Last week, a Turkish Parliamentarian
submitted a proposal to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, seeking
condemnation of the Armenian Genocide, a series of atrocities, and other acts
of state terrorism. In this document, Sebahat Tuncel, member of pro-Kurdish
Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), requests that Pres. Erdogan acknowledge and
apologize in Parliament for the Armenian Genocide, massacres of Dersim, Marash,
Sivas, and Chorum, mass hangings after the Sept. 12, 1980 military coup, and
other Crimes Against Humanity resulting from state terror.
The proposed resolution also demands that the Turkish
President visit one of the sites of the mass killings, repeat his apology in
public, and declare April 24 to be an official Day of Mourning. Within a year,
the Parliament is to form a Truth Commission and make public all documents in
state archives regarding these crimes. Moreover, moral and material restitution
should be provided to descendants of the victims.
It is expected that the Turkish Parliament would reject
consideration of this proposal. Most probably, Tuncel’s real intent is to raise
the issue of the Armenian Genocide and other mass killings in Parliament,
regardless of the outcome. The mere submission of such a resolution would
create a national uproar inside the Parliament, the media, and Turkish
denialist circles. Tuncel must be aware that she is running the risk of having
her parliamentary immunity lifted and being prosecuted for bringing up banned
subjects under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code.
While welcoming Tuncel’s daring and bold proposal,
Armenians, Turks, Kurds, and others should not forget that this would not be
the first time the Turkish government has taken up the deportation and massacre
of Armenians. On November 4, 1918, immediately after the collapse of the Young
Turk regime and before the founding of the Republic of Turkey by Kemal Ataturk
in 1923, the Ottoman Parliament considered a motion on the crimes committed by
the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP): “A population of one million people
guilty of nothing except belonging to the Armenian nation were massacred and
exterminated, including even women and children.” The then Minister of Interior
Fethi Bey responded by telling the Parliament: “It is the intention of the
government to cure every single injustice done up until now, as far as the
means allow, to make possible the return to their homes of those sent into
exile, and to compensate for their material loss as far as possible.”
A Parliamentary Investigative Committee proceeded to
collect relevant documents describing actions of those responsible for the
Armenian mass killings and turned them over to the Turkish Military Tribunal.
CUP’s leading figures were found guilty of massacring Armenians and hanged or
given lengthy prison sentences. The Military Tribunal requested that Germany
extradite to Turkey the masterminds of the massacres who had fled the country.
After German refusal, they were tried in absentia and sentenced to death.
To reinforce her proposal with historical and legal
precedents, Tuncel may want to submit to the Turkish Parliament a copy of the
1918 parliamentary motion and discussion on the Armenian Genocide, which was
referred to at the time as “Armenian deportations and massacres.” She should
also submit a copy of the guilty verdicts issued by Turkish Military Tribunals.
Finally, Tuncel should remind the Parliament of the historic admission Kemal
Ataturk made in an interview published in the Los Angeles Examiner on August 1,
1926: “These leftovers from the former Young Turk Party who should have been
made to account for the lives of millions of our Christian subjects who were
ruthlessly driven en masse from their homes and massacred.” Would any Turkish
Parliamentarian dare to call the Father of Modern Turkey a liar?
Should the Turkish Parliament block Tuncel’s resolution
and prevent its consideration, it would expose the Erdogan government’s fear of
facing the truth and concealing the guilt of its predecessors! Regardless of
the end result, this proposal is an unexpected positive development on the eve
of the Armenian Genocide Centennial and provides some consolation to
descendants of the victims of more recent Turkish atrocities.
The introduction of Tuncel’s proposal to the Turkish
Parliament coincided with the unanimous recognition of the Armenian Genocide by
Bolivia’s Senate and Parliament. Significantly, this acknowledgment was
achieved on its own merits, without any Armenian lobbying efforts, which
negates the standard Turkish claim that countries recognizing the Armenian
Genocide do so under pressure from local Armenian communities. Hardly any
Armenians live in Bolivia!
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