On the qestion of the Denial of the Armenian Genocide.
Washed out rebel | 25.01.2012 05:02 | Anti-racism | Globalisation | History | World
French government has just voted in favour of a law which criminalises the denial of the Armenian Genocide. Fourty thousand Turks have marched in Paris attempting to challenge this development. This article exposes the French Government's sheer hipocracy in shamelessly exploiting the suffering of the Armenian Nation. It also exposes the Turkish appologists of the Armenian Genocide and their national chauvinist agendas.
This is a hastily prepared article as I felt I had to say something about a number of issues which came up recently following the French government's decision to vote in favour of a legislation designed to criminalise the denial of the Armenian Genocide. For the purpose of this discussion I think it is appropriate for me to identify my national backgroung. I am Turkish. Although, I wouldn't normally affirm my whole being in terms of the particular nation I happen to belong to as one is primarily a human being and not simply a member of a particular nation or race. Nationality and ethnicity is an accidental matter. No one gets to decide it.
So it is not my business to feel pride or shame in an aspect of my identity that has been decided by those forces outside of my control. Yet I fail to see how anyone regardless of their ethnic background could possibly deny the truth about the Armenian Genocide.
As a Turk, I am outraged by the Turkish governments' insistance on holding the world to randsom over this issue and the fact that tens of thousands of Turkish people who have been so misguided as to have identified themselves with the interests of their own opressors, have decided to march in Paris with flags in their hands not only denying the Armenian Genocide but actually excusing it by calling it a defence of the motherland(!)
It is ironic that most of these individuals would have left their own country in search of economic opportunities that had been denied to them by those same rulers whose murderous agendas they are now upholding. I say this without forgetting the fact that these economic opportunities in Europe which are relative to say the very least, have been brought and paid for by the extreme explotion of the enslaved native peoples of the colonised lands and are still being pursued today through Imperial wars of conquest at the expense millions of lives throughout the world. But going back to the march in Paris I'd say that this is false- consciousness in one of its worst manifestations.
The official position of the current Turkish government (and all the previous governments of Turkey for that matter) has been clear. They have consistently denied that the events of 1915 which resulted in the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians amounted to genocide. They argue that the Armenians have died as a result of hunger and starvation under the desperate conditions of the first world war and that there was no deliberate policy on the part of the state authorities to exterminate the Armenian population.
However, the very concept of Genocide and its detailed description as documented in the UNHCR papers was based not so much on the Holocaust but on the manner in which the Ottoman government under the fascist leadership of the so called Union and Progress Party carried out their murderous plan of annihilating the Armenian nation by deliberately forcing men women and children to march along the entire length of Anatolia. Nothing was left to chance. By the end of 1915, more than one and a half million Armenians were wiped out and their possessions including their lands and other assests were usurped by the Turkish bourgeoisie.
This process of mass extermination coupled with mass expropriation laid the economic basis for the founding of the Republic of Turkey. It is widely known that the Ottoman Bank (i.e. Osmanlı Bankası) was founded on expropriated Armenian wealth. I cant dig up the exact date right now but I believe it was towards the end of the first half of the 20th century when the Official Gazette of the Turkish state surreptitiously published the detailed accounts of the so called unclaimed armenian assets and decreed that they shall now be incorporated into the state coffers.
In referring to the first Genocide of the twentieth century as a means to justify what later became known as the holacoust, Hitler famously said: "WHO, AFTERALL, SPEAKS TODAY OF THE ANNIHILATION OF THE ARMENIANS?" It should also be noted that the Young Turks at the helm of the Union and Progress Party were not acting alone in their murderous campaign. It is firmly established that the military neccesities of the first Imperialist world war and the need to uphold the interests of Germany, in particular, meant that by 1915, the Armenian population had to be cleared away. They have been described as an obstacle by the German imperialists because of their natural support for the Russians. The British Imperialists' condemnation of the genocide at the time was purely a pragmatic exercise as it suited their interests to do so. Which brings me to my other point. How could anyone not question the insistance on the part of France, Britain, US or any other Imperialist power to step forward as international arbitrators of justice when they have had their hands drenched in the blood of the countless millions?
It is true that the Turkish people are faced with a monumental historic task of coming to terms with their own past. This includes the Armenian genocide as well as the mass extermination of Kurds and other nations and minorities. The process that is required needs to be deep and uncompromising. It needs to go beyond the stage of issuing a formal apology. It is clear that such a process cannot be undertaken unless the Turkish State which is fascist to the core is smashed, dismantled and finally replaced by the Revolutionary Peoples Power and the process will not end there.
Imperialists, meantime, will continue to do what they do best, and that is to selectively use and abuse the suffering of certain populations of people not out of any genuine affection for the people concerned but out of their need to pursue their own global interests. While the Turkish primeminister's decision to repeatedly talk about the Algerian Genocide and other such acts of western cruelty has no credibilty and has rightly been condemned as an attempt on his part to exploit these issues so as to exonerate his own regime's dark past, one thing is clear and that is if there is going to be any talk of an international trade in human bones then the Turkish state will top the charts amongst the existing "retailers". They may, however, still struggle to make it into the carts of the existing "wholesalers" that are represented by their western imperialist masters.
What is scandallous here is not so much the French recognition of the Armenian Genocide or the recent vote in favour of the law criminalising its denial, but the fact that even after almost 100 years, the wholesale extermination of 1.5 million people is still being used as a barganning tool between Washington, Paris and Ankara and we are supposed to celebrate and be gratefull that there are at least some countries in the world who dared to stick their necks out in recognising this genocide. And what about the others who have not yet recognised it and are continuously treathening to do so? What will it take for them to finally, after 100 years, cast their votes? Would the Turkish state need to make firmer commitments to the US government and agree to expand its expected role within the middle east in accordance with the USA's Greater Middle Eastern Project before Washington once again agrees to postphone the vote on the Genocide? Would France have been so eager to punish Turkey by recognising the genocide had the Turkish state with the worlds fifth largest army moved closer to Franko-German positions on strategic global matters?
This is enough to make anyones blood boil in outrage. Anyhow... There are lots of things to say but I cant go on. I also wanted to say that some of the comments I have come across in relation to this matter are clearly racist in character. One must not confuse the actions of the Turkish State authorities with the oldinary Turkish people in general, however misguided some of them might be. There is a long running tread of pure hatred againts the "Turk" and some of this is clearly designed to hide the promotion of other reactionary agendas. This is wrong. It is totally unacceptable. And it provides ammunition to all those fascist fanatics out there in Turkey and elsewhere.
There has also been an attempt to justify or excuse the genocide by suggesting that the Armenians have stabbed the Turks in the back by virtue of having sided with the Russians. Similar arguements have been used against Arabs. This is wrong. Turkish national chauvinists are taking it for granted that all the peoples and nations whose lands had been invaded and annexed by the forces of the Ottoman empire were under some kind of a duty to remain loyal to their oppressors. Turkish nation was only one of the many nations that made up the empire. Nations right of self determination in the face of oppression and conquest has to be recognised and respected without any conditions. Our need to move beyond the narrow horizon of national rights does not mean that we should ignore the problem of national oppression and the legitimate aspirations of the number of opressed nations which still exist in the world today.
So why should the exercise of such a right be regarded as legitimate when it comes to the Turks but can quickly be dismissed as illegitimate and condemned as back stabbing when it concerns the Armenians,Kurds and others? The truth is that the Armenians had every right to fight for their independence just like any other nation. And the Turkish historians who shamelessy tow the official line have no right to judge what was left of the Armenian leadership for having sought alliance with the Russians. It was never up to the Turkish elite to determine the strategy and tactics of the Armenian National Liberation Movement. That was a matter for the Armenians.
About the law... Yes it is perfectly acceptable to debate the merits of passing such a law, but why is it the case that the ones who are to opposing this law and lecturing the world about the principle of the freedom of thought happen to be the ones who are the greatest violators of this very freedom they claim to uphold? And why are we getting all manner of national chauvinists and fascists who are attempting to hide their genocidal agendas by appealing to the “civilised world” with all their talk about the fathers of the French enlightenment? The french imperialists should certainly be challenged for their sheer hipocracy and for having so shamelesly exploited for their own narrow interests, the suffering of the Armenian people and their 100 year long yearning for justice. Such a challenge, however, can not be regarded as credible when it is clearly coming from those people whose entire mission in life is based on the denial of the Armenian Genocide.
So it is not my business to feel pride or shame in an aspect of my identity that has been decided by those forces outside of my control. Yet I fail to see how anyone regardless of their ethnic background could possibly deny the truth about the Armenian Genocide.
As a Turk, I am outraged by the Turkish governments' insistance on holding the world to randsom over this issue and the fact that tens of thousands of Turkish people who have been so misguided as to have identified themselves with the interests of their own opressors, have decided to march in Paris with flags in their hands not only denying the Armenian Genocide but actually excusing it by calling it a defence of the motherland(!)
It is ironic that most of these individuals would have left their own country in search of economic opportunities that had been denied to them by those same rulers whose murderous agendas they are now upholding. I say this without forgetting the fact that these economic opportunities in Europe which are relative to say the very least, have been brought and paid for by the extreme explotion of the enslaved native peoples of the colonised lands and are still being pursued today through Imperial wars of conquest at the expense millions of lives throughout the world. But going back to the march in Paris I'd say that this is false- consciousness in one of its worst manifestations.
The official position of the current Turkish government (and all the previous governments of Turkey for that matter) has been clear. They have consistently denied that the events of 1915 which resulted in the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians amounted to genocide. They argue that the Armenians have died as a result of hunger and starvation under the desperate conditions of the first world war and that there was no deliberate policy on the part of the state authorities to exterminate the Armenian population.
However, the very concept of Genocide and its detailed description as documented in the UNHCR papers was based not so much on the Holocaust but on the manner in which the Ottoman government under the fascist leadership of the so called Union and Progress Party carried out their murderous plan of annihilating the Armenian nation by deliberately forcing men women and children to march along the entire length of Anatolia. Nothing was left to chance. By the end of 1915, more than one and a half million Armenians were wiped out and their possessions including their lands and other assests were usurped by the Turkish bourgeoisie.
This process of mass extermination coupled with mass expropriation laid the economic basis for the founding of the Republic of Turkey. It is widely known that the Ottoman Bank (i.e. Osmanlı Bankası) was founded on expropriated Armenian wealth. I cant dig up the exact date right now but I believe it was towards the end of the first half of the 20th century when the Official Gazette of the Turkish state surreptitiously published the detailed accounts of the so called unclaimed armenian assets and decreed that they shall now be incorporated into the state coffers.
In referring to the first Genocide of the twentieth century as a means to justify what later became known as the holacoust, Hitler famously said: "WHO, AFTERALL, SPEAKS TODAY OF THE ANNIHILATION OF THE ARMENIANS?" It should also be noted that the Young Turks at the helm of the Union and Progress Party were not acting alone in their murderous campaign. It is firmly established that the military neccesities of the first Imperialist world war and the need to uphold the interests of Germany, in particular, meant that by 1915, the Armenian population had to be cleared away. They have been described as an obstacle by the German imperialists because of their natural support for the Russians. The British Imperialists' condemnation of the genocide at the time was purely a pragmatic exercise as it suited their interests to do so. Which brings me to my other point. How could anyone not question the insistance on the part of France, Britain, US or any other Imperialist power to step forward as international arbitrators of justice when they have had their hands drenched in the blood of the countless millions?
It is true that the Turkish people are faced with a monumental historic task of coming to terms with their own past. This includes the Armenian genocide as well as the mass extermination of Kurds and other nations and minorities. The process that is required needs to be deep and uncompromising. It needs to go beyond the stage of issuing a formal apology. It is clear that such a process cannot be undertaken unless the Turkish State which is fascist to the core is smashed, dismantled and finally replaced by the Revolutionary Peoples Power and the process will not end there.
Imperialists, meantime, will continue to do what they do best, and that is to selectively use and abuse the suffering of certain populations of people not out of any genuine affection for the people concerned but out of their need to pursue their own global interests. While the Turkish primeminister's decision to repeatedly talk about the Algerian Genocide and other such acts of western cruelty has no credibilty and has rightly been condemned as an attempt on his part to exploit these issues so as to exonerate his own regime's dark past, one thing is clear and that is if there is going to be any talk of an international trade in human bones then the Turkish state will top the charts amongst the existing "retailers". They may, however, still struggle to make it into the carts of the existing "wholesalers" that are represented by their western imperialist masters.
What is scandallous here is not so much the French recognition of the Armenian Genocide or the recent vote in favour of the law criminalising its denial, but the fact that even after almost 100 years, the wholesale extermination of 1.5 million people is still being used as a barganning tool between Washington, Paris and Ankara and we are supposed to celebrate and be gratefull that there are at least some countries in the world who dared to stick their necks out in recognising this genocide. And what about the others who have not yet recognised it and are continuously treathening to do so? What will it take for them to finally, after 100 years, cast their votes? Would the Turkish state need to make firmer commitments to the US government and agree to expand its expected role within the middle east in accordance with the USA's Greater Middle Eastern Project before Washington once again agrees to postphone the vote on the Genocide? Would France have been so eager to punish Turkey by recognising the genocide had the Turkish state with the worlds fifth largest army moved closer to Franko-German positions on strategic global matters?
This is enough to make anyones blood boil in outrage. Anyhow... There are lots of things to say but I cant go on. I also wanted to say that some of the comments I have come across in relation to this matter are clearly racist in character. One must not confuse the actions of the Turkish State authorities with the oldinary Turkish people in general, however misguided some of them might be. There is a long running tread of pure hatred againts the "Turk" and some of this is clearly designed to hide the promotion of other reactionary agendas. This is wrong. It is totally unacceptable. And it provides ammunition to all those fascist fanatics out there in Turkey and elsewhere.
There has also been an attempt to justify or excuse the genocide by suggesting that the Armenians have stabbed the Turks in the back by virtue of having sided with the Russians. Similar arguements have been used against Arabs. This is wrong. Turkish national chauvinists are taking it for granted that all the peoples and nations whose lands had been invaded and annexed by the forces of the Ottoman empire were under some kind of a duty to remain loyal to their oppressors. Turkish nation was only one of the many nations that made up the empire. Nations right of self determination in the face of oppression and conquest has to be recognised and respected without any conditions. Our need to move beyond the narrow horizon of national rights does not mean that we should ignore the problem of national oppression and the legitimate aspirations of the number of opressed nations which still exist in the world today.
So why should the exercise of such a right be regarded as legitimate when it comes to the Turks but can quickly be dismissed as illegitimate and condemned as back stabbing when it concerns the Armenians,Kurds and others? The truth is that the Armenians had every right to fight for their independence just like any other nation. And the Turkish historians who shamelessy tow the official line have no right to judge what was left of the Armenian leadership for having sought alliance with the Russians. It was never up to the Turkish elite to determine the strategy and tactics of the Armenian National Liberation Movement. That was a matter for the Armenians.
About the law... Yes it is perfectly acceptable to debate the merits of passing such a law, but why is it the case that the ones who are to opposing this law and lecturing the world about the principle of the freedom of thought happen to be the ones who are the greatest violators of this very freedom they claim to uphold? And why are we getting all manner of national chauvinists and fascists who are attempting to hide their genocidal agendas by appealing to the “civilised world” with all their talk about the fathers of the French enlightenment? The french imperialists should certainly be challenged for their sheer hipocracy and for having so shamelesly exploited for their own narrow interests, the suffering of the Armenian people and their 100 year long yearning for justice. Such a challenge, however, can not be regarded as credible when it is clearly coming from those people whose entire mission in life is based on the denial of the Armenian Genocide.
Washed out rebel
