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GWYNNE DYER: THE ARMENIAN MASSACRES AND THE FRENCH PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
By Gwynne Dyer
Straight.com
http://www.straight.com/article-589961/vancouver/gwynne-dyer-armenian-massacres-and-french-presidential-elections
Jan 24 2012
I go to France quite often, but after this article is published,
I may be liable to arrest if I set foot in the country.
The French parliament has just passed a bill, proposed by President
Nicolas Sarkozy's party, that will make it a crime to question
whether the Armenian massacres in eastern Turkey in 1915 qualified
as a genocide. Sarkozy will doubtless sign it into law next month,
just in time for the presidential elections.
It won't just be a crime in France to deny that hundreds of thousands
of Armenians, perhaps as many as a million, were killed in eastern
Anatolia in 1915, and that it was the responsibility of the Turkish
state. That is a historical fact, and only fools, knaves, and Turkish
ultra-nationalists deny it. It will also be a crime, punishable by
one year in prison and a fine of up to 45,000 euros ($58,000), even
to question the use of the word "genocide".
"Genocide" doesn't just mean killing a lot of people, even a lot
of civilians. If it did, then the United States would be guilty of
genocide because of Hiroshima. Genocide is a deliberate attempt to wipe
out much or all of a specific ethnic, linguistic or religious group.
Words matter. The descendants of the Armenians who were killed in
1915, most of whom now live in Lebanon, France, or the United States,
desperately want what happened to their great-grandparents to be
defined as a genocide and not just a calamity of war. They have even
been accused of "Holocaust envy": the belief that they are being
short-changed if the Armenian tragedy is not given the same status
as the Nazi genocide of the European Jews.
The state of Israel, interestingly, has never been comfortable with
this claim, and avoids the word "genocide" when discussing the massacre
of the Armenians in 1915.
Of course, this might just be a Jewish desire to ensure that no other
group's tragedy is seen as comparable to that of the European Jews.
But there are concrete reasons for the Israeli unease with the simple
equation: Jewish holocaust = Armenian genocide.
About half of the Jewish population of Europe in 1939 was dead by 1945;
about half of the Armenians living in eastern Turkey in 1914 were
dead by 1918. But what distinguishes the Holocaust from most other
atrocities is not the number of deaths, or even the proportion of the
population that was killed. It is the motivation behind the killings.
The European Jews were killed as an act of deliberate German policy:
a peaceful civilian population was rounded up and transported to
camps where they were systematically murdered. What happened to the
Armenians of Turkey was less systematic, and probably unplanned.
There is no equivalent in Turkish history to the Wannsee conference
of January 1942, at which the Nazis planned the "final solution"
to the "Jewish problem". The mass deportation of Armenians in the
First World War, during which hundreds of thousands of them died,
took place as Russian troops invaded eastern Anatolia and Armenian
revolutionary groups staged uprisings in support of them.
The Armenian uprisings of 1915 were tiny and ineffectual, but the
Dashnak and Hnchak revolutionaries had indeed been conspiring with
both the Russians and the British to support planned invasions
of eastern Anatolia. The British attack was switched west to the
Dardanelles quite late in the planning process, but the Russian
offensive actually happened.
The Turkish government was panicked by the uprisings behind the front
and ordered the mass deportation of the civilian Armenian population to
Syria. Regular Turkish troops could not be spared from the fighting,
so most of the job of "guarding" the columns of Armenian deportees
marching through the mountains to Syria was given to Kurdish tribesmen,
who proceeded to rob, rape, and murder them in huge numbers.
But Armenian civilians living in the cities of western Turkey were
not massacred or deported in 1915. Many Armenians in eastern Turkey
who were rich enough to buy train tickets to Syria only had to walk
where the tracks had not yet been laid. Most of the Armenians who
made it to Syria alive were held in camps there, but they were not
murdered and burned in ovens. It was horrible, but does it qualify
as a case of genocide?
Successive Turkish governments have undermined their own case by
insisting that it didn't happen at all. That is dishonest and stupid.
There were certainly horrendous massacres, though the exact numbers
of dead cannot be known. However, the use of the word "genocide"
remains open to question-but it will soon be a criminal offence in
France to say so.
Have the French politicians gone mad? Not at all. It's election time,
and there are half a million voters of Armenian descent in France.
The Armenian massacres were officially recognized as a genocide
in France just before the 2001 elections. A law criminalizing any
questioning of that definition was passed by the National Assembly
just before the 2007 elections, but narrowly rejected by the Senate.
This time it made it through the Senate, too. So if you're in France,
watch what you say.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
By Gwynne Dyer
Straight.com
http://www.straight.com/article-589961/vancouver/gwynne-dyer-armenian-massacres-and-french-presidential-elections
Jan 24 2012
I go to France quite often, but after this article is published,
I may be liable to arrest if I set foot in the country.
The French parliament has just passed a bill, proposed by President
Nicolas Sarkozy's party, that will make it a crime to question
whether the Armenian massacres in eastern Turkey in 1915 qualified
as a genocide. Sarkozy will doubtless sign it into law next month,
just in time for the presidential elections.
It won't just be a crime in France to deny that hundreds of thousands
of Armenians, perhaps as many as a million, were killed in eastern
Anatolia in 1915, and that it was the responsibility of the Turkish
state. That is a historical fact, and only fools, knaves, and Turkish
ultra-nationalists deny it. It will also be a crime, punishable by
one year in prison and a fine of up to 45,000 euros ($58,000), even
to question the use of the word "genocide".
"Genocide" doesn't just mean killing a lot of people, even a lot
of civilians. If it did, then the United States would be guilty of
genocide because of Hiroshima. Genocide is a deliberate attempt to wipe
out much or all of a specific ethnic, linguistic or religious group.
Words matter. The descendants of the Armenians who were killed in
1915, most of whom now live in Lebanon, France, or the United States,
desperately want what happened to their great-grandparents to be
defined as a genocide and not just a calamity of war. They have even
been accused of "Holocaust envy": the belief that they are being
short-changed if the Armenian tragedy is not given the same status
as the Nazi genocide of the European Jews.
The state of Israel, interestingly, has never been comfortable with
this claim, and avoids the word "genocide" when discussing the massacre
of the Armenians in 1915.
Of course, this might just be a Jewish desire to ensure that no other
group's tragedy is seen as comparable to that of the European Jews.
But there are concrete reasons for the Israeli unease with the simple
equation: Jewish holocaust = Armenian genocide.
About half of the Jewish population of Europe in 1939 was dead by 1945;
about half of the Armenians living in eastern Turkey in 1914 were
dead by 1918. But what distinguishes the Holocaust from most other
atrocities is not the number of deaths, or even the proportion of the
population that was killed. It is the motivation behind the killings.
The European Jews were killed as an act of deliberate German policy:
a peaceful civilian population was rounded up and transported to
camps where they were systematically murdered. What happened to the
Armenians of Turkey was less systematic, and probably unplanned.
There is no equivalent in Turkish history to the Wannsee conference
of January 1942, at which the Nazis planned the "final solution"
to the "Jewish problem". The mass deportation of Armenians in the
First World War, during which hundreds of thousands of them died,
took place as Russian troops invaded eastern Anatolia and Armenian
revolutionary groups staged uprisings in support of them.
The Armenian uprisings of 1915 were tiny and ineffectual, but the
Dashnak and Hnchak revolutionaries had indeed been conspiring with
both the Russians and the British to support planned invasions
of eastern Anatolia. The British attack was switched west to the
Dardanelles quite late in the planning process, but the Russian
offensive actually happened.
The Turkish government was panicked by the uprisings behind the front
and ordered the mass deportation of the civilian Armenian population to
Syria. Regular Turkish troops could not be spared from the fighting,
so most of the job of "guarding" the columns of Armenian deportees
marching through the mountains to Syria was given to Kurdish tribesmen,
who proceeded to rob, rape, and murder them in huge numbers.
But Armenian civilians living in the cities of western Turkey were
not massacred or deported in 1915. Many Armenians in eastern Turkey
who were rich enough to buy train tickets to Syria only had to walk
where the tracks had not yet been laid. Most of the Armenians who
made it to Syria alive were held in camps there, but they were not
murdered and burned in ovens. It was horrible, but does it qualify
as a case of genocide?
Successive Turkish governments have undermined their own case by
insisting that it didn't happen at all. That is dishonest and stupid.
There were certainly horrendous massacres, though the exact numbers
of dead cannot be known. However, the use of the word "genocide"
remains open to question-but it will soon be a criminal offence in
France to say so.
Have the French politicians gone mad? Not at all. It's election time,
and there are half a million voters of Armenian descent in France.
The Armenian massacres were officially recognized as a genocide
in France just before the 2001 elections. A law criminalizing any
questioning of that definition was passed by the National Assembly
just before the 2007 elections, but narrowly rejected by the Senate.
This time it made it through the Senate, too. So if you're in France,
watch what you say.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress