Hakan Aydin

In a mockery of the famous motto of the French revolution, the mass-circulation Turkish newspaper Hurriyet ran the following headline in French: “Liberté, égalité, stupidité” (Liberty, equality and stupidity).

Today, the French government approved legislation that makes denying that the death of many Armenians in Turkey during WWI amount to genocide a punishable crime. If it is to become law, the Senate must also approve the measure. The law would set fines of as much as €45,000, or about $56,000, and a year in prison.

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From IHT:

The National Assembly, defying appeals from Turkey, approved legislation Thursday that would make it a crime to deny that mass killings of Armenians in Turkey during and after World War I were genocide. Denounced by Ankara and criticized by the European Union, the legislation could further complicate talks for Turkey’s admission to the EU. Of the 577 members of the Assembly, 106 deputies voted in favor and 19 against, while 4 abstained and 448 did not vote at all, raising the question of whether there will be enough political will to push the legislation through the Senate. If it is to become law, the Senate must also approve the measure.

The law would set fines of as much as €45,000, or about $56,000, and a year in prison for denying that the killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks was genocide. Turkey denies allegations of genocide, disputing the number of deaths and premeditation in the killings, saying that tens of thousands of Armenians and Turks were killed in chaotic civil unrest after Armenian groups supported Russia during the war. The Armenian issue has complicated the country’s bid for EU membership. Chirac and the two leading contenders to replace him in elections next May - Nicolas Sarkozy, the conservative interior minister, and Ségolène Royal, a Socialist - all say Ankara must acknowledge the genocide before gaining EU membership.

Two prominent national newspapers, Le Monde and Le Figaro, opposed the law. Le Monde said that while denying the genocide of Jews in Germany amounts to anti-Semitism and is worthy of criminal prosecution, arguments over the Armenian genocide should be resolved through diplomatic means. With roughly 500,000 citizens claiming Armenian origin, France has one of Europe’s largest Armenian populations.

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Reacting to this morning’s decision of the French National Assembly on Armenian ‘genocide’, Andrew Duff MEP, Vice-President of the European Parliament’s delegation to Turkey and Liberal Democrat Constitutional Affairs Spokesperson, said:

“This is a sad day for liberalism in France. The Assemblée Nationale has rejected the fundamental right of freedom of speech. It has acted in direct contravention of the European Convention on Human Rights on which basis the European Union is founded. For friends of France, this is a poignant moment.

“Who would have thought that it would be French deputies who would be the first in the 21st Century to reject the spirit of the Enlightenment. Voltaire must be spinning in his grave.

“France has done huge damage to EU-Turkey relations and, in passing, to Turkish relations with Armenia. Progressive forces in Turkey have been given a gratuitous blow. How can the EU expect Turkey to develop its laws and practice on freedom of speech when France, one of its founding members, is going in the opposite direction?

“Europe’s friends in Turkey should not despair. The French Sénat should throw out this Bill. But the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights should get ready to review the measure should it, unfortunately, pass.”

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Commentary from The Guardian, UK (Denis McShane):

Where is Voltaire when you need him? The decision of the French politicians in the national assembly in Paris to legislate on the writing of the history of the Armenian massacres of 1915-1916 deserves the wit, the scorn, the satire and the derision of France’s greatest exponent of free speech. I cannot believe that the nation of Voltaire, Hugo, Zola and Sartre has decided to try and control what is written about history.

But alas, Voltaire is dead and his spirit is slowly being extinguished as freedom of speech is being replaced by freedom from being insulted or hurt. The Turkish politicians who also want to dictate how the Armenian massacres are reported must be opening champagne that they now have fellow politicians who think they can control history.

Let us be clear. What happened to a million or more Armenians in the dying days of the Ottoman empire as seismic changes took place in the political landscape of the region was an atrocious crime. It joins the other atrocious crimes of the 20th century from Stalin’s extermination of the Ukrainian Kulaks, Mao’s murder through calculated starvation of millions of Chinese in the 1950s, or, whisper it quietly in France, the killing of scores of thousands of people in Madagascar or Algeria by French soldiers. And more and more can be added.

Was it genocide? The word has become devalued as almost every event in which innocent people are killed now seems automatically to get the tag “genocide”. Milosevic’s brutalities in the Balkans, the Palestinians killed by Israelis, the horrific ethnic-tribal-religious wars in Africa all get given the description “genocide” as if by using this awesome term the deaths of the innocent are elevated.

What neither the Armenian tragedy nor any of the other mass killings constitute is the equivalent of the Shoah - the 4-year long, industrially organised, professionally executed transportation of Jews from many countries in Europe to face a scientific, hi-tech, engineered process of extermination. To deny the Holocaust is a deliberate ploy by today’s Jew-haters to begin the process of returning Europe to a past that begins with anti-semitic jokes and ends in gas chambers.

It little matters whether the disaster that befell the Armenians is called genocide or not. It is not for states or parliament to award descriptions to what happened in the past. That is for historians and for a sense of deep cultural understanding.

The Turks are as foolish as the French in pretending that politicians of today can define the events of yesterday. Last year I was attacked by ultra-nationalists in Turkey when I attended the trial of Orhan Pamuk, the new Nobel Laureate, who said that the Armenian massacres should be discussed openly. Turkish law allows private and public prosecutions against writers and journalists who want to examine Turkey’s past without any limits on what can or might be said.

Now the French parliament have passed their own version of this kind of legislation. I appear regularly on French radio and TV. If I now say I do not believe that the deaths in 1915 merit the term “genocide”, will a gendarme arrive to arrest me? When the British writer and Labour MP, Michael Foot, was in Paris in 1958 he wrote an article criticising the behaviour of the then president, René Coty. He was expelled from France for the crime of being rude about a French president.

Five decades later France is now declaring that any European citizen who decides to state that “genocide” is not the right term to use for the Armenian massacres will face punishment under French law. How has Europe come to behave like its own worst enemy? The Muslim intellectual, Tariq Ramadam, first came to fame in his native Geneva when he tried to stop the staging of a play by Voltaire in 1992, the bicentenary of Voltaire’s death. Like the fatwa on Salman Rushdie this was the beginning of the long assault against intellectual and artistic freedom that Europe has had to defend itself against in recent years.

It is not a tragedy that the French parliament has now joined the enemies of freedom with this attempt to control history. It is a farce, which need to be laughed away with scorn. At a time when Europe should defend freedom of expression it is hard to believe that European politicians should be seeking to make thought a crime. We live in strange times.

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From EuroNews:

Deputies in France have voted in favour of a bill that would make it illegal to deny that a genocide against Armenians took place in Turkey. The vote was 106 for and 19 against. However, observers are quick to point out that only a quarter of deputies were actually present in the house to vote.

If the law comes into effect, those who deny the killings of Armenians between 1915 and 1919 amounted to genocide would risk up to a year in prison and fines of up to 45,000 euros. However, the bill would still need to be ratified by parliament’s upper house, the Senate, and President Jacques Chirac.

Ruling UMP deputy, Patrick Devedjian, who has Armenian roots, said: “France is the country of human rights that welcomed people in pain and distress. France protected our memories, identity, and this law opposes the aggression we are suffering with the organisation in France of the revisionist ideas of the Turkish authorities”.

Turkey maintains Armenians were killed in civil unrest during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and it cannot be described as genocide. “I do no t think the parliament is doing itself any favours by voting on laws, and going after the electorate for essentially political reasons,” said another UMP deputy, Pierre Mehaignerie: “I think historians have explained enough about what the role of parliament should be and what it shouldn’t be.” While the French government did not support the draft legislation, the ruling Union for a Popular Movement gave its deputies a free hand in the ballot. In the end, however, most of them decided to stay away from the vote.