BREAKING NEWS

Turkey: French ties dealt blow over Armenian genocide bill

By News Agencies
Last Update: 12/10/2006 18:06

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=Armenian&itemNo=773887

Armenians in the Old City of Jerusalem, many of them descendants of people who fled during World War I, on Thursday welcomed passage of a law by the lower house of the French legislature making it a crime to deny that the mass killing then was genocide.

"They have recognized it," said Caroline Jansezian, owner of an Armenian gift shop in the Old City. "It's come the time that somebody cares about it."

An estimated 1.5 million Armenians were killed from 1915-1919. Turkey maintains the deaths occurred during civil unrest, disputes the numbers and rejects the genocide label.

Armenians in Jerusalem hoped that would change. "Little by little, more and more people are becoming aware of it, and accepting it, and one day Turkey will accept it," said Vic Lepejian, an artist working in a small ceramic shop.

The French law must be passed by the senate and signed by President Jacques Chirac before it would take effect.

About 6,000 Armenians live in Israel and the West Bank, according to a community leader, 2,500 of them in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. There, maps documenting the tragedy are posted on the walls and pamphlets are passed out to visitors.

"I think recognition is a consolation, but nothing will compensate for the sense of loss, at least for this generation," said George Hintlian of the Convent of St. James, a key Armenian holy site Jerusalem. Hintlian's grandfather and uncle were killed during the violence.

Hintlian said Armenians here have a special link with their tragic past.

"Our sense of genocide is more focused or sharper because we live next to the Jewish people who went through their own Holocaust," he said. "The Holocaust culture is very much alive here. And the sadness that accompanies it." Six million Jews were murdered by German Nazis and their collaborators during World War II.

Every April 24, the day Armenians around the world commemorate the genocide, there is a solemn procession around walls of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Turkey: French ties dealt blow over Armenian genocide bill

A French parliamentary vote supporting a bill on the alleged genocide of Armenians by Ottoman Turks has dealt Turkish-French ties a severe
blow, Turkey's Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.

"French-Turkish relations, which have developed over centuries... have been dealt a blow today as a result of the irresponsible false claims of French politicians who do not see the political consequences of their actions," the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry did not say whether Turkey, which is seeking European Union membership, would take any retaliatory measures against France, a founder member of the EU.

Turkish Economics Minister Ali Babacan did say, however, that he could not rule out consequences for French businesses.

"Time will show. But I cannot say it will not have any consequences," Babacan, who is also Ankara's chief negotiator in accession talks with the EU, told reporters in Brussels.

Asked about the threat of a boycott to French goods after the French lower house of parliament overwhelmingly backed the bill, he replied: "As the government of Turkey, we are not encouraging something like that. But this is the people's decision."

The French government said in response that as it valued its relations with Turkey, it did not believe the bill, which would make it a crime to deny that the World War I-era killings of Armenians in Turkey, was genocide to be necessary.

The bill, which was introduced by the opposition Socialists, must still be passed by the Senate and be signed by President Jacques Chirac. France's minister for European affairs, Catherine Colonna, said just before the vote that the government did not look favorably on the bill.

"It is not for the law to write history," she said in parliament.

France has already recognized the killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians from 1915 to 1919 as genocide; under Thursday's bill, those who contest it was genocide would risk up to a year in prison and fines of up to $56,000.

Deputies in the National Assembly voted 106-19 for the bill, an issue has become intertwined with Turkey's efforts to join the European Union.

The European Commission said Thursday that French bill would hamper reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia.

"Turkey has been called on many times ... to achieve reconciliation on that matter, and to conduct an open dialogue with its neighbor Armenia," said EU spokeswoman Krisztina Nagy.

She added that EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn "has made very clear over the last few days that if this law indeed enters into force it would prevent dialogue and the necessary debate to reconcile the different opinions on this subject."

A similar bill was shelved in the spring amid pressure from Ankara. It was presented by the opposition Socialists, and most lawmakers from Chirac's ruling conservative party UMP did not take part in Thursday's vote.

Turkey supporters abruptly left the parliament building after the vote without speaking to reporters. Outside, a few dozen protesters of Armenian descent celebrated.

"The memory of the victims is finally totally respected," said Alexis Govciyan, head of a group coordinating Armenian organizations in France. "The dignity of all their descendants and all of our compatriots will now be taken into account in a republican way, with the rules and values that govern our country."

Chirac, during a visit to Armenia last month, said the bill "is more of a polemic than of legal reality" but he also urged Turkey to recognize "the genocide of Armenians" in order to join the European Union.

"Each country grows by acknowledging its dramas and errors of the past," Chirac said.

Jean-Marc Ayrault, the Socialist leader in the Assembly, said Tuesday that the bill should not be seen as an act of "aggression against the Turkish state and the Turkish nation."

Khilafah:

As for how I feel today, there's a smile on my face and life is good, very good. :)

As it pertains to Islam, it's all a matter of fact.

What the Armenians did to the Ottoman Turks was in retaliation, and it was of minor consequence in comparison.

"The Armenians were nothing like the Jews of Europe"? That's the statement of a closeted denier. The Jews were very much like the Armenians. Ever hear of Ghetto uprising? There were many. That's all that the Armenians did as well. The Armenians stood up and fought back valiantly, as did the Jews.

[deleted]

An article from Guardian, yesterday

This is the moment for Europe to dismantle taboos, not erect them

Far from criminalising denial of the Armenian genocide, we should decriminalise denial of the Holocaust

Timothy Garton Ash
Thursday October 19, 2006
The Guardian

What a magnificent blow for truth, justice and humanity the French national assembly has struck. Last week it voted for a bill that would make it a crime to deny that the Turks committed genocide against the Armenians during the first world war. Bravo! Chapeau bas! Vive la France! But let this be only a beginning in a brave new chapter of European history. Let the British parliament now make it a crime to deny that it was Russians who murdered Polish officers at Katyn in 1940. Let the Turkish parliament make it a crime to deny that France used torture against insurgents in AlgeriaLet the German parliament pass a bill making it a crime to deny the existence of the Soviet gulag. Let the Irish parliament criminalise denial of the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition. Let the Spanish parliament mandate a minimum of 10 years' imprisonment for anyone who claims that the Serbs did not attempt genocide against Albanians in Kosovo. And the European parliament should immediately pass into European law a bill making it obligatory to describe as genocide the American colonists' treatment of Native Americans. The only pity is that we, in the European Union, can't impose the death sentence for these heinous thought crimes. But perhaps, with time, we may change that too.
Oh brave new Europe! It is entirely beyond me how anyone in their right mind - apart, of course, from a French-Armenian lobbyist - can regard this draft bill, which in any case will almost certainly be voted down in the upper house of the French parliament, as a progressive and enlightened step. What right has the parliament of France to prescribe by law the correct historical terminology to characterise what another nation did to a third nation 90 years ago? If the French parliament passed a law making it a crime to deny the complicity of Vichy France in the deportation to the death camps of French Jews, I would still argue that this was a mistake, but I could respect the self-critical moral impulse behind it.
This bill, by contrast, has no more moral or historical justification than any of the other suggestions I have just made. Yes, there are some half a million French citizens of Armenian origin - including Charles Aznavour, who was once Varinag Aznavourian - and they have been pressing for it. There are at least that number of British citizens of Polish origin, so there would be precisely the same justification for a British bill on Katyn. Step forward Mr Denis MacShane, a British MP of Polish origin, to propose it - in a spirit of satire, of course. Or how about British MPs of Pakistani and Indian origin proposing rival bills on the history of Kashmir?
In a leading article last Friday, the Guardian averred that "supporters of the law are doubtless motivated by a sincere desire to redress a 90-year-old injustice". I wish that I could be so confident. Currying favour with French-Armenian voters and putting another obstacle in the way of Turkey joining the European Union might be suggested as other motives; but speculation about motives is a mug's game.
It will be obvious to every intelligent reader that my argument has nothing to do with questioning the suffering of the Armenians who were massacred, expelled or felt impelled to flee in fear of their lives during and after the first world war. Their fate at the hands of the Turks was terrible and has been too little recalled in the mainstream of European memory. Reputable historians and writers have made a strong case that those events deserve the label of genocide, as it has been defined since 1945. In fact, Orhan Pamuk - this year's winner of the Nobel prize for literature - and other Turkish writers have been prosecuted under the notorious article 301 of the Turkish penal code for daring to suggest exactly that. That is significantly worse than the intended effects of the French bill. But two wrongs don't make a right.
No one can legislate historical truth. In so far as historical truth can be established at all, it must be found by unfettered historical research, with historians arguing over the evidence and the facts, testing and disputing each other's claims without fear of prosecution or persecution.
In the tense ideological politics of our time, this proposed bill is a step in exactly the wrong direction. How can we credibly criticise Turkey, Egypt or other states for curbing free speech, through the legislated protection of historical, national or religious shibboleths, if we are doing ever more of it ourselves? This weekend in Venice I once again heard a distinguished Muslim scholar rail against our double standards. We ask them to accept insults to Muslim taboos, he said, but would the Jews accept that someone should be free to deny the Holocaust?
Far from creating new legally enforced taboos about history, national identity and religion, we should be dismantling those that still remain on our statute books. Those European countries that have them should repeal not only their blasphemy laws but also their laws on Holocaust denial. Otherwise the charge of double standards is impossible to refute. What's sauce for the goose must be sauce for the gander.
I recently heard the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy going through some impressive intellectual contortions to explain why he opposed any laws restricting criticism of religion but supported those on Holocaust denial. It was one thing, he argued, to question a religious belief, quite another to deny a historical fact. But this won't wash. Historical facts are established precisely by their being disputed and tested against the evidence. Without that process of contention - up to and including the revisionist extreme of outright denial - we would never discover which facts are truly hard.
Such consistency requires painful decisions. For example, I have nothing but abhorrence for some of David Irving's recorded views about Nazi Germany's attempted extermination of the Jews - but I am quite certain that he should not be sitting in an Austrian prison as a result of them. You may riposte that the falsehood of some of his claims was actually established by a trial in a British court. Yes, but that was not the British state prosecuting him for Holocaust denial. It was Irving himself going to court to sue another historian who suggested he was a Holocaust denier. He was trying to curb free and fair historical debate; the British court defended it.
Today, if we want to defend free speech in our own countries and to encourage it in places where it is currently denied, we should be calling for David Irving to be released from his Austrian prison. The Austrian law on Holocaust denial is far more historically understandable and morally respectable than the proposed French one - at least the Austrians are facing up to their own difficult past, rather than pointing the finger at somebody else's - but in the larger European interest we should encourage the Austrians to repeal it.
Only when we are prepared to allow our own most sacred cows to be poked in the eye can we credibly demand that Islamists, Turks and others do the same. This is a time not for erecting taboos but for dismantling them. We must practice what we preach.
timothygartonash.com

"Bravo! Chapeau bas! Vive la France!"

Indeed . The armenian genocide is finally recognised at the same level as the jewish one . Is that not fair ? Either you ignore both , or accept both - it's obvious for all to see .

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