Turkey Human Rights Group Disappointed in ECHR Decision, Urges Appeal
Human Rights Association of Turkey Urges Switzerland to Appeal European Court Decision on Genocide Denial
ISTANBUL, Turkey (A.W.)–The Human Rights Association (HRA) in Turkey
issued a letter addressed to the Swiss Minister of Justice, expressing
the organization’s disappointment with the decision of the European
Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Armenian Genocide denial.
“As human rights defenders in Turkey, we are the most immediate, most
direct witnesses of how the denial of the genocide against Amenians and
other Christian ethnic groups of Asia Minor has right from the start
generated an anti-democratic system, allowing racist hatred, hate crimes
and violation of the freedom of expression and the human rights in
general,” argued HRA in a copy of the letter received by the Armenian
Weekly.
HRA concluded: “In the name of human rights, of the struggle against
racist hatred and of justice in Turkey and elsewhere, we would like to
express our belief that the Swiss Court’s decision to penalize Doğu
Perinçek’s denialism was a step to protect us all, the entire humanity
against racism, and our heartfelt support to Swiss Court’s exercising
its right to appeal against the ECHR decision dated 17 December 2013.”
Below is the full text of the letter.
***
To:
Mrs. Simonetta Sommaruga
Minister of Justice and Police of the Swiss Confederation
Prof. Dr. Frank Schürmann
Chief of the Division European Law and International Protection of Human Rights, the Federal Office for Justice
We, as the Human Rights Association in Turkey (HRA), are writing this
letter to you to express our disappointment at the European Court of
Human Rights’ (ECHR) decision dated 17 December 2013 rejecting the Swiss
court decisions of 2007 to penalize Doğu Perinçek’s denial of the
Armenian genocide and our unconditional and firm support of Swiss
jurisdiction’s using its right to appeal against ECHR’s decision.
As human rights defenders in Turkey, we are the most immediate, most
direct witnesses of how the denial of the genocide against Armenians and
other Christian ethnic groups of Asia Minor has right from the start
generated an anti-democratic system, allowing racist hatred, hate crimes
and violation of the freedom of expression and the human rights in
general.
In the case of the successive governments of the Republic of Turkey,
the ultra-nationalists and the Turkish public loyal to the official
thesis, denial is not just to say “We didn’t do it” or “What we did was
no genocide.” Here in Turkey denial means criminalizing the victims and
encouraging hatred towards Armenians. In other words denial becomes the
continuation of the genocide and the genocidal intent in Turkey. In
order to deny the genocide, the system argues and urges the society to
believe that:
(i) It is the Armenians to blame, i.e., they deserved what they got.
(ii) Armenians are the enemies of Turkish people.
(iii) Armenians stabbed the Ottomans and the Turks in
the back, they are treacherous and what was done to them was a war-time
necessity for the survival of Turkey.
(iv) Armenians, both at home and abroad, are still a threat to the Republic of Turkey and Turks.
Not a passive, peaceful denial but aggressive onslaught
Consequently in Turkey denial is not just a passive position, but it
is an active aggression, creating a racist environment fully exposed to
sheer violence. This has paved the way for Armenians in Turkey to be
treated as a “fifth column” throughout the Republican history, to be
discriminated against, to be destined to lead their lives in constant
fear as their lives were threatened during various nationalist upheavals
and pogroms that took place during the Republican period. The word
“Armenian” has become a word of curse so widespread to include an
interior minister of the Republic who openly used it in public (in 1997
by Meral Akşener). This racist hateful environment led to not only
verbal but physical assaults on Armenians. Hrant Dink, the chief editor
of Agos, the first and only Armenian weekly newspaper published
in Turkish in Republican history, and a prominent supporter of human
rights, democracy and freedom of expression was assassinated in cold
blood in 2007, although he had always been against hatred and animosity
on the part of Armenians towards Turks, advocating instead a
reconciliatory stance of mutual understanding. The Armenian private
Sevag Şahin Balıkçı, was shot dead on 24 April 2011 (i.e. on the day
when Armenians worldwide commemorate the beginning of the genocide of
1915) while doing his military service in the Turkish army in southeast
province Batman by another Turkish private. The investigation leading to
trial was totally untrustworthy, as the witnesses’ superiors putting
pressure on them to confirm the suspect’s statement that it was an
“accident” was reported in the newspapers. The court decided that the
intentional murder was a result of “gross carelessness,” disregarding
all evidence that it was a hate crime, and sentenced the suspect to only
5 years’ imprisonment. Another incident took place on 26 February 2012
when, orchestrated by Turkish and Azerbaijani governments, a big
demonstration took place on Taksim square, the largest and most central
square in Istanbul, for condemning the “Khojaly Genocide,” the massacre
of civilians in Karabagh that Armenian and former Soviet troops
allegedly committed ten years before. During the rally, which was
announced days before by means of posters bearing the slogan: “Don’t
believe Armenian lies” posted all throughout Istanbul, anti-Armenian
slogans containing hate speech were chanted and professionally printed
signs that read “You are all Armenians, you are all bastards” were
carried, in reaction to the slogan “We are all Armenians,” which had
been chanted at the funeral of Hrant Dink. In 2013, within one and a
half month, four elderly Armenian women were attacked in Samatya, a
neighborhood with a high agglomeration of Armenians, cruelly beaten,
until one of them died from heavy beating with numerous deep fatal cuts
on her body inflicted by a sharp object. In short, persistent denial of
genocide is the main reason for the Armenians’ threatened existence in
Turkey, a reason provided by the official narrative itself.
On the other hand, the ECHR decision establishes that the Armenian
genocide is somehow disputable, arguing that the denial of events which
are not qualified as a genocide cannot provoke racist hatred.
However this is not what Doğu Perinçek and the “Talaat Pasha
Committee” (named after Talaat, the main author of the Armenian
genocide), of which he is one of the leaders have been doing since the
Committee’s inception. They deny all the sufferings and horrible
massacres—genocide or not—and thus openly insult the victims and their
descendants. They deny all the sufferings of the Armenian people under
Turkish rule and declare that what had happened to them is an
“imperialist lie.” They deny the extermination of the Armenian people
and their civilization, playing a vital role in the Ottoman Empire not
only demographically, but economically, culturally. In other words, it
is not a question of naming what happened to Armenians, it is a question
of denying their very existence, their historical heritage and the
enormous contribution they made to the country they were an integral
part of.
Talaat Pasha Committee already condemned by the European Parliament
Perhaps most important of all, is the European Parliament’s
resolution dated 27 September 2006 on the EC Progress Report on Turkey,
where Turkey was called to put an end to the racist and xenophobic
Talaat Pasha Committee’s activities. The according paragraph reads: “[The
European Parliament] strongly condemns the xenophobic and racist Talaat
Pacha Committee, run by extreme right-wing organisations, for gravely
infringing European principles, and the denialist demonstrations in Lyon
and Berlin organised by those same organisations; calls on Turkey to
abolish this committee and to end its activities.” (See: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P6-TA-2006-0381+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN#def_1_2)
It is clear that the Talaat Pasha Committee where Doğu Perinçek was
one of the founders and leaders was condemned with the above words by
the European Parliament itself. We, as the human rights defenders of
Turkey would expect the ECHR to take into consideration the European
Parliament’s official views as referred to above.
Coming back to the ECHR decision, we would like to draw your
attention to the opposing opinion of two ECHR judges. The main arguments
in their dissenting opinion were (paraphrased by ourselves in English
based on the original document in French) as follows:
- To accuse the victims of distorting history is an invitation to most
violent racist defamation and hate. The sufferings of an Armenian due
to the Ottoman Empire’s genocide policy is not less serious than those
of a Jew under the Nazi’s genocidal policies. Denial of the Meds Yeghern
(“Great enormity,” i.e. “infamous crime” in Armenian) is not less
dangerous than the denial of Shoah.
- The defendant has openly denied the Armenian genocide as an
“international lie,” accused the Armenian people of aggression towards
the Turkish state and stated that he supported Talaat Pasha’s ideas. His
statements provoke a grave intolerance and hatred against a defenseless
minority. The Defendant declared that he would never recognize the
Armenian genocide even if an expert or academic committee decides on the
existence of such a genocide.
- Expressions such as “international lie,” “historic lie,”
“imperialist lie” obviously go beyond the acceptable boundaries of
freedom [of] expression, because these expressions declare the victims
to be “liars” and suggest an international conspiracy against Turkey or
Turks. Besides, D. Perinçek’s identification with a major genocide
perpetrator, who in 1919 was sentenced to death for crimes against
humanity by an Ottoman court makes the situation even more repugnant.
The dissenting judges refer in their statement to our Association’s
press release of 24 April 2006 (the commemoration of the Armenian
Genocide) as follows (again a paraphrase of the original document in
French):
“Tolerance to denialism is to ‘kill the victims for the second
time,’ as Elie Wiesel puts it, or ‘denialism is part of the genocide and
enables the perpetuation of the genocide. Denial of genocide is in
itself a violation of human rights,” as Human Rights Association,
Turkey, had declared in their press release dated 24 April 2006 for the
commemoration of the Armenian Genocide.”
Talaat Pasha Committee: an organisation of violent action
Genocide denial, as indicated above, directly contributes to the
racist hatred environment in Turkey. Furthermore, the Talaat Pasha
Committee is anything else than an organisation of peaceful “thought,”
or a think tank. It operates on active, sometimes violent militant
denialism. Members of the Labour Party led also by Doğu Perinçek
have raided and sabotaged meetings related to the Armenian “question.”
In 2005 for the first time in Turkey a conference had been organised
with the title “Ottoman Armenians during the decline of the Ottoman
Empire.” Although the term genocide didn’t appear neither in the
conference title, nor in any of the papers presented there, the Labour Party
militants, who would soon become part of the Talaat Pasha Committee
demonstrated outside the conference building, shouting denialist slogans
and hatred towards the organizers, throwing eggs and tomatoes against
those who left the conference. The Committee organised demonstrations in
2007 in France, Germany and Switzerland to protest against “Armenian
genocide lies,” insulting genocide victims’ memories, hurting the
feelings of their children and grandchildren. Doğu Perinçek’s Labour
Party members had in 2009 also staged a demonstration against our press
conference in Ankara. The meeting was hosted by our association HRA and
the Ankara Initiative for Freedom of Expression on Friday June 26, 2009.
Our guests were Lord Avebury, the then vice-chairman of the Human
Rights Group in the British Parliament, and historian Ara Sarafian from
the Gomidas Institute, London, the publisher of the uncensored edition
(2000; 2005) of the 1916 parliamentary “Blue Book,” titled The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915-16, a collection of first-hand testimonies of the Armenian genocide
compiled by Viscount Bryce and Arnold Toynbee. In the press conference
it was declared that the copies of the Turkish translation of the book
were sent to the members of the Turkish Parliament (who in 2005 had
signed a letter to the British Parliament arguing that the Blue Book was
a wartime propaganda material and a mere fabrication, and for that
reason the current British parliament should formally withdraw it) “in
an effort to enable them to be better informed about their subject
matter.” While the press conference was going on, the Labour Party
members gathered in front of our Human Rights Association offices in
Ankara, chanted slogans against “false Armenian genocide allegations,”
harassing and alarming both the audience and our guests from abroad,
Sarafian and Lord Avebury. In the meantime, the copies of the “Blue
Book” sent were not delivered to the Turkish parliamentarians, thus it
became clear that the Turkish Grand National Assembly refused to discuss
the witness reports in the book.
ECHR decision encouraged racist denialism
What is very alarming and unacceptable is that the ECHR’s decision to
acquit Doğu Perinçek has fueled hostility against Armenians in Turkey.
The Talaat Pasha Committee held a meeting for the first time after many
years, on 19 January 2014, on the 7th anniversary of Hrant Dink’s
assassination. The headline of the press report read: “This is only a
beginning. New victories are on the way!” It is reported that Doğu
Perinçek, sentenced to 117 years’ imprisonment in Turkey, had reportedly
sent a message to the meeting saying: “We will now get out of the
circle [that limits our mobility] and encircle/besiege Turkey’s enemies
and win victories on every front.” In the statement issued during this
meeting the Committee misled the Turkish public by claiming that the
ECHR decision had confirmed that the Armenian genocide was a lie,
whereas in fact the Court only ruled that the Armenian genocide is open
to debate and its denial was within the boundaries of freedom of speech.
Members of Doğu Perinçek’s Labour Party reappeared right after the
ECHR decision and ambushed a meeting on 1 February 2014 organised by
“Say Stop to Racism and Nationalism” initiative with the topic “Why
should states apologize?” chanting denialist slogans such as “Armenian
Genocide: an American Lie.”
We call on the the Swiss authorities to appeal against ECHR decision
The reason for us to take your time and give an account of the
denialist history of Doğu Perinçek and the Talaat Pasha Committee, is to
underline that denial of genocide cannot be considered as a simple
disagreement of views. This land that is now Turkey, was a land where at
the turn of the 19th century one of every 5 residents was a Christian,
corresponding to the 20% of the overall population. Now the proportion
is below 0.01%! Under these circumstances denialism, which is woven in
the very texture of the society, provokes racism and hatred against
Armenians, threatens those who challenge the official theses and
constitutes one of the biggest obstacles to democratization which is a
precondition of Turkey’s membership to EU. In this context we would also
like to quote the European Parliament’s resolution of 1987 in which the
acknowledgment of the Armenian genocide was named as a pre-condition
for Turkey’s admission to the EU. (see http://www.europarl.europa.eu/intcoop/euro/pcc/aag/pcc_meeting/resolutions/1987_07_20.pdf)
In view of the above we, as the Human Rights Association in Turkey,
in the name of human rights, of the struggle against racist hatred and
of justice in Turkey and elsewhere, we would like to express our belief
that the Swiss Court’s decision to penalize Doğu Perinçek’s denialism
was a step to protect us all, the entire humanity against racism and our
heartfelt support to Swiss Court’s exercising its right to appeal
against the ECHR decision dated 17 December 2013.
Sincerely yours,
Öztürk Türkdoğan
Chairman,
Human Rights Association
TURKEY
