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Table of contents
Conference about the Assyrian Genocide (SEYFO) at
the European Parliament
Genocide Denial and the Right of Recognition
27 March 2007
Editor-in-chief: Willy Fautré
Website: <;
Email: [email protected]
TURKEY
Conference about the Assyrian Genocide (SEYFO) at the European Parliament
Genocide Denial and the Right of Recognition
HRWF Int. (27.03.2007) – Email: [email protected] – Website:
– On 26 March, MEP Eva-Britt Svensson (European United Left/ Nordic Green
Left) hosted a conference called "Assyrian Genocide (Seyfo)" and organized
at the European Parliament by the Assyrian Federations of Sweden, Holland,
Germany and Firodil Institute. The speakers were MEP Eva-Britt Svensson
(GUE/ NGL), MEP Markus Ferber (EVP-ED), Sabri Atman (Seyfo Center), Prof.
David Gaunt (Sodertorns University College, Sweden), Willy Fautré (Human
Rights Without Frontiers). More than 500 people from Belgium, The
Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, the U.S., etc. had registered to attend the
conference but only half of them could participate in it. Both MEPs
stressed that they had received several phone calls from the Turkish embassy
in Brussels and a letter from the Turkish ambassador – that they showed –
trying to dissuade them to host the conference . See below the presentation
of Human Rights Without Frontiers Int’l on negationism in Belgium.
SEYFO, THE GENOCIDE AGAINST THE ASSYRIANS
Revisionism and Negationism of WW I Ottoman Genocide in Belgium
The Ottoman Empire’s widespread persecution of Assyrian civilians during
World War I constituted a form of genocide, the present-day term for an
attempt to destroy a national, ethnic or religious group, in whole or in
part. Ottoman soldiers and their Kurdish and Persian militia partners
subjected hundreds of thousands of Assyrians to a deliberate and systematic
campaign of massacre, torture, abduction, deportation, impoverishment and
cultural and ethnic destruction.
Up to now, the international community has been hesitant to recognize the
Assyrian experience as a form of genocide. However, the Assyrian genocide is
indistinguishable in form from its Armenian counterpart. Both are narrowly
intertwined.
My presentation will deal with the debate about the genocide issue on the
Belgian scene in the form that it has explicitly taken, the Armenian
genocide, and implicitly and indirectly the Assyrian genocide, Seyfo. My
analysis will identify a number of negationist actors in Belgium, highlight
their objectives and their strategies, their links with Belgian political
parties, with the Turkish embassy in Brussels and with not very commendable
organizations in Turkey.
The Belgian State and the Ottoman Genocide
In 1998, the Belgian senate recognized the genocide committed by the
Ottomans against the Armenians during WW I.
On June 6, 2005, the Justice Commission of the Belgian Senate rejected a
draft bill (Ref. 51/ 1284) meant to extend the March 23, 1995 law
criminalizing the negationism of the Nazi genocide against the Jews to all
the genocides and crimes against humanity legally recognized.
The issue of the Armenian genocide which was recognized by all the parties
was sneaked in during the debate, especially by the MRAX (Movement against
Racism, Anti-Semitism and Xenophobia), but was excluded from the draft law
because it had not been recognized by an international jurisdiction. The
draft bill extending the criminalization of negationism divided the parties
in power and was finally rejected with twelve `no’ votes to two `yes’ votes.
If it had been approved in Parliament, Belgium would have been the first
country to punish those who deny the Armenian genocide allegations.
Revisionist and Negationist Players in Belgium
Several Turkish nationalist organizations based and operating in Belgium but
linked to sister-organizations based in Turkey are opposed to the
qualification of genocide attributed to the mass-scale massacres of
Armenians during WWI and even deny the very existence of such massacres.
The Association of Ataturk’s Philosophy in Belgium/ Association de la Pensée
d’Ataturk en Belgique (APAB-BADD) is a non-profit association linked to the
Turkish Labor Party, a nationalist maoist party which is hostile to the
United States and to the European Union. It receives public subsidies.
EYAD/ The House of Turkey is a social association. Strange though it may be,
its chairman Metin Edeer is also a member of the municipal council of the
Turkish town Emirdag (22,000 inhabitants) although he lives in Belgium. He
was elected in 2004 on the list of the MHP (Green Wolves), the nationalist
extreme-right party in Turkey.
The Turkish Islamic Religious Foundation of Belgium / Fondation religieuse
islamique turque de Belgique (FRITB-BTIDV), better known under the name
Diyanet whose president is the adviser for social affairs at the Turkish
embassy in Brussels, Omer Faruk Turan.
The Belgian-Turkish Coordination Council (CCBT-BTKK), which was created in
March 1996, is an umbrella organization for more than ninety Turkish
associations. It gathers together nationalist extreme-right movements
depending directly from the Turkish embassy in Brussels. Its leader, Kenan
Daggun, was sentenced to nine days in prison due to the incidents that took
place during the demonstration against the monument erected in memory of the
Armenian genocide in Ixelles.
The Sports Federation of the Turks of Belgium/ Fédération sportive des Turcs
de Belgique is an organization depending from the Turkish embassy in
Brussels.
Yeni Belturk is an association which published a magazine and runs a
nationalist and negationist website bearing the same name.
The symbolic target of the revisionist and negationist actors operating on
the Belgian territory, and especially in Brussels, is an Armenian monument.
In 1995, the Armenian community in Belgium proposed to the municipal council
of Ixelles (Brussels) to erect a monument in memory of the victims of the
Armenian genocide at Square Henri Michaux in Ixelles (Brussels) The proposal
was unanimously adopted.
Revisionist and Negationist Campaign in Belgium
In March 2003, the Association of Ataturk’s Philosophy in Belgium
(APAB-BADD) organized a non-authorized demonstration in front of the
monument dedicated to the Armenian genocide and spattered it with painting.
The police had to intervene and to arrest several demonstrators. Elected
members of Turkish descent belonging to several francophone political
parties in power supported this campaign.
In the same year, during the campaign for the parliamentary elections, the
APAB-BADD and the Belgian-Turkish Coordination Council (BTKK) pressured the
mayor of Ixelles to remove the monument commemorating the Armenian genocide.
On May 29, 2004, during the political campaign for regional elections,
Turkish extremists held a demonstration in Brussels under the slogan `Reject
the assertions of genocide.’ On this occasion, the Committee for the
Coordination of the Turkish Associations claimed the destruction of the
Armenian monument in Ixelles. Emir Kir, who was to become State Secretary of
the Brussels Parliament in charge of Monuments after those elections
participated in the demonstration. It was also the case for a number of
Belgian elected candidates of Turkish descent belonging to the Socialist
Party, the Liberal Party, the Green, the Democrat and Humanist Centre. Among
the participants, it is worth mentioning Afyon Mahmut Koçak, a member of the
Turkish Parliament belonging to the party of the Prime Minister, the
president of the Turkish Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the mayor of the
Turkish town Emirdag and a number of Brussels municipal councilors of
Turkish descent.
On December 16, 2004, Yves de Jonghe d’Ardoye addressed a question to the
then mayor, Willy Decourty, and the councilors of Ixelles about a
demonstration for the demolition of the Armenian monument. The opponents to
the Armenian monument raised the issue of the legality of that construction
but their attempt was unsuccessful. In his answer, the mayor admitted that
Turkish movements had exerted pressure on him to remove the monument but he
did not yield to it.
On February 15, 2007, a number of negationist associations organized a
conference called `A look at the so-called Armenian genocide’ with a
controversial guest-speaker, Mr. Yusuf Halaçoglu, President of the Turkish
History Foundation. This foundation is not an academic institution but has
always served the political agenda of Ataturk and his ideological heirs
since its creation in the 1930s. Mr. Halaçoglu is currently prosecuted by
Swiss justice on the basis of article 261 bis of the Swiss criminal code
pertaining to racial discrimination after he delivered a speech in
Winterthur in 2004. Despite these charges, the Socialist mayor of the
commune of Saint-Josse (Brussels) failed to prohibit this meeting.
Freedom of Expression and Negationism
Another tactic that was used to try to silence anti-negationist activists
was to prosecute them on the grounds of defamation.
In November 2004, State Secretary of the Brussels Regional Parliament Emir
Kir (Socialist Party) sued the persons in charge of the website Suffrage
Universel who had called him `a negationist, a liar and a delinquent’
regarding the issue of the Armenian genocide and his expenses during the
last electoral campaign.
In the part of his complaint related to the genocide issue, Emir Kir
declared : `It is a fact that the Ottoman Empire ordered the massacre of the
Armenian populations and internal displacements (=85). This policy can only be
unconditionally condemned (=85) but I cannot make the next step consisting in
affirming that it is a genocide to be assimilated to the genocide of the
Jews by the Nazis as long as an independent commission of historians has not
qualified these facts.’
The defendants were Pierre-Yves Lambert, an independent researcher, and
Mehmet Koksal, a journalist of Turkish descent. Both are running the website
in their personal capacity.
The trial started on September 14, 2005. Emir Kir was defended by a famous
barrister, Marc Uyttendaele, the husband of Minister of Justice, Laurette
Onkelinx, who belongs to the Socialist Party.
The King’s Procurator Valery de Theux de Meylandt said about the accused
that `the incriminated remarks were not off the acceptable limits.’
The court decision was released on October 28, 2005. It was 100% in favor of
the courageous defendants.
Links Between the Belgian Political Parties and the Revisionist Players
Due to the election system of proportionate representation, the political
parties court the various cultural groups of foreign origin heavily present
in Belgium, and in particular in Brussels, by putting Belgian citizens of
Turkish, Moroccan, Congolese, etc=85 descent on their election lists to garner
as many votes as possible from their respective communities. In the last
local elections in Brussels, more than 50% of the candidates of the same
political party were sometimes of foreign descent.
The problem is not their origin but the fact that the major political
parties have failed to screen them on the basis of a number of legitimate
criteria and that they have put extreme-right and extreme-left nationalist
candidates on their election lists. A number of them have campaigned in
their native language and are said to have held a double language within and
without their communities. They have now been elected at various levels of
the legislative and executive institutions and some are accused of double
allegiance, which is incompatible with the Belgian institutions.
It must also be said that ministers and party leaders have campaigned in the
premises of Turkish associations known to be negationist.
Conclusions and Recommendations
The debate around the terminology `genocide’ or not is outdated. Those who
delay their position on this issue until `an international independent
commission of historians is put in place and publicizes its verdict’ just do
not want to recognize the first genocide of the 20th century. Such a
commission exists: it is the international community of historians who
throughout the last 90 years have amply demonstrated that a genocide was
perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians and the Assyrians
during WW I.
The Ottoman genocide of the Armenians and the Ottoman genocide of the
Assyrians are the two sides of the same coin. They cannot be separated from
each other. They are one and the same genocide.
Our organization `Human
Rights Without Frontiers Int’l’ recommends
to the Belgian political parties
to recognize that genocide unambiguously
to ask their elected members to recognize it
to screen their candidates for the upcoming parliamentary elections.
to the Belgian elected people of Turkish descent
to have one and sole allegiance: the Belgian state
to the MRAX, the Centre for Equal Opportunities, Armenian, Assyrian and
civic organizations
to lodge complaints against negationist statements, conferences and
demonstrations on the basis of the legislation prohibiting racism and
negationism.
Willy Fautré
Director
[email protected]
http:// <;
Sources:
Ha nnibal Travis, `’Native Christians Massacred’: The Ottoman Genocide of the
Assyrians during World War I.’, Genocide Studies and Prevention 1,3
(December 2006): 327-371.
Suffrage Universel: <;
rage-universel.be <;
Info-Tu rk : <;
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