Tag: genocide in Algeria

  • Turkey / France / Genocide Denial / Raphael Lemkin

    Turkey / France / Genocide Denial / Raphael Lemkin

    Turkey / France / Genocide Denial / Raphael Lemkin

    Genocide Denial Bans: What Would Raphael Lemkin Do?

    By Douglas S. Irvin

    “The French Senate’s recent decision to criminalize denial of the 1915 Armenian Genocide prompted backlash from the Turkish government and charges of hypocrisy. While Turkey officially denies the systematic destruction of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire, in Turkey, a common response to the French ban on Armenian genocide deniers is that French occupation of Algeria constituted genocide. Many find it strange to equate the two. The Armenian genocide appears to be the prototype of violent attempts to destroy entire groups of people. France certainly didn’t attempt to kill all of the Algerians. How could they compare? To answer this question, it serves us to investigate the origins of the term. In his 1944 ‘Axis Rules in Occupied Europe,’ Raphael Lemkin, the man who coined the term ‘genocide,’ described the concept as ‘a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.’ Genocide had two phases: ‘One, the destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group; the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor.’ This destruction of groups could be equally waged through economic policy, the law, or violence. Thus for Lemkin, the Nazi occupation of Europe, Stalin’s attempts to destroy the Ukrainian people through religious persecution and famine, the Belgian colonization of Congo, and the Ottoman massacres of Armenians were all genocide. They were not genocide because of the killing that occurred, but because they were all purposeful attempts to destroy the way of life of the oppressed. On the Algerian genocide, Lemkin wrote that a nation-wide campaign of violence and torture targeted Algerian national consciousness while colonial land and resource policy brought decimating poverty and disease upon the Algerian population. He believed these coordinated policies were purposeful attempts by the French colonial government to destroy Algerian culture. This was no different from the Ottoman Empire’s genocide of the Armenians, Lemkin believed.

    Under the UN’s current definition, it would be hard to define the French rule in Algeria as genocide. But if we go back to the roots of the concept and pay attention to Lemkin’s ideas, those in Turkey who charge the French with hypocrisy make a valid point. Let us be fair, we all live in states built on bones. In the US, we hide our genocide in plain sight, calling it manifest destiny. Kill the Indian and save the man, from sea to shining sea. What would Lemkin do if he heard this debate about criminalizing the denial of genocide? He would probably point to the genocides both governments are currently facilitating either tacitly or directly, from Libya and Iraq to Congo. Instead of fretting over criminalizing the denial of past genocides, our governments should be criminalizing the support of current genocides. […]”

    via GENOCIDE STUDIES MEDIA FILE: Turkey / France / Genocide Denial / Raphael Lemkin.

  • Algerian Islamist party backs Turkey over genocide row

    Algerian Islamist party backs Turkey over genocide row

    Algerian Islamist party backs Turkey over genocide row

    AlgeriaIslamists1

    An Algerian Islamist party on Sunday sprang to the defence of Turkey’s prime minister after Algeria’s leader criticised Ankara for exploiting France’s oppression of Algerians during the colonial period.

    Bouguerra Soltani, head of the Social Movement for Peace (MSP) party, backed Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan after he was criticised by Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia.

    Turkey has accused France of hypocrisy for pushing a bill that would make it a crime for anyone to deny that the 1915-17 killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks amounted to genocide.

    Erdogan has argued that France is turning a blind eye to its own colonial-era killings in Algeria, at the end of World War II and during the north African nation’s struggle for independence between 1954 and 1962.

    “An estimated 15 percent of the Algerian population was massacred by the French from 1945 onwards,” Erdogan has said. “This is a genocide.”

    Ouyahia implicity rebuked him in remarks Saturday.

    Every country had the right to defend its interests, he said, but “nobody has the right to make the blood of Algerians their business”.

    Ouyahia noted that Turkey had been a member of NATO during the independence war in Algeria and as such had provided material support to France.

    “We say to our (Turkish) friends: Stop making capital out of Algeria’s colonisation,” he added.

    But Soltani said Sunday: “We don’t accept anyone saying that Erdogan is making the blood of Algerians their business,” he told reporters.

    “We have a historic cause,” he added.

    “Colonialism killed 5.5 million Algerians, 1.5 million of them during the (1954-1962) liberation war…,” he said, referring to the legacy of French occupation from 1830.

    When someone spoke up about your cause, he added, you should thank them rather than criticising them.

    Erdogan had asked nothing of Algeria, he added.

    “He just told France ‘You say that Turkey exterminated the Armenians in 1915, I am reminding you that you exterminated the Algerians’.

    “We support all those who call for France to officially acknowledge the crimes of colonial France and to apologise to and compensate the victims,” he added.

    He denounced Ouyahia’s comments as “a service rendered to France”.

    Algerian historians say that a French crackdown on a protest in the east Algerian city of Setif on May 8, 1945, to call for an end to French colonial rule, left 45,000 people dead.

    Western researchers put the death toll at between 8,000 and 18,000.

    The French lower house approved the genocide bill December 22 and the Senate is expected to vote on it by the end of January.

    If it is enacted, anyone denying that the 1915-1917 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turk forces amounted to genocide, could face jail time.

    © 2011 AFP

    via Algerian Islamist party backs Turkey over genocide row < French news | Expatica France.

  • Turkey accuses France of genocide in Algeria

    Turkey accuses France of genocide in Algeria

    Turkey has responded to French genocide allegations with a charge of its own, accusing France of committing genocide during its colonial occupation of Algeria.

    Turkey’s accusation on Friday, comes a day after French legislators voted to outlaw denial of the 1915 Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey, now threatening to cause a huge rift between the two countries.

    Personalising the standoff, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on live television that the father of French President Nicolas Sarkozy might have direct knowledge about French “massacres” in Algeria where Algerians were “martyred mercilessly” and “en masse”.

    “In Algeria from 1945, an estimated 15 per cent of the population was massacred by the French. This is a genocide. The Algerians were burned en masse in ovens. They were martyred mercilessly,” Erdogan said.

    “If the French President Mr Sarkozy doesn’t know about this genocide he should go and ask his father, Paul Sarkozy. “His father served in the French Legion in Algeria in the 1940s. I am sure he would have lots to tell his son about the French massacres in Algeria,” the Turkish premier said.

    ‘Never been to Algeria’

    Sarkozy’s father – actually named Pal – told BFM TV the comments were ‘completely ridiculous’.

    “I have never been to Algeria. I’ve never been beyond Marseille and I was in the foreign legion for just four months,” he said.

    Speaking in Prague where he attended the funeral of former Czech President Vaclav Havel, Nicolas Sarkozy responded calmly to Erdogan’s comments.

    “I respect the convictions of our Turkish friends. It is a great country with a great civilisation, (but) it has to respect our convictions,” the president said.

    Alain Juppe, French foreign minister, described Turkey’s reaction as “in all likelihood excessive”, but struck a conciliatory tone.

    “There are many reasons to keep alive a relationship of trust and friendship between France and Turkey,” Juppe said, adding that personally he had not been in favour of the vote.

    Turkish Anger

    The French bill, which will be debated in the Senate next year, has caused outrage in Turkey, which argues killings took place on all sides during a fierce partisan conflict.

    Erdogan condemned the bill shortly after the vote, suggesting Sarkozy was angling for ethnic Armenian votes in next year’s presidential election. He recalled Ankara’s ambassador to France for consultations and cancelled all joint economic, political and military meetings.

    On Friday, he vowed to take more steps.

    “We will take gradual measures as long as the current [French] attitude is maintained,” he said without elaborating, but added Turkey’s stance was not directed at the French people.

    “The vote in the French parliament has shown how dangerous racism, discrimination and Islamophobia have become in France and Europe.”

    Faced with Sarkozy’s open hostility to Turkey’s stagnant bid to join the European Union, and backed by a fast-growing economy, Ankara feels it has little to lose in a political fight with Paris.

    Economic Muscle

    The country’s economy minister weighed in late on Thursday, saying the genocide bill was based on “a crisis of jealousy”.

    “There are nearly 1,000 French capital investors in Turkey. Created on the basis of trust and belief in the Turkish economy, these investments are as secure as our own investments,” Zafer Caglayan said in a written statement.

    “However … the Turkish people are very sensitive regarding this issue and this cannot be ignored.”

    Largely unaffected by the financial crisis dogging Western European countries, Turkey has been increasingly flexing its economic and political muscle on the world stage. France could experience some diplomatic discomfort and French firms could lose out on lucrative Turkish contracts.

    “The French were warned. Turkey is showing it won’t be pushed around and that Turkey is no longer desperate for EU accession, i.e. it has other options,” said Timothy Ash, an economist at the Royal Bank of Scotland.

    “Arguably Turkey now has far more vibrancy than Western Europe. There is a deep vein of opinion in Turkey that continental European opposition to Turkish EU accession is not based on rational, objective reasoning, but more like old-style stereotypes.”

    France is Turkey’s fifth biggest export market and the sixth biggest source of its imports.

    via Turkey accuses France of genocide in Algeria.

  • Turkey’s Leader Counters French Law With Accusations of Colonial-Era Genocide

    Turkey’s Leader Counters French Law With Accusations of Colonial-Era Genocide

    turkey articleLarge
    Daniel Etter for The New York Times

    Posters of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose role in advancing Turkey’s economy and society have won him wide admiration in the Arab world.

    By DAN BILEFSKY

    ISTANBUL — In a deepening diplomatic rupture, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey accused France on Friday of genocide against Algerians in the period of French colonial rule, one day after France made it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Turks.

    “Approximately 15 percent of the population in Algeria have been subjected to a massacre by the French starting from 1945,” Mr. Erdogan said of the French dominion, which ended in 1962. “This is genocide.”

    Mr. Erdogan’s sharp remarks seemed to severely dent Turkey’s already fraught talks on joining the European Union. But more immediately, they underscored concerns both at home and abroad that Turkey’s expansive new sense of self-confidence — buttressed by its emerging role as a leader in the Middle East — might be tipping into arrogance, threatening to alienate allies and foes at a critical time.

    Turkey halted diplomatic consultations and military dealings with France on Thursday after the lower house of the French Parliament backed the bill, which would impose a fine of about $58,700 and a year in jail for those who deny the genocide of up to 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1918. Turkish lawmakers also called on France to investigate its own atrocities in Algeria.

    Turkey faces a raft of foreign-policy challenges on its doorstep, any one of which could derail its long-term goal of obtaining regional power status. France, a powerful member of the European Union, has played a leading role in thwarting Turkey’s efforts to join the group, so the latest clash is likely to harden French attitudes even more.

    An increasingly outsize national ego, analysts say, had already helped to fray ties with Europe. With talks to join the union hopelessly stalled, many of Turkey’s 79 million people have greeted the euro crisis with barely concealed glee, saying Europe has rejected them because they are Muslim.

    Closer to home, three of the most volatile states in the world — Syria, Iraq and Iran — are lined up along Turkey’s southern and eastern borders. Syria is already in a state of civil war, and Iraq seems to be flirting once again with sectarian strife and dissolution. Throw in an alienated Kurdish minority combined with an Iran that erupted in 2009 and is now struggling with economic sanctions and inflation, and the possibilities of regional destabilization, mass refugee flows and even war do not seem terribly remote.

    Facing such threats, analysts and diplomats say, Turkey needs to resist the temptation to gloat and swagger. Soli Ozel, professor of international relations at Istanbul’s Kadir Has University, said that European and American economic decline, coupled with the Arab Spring, were magnifying Turkey’s sense of its own importance as it evolves into the model of democracy for the Arab world.

    “Turks are saying, ‘We are now on the rise, you are running out of steam and we don’t have to take any nonsense from Westerners,’ ” he said. But he added, “There is a fine line between self-confidence and hubris.”

    Turkey and its charismatic prime minister, Mr. Erdogan, could be forgiven for displaying some vanity. He has overhauled a country once haunted by military coups into a regional democratic powerhouse. He is so popular in the Arab world that there has been a surge in babies named Tayyip.

    While Turkey’s economy surges — growing by 8.2 percent in the third quarter, second only to China — Europe is sputtering and Greece, a longtime rival, has been flattened by the sovereign debt crisis. With its new clout as a leader in a region long dominated by the United States, Turkey has also been basking in its roles as the voice of regional indignation against Syria and the chief critic of Israel.

    Earlier this month a deputy prime minister boldly lectured Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. that it was Turkey, and not the struggling economies of the United States and Europe, that would win the 21st century.

    “The fast fish, not the big fish, eats the small fish,” said the official, Ali Babacan, who oversees the economy. Challenging his host’s boastful tone, Mr. Biden reminded the audience that in a sea of young sharks, the United States was still the whale.

    Six years ago, Burak Turna, a Turkish writer, was mocked here as a literary shock jock after he wrote a futuristic novel in which Turkish commandos besiege Berlin, lay waste to Europe and take control of the Continent. Now, he says, the same people who once dismissed him are celebrating him. “There is a new air being pumped into the Turkish consciousness,” he said. But, he warned, “We shouldn’t be too brave or overconfident.”

    Indeed, for all of Turkey’s recent achievements, its aim of having “zero problems” with its neighbors has shown few successes.

    Turkish officials tried in vain for months to persuade President Bashar al-Assad of Syria to halt his violent crackdown against civilians, before finally turning against him. Turkey has been unable to resolve conflicts with Cyprus and Armenia. Its recent decision to host a NATO radar installation has rankled Iran. Relations with Israel collapsed after Israeli troops killed nine people aboard a Turkish flotilla trying to break the blockade of Gaza.

    In September, the limits of Turkey’s appeal as a political model were laid bare when Mr. Erdogan told the Egyptian satellite channel Dream TV that secularism was not the enemy of religion and that Egypt should embrace a secular constitution. A spokesman for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, which won first-round parliamentary elections there, told the Egyptian daily Al Ahram that Mr. Erdogan was interfering in Egyptian affairs. (Mr. Erdogan’s aides said the term secularism had been mistranslated as atheism.)

    Nor were many Kosovar Albanians amused in August when Turkey’s minister of education, Omer Dincer, asked his Kosovo counterpart to alter offending paragraphs from history textbooks, which he said insulted the Ottoman Turks. Local historians protested that Turkey was trying to whitewash centuries of Ottoman subjugation.

    The perils of standing in Turkey’s way became abundantly clear at the United Nations during the annual General Assembly meeting of world leaders this fall.

    Mr. Erdogan was on the fourth floor of the General Assembly hall when he learned that the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, whom he ardently supports, was making his address demanding full United Nations membership for Palestine. When Mr. Erdogan rushed to the nearest entrance to take Turkey’s seat on the main floor, a security guard refused to let him pass. When Mr. Erdogan pressed forward, a loud scuffle erupted that was audible four flours below.

    One Western diplomat noted that “the Turks were literally throwing their weight around.”

    Yet Turkey’s many defenders say the West cannot expect Turkey to play regional leader and then criticize it when it flexes its muscles. Moreover, they note, the country is entitled to defend its dignity.

    At the summit meeting of the Group of 20 major economies in Cannes, France, in November, cameras showed Mr. Erdogan suddenly kneeling down when he noticed a sticker of the Turkish flag on the floor to mark the position where he was supposed to stand for a group photo, near President Obama.

    He gently folded it and put it in his pocket.

    Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting.

    A version of this article appeared in print on December 24, 2011, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Turkey’s Leader Counters French Law With Accusations of Colonial-Era Genocide.
  • AFP: Turkey accuses France of genocide in Armenia row

    AFP: Turkey accuses France of genocide in Armenia row

    By Nicolas Cheviron (AFP) – 17 hours ago

    ISTANBUL — The war of words between France and Turkey escalated dramatically on Friday, when the Turkish premier accused Paris of committing genocide in Algeria and of stirring hatred of Muslims.

    Furious that French lawmakers had voted on Thursday to outlaw denial of the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey in 1915, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan hit back directly at France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy.

    Earlier, Turkey’s ambassador to France had left Paris and Ankara had announced diplomatic sanctions — banning political visits between the countries — and frozen military ties between the nominal NATO allies.

    “France massacred an estimated 15 percent of the Algerian population starting from 1945. This is genocide,” Erdogan told reporters, accusing Sarkozy of “fanning hatred of Muslims and Turks for electoral gains.”

    “This vote that took place in France, a France in which five million Muslims live, clearly shows to what point racism, discrimination and Islamophobia have reached dangerous levels in France and Europe,” he said.

    Demonstrators gathered in front of the French consulate in Istanbul, chanting “Down with France” and “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest).

    Paris appeared to have been caught off guard by the fury of Turkey’s response. Sarkozy, in Prague where he was at the funeral of late Czech president Vaclav Havel, was on the defensive.

    “I respect the views of our Turkish friends — it’s a great country, a great civilisation — and they must respect ours,” he said.

    “France does not lecture anyone but France doesn’t want to be lectured. France decides its policy as a sovereign nation. We do not ask for permission. France has its beliefs, human rights, a respect for memory.”

    But back in France, Foreign Minister Alain Juppe admitted that the vote on the genocide law had “without doubt been badly timed”. He urged calm, while adding that “certain declarations have been excessive”.

    France fought a long guerrilla war between 1954 and 1962 to try to hang on to its Algerian colony. Estimates for the number of dead vary wildly. Algeria puts it at more than a million, French historians estimate 250,000.

    Citing earlier French action against Algerian rebels in the aftermath of World War II, Erdogan said Sarkozy’s father Pal Sarkozy had been a French legionnaire and should be able to tell his son of “massacres”.

    But Sarkozy senior appeared on French television to mock this claim, pointing out that he had been in the Foreign Legion for only four months and had never been deployed to Algeria.

    In 1915 and 1916, during World War I many Armenians died in Ottoman Turkey. Armenia says 1.5 million were killed in a genocide. Turkey says around 500,000 died in fighting after Armenians sided with Russian invaders.

    France is home to around 500,000 citizens of Armenian descent and they are seen as a key source of support for Sarkozy and his UMP ahead of presidential and legislative elections in April and June next year.

    France recognised the 1915 killings as genocide in 2001 and on Thursday the National Assembly approved a first step towards a law that would impose a jail term and a 45,000 euro(($60,000) fine on anyone in France who denies this.

    The bill will now go to France’s upper house, the Senate, and could become law next year — although Turkey will lobby hard to prevent this.

    “We are really very sad. Franco-Turkish relations did not deserve this,” Ambassador Tahsin Burcuoglu said before taking a flight home. “When there is a problem it always comes from the French side.

    “The damage is already done. We have been accused of genocide! How could we not overreact? Turkey will never recognise this story of an Armenian genocide. There are limits. A country like Turkey cannot be treated like this.”

    Turkey will now boycott an economic committee meeting in Paris in January — a move that will worry business leaders in both countries fearful for the fate of 12 billion euros ($16 billion) in annual trade.

    And the freeze in military and political ties will hamper France’s ambition to work with fellow NATO power Turkey to bring stability to Afghanistan and Syria and to face down Iran over its nuclear programme.

    Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian thanked France, which had “once again proved its commitment to universal human values”.

    Franco-Turkish relations are often tense — Sarkozy is opposed to allowing Turkey to join the European Union — but 1,000 French firms work there.

    Much of Europe, including France, is facing recession amid a sovereign debt crisis, but Turkey enjoys growth rates in excess of eight percent and, with 78 million people, it is a huge potential market.

    via AFP: Turkey accuses France of genocide in Armenia row.