There is a famous saying in French “Qui vivra verra” that is translated into English as “Wait and see”.
At the end of last week when the Minister of Foreign Affairs of France Alain Juppé made a statement that “France is ready to accept the discussions on the Armenian Genocide”, I remembered that in particular the mentioned saying occurred to me when I asked French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Yerevan this October whether he feared that serious controversies that exist in France concerning the issue of Turkey’s membership in EU might become threatening after the elections. Mr. Sarkozy answered at the time, “No.” Now judging from the above-mentioned statement of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of France, we may think that apprehensions are there. After the statement of the French official, the Turkish side was not late to respond and Cemil Çiçek, the Speaker of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, stated during the “International Symposium on the Sultan Abdülmecid Period on the 150th Anniversary of his Death” that Turkey is ready to face its past and history, “We deal with accusations at the international level, in particular, concerning the 1915 events. We are ready to face our history in regard to the 1915 events. We have opened our archives and are ready to discuss the works of the historians. I am convinced that it would be better to discuss the facts put forward by our scientists, rather than make judgments based on wrong information.” The Armenian side has not officially responded to all that yet. By the way, when Sarkozy was in Yerevan, the word “Genocide” pronounced by him in Armenian, as well as the pro-Armenian statements, was voiced exceptionally in the spirit of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF). In the meantime, today an atmosphere of misunderstanding has been created.
Yesterday I spoke with National Assembly Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) member Aram Safaryan, the head of the Armenian delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, about the two above-mentioned statements. He firstly asked for the following, “Let me answer that question not as a political and party figure, but as an expert who has dedicated 10 years of his life to the History of the Armenian Genocide, its revelation, international recognition and condemnation, a person whose service in this field was appreciated by a ‘Fridtjof Nansen’ order, whose articles concerning this issue have been published in France.” After this preface, Mr. Safaryan said that the archives in Turkey have been cleansed for a few times since 1960s and information on that has been published both in the Armenian Diaspora and the American press, “The pressure of the Turkish political stage on the Genocide issue has been so intense for the past 60-70 years that the Turkish historians are not eligible for the Western science. Thirdly, the recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide (more than 20 countries around the world have recognized it) is based on the studies of the scientists from those countries, which are published and famous – it is a different matter that they are not acceptable for the Turkish scientists guided by political order.” In response to my question whether the Turkish government could be responsible for the “cleansing of archives” during the past decades, Aram Safaryan said, “Certainly, no, because they can say now as if they want to restore the historical truth and as if they are not guilty – there has been a different approach before them. However, one must take into account that unless the obvious fact that unlawful actions were taken in the Turkish archives to reject the Armenian Genocide is accepted, it will be hard.” According to my interlocutor, this is the way out, “The Armenian and Turkish historians must jointly discuss not the actual fact of the Armenian Genocide, it is undeniable and unarguable, but the historians could have jointly examined the history of sharp change in the attitude of the Ottoman Empire toward the Armenians since the 1878 Russo-Turkish war.” Aram Safaryan is convinced that the discussion of any issue among the historians has two sides – it is both a political issue and a scientific one, “Our historians have to decide and explain in what format they are ready to meet and discuss the issue and it must be the foundation of the expertise on the political assessments.” One of the issues preserved and burning on the French political agenda is the issue of imposing criminal liability for denying the Armenian Genocide, “I want to remind that the most pro-Armenian state in the world that has ever adopted a law recognizing and condemning the Armenian Genocide is France. The desire of the political circles of France and the French Armenians to carry this process through is understandable. On the other hand, I would like to remind that this issue met the protest of many international organizations, in particular, some professional organizations of OSCE. They stated that condemning people for not recognizing the Armenian Genocide could be presented as limiting the freedom of speech. I want to say that I do not share this notion and I have opposed this in the framework of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. Nevertheless, I know that people promoting this idea are well-organized and powerful. I think the French government wants to have this issue discussed once again, aiming at a very simple thing, in order to contribute to Turkey’s recognition of this crime committed by the Ottoman Empire and talking about this issue is useful only from this viewpoint.”
In response to another question of mine what our state should do given the circumstances, Mr. Safaryan said, “France is the country, the attitude of which toward the recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide has been a role model for the other countries around the world.” According to Safaryan, “the Armenian historians should necessarily talk about this before holding discussions on the political stage.”
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MARGARIT YESAYAN
