Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Nov 21 2009

French teacher insists Turkish student accept genocide

A news piece published in Today’s Zaman this week has reverberated in
France as the drama continues to unfold around the case of a student
in France suspended from school for refusing to deign to his teacher’s
insistence he recognize an alleged genocide against Armenians.

The controversy centers around 13-year-old French student of Turkish
descent Mustafa DoÄ?an. DoÄ?an’s history teacher asked a question about
the events of 1915 and the `Armenian genocide’ in a written exam.
Having previously argued with the teacher over the issue, the Turkish
student became angry and wrote, `Even if it did happen, they deserved
it.’ DoÄ?an told Today’s Zaman his teacher threatened to give him a
zero on the exam if he denied the genocide. The school principal
phoned the student’s father, who said that there was no law
stipulating punishment for those who denied the so-called genocide.
Following the quarrel, the school’s disciplinary committee suspended
DoÄ?an for two days and gave him an assignment in which he was to
recognize the validity of the genocide within two days, despite his
apology for his comment about Armenians deserving their fate. The
homework was to be titled `Armenian Genocide Committed by the Ottoman
Empire: A Crime against Humanity.’

Following the emergence of the events, members of the Armenian
diaspora in France have sprung into action, urging immediate passage
of a draft bill pending in the Senate that would make it a crime to
deny the alleged genocide. The school principal had told Today’s Zaman
and also Turkish association COJEP International, which is following
the case closely, that the student’s punishment was given not because
of his denial of the alleged genocide but because of the phrase he had
used regarding Armenians `deserving’ whatever happened to them. But
when DoÄ?an submitted an assignment describing the concept of genocide
in general terms and including an apology for his statement, his
teacher rejected it, saying the student needs to submit an assignment
researching the historical context of the `genocidal’ events, writing
a detailed list of how many people were killed and how it was
organized, meeting with genocide survivors, stating that he recognizes
the genocide and focusing on militant Turks who committed the
genocide.

COJEP head Veysel Filiz told Today’s Zaman that DoÄ?an’s teacher’s
insistence in regard to the incident and the homework assignment is
not understandable given that the offense committed by DoÄ?an has been
retracted; even his father, Mehmet DoÄ?an, described his child’s usage
of the phrase a mistake.

21 November 2009, Saturday
ALI Ä°HSAN AYDIN PARIS