Month: October 2006

Nobel winner denounces French genocide bill

1:30 PM October 13, 2006

ANKARA (AFP) – Dissident Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, winner of the 2006
Nobel Literature Prize, denounced a French bill that would make it a crime
to deny Turks commited genocide against Armenians, saying it flouted
France’s "tradition of liberal and critical thinking."

"What the French did is wrong," Pamuk, better known for criticizing his own
government, told the NTV television from New York, a day after the bill was
voted in the lower house of the French parliament, infuriating Ankara.

"France has a very old tradition of liberal and critical thinking and I
myself was influenced by it and learned much from it.

"But the decision they made constitutes a prohibition. It does not suit the
French tradition of liberalism," he said.

The bill, which still needs the approval of the Senate and the president to
take effect, foresees up to one year in jail and a heavy fine for anyone who
denies that the World War I massacres of Armenians under Ottoman rule were
genocide, a label Ankara fiercely rejects.

The 54-year-old Pamuk himself stood trial in Turkey this year for contesting
the official line on the massacres under an infamous provision for
"insulting Turkishness," which Ankara is under European Union
pressure to amend.

The trial was dropped on a technicality in January, but won Pamuk the
reputation of a "traitor" among Turkish nationalists.

His Nobel award, announced shortly after the French vote on Thursday, was
greeted with mixed reactions at home.

The government was among the many who hailed the first Turk to win a Nobel
prize, but skeptics questioned whether Pamuk was rewarded for his writing or
the political dissidence that has often embarrassed his country in the West.

Parliament Speaker Bulent Arinc and several newspaper columnists had called
on the writer to speak out against the French bill if he was an earnest
campaigner for free speech.

Pamuk, a staunch advocate of Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, urged
his compatriots not to "blow the issue out of proportion" in their reactions
to France.

"Don’t burn the duvet for a flea," he said, using a Turkish proverb.

Commenting on the mixed reaction to his award, Pamuk said: "There was never
a Nobel literature prize that was not met with any (negative) reactions…
I’m not angry with anyone. People are free to think what they like."

"These debates will one day end but the fact will remain that Turkey has won
a Nobel prize," he said. "I’m very honored and proud to have brought this
award to my country."

Pamuk first drew the ire of the state in the mid-1990s when he denounced the
treatment of the Kurdish minority as the army waged a heavy-handed campaign
to suppress a bloody separatist insurgency in the southeast.

The state extended an olive branch in 1998, offering him the accolade of
"State Artist," but Pamuk declined.

Ha’aretz, Israel
Oct 13 2006

Taking sides on genocide

By Jonas Attenhofer

On an official visit to Turkey, Swiss justice minister Christoph
Blocher expressed sympathy for his hosts’ anger at Switzerland’s
prosecution of two Turkish men who publicly denied the Armenian
Genocide. The two, a historian and a politician, are being prosecuted
under a Swiss anti-racism law.

Blocher, leader of the right-wing People’s Party, also mentioned
during his visit that the Department of Justice he heads was working
toward a revision of the law, which he said caused him pain as well.
These remarks caused an uproar in Swiss political and academic
circles, which broadly support the law that withstood a referendum in
1994. Aside from racism in general, the law explicitly prohibits the
public denial, grave belittlement, or attempted justification of
genocide and other crimes against humanity.

Upon his return to Switzerland, Blocher stated his intention of
working to exclude from the anti-racism law the section that
prohibits denial of a genocide. He was quoted as saying that this
particular passage could impair freedom of expression, as well as
Switzerland’s relations with other states. Regarding freedom of
expression, the question is whether a law that prohibits the
racially, ethnically or religiously motivated violation of the human
dignity of particular individuals, represents a serious limitation of
individual freedom.

The president of the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland, Giusep
Nay, sees the law as a necessary limitation to freedom of expression.
He sees no threat to this freedom as expressed in the Swiss
Constitution and the United Nations Charter. A state’s interest in
limiting this basic right was explained by the Armenian Republic’s
ambassador to Switzerland, who observed that by allowing the denial
of past genocides, the perpetrators remain unpunished by public
opinion, and the prevention of future genocides is undermined.

The Swiss law covers only public statements. In a case in which a
group of Swiss soldiers gave the Nazi salute and expressed racist
sentiments while serving in the army, a military court recently
applied the term "public" to expressions made during military
training. If the anti-racism law were rescinded, it would become
easier to dismiss historic facts surrounding a genocide – effectively
favoring freedom of expression over the moral integrity of minority
groups. Equally controversial is the surrender of their moral
integrity by dropping the law in favor of good relations with states
that might disagree with it.

In the case of Switzerland and Turkey, Blocher’s call to weaken the
law has not earned much support among fellow cabinet members, whose
scheduled visits to Turkey have been cancelled by the host country
over frictions about the question of the Armenian Genocide. The Swiss
National Council had previously recognized the Armenian Genocide, and
this may be seen as the official Swiss position.

Blocher was sharply criticized by his colleagues in the seven-member
cabinet for disagreeing with a Swiss law while in a foreign country,
for not aligning his statements with the official positions of the
joint cabinet and for not fully coordinating his activities abroad
with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

As minister of justice, Blocher was not involved in any official
negotiations, but merely accepted an invitation by his Turkish
counterpart on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the
establishment of Turkish civil law, which is modeled on the Swiss
Civil Code (ZGB). At the ceremony, the dean of the faculty of law of
Ankara University mentioned the constructive role Western European
law codes played in the shift from an Islamic society to a modern,
secular one.

Should neutral Switzerland engage in Armenian-Turkish mediation in
the future, recognition of the Armenian Genocide will unlikely be
subject to negotiations. Upholding its humanitarian tradition,
Switzerland can be expected to maintain a firm stance on the issue.
This also seems to be the intention of France’s Jacques Chirac and
Germany’s Angela Merkel, who want to make the issue a precondition
for Turkey to enter the European Union. France is presently
discussing implementation of a law that explicitly prohibits denial
of the Armenian Genocide.

The situation could have significance for the Middle East. The
European Union will eventually share a border with Iran. When a
Western European country considers weakening its stance against
public denial of the Holocaust, how is the message perceived in the
Middle East?

The writer is a law student at the universities of Zurich and Berne.

Grenada Broadcasting Network, Grenada
Oct 13 2006

TURKEY CONDEMNS GENOCIDE
12th October, 2006

Turkey has condemned a French parliamentary vote which would make it
a crime to deny that Armenians suffered "genocide" at the hands of
the Turks.

Turkey called it a "serious blow" to relations and has threatened
sanctions. The vote was also criticised by the EU.

The bill, tabled by the opposition but opposed by the French
government, needs approval from the Senate and president.

Armenia says Ottoman Turks killed 1.5 million people systematically
in 1915 – a claim strongly denied by Turkey.

There are accusations in Turkey that the Armenian diaspora and
opponents of Turkey’s European Union membership bid are using the
issue to stop it joining the 25-member bloc.

The Daily Telegraph
Oct 13 2006

Turkey angered over France genocide denial move
By David Rennie, Europe Correspondent
(Filed: 13/10/2006)

The French parliament triggered a fresh crisis yesterday in Turkey’s
relations with Europe by approving a bill that would make it an
offence punishable by jail to deny that Armenians suffered a genocide
at the hands of Ottoman Turks.

The Turkish foreign ministry said the vote in the French Assemblée
Nationale had dealt "a heavy blow" to bilateral relations.

Patrick Devedijan, a French deputy of Armenian descent, addresses the
National Assembly
Turkey denies that massacres of Armenians between 1915 and 1923
amounted to genocide, saying large numbers of Turks and Armenians
died in civil war.

Ali Babacan, Turkey’s economics minister, said it was too soon to
know whether the Turkish public would heed calls from nationalist
groups to boycott French goods.

"As the government, we are not encouraging that, but this is the
people’s decision," he said. "I cannot say [the vote] will not have
any consequences."

The Socialist-backed law was widely criticised in Turkey as another
attempt by European politicians to place obstacles in the path of
Ankara’s painful progress towards membership of the European Union.
Polls have shown that 60 per cent of the French public is opposed to
Turkish entry into the EU.

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France would impose a one-year prison term and a 45,000 euro
(£30,000) fine for anyone denying the Armenian genocide, following
the lead of an earlier law on denying the Nazi Holocaust.

The vote came months ahead of French presidential and parliamentary
elections, in which the 400,000-strong Armenian community in France
will form a formidable voter bloc.

The bill does not have government support and it seems likely to fall
in the upper house, the Senate.

Both President Jacques Chirac, and Segolene Royal, the Socialist
presidential front-runner, say that Turkey must acknowledge the
genocide of the Armenians before joining the EU. Nicolas Sarkozy, the
conservative front-runner, is opposed to Turkey’s EU entry under any
conditions.

The Turkish parliament scrapped plans for a tit-for-tat law that
would have made it illegal to deny that French colonialists committed
genocide against the Algerians in their war for independence. Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told MPs: "You don’t clean up dirt with
more dirt."

He repeated calls to Armenia jointly to research the killings by
opening the historical archives of both countries to historians.

The European Commission, which will next month unveil a key report on
Turkey’s progress towards meeting EU admission standards, said the
vote threatened to silence the first signs of debate inside Turkey on
the Armenian issue.

Krisztina Nagy, the EC’s enlargement spokesman, said: "It is
important to see that there is an opening in Turkey to conduct debate
on that issue." The bill, if it became law, "could have a negative
effect on debate".

Ankara is under intense pressure to improve free speech rights, and
abolish the notorious Article 301 of its penal code, which allows for
the prosecution of anyone who insults "Turkishness".

The Daily Telegraph, UK
Oct 13 2006

Nobel prize for Turkish author who divided nation over massacres
By Oliver Poole in Istanbul
(Filed: 13/10/2006)

Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish novelist prosecuted for "insulting
Turkishness" after commenting on the scale of the Armenian massacre,
was yesterday named winner of the Nobel Prize for literature.

Orhan Pamuk: Overjoyed
This could bring renewed claims that the prize is now politicised
after Harold Pinter, a critic of the Iraq war, won last year despite
his last acclaimed stage work having been written in 1978.

Yesterday’s announcement was particularly contentious as it came on
the day French MPs voted to make it a crime to deny that the Armenian
massacre occurred, a move that provoked fury in Turkey.

Pamuk, 54, is lauded for novels such as Snow and My Name is Red that
deal with Turkey’s coming to terms with its imperial past and its
position as a crossroads between East and West.

But last year he became better known as a symbol for free speech
campaigners after he was put on trial for rejecting the official line
on the Armenian massacre, which the Turkish government says was not
genocide. Pamuk told a Swiss newspaper that Turkey was unwilling to
face the reality that "30,000 Kurds and one million Armenians" had
been killed in the country’s recent history.

advertisementHe faced up to three years in prison, but the case was
dropped on a technicality in January.

However, Pamuk’s comments resulted in death threats and a provincial
governor calling for his books to be burnt. At one point he had to go
into hiding abroad.

Horace Engdahl, the head of the Nobel academy, stressed that Pamuk
had been chosen for his literary achievements. "It could lead to some
political turbulence but we are not interested in that," he said. "He
is controversial in his own country, but so are almost all our
prize-winners."

Pamuk was selected because he "enlarged the roots of the contemporary
novel" through his links to both Western and Eastern culture.

The citation for the award praised his latest work, Istanbul:
Memories of a City, as a "quest for the melancholic soul [in which
he] has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of
cultures".

The Turkish cultural ministry chose to dwell on Pamuk’s achievement
in becoming the first Turk to win the prize rather than the recent
court case, or his decision in 1998 to reject the accolade of State
Artist. "I am concerned only with Pamuk as a novelist," said Mustafa
Isen, the ministry’s under-secretary. "I congratulate him."

Pamuk was born into a wealthy, westernised family and turned to
writing after deciding he did not have the talent to become a
painter. He has published five novels and won the International IMPAC
award for My Name is Red.

Pamuk, who will receive a gold medal and a £750,000 cheque, described
his writing as a study of "international themes. . . seen through my
Turkish window".

It is a vantage point that has enabled him to examine East-West
issues and subsequent clashes between Islam and secularism, tradition
and modernity. In My Name is Red and Snow, he explores "the confusion
in-between" that occurs when the cultures attempt to exist together.

The study of Istanbul, written in a room overlooking the Bosphorus,
celebrates the "melancholy" atmosphere caused by the impact of
westernisation on a city filled with reminders of a glorious but
abandoned imperial past.

Embracing that emotion, he says, at least offers the citizens a
chance to escape from the far more painful belief of cultural
triumphalism.

Pamuk, at present a visiting professor at Columbia University, New
York, said that he was overjoyed by the award.

It was "an honour bestowed upon the Turkish literature and culture I
represent".

Kemal Kerincsiz, who leads a group of ultra-nationalist lawyers that
helped bring the charges against Pamuk, said he was ashamed by the
award.

"I don’t believe it was given for his books or literary identity. It
was given because he belittled our national values, for his
recognition of the genocide. As a Turkish citizen I am ashamed."

The Brunei Times, Brunei Darussalam
Oct 13 2006

French MPs vote on Armenia `genocide’ bill despite Turkish fury

13-Oct-06

FRENCH MPs yesterday adopted a bill that would make it a crime to
deny that the 1915-1917 massacres of Armenians by the Ottomans was
genocide.

The draft law which has provoked the fury of Turkey, the modern state
that emerged from the Ottoman Empire will now be sent to the Senate,
or upper house of parliament, for another vote.

If it becomes law, it would make it a crime in France to deny that
the killings of the Armenians were genocide. Those violating the law
would face up to one year in prison and a fine of up to +euro+45,000
(US$57,000).

Ankara reacted swiftly, with the foreign ministry saying France had
dealt “a heavy blow” to its relations with Turkey, while parliament
speaker Bulent Arinc called the vote “shameful” and reflecting a
“hostile attitude”.

Turkey has threatened economic reprisals against France if the
legislation passes, warning that French firms could be excluded from
public tenders and that a boycott of French goods might be imposed.

The MPs in the lower house, the National Assembly, passed the bill,
introduced by the opposition Socialist Party, by 106 votes to 19.

Most of the parliamentarians from President Jacques Chirac’s ruling
conservative party were absent from the 577-seat chamber for the
vote.

The vote was the first step in what could be a lengthy legislative
passage for the bill, which has supporters and opponents ranged
across party lines. Turkey, though, is united in slamming the draft
law.

“If the bill is adopted, Turkey will not lose anything, but France
will lose not only Turkey, but something of itself as well,” Turkish
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said on Wednesday. Ankara contests the
term “genocide” for the killings and strongly opposes the bill’s
provisions.

It says 300,000 Armenians, and at least as many Turks, died in civil
strife when Armenians took up arms for independence and sided with
invading Russian troops as the Ottoman Empire fell apart during World
War I. Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of their ancestors were
slaughtered in orchestrated killings that can only be seen as
genocide.

Around 400,000 people of Armenian origin are estimated to live in
France, the most famous being the singer Charles Aznavour, born
Chahnour Varinag Aznavourian to immigrant parents. One French MP of
Armenian descent, Patrick Devedjian, who belongs to the ruling UMP
party, told RTL radio that “I see no reason why the right shouldn’t
vote” in favour of the bill.

He said an amendment he had attached to it which would exclude
scientists, historians and academics from the provision of the law
made the bill “more reasonable ”. Turkey was simply trying to
employ “denial propaganda” over the Armenian killings, he claimed.

A Socialist MP, Jean-Michel Boucheron, took an opposing position,
saying “no parliament has the right to impose an ‘official’ history,
especially regarding a foreign country…. What would we say if the
Turkish parliament tried to shape France’s history?”

France in 2001 already adopted a law officially calling the massacres
a genocide sparking a first found of Turkish anger that had
short-lived negative consequences for French firms in Turkey.

The new bill would go further by making it illegal to deny that
genocide took place, much in the way denial of the Holocaust during
World War II is a crime in France.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called the proposed
law “a blunder” and Turkish newspapers Thursday were scathing in
saying the bill undermined France’s commitment to freedom of
expression. “Liberty, equality and stupidity”, was how one daily,
Hurriyet, headlined its opinion. AFP

The Guardian, UK
Oct 13 2006

A Nobel winner for our times

Margaret Atwood
Friday October 13, 2006
The Guardian

‘Pamuk gives us what all novelists give us at their best: the truth’
… Orhan Pamuk. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty

Orhan Pamuk, the celebrated Turkish novelist, has won the Nobel prize
for iterature. It would be difficult to conceive of a more perfect
winner for our catastrophic times. Just as Turkey stands at the
crossroads of the Muslim East/Middle East and the European and North
American west, so Pamuk’s work inhabits the shifting ground of an
increasingly dangerous cultural and religious overlap, where
ideologies as well as personalities collide.
It’s no exaggeration to say that you have to read Pamuk if you want
to begin to understand what’s going on in people’s hearts, minds and
souls, not only in Turkey, but also in Britain, where the current
Jack Straw headscarf controversy eerily mirrors the subject matter of
Pamuk’s recently-translated 1996 novel, Snow (in which we are
reminded that Ataturk’s ruthless modernisation campaign included a
much-disputed banning of headscarves.

Pamuk has felt the shockwaves from such factional collisions. He has
never been one to duck controversy: just a year ago he was facing
prosecution on charges of "un-Turkishness" – he’d been so rash as to
have mentioned the fate of the Armenians at the beginning of the 20th
century, a taboo subject for the authorities. Possibly in response to
international outcries, the charges were dropped, but many
lesser-known Turkish writers have not been so lucky.
He has already won many literary prizes, including the 2003 Dublin
Impac Award for his sixth novel, My Name Is Red. In Turkey, he is far
more than a novelist: people rush to read his novels as if he’s a
kind of sure-fire prophet, or a hugely popular singer, or a national
psychoanalyst or a one-man newspaper editorial page. There is nothing
programmatic about his novels; he simply writes out of the centre of
the whirlwind both his characters and his Turkish readers feel swept
up in every day.

Where is Turkey going? How will it come to terms with its
once-glorious, often-troubled history, and resolve the conflict
between old and new, and handle the power struggle between
secularists and Islamists, and find self-respect, or peace of mind,
or inner wholeness or a new direction? Pamuk’s novels don’t provide
cut-and-dried solutions, but they follow the tortuous lines of such
questionings with anguished and wrenching fidelity. Sometimes his
characters are almost literally torn apart by choices they don’t know
how to make, but are forced to make. His power as a novelist stems in
part from his refusal to judge the choices his characters make: their
tragedy is that no matter what path they take, they can’t be at ease;
and, worse, some other element in their society is bound to condemn
them.

Thus Pamuk’s heroes – they are typically heroes, not heroines –
wander through the plots of their books as if in caught in a
particularly anxious and threatening collective dream.

I wrote of his novel Snow in the New York Times Book Review: "The
twists of fate, the plots that double back on themselves, the
trickiness, the mysteries that recede as they’re approached, the
bleak cities, the night prowling, the sense of identity-loss, the
protagonist in exile – these are vintage Pamuk, but they’re also part
of the modern literary landscape."

It is not unusual for a Pamuk protagonist to end up dead at the hands
of persons unknown.

Pamuk’s heroes are pestered by Turkey’s former pre-eminence: they may
stumble upon architectural fragments of the huge, opulent Ottoman
empire, or see an Armenian church standing empty, or be reminded of
earlier Russian rulers, or glimpse a fly-spotted picture of the once
revered Ataturk, whose attempts to forge a fully westernised, secular
Turkey now seem futile. Where has all the power gone? such echoes
say. The Christian Byzantine city of Constantinople casts a long
shadow, and the European west and the Muslim east are seen as
mirror-opposite twins ensnared in a net that traps them both.

Pamuk gives us what all novelists give us at their best: the truth.
Not the truth of statistics, but the truth of human experience at a
particular place, in a particular time. And as with all great
literature, you feel at moments not that you are examining him, but
that he is examining you. "No one could understand us from so far
away," says a character in Snow. Reader, it’s a challenge.

The Guardian, UK
Oct 13 2006

French MPs anger Ankara over Armenian genocide vote

Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
Friday October 13, 2006
The Guardian

Turks demonstrate outside the French consulate in Istanbul over
France’s plans to make it a crime to deny that Armenians suffered
genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turks after the first world war.
Photograph: Reuters

The French national assembly yesterday passed a bill making it a
crime to deny that Armenians suffered genocide at the hands of
Ottoman Turks during the first world war, sparking anger in Turkey
and condemnation from Brussels.
The bill, proposed by the opposition Socialist party, states anyone
who denies that the mass murder of Armenians from 1915-1917 was
genocide should face a year in prison and a 45,000 (£30,000) fine.

The bill is unlikely to become law as it faces opposition from the
French government and president Jacques Chirac.

But Ankara’s foreign ministry said relations between the Nato allies,
France and Turkey had been dealt "a severe blow" and warned of
"political consequences". French businesses which exported 4bn of
goods to Turkey last year feared a consumer boycott.
Turkish commentators said the proposed law could boost Turkish
nationalists and undermine pro-EU liberals by exposing the depth of
anti-Turkey feeling in France, a founder member state. Some MEPs
warned that the French bill would hamper efforts by Turkish
intellectuals to develop an open debate on the Armenian question,
sending a hypocritical message that an EU country was prepared to
lock people up for expressing a particular view of history just as
Europe is pressuring Turkey to promote freedom of expression.

Richard Howitt, Labour MEP and foreign affairs spokesman, told the
Guardian the French move was the "worst kind of hypocrisy and
provocation". He said the bill reflected problems in France, and was
"partly racially motivated against Turkey which is a majority Muslim
state". He said French politicians were also courting the Armenian
community in France – which at more than 400,000 is the largest
Armenian diaspora in western Europe.

A European commission spokeswoman said: "It is not up to law to write
history. Historians need to have debate."

Turkey’s official policy is to acknowledge that large numbers of
Armenians were killed by Turks, but to reject the overall estimate of
1.5m deaths as inflated. It maintains that deaths occurred as part of
civil unrest during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and thousands
of Turks also died. Saying otherwise can lead to prosecution and some
of Turkey’s literary names have faced trial over the issue.

The French government yesterday tried to limit the damage by
stressing its "solid ties of friendship and cooperation" with Turkey,
vowing to oppose the bill. The French parliament’s lower house
approved the bill by 106 votes to 19.

The European commission said recognition of an Armenian genocide was
not a precondition for Turkey entering the EU. But Jacques Chirac and
two likely candidates for next year’s presidential elections, Nicolas
Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal, have all stated that Ankara must accept
the genocide before joining the EU.

Arab News, Saudi Arabia
Oct 13 2006

Editorial: Confronting the Past
13 October 2006

TURKS prize the characteristics of toughness and fixity of purpose
that have made the ordinary Turkish soldier such an indomitable and
ferocious foe on the battlefield. The elite Janissaries from the
country’s Ottoman past, with their alarming tactic of relentless
advance using an eccentric swaying march, epitomize a sturdiness,
which after the humiliations of defeat in 1918, the Turks reasserted
under Ataturk’s leadership and threw occupation forces out of the
country.

However, in this formidable stubborn strength lies Turkey’s weakness
as the country bids for EU membership, for which in many other ways
it is eminently qualified. Turkey’s obdurate denial of the massacres
that took place for three years after an Armenian insurrection in
1915 is a folly that helps only those who wish to exclude it from the
EU.

With the 1983 return of democracy under Turgut Özal, work was
actually begun on a public-relations campaign that would at last have
recognized the horrors in Eastern Turkey. It would have argued that
the government of Enver Pasha feared a czarist Russian-inspired
rebellion that could have opened a further front for the already
overstretched Turkish armed forces. The point would also have been
made that Kurds, who turned on their more prosperous Armenian
neighbors, did much of the killing. In the event the project was
abandoned in favor of publishing a collection of source documents
that majored on the atrocities committed by Armenian rebels. History
is never black and white. Unfortunately almost a century after the
fact, Turkey is still stubbornly committed to a denial, not only that
there was official sanction for the massacres of maybe up to 1.5
million Armenians, but also of the fact that the massacres took
place. In France, which has a very large Armenian community,
legislators are making denial of the Armenian massacres a crime.
Regardless of the wisdom of this curtailment of free speech (proposed
by the opposition Socialists), the move is only the latest by French
parties of all political colors to block Turkey’s EU entry.

Socialist presidential challenger next year Segolene Royal, her rival
Nicolas Sarkozy, and President Chirac have all called for a
referendum on Turkish membership. Given current anti-Muslim feeling
and the articulate and wealthy Armenian community, that vote would
likely go against Turkey. Even in Italy and the UK, Turkey’s leading
supporters, there is now some concern that though many reforms
demanded by Brussels are being implemented by Ankara, Turks have not
grasped the wider implication of EU membership: that Europe is built
on compromise often hammered out in exhausting all-night
horse-trading sessions.

As the French themselves have been learning in recent years,
`nationalism’ is a dirty word in the EU. National pride is fine, but
it cannot be carried over into nationalist policies that tear apart
this unique economic and political organization of nation states.

Turkey’s staunch nationalism and obdurate refusal to confront a
tragic past plays right into the hands of its opponents.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

People’s Daily, China
Oct 13 2006

EU concerned over French legislation on alleged Armenian genocide

The European Commission on Thursday expressed concern over French
legislation that would penalize denial of the alleged 1915-1917
Armenian Genocide by the Turks.

"If this law were to indeed enter into force, it would prohibit the
debate and the dialogue which is necessary for reconciliation on this
issue," said a commission spokeswoman.

The legislation won approval in the French lower house National
Assembly on Thursday. But it now needs to go through the Senate
before it becomes law, said Krisztina Nagy, the commission’s
spokeswoman on enlargement.

Turkey is in accession negotiations with the European Union (EU).

Nagy said the law could have a negative effect on the important
debate opened by the Turks on the issue.

It should not be law that writes history, said Nagy. To write
history, historians and intellectuals need to debate.

Asked if the Armenian issue would be another obstacle to Turkey’s
accession to the EU, Nagy said the recognition of the issue was not a
criterion for Turkey’s entry into the EU.

Under French law, Turkey’s accession needs approval by a referendum
in France.

Turkey began accession talks in October 2005. But experts believed
the negotiations would last at least one decade.

The spokeswoman would not be drawn to comment on whether or not the
commission, the executive body of the EU, would act against France,
should the legislation finally become law.

The alleged Armenian Genocide refers to the forced mass evacuation
and related deaths in 1915-1917 of hundreds of thousands or possibly
more than a million Armenians, during the rule of the Ottoman Empire.

Some main aspects of the event are a matter of ongoing dispute among
the academic community and between parts of the international
community and Turkey.

Turkey rejects the term "genocide" and claims that the deaths among
the Armenians were not a result of a state-sponsored plan of mass
extermination, but of inter-ethnic strife, disease and famine during
the turmoil of World War I.