American Jewish Committee: Abolish 301

(Image: AmnestyInternational)

One of America's most respected Jewish organizations is calling on Turkey to abolish article 301, in the wake of Hrant Dink's assassination. The American Jewish Committee declared on January 24 that

Law 301 is widely believed to have created the atmosphere that encouraged those responsible for the murder of Hrant Dink, the Turkish Armenian editor of Agos, who was shot at his Istanbul office last Friday.

The AJC urged Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to "take steps to guarantee the full rights of expression in the media and other forums."

The Manipulations of Alexandre Adler

Alexandre Adler

Hrant Dink must be turning in his grave about all the articles that have invoked him to argue for causes quite foreign to his own. While we might applaud the fact that Dink's murder has forced many Turks to speak out publicly against the nationalist ideology that caused his death, some unsavory characters have perversely seized the occasion to attack diaspora Armenians and the Republic of Armenia. Alexandre Adler's recent column in Le Figaro to me represents the height of this kind of cynicism.

Adler's essay crafts "connections" between ideas and events that are hallucinatory at best. After eulogizing Dink for one paragraph, Adler proceeds to launch into a vicious tirade against Armenia only to end with a melodramatic paean to the founder of post-Soviet Azerbaijan and the father of the state's current ruler:

Héros de l'Union soviétique, fils de mollah, excellent connaisseur de la poésie persane et patriote turc à la Mustafa Kemal, Haidar Aliev synthétisait ces courants culturels apparemment incompatibles, en tout cas aujourd'hui, en un espoir uto­pique pour demain : la grande alliance des trois cultures russe, turque et persane dans un nouvel ensemble producteur de laïcité et de démocratie.

[A USSR hero, son of a mullah, remarkable connoisseur of Persian poetry, and a patriotic Turk, Haidar Aliev combined those cultural currents which, at least today, seem incompatible, with a utopian hope for tomorrow: the great alliance of three cultures - Russian, Turkic, and Persian in a new fusion producing secularism and democracy.]

Adler then has the audacity to declare that

Si un jour nous parvenons à réaliser cette ambition, on se souviendra de Dink comme de l'un des héros stoïques de cette indispensable longue marche

[If one day we manage to achieve this ambition, we will remember Dink as one of the stoic heroes of this long, vital march.]

Adler's enlistment of Dink in his ode to Haidar Aliev is distasteful enough, as is his characterization of Armenia as a "violent, aggressive, and inept" country. But even more insidious is Adler's effort to link Armenia to Russian and Arab terrorism, and, along the way, to establish some kind of moral equivalence between the genocide of 1915 and Armenians' alleged crimes in recent times:

Certes, la Turquie devrait avancer avec retenue et dignité vers une prise en compte de plus en plus lucide de la tragédie de 1915, mais l'Arménie d'aujourd'hui a aussi son chemin à accomplir pour conjurer une bonne fois pour toutes son alliance faustienne avec les éléments les plus terroristes de l'ex-Union soviétique et du monde arabe, le moment Asala, si on cherche à lui donner un nom.

[Surely, Turkey must advance with self-restraint and dignity toward a more and more lucid accounting of the tragedy of 1915. But today's Armenia also has a ways to travel to conjure {i.e., "do away with"} once and for all its Faustian deal with the most terrorist elements of the former Soviet Union and the Arab world, the Asala moment, if one is looking for a name to give it.]

Few would deny that Armenia, like a host of other former Soviet republics, is experiencing some serious problems. The most serious challenge facing the country is the ongoing blockade against it by Turkey, and by Azerbaijan, with which it continues to be embroiled in a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. Other troubles include corruption and authoritarian tendencies among some of its leaders - tendencies that are abundant elsewhere in the region (indeed, Azerbaijan probably takes the prize). But to link Armenia to Islamist or ex-Soviet terrorism is an insidious lie.

Asala (the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia) was a terrorist group active in the late 1970s and until the early 1980s, which assassinated Turkish diplomats in the West. It was founded and based in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war. But it had no connection at all to Armenia, which in any case was a Soviet republic then. Nor was it ever embraced by the vast majority of Armenians in the diaspora.

Finally, as horrible as the actions of the now defunct group may seem today, anyone who seeks to compare them with the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians is nothing but a vicious demagogue.

On top of all this, after linking Armenia to the attempted assassination of John Paul II (a connection that seems as solid as the visions produced by the mushrooms he must have ingested), Adler also manages to drag the Jews into the whole mess, of course on his side. As if the innuendo about Armenian connections to Arab terror weren't enough, he praises Haidar Aliev as someone "qui aurait banni ... racisme et antisémitisme" [who would have exiled racism and antisemitism].

Both advocates for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide as well as their opponents have appealed specifically to Jews and their historical experience to aid their respective causes. One canard circulating among various denialist groups is the claim that Armenians were or are antisemitic, which is part of a transparent effort to impugn Armenian credibility and to provoke antipathy toward the cause of genocide recognition among Jews. Adler seems to be employing a similar strategy by linking Armenians to Arab terrorism, while presenting Aliev as a heroic vanquisher of antisemitism. I think I speak for many Jews when I say that I want no part in Adler's dangerous game.

Le juste

Ce weekend a eu lieu une cérémonie importante à Paris, présidée par Jacques Chirac : le Panthéon s’est ouvert pour ceux et celles, Justes, qui durant la seconde guerre mondiale avaient pris le risque de cacher des Juifs, alors que la France vichyste faisait le jeu de l’occupation et de son programme infâme. Dans son discours, le Président français a qualifié le négationnisme de la Shoah de crime. On ne peut que l’approuver… mais regretter l’insuffisance d’un propos à vocation pourtant universelle. C’est également le message de Serge Klarsfeld que l’on peut entendre dans la vidéo sur YouTube.

Serge Klarsfeld, fondateur de l’Association des Fils et Filles des Déportés Juifs de France, fait partie de ces personnalités, encore trop peu nombreuses, qui à partir de leur expérience individuelle et de leurs racines, vont au-devant d’autres expériences communes quoique nées sur un sol différent. Mercredi dernier, lors d’un meeting organisé par le Conseil de Coordinations des Arméniens de France, Serge Klarsfeld, Me Christian Charrière-Bournazel, représentant de la LICRA (Ligue Internationale Contre le Racisme et l’Antisémitisme), et à leur côté le très médiatique Bernard-Henri Levy se sont tous exprimé en faveur de la loi sur la pénalisation du négationnisme du génocide arménien. Je ne reviendrai pas ici sur le contenu de leur argumentation, qui ne leur est pas spécifique, mais sur ce qui fait la richesse de leur point de vue. Ces trois hommes ont explicitement lié leur conviction sur la nécessité de cette loi au fruit de leur histoire familiale et/ou de leur réflexion professionnelle. Ils ont démontré une fois de plus que sur un sujet aussi sensible pour les Arméniens que celui du négationnisme, la mémoire et le travail fait autour du négationnisme de la Shoah est une perspective qui permet de mieux cerner les enjeux du délit. Les deux génocides ont leur spécificité bien sûr - comme aussi les génocides cambodgien et rwandais - mais les négationnismes ont aussi leur. Alors que la Shoah n’est contestée que par quelques affiliés de sectes révisionnistes, fous dangereux mais solitaires et traduisibles en justice, le génocide arménien est nié par l’Etat turc héritier du gouvernement Jeune turc responsable du crime, et nié avec tous les moyens d’un Etat puissant et influent, qui a fait de la négation un de ses chevaux de bataille, et produit des émules féroces dans de nombreux pays, de l’Union Européenne aux Etats-Unis. Pour eux point de peine. Pourtant, le négationnisme est un crime organisé qui nécessite une réponse irrévocable et sans ambiguïté ; et pour ses relais coupables, un juge, ayant en mains la loi lui permettant d’exercer son office.

Reactions after a Tragedy

Today was Hrant Dink’s funeral in Istanbul's Armenian cathedral. The event brought 100,000 people to the street, Turks and Armenians united in their mourning for the journalist and in anger toward the Turkish state. With their presence around Dink today and their demand for an explanation other than the crazy face of a lone teenage nationalist, this crowd gives some credit to the following lines I wrote a couple of hours after the killing.

First, Hrant Dink was no vociferous nationalist. He saw his struggle in Turkey as one for democratization and freedom of speech. The fact that he talked openly about the Armenian Genocide was meant to open up a space for expression on the subject which is a very strong taboo in the country. He had managed to change things a little bit. Something like the beginning of a change could be felt from the Turkish civil society on which Dink and others, such as Zarakolu, Orhan Pamuk, Halil Berktay, and Taner Akçam had placed all their hopes for democratization, and, linked to it, recognition of the genocide. Concerning such subjects as joining the EU, Dink was in favour of it, because he reckoned that this was a way for his country to advance on democratization.

Secondly, we can already see that the Turkish government is trying to present this crime as an attack against Turkey, saying that the killers are trying to destabilize the country, and to divide citizens from different religions. They also pretend, as always, that Armenians there live with no trouble, when the reality is that the 57,000 Armenians remaining in Turkey, who live mainly in Istanbul, can hardly identify in public as Armenians and are subject to all kinds of discrimination. Worse, the government wants to make the death of Dink a common outrage to all democrats, including themselves obviously. Erdogan has declared that this murder was "a bullet fired at democratization and freedom of speech" in Turkey. This is a total shame, given that the very same Dink was on trial last year for having touched the limits of democracy and freedom of speech in his country - limits which we know to be very low- that is for having used the G-word. He was condemned to a 6-months suspended sentence for this reason, convicted of having insulted Turkish identity, under article 301 of the penal code.

Turkish here share a part of the responsibility in distorting the meaning of what happened. Their ignorance, added to the political line of each of them, making them write nonsense. Since Friday, I’ve read that Dink was unwelcome in the Diaspora and in Armenia because his opinions were not those of the majority; allegedly because the Diaspora is made of extremists who don’t want any reconciliation with Turkey; allegedly because Armenia has something else on its plate than genocide recognition, and that hard economic realities made this issue disappear. Today, 2,000 people gathered in Yerevan at the same time that the funeral was taking place. Certainly, we Armenians are not of one mind on how to further genocide recognition; but we are united about the necessity of achieving it and we are of one heart about what Dink was doing, saying and writing in Turkey. If those same media had taken a look at the reactions all around the Armenian world, at the commemorations in all Armenian churches since Friday, they would not have written such silly things.

I’ve also read articles toeing the line of Turkey’s Prime Minister, saying that this crime was in fact directed against the Turkish state. And now, four days after the tragedy, four days after having spread absurdities, I don’t hear anything anymore. Silence, disinterest, oblivion. And I can’t help but noticing the huge difference between similar cases. Anna Politovskaya, well-known Russian journalist and human rights activist in her country, was killed last October. For days and days, even weeks, that was a big topic in the media; Putin was the target of accusations, and the opportunity was seized to recall what was going on in Chechnya. In Istanbul, a lot of people whether Armenian or Turkish, want explanations.

I believe that unless Turkish civil society and its intellectual leaders sincerely committed to democratization claim justice for Hrant Dink’s murder, and satisfaction on the issues he was struggling for, nothing will come out of it. All I can do is hope that their reaction will be strong enough to sustain a wave of change such as the crowd of this morning was promising.

Hrant Dink

Just now I heard on the news that Hrant Dink, a brave man, whom I had the privilege of hearing at Berkeley last year, was killed on the street today. Dink, the editor of the Armenian-Turkish weekly Agos, frequently in the news in Turkey for "insulting Turkishness," was 53 years old.

Israel's Position on Nagorno Karabakh

MK Yosef Shagal
(Yisrael Beitenu)

Yesterday, the following item appeared on PanARMENIAN.net, with the usual spelling mistakes and grammatical idiosyncracies:

With the absence of Azerbaijani Embassy in Israel it’s incorrect to speak on delicate topics such as the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, Knesset member Josef Shagal said in Baku. In his words, Israel doesn’t have official stance on the conflict, as Azerbaijan did not express its position on the Palestine-Israel conflict and did not support the military operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon. “Once nobody could believe that Israel will withdraw troops from Sector Gaza Strip. However, it became a reality as a consequence of certain processes. I am sure, the same will happen with the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. The day will come when positive tendencies will lead to resolution of the problem. I wish the conflict be settled peacefully,” Shagal said, reports Zerkalo Baku-based newspaper.

It is not immediately apparent why this is news, but the person in question, Yosef Shagal caused a bit of a scandal last time he opened his mouth about South Caucasian affairs on May 15, 2005. Back then, the former Baku native, who emigrated to Israel in 1990, announced that "Israel supports a fair position of Azerbaijan in the Upper Karabakh conflict." For good measure, he went on to promise Israel's support in canceling the Congressional arms embargo on Azerbaijan, enacted by the U.S. House of Representatives in in 1992 (Sami Rozen, Axis). Unfortunately, these remarks were taken quite seriously in the region, and, some analysts argue, used by the Iranians to pull Armenia closer toward them (Ibid.).

Never mind that at the time, Shagal had no official government position whatsoever, and that he was a rookie backbencher of an upstart (though significant) opposition party, Yisrael Beitenu, composed of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, including a number of outright racists such as its chief, Avigdor Lieberman. In the wake of Shagal's bizarre and unauthorized comments - which seemed to represent only his own private foreign policy - Israeli Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni canceled her trip to Azerbaijan, which has not hosted an Israeli minister since 1998, in order not to convey the impression that the government endorses Shagal's position.

Things have changed slightly since 2005. Now, unfortunately, Yisrael Beitenu is a member of the governing coalition, though its representatives, with the exception of Lieberman, named Deputy PM and Minister for Strategic Affairs, work mostly in insignificant committees. No doubt, Lieberman made sure that Shagal would toe the line this time. The Knesset member even threw in Israel's dissatisfaction with Azerbaijan's line during the war with Hizbullah in the summer.

While searching for information on Shagal, I discovered an interesting document. It is a protocol of a meeting with Jewish organizations from the former Soviet republics, which took place at the end of the war, in August 2006, in Israel (the organizations had come one a solidarity mission). Present at the meeting was the head of the Jewish community in Armenia, Rimah Verpapitian-Feller (sp?) Rimma Varzhapetian-Feller (thanks for the correction, Anonymous) as well as a certain Genady Zalmanovitch, head of the Azerbaijani Jewish community. While the former did not speak during the meeting, Zalmanovitch went on in quite some detail - he finally stopped, after protests from the audience - about Iran's discrimination against Azeris and the comparably privileged status of Armenians in the Islamic Republic. Zalmanovitch began his long-winded speech by admitting that he "sometimes offend[s] the representative from Armenia." What is more interesting, however, is that Zalmanovitch highlighted that "Lebanon recognized the Armenian Genocide [literally, "the Armenian Shoah or Holocaust"; לבנון הכירה בעקרון בשואת הארמנים] , while Turkey and Azerbaijan opposed this."

Member of German Leftist Party Denies Genocide

Armenians in Germany call on the Bundestag to condemn the Genocide
Berlin, April 2005 (Source: Central Council of Armenians in Germany)

A Bundestag parliamentarian who belongs to the Linkspartei.PDS, the successor of the former East German Communist Party, is in the news for denying the Armenian Genocide. Hakki Keskin first publicly entered the ranks of the negationists when he condemned the June 2005 Bundestag resolution which

mourn[ed] the actions of the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire which almost led to the complete extermination of the Armenians in Anatolia.

At the time, the two lawmakers from his party sitting in the parliament voted for the resolution. But Keskin's position, exposed in a recent newspaper report, has drawn official protest from the Central Council of Armenians in Germany, who have asked the leftist party for clarification.

On his website, Keskin parrots the standard denialist line:

Personally, I believe that the deportation of hundreds of thousands human beings, whatever their motives may have been, was profoundly inhumane and wrong. I want to emphasize that Turkey does not deny the fact that as part of this deportation hundreds of thousands Armenians but also Muslims died.

Keskin also backs Erdogan's calls for a UN-monitored Turkish-Armenian historical commission to evaluate the evidence.

Now, the vice-chair of the party's Bundestag-caucus [Vize-Fraktionschef] Bodo Ramelow has stooped so low as to accuse the Central Council of "instrumentalizing the victims of the genocide" (Tagesspiegel)and even giving credence to Keskin's statements to the effect that the killings of Armenian "had a pre- and post-history" [Vor- und Nachgeschichte] which involved atrocities by Armenians against Turks.

Meanwhile, both Keskin and Ramelow are spreading the usual stories about the "Armenian lobby," which is allegedly stifling freedom of speech. Keskin has even planned an event to examine the lobby's activities.