TURKEY’S ARMENIANS DISTRUST FRENCH GENOCIDE BILL
by Nicolas Cheviron

Agence France Presse — English
October 10, 2006 Tuesday 3:42 PM GMT

Turkey’s Armenians have raised their voice against a French bill that
makes it a jailable offense to deny their ancestors were the victim
of genocide under Ottoman rule.

They fear it will antagonize the Turkish majority and further strain
an already tense debate.

The draft law, to be debated and voted in the French parliament
Thursday, calls for one year in prison and a hefty 45,000-euro
(57,000 dollar) fine for anyone who denies that the World War I
massacres constituted genocide.

Among the first to condemn the bill was journalist Hrant Dink, who is
among a handful of taboo-breaking intellectuals in Turkey who have
openly argued that the massacres were genocide, drawing nationalist
ire and landing himself in court.

"This is idiocy," the Turkish-Armenian Dink said in remarks to the
liberal daily Radikal. "It only shows that those who restrict freedom
of expression in Turkey and those who try to restrict it in France
are of the same mentality."

Dink, editor of the Turkish-Armenian bilingual weekly Agos, received
a six-month suspended sentence last year for "insulting Turkishness"
in an article about the 1915-1917 massacres.

He is scheduled to go on trial again under the same provision, this
time for saying the killings were genocide.

Dink said he was ready to defend freedom of expression even if it
means running the risk of imprisonment in France.

"I am standing trial in Turkey for saying it was genocide. If this
bill is adopted, I will go to France and, in spite of my conviction,
I will say it was not genocide," he said in a television interview.

"The two countries can then compete to see who throws me in jail
first."

Another Armenian journalist, Etyen Mahcupyan, said Turks see the
proposed law as an imposition on them to accept the genocide and
feared the French move could scupper a fledgling, timid debate in
Turkey to question its past.

"Initiatives like the one in the French parliament are awkward,"
he told AFP. "They push the Turks closer to the state and make them
more vulnerable to manipulation."

Discussing the massacres was a near-taboo in Turkey until recently
and an open debate on the issue — one of the most controversial in
Turkish history — still sends nationalist sentiment into frenzy.

Mahcupyan, a columnist for the conservative daily Zaman, called on
European countries to back efforts to improve democracy in Turkey,
which he said was the only way to ensure free debate and challenge
Ankara’s official line.

The Armenian Patriarchate said the French bill only created obstacles
to frank dialogue between Armenians and Turks.

"All initiatives creating obstacles to freedom of expression endanger
the process of dialogue between the Turkish and Armenian societies,
and reinforce nationalist and racist tendancies on both sides,"
the head of the Armenian Church said in a statement.

Ara Kocunyan, editor of the small Armenian-language daily Jamanak,
criticized what he called the feeling of "self-victimization" with
which the Armenian diaspora in the West is pursuing its campaign to
have the massacres internationally recognized as genocide.

He urged instead increased efforts to combat the dire economic
situation in Armenia, to which Turkey has contributed by sealing
its border.

"If we stick to the current priorities, I fear those weeping today
for a father killed 90 years ago will find themselves weeping for
little Armenia in 50 years’ time," Kocunyan said.

Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered in
orchestrated killings between 1915 and 1917.

Turkey categorically rejects the genocide label, saying 300,000
Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when
Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia and sided
with invading Russian troops as the Ottoman Empire fell apart.