Algerian Genocide

[FORTUNATO]

I think this is more political decision, the Turkish parlment is debating the close to recognise the crime commited in Algeria by the French Army as "the Algerian genocide"...

Lets see hoe many so called Arabs will follow Turkish exemple, at the end of the Day juridically France took over Algeria, from a Turkish day...or Othoman Bey?!


Between 350,000 and 1.5 million Algerians died during the Algerian War of Independence [2]. Algerians argue that the massacres should be named as genocide and France must apologise to the Algerians[8] [9] However the French do not accept the claims. Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika says that French colonization of his country Algeria was a form of genocide [10] [11] [12]. In memoirs, some French officers have described torture of Algerians during the war. Edouard Sablier, for instance, one of the soldiers who took part in the repression, later described the situation: “Everywhere in the towns there were camps surrounded by barbed wire containing hundreds of suspects who had been arrested… Often, when we set out to inspect an isolated hamlet in the mountains, I heard people say, ‘We should punish them by taking away their crops’.” [13] A paper called Ohé Partisans, published by the French Trotskyists, described Sétif as an “Algerian Oradour”. Oradour was a French town where the Nazi occupiers had murdered over 600 people, including children. [14]

However France has never accepted its responsibility in tortures and massacres in Algeria. Paris says that the past should be left to historians. French President Jacques Chirac, upon harsh reactions to the law encouraging the good sides of the French colonial history, made the statement, "Writing history is the job of the historians, not of the laws." Writing history is the job of the historians" According to Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, "speaking about the past or writing history is not the job of the parliament."[3]

The Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika said in a speech in Paris on 17 April 2006 "Colonisation brought the genocide of our identity, of our history, of our language, of our traditions".[4]


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Turkish Weekly Comment - Algerian Genocide

[Al-khiyal]

Turkish parliament gives up Algerian genocide law

[Al-khiyal]

It is fascinating to see how France, time and again, insists on sticking its refined nose into the affairs of others and preach wisdom to them, instead of dealing with the boiling kettles on its own stove. The law against deniers of the massacre of the Armenian people is still provoking a lively debate in the French press. (France approved the law about two weeks ago by a narrow majority, following an internal debate over the severity of punishment.) In Turkey, the French law pushed intellectuals and writers oppressed by the regime into a corner, compelling them to defend their country.

A day after winning the Nobel Prize, the author Orhan Pamuk hurried to declare that the French law constitutes "a blow to the principles of freedom of expression that France itself instilled." It is a shame, Pamuk said, that France does not leave the Turks to do their own soul-searching, which is occurring in any case. Another Turkish writer, Elif Shafak, was recently brought to trial in Istanbul for allegedly "denigrating Turkish national identity" in her latest novel, "The Bastard of Istanbul," which tells the stories of two families, Turkish and Armenian. In an article in Le Monde, Shafak asked the French to allow her nation to "heal the wounds of its history by itself." Sinan Ulgen, the president of the Turkish think tank Economics and Foreign Policy Studies (EDAM), argued in an article in Le Figaro, that "France is weakening democracy in Turkey."

This phenomenon is familiar to Israeli writers and intellectuals, veterans of the fight against the occupation, who stutter in an attempt to defend their country in the face of a buttressed, superficial, arrogant and self-righteous European stance. And like the French left's attack against Israel, which places doubt on the legitimacy of the state of the Jews, the new legislation derives from a combination of factors: a historical connection (some of the Armenians who were murdered during World War I were accused of spying for France), an elitist lobby of anti-Turkish Armenian immigrants in France, a desire to embarrass Jacques Chirac and weaken the right, and - at least among some of the legislators - an innocent aspiration, though somewhat self-righteous, for tikkun olam [making the world better].

The ones seeking to improve the world argue that the Armenian people have suffered a hardship for 90 years, in addition to what they experienced during World War I. The denials of the massacre are indeed an open wound. Turkey is not only to blame. Most of the world is responsible for belittling the tragedy and shunting it aside. In the soul-searching that has yet to occur here, the children of Holocaust refugees will have to examine why it was uncomfortable for them to recognize the magnitude of the suffering of others. In this sense, the law ostensibly does justice. But this is misleading, and not only because the measure was essentially an internal-political one, but also because even when the French left is correct, it is definitely not smart.

In the introduction to the Hebrew edition of Raymond Aron's "The Algerian Tragedy," Professor Emmanuel Sivan analyzes this symptom: In France, he explains, politicians tend to be "frighteningly cynical - even, and primarily, when speaking loftily about morality - while the intellectuals tend to be detached 'moralists'." (This brings to mind, in particular, Albert Camus and his denial of oppression in Algeria and Jean-Paul Sartre and his support for the USSR in 1956 - A.G.) Thus, the moralists of the French left had little impact on the war crimes perpetrated by France in Algeria, while Aron, a centrist who spoke in the name of realpolitik, significantly contributed to the effort to convince the French to end the occupation.

In the case of the law against deniers of the massacre of the Armenian people, the French left is again ignoring realpolitik. This only serves to muffle the internal Turkish debate that finally began to awaken after years of silence. The French should demonstrate sensitivity for denials. After all, it has only been a few years since they allowed references to the "war" in Algeria and lifted censorship from Gillo Pontecorvo's 1965 film "The Battle of Algiers." Why now of all times, when France is in a tumult over a film exposing a new affair - the (denied) colonial use of North Africans as soldiers in World War II - is it so urgent for the left to focus on the Armenians?

Perhaps it is because of another, concealed motive related to the fear of Turkey's entry to the European Union: the fear of Islam, which the Pope expressed in his native tongue during a visit to his homeland. This fear is the strongest thread motivating politicians in Europe today. The French, who are waging a desperate battle against head scarves and the teenagers in the suburbs, are on the eve of a dramatic election campaign and its perennial X-factor, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who threatens again to conjure up the dark ghosts and fears simmering on the republic's ideological periphery.

An Islamic Turkey frightens the French, and the fear makes them forget smart realpolitik. If Raymond Aron were alive today, perhaps he would explain to the citizens of his country that the order of the day is actually to bring Turkey closer, help it prosper, encourage its democracy, and reinforce the voices of Pamuk and his colleagues. The insult and enmity now engendered in Turkey as a result of the French legislation were unnecessary.

Scratching the other's wounds

[Al-khiyal]

ANKARA - Chairman of Turkish Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Commission Mehmet Dulger and Chairman of EU Adjustment Commission Yasar Yakis objected to the submission of a draft law to the parliament's Justice Commission regarding Algerian genocide, to be debated tomorrow.

"In case of the adoption of a draft on Algerian genocide, we will reduce ourselves into a position like France," said Mehmet Dulger, a deputy of ruling Justice & Development Party (AKP). However, Dulger noted that French products could be boycotted. "We should hurt them. Maybe this way we can let them see the realities," he added.

Responding to a question about 70,000 Armenians working illegally in Turkey, Dulger said "we see this fact as a generosity of Turkish Republic. Moreover 90 percent of MPs in French parliament do not know about Turkish-Armenian relations and its historical dimension".

Yasar Yakis, another deputy of AKP, also objected to the proposal about Algerian genocide.

"If there had been a genocide in Algeria, Algerians themselves should deal with it and pass a legislation. While Algerians have not made such a law, it won't be logic for us to make one," he noted.

Turkish deputies object to Algerian genocide proposal

[Al-khiyal]

The decision by the French National Assembly to make denying the Armenian genocide a punishable offence has raised protest not only in Turkey. Many Algerian intellectuals are also outraged, as al-Khayr Shawar reports from Algiers, quoting theatre critic Ihsan Talilani: "The French attitude is questionable, and demonstrates that French politics employs a double standard. While France tries to portray itself as a civilised nation that sympathises with the Armenians, its own history if full of bloody acts, crimes and massacres committed in Algeria. At the same time, it tries to hide these crimes with a law that glorifies colonialism.":

مثقفون جزائريون غاضبون من «مؤرخي» البرلمان الفرنسي: إن لم تستح «فشرّع» بما شئت

[Mnarvi-DZ]

• En juillet 1830, la presse francaise declarait: "Une partie de l'Afrique se couvrira en quelques annees de populations laborieuses comme en Amerique".
  
  Et parlant dans leurs lettres au sujet de leurs activites militaires, durant leur affrontement avec l'Emir Abdelkader, les officiers Francais declarerent:
• Saint-Arnaud: "Nous sommes dans le centre des montagnes entre Miliana et Cherchell. Nous brulons tous les douairs, tous les villages, toutes les cahutes... le pays des Beni-Menasser est superbe... nous avons tout brule, tout detruit... on ravage, on brule, on pille, on detruit les maisons et les arbres... nous rasons les silos... aujourd'hui je fais sejour... recommencer bruler des villages et des gourbis a vider encore les silos... tu m'as laisse chez les Brazes, je les ai brules et devastes. Me voici chez les Sinjes, meme repetition en grand..."
• Montagnac: "... les femmes, les enfants accroches dans les epaisses broussailles... on tue, on egorge; les cris des epouvantes, des mourants se melent au bruit des bestiaux... c'est un enfer... dans toutes les operations de guerre que nous faisons, il y a des scenes a attendrir un rocher, si l'on avait le temps de s'attendrir un peu. Eh bien on arrive a regarder tout cela avec une seche indifference qui fait fremir."
• Tocqueville: "Apres avoir tout rase a la ronde, Lamoriciere ne savait plus ou aller pour trouver quelques chose... nous faisons la guerre d'une maniere beaucoup plus barbare que les Arabes eux-memes."
• Pelissier qui enfuma la tribu de Ouled Riah: "Fait d'autant plus grave que les insurges avaient offert de se rendre et de payer rancon... des fascines enflammees et systematiquement entretenues furent placees devant les issues des grottes ou s'etait refugiee la population... On trouva le lendemain des cadavres amonceles, cinq cents ou mille, on ne sait. Ce fut ce que le prince de la Moskowa, le fils de Ney, qualifia devant la chambre des pairs de "meurtre consomme avec premeditation sur un ennemi sans defense"."
• Saint-Arnaud: "Je fais hermetiquement boucher toutes les issues et je fais un vaste cimetiere. La terre couvrira a jamais les cadavres de ces fanatiques. Personne n'est descendu dans les cavernes; personne... que moi ne sait qu'il y a la-dessous cinq cents brigands qui n'egorgeront plus les Francais. Un rapport confidentiel a tout dit au Marechal..."
• Un historien: "Les generaux d'Afrique ne brulerent pas le pays en cachette et ne massacrerent pas les ennemis en faisant des tirades humanitaires. Ils s'en firent gloire pour la plupart, qu'ils fussent royalistes, republicains ou bonapartistes... Les veritables vandales... ne furent pas les soldats de Genseric au cinquieme siecle mais les militaires et les colons francais du XIXeme siecle."
• Bugeaud: "Une guerre de cette nature ne peut se terminerque par une action incessante de toutes nos colonnes et, disons-le, car il faut que la nation le sache, en ruinant les Arabes."

[Al-khiyal]

The Grand National Assembly of Turkey President Bülent Arınç said "France should take all responsibility and apologize to Algeria."

Arınç has made a press conference after visiting historical places in Algeria. Arınç said he has met with Algeria National Council President Abdülkadir Benselah, Prime Minister Albulaziz Belkadem and other ministers.

Stating that Turkish and Algerian people share strong bonds with their common history, Arınç said: "Turkey and Algeria should cooperate with each other."

Arınç: France should apologize to Algeria