LET’S TALK ABOUT ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
>From the desk of James McConalogue
Brussels Journal, Belgium
Oct 7 2006
Why is it that Turkey is still unable to recognise the atrocities
committed against the Armenians? Furthermore, why is it that the EU
is entirely antagonistic towards the idea of Turkey, a predominantly
Muslim country, recognising their genocidal past? Last July, I reported
to The Brussels Journal on the unjust suppression of the freedom of
expression in Turkey. The most high-profile case pertained to the
trial of Turkish novelist, Orhan Pamuk in December 2005 after the
author had claimed in a Swiss newspaper that 30,000 Kurds and one
million Ottoman Armenians were killed in Turkey yet nobody in the
Turkish population would dare talk about it. The trial was dismissed
by the Turkish Ministry of Justice at the beginning of 2006.
Two previous reports had also scrutinised the legal proceedings
against the novelist, Elif Shafak. Shafak, author of Bastard
of Istanbul, faced charges of "insulting Turkishness" under the
primitive legislation. Subsequent to an earlier dismissal, the seventh
High Criminal Court revived the charges made by Kemal Kerincsiz’s
nationalist jurist group, ‘The Unity of Jurists.’ Fortunately, in the
final week of September, Shafak was immediately acquitted although it
is difficult to determine whether the acquittal arose because of EU
pressure (threatening Turkish membership) or because the text truly
did not "insult Turkishness" according to Turkey’s dated legislation.
The suppression of free expression has occurred for authors such as
Shafak and others like her, precisely because of the notorious Article
301 of the Turkish Penal Code, prohibiting "insulting Turkishness". The
legislation was passed in 2005 as a measure of harmonizing Turkish
law with Copenhagen criteria of the European Union.
Interesting in both the cases of Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak is
how these novelists came to represent such a gigantic insult to
Turkishness. Both novelists had referred to their mass killing –
or genocide – of Armenians during the Ottoman Empire. It is those
references to the Armenian genocide that led charges to be made by
Kemal Kerincsiz’s Unity of Jurists. The Turkish government still
denies the conceptual definition of the Armenian genocide.
However, the acknowledgment of the Armenian genocide has now become
a central issue for the Turkish government. It is so important that
the EU Commission spokesperson, Krisztina Nagy, commented after
the acquittal of Shafak trial that Article 301 "continues to pose a
significant threat to freedom of expression in Turkey and all those
who express a non-violent opinion." Accordingly, EU member-states have
considered reform of Article 301 as important as the Cyprus issue,
tackling minority rights and social violence, in order for the EU to
properly consider Turkish accession.
However, has the EU’s request for reform of Article 301 missed the
point? After all, the Turkish Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan, has
already hinted at an acceptance to change the legislation. Should
the EU, instead, as a condition of EU entry demand that the Turkish
government acknowledge the Armenian genocide? In both the cases
of Pamuk and Shafak – and eighty or so other authors – many of the
legal proceedings against Turkish writers have arisen as a result of
references to the Armenian genocide. That is the real obstacle for
the Turkish government and frankly, its revisionist approach to the
nation’s history is not at all suited to a future of diplomacy. It
is essentially denying a holocaustal error of its past. Furthermore,
all other national governments across the globe (other than Turkey)
have classified the Armenian events that occurred between 1915 and
1917 as genocide. International authorities recognise the event
as the Armenian genocide, a direct set of policies that led to the
persecution and death of 1.5 million Ottoman Armenians. It cannot
be named something else. It cannot be ignored. Neither can it be
understood from the Turkish historical perspective as a ‘civil war.’
That is why I paid strong attention to the French President, Jacques
Chirac’s words on 30 September. In a visit to Yerevan, the French
President declared to news agencies: "Should Turkey recognize the
genocide of Armenia to join the EU? […] I believe so. Each country
grows by acknowledging the dramas and errors of its past. […] Can
one say that Germany which has deeply acknowledged the holocaust,
has as a result lost credit? It has grown."
It is certain that Chirac’s desire to enforce the acceptance of
the mass-killings as genocide amongst other EU accession conditions
has not been aligned with that of other European nations. Other EU
member-states seem to be fairly relaxed in letting Turkey off the
hook on the genocide issue. The last MEP interim report on Turkey’s EU
accession removed the request for an acknowledgement of the Armenian
genocide. More worryingly, the MEPs removed the condition of EU
accession out of fears that Turkish nationalists would be incited
into aggression against this.
It is never a good sign that a major political sanction should be
removed from a country simply out of fear of reprisals. Yet, that is
exactly what has happened. In brief, Europeans have decided not to
ask the Turkish to recognise the Armenian genocide simply because it
is scared that the Turks might actually bite. And, if the Turks do
bite? Well that can only be a result of a troubled national Turkish
culture – largely unable to confront significant genocidal errors –
and not because Europe has asked the wrong question. There are rumours
that the French will continue to push the ‘genocide recognition rule’
as a condition of EU entry, but if they are alone on that effort,
then there is very little that can be done to ensure it will be among
the requisites for EU entry. It might also be thought that Chirac
could not afford to push the condition too far, since it may bring
substantial damage to Franco-Turk relations before Turkey has even
begun to attempt its progress towards European harmonization. Whether
the European harmonization process is a good and worthwhile path for
either Turkey or Europe will always remain unclear.