GENOCIDE DENIAL CAUSES DUTCH ELECTION UPSET
by Andy Clark

Radio Netherlands, Netherlands
Sept 27 2006

It might seem a little strange but the Armenian genocide of 1915 has
become an issue in the run up to the Dutch elections. The two leading
parties in the opinion polls have kicked out prospective MPs because
they deny that the genocide took place. The candidates, one from the
opposition Labour Party and two from the biggest coalition party –
the Christian Democrat CDA – are Dutch/Turkish politicians.

It made the headlines after questions were raised by the Armenian
community in the Netherlands when the names of the candidates were
made public on the party lists for the November elections, and a
heated discussion soon followed.

Official policy The candidates in question had clearly stated in the
past that, in their view, the genocide of Armenians in Turkey in 1915
had not taken place. This view is contrary to the official policy of
the Dutch government and of the parties themselves.

Tineke Huizinga is from the Christian Union – a small party in the
parliament which introduced an initiative in 2004 saying that the
government has to push for recognition of the genocide in Turkey as
part of the negotiations for Turkey’s desired accession to the EU.

That initiative was unanimously accepted. Ms Huzinga explains the
official Dutch position:

"More than one and a half million people were murdered during the
time of World War I by Turkey and this was a genocide and you can
absolutely compare this with the Holocaust."

Never took place It was a clash with this position that brought the CDA
candidates Ayhan Tonca, Osman Elamci and Labour Party candidate Erdinc
Sacan into problems with their parties. Ayhan Tonca has constantly
denied the genocide occurred:

"The genocide that people talk about never took place."

Although he doesn’t deny that hundreds of thousands of people died,
he argues that there needs to be further investigation to see if the
killings were consciously carried out by the Turkish government at that
time. Deliberate and conscious persecution would constitute genocide.

Newspaper interview His explanation was not in line with the
recognition of genocide called for by his party, and events that
followed the initial uproar made things even harder for the CDA to
accept. Under pressure following the discussion in the Dutch media,
the two CDA candidates signed a declaration saying they had changed
their minds and would now recognise the genocide. But then followed
an interview with a Turkish newspaper in which they repeated their
original denials – and this left the CDA with little choice but to
remove them from the list of candidates.

The Labour Party decided to scrap its candidate from the list after he
refused to stand by the official party policy recognising the genocide.

Naive Experts accuse the parties of being somewhat naive in not
carrying out more thorough checks before putting the candidates up
for election. Professor of Turkish studies at Leiden University Erik
Jan Zurcher says the parties were so anxious to have ethnic minority
candidates on their lists that they didn’t carry out the checks.

In Turkey itself it is official policy to deny the genocide and those
saying it did take place are liable to prosecution. Just this week
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink made it known that he is being
prosecuted for the second time for saying that the genocide took place.