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  • HRWF: Turkey: Assyrian Genocide

    Human Rights Without Frontiers

    Asbl - National Registration Number: 473809960
    Associated member of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights
    Avenue Winston Churchill 11/33, 1180 Brussels, Belgium - Phone: + 32 2
    3456145 - Fax: + 32 2 3437491

    Information and Press Service "Religious Intolerance and Discrimination"
    Table of contents
    Conference about the Assyrian Genocide (SEYFO) at
    the European Parliament

    Genocide Denial and the Right of Recognition

    27 March 2007

    Editor-in-chief: Willy Fautré
    Website: http://www.hrwf.org <http://www.hrwf.org/>

    Email: [email protected]


    TURKEY

    Conference about the Assyrian Genocide (SEYFO) at the European Parliament

    Genocide Denial and the Right of Recognition

    HRWF Int. (27.03.2007) - Email: [email protected] - Website: http://www.hrwf.net
    - On 26 March, MEP Eva-Britt Svensson (European United Left/ Nordic Green
    Left) hosted a conference called "Assyrian Genocide (Seyfo)" and organized
    at the European Parliament by the Assyrian Federations of Sweden, Holland,
    Germany and Firodil Institute. The speakers were MEP Eva-Britt Svensson
    (GUE/ NGL), MEP Markus Ferber (EVP-ED), Sabri Atman (Seyfo Center), Prof.
    David Gaunt (Sodertorns University College, Sweden), Willy Fautré (Human
    Rights Without Frontiers). More than 500 people from Belgium, The
    Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, the U.S., etc. had registered to attend the
    conference but only half of them could participate in it. Both MEPs
    stressed that they had received several phone calls from the Turkish embassy
    in Brussels and a letter from the Turkish ambassador - that they showed -
    trying to dissuade them to host the conference . See below the presentation
    of Human Rights Without Frontiers Int'l on negationism in Belgium.


    SEYFO, THE GENOCIDE AGAINST THE ASSYRIANS

    Revisionism and Negationism of WW I Ottoman Genocide in Belgium

    The Ottoman Empire's widespread persecution of Assyrian civilians during
    World War I constituted a form of genocide, the present-day term for an
    attempt to destroy a national, ethnic or religious group, in whole or in
    part. Ottoman soldiers and their Kurdish and Persian militia partners
    subjected hundreds of thousands of Assyrians to a deliberate and systematic
    campaign of massacre, torture, abduction, deportation, impoverishment and
    cultural and ethnic destruction.

    Up to now, the international community has been hesitant to recognize the
    Assyrian experience as a form of genocide. However, the Assyrian genocide is
    indistinguishable in form from its Armenian counterpart. Both are narrowly
    intertwined.

    My presentation will deal with the debate about the genocide issue on the
    Belgian scene in the form that it has explicitly taken, the Armenian
    genocide, and implicitly and indirectly the Assyrian genocide, Seyfo. My
    analysis will identify a number of negationist actors in Belgium, highlight
    their objectives and their strategies, their links with Belgian political
    parties, with the Turkish embassy in Brussels and with not very commendable
    organizations in Turkey.


    The Belgian State and the Ottoman Genocide

    In 1998, the Belgian senate recognized the genocide committed by the
    Ottomans against the Armenians during WW I.

    On June 6, 2005, the Justice Commission of the Belgian Senate rejected a
    draft bill (Ref. 51/ 1284) meant to extend the March 23, 1995 law
    criminalizing the negationism of the Nazi genocide against the Jews to all
    the genocides and crimes against humanity legally recognized.

    The issue of the Armenian genocide which was recognized by all the parties
    was sneaked in during the debate, especially by the MRAX (Movement against
    Racism, Anti-Semitism and Xenophobia), but was excluded from the draft law
    because it had not been recognized by an international jurisdiction. The
    draft bill extending the criminalization of negationism divided the parties
    in power and was finally rejected with twelve `no' votes to two `yes' votes.
    If it had been approved in Parliament, Belgium would have been the first
    country to punish those who deny the Armenian genocide allegations.


    Revisionist and Negationist Players in Belgium

    Several Turkish nationalist organizations based and operating in Belgium but
    linked to sister-organizations based in Turkey are opposed to the
    qualification of genocide attributed to the mass-scale massacres of
    Armenians during WWI and even deny the very existence of such massacres.

    The Association of Ataturk's Philosophy in Belgium/ Association de la Pensée
    d'Ataturk en Belgique (APAB-BADD) is a non-profit association linked to the
    Turkish Labor Party, a nationalist maoist party which is hostile to the
    United States and to the European Union. It receives public subsidies.

    EYAD/ The House of Turkey is a social association. Strange though it may be,
    its chairman Metin Edeer is also a member of the municipal council of the
    Turkish town Emirdag (22,000 inhabitants) although he lives in Belgium. He
    was elected in 2004 on the list of the MHP (Green Wolves), the nationalist
    extreme-right party in Turkey.

    The Turkish Islamic Religious Foundation of Belgium / Fondation religieuse
    islamique turque de Belgique (FRITB-BTIDV), better known under the name
    Diyanet whose president is the adviser for social affairs at the Turkish
    embassy in Brussels, Omer Faruk Turan.

    The Belgian-Turkish Coordination Council (CCBT-BTKK), which was created in
    March 1996, is an umbrella organization for more than ninety Turkish
    associations. It gathers together nationalist extreme-right movements
    depending directly from the Turkish embassy in Brussels. Its leader, Kenan
    Daggun, was sentenced to nine days in prison due to the incidents that took
    place during the demonstration against the monument erected in memory of the
    Armenian genocide in Ixelles.

    The Sports Federation of the Turks of Belgium/ Fédération sportive des Turcs
    de Belgique is an organization depending from the Turkish embassy in
    Brussels.

    Yeni Belturk is an association which published a magazine and runs a
    nationalist and negationist website bearing the same name.

    The symbolic target of the revisionist and negationist actors operating on
    the Belgian territory, and especially in Brussels, is an Armenian monument.

    In 1995, the Armenian community in Belgium proposed to the municipal council
    of Ixelles (Brussels) to erect a monument in memory of the victims of the
    Armenian genocide at Square Henri Michaux in Ixelles (Brussels) The proposal
    was unanimously adopted.

    Revisionist and Negationist Campaign in Belgium

    In March 2003, the Association of Ataturk's Philosophy in Belgium
    (APAB-BADD) organized a non-authorized demonstration in front of the
    monument dedicated to the Armenian genocide and spattered it with painting.
    The police had to intervene and to arrest several demonstrators. Elected
    members of Turkish descent belonging to several francophone political
    parties in power supported this campaign.

    In the same year, during the campaign for the parliamentary elections, the
    APAB-BADD and the Belgian-Turkish Coordination Council (BTKK) pressured the
    mayor of Ixelles to remove the monument commemorating the Armenian genocide.

    On May 29, 2004, during the political campaign for regional elections,
    Turkish extremists held a demonstration in Brussels under the slogan `Reject
    the assertions of genocide.' On this occasion, the Committee for the
    Coordination of the Turkish Associations claimed the destruction of the
    Armenian monument in Ixelles. Emir Kir, who was to become State Secretary of
    the Brussels Parliament in charge of Monuments after those elections
    participated in the demonstration. It was also the case for a number of
    Belgian elected candidates of Turkish descent belonging to the Socialist
    Party, the Liberal Party, the Green, the Democrat and Humanist Centre. Among
    the participants, it is worth mentioning Afyon Mahmut Koçak, a member of the
    Turkish Parliament belonging to the party of the Prime Minister, the
    president of the Turkish Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the mayor of the
    Turkish town Emirdag and a number of Brussels municipal councilors of
    Turkish descent.

    On December 16, 2004, Yves de Jonghe d'Ardoye addressed a question to the
    then mayor, Willy Decourty, and the councilors of Ixelles about a
    demonstration for the demolition of the Armenian monument. The opponents to
    the Armenian monument raised the issue of the legality of that construction
    but their attempt was unsuccessful. In his answer, the mayor admitted that
    Turkish movements had exerted pressure on him to remove the monument but he
    did not yield to it.

    On February 15, 2007, a number of negationist associations organized a
    conference called `A look at the so-called Armenian genocide' with a
    controversial guest-speaker, Mr. Yusuf Halaçoglu, President of the Turkish
    History Foundation. This foundation is not an academic institution but has
    always served the political agenda of Ataturk and his ideological heirs
    since its creation in the 1930s. Mr. Halaçoglu is currently prosecuted by
    Swiss justice on the basis of article 261 bis of the Swiss criminal code
    pertaining to racial discrimination after he delivered a speech in
    Winterthur in 2004. Despite these charges, the Socialist mayor of the
    commune of Saint-Josse (Brussels) failed to prohibit this meeting.


    Freedom of Expression and Negationism

    Another tactic that was used to try to silence anti-negationist activists
    was to prosecute them on the grounds of defamation.

    In November 2004, State Secretary of the Brussels Regional Parliament Emir
    Kir (Socialist Party) sued the persons in charge of the website Suffrage
    Universel who had called him `a negationist, a liar and a delinquent'
    regarding the issue of the Armenian genocide and his expenses during the
    last electoral campaign.

    In the part of his complaint related to the genocide issue, Emir Kir
    declared : `It is a fact that the Ottoman Empire ordered the massacre of the
    Armenian populations and internal displacements (=85). This policy can only be
    unconditionally condemned (=85) but I cannot make the next step consisting in
    affirming that it is a genocide to be assimilated to the genocide of the
    Jews by the Nazis as long as an independent commission of historians has not
    qualified these facts.'

    The defendants were Pierre-Yves Lambert, an independent researcher, and
    Mehmet Koksal, a journalist of Turkish descent. Both are running the website
    in their personal capacity.

    The trial started on September 14, 2005. Emir Kir was defended by a famous
    barrister, Marc Uyttendaele, the husband of Minister of Justice, Laurette
    Onkelinx, who belongs to the Socialist Party.

    The King's Procurator Valery de Theux de Meylandt said about the accused
    that `the incriminated remarks were not off the acceptable limits.'

    The court decision was released on October 28, 2005. It was 100% in favor of
    the courageous defendants.


    Links Between the Belgian Political Parties and the Revisionist Players

    Due to the election system of proportionate representation, the political
    parties court the various cultural groups of foreign origin heavily present
    in Belgium, and in particular in Brussels, by putting Belgian citizens of
    Turkish, Moroccan, Congolese, etc=85 descent on their election lists to garner
    as many votes as possible from their respective communities. In the last
    local elections in Brussels, more than 50% of the candidates of the same
    political party were sometimes of foreign descent.

    The problem is not their origin but the fact that the major political
    parties have failed to screen them on the basis of a number of legitimate
    criteria and that they have put extreme-right and extreme-left nationalist
    candidates on their election lists. A number of them have campaigned in
    their native language and are said to have held a double language within and
    without their communities. They have now been elected at various levels of
    the legislative and executive institutions and some are accused of double
    allegiance, which is incompatible with the Belgian institutions.

    It must also be said that ministers and party leaders have campaigned in the
    premises of Turkish associations known to be negationist.

    Conclusions and Recommendations

    The debate around the terminology `genocide' or not is outdated. Those who
    delay their position on this issue until `an international independent
    commission of historians is put in place and publicizes its verdict' just do
    not want to recognize the first genocide of the 20th century. Such a
    commission exists: it is the international community of historians who
    throughout the last 90 years have amply demonstrated that a genocide was
    perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians and the Assyrians
    during WW I.

    The Ottoman genocide of the Armenians and the Ottoman genocide of the
    Assyrians are the two sides of the same coin. They cannot be separated from
    each other. They are one and the same genocide.

    Our organization `Human
    Rights Without Frontiers Int'l' recommends

    to the Belgian political parties

    to recognize that genocide unambiguously
    to ask their elected members to recognize it
    to screen their candidates for the upcoming parliamentary elections.

    to the Belgian elected people of Turkish descent

    to have one and sole allegiance: the Belgian state

    to the MRAX, the Centre for Equal Opportunities, Armenian, Assyrian and
    civic organizations

    to lodge complaints against negationist statements, conferences and
    demonstrations on the basis of the legislation prohibiting racism and
    negationism.



    Willy Fautré

    Director

    [email protected]

    http:// www.willyfautre.org <http://www.willyfautre.org/>


    Sources:

    Ha nnibal Travis, `'Native Christians Massacred': The Ottoman Genocide of the
    Assyrians during World War I.', Genocide Studies and Prevention 1,3
    (December 2006): 327-371.

    Suffrage Universel: http://www.minorities.org <http://www.minorities.org/>
    http://www.suff rage-universel.be <http://www.suffrage-universel.be/>

    Info-Tu rk : http://www.info-turk.be <http://www.info-turk.be/>


    HRWF network of experts covers more than 20 countries, including AUSTRIA
    (Dr. Reinhard Kohlhofer [email protected] - Univ. Prof. Dr. Christian
    Bruenner [email protected]) - BELARUS (Prof. Viktor Adzinochanka
    [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ) - BELGIUM (Attorney Inès Wouters
    [email protected] ) - CHINA (Dr Paul Dowaschowski
    [email protected]) - FRANCE (Prof. Regis Dericquebourg
    [email protected] ) - GERMANY (Prof. Dr Dr Thomas SCHIRRMACHER
    [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ) - IRAQ: Eden
    Naby, Ph D ([email protected]), KAZAKHSTAN (Dr Roman Podoprigora
    [email protected]) KOREA, REPUBLIC OF (Prof. Joshua Park
    [email protected]) - POLAND (Agnieszka Koscianska / Warsaw
    University [email protected] ) - RUSSIA (Prof. Elena Miroschnikova
    [email protected] ) - UKRAINE (Prof. Yevgeniya Dodina [email protected] ),
    etc.
    The experts are not responsible for the material distributed by HRWF Int.
    The experts can be contacted to participate in conferences as guest-speakers

    Articles that are not written by HRWF staff or correspondents are not
    endorsed by the organization.
    They are purely distributed for information of parties interested in
    religious issues and trends.
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