DEBATE NEEDED; WHAT HAPPENED IN ARMENIA?
By Tulin Daloglu, Special To The Washington Times

The Washington Times
October 17, 2006 Tuesday

A few months ago, I came across an article in the Middle East Quarterly
entitled "Armenian Massacres: New Records Undercut Old Blame." Its
author, Edward J. Erickson, a retired U.S. Army officer, categorically
dismissed the claims of genocide perpetrated against the Armenians
by the Ottomans during World War I. "In bitter internecine fighting,
many civilian Turks, Armenians, and other ethnic groups were massacred
indiscriminately," Mr. Erickson wrote.

The claim of Armenian genocide is an incredibly emotional subject,
fraught with political and violent undertones. Only a small number of
scholars dare to question the notion that what happened was genocide.

When Stanford Shaw, a pioneer scholar and former UCLA professor,
disputed it in 1977, a bomb exploded in front of his house.

Recently, two researchers have debated the nature of World War I
Armenian massacres, Dr. Erickson wrote. The first, Vahakn Dadrian, is
director of genocide research at the Zoryan Institute for Contemporary
Armenian Research and Documentation. Mr. Dadrian wrote that Stange
(a Prussian artillery officer known in records only by his last name)
was the "highest-ranking German guerrilla commander operating in the
Turko-Russian border" area and the Ottoman government ordered him to
deport Armenians. Stange and his soldiers became principals in the
Armenian massacres, Mr. Dadrian found.

But last year, Guenter Lewy, a professor emeritus of political science
at the University of Massachusetts, challenged Mr. Dadrian’s claim,
concluding that Stange’s unit did not even operate in the area. "Tribal
Kurds or Circassians may have deported the Armenians in the spring
of 1915," Mr. Erickson wrote.

The debate over the historical record goes on, and Turkey has finally
begun to allow its citizens to engage in controversial debates. This
makes one wonder what the members of the French Parliament were
thinking last week when they made it a crime to question the claim
of Armenian genocide. The lower house decided that the punishment
for denying the genocide would be one year in prison and a fine of
45,000 Euros. It would only take effect if it passed the upper house
and was agreed to by French President Jacques Chirac. According to
Turkish media reports, Mr. Chirac called Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan and said he would do his best to keep the legislation
from becoming law.

Making it a crime to dispute the idea of an Armenian genocide is so
outrageous that senior European Union officials sided with Turkey.

"This is not the best way to contribute to something we think is
important," said Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European
Commission. Oli Rehn, the EU commissioner for enlargement, agreed,
saying, "We don’t achieve real dialogue and real reconciliation by
ultimatums, but by dialogue. Therefore this law is counterproductive."

Indeed it is. This law displays the aggressive tactics of the Armenian
diaspora to prevent any objective re-examination of history.

They demand that Turkey accept that what happened was genocide. But
is the goal to find the truth, or to make political arguments? Mr.

Erdogan offered to open the Turkish archives to study the matter,
and called for Armenians to do the same. They denied his request. The
other side can’t stand the idea of questioning whether what happened
was genocide.

Turks have done a poor job in dealing with the claims. They let one
narrative dominate the world’s understanding of the incident. They
did not write about the Armenian attacks on Muslim villages. But now
Turks are paying attention. They are angry. But they are not hateful
like the Armenians who killed almost four dozen Turkish diplomats over
"history."

I sat down with Turkish Ambassador Nabi Sensoy in Washington,
and asked him whether the French Parliament’s vote will make it
more difficult for him to deal with the resolutions likely to be
presented this year in the U.S. Congress, calling for recognition of
Armenian genocide. Sixteen countries have already passed legislation or
resolutions to recognize the Armenian genocide, he said. "The Congress
has never been affected by the decisions of the foreign parliaments,"
he said. "The U.S. knows to think independently in its own democracy,
and they know their own responsibilities."

The French Parliament’s law is even more absurd than the section of
the Turkish penal code that calls for Turkish citizens to be punished
if they insult "Turkishness" by accepting the genocide claims, for
example. Orhan Pamuk, this year’s Nobel Prize winner for literature,
was charged under that law. The charges were dropped, and no one has
been punished.

But even the existence of such a law is embarrassing to a country
wrestling with how to deal with freedom of expression. What Mr. Pamuk
said about the Armenian genocide claims is irrelevant. What’s important
is that he should feel free to say whatever he thinks. But historians
should have the definitive say on the issue and they haven’t written
the final chapter yet.

Tulin Daloglu is a free-lance writer.