Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News

Monde Urges Turkey To Recognize Armenian Genocide
by Paris Le Monde (Internet version-WWW), 19 Jan 2001
Posted: Friday, February 02, 2001 01:32 am CST

Editorial: "Armenia: Duty to Memory"

[FBIS Translated Text] By approving, in a final reading, Thursday 18 January, a piece of legislation that hinges on a single sentence, French members of parliament gave rise to exceptionally important event: "France publicly recognizes the Armenian genocide of 1915." Before them, the UN sub-committee on human rights, in 1985, and the European Parliament, two years later, described the massacre of Armenians by the Turks during World War I as "genocide." Under pressure of diplomatic considerations - which have not been absent from the debate in France between the legislative and executive authorities -- the US House of Representatives decided against making the same move.

We may certainly wonder about what authority a parliamentary assembly may haves to decide by a vote on a historical event that continues to give rise to controversies among specialists. But the fact is that in 1915-1916, 1-2 million Armenians that had lived in the Ottoman Empire for centuries were deported and then murdered by the Turks. The pretext was that some of them had collaborated with the Russian enemy, Turkey at that time being an ally of Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany. However, the massacres began back at the end of the 19th Century, and again in 1909, at the initiative of the Young Turks, rebelling against the Sultan.

In 1948, the United Nations defined "genocide" as the "deliberate subjection, (of a group, whether -- Le Monde editor's note) national, racial, or religious, to conditions of existence leading to its complete or partial physical destruction." In the case of the Armenians, the crime of genocide seems to be well established. The 1914-1918 allies did not hesitate to describe Turkey's attitude as a "crime against humanity," until that definition ceased to exist, in the Lausanne Treaty of 1923, for the sake of Realpolitik.

Instead of threatening a "serious crisis" in Franco-Turkish relations if the bill on the genocide of the Armenians is promulgated, the Ankara authorities would be better advised to ponder the contribution that they themselves -- in the wake of Turkey's own "new historians," who are starting to challenge taboos -- could make to the acknowledgment of responsibility for the horrors inflicted in Turkey's name. This entails a painful effort of memory -- as France knows all too well, having had to confront with its own dark periods, from Vichy to Algeria. It is all the more delicate an issue since it touches on the very foundations of the Kemal-ist Republic. But it is indispensable if Turkey wants to be accepted as a fully-fledged European power and eventually admitted to the EU.

The genocide of the Armenians was the first of the 20th Century. It is a tragic irony of History that members of the German military mission to Constantinople, who in 1915 advised the Turkish Government on the Armenians' deportation, found themselves, 20 years later, among the executioners of the final solution against the Jews. It is imperative that this not be forgotten.

[Description of Source: Paris Le Monde in French - leading left-of-center daily]

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