NY Times Article: French Council Strikes Down Bill on Armenian Genocide Denial
On February 28th, the French Constitutional Council struck down a bill that would have criminalized the act of denying that the Armenian genocide occurred, specifically by Ottoman Turks. The bill was backed by Nicolas Sarkozy, who vowed to resubmit the bill with different language. The opposition, by French and Turkish politicians, to the bill was that "the legislature did unconstitutional harm to the exercise of freedom of expression and communication.” This sequence of legal and political events brings up the issue of the importance of language when discussing genocide. Lawmakers across the political spectrum in France said that "it was not the place of the legislature to impose its own explanation for the hundreds of thousands of Armenian deaths that began in 1915, amid the chaos of World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire."
One question is when did Turks begin this campaign of denial? Was the Ottman-Turkish public ever fully aware of the extent of the genocide committed against the Armenians? It would have been difficult for the Ottoman-Turks to know about the ethnic cleansing that took place, during WWI, at the time of the war because communication was not nearly as rapid and advanced as it is today. If this denial of the events that occurred began before communication technologies were advanced in these areas, it would be hard to suddenly change the mind of the people, who now have access to many sources on the internet that detail the facts of the Armenian genocide.
The accusation that it is not the place of the French lawmakers to dictate history is a fair one, but it is important to note that amongst historians and experts on the events in WWI the general consensus is that 1.5 million Armenians were systematically killed by Ottoman Turkish troops. Despite this fact, "Turkey maintains that no more than 500,000 Armenians died, with many of them victims of starvation or exposure, and not targeted killings." It is also important to recognize that historians and academics on the subject do not have much sway or power in influencing the beliefs of the general public and that it is admirable of France to try to get this genocide recognized out of respect and sympathy for the Armenian people.
Discussing genocide today and in the last half century has been different than in times before Lemkin because genocide was not an established, recognized academic term. Thinking about the horrific phenomenon of genocide is different when instances of it can be compared to each other and common patterns can be recognized to qualify these instances. Since the term has such strong connotations, the Turkish people are likely very hesitant to admit what happened to the Armenian people because they do not want themselves to be compared with the Nazi regime in Germany during WWII. When historic facts are disputed about the number of deaths and geopolitical intentions of these killings that is a serious case of denial. However, when the term genocide is one of the things that keeps the Turkish people from admitting what happened in Anatolia, that is a product of how the discussion about genocide has changed in the discussion on it today because of the terminology.
I think Peter makes a couple key points in this post. First, that the issue of legislating on the freedom of speech and thought is a sticky issue that should not be taken lightly. I think the historical documentation concerning the Armenian genocide-- or rather the historical documentation that we have thus far been exposed to-- indicates with little doubt that the actions perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks in the early 20th century should by definition be labeled a genocide. This should not, however, bear on the rights of citizens to hold beliefs that contradict the facts. The notion that the government may legislate on a person's ability to think and speak, particularly in the form of placing judgements of accurate or inaccurate on these thoughts and words, in turn legitimizes actions taken by a government that reach far beyond its scope.
ReplyDeleteThe second key point is that of language. Peter notes that the label "genocide" factors into the difficulty with which modern Turkish citizens grapple with issues of historical memory and the Armenian genocide/massacres. Though I am tempted by the argument that a greater and broader recognition of the atrocities committed by the Young Turks against the Armenians might be accepted if the term genocide were taken off the table, I ultimately reject this consideration. As our discussion in class Thursday touched on, history should not be written through compromise. Though there are certainly different perspectives from which people can remember, interpret and relay stories, facts can be ultimately understood more objectively than this would indicate. Genocide is difficult to define, but there *is* a working definition of it. From that definition, albeit flawed and dynamic, we as historians are capable of applying the term genocide to humanity's history. The debate over the Armenian genocide is silly in that Lemkin used the case to substantiate with example the word itself. I fear that the issue is, ultimately, not language but rather the cowardice on part of the Turkish people to admit their historical past. By shifting the issue to language they only succeed in further separating themselves from addressing the issues and I hope that this attempt is dismissed by genocide scholars and historians.