Thursday, October 11, 2007
Vote on Armenian history
Linenthal's book touched on the controversy about whether to call what happened in Armenia in the early 20th c. a "genocide." Apparently, a resolution to do just that is making its way through Congress, and the controversy is significant. Here's the article from today's Times.
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This has been an issue for many, many years. The French government passed a similar resolution in 2000 labeling the Turkish actions in the early 20th century as "genocide," which led to fierce Turkish protests.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/monitoring/media_reports/1013659.stm
The discussion about whether to use the word "genocide" is, of course, always highly politicized. In this case, members of the German and the U.S. government as well as European politicians have said openly that Turkey is so important of a trade/military partner that it must not be alienated by a genocide resolution.
In France, however, there is a large Armenian minority, which made it somewhat easier for such a resolution to pass in the parliament. The French parliament even decided in 2006 to make genocide denial a crime:
http://www.caucaz.com/home_eng/breve_contenu.php?id=269
I do not think though that the law has come into force yet.
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