Turkey’s Erratic Genocide Jurisprudence
By
Burak Bekdil
27 March, 2015
In the early 1990s, Turkey started to generously buy
off-the-shelf arms from foreign manufacturers who had happily discovered an
emerging but potentially lucrative market.
Spoiled by big companies vying for Turkish contracts
in manners reminiscent of the insurance policy salesman in Tintin’s adventures,
the Turks occupying important official seats discovered they could extract
benefits from their roles as rich buyers. Some personally got rich. More
innocent ones calculated that Turkey could use defence contracts as a foreign
policy tool.
Before the French legislature recognized the Armenian
genocide in 2001 Turkey threatened to freeze all economic, political and
military ties with the country, including defence contracts. The French
recognized the Armenian genocide. And Turkey’s bilateral trade with France rose
from $4 billion in 2001 to $15 billion a decade later.
However, a decade later Turkey was threatening France
again: This time, all economic, political and military ties would be frozen if
the French legislature criminalized the denial of Armenian genocide.
Then-foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said the French
bill, if passed, would “dishonour our country and nation.”
Having learned from past experiences how punishing
Turkey’s wrath could be, the French legislature passed the genocide denial
bill. A few months later, France’s Supreme Court overturned the bill. So, “our
country and nation were not dishonoured.” In June 2012, Mr. Davutoğlu
cheerfully announced Turkey and France could now live happily ever after.
That set a new Turkish jurisprudence on the genocide
dispute. Between 2001 and 2012, Turkey moved from threatening countries whose
legislatures could recognize the genocide to living happily ever after with
such countries as long as their denial laws do not take effect.
As erratic in its position as before, Turkey, these
days, is trying to market a new product. And that new product, too, is related
to a defence contract. In September 2013, Ankara selected a Chinese company in
a multi-billion dollar bid for the construction of its first long-range air and
anti-missile defence architecture. As talks with the Chinese bidder inevitably
stumbled, Turkey first opened parallel talks with a French-Italian group (whose
legislature recognizes the genocide), which it had ranked second in the
bidding, and then with an American partnership that had come third.
Zigzagging between three solutions ranging between
$3.4 billion to $4.5 billion, the Turks decided to resort to the tactic they
had discovered in the 1990s: Let’s wait and see, before we select the winner,
how Washington and Paris will commemorate the centennial of the genocide. If,
for instance, President Barack Obama kept his pre-election promise, broke the
taboo and used the word “genocide” in his annual Apr. 24 speech, we cross out
the Americans. Similarly, if the French administration went to another extreme
on Apr. 24, the French-Italian contender would risk losing the contract; Lucky
Beijing. Apr. 24 will be just another fine spring day.
The Turkish inconsistency persists. What if Paris
commemorates Apr. 24 in a low-profile manner but Mr. Obama mentions the word
that terribly scares off Ankara? Cross out the Americans. Jump into the
French-Italian bid. But did the French legislature not recognize genocide in
2001 and even pass a bill that would have criminalized denial? Yes, but that
was long time ago and in 2012 Mr. Davutoğlu decided to forget about it all just
because the French supreme court overturned the denial bill (while the bill
that recognizes genocide remains effective).
Once again, Ankara is wrong in its carpet bazaar
calculus. If Mr. Obama once again avoids the word “genocide” in his annual
speech, it will not be because he fears the Turkish wrath, which does not exist
– other than as a joke. It will be because he will not wish to enable Turkey’s rulers
to run from one public rally to another and scream to the already anti-American
(and anti-Semitic) crowds that “this is a dark
imperialist-Jewish-American-Gülenist plot to stop the rise of the Turkish
empire.” A neat, extra two-to-four percentage points for the ruling party.
Public curses and private thanks to President Obama.
Turkey’s deterrence-through-$$$$$ policy on the
Armenian genocide issue embarrassingly collapsed in 2012. With the French
precedent, no country takes “Turkey’s wrath” seriously because it does not
exist.
Source:
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkeys-erratic-genocide-jurisprudence.aspx?pageID=449&nID=80233&NewsCatID=398
URL: https://newageislam.com/islamic-history/turkey’s-erratic-genocide-jurisprudence/d/102144