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FRANCE'S SARKOZY SHOULD NOT ATTEMPT TO LEGISLATE TURKEY'S HISTORY: VIEW
Bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-30/sarkozy-should-not-attempt-to-legislate-turkey-s-history-view.html
Jan 30 2012
The president of France is getting ready to sign a bill making it a
crime in his country to deny that a century ago, the Ottoman Empire
committed genocide against Armenians. As President Nicolas Sarkozy's
own party proposed the legislation, we suspect that he will sign it.
But it's never too late to drop a bad idea.
Let's start with the genocide -- it happened. Beginning in 1915,
as many as 1.5 million ethnic Armenians living in what today is
modern Turkey were killed or deported. The Ottoman Empire was falling
apart, or more accurately was being dismembered by Britain, France
and Russia. The authorities in Istanbul saw Christian Armenians as
a potential fifth column and drove them out through executions and
deportations. Greeks and Christian Assyrians soon followed.
This is a painful piece of Armenian history that continues to
traumatize the families of its victims, now dispersed around the globe
in California, France and elsewhere. Every April, there are battles
in Washington as legislators with Armenian constituents lobby for
the U.S. to formally recognize the genocide.
Turkey, the Ottoman Empire's successor state, has barely started to
deal with the essential process of facing the truth and bringing some
kind of closure to the victims' families. While it has recently become
possible for Turkish historians to discuss the events of 1915 without
facing jail, it was only in 2007 that Turkish-Armenian journalist
Hrant Dink was shot dead in broad daylight for daring to write about
the genocide.
Instead, Turkish officials like to emphasize that 1915 was in the
midst of World War I; that Armenian units fought with the Russians
in a grab for territory; and that many ethnic Turks were killed too,
some of them by Armenian revenge squads. That's all true. It's also
irrelevant. The 1948 United Nations convention on genocide defines it
as crimes carried out with "intent to destroy, in whole or in part,
a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." It's what the
Ottoman leaders intended and carried through that counts.
But if Turkey is having trouble defending free speech, that's no reason
for France to follow suit. The new French law would make denying
the Armenian genocide punishable by a year in jail or a 45,000-euro
fine. Just as problematic, if governments are going to make a habit
of legislating the history of other nations, where should they stop?
The bill on President Sarkozy's desk covers only the two genocides
that France has formally recognized -- the Jewish Holocaust and the
Armenian Great Catastrophe. Yet UN courts have ruled that genocide was
committed in Rwanda in 1994, as well as at Srebrenica in Bosnia, a year
later. Why not send people to jail for denying these genocides, too?
French legislators didn't need a UN court ruling to act on the Armenian
issue. So how about Sudan's Darfur, or Pol Pot's killing fields in
Cambodia? Or Stalin's engineered famine in Ukraine in the 1930s,
or Oliver Cromwell's scorched earth campaign against the Catholics
of Ireland? Or, indeed, the decimation of Native Americans during
the European settlement of North America?
No surprise then that Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
not a man to mince his words, is now claiming that France committed
genocide in Algeria, a former African colony, in the 1950s and '60s.
None of this helps solve the real problems that this troubled part
of the world faces today. The question for Sarkozy isn't who is right
in this dispute, but why should France be legislating an issue of two
other nations' history, let alone adding it to the French penal code?
Turkey eventually will have to reconcile with Armenia over the
genocide, on its own.
The law could also harm economic relations. Turkey, an emerging market
with a young and growing population, is spending tens of billions
of dollars on new capital investment. That means passenger aircraft,
water purification plants, high-speed trains, nuclear power stations
and military hardware -- all areas in which French companies are
among the world leaders. Turkish officials have said publicly they
would extract a commercial price for the genocide law.
Some of the 86 French senators who voted against the genocide bill are
now trying to round up the votes they need to challenge it in France's
constitutional court. We hope they succeed. Turkey and France are NATO
allies that need to be working together to stabilize the Middle East,
not bickering over each other's history.
Bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-30/sarkozy-should-not-attempt-to-legislate-turkey-s-history-view.html
Jan 30 2012
The president of France is getting ready to sign a bill making it a
crime in his country to deny that a century ago, the Ottoman Empire
committed genocide against Armenians. As President Nicolas Sarkozy's
own party proposed the legislation, we suspect that he will sign it.
But it's never too late to drop a bad idea.
Let's start with the genocide -- it happened. Beginning in 1915,
as many as 1.5 million ethnic Armenians living in what today is
modern Turkey were killed or deported. The Ottoman Empire was falling
apart, or more accurately was being dismembered by Britain, France
and Russia. The authorities in Istanbul saw Christian Armenians as
a potential fifth column and drove them out through executions and
deportations. Greeks and Christian Assyrians soon followed.
This is a painful piece of Armenian history that continues to
traumatize the families of its victims, now dispersed around the globe
in California, France and elsewhere. Every April, there are battles
in Washington as legislators with Armenian constituents lobby for
the U.S. to formally recognize the genocide.
Turkey, the Ottoman Empire's successor state, has barely started to
deal with the essential process of facing the truth and bringing some
kind of closure to the victims' families. While it has recently become
possible for Turkish historians to discuss the events of 1915 without
facing jail, it was only in 2007 that Turkish-Armenian journalist
Hrant Dink was shot dead in broad daylight for daring to write about
the genocide.
Instead, Turkish officials like to emphasize that 1915 was in the
midst of World War I; that Armenian units fought with the Russians
in a grab for territory; and that many ethnic Turks were killed too,
some of them by Armenian revenge squads. That's all true. It's also
irrelevant. The 1948 United Nations convention on genocide defines it
as crimes carried out with "intent to destroy, in whole or in part,
a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." It's what the
Ottoman leaders intended and carried through that counts.
But if Turkey is having trouble defending free speech, that's no reason
for France to follow suit. The new French law would make denying
the Armenian genocide punishable by a year in jail or a 45,000-euro
fine. Just as problematic, if governments are going to make a habit
of legislating the history of other nations, where should they stop?
The bill on President Sarkozy's desk covers only the two genocides
that France has formally recognized -- the Jewish Holocaust and the
Armenian Great Catastrophe. Yet UN courts have ruled that genocide was
committed in Rwanda in 1994, as well as at Srebrenica in Bosnia, a year
later. Why not send people to jail for denying these genocides, too?
French legislators didn't need a UN court ruling to act on the Armenian
issue. So how about Sudan's Darfur, or Pol Pot's killing fields in
Cambodia? Or Stalin's engineered famine in Ukraine in the 1930s,
or Oliver Cromwell's scorched earth campaign against the Catholics
of Ireland? Or, indeed, the decimation of Native Americans during
the European settlement of North America?
No surprise then that Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
not a man to mince his words, is now claiming that France committed
genocide in Algeria, a former African colony, in the 1950s and '60s.
None of this helps solve the real problems that this troubled part
of the world faces today. The question for Sarkozy isn't who is right
in this dispute, but why should France be legislating an issue of two
other nations' history, let alone adding it to the French penal code?
Turkey eventually will have to reconcile with Armenia over the
genocide, on its own.
The law could also harm economic relations. Turkey, an emerging market
with a young and growing population, is spending tens of billions
of dollars on new capital investment. That means passenger aircraft,
water purification plants, high-speed trains, nuclear power stations
and military hardware -- all areas in which French companies are
among the world leaders. Turkish officials have said publicly they
would extract a commercial price for the genocide law.
Some of the 86 French senators who voted against the genocide bill are
now trying to round up the votes they need to challenge it in France's
constitutional court. We hope they succeed. Turkey and France are NATO
allies that need to be working together to stabilize the Middle East,
not bickering over each other's history.