangs also
attacked the Armenian immigrants hoping to get their valuables. What
is obvious that the Ottoman soldiers could not protect the Armenian
civilians and thousands of Armenians were killed or died due to the
'natural reasons'.
Turkish candidates explanation was not in line with the CDA's and
Labour Party's official policy, and events that followed the initial
uproar made things even harder for the CDA to accept. As a matter
of fact that these Turkish candidates do not accept some other
CDA policies, like Turkey's full EU membership. The Armenian and
anti-Turkey lobbies' pressure left the CDA with little choice but
to remove them from the list of candidates. The Dutch Labour Party
decided to scrap its candidate from the list after the Turkish-Dutch
candidate refused to stand by the so-called official party policy
recognizing the Armenian claims. According to the candidates removed
from the list, this was unacceptable, because the political parties
are known as the symbol of different ideas and freedom of speech. If
a politician cannot think in different ways in political parties,
where does he/she can do so?
The Netherlands has been known for its liberal laws and political
system. Dutch even allow paedophile group. A Dutch court turned down
a request to ban a political party (the Brotherly Love, Freedom and
Diversity Party, PNVD) with a paedophile agenda. Dutch PNVD seeks
to lower the age of sexual consent from 16 to 12 and legalize child
pornography and sex with animals. "Freedom of expression...including
the freedom to set up a political party can be seen as the basis
for a democratic society," Judge Hofhuis told the journalist after
the verdict.
As a result, you can defend child pornography and sex with animals
in the Netherlands but you cannot have different opinion on Armenian
issue.
If you are Turkish you have to obey what the imposed on you. Shut up,
and accept it!
You have no choice but recognition of what you did not commit.
Thanks God, the Netherlands is a liberal and democratic country.