Despite int’l recognition, why Turkey insists on denying Armenian genocide

Ahmed Sami Abdel-Fatah

Relations between France and Turkey have recently been strained over the French recognition of the Armenian genocide and marking April 24 of every year to commemorate its memory, the matter which disturbed Ankara.

France was the first major European country to recognize the massacres as genocide in 2001. Turkey disputes the description, saying the toll has been inflated and considers those killed to be victims of a civil war.

April 24, 1915, is considered the start of the World War I-era massacres of ten of thousands of Armenians by Ottoman Turks.

According to Armenian historians, up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Turks during World War I, and their assets appropriated by Kemal Ataturk to establish the Turkish republic in 1923.

In a historic move, the French Senate has passed a bill making it illegal to deny that the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in 1915 Turkey was genocide. Therefor, Turkey threatened to impose more, “permanent” sanctions on France if the bill was passed by the Senate

The bill, which will punish denial with a year’s jail and a fine of up to 45,000 euros ($58,000), was supported by both the ruling conservatives and the opposition socialists.

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) insists on denying the Armenian genocide for several reasons; most importantly because the party lives on the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, as it tries to present itself as a mean to revive the power of the fallen empire, which means that it took advantage of the “Ottoman Empire” to achieve political gains in Turkey.

The AK Party believes that recognizing the Armenian genocide will challenge the history and credibility of the Ottoman Empire, especially since it was a religion-based empire.

In other words, Turkey is criticizing the Dutch role in the Bosnian war, as well as the French in Rwanda and Algeria, but if Turkey recognizes its massacres against the Armenians, it will not be able to direct criticism against any of these countries.

Turkey used this color of criticism to limit the western role in current crises in the Middle East region.

Perhaps in case opposition parties reached authority, Turkey’s attitude might change, especially that Liberal parties are always often more inclined towards their principles and find nothing wrong with refuting and criticizing the past in order to draw lessons from it.

Moreover, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) see that the Ottoman Empire occupied many areas in the world and caused a major deterioration in civil and social conditions in the countries of the Middle East after taking over the natural resources of these countries.

France and Austria were accorded the right to defend Roman Catholics residing in the empire and in 1774, after a disastrous defeat of the Ottomans by Russia, Catherine the Great became the guardian of the far more numerous Orthodox Christians. Therefore, Turkey says the conditions required to name a genocide did not exist with the Armenians.

Under the cover of WWI, Turkey’s government destroyed 1.5 million people attempting to create a land with one language and religion, however, Turkey is claiming that this was the result of a mere civil war.