Conservatives modify position on Turkey
Turkey's state policy of denial continues to serve as a daily affront to all Armenians.
January 26, 2007
rabble news
by Anthony Wing
Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay recently modified the Canadian government's official acknowledgement of the 1915 Armenian genocide with a statement of support for the government of Turkey's proposal to establish a joint commission with Armenia to investigate the events of that period.
This apparent gesture of goodwill towards conflict resolution between neighbour states admits of an astonishing naiveté that may effectively kill the government's acknowledgement resolution first passed in 2004 by the Liberal government and briefly reaffirmed by the ruling Conservatives.
Even a cursory glance behind Turkey's proposal should have been enough to stay the Minister's hand: the government of Turkey, after denying for decades historical responsibility for the organized and bureaucratic extermination of an unarmed Christian Armenian minority by Ottoman Turks (which in recent years featured arrests and show trials for writers mentioning the genocide, including current Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk), first floated the joint-commission idea in 2005.
However, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) quickly revealed that this gesture amounted to a further act of aggression: Turkish authorities had sought the help of U.S. scholars to obfuscate the historical record and, the IAGS argued, this spurious scholarship would be used to sabotage such a panel. The IAGS expressed this in a June 2005 letter to the Turkish Government, re-sent nearly a year later:
We are dismayed that your government, in asking the Armenian government to establish a so-called objective commission to study the fate of the Armenian people in 1915, is refusing to acknowledge the resolved discourse on the Armenian Genocide in the mainstream international scholarly community outside of Turkey. We are concerned that your request is a political ploy designed to create controversy over the Armenian Genocide when in fact, outside of your government, there is none.
Also not open to debate is the government of Turkey's transparent record of human rights abuse. Eager to speed negotiations for terms of accession into the European Union, Turkey officially abolished the death penalty and state torture in a new Penal Code adopted in 2004; however, Amnesty International has since reported that torture and extrajudicial executions have persisted outside official detention centres, largely unchecked by a feeble investigation process.
Moreover, persecution of the Kurdish minority in the southeast has not abated, and the 32-year control of an impoverished military colony in the northern third of Cyprus bestows on Ankara the title of sole occupying power in mainland Europe since 1945; indeed, the EU recently suspended membership negotiations over Turkey's latest paltry concessions over the latter issue.
Here at home, the Harper government's decision to modify their Armenian genocide acknowledgement was criticized by columnist Jeffrey Simpson, but for a different reason: The Globe and Mail's sophist emeritus disagreed with the acknowledgement in the first place. For some time The New York Times had a policy that the term “Armenian genocide” could be used freely and without qualification; not so the Globe's editorial board, which twice recently allowed Simpson to place quotation marks around the word “genocide” when writing of the event.
Moreover in a recent Globe online Q&A, Simpson appeared to argue simultaneously that 1) the events of 1915 are a matter for genuine debate and 2) Canada should ignore 1). But in the case of 1), I am in agreement with Simpson, albeit on very different terms:
Rafael Lemkin, international law professor and U.S. War Department adviser during WWII, coined the term “genocide,” later furnishing a definition in his 1944 work Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. His proposal that the neologism enter language as a violation of international law was adopted by jurists at the Nuremberg trials and thereafter by the United Nations General Assembly. Appearing on U.S. national television in 1949, Lemkin was the first to call what happened to the Armenians “genocide.” Earlier he had elaborated on components of the term in an address to the Geneva Conventions:
The objectives of a [genocidal] plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.
Applying this calculus today, Turkey's state policy of denial continues to serve as a daily affront to all Armenians. Could it not therefore be put that zero acknowledgement of historical responsibility will postpone indefinitely the reconciliation and healing process for the affected group, thus perpetuating several of the articles of genocide as defined in the Geneva Conventions? This may well be the matter for genuine debate, not the “question” of whether the massacres occurred at all.
As for Canada, there is absolutely no place for credulity as we begin to emerge as a world leader in 21st century international jurisprudence. The United States government sponsored and encouraged Rafael Lemkin's efforts to entrench genocide into international law, yet in 1994 the U.S. proxy at the United Nations helped block a resolution to assist the UN Rwanda mission on the eve of the 100-day genocide of close to one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
This avoidable event may have occasioned the demise of peacekeeping, and after an intervening period of UN confusion and indecision it was Canada who seized the initiative with their support of the “Responsibility To Protect” commission. The latter's 2001 report provided a template for the policy behind Canada's current Afghan deployment, but if our leaders still hope to maintain a conscientious world leadership in foreign policy, missteps of this magnitude must be addressed.
The world's failure to remember the Armenian genocide was an inspiration for both Adolf Hitler, who borrowed its techniques of cattle-car transport and pit-burial for the Final Solution, and Rafael Lemkin, who made an indivisible contribution to human rights, international law and language in the wake of the Holocaust. If the Canadian government supports the formation of a joint commission to look into “genocide allegations,” then we should immediately appoint a committee to investigate whether the 1922 discovery of insulin has really been of any help to diabetics.
The Foreign Affairs Minister must interrupt his human rights posturing with China to condemn forthwith Turkey's latest attempt to avert the world's gaze from the 20th century's first genocide.
Anthony Wing is a Toronto writer.
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
January 26, 2007
rabble news
by Anthony Wing
Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay recently modified the Canadian government's official acknowledgement of the 1915 Armenian genocide with a statement of support for the government of Turkey's proposal to establish a joint commission with Armenia to investigate the events of that period.
This apparent gesture of goodwill towards conflict resolution between neighbour states admits of an astonishing naiveté that may effectively kill the government's acknowledgement resolution first passed in 2004 by the Liberal government and briefly reaffirmed by the ruling Conservatives.
Even a cursory glance behind Turkey's proposal should have been enough to stay the Minister's hand: the government of Turkey, after denying for decades historical responsibility for the organized and bureaucratic extermination of an unarmed Christian Armenian minority by Ottoman Turks (which in recent years featured arrests and show trials for writers mentioning the genocide, including current Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk), first floated the joint-commission idea in 2005.
However, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) quickly revealed that this gesture amounted to a further act of aggression: Turkish authorities had sought the help of U.S. scholars to obfuscate the historical record and, the IAGS argued, this spurious scholarship would be used to sabotage such a panel. The IAGS expressed this in a June 2005 letter to the Turkish Government, re-sent nearly a year later:
We are dismayed that your government, in asking the Armenian government to establish a so-called objective commission to study the fate of the Armenian people in 1915, is refusing to acknowledge the resolved discourse on the Armenian Genocide in the mainstream international scholarly community outside of Turkey. We are concerned that your request is a political ploy designed to create controversy over the Armenian Genocide when in fact, outside of your government, there is none.
Also not open to debate is the government of Turkey's transparent record of human rights abuse. Eager to speed negotiations for terms of accession into the European Union, Turkey officially abolished the death penalty and state torture in a new Penal Code adopted in 2004; however, Amnesty International has since reported that torture and extrajudicial executions have persisted outside official detention centres, largely unchecked by a feeble investigation process.
Moreover, persecution of the Kurdish minority in the southeast has not abated, and the 32-year control of an impoverished military colony in the northern third of Cyprus bestows on Ankara the title of sole occupying power in mainland Europe since 1945; indeed, the EU recently suspended membership negotiations over Turkey's latest paltry concessions over the latter issue.
Here at home, the Harper government's decision to modify their Armenian genocide acknowledgement was criticized by columnist Jeffrey Simpson, but for a different reason: The Globe and Mail's sophist emeritus disagreed with the acknowledgement in the first place. For some time The New York Times had a policy that the term “Armenian genocide” could be used freely and without qualification; not so the Globe's editorial board, which twice recently allowed Simpson to place quotation marks around the word “genocide” when writing of the event.
Moreover in a recent Globe online Q&A, Simpson appeared to argue simultaneously that 1) the events of 1915 are a matter for genuine debate and 2) Canada should ignore 1). But in the case of 1), I am in agreement with Simpson, albeit on very different terms:
Rafael Lemkin, international law professor and U.S. War Department adviser during WWII, coined the term “genocide,” later furnishing a definition in his 1944 work Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. His proposal that the neologism enter language as a violation of international law was adopted by jurists at the Nuremberg trials and thereafter by the United Nations General Assembly. Appearing on U.S. national television in 1949, Lemkin was the first to call what happened to the Armenians “genocide.” Earlier he had elaborated on components of the term in an address to the Geneva Conventions:
The objectives of a [genocidal] plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.
Applying this calculus today, Turkey's state policy of denial continues to serve as a daily affront to all Armenians. Could it not therefore be put that zero acknowledgement of historical responsibility will postpone indefinitely the reconciliation and healing process for the affected group, thus perpetuating several of the articles of genocide as defined in the Geneva Conventions? This may well be the matter for genuine debate, not the “question” of whether the massacres occurred at all.
As for Canada, there is absolutely no place for credulity as we begin to emerge as a world leader in 21st century international jurisprudence. The United States government sponsored and encouraged Rafael Lemkin's efforts to entrench genocide into international law, yet in 1994 the U.S. proxy at the United Nations helped block a resolution to assist the UN Rwanda mission on the eve of the 100-day genocide of close to one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
This avoidable event may have occasioned the demise of peacekeeping, and after an intervening period of UN confusion and indecision it was Canada who seized the initiative with their support of the “Responsibility To Protect” commission. The latter's 2001 report provided a template for the policy behind Canada's current Afghan deployment, but if our leaders still hope to maintain a conscientious world leadership in foreign policy, missteps of this magnitude must be addressed.
The world's failure to remember the Armenian genocide was an inspiration for both Adolf Hitler, who borrowed its techniques of cattle-car transport and pit-burial for the Final Solution, and Rafael Lemkin, who made an indivisible contribution to human rights, international law and language in the wake of the Holocaust. If the Canadian government supports the formation of a joint commission to look into “genocide allegations,” then we should immediately appoint a committee to investigate whether the 1922 discovery of insulin has really been of any help to diabetics.
The Foreign Affairs Minister must interrupt his human rights posturing with China to condemn forthwith Turkey's latest attempt to avert the world's gaze from the 20th century's first genocide.
Anthony Wing is a Toronto writer.
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
posted by Vahe Balabanian at 3:50 PM
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