The Armenian genocide was a fact, and the Turkish refusal to admit its existence is of a piece with the consistent Islamic supremacist tendency never, ever to admit wrongdoing, and to project their faults upon others. As a believer in the freedom of speech, I believe that the antidote to lies is truth, not censorship, and so I oppose France’s new law, but there is no doubt that its foundation is correct and its intention is good. And Erdogan’s reaction is the quintessential Islamic supremacist response to the truth about Islamic jihad: evasion, finger-pointing, projection, and claiming of victim status.
“Turkey Accuses France of Genocide After Armenian Bill,” from Reuters, December 23 (thanks to all who sent this in):
ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan accused France of genocide in Algeria in the 1940s and 50s, in his latest response to a French parliament vote to make it a crime to deny that the mass killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey was genocide.
Erdogan also said President Nicolas Sarkozy’s father might have direct knowledge about French “massacres” in Algeria.
“In Algeria from 1945, an estimated 15 percent of the population was massacred by the French. This is a genocide,” Erdogan said on live television.
15 percent of the population? Ridiculous and unsupportable historically — unlike the Armenian genocide.
“If the French President Mr Sarkozy doesn’t know about this genocide he should go and ask his father, Paul Sarkozy.
“His father served in the French Legion in Algeria in the 1940s. I am sure he would have lots to tell his son about the French massacres in Algeria,” the Turkish premier said.
Parliamentarians in France’s lower house of parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of a draft law outlawing genocide denial Thursday, which the Senate will debate next year.
If passed, the bill would make it illegal to deny the 1915 mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks amounted to genocide. The issue has caused outrage in Turkey, which argues killings took place on all sides during a fierce partisan conflict.
Erdogan condemned the bill shortly after the vote, recalled Ankara’s ambassador to France for consultations and cancelled all joint economic, political and military meetings. Friday, he vowed to take more steps….
“The vote in the French parliament has shown how dangerous racism, discrimination and Islamophobia have become in France and Europe.”
Although nearly a century has passed since the killings in the middle of World War One, successive Turkish governments and the vast majority of Turks feel the charge of Armenian genocide is an insult to their nation.