ARMENIAN U.S.: the other side: samplings

tulay luciano [tulayluciano@yahoo.com]
Subject: U.S.: the other side: samplings

Dear Friends:

I think it would be interesting to know what the other side is up to, and what kind of recommendations it is getting. I hope you will find the three sections I will summarize very interesting and eye opening. This book fell into my lap when I was searching the statewide database REQUEST. I obtained it through the interlibrary loan.

Looking backward, moving forward: confronting the Armenian Genocide, ed. by Richard G. Hovannisian. Transaction Publishers, 2003.301 pp. Every article includes notes. Most sections are the papers presented to the conference: The Armenian Genocide and Historical memory: challenge of the Twenty-First Century” organized by UCLA”s Armenian Educational Foundation chair in Modern Armenian History held at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2000.

Joe Verhoeven: the Armenian Genocide and International Law. pp. 137-155.
(Note: Joe Verhoeven is a professor at the Universite de Paris II and was ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice in the case of “Uganda versus Congo”.)

“Established fact” is a legal term.

“It is not for a judge or any other political authority to establish the truth in case facts or situations are disputed between contesting parties. As far as the judge is concerned, his task is to decide whether to take a given fact or situation as having been established….there exists some judicial or political truth that cannot…be confused with historical truth…”

As far as I understand from his paper, there are three international courts: 1. International Court of Justice (ICJ): the judicial organ of the United Nations, 2. International Criminal Court, 3. European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Because Turkey’s consent is needed and Turkey would not give such a consent for the above named courts, he concludes that “the prospect of having the Armenian Genocide officially recognized or of receiving compensation remains legally weak.” So what to do? Copy the Jews. After fifty years of holocaust, they could get their compensation. “…the victims, invoking some natural law of a new kind independent of the political interests of any state, organize so as to negotiate a settlement effectively and that public opinion – some influential public authorities – be influenced so as to sustain and reinforce the legitimacy of their claim.”

Henry C. Theriault: Denial and Free Speech: The Case of the Armenian Genocide. (pp.231-261).
(Note: Henry C. Theriault is assistant professor of philosophy at Worcester State College and a coordinator of the College’s Center for the Study of Human Rights.)

Heath Lowry takes a frontal assault in this paper.

Theriault‘s article should be read in its entirety. He mainly focuses on academia. He wants to block the voices of the deniers of “Armenian Genocide”. This is a long article. I will mention some of his points.

Here are some of his reasons:

There should be no freedom for the deniers, because academic freedom devolves into academic relativism, which turns itself into the form of historical relativism.

It is a form of hate speech. Hate speech incites discrimination and violence.

Denial is dishonest advertisement.

Therefore, he proposes:

1. Use the hate speech code in universities, colleges, scholarly associations, school systems to ban deniers of Armenian Genocide. A guilty person should get the order to cease and desist.

2. Laws and regulations should target statements that deny the Armenian Genocide.

3. A person who is “genuinely ignorant” should get education as opposed to legal action.

4. Take them to the court. Put the deniers on the defensive..

5. Enacting a law or a rule barring denial is difficult. But it would put Turkey in the contradiction how it uses censorship, physical violence, even assassinations in Turkey.

6. It is difficult to pass laws against denial in the American Congress. The solution: Enact laws locally. It would be symbolic and educational.

7. Work with other victim groups.

8. Employ university proceedings against the deniers.

Fatma Muge Gocek: Reconstructing the Turkish Historiography on the Armenian massacres and Deaths of 1915. pp. 209-230.

Note: She is associate .prof. of sociology and women studies at the University of Michigan. This article is a summary of her manuscript.

She is looking forward to “post-nationalist” stage so that 1915 massacres may be “formally” and “officially” recognized. This would happen only if Turkey” severs the connection between the Turkish military and the nation-state.”