EU-Turkey & the Armenian Genocide - Part II -
|
|
|
|
Written by Dr Harry Hagopian
|
|
Tuesday, 25 October 2005
|
(Previous) Audere est Facere!
Calls on Turkey to recognise the Armenian Genocide; considers this recognition to be a pre-requisite for accession to the European Union; European Parliament Resolution (28 September 2005).
II. But what about the Armenian Genocide in the overall context of EU-Turkey dossier? There have been quite a few developments within Turkey that have highlighted the inherent paradoxes of the Turkish mindset on this human rights issue. There has also been a tug-of-war between progressives and reactionaries on the one hand, and between the small minority of Turks openly addressing the issue of the genocide and an ignorant or fearful majority who maintain the denial that has typified Turkey for the past 90 years. One of the most prominent issues in the past few months that highlights Turkey’s non-EU credentials to date as much as its paranoia about the Armenian Genocide, is the case of Orhan Pamuk, one of Turkey’s most acclaimed contemporary writers. On 1st September, a district prosecutor indicted Pamuk under Article 301(1) of the Turkish penal code for having ‘blatantly belittled Turkishness” by his “denigrating” remarks. Pamuk’s crime was to have given an interview in the Swiss Tages Anzeiger newspaper on 6th February stating that Turkey was responsible for the deaths of 1 million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds during WWI but that nobody within the country dared speak about this genocide. If convicted at his trial that starts on 16th December, Pamuk could well face up to three years in gaol. Article 301/1 of the Turkish penal code states that ‘a person who explicitly insults being a Turk, the Republic or Turkish Grand National Assembly, shall be sentenced to a penalty of imprisonment for a term of six months to three years … Where insulting being a Turk is committed by a Turkish citizen in a foreign country, the penalty shall be increased by one third’. This case came almost at the same time as that of Hrant Dink, editor of the bilingual Agos magazine who received a suspended six-month sentence in Istanbul on 7th October for writing a column that allegedly insulted Turkey, and for telling an audience in 2002 that he was not a Turk but an Armenian of Turkey. According to PEN International, fifty writers, journalists and publishers currently face trials in Turkey. The International Publishers’ Association, in its deposition to the UN, has also described the revised Turkish penal code as being ‘deeply flawed’. It is questionable how a country such as Turkey that has ratified both the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) could flout the fundamental freedom of expression and continue to enforce a penal code that is contrary to such universal and EU-friendly principles. No wonder therefore that Fethiye Cetin, Dink’s lawyer, averred that the ruling against her client showed how little had changed under Turkey’s new criminal code, despite international and internal pressures. With those Turkish manoeuvres, Orhan Pamuk and Hrant Dink have joined a long list of cognoscenti and literati such as Kemal Tahir and Fakir Baykurt who have been muzzled by the state for expressing their viewpoints. Numerous international bodies, such as the Commissioners of the US Helsinki Commission, have sent letters to the Turkish Prime Minister calling upon him to authorise the dropping of charges against the writer. In an Opinion in the Turkish Daily News, Semih Ydyz wrote critically, "Anti-EU forces that are using the legal system to bound people like Orhan Pamuk and Hrant Dink may believe they are doing a great service to the country. They don't realise, however, that they are doing the opposite ... They are exposing the outmoded system of thought for what it is and forcing progressive Turks to rally around principles like respect for freedom of thought". This Turkish imbedded sense of nationalism, dissimilar to patriotism, was manifested again in the deferrals of an international conference entitled Ottoman Armenians in the Period of the Collapse of the Empire: Issues of Scientific Responsibility and Democracy. Many people, from the Turkish Minister of Justice to a lawyer from one of the districts of Istanbul, tried twice to cancel this conference. However, it finally took place at Bilgi University in Istanbul on 24th September. As the Economist wrote in an article entitled Too soon for Turkish delight on 29th September, "For Turks who want a European future, there was a dollop of hope last weekend, when brave historians managed to hold a conference in Istanbul to discuss the fate of the Ottoman Armenians. It was the first time Turkish pundits were permitted to challenge publicly the official line, holding that the mass deportation of Armenians in 1915 did not amount to a conspiracy to kill them. As participants read out letters between the 'Young Turks' then ruling the empire, a rapt audience was left with no doubt that hundreds of thousands of Armenians were deliberately slain". In the words of Halil Berktay, coordinator of the history department at Sabançi University and participant at the conference, ‘This is a country of more than 70 million, with a strong nationalist past; there are strong forces opposed to the European Union, to democracy and opening up’. Berktay added that ‘the question of what happened in 1915-1916 is not a mystery, it’s not like we know just 5 percent, so the question is not finding more evidence. The question is liberating scholarship from the nationalist taboos …’ Fatma Muge Goçek, a sociologist at the University of Michigan and advisor to the conference, said that ‘Turkey has to confront its history, and the fact of the violence of 1915 and 1916, and lack of accountability, sanctioned more [state] violence’. Equally, Elif Shafak, a social scientist and renowned novelist whose works include The Flea Palace and who recently captured the cultural voices of Turkey in Street of the Cauldron Makers (Kazançi Yokushu), published an editorial in the Washington Post on 25th September entitled In Istanbul, a Crack in the Wall of Denial. She wrote, "I also got to know other Turks who were making a similar intellectual journey. Obviously there is still a powerful segment of Turkish society that completely rejects the charge that Armenians were purposely exterminated. Some even go so far as to claim that it was Armenians who killed Turks, and so there is nothing to apologise for. These nationalist hardliners include many of our government officials, bureaucrats, diplomats and newspaper columnists. They dominate Turkey's public image - but theirs is only one position held by Turkish citizens, and it is not even the most common one. The prevailing attitude of ordinary people toward the 'Armenian question' is not one of conscious denial; rather it is collective ignorance. These Turks feel little need to question the past as long as it does not affect their daily lives". Shafak concluded her editorial about the conference, "Whatever happens with the conference, I believe one thing remains true: Through the collective efforts of academics, journalists, writers and media correspondents, 1915 is being opened to discussion in my homeland [Turkey] as never before. The process is not an easy one and will disturb many vested interests. I know how hard it is - most children from diplomatic families, confronting negative images of Turkey abroad, develop a sort of defensive nationalism, and it's especially true among those of us who lived through the years of Armenian terrorism. But I also know that the journey from denial to recognition is one that can be made". As Begle, another Turkish historian and a contemporary of Selim Beligir, opined much along the same lines during the conference in Istanbul, "The younger generation in Turkey knows nothing about the events in the early 20th century and the reason is the educational system. [] The Armenian Question is one of the darkest pages of our history, and naturally no one wants to admit it. People who want to revisit and discuss the problem gave gathered in this university". Another speaker at the conference, historian Fikret Adanir, stated outright that the killings constituted genocide whilst Cengiz Candar, a prominent columnist for the Bugun newspaper in Turkey wrote, "The judiciary is one of the most reactionary and backward institutions in Turkey, and the illegal [court] verdict reflects the inherent problems. [] But the fact that we are discussing this is ample evidence to be optimistic". - Continuation Part III: Could things be shuffling forward at long last in Turkey? -
|
|
Last Updated ( Monday, 31 October 2005 )
|
|
|
Image de la semaine |
Non ce n'est pas une affiche de campagne en Turquie, mais bien celle du parti socialiste autrichien (SPÖ) pour les élections d'octobre prochain à Vienne. Après les affiches de campagne de Strache qui plaide pour le " pur sang viennois" c'est la course au populisme?
Wien-Wahl: Politiker sprechen türkisch: 200.000 Neoösterreicher Wähler haben Migrationshintergrund. Die Parteien buhlen um ihre Stimmen - gerne auch in einer Fremdsprache.( Kurier 25/08/2010)
section: Portofolio
|
|
NewropMag Blog Press Review |
|
mod_dbrss2 AJAX RSS Reader poweredbysimplepie
|
|
Cartoon of the week |
(click on the image to enlarge)
|
|
Focus |
|
La deuxième rencontre du cycle
“LA DEMOCRATIE EN DANGER”,
consacrée à la Justice en Europe
Le lundi 13 septembre
de 19h30 à 22h00
Salons de l’Aveyron
17 Rue de l'Aubrac
75012 Paris
 A l’heure où les discours et les mesures sécuritaires et judiciaires se durcissent dans nombreux pays européens, où l’on sait les atteintes aux droits les plus élémentaires et aux principes fondamentaux des simples citoyens, quels traitements sont réservés à ceux qui tiennent les pouvoirs politiques, financiers, économiques entre leurs mains? Une conférence-débat organisée dans le cadre du cycle La démocratie en danger par Les Amis de Beppe Grillo à Paris et le NewropMag.
Intervenants: les députés européens Luigi De Magistris, Sonia Alfano et Rosario Crocetta ; Harald Greib, vice-président de Newropeans en charge des affaires des institutions européennes ; Eric Alt, magistrat, membre de l’association MEDEL (magistrats européens pour la démocratie et les libertés) et de l’association Anticor, et Corinne Lepage, députée européenne et ex Ministre de l’environnement, engagée dans la lutte contre la corruption politique et financière.
Parmi les sujets de discussion:
- L'infiltration des organisations criminelles et le vide législatif relatif en Europe
- Les récentes dépénalisations des crimes financiers et économiques en Italie, en France et leur traitement au sein des institutions européennes
- Présomption d'innocence ou de culpabilité? L'exemple de la “loi bâillon” sur les écoutes téléphoniques qui viole les recommandations de l’OSCE concernant l’emploi de sources et de matériels nécessaires aux investigations journalistiques au service de la démocratie.
Contacts:
Micaela Bracciaferri, Coordinatrice “Les Amis de Beppe Grillo à Paris »
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Marianne Ranke-Cormier, Rédactrice en chef du NewropMag
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Entrée libre sur pré-inscription auprès de
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
|
|
|
|
Podcast: "La France en 2020" - France Inter "Le Téléphone sonne" |
|
|
|
Newsletter |
|
Keep yourself updated with our FREE newsletters now!
|
|
Europolitik 
Le 22 juillet dernier, Franck Biancheri, Directeur des études de 
