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IS FRANCE'S ARMENIAN GENOCIDE LAW MERELY A DOMESTIC PLOY FOR VOTES?
By Robert Marquand
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2011/1228/Is-France-s-Armenian-Genocide-law-merely-a-domestic-ploy-for-votes
December 28, 2011
The diplomatic repercussions of the vote in France to criminalize
denying the Armenian Genocide have been substantial, but so are the
domestic benefits.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul (r.) meets Turkey's Ambassador to
France Tahsin Burcuoglu at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Monday.
Turkey has recalled its ambassador to France after the French lower
house of parliament approved a bill that would make it a criminal
offence to deny genocide.
Lawmakers in France's lower house last week voted to make it a crime
to deny the Turkish Ottoman genocide of Armenians in 1915, citing
human rights and the protection of memory. Violators will receive a
one-year jail sentence and a nearly $70,000 fine.
But France's righteous ire about the Armenian genocide couldn't mostly
be about French politics, about currying favor with an estimated
500,000 Armenian heritage French ahead of a tight election, could it?
How well do you know Europe? Take our quiz and find out
Consider some relevant data points: In fall 2011, just ahead
of national elections, France officially recognized the Armenian
genocide. In fall 2006, again just before the elections that brought
President Nicolas Sarkozy into office, French politicians threatened
to criminalize the denial of the genocide of Armenians with a five-year
prison sentence. Now, just ahead of presidential elections this spring,
President Sarkozy's ruling party led the first-time law to criminalize
denying the 1915 genocide.
Never mind that the French foreign minister registered a dissenting
opinion over the law, passed on Dec. 22, and that French historians
have disagreed with legislating truth on an event less clear than
the Holocaust of mid-20th century. Or that the law may well not pass
the French Senate when it is debated next year. Or that the Armenian
patriarch in Turkey said this week he'd rather the French let the
issue be worked out in Turkey, where it remains an unresolved and
contentious issue.
"The law is complicating the work of Turkish progressives who have
been trying to get Turkish society to address what actually happened
in their history. That's the saddest part," says Karim Emile Bitar,
a senior fellow at the Institute for International and Strategic
Relations in Paris. "The most sensible intellectuals on the issue
are being trampled in Turkey."
How well do you know Europe? Take our quiz and find out
Some 20 nations have passed resolutions condemning the Armenian
genocide. But while individuals in some nations can be prosecuted
for denying mass crimes against humanity or on anti-racial grounds,
or for denying the Jewish Holocaust, France may be the first to
criminalize the Armenian genocide.
The late Turkish writer and leading intellectual Hrant Dink, who did
more than anyone to raise the issue of the massacre and deportations
of anywhere from 700,000 to 1.5 million Armenians, said of the French
proposed laws in 2006 that he'd rather dance up the Champs-Elysees
denying the genocide than see the law passed in France.
Documentation of the genocide, which took place during or under cover
of World War I, is substantial. The historical consensus is that a
genocide - as defined by the United Nations as the "intent to destroy
in whole or in part" an ethnic or religious peoples - happened. The US
ambassador to the Ottoman Empire at the time, Henry Morgenthau, Sr.,
was distraught at the scale of the inhumanity, and wrote prolifically
about the details in cables and articles. Yet the carnage was ignored
for years as an inconvenient truth or lost in the overall shock of
World War I - and earned the title of "the forgotten genocide."
By Robert Marquand
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2011/1228/Is-France-s-Armenian-Genocide-law-merely-a-domestic-ploy-for-votes
December 28, 2011
The diplomatic repercussions of the vote in France to criminalize
denying the Armenian Genocide have been substantial, but so are the
domestic benefits.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul (r.) meets Turkey's Ambassador to
France Tahsin Burcuoglu at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Monday.
Turkey has recalled its ambassador to France after the French lower
house of parliament approved a bill that would make it a criminal
offence to deny genocide.
Lawmakers in France's lower house last week voted to make it a crime
to deny the Turkish Ottoman genocide of Armenians in 1915, citing
human rights and the protection of memory. Violators will receive a
one-year jail sentence and a nearly $70,000 fine.
But France's righteous ire about the Armenian genocide couldn't mostly
be about French politics, about currying favor with an estimated
500,000 Armenian heritage French ahead of a tight election, could it?
How well do you know Europe? Take our quiz and find out
Consider some relevant data points: In fall 2011, just ahead
of national elections, France officially recognized the Armenian
genocide. In fall 2006, again just before the elections that brought
President Nicolas Sarkozy into office, French politicians threatened
to criminalize the denial of the genocide of Armenians with a five-year
prison sentence. Now, just ahead of presidential elections this spring,
President Sarkozy's ruling party led the first-time law to criminalize
denying the 1915 genocide.
Never mind that the French foreign minister registered a dissenting
opinion over the law, passed on Dec. 22, and that French historians
have disagreed with legislating truth on an event less clear than
the Holocaust of mid-20th century. Or that the law may well not pass
the French Senate when it is debated next year. Or that the Armenian
patriarch in Turkey said this week he'd rather the French let the
issue be worked out in Turkey, where it remains an unresolved and
contentious issue.
"The law is complicating the work of Turkish progressives who have
been trying to get Turkish society to address what actually happened
in their history. That's the saddest part," says Karim Emile Bitar,
a senior fellow at the Institute for International and Strategic
Relations in Paris. "The most sensible intellectuals on the issue
are being trampled in Turkey."
How well do you know Europe? Take our quiz and find out
Some 20 nations have passed resolutions condemning the Armenian
genocide. But while individuals in some nations can be prosecuted
for denying mass crimes against humanity or on anti-racial grounds,
or for denying the Jewish Holocaust, France may be the first to
criminalize the Armenian genocide.
The late Turkish writer and leading intellectual Hrant Dink, who did
more than anyone to raise the issue of the massacre and deportations
of anywhere from 700,000 to 1.5 million Armenians, said of the French
proposed laws in 2006 that he'd rather dance up the Champs-Elysees
denying the genocide than see the law passed in France.
Documentation of the genocide, which took place during or under cover
of World War I, is substantial. The historical consensus is that a
genocide - as defined by the United Nations as the "intent to destroy
in whole or in part" an ethnic or religious peoples - happened. The US
ambassador to the Ottoman Empire at the time, Henry Morgenthau, Sr.,
was distraught at the scale of the inhumanity, and wrote prolifically
about the details in cables and articles. Yet the carnage was ignored
for years as an inconvenient truth or lost in the overall shock of
World War I - and earned the title of "the forgotten genocide."