A $12 billion history lesson
Last week, a senior French official flew to Istanbul to discuss Turkey's exclusion of Gaz de France from an $12 billion pipeline project - designed to bring Central Asian oil directly to European markets - because of recent French legislation making it a criminal offense to deny that the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in 1915 constituted genocide.
The Turkish government clearly takes history seriously. Just last October, when the United States Congress considered a bill similar to the French genocide legislation - without the punitive dimension - Turkey threatened to restrict airspace vital to the American military efforts in Iraq. Washington backed off.
Turkey objects to the term "genocide" to describe the historical tragedy it calls the "events of 1915." Ankara is resolute in defending this stance and has mirror legislation to that of France making it a criminal offense to use the term "genocide." Turkey does not deny that hundreds of thousands of men, women and children perished in a series of population transfers across a rugged mountain region, but it blames the deaths on the tragic combination of bureaucratic ineptness and particularly harsh climatic conditions.
For Armenians, as well as nearly two dozen other countries ranging from Australia to Venezuela, this was "genocide" plain and simple. This clash of historical narratives has become more than academic, as France and the United States have recently learned.
Read entire article at International Herald Tribune
The Turkish government clearly takes history seriously. Just last October, when the United States Congress considered a bill similar to the French genocide legislation - without the punitive dimension - Turkey threatened to restrict airspace vital to the American military efforts in Iraq. Washington backed off.
Turkey objects to the term "genocide" to describe the historical tragedy it calls the "events of 1915." Ankara is resolute in defending this stance and has mirror legislation to that of France making it a criminal offense to use the term "genocide." Turkey does not deny that hundreds of thousands of men, women and children perished in a series of population transfers across a rugged mountain region, but it blames the deaths on the tragic combination of bureaucratic ineptness and particularly harsh climatic conditions.
For Armenians, as well as nearly two dozen other countries ranging from Australia to Venezuela, this was "genocide" plain and simple. This clash of historical narratives has become more than academic, as France and the United States have recently learned.