NEWS FEATURE: Armenian genocide haunts Dutch-Turkish politicians

Deutsche Presse-Agentur
October 5, 2006 Thursday 10:30 AM EST

Rohan Minogue, dpa

The Hague

DPA POLITICS Dutch Politics Turkey NEWS FEATURE: Armenian genocide
haunts Dutch-Turkish politicians Rohan Minogue, dpa

The Hague — The Armenian genocide of almost a century ago has returned
to haunt Dutch politicians of Turkish origin, whatever their political
leaning.

While the European Parliament was deciding last week to lift a
requirement that Turkey acknowledge as genocide the death in 1915-16
of hundreds of thousands of Armenians, the main Dutch parties were
throwing Turkish candidates off their electoral lists over the issue.

Caught in the middle just seven weeks before the country goes to the
polls is Nebahat Albayrak, who occupies the second position on the
list of the main opposition Labour Party (PvdA).

She has backed a parliamentary motion describing the deaths as
genocide, but questions have been raised over the exact position
taken by this Turkish-born politician.

"I have to acknowledge that I knew little about the issue, but when
I looked into it, I encountered a problem: All the sources appear
to be corrupted," Albayrak, who has been in parliament since 1998,
said in a recent interview with the newspaper Trouw.

Last week the PvdA was the first to act, excluding Erdinc Sacan from
their list, where he had held the 53rd position, after he refused to
sign an undertaking that he regarded the events of 1915 as genocide.

The ruling Christian Democrats (CDA) then removed Ayhan Tonca, 35th
on the party list, and Osman Elmaci, 56th, after they had backtracked
on a previous statement. Tonca, at least, would have been
certain of becoming a member of the new parliament.

When the party attempted to mollify its angry Turkish support base
last weekend by placing another Turkish candidate low down on the
list for the November 22 elections, it was accused of tokenism.

A group of senior members of Turkish origin in the party attempted
to have the "token Turk" at number 55, Nihat Eski, removed during
the party congress, but the leadership went ahead anyway.

Albayrak, who came to the Netherlands at the age of 2, remains
reluctant to take the word "genocide" in her mouth, preferring to urge
both sides to set up a probe to uncover what took place in central
Anatolia from 1915 onwards.

And she is angry about the pressure she is coming under.

"What we are being asked to do looks like an imposed profession of
faith. It’s a kind of spasm from a country that does not know how to
deal with people like me, with the second generation," she says.

Ton Zwaan, an academic at the University of Amsterdam who has studied
genocide, accuses Albayrak of being "in denial," adding that her
position is little different from the official Turkish position.

Albayrak, like Coskun Coruz at 19 on the CDA list, has taken to
avoiding the press, although in an interview to be published in the
next issue of the analysis magazine HP/De Tijd she says she feels as
though she is "under permanent examination over her loyalty."

Sacan regards the PvdA as hypocritical, saying that he, like Albayrak,
regards the historical sources as unreliable.

He notes that the issue remains a controversial one among European
governments, some of whom refer to genocide, while others, including
the Netherlands, avoid the term.

CDA politicians Tonca and Elmaci are more forthright.

In interviews Tonca has made clear that he does not believe genocide
took place, while Elmaci has described estimates that 1.5 million
Armenians were killed, as "seriously exaggerated."

In a tight electoral race – recent polls put the CDA and PvdA
neck-and-neck – and with most in the 365-000-strong Turkish community
tending towards the PvdA, the party faces a problem.

Yuksel Kaplan, a PvdA local politician in Amsterdam, said he and
his colleagues had been inundated by e-mails and text messages from
"angry Turks." He predicted 70 per cent of the Turks eligible to vote
could stay at home on November 22.

If a high-profile figure like Albayrak feels pressured to withdraw
from the PvdA list, that could mean the difference between being the
main party of government and four more years in opposition.

As the NRC Handelsblad asked this week: "Did the two parties know
what they were bringing down on themselves when they demanded their
Turkish candidates acknowledge the Armenian genocide?"

Oct 0506 1030 GMT