Less sublime window, more Sublime Porte

Turkey’s hysterical reaction to the French parliament decision to make illegal the denial of the massacre of Armenians by Turks in World War One and its aftermath is a symptom of lingering authoritarianism. Just as Turks cannot accept that their intervention in Cyprus could be construed as anything other than noble, a certain militarism has infiltrated the pores of Turkish society. The French may be playing to the gallery of half a million French Armenians as elections loom, but how is it any different to the Turkish law which makes it a crime to call the genocide ‘genocide’. Winston Churchill called it an ‘administrative holocaust’ years before that term became associated with Jews in World War Two (which to distinguish is given a capital ‘H’). It is well attested by many parliaments and independent historians.


While the Germans were forced to come to a reckoning with their shameful and heinous acts, like the Japanese ruling class with their own refusal to acknowledge war crimes of the Imperial Army of Nippon (some prominent politicians call World War Two a war of ‘self-defence’ as do several school textbooks), the Turks have never really come to terms with their own horrors and have inculcated in the education system that everything that has happened was for the best. Repeated military coups and the nationalist ideology of Kemal Atatürk have infantilised the Turkish political rubric, but it is immature to deny responsibility, even if all the participants are long dead (moreover, Atatürk, the only undefeated Ottoman general was desperately striving to create a Turkish unity and identity to counteract the Greek military advances in the early 1920s – times have changed). An ethnic Armenian editor was assassinated in Istanbul by a nationalist agitator for challenging the law on this and the murderer was acclaimed as a hero by many inside Turkey.  Britain has apologised for some of the wrongs of its past. Turkey should grow up or soon its attitude among nations will be the diplomatic equivalent of turkeys voting for Christmas.