Hurriyet Daily News, Turkey
March 27 2015
Turkey’s erratic genocide jurisprudence
by Burak Bekdil
In the early 1990s, Turkey started to generously buy off-the-shelf
arms from foreign manufacturers who had happily discovered an emerging
but potentially lucrative market.
Spoiled by big companies vying for Turkish contracts in manners
reminiscent of the insurance policy salesman in Tintin’s adventures,
the Turks occupying important official seats discovered they could
extract benefits from their roles as rich buyers. Some personally got
rich. More innocent ones calculated that Turkey could use defence
contracts as a foreign policy tool.
Before the French legislature recognized the Armenian genocide in 2001
Turkey threatened to freeze all economic, political and military ties
with the country, including defence contracts. The French recognized
the Armenian genocide. And Turkey’s bilateral trade with France rose
from $4 billion in 2001 to $15 billion a decade later.
However, a decade later Turkey was threatening France again: This
time, all economic, political and military ties would be frozen if the
French legislature criminalized the denial of Armenian genocide.
Then-foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the French bill, if passed,
would “dishonour our country and nation.”
Having learned from past experiences how punishing Turkey’s wrath
could be, the French legislature passed the genocide denial bill. A
few months later, France’s Supreme Court overturned the bill. So, “our
country and nation were not dishonoured.” In June 2012, Mr Davutoglu
cheerfully announced Turkey and France could now live happily ever
after.
That set a new Turkish jurisprudence on the genocide dispute. Between
2001 and 2012, Turkey moved from threatening countries whose
legislatures could recognize the genocide to living happily ever after
with such countries as long as their denial laws do not take effect.
As erratic in its position as before, Turkey, these days, is trying to
market a new product. And that new product, too, is related to a
defence contract. In September 2013, Ankara selected a Chinese company
in a multi-billion dollar bid for the construction of its first
long-range air and anti-missile defence architecture. As talks with
the Chinese bidder inevitably stumbled, Turkey first opened parallel
talks with a French-Italian group (whose legislature recognizes the
genocide), which it had ranked second in the bidding, and then with an
American partnership that had come third.
Zigzagging between three solutions ranging between $3.4 billion to
$4.5 billion, the Turks decided to resort to the tactic they had
discovered in the 1990s: Let’s wait and see, before we select the
winner, how Washington and Paris will commemorate the centennial of
the genocide. If, for instance, President Barack Obama kept his
pre-election promise, broke the taboo and used the word “genocide” in
his annual Apr. 24 speech, we cross out the Americans. Similarly, if
the French administration went to another extreme on Apr. 24, the
French-Italian contender would risk losing the contract; Lucky
Beijing. Apr. 24 will be just another fine spring day.
The Turkish inconsistency persists. What if Paris commemorates Apr. 24
in a low-profile manner but Mr Obama mentions the word that terribly
scares off Ankara? Cross out the Americans. Jump into the
French-Italian bid. But did the French legislature not recognize
genocide in 2001 and even pass a bill that would have criminalized
denial? Yes, but that was long time ago and in 2012 Mr Davutoglu
decided to forget about it all just because the French supreme court
overturned the denial bill (while the bill that recognizes genocide
remains effective).
Once again, Ankara is wrong in its carpet bazaar calculus. If Mr Obama
once again avoids the word “genocide” in his annual speech, it will
not be because he fears the Turkish wrath, which does not exist –
other than as a joke. It will be because he will not wish to enable
Turkey’s rulers to run from one public rally to another and scream to
the already anti-American (and anti-Semitic) crowds that “this is a
dark imperialist-Jewish-American-Gulenist plot to stop the rise of the
Turkish empire.” A neat, extra two-to-four percentage points for the
ruling party. Public curses and private thanks to President Obama.
Turkey’s deterrence-through-$$$$$ policy on the Armenian genocide
issue embarrassingly collapsed in 2012. With the French precedent, no
country takes “Turkey’s wrath” seriously because it does not exist.