Month: October 2006

FRENCH NATIONAL ASSEMBLY MAKES DENIAL OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE A PUNISHABLE OFFENCE
By Peter Schwarz

World Socialist Web Site, MI
Oct 18 2006

The decision by the French National Assembly to make denial of the
genocide of Armenians in 1915 a punishable offence is a reactionary
provocation.

The prohibition primarily serves domestic purposes. In line with the
ongoing campaign against Islam, this latest ban uses religious and
ethnic issues to divert attention from increasing social tensions.

The new bill does absolutely nothing to help explain one of the
darkest chapters in the history of the last century. Quite the
contrary, the intrusion by criminal law into historical debate is
an attack on free speech and actually obstructs the clarification of
historical questions.

The law, which was passed by the National Assembly last Thursday by
106 votes to 19, threatens those who deny the genocide of Armenians
during the Ottoman empire with one year in prison and a fine of 45,000
euros. The new law supplements a law unanimously passed by the National
Assembly in 2001, which officially recognised the genocide conducted
against the Armenians.

The new law was introduced by the main opposition party, the Socialist
Party. Forty Socialist deputies voted in favour of the bill with two
voting against. The law was also supported by the French Stalinist
Communist Party (PCF).

The Gaullist government rejected the law on the basis of foreign
policy considerations. But the governing UMP (Union for a Popular
Movement) cleared the way for the law by freeing its deputies from
party discipline and recommending non-participation at the vote. In
the event, 49 UMP deputies, led by former minister Patrick Devedjian,
who is of Armenian origin, voted for the new bill with 17 voting
against. The vast majority of the Assembly’s 577 deputies did not
attend the vote.

In order to become law the bill has to be agreed by the second
chamber, the Senate. It is up to the government to decide if and when
it introduces the bill into the Senate and it may well be the case
that this will never happen. Nevertheless, the vote by the National
Assembly has already had significant consequences.

Reaction has been particularly pronounced in Turkey, which has its own
law making the opposite claim, i.e., affirmation of the genocide of
1915, a punishable offence. The extreme-right Nationalist Movement
Party (MHP) had organized demonstrations against the French bill
even before the vote was taken. Other organizations have called for
a boycott on French goods and the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has
threatened to retaliate with economic sanctions, including calling
off a planned French-Turkish armaments deal, and a ban on French bids
to construct a nuclear power plant.

Significantly opposition movements and representatives of the Armenian
community in Turkey have also condemned the French law. They fear
that it plays into the hands of right-wing, nationalist forces and
could provoke repressive measures against the Armenian people.

They are also opposed to the fact that France wants to enforce
recognition of the Armenian genocide with the same measures Turkey
is utilising denying it-i.e., penal law.

"How can we in future argue against laws that forbid us to talk about
a genocide if France, for its part, now does the same thing? That
is completely irrational," commentated Hrant Dink, publisher of
the Armenian Turkish weekly Argos. Dink, who was condemned to six
months in prison on probation last year over the Armenian question,
and currently faces renewed repression over the issue, has even
threatened to go to France and, contrary to his own opinion, deny
the genocide in defiance of the new law.

Another Armenian journalist, Etyen Mahcupyan, from the daily paper
Zaman, sees a danger that the tenuous discussion begun in Turkey
over the Armenia question could be jeopardised by the French law. For
the first time ever a congress has been held in Istanbul to publicly
discuss the Armenian question. Mahcupyan warned: "The action of the
French parliament brings the Turkish population nearer to the state,
which can then manipulate them more easily."

Prominent historians in France have also expressed their vehement
opposition to the law. In a statement entitled "Freedom for history"
they condemned the law as an attack on the "freedom of expression."

The law served to reduce "teachers once more to the status of
hostages."

The French government and the European Commission have expressed
objections to the law because they fear a deterioration of relations
with Turkey. There is much at stake for French businesses. Should
Erdogan stick to his threat then orders of up to 14 billion euros
are at risk. Additional losses could be recorded by the French
supermarket chain Carrefour, which has a substantial share of the
market in Turkey, as well as the auto concern Renault, which has a
big factory near Istanbul.

Nevertheless, all this has not prevented the National Assembly from
passing a law that punishes undesirable opinions on an event which
took place 90 years ago and in which France played no substantial role.

The only other similar law in France is one which forbids any denial of
the Holocaust, in which the French Vichy regime did play an important
role. Other crimes with much more immediate relevance-such as the
torture and massacres carried out by French colonialism in Algeria
and Indochina-are not subject to legal sanction and are occasionally
officially denied.

Just last winter, when the government sought to pass a law emphasising
the "positive role" of French colonial policy in school textbooks,
the Socialist Party argued that parliament had no right to issue
laws dealing with history and that politicians could not determine
historical issues. Now they have thrown this principle overboard and
are doing the same themselves.

Why this law?

The principal aim of the new law is to garner electoral support. Both
Segol ène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy, the probable candidates of the
Socialist Party and the UMP for the presidential elections next year,
have declared their support for the new law. Both candidates are
seeking to win support from the approximately half million Armenians
living in France, the majority of whom back the law.

However there is more at stake than the Armenian electorate. The new
law is also aimed against Turkey’s plans to join the European Union.

President Chirac led the way in this respect 10 days ago when, during
an official trip to the Armenian capital of Yerevan, he declared
that Turkey must recognize the genocide of the Armenians before being
accepted into the European Union-a condition that the European Union
does not require.

Right-wing politicians throughout Europe have used agitation against
Turkish membership in the European Union as a means of mobilising
backward layers of the electorate. In a similar manner to the current
campaign being waged against immigrants and Muslims this question is
being exploited to encourage xenophobia and divert social fears and
tension away from the ruling elite. While Conservative politicians
generally argue for the "defence of the Christian civilisation,"
French socialists are using the Armenian question for the same purpose.

The fact that the French Socialist Party has undertaken such an
initiative with the active support of the Communist Party speaks
volumes over the extent of the decline of these organizations. Unable
to provide any sort of answer to the growing social crisis, they are
both playing the card of xenophobia.

The officer’s daughter Segol ène Royal, who has been systematically
groomed by the media as the Socialist presidential candidate, has
sought on a number of occasions to outflank her UMP rival Nicolas
Sarkozy on the right-for example with her appeal to entrust the army
with the education of rebellious young people. She has now gone even
further with her advocacy of the Armenian law.

As usual the Communist Party is seeking to shout even louder.

Communist deputy Frederic Dutoit praised the new law before the
National Assembly as an "immense progress for the Armenian cause
and for humanity as a whole." He then threatened, "It is a first
step, others must follow." The newspaper La Marseillaise, which has
close links to the PCF, celebrated the "prohibition of denial" as an
"expression of respect for universal values." In the world of the
French Stalinists censorship remains the highest form of freedom!

Following a series of strike movements and revolts in recent years
directed at both Gaullist and Socialist Party-led governments, the
Socialist and Communist parties are prepared to go to any lengths to
prevent a further intensification of social protest.

–Boundary_(ID_FIVFUo4sSOuQWAJNfCjviw)–

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

THE SITUATION IN EUROPE ISN’T SO BAD
By Taha Akyol

Turkish Press
Oct 18 2006

MILLIYET- Turkey isn’t opening its harbors to the Greek Cypriots, and
the European Union isn’t lifting the embargo on the Turkish Republic of
Northern Cyprus (TRNC). It’s a deadlock, isn’t it? It seemed this way,
but EU Term President Finland suggested a solution. So we saw that
there may be searches for interim solutions and meanwhile Turkey’s
membership talks with the EU can continue. This is a very important
development. Instead of asking us to open our harbors this year,
a new terminology is being developed. According to this, Luxembourg
wants us to do it in the following months or years. This was said by
EU Commissioner for Enlargement Olli Rehn. So Turkey will continue
its membership talks, while the issues of harbors and isolation are
being discussed. Our image of a country engaged in EU membership
talks attracted $20 billion in capital to Turkey. This image will
continue uninterruptedly. Meanwhile, strong EU countries are against
the idea of suspending the process of Turkey’s membership talks,
and the Greek Cypriot administration isn’t strong enough to suspend
it. However, for example, the Greek Cypriot administration can hinder
the opening of certain chapters on transportation. Then Turkey would
continue its membership talks, in other words, the train would go on
its way. In Luxembourg, when I talked with Foreign Minister Abdullah
Gul’s advisors during the breakfast break, I heard that this is what
they are thinking.

Another problematic issue for Turkey is Article 301. When we were
talking on the plane, Gul said, ‘Turkey is a free, democratic
country. Everybody can talk and write freely. All the charges filed
under Article 301 ended in acquittal. Of course we know our problems
but we’ll address them. Turkey is developing in the areas of the
economy and democracy. France is the engine of the EU. You saw
what’s going on even there!’ Stating that the EU criticized France
for removing freedom of thought on the Armenian issue, Gul said that
the Turkish public should know this and shouldn’t think that only
Turkey is always criticized. Diplomats are looking for a solution
about Article 301. This issue will be discussed a great deal.

During the press conference later, nobody had a sour face and the
atmosphere wasn’t tense. Rehn started by saying that there are good
developments. It seems that what Gul said about Article 301 had a
positive effect. Finland’s intercession to solve the Cyprus deadlock
on harbors and isolation softened the atmosphere. Nobody is especially
stressing the Cyprus issue. So what will happen if the Finnish plan
doesn’t work? Finnish Foreign Minister Erki Tuomioja and Rehn gave
the same answers to this question. They said that now this was on the
table and that they don’t want to think of another possibility. These
are all positive developments. We can say that the Nov. 8 EU progress
report won’t be as harsh as expected. The situation in Europe isn’t
bad at all.

PARLIAMENT TO DISCUSS DEVELOPMENTS IN WAKE OF FRANCE’S PASSAGE OF ARMENIAN BILL

Turkish Press
Oct 18 2006

Parliament is due today to discuss a bill criminalizing denial of the
so-called Armenian genocide passed last week by France and developments
in its wake. Parliament is expected to give a harsh response to France
over the bill. Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul is due to brief the
assembled deputies on the issue. After Gul addresses the deputies,
members of the opposition parties will make speeches. A declaration
condemning the decision of the French Parliament is expected to be
released following the speeches.

ARINC: "WITH THE ARMENIAN BILL, FRANCE ROUSED TURKISH OPPOSITION AND FAILED THE SINCERITY TEST"

Turkish Press
Oct 18 2006

Speaking yesterday at a press conference marking the beginning of
Parliament’s new legislative year, Parliament Speaker Bulent Arinc
said that the whole nation had reacted against the bill criminalizing
denial of the so-called Armenian genocide passed by the French
Parliament last week, adding that France should know that the bill
will hurt it in the future. Asked whether he believed that French
President Jacques Chirac, who recently telephoned Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan to apologize over the bill, was being sincere,
Arinc stated that if a child were asked this question, he would give
the same answer. "The whole Turkish nation gave the same answer to
France," said Arinc. "France has failed the sincerity test." Later,
Arinc flew to Saudi Arabia for an official visit.

BABACAN: "ARMENIAN GENOCIDE CLAIMS ARE MEANT TO PROVOKE TURKEY"

Turkish Press
Oct 18 2006

State Minister for the Economy and chief European Union negotiator Ali
Babacan said yesterday that the so-called Armenian genocide claims
were meant to provoke Turkey, adding that the Turkish nation could
lose if it doesn’t keep its calm. "We can’t get anywhere if we’re
overly sensitive," said Babacan. Commenting on Turkey’s EU bid,
Babacan stated that the screening of chapters was completed on Oct.

13, adding that Turkey had completed its screening process in a year
compared to other EU candidates’ 18 months. Cautioning that 2007
would be difficult for Turkey’s EU bid, Babacan added that Ankara
would focus on the official negotiations. Babacan further denied
claims that the government had lost its EU enthusiasm.

TURK HOUSE RAPS ‘GENOCIDE’ BILL

Gulf Times, Qatar
Oct 18 2006

ANKARA: Turkey’s parliament yesterday backed a declaration condemning
the French National Assembly’s approval of a draft bill that would
make it a crime to deny Armenians suffered genocide by Ottoman Turks
in 1915.

But the government stopped short of taking measures against French
interests and companies, aware this could harm Turkey’s economy more
than France’s.

Diplomats say the genocide bill, approved by the lower house last
Thursday, is unlikely to become law due to resistance from the upper
chamber, the Senate and President Jacques Chirac.

Turkish lawmakers said much damage had already been done.

"Naturally, approval of the draft by the French parliament will
inflict irreparable damage on political, economic and military
relations between Turkey and France," said the declaration which had
the backing of all political parties.

It said Armenia would pay a "heavy price" for using lobbies in France
and in other countries against Turkey, although it did not say what
that might entail.

Turkey has no diplomatic relations with Armenia due to the tiny
ex-Soviet republic’s occupation of territory belonging to Ankara’s
Turkic-speaking ally Azerbaijan.

France is home to Europe’s largest Armenian diaspora.

Ankara denies Armenians’ claims they suffered a systematic genocide in
Turkey during World War I, saying both Christian Armenians and Muslim
Turks died in large numbers in a partisan conflict that accompanied
the break-up of the Ottoman Empire.

In yesterday’s debate in the Turkish parliament, Foreign Minister
Abdullah Gul said the "baseless" Armenian claims were nothing more
than political propaganda.

"We hope this bill stops halfway and that the French come to their
senses," Gul said.

He said the French bill violated the principle of free speech, a key
requirement of the EU, which Turkey hopes to join. He said Ankara
would fight the bill in international courts if it ever became law
in France. – Reuters

IRAQ’S CHRISTIANS IMPERILED
By Charles Tannock

Philadelphia Inquirer, PA
Oct 18 2006

The world is consumed by fears that Iraq is degenerating into a civil
war among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. But in this looming war of all
against all, it is Iraq’s small community of Assyrian Christians that
is at risk of annihilation.

Iraq’s Christian communities are among the world’s most ancient,
having practiced their faith in Mesopotamia almost since the time
of Christ. The Assyrian Apostolic Church has existed since 34 A.D.,
and the Assyrian Church of the East dates to 33 A.D. The Aramaic that
many of Iraq’s Christians still speak is the language of Christ.

When tolerated by their Muslim rulers, Assyrian Christians contributed
much to their societies. Their scholars helped to usher in the "Golden
Age" of the Arab world by translating important works into Arabic
from Greek and Syriac. But in recent times, toleration has scarcely
existed. In the Armenian Genocide of 1914-1918, 750,000 Assyrians –
roughly two-thirds of their number – were massacred by the Ottoman
Turks with the help of the Kurds.

Under the Iraqi Hashemite monarchy, Assyrians faced persecution
for cooperating with the British during World War I. Many fled to
the West. During Saddam Hussein’s wars with the Kurds, hundreds
of Assyrian villages were destroyed, their inhabitants rendered
homeless, and dozens of ancient churches were bombed. The teaching
of the Syriac language was prohibited, and Assyrians were forced to
give their children Arabic names.

In 1987, the Iraqi census listed 1.4 million Christians. Today, only
about 600,000 to 800,000 remain. As many as 60,000, and perhaps even
more, have fled since the beginning of the insurgency that followed the
U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Their exodus accelerated in August 2004,
after the start of the terrorist bombing campaign against Christian
churches by Islamists.

A recent United Nations report states that religious minorities in Iraq
"have become the regular victims of discrimination, harassment and,
at times, persecution, with incidents ranging from intimidation to
murder," and that "members of the Christian minority appear to be
particularly targeted."

Indeed, there are widespread reports of Christians fleeing the country
as a result of threats being made to their women for not adhering
to strict Islamic dress codes. Christian women are said to have had
acid thrown in their faces. Some have been killed for wearing jeans
or not wearing the veil.

Over the last two years, 27 Assyrian churches have reportedly been
attacked for the sole reason that they were Christian places of
worship. These attacks go beyond targeting physical manifestations
of the faith. Christian-owned small businesses, particularly those
selling alcohol, have been attacked, and many shopkeepers murdered.

Sadly, the plight of Iraq’s Christians is not an isolated one in the
Middle East. Iran’s population has nearly doubled since the 1979
revolution, but, under a hostile regime, the number of Christians
in the country has fallen from roughly 300,000 to 100,000. In 1948,
Christians accounted for roughly 20 percent of the population of what
was then Palestine; now, they are about 1.6 percent of the Palestinian
population in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.

In Egypt, emigration among Coptic Christians is disproportionately
high; many convert to Islam under pressure, and over the last few
years, violence against the Christian community has taken many lives.

Saudi Arabia’s Wahabbi regime prohibits any form of Christian worship.

The persecution of these ancient and unique Christian communities,
in Iraq and in the Middle East as a whole, is deeply disturbing. Last
April, the European Parliament voted virtually unanimously for the
Assyrians to be allowed to establish (on the basis of Section 5 of
the Iraqi constitution) a federal region where they can be free from
outside interference to practice their own way of life. It is high
time now that the West paid more attention, and took forceful action
to secure the future of Iraq’s embattled Christians.

Charles Tannock ([email protected]) is vice president
of the human rights subcommittee of the European Parliament.

CENSORING IDEAS
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist

Boston Globe, MA
Oct 18 2006

DID THE Ottoman Turks commit genocide against the Armenians in 1915?

Careful — in some places you can be arrested if you give the wrong
answer to that question. Under Article 305 of the Turkish Penal Code,
for example, those who promote "recognition of the Armenian genocide"
are subject to prosecution, while Article 301 makes the denigration of
"Turkishness" a crime punishable by up to three years in prison. The
Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk , winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for
L iterature , is among those who have been charged under Article
301. His offense was to tell a Swiss interviewer that "30,000 Kurds
and a million Armenians were killed in these lands, and nobody but
me dares to talk about it."

Yet if acknowledging the Armenian genocide is a crime in Turkey,
gainsaying it could soon be a crime in France. Last week the French
National Assembly voted to approve a bill under which anyone denying
the 1915 genocide could be sentenced to a year’s imprisonment and
a 45,000-euro ($56,000) fine. That matches the penalty under French
law for denying the Nazi Holocaust .

The French legislation is meant to uphold the truth — the Armenian
genocide, like the Holocaust, is a fact of history — while the point
of the Turkish law is to debase it. Both, however, are intolerable
assaults on liberty. Beliefs should not be criminalized, no matter
how repugnant or absurd. As I wrote when David Irving was convicted
of Holocaust denial in Austria earlier this year, free societies do
not throw people in prison for giving offensive speeches or spouting
historical lies.

We Americans should know this better than anyone. The right to speak
one’s mind is supposed to be a core article of our civic faith. Yet
the would-be censors are busy here, too.

THE ‘SHUT UP’ FACTOR: How serious a problem is censorship today? Are
would-be censors smothering debate?

At Columbia University two weeks ago, a forum on immigration was to
feature a speech by Jim Gilchrist of the Minutemen, a group that
monitors the US-Mexico border for illegal immigrants. But moments
after Gilchrist began speaking, protesters led by members of the
International Socialist Organization stormed the stage, overturning
tables, unfurling banners, and yelling insults. After 15 minutes of
pandemonium, campus police shut down the program .

In Seattle, two teachers are suing the affluent Lakeside prep school
for illegal racial discrimination and the creation of a hostile
work environment. "Among the plaintiffs’ complaints," reports the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "was Lakeside’s invitation to conservative
commentator Dinesh D’Souza to speak as part of a distinguished lecture
series." But D’Souza, a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and
a veteran of the Reagan White House, never gave the lecture: Faculty
members opposed to his views howled when he was invited, and the
school’s headmaster, bowing to the censors, rescinded the invitation.

Asked about the campaign against him, D’Souza had said: "I am coming
to speak on one day. If they think what I am saying is so awful, they
have the rest of the year to refute it." But that isn’t enough for
the enemies of free speech. They insist not only that speakers with
politically incorrect opinions be shunned, but that anyone offering
them a platform be punished as well.

Then there is "Grist," an environmental webzine whose staff writer
David Roberts recently proposed that global warming skeptics be put
on trial like Nazi war criminals.

"When we’ve finally gotten serious about global warming . . . we
should have war crimes trials for these bastards — some sort of
climate Nuremberg," Roberts wrote. Negative publicity led him to
recant, but he is far from the only one invoking the Holocaust as a
way to silence global warming heretics.

Environmental writer Mark Lynas, for example, puts dissent on
climate change "in a similar moral category to Holocaust denial —
except that this time the Holocaust is yet to come, and we still have
time to avoid it. Those who try to ensure we don’t will one day have
to answer for their crimes." This totalitarian view is taking root
everywhere, making skepticism on climate change taboo and subjecting
anyone reckless enough to question the global-warming dogma to mockery
and demonization. Former vice president Al Gore lumps "global warming
deniers," some of whom are eminent scientists, with the "15 percent of
the population (who) believe the moon landing was actually staged in a
movie lot in Arizona" and those who "still believe the earth is flat."

The silencers are at work in the marketplace of ideas, using hook
or crook to smother opinions they dislike. The lust to censor is as
powerful as ever. If only liberty’s defenders were equally vigilant.

Jeff Jacoby’s e-mail address is [email protected].

e/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/10/18/censo ring_ideas/

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

KEEPING TURKEY OUT
By Gwynne Dyer

Cyprus Mail, Cyprus
Oct 18 2006

WORDS matter. The Holocaust of the European Jews during the Second
World War was a genocide. The mass deportation of Chechens from their
Caucasian homeland during the same war was a crime but not a genocide,
even though half of them died, because Moscow’s aim was to keep them
from collaborating with German troops who were nearing Chechnya, not
to exterminate them. Which brings us to the far more controversial
case of the Armenians and the Turks.

On October 12, the French parliament passed a law declaring that
anyone who denies that the mass murder of Armenians in eastern
Turkey in 1915-17 was a genocide will face a year in prison. But the
French foreign ministry called the law "unnecessary and untimely",
and President Jacques Chirac telephoned Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyib Erdogan to apologise.

"Chirac called me and told me he was sorry. He said that he is
listening to our statements and he thinks we are right and he will do
what he can in the upcoming process [of ratifying the legislation[,"
said Erdogan on Saturday. Since Chirac can veto the law, that should be
the end of that, but the point of passing the law was never really to
get it on the books. It was to alienate Turkish public opinion and to
curry favour with the half-million French citizens of Armenian descent.

Why would the conservative majority in the French parliament
deliberately set out to annoy the Turks, knowing that the law would
eventually be vetoed by the president? Because they hope to provoke a
nationalist backlash in Turkey that would further damage that country’s
already difficult relationship with the European Union.

French public opinion is already in a xenophobic mood over the last
expansion of the EU, with folk-tales of "Polish plumbers" working for
peanuts and stealing the jobs of honest French workers causing outrage,
especially among right-wing voters who never much liked foreigners
anyway. The prospect of eighty million Turks – Muslim Turks – joining
the European Union, even if it is at least ten years away, is enough
to make their blood boil.

So a big row with Turkey should attract lots of votes to the right’s
presidential candidate in next May’s election, who is likely to be
none other than current prime minister Nicolas Sarkozy – who announced
last month that Turkey should never be allowed to join the EU: "We
have to say who is European and who isn’t. It’s no longer possible to
leave this question open." The new law is not really about Armenians
or Turks. It’s about the French election.

Meanwhile, in Turkey, anti-EU nationalists have their own game
under way. While Turkey was busy amending its penal code to make it
conform to EU standards over the past few years, hard-line lawyers and
bureaucrats smuggled in a new law, Article 301, that provides severe
penalties for "insulting Turkishness". In practice, that mainly means
trying to ban public discussion of the Armenian massacres, and some 70
prosecutions have already been brought by the ultra-right-wing Union of
Lawyers against Turkish authors, journalists and other public figures.

For several generations, the Turkish government flatly denied any
guilt for the Armenian massacres, insisting that they didn’t happen
and if they did, it was the Armenians’ own fault for rebelling against
the Turkish state in wartime. Latterly, a new generation of Turkish
intellectuals has been saying that a million or more Armenians did
die in the mass deportations from eastern Anatolia, and that Turkey
needs to admit its guilt and apologise – though most still refuse to
call it a genocide, as that would put it in the same category as the
Jewish Holocaust.

Israel, too, refuses to use the term "genocide" for the Armenian
massacres, on the grounds that there was some provocation (Armenian
revolutionaries conspired with both Britain and Russia in 1914-15
to launch local uprisings in support of their planned invasions
of Turkey), and that the Turkish state’s actions, though brutal,
illegal and immoral, were not premeditated. Most Armenians, of course,
desperately want the label "genocide" to be applied to their ancestors’
suffering, since they feel that any other term demotes it to a lower
rank of tragedy. But there is room for dialogue and even reconciliation
here, if people can get past the issue of nomenclature.

The prosecutions for "insulting Turkishness" – even against Turkey’s
greatest living novelist, Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk – are not
just an attempt to stifle this dialogue among Turks, or between
Turks and Armenians. The ultra-nationalists also want to derail the
negotiations for EU membership by painting Turkey as an authoritarian
and intolerant state that does not belong in Europe. They are, in
effect, Sarkozy’s objective allies.

But Prime Minister Erdogan will probably repeal Article 301 once next
year’s elections are past. France’s law, which requires people to
discuss the Armenian massacres in precisely the terms that 301 bans,
will probably be vetoed by Chirac. And Turkey’s best-known Armenian
journalist, Hrant Dink, who has already been prosecuted several
times under 301, has just announced that he will go to France "to
protest against this madness and violate the [new] law… And I will
commit the crime to be prosecuted there, so that these two irrational
mentalities can race to put me into jail."

NOBEL PRIZE WAS VICTORY FOR OUTSPOKEN NOVELIST
By Laura T. Ryan – Staff writer

Syracuse Post Standard, NY
Oct 18 2006

Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk’s prize was a win for intellectual
freedom, says Colgate professor.

The awarding of a Nobel Prize to Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk
constitutes a victory to those who seek the freedom to acknowledge
Turkey’s bloody past, according to a Colgate University professor.

Last year, Pamuk was put on criminal trial for "insulting" Turkey,
by telling a Swiss newspaper his country needed to acknowledge its
role in the deaths of 1 million Armenians in 1915 and the more recent
killing of 30,000 Kurds in the 1980s.

The case eventually was thrown out.

"First andforemost, one gets a Nobel Prize for one’s art, but . . . I
think (Pamuk’s case) became a manifestation of Turkey’s struggle
with intellectual freedom and issues surrounding democracy and human
rights," said Peter Balakian, director of Colgate’s Center for Ethics
and World Societies and the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor
of the Humanities.

Balakian, a New Jersey native of Armenian descent, also is the author
of "The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response"
(2003) and "Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenian
Past" (1997), which won a PEN/Martha Albrand Prize for Memoir.

Pamuk becamea lightning rod for those issues, Balakian said, and
his trial "became a cause celebre because it embodied the issues of
democracy which Turkey is failing to fully embrace, in its refusal
to acknowledge the past and its intimidation and punishment of those
who do, like Pamuk and others."

Fellow Turkish novelist Elif Shafak faced similar charges for
statements made by a fictional character in her novel "The Bastard
of Istanbul." She was acquitted last month.

Turkish publisher Zagip Zarakolu, meanwhile, faces up to 13 years in
prison for publishing books that deal with the Armenian genocide. He
published Balakian’s "Burning Tigris" in Turkey last year.

"Pamuk is part of a larger intellectual moment in Turkish culture,
a more forceful challenging of state taboos," Balakian said. "And
(writers like Pamuk and Shafak) are the hope for the future. So much
of this has been amplified by the Turks’ desire to join the European
Union, and Europe is making it clear, unless there’s intellectual
freedom, joining Europe is not going to be possible."

Arpena Mesrobian,former director of Syracuse University Press
and author of the 2000 book, "Like One Family: The Armenians of
Syracuse," said she, too, was pleased the Nobel committee chose to
honor Pamuk’s contributions at a time when his comments had landed
him in controversy.

"I think it’s delightful they reached out and chose something that
most people might not encounter," Mesrobian said.