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ISTANBUL: Sarkozy lives in a glass house and shouldn't throw stones

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  • ISTANBUL: Sarkozy lives in a glass house and shouldn't throw stones

    Today's Zaman, Turkey
    Jan 1 2012

    Sarkozy lives in a glass house and shouldn't throw stones

    by Othman Ali*

    Last Thursday the French National Assembly passed a bill that
    criminalizes any disagreement with the Armenian claim of a genocide
    having been committed against them by the Ottoman Empire.
    The passing of this resolution has had many implications throughout
    Europe and will adversely impact the freedom of expression in France
    and sets a bad precedent for others. Turkey's relation with the EU
    will also witness tension at a time when the West needs Turkey to
    channel its positive input on the historic developments that are
    taking place in the Muslim world and the Middle East in particular.
    This move on the part of the French government has a multitude of
    reasons: the fanning of Islamophobia for electoral purposes, the
    influence of the pro-Israeli lobby on French politics and the alarm
    with which some circles in Europe are viewing Turkey's rising
    political and economic power.

    It is ironic that of all European powers France, which has an alarming
    record of genocidal policies on several continents in the past, chose
    to lead the crusade against Turkey. It is more ironic that Europe,
    which remained silent on this particular issue when Turkey was
    governed by malfunctioning military dominated regimes, raised the
    issue at a time when Justice and Development Party (AKP) government is
    in power, a party that helped the country make significant inroads to
    establish democracy and uphold human rights to meet the Copenhagen
    criteria. Besides, there is a serious self-examination in progress,
    including attempts to correct the many wrongdoings of the past, and
    Turkish officials, more than at any time in the past, have signaled
    Turkish readiness to address the wrongs done to the Armenians,
    including a readiness to give unlimited access to Ottoman archives and
    holding open debates on the matter on a national and international
    level.

    An effort to gain more votes

    Analysts tend to attribute French President Nicolas Sarkozy's sudden
    attention to the Armenian issue to his efforts to gain more votes in
    the upcoming national election and be re-elected for a second term.
    Among French politicians Sarkozy has a well-known record for his
    indifference in the past to the plight of Armenians. The sudden
    conversion on the part of Sarkozy comes as result of his concern to
    win over the votes of the extreme right and the 500,000-strong
    Armenian community in France. Sarkozy, who faces a tough challenge
    from a rejuvenated far right in next year's presidential elections,
    has decided to reach out to Catholic voters. Recently, he courted the
    Christian voters and visited many symbolic Christian places of worship
    in France. Opponents accused the leader, who is struggling in the
    polls, of stirring up racial and religious divisions in a bid to win
    votes from the far-right National Front (FN), now gaining ground under
    Marine Le Pen, daughters of its founder Jean-Marie Le Pen. Sarkozy
    appears to be returning to the fray. In January 2011, he declared that
    multiculturalism had been a `failure.' In order to appease the far
    right, he targeted Roma last year to have them expelled from France.

    Islamophobia is another tool that Sarkozy has been continuously
    utilizing to win the votes of the rising extreme right for his
    center-right Union for a Popular Movement Party (UMP). This is what
    gained him notoriety and fame at the same time when he was minister of
    the interior. Consequently, this made him the rising star of the right
    in France, and eventually earned him the French presidency. The
    powerful pro-Israeli lobby in France is very much annoyed with the
    rising influence of the 5 million French Muslims in French society and
    politics, and has been stirring the extreme right against Muslims. On
    Nov. 29, 2009, in a Swiss referendum in which 53 percent of the
    electorate voted, 57 percent of voters voted to ban the building of
    minarets in Switzerland, a country of 7.5 million with some 400,000
    Muslims and just four mosques. French Foreign Minister Bernard
    Kouchner reflected the general public opinion in Europe and elsewhere
    when he said he described himself as shocked and affronted by the vote
    and called for the ban to be reversed. Days later (on Dec. 9), French
    President Sarkozy wrote a column in the Le Monde daily defending the
    vote. The recent call by Sarkozy's UMP for a national debate on Muslim
    religious practices in France, raising the banner of Islam's threat to
    secular French values, and the ban on the Muslim veil are all
    indications that Sarkozy is utilizing Islamophobia to get re-elected
    as president for a second term, using the tragedy of the Armenians in
    the Ottoman Empire a century ago as a part of this hypocritical but
    dangerous game.

    The English saying that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones
    could not be more applicable to Sarkozy's France. The country has an
    infamous record of genocide, committed by both the French monarchical
    and republican regimes. It suffices to say in this regard that the
    colonial French power was an equal partner of the British Empire in
    the genocide that was committed against the indigenous population of
    America. This well documented genocide reduced the pre-16th century
    population of 30 million to only 500,000 in 1908. The French colonial
    power has committed more genocide in Southeast Asia and Africa than
    any other European power. This led to the death and enslavement of
    millions of native people in those regions. French colonial policy was
    particularly known for its brutality and attempts to uproot people
    from their lands and for pursuing policies of cultural and physical
    genocide to turn the natives into cultured French people, eliminating
    those who resisted.

    Taking a look at Algeria from 1830-1962

    A close examination of French policy in Algeria during the years
    1830-1962, for example, proves that it fits well into the definition
    of genocide as mentioned in the Convention on the Prevention and
    Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948: It is the deliberate and
    systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic group.
    During the four decades of their colonial rule no less than 70 percent
    of Algerians were either killed, uprooted, maimed or forcibly
    assimilated, and 90 percent of the land was confiscated and given to
    French settlers and collaborators, comprising no more than 10 percent
    of the population. Had it not been for the Algerian resistance and the
    external aid coming from Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and the Soviet
    bloc, Algerians would have suffered the same fate as Native Americans.

    While French leaders enjoy lecturing Turkish officials on the
    necessity of recognizing the alleged Armenian genocide, they, for the
    most part, refuse to recognize the genocide in Algeria. In February
    2005, France's ambassador to Algeria, Yves Colin de Verdière, formally
    apologized for the Sétif and the Guelma massacres in which 45,000
    Algerians were slaughtered in only a few days, calling it an
    `inexcusable tragedy.' It was the most explicit comment by the French
    state on the massacres. This apology contains the word `tragedy,' not
    genocide.

    President of Algeria Abdelaziz Bouteflika has described the Sétif
    massacre as being part of a wider campaign of `genocide' perpetrated
    during the Algerian War by the French occupational forces. This was
    swiftly denounced by the French government and by various French
    historians. On July 5, 2011 the Algerian Minister of Mujahideen (war
    veterans) Mohamed Cherif Abbes urged the government to introduce a new
    law for criminalizing French colonial practices in Algeria. This
    debate in Algiers infuriated the French government, which threatened
    to take far-reaching measures against Algeria. The government in
    Algiers was forced to withdraw the bill

    The most appropriate action that the Turkish government needs to take
    is not cutting commercial and other ties with France as this will
    create tensions in Europe that will only play into the hands of
    Sarkozy. It would be most appropriate to host an international
    conference on the French genocide in Algeria. Many French and Algerian
    scholars would be glad to attend. The recommendations of this
    conference may serve to address the issue in other forums.


    * Dr. Othman Ali, Ph.D., is the head of the Turkish-Kurdish Studies
    Centre in Arbil, Iraq.


    From: Baghdasarian
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