Posted on 01/05/2012 12:57:01 PM PST by george76
The French Government announced recently that the Senate is to debate the bill penalizing the denial of the Armenian 'genocide' by late January. The lower chamber of the French parliament approved the draft with an overwhelming majority of votes on December 22.
...
After the passage of the bill by the National Assembly, Turkey’s state-run television said Ankara was recalling its ambassador from Paris. Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan later said the country was freezing its political, economic and military ties with France.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.az ...
France should not prohibit freedom of speech but that doesn’t bother me as much as usual in this case.
The Turks behavior on this matter is shameful.
You wrote, “But genocide is not the word to use — I found that out real quick when I lived in Ankara, “
I beg to differ. The deliberate attempt to exterminate a race of people is genocide. Exactly what the Turks were guilty of.
How long did you live in Ankara ? My father’s Armenian family lived in Turkey for more than 2500 years. Those who survived lived to tell the tale .
With apologies to ‘They Might Be Giants’
Why did the Armenians get the works?
That’s nobody’s business but the Turks.
“Why did the Armenians get the works?
That’s nobody’s business but the Turks.”
Unless they deny it and teach their school children that it never happened, as the Turks do.
The German people don’t deny the Jewish holocaust.
I know that the Ottoman Empire did in fact do those horrible things. But I do not choose to refer to it as genocide -- so would you have me punished for that? I asked this question up in reply #20. You want me to be arrested, jailed, fined? Called names?
Some say that Europeans committed genocide on the Indians in America. The UN definition of genocide includes expelling people as well as killing them. So we committed genocide or did we do terrible things -- either way it is just as terrible without calling it genocide.
There are Kurd and German connections to the mass killings not just Ottoman Turks. What about them?
There were also hundreds of thousands of others killed as a result of W.W.I. Russia and Armenia were fighting Germany and the Ottoman Empire.
How many Armenians did the Bolsheviks kills when they forced Armenia into the U.S.S.R in 1918? Are those victims worth less than the victims of the Ottoman Empire?
Why are the Germans, the Kurds, the Communists being excused? It appears to me that they are. Maybe they did not kill as many but the dead were done just as wrong.
You wrote:
“As far a I recall Turkey does not deny the horrors but will not describe it as genocide.”
Then let’s call it Jihad....
On Nov. 14, less than two weeks after the Ottoman Empire entered the war, the sheikh-ul-Islam ,Mustafa Hayri Bey,
made a formal declaration of JIHAD in Constantinople. (Istanbul) The Germans and Austro-Hungarians were the only Christians exempt from the Jihad.Pamphlets were circulated
extolling the need to exterminate the Christians....”He who kills even one believer shall be rewarded by God.”
I never thought of that, that's great! Thanks!
That kind of Islam was crushed in the modern secular Turkey but it is coming back.. easy to find it documented even right here in FR -- in some important aspects the return of an Ottoman Empire-like Turkey is being immensely aided from right here in the U.S. of A.
Thanks again. I have a lot of respect for the Turks.. even my wife whom I met and married in Madrid made the point that Madrid v. Ankara looks-wise Madrid wins easily.. but it is just the opposite people-wise. I absolutely agree. This was several years before the AK Party and such.
I really don’t care whether or not the French pass this contoversial law. I do care, however, that the government of Turkey continues to deny the genocide and mislead their young people. Far better, they should honor the memory of the victims of this tragedy.
Why teach the young generation in their schools that this was a result of WW I when this evil deed began against a peaceful Armenian population with no war on Turkish soil ?
Why not admit it and move on ? Probably because it would shake the foundations of the old Ataturk power structure .
We differ on this issue, but I send my best to you.
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