Friday 4 January 2008

Turkey APrepares to Amend Free Speech Law: Turkish M.F.A. Expresses Discontent over rejection of Perince: Armenia tomorrow's Israel:Lessons of History

Turkey Prepares To Amend Free Speech Law
Reuters


Turkey is preparing to amend a controversial law on freedom of speech
that has been criticized repeatedly by the European Union and could slow
EU accession talks with Brussels.

The justice ministry will hand the draft amendment to article 301 of the
penal code, which makes it an offence to "insult Turkishness", to the
cabinet within 15 days, Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin told reporters
on Tuesday. It was not clear when the cabinet would approve the
amendment.

Article 301 has been used to prosecute Turkish writers and thinkers,
notably for comments on the mass killings of Armenians in 1915 under the
Ottoman Empire. Two years ago the government tried Nobel literature
laureate Orhan Pamuk under article 301 for his remarks on the events of
1915-16, but he was acquitted on a legal technicality.

The European Commission's annual progress report on Turkey, published in
November, called on Ankara to make "significant further efforts" on
freedom of expression and religion, and noted that more people had been
prosecuted under article 301 last year than in 2005. Enlargement
Commissioner Olli Rehn has recommended that the EU not extend accession
talks to the key areas of justice and human rights until the article is
changed.

Critics say Turkey's centre-right government is dragging its feet,
fearing that amending the law could spark a nationalist backlash at a
time when EU membership is becoming less popular among Turks.

EU officials said the law was poisoning Turkey's relations with Armenia
and weighing on the media and non-government organizations in Turkey.

Ankara began EU accession negotiations in 2005 but the EU suspended
talks last December on eight of the 35 chapters or policy areas into
which EU law is divided after Ankara refused to open its ports and
airports to traffic from Cyprus.
Turkish Press
Dec 22 2007
Turkish M.F.A. Expresses Discontent Over Rejection Of Perincek's
Appeal By Swiss F.S.C.
Published: 12/21/2007


ANKARA - Turkish MFA said the rejection of the appeal of Dogu
Perincek, leader of Worker's Party (IP) by The Federal Supreme
Court(FSC)of Switzerland was "a serious violation of freedom of
expression".
FSC of Switzerland had announced its rejection of the appeal of
Perincek, IP leader, against the verdicts of Lausanne Court of First
Instance and Regional Court of Appeal on 19 December 2007.

"We maintain the same views put forward in our press release which
was made following the verdict of Lausanne Court of First Instance.
We consider the verdicts of these courts, above all, as serious
violations of freedom of expression," said a press release issued by
Turkish MFA on Thursday.

Turkish MFA noted that 'an understanding which was predicated on
subjective assessments' prevailed in the said verdicts instead of
universal norms, principles and rules of law.

"In these verdicts, the historical facts have been replaced by the
self-constructed memory of Armenian circles and the erroneous
convictions of some circles concerning the 1915 events," said the
press release.

Turkish MFA recalled the proposal it had made in 2005 to Armenia for
the establishment a joint commission of historians to study the
incidents of 1915 and said, "history should be evaluated and
commented by historians and not by judicial or legislative organs."

On the other hand, Jean-Philippe Jeanneraz, Spokesperson of the Swiss
MFA told A.A that the Swiss Government was of the belief that
formation of a commission of historians would be beneficial for
shedding light to the incidents that had occured in the last period
of the Ottoman Empire, on Thursday.

Turkish MFA welcomed the statement made by the Swiss MFA following
the verdict of FSC.

IP leader Perincek, who had been fined to 9,000 francs for breaching
the disputed Swiss law on "denying" Armenian allegations of genocide
saying "Armenian genocide is an imperialist lie", had filed an appeal
with the FSC in March 2007.
MEMRI, DC
Dec 18 2007
Islamist Columnist: The Jew Is a Curse

Fahri Guven of the antisemitic Islamist Turkish daily Milli Gazete
quoted in his column the following excerpts from a recently published
book by M. Ertugrul Duzdag and Ali Ulvi Kurucu presenting them as
historical truths that every Muslim must take into account:

“The Jew is a curse. If you enter a war against the Jew you end up
fighting powerful nations behind him. If you try to make peace, years
pass with no result. He lies 70 lies. It is not surprising that
America supports Israel. It is because America is a province of
Israel! Last century it was god-damned Britain that was under [Jew’s]
command, this century they made the U.S. their servant…

“Don’t forget the Russian revolution. The only non-Jew was Stalin but
his wife was Jewish. Karl Marks was a Jewish psychopath. Behind the
Free Mason’s that played a role in every revolution is Jewish power
and intelligence. The Jew wants to rule the world, and step by step,
he is advancing towards his goal of destroying faith, respect, love,
honor, family values in the world.

“The Zionist organization, exaggerated what was done to the Jews at
the time of Hitler; created a genocide balloon; blew into it hard
enough so it could fly. He blew it to ten, fifty, hundred times more
than what it really was. Then they [Jews] made this the subject of
thousands of novels, plays and films.

“Who would have believed a hundred years ago? But here it is now; a
Jewish state in the midst of Muslims like an abscess."

"Look at Armenia. This too will become tomorrow’s Israel. It was
built by Christians to severe the ties between Turkey and the Muslim
Turkish world and it will grow. It will be the roadblock between
Turkey and Azarbaycan and the rest of the Turkic world."

Source: Milli Gazete, Turkey, December 15, 2007
Hellenic News of America, PA
Dec 11 2007
Lessons of History: The Question of Armenian Genocide


The Foreign Affairs Congressional Committee voted in the fall for the
recognition of the Armenian massacres perpetrated by the Ottoman
Turks during the First World War, as genocide. The Speaker of the
House, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, has vowed to bring the resolution to
the House floor for a vote before her term in office expires a year
from now.

This development has caused diplomatic tremors in Ankara and
Washington. The two governments are concerned about the political
implications of such a resolution, if it were to pass at this
critical time of uncertainty and turbulence in the Middle East. After
all, the US/Turkish relations have not been in their best state
lately, due primarily to the Turkish refusal to allow the US military
to open a second front of attack in the North, during the invasion of
Iraq in 2003. That refusal, coming unexpectedly from a NATO ally, has
proven rather costly to the US war effort in both dollars and
American lives.

To complicate things further, the Turkish Government has asked and
received authorization from the National Assembly for an invasion and
possible extensive military operations in Northern Iraq ostensibly
against Kurdish “terrorists,” but in reality to get control of some
of the rich oil resources in the area. Such a Turkish move would
certainly make things even more difficult for the US in Iraq, because
it will set in turmoil the only area of Iraq which is relatively
peaceful and prosperous, the Kurdish Iraq in the North.

However, a prosperous and autonomous Kurdistan is exactly what the
Turks fear most, because it will set a “bad example” for the millions
of Kurds in Turkey to imitate. The Turks, therefore, will do whatever
they can to prevent a free Kurdish State from coming into being. They
will not hesitate to use any pretext, even the Armenian genocide
resolution in the US Congress, to move into Northern Iraq and occupy
it militarily, just as they did thirty-three years ago when they
invaded Cyprus and occupied almost half of the island, under the
pretext of protecting the Turkish Cypriots. There are some Turkmen in
Iraq too, who may want to have Turkish “protection” from the
surrounding Kurds.


But this political maneuvering and shrewd calculations of Turkey’s
Islamist Government should not be allowed to derail the legitimate
process of the US Congress to amend a historical error by recognizing
the Armenian genocide with its proper name at last. The Republic of
Turkey does not gain anything of moral value by trying to cover up
the painful and horrible events that accompanied the dissolution of
the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War II, or its own birth in
1923. History has lessons to teach for those who are prudent enough
to learn from it and courageous so as not repeat the same errors.


History teaches us that the dissolution of empires is usually as
messy or violent as a non-amicable divorce. Various ethnic and
religious groups, that had found a modus vivendi under the protective
umbrella of a thriving empire, suddenly come to realization that the
imperial power is falling apart and cannot protect them any more.
Then, each ethnic group goes its own way and tries to become
independent and self-sufficient. Hence the messy process of
separating the common-wealth and getting a fair share arises.

In the case of the Ottoman Turks, their coming into Western Anatolia
and the establishment of an empire there and in Southeastern Europe
was facilitated by the fact that the Christian powers of that time
were divided, while the Byzantine Empire had been broken down into a
number of principalities as a result of the disastrous fourth
Crusade. Thus many Anatolian Christians (Armenians, Syrians, Greeks,
etc.) did not resist but rather helped the Turks build and sustain
for centuries the Ottoman Empire (14th-20th).

For more than a century the Ottoman Empire had become “the old sick
man” of Europe, who would not die, because the Great Powers could not
agree how to burry its corpse and divide the spoils. In the First
World War it appeared that the dismemberment of the Empire would be
accomplished finally. But the rise of Kemalism in Turkey and the
threat of the spread of Communism after its success in Russia (1917),
combined to keep the whole of Anatolia and a corner of Europe in
Turkish hands. Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, and other ethnic
minorities were either slaughtered or forced out from the lands where
they had lived and prospered for millennia.

The Armenians of Anatolia particularly were targeted in such a
systematic way for extermination by massive executions, forced labor
camps, violent transportations, and ethnic cleansing that the term
“genocide” describes fittingly the brutality of that historical
reality. A generation later, Hitler was to use the Armenian genocide
as “a model” for his even more horrific conception of a genocidal
scheme against the Jews in Germany.

No wonder, then, that many of the Jewish and other survivors feel
sympathy for the Armenians and their tragic fate. Many Europeans and
American have felt the same sympathy for a long time.
Recently, the
citizens of European States and the United States have found the
courage to apply the necessary pressure on elected officials to act
in the direction of recognition of the Armenian genocide by its
proper name in memory of the millions of its victims. There is hope
that horrors of this magnitude and inhumanity will not be repeated in
the future, if humanity remembers them and names them appropriately.

In this light present day Turkey, which is supposed to be secular and
democratic, should not be offended if other States judge it
politically correct and prudent to recognize the atrocities
perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians as genocide.
The Republic of Turkey perhaps should do the same for its own good.
In fact, it would have been better for the image of Turkey and its
aspiration of joining the European Union, if it had done so some time
ago. Instead of this sensible policy, Turkey threatens the United
States with strategic penalties to prevent the resolution on Armenian
genocide from reaching the House of Representatives. This is very
strange behavior of a NATO ally.

Turkish policy makers probably calculate that they can get now the
share of Iraq that they wanted four years ago (2003). At that time
Turkey, under the same Islamist Government of Mr. Erdogan, refused to
help the Americans by allowing them to open a second front in the
North, because the United States did not want it to enter the rich in
oil fields of Northern Iraq. Now they threaten to prevent even
supplies for the SU troops in Iraq to pass through Turkey. They also
threaten to invade Iraq to fight PPK members, using as pretext not
just the killing of ambushed Turkish solders, but also the passing of
the Armenian genocide resolution in the Congressional Committee of
Foreign Affairs.

The Turks may want to repeat the success they had so easily in Cyprus
in 1974, when they invaded the island illegally. By threatening to
occupy the whole of Cyprus, they managed to hold on to more than a
third of it for more than thirty years now. But Iraq is not Cyprus,
Kurds are not Greeks, and the US of post 9/11 is very different from
its previous self. So, if Turkey moves into Northern Iraq against the
expressed will of the US and NATO, if may bite more than it will be
able to chew this time. The good luck cannot be on the Turkish side
for ever. Kurds and poor Armenians deserve a share of it.

Dr. Christos Evangeliou is Professor of philosophy, poet, and author
of several books including the latest, Hellenic Philosophy: Origin
and Character (Ashgate, 2006).


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