Monday 26 December 2011

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE AND THE WESTERN DEFINITION OF CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

Does the fact that France has rhetorically acknowledged some of its crimes when it had colonized Algeria, Indochina and sub-Sahara Africa excuse them? If that is the case, why not hold that standard regarding Nazi Germany and the holocaust? Moreover, is this an issue about who has done what and who has acknowledged what, or one of Sarkozy cynically, though very cleverly, baiting Erdogan, in essence forcing him him to take the bait, so that Sarkozy can score politically back home and distract from essential economic and social issues? This is hardball international politics sinisterly used to serve a domestic agenda, and it has absolutely nothing to do with Armenian victims of genocide.

Article VI of the Nuremberg Court includes a) Crimes against peace b) war crimes, and c) crimes against humanity, while the UN General Assembly Resolution #96 in 1946 followed the legal path of Nuremberg to define genocide, a term that the Nuremberg court used at times to refer to the holocaust. There are Turkish nationals who argue that Armenians were collaborating with the invading Russian against Muslim Turks, thus the Ottoman government was engaging the Armenians in the same manner as it would foreign combatants. This perspective notwithstanding, the Ottoman regime is guilty of crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity (with regard to the Armenians), though not to the degree of Nazi Germany, and perhaps not even to the degree of France. The question is whether under Nuremberg and UN GEN/Assembly #96 (1), France is as guilty as the Ottoman Turks with regard to Algeria, Indochina and Africa.


It is immoral and utterly naive (or opportunistic, politically-motivated) for anyone to make a claim that Sarkozy's move has even a fiber of morality about it. On the contrary, it is a moral affront to the memory of the Armenian genocide victims that Sarkozy and his followers are using the issue in such a manner. I believe that there would hell to raise by many Western governments and people if he used the Holocaust in a similar manner. But who really cares in the West that a Muslim country is on the receiving end of the politics of cynicism and manipulation?

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