Almanya & Kuma

Reporting on more films I’ve seen in recent months, these two, on Turkish immigrants in Europe, are worth noting. The first, ‘Almanya – Willkommen in Deutschland’, by Turkish-German director Yasemin Şamdereli, is “a delightful, charming comedy,” as one review accurately put it, about a three-generation Turkish immigrant family in Germany and the trials and tribulations of integrating into German society. The film flashes back between the present day and the mid 1960s, when the father, played by Vedat Erincin—the acting is very good overall—, arrives in Germany with his wife, as a clueless Gasterbeiter. The reconstitution of the era is well done and with some funny, indeed hilarious, scenes. The light-hearted portrayal of present-day family dynamics, with the younger generation far more culturally German than Turkish, is also good, and particularly what happens when they take their big family vacation back home in Turkey (in the Izmir area, so far as I could tell). Variety and Hollywood Reporter liked the pic, as did French critics. Trailer is here. So thumbs up to this one.

The other film, ‘Kuma’ (titre en France: ‘Une seconde femme’), by Turkish-Kurdish-Austrian director Umut Dağ, is more serious—not to mention less joyous—, about a conservative Turkish immigrant family in Vienna that recruits, as it were, a “kuma” (a second wife), in the family’s village in eastern Turkey, for the aging father—played by Almanya’s Vedat Erincin—, whose wife is dying of cancer and instigates the affair. The unsuspecting 19-year old village girl thinks she’s marrying the son but discovers the truth when she arrives at the family’s home in Vienna. The movie is what happens to her and the family—which is rather less integrated and provokes fewer laughs than the one in ‘Almanya’. I thought it was quite a good film, absorbing, well-acted, and no doubt anthropologically accurate. Hollywood press reviews are here, here, and here. French reviews are here. And the trailer is here.

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Who is Fethullah Gülen?

Fethullah Gülen

[update below]

Istanbul-based journalist Claire Berlinski has a good, informative article in City Journal on Fethullah Gülen, the “[c]ontroversial Muslim preacher, feared Turkish intriguer—and ‘inspirer’ of the largest charter school network in America.” I’ve posted several articles on Gülen and his movement over the past year-and-a-half (see here, here and here). Claire’s is one of the best.

Here are some other interesting articles I’ve read on Turkey of late:

On The National Interest website, Halil Karaveli says how ”Erdogan Pays for His Foreign Policy,” in the sense of paying the price. In the space of three years, Turkey has gone from zero problems with its neighbors to problems with almost all of them. Insofar as Erdoğan’s domestic political standing is undermined as a consequence, this is objectively not a bad thing.

On the NYT’s Latitude blog, Andrew Finkel , in “Erdogan, the Not-So Magnificent,” tells us how the Turkish PM and his party are “parodying Turkish history with a slew of misguided construction projects attempting to revive the Ottomans’ glory.” Quelle bande de ploucs…

Also in the NYT, Anand Giridharadas had a good piece last week on “Forging a New Identity” in Turkey, on the deep socio-cultural-political cleavage and conflict between “white Turks” and “black Turks” (which has nothing to do with skin color). In this conflict, I am resolutely with the “whites,” though I do think they should seek accommodation with—and show a little more tolerance toward—their “black” compatriots. And vice-versa.

UPDATE: Soner Cagaptay has a good article in The Atlantic on “Turkey’s Distinctive Brew,” in which he asserts that Turkey’s institutionalized Westernization and deeply-rooted secularism will limit the extent of Islamization. (December 11)

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Gaza: the permanent war – VI

I have links to two noteworthy analyses of last month’s Gaza flare-up that I want to post. Not that I find both analyses of equal value. loin s’en faut. The lesser value one is by Norman Finkelstein, writing on a website called New Left Project, on “Israel’s latest assault on Gaza: what really happened” (h/t Roane C.). WADR, NF is, as we say in France, à côté de la plaque, i.e. off-the-wall. I am not going to give a point-by-point commentary on NF’s take—entre autres, he thinks Israel suffered a “stunning defeat”—but will offer comments on a few passages I highlighted. E.g. this one

But this past year Hamas has been on a roll. Its ideological soulmate, the Muslim Brotherhood, ascended to power in Egypt. The emir of Qatar journeyed to Gaza carrying the promise of $400 million in aid, while Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was scheduled to visit Gaza soon thereafter. In the West Bank many Palestinians envied (rightly or wrongly) that Gazans fared better economically.

Now it is indeed the case that Hamas has been on something of a roll lately, but Gazans being “envied (rightly or wrongly)” by their West Bank cousins because they are “far[ing] better economically”?? Hey, I thought Gazans in their open-air prison were supposed to be starving! Or, at best, living lives of extreme privation on account of the Israeli blockade. But WBers, so NF is informed, are apparently receiving reports that life isn’t so bad in the Strip after all, that it may even be better than chez eux in the WB (but where, in point of fact, it is not catastrophic; e.g. see my pics of Ramallah-El Bireh, Bir Zeit, and Nablus, taken 3½ years ago). So what gives?

And there’s this

The natives were getting restless. It was time to take out the big club again and remind the locals who was in charge.

That’s right, the Israelis decided to kick some Palestinian butt because, well, it was just time to do that… Norman: analytically-wise I think you can do better.

It is possible to pinpoint the precise moment when the Israeli assault was over: Hamas leader Khalid Mishal’s taunt to Israel at a 19 November press conference, Go ahead, invade! Netanyahu panicked. His bluff was called, and Israel stood exposed, naked, before the whole world.

Right again… Bibi N., Avigdor Lieberman, and the general staff of the IDF shat bricks at tough guy Khaled Mashal’s trash talking them from his villa in Cairo… Seriously now, Norman. I have a hard time imagining this scene, literally or figuratively.

In a CNN interview with Christiane Amanpour, Hamas’s Mishal cut the figure and exuded the confidence of a world leader.

Oh please, GMAB! I linked to the Amanpour-Mashal interview in my IVth Gaza post, remarking on how Amanpour seriously grilled him. She had the SOB on the defensive almost throughout. Now Mashal does cut a more dashing figure than Avigdor Lieberman and is definitely better looking than Bashar al-Assad, but does this ergo make him look like “a world leader”???…

It appears that many Palestinians have concluded from the resounding defeat inflicted on Israel that only armed resistance can and will end the Israeli occupation. In fact, however, Hamas’s armed resistance operated for the most part only at the level of perceptions—the projectiles heading towards Tel Aviv did unsettle the city’s residents—and it is unlikely that Palestinians can ever muster sufficient military might to compel an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank.

NF is correct in what he says about military might (and even understates his point) but on the matter of “projectiles” he uses this term (and “projectile attacks”) throughout his piece for those devices that have been hurled at Israel from Gaza over these past months and years. “Projectile” has indeed become the substantive of choice for the Palestinian Amen Corner (PAC) when discussing the phenomenon. As the web’s Free Dictionary defines “projectile” as “[a] fired, thrown, or otherwise propelled object, such as a bullet, having no capacity for self-propulsion,” and which may be a rocket or missile, then it not stricto sensu incorrect to characterize in this way those metallic tubes that Hamas, Islamic Jihad et al propel at Israel. But when one employs the term “projectile” it is normally to describe an object thrown by hand, e.g. the stones and other objects that were hurled by teenage boys at IDF soldiers during the first Intifada. By contrast, during the Cold War one did not refer to the thousands of metal tubes with multiple nuclear warheads that the USA and USSR pointed at each other as Intercontinental Ballistic Projectiles. In the case of the Qassems and Fajrs, which constitute 99.9+% of the projectiles that are propelled at Israel from Gaza, these are rockets tout court. So why not just come out and call them that? Pourquoi la pudeur? They’re rockets, Norman. Rockets.

But if one calls a projectile rocket a rocket tout court, this naturally makes the matter sound somewhat more serious, and that could ergo possibly lead to a certain comprehension of the Israeli position, ce qu’il faut évidemment parer à tout prix. In this respect, it has become courant in the PAC to describe the Qassem rocket attacks on Israel as “pinpricks” at worst, that injure or kill almost no one. What the relative loss of life on the Israeli side in fact suggests is both the sophistication of the Israeli civil defense efforts (e.g. rocket shelters in Sderot every 15 meters) and the lack of sophistication of the Qassems and other such projectiles. But if these were more sophisticated—if Hamas & Co had the guidance systems and requisite intelligence (in the spy sense) to score hits on high-value targets—it stands to reason that the casualty rate on the Israeli side would be rather higher. So it is not for lack of desire or want of trying. After all, it really doesn’t make much sense—strategically or financially (these things do cost money, after all)—to deliberately fire rockets into empty fields. Why would one do that? So what are Hamas, Islamic Jihad et al’s strategic objectives in firing all those rockets into Israel? For the answer, see below.

NF’s final passage

But Gaza’s steadfastness until the final hour of the Israeli assault did demonstrate the indomitable will of the people of Palestine. If this potential force can be harnessed in a campaign of mass civil resistance, and if the supporters of Palestinian rights worldwide do their job of mobilizing public opinion and changing government policy, then Israel can be forced to withdraw, and with fewer Palestinian lives lost than in an armed resistance.

Insofar as NF is calling for civil, as opposed to armed, resistance, this is salutary. But I would think he’d have read enough on the subject to know that the Israelis are not going to withdraw from the West Bank in the same way they did from southern Lebanon and Gaza, i.e. unilaterally and with no negotiations or security arrangements with the other side. The Israelis feel burned by what happened afterward in these two places—though they were hardly blameless themselves—and are simply not going to do it again. The occupation will only end subsequent to face-to-face negotiations and the conclusion of an agreement that is approved by a large majority of Israelis (and of Palestinians too, of course). It won’t happen any other way.

The second analysis I want to post—and the one of higher value—is an interview in the Istanbul daily Today’s Zaman with Bora Bayraktar, a Turkish specialist of the I-P conflict, who says that “Hamas [and] Israel [made] political gains following Gaza fighting” (h/t Claire B.). Interesting that this appeared in TZ, which is a mouthpiece of the Fethullah Gülen movement. Bayraktar is manifestly very knowledgeable on the subject, having authored two books on it (in Turkish), including one on Hamas. The interview is worth reading in full but this exchange is particularly noteworthy

Hamas must have had something certain in mind by sending that many missiles to Israel. Would you elaborate on the strategy of Hamas?

I had interviews with Mahmoud Zahhar, a senior Hamas leader, who told me that Hamas’s strategy is to reverse the Jewish immigration.

There you have it. The “projectiles” are being fired from Gaza into Israel to terrorize the population, so they will pack their bags and leave, to go back to where they came from; or, if they were born or raised in Israel—which is the case for the majority of Israeli Jews—, to go wherever. Hamas’s strategic objective, and from which it has never deviated, is to liberate all of Palestine, from the sea to the river. And no namby-pamby talk about a binational state, or a secular, democratic state for all its citizens blah blah. It will be an Arab, Islamic Palestine. Tout court. It’s all so simple, no?

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Welcome to Israel!

[update below] [2nd update below] [3rd update below] [4th update below]

For those who didn’t go onto my blog this past weekend, I had two posts on the practices of the French internal security apparatus, one on the scandalous ethnic-racial profiling by the police. France is, of course, not the only state where this sort of profiling—and the inevitable abuses that ensue—occur. Now I read this account by two young American professionals (one in finance, the other an architect), Sasha Al-Sarabi and Najwa Doughman (above photo), of their recent humiliating interrogation at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, overnight detention in a fetid facility, and deportation from Israel, and for no other reason than they were of Arab origin and the security personnel at BGA simply didn’t feel like admitting them into the country. I have already written on the subject of the interrogation gauntlet at Israeli ports of entry (here and here), with the humiliations involved and the arbitrary deportations—and which happen daily—, so won’t do so again, except to repeat that it is simply outrageous and utterly unjustified. The interrogation methods could be justified if security were genuinely the purpose, but it is manifestly not. Now I happen not to be a fan of the website where the account was published, BTW, mais peu importe (and the authors are not otherwise associated with the site). The account should be read by anyone who has the slightest sympathy for Israel. And if one wishes to justify the behavior of the BGA security personnel toward these women, please do so. Give it a shot.

An assertion: no Jew would ever be subjected to such treatment at an Arab port of entry and on account of his or her Jewishness. If one wishes to dispute what I say here, please provide a recent example or two.

Israel does not have a monopoly on such behavior by agents at ports of entry, of course. The United States is also a big offender. I will have something on this soon.

ADDENDUM: A question: are the secondary interrogations at BGA carried out by agents of the Israeli state or a private security company? If the latter, this could explain a good part of the problem. The Israeli state—like the American and others—has outsourced many security functions—e.g. the manning of West Bank checkpoints—to private contractors, who are both overzealous and unaccountable (on the subject, see here). For the anecdote, on my first visit to Israel, in the pre-Intifada 1980s—and before anyone had ever heard about regalian functions of the state being outsourced to private contractors—, I entered via the Allenby Bridge from Jordan, a then enemy state of Israel. Several days before, I had been in Syria, an even bigger enemy state. I was asked no questions about where I had been, why I had been there, with whom I had met, etc, etc (and in view of my name and appearance, it could have been assumed that I was of Middle Eastern or some other suspect origin). The agents who inspected my baggage were friendly enough. I even joked with one. I don’t think I would joke nowadays.

UPDATE: I have a few links from Haaretz from last September, of a spat between Israel and Turkey over the humiliating treatment of Turkish citizens at BGA and the tit-for-tat Turkish response, targeting Israelis at Istanbul airport (see here, here, here, and here). The Israeli foreign ministry admitted that Turks were routinely humiliated when arriving in Israel and Haaretz editorialized that “perhaps Israelis need humiliation to respect others.” One thing’s for sure: when it comes to stuff like this, one should not mess around with the Turks.

2nd UPDATE: AP has a report, “Israel asks Arab visitors to open emails to search.” (June 5)

3rd UPDATE: Amira Hass reports that the agents who interrogated Sasha and Najwa at BGA were from Shin Bet. (June 5)

4th UPDATE: Amira Hass has a report on how a “U.S. couple with Jewish roots didn’t expect El Al’s inquisition.” (January 13, 2013)

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Two Middle East blogs

I’ve just come across two very good academic blogs on the Middle East. One is ‘Mideast Matrix: Commentary and analysis on Middle East politics’, run by political scientists Jeremy Pressman (University of Connecticut) and Brent Sasley (University of Texas-Arlington). The other is ‘Ottomans and Zionists: Blogging about Turkey and Israel, the two most interesting countries in the Middle East’, run by Michael Koplow, a Ph.D. student in government at Georgetown. I’m impressed with both. And they’re WordPress to boot (which is superior to Blogger/Blogspot, no question about it).

ADDENDUM: Adam Garfinkle has a new blog on The American Interest web site, ‘The Middle East and Beyond‘.

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Labyrinth

I saw this slick Turkish political thriller the other day at a festival of Turkish cinema, just down the block from the Sorbonne. The pic is about a terror campaign of fanaticized international jihadists in the heart of Istanbul—the opening scene is a suicide bombing in the city’s financial quarter that kills 130 people (recalling the HSBC Bank bombing in 2003)—and the police counter-terror unit’s race against the clock to neutralize the terrorists before they carry out their next big attack, which, we learn toward the film’s climax, is to set off 1.3 tons of explosives on the Bosphorus Bridge at the peak of rush hour. A 9/11 à la turque (trailer here). Though the plot and its unfolding are fairly conventional the film is high octane, well-acted, and well-done overall. And it is far superior to recent big budget Hollywood films of the genre—thrillers of Middle Eastern geopolitics and Islamism/terrorism—, such as ‘Syriana’ (a mess of a film), ‘Body of Lies’ (a worse mess of a film), and ‘Green Zone’ (big mess of a film). These all had contrivances, gross implausibilities, and downright howlers, proving for the umpteenth time that Hollywood has a hard time making good movies about politics, not to mention geopolitics. I didn’t detect any goofs in ‘Labyrinth’ (which is mainly set in Istanbul and with scenes in Mardin and Frankfurt, and with English, Arabic, and German spoken at points). Technically it may be a notch below the aforementioned Hollywood pics but the screenplay is superior.

What is particularly noteworthy about the film is its politics. It is the anti-’Kurtlar Vadisi: Irak‘ (a doozy of a film, that has to be seen to be believed). In terms of political world-view, it is the polar opposite of the Kurtlar Vadisi series (I haven’t yet seen the one on Palestine but did see Gladio, on the sinister machinations of the Deep State and that backhandedly accredits the official line on the supposed Ergenekon/Balyoz conspiracy). ‘Labyrinth’ has its share of nationalism and plays to Turkish amour propre vis-à-vis the West—displayed in the dealings between secret agent Fikrit (the Timuçin Esen character) and the arrogant, cynical British MI6 operative—, but doesn’t overdo it. The Americans come into the film in one scene, when a Turkish counter-terrorist hit squad slips into northern Iraq to liquidate a jihadist and is covered by American soldiers. The scene is almost identical to one in ‘Kurtlar Vadisi: Irak’ except that here the Americans are on the side of the Turks. The Israeli Mossad is mentioned once in passing, matter of factly and with the suggestion that it has worked with Turkish intelligence. But most significantly, the evil doers in the film are Islamists—Turks and Arabs, not Americans and Jews à la Kurtlar Vadisi—, with the good guys the secular agents of the Turkish state, who drink wine at dinner and whose wives (also wine drinkers) would surely not be caught dead wearing a headscarf. The one hijab-wearing woman in the film is a terrorist who gets smoked before she can do harm. The jihadists are very bad, really evil, except for one sent to blow up a synagogue but can’t bring himself to do it after seeing the families entering, as “this is not what Islam is about” (as he cries to his handler; okay, that scene may be a tad contrived but the sentiment expressed is appreciated). Government offices have large portraits of Ataturk but none of the current president or PM. But the Turkish state is not portrayed too positively, the government apparently not fully appreciating the jihadist threat and the corrupt high-level functionaries in the police willing to sell out the interests of Turkey—and the lives of their own men—for personal financial gain. The good guys in the film are the police agents who put their lives on the line to defend Turkey against radical Islamism, and in taking initiatives without informing their hierarchical superiors and in serving a state that is portrayed as not always loyal to them. It would seem that the director, Tolga Örnek, was trying to make a political statement… I unfortunately did not attend the screening at which he was scheduled to speak, so didn’t have the opportunity to ask questions.

One of the subtexts is that jihadist terrorism targets Muslims and Muslim countries as much as the West—more so in fact—, which is not a revelation to anyone minimally informed but still tends to be lost sight of in Europe and North America—and, as the film would have it, among the Western intelligence and security services with whom the Turks collaborate on the matter. It’s the Muslim world that is on the front lines with Al-Qaida et al, not the West, and with Turkish-style secularism arousing particular antipathy from Islamist extremists. One notes that the film was shot in the modern part of Istanbul, above the Golden Horn—Beyoğlu, Harbiye, etc—, and not in the Sultanahmet-Beyazit area more familiar to Western tourists. Istanbul looks “European,” which, in my experience at least, is not the image Europeans tend to have of it. The acting in the film is also first rate. The characters are complex—not at all the cartoonish caricatures of ‘Kurtlar Vadisi: Irak’—and with états d’âme. The heroine, special agent Reyhan (played by Meltem Cumbul), is not modeled after Lara Croft. She’s pleasant-looking but not glamorous, is feminine in an understated way but with nerves of steel, and turns out to be a karate black belt, a skill she uses to dispatch the master terrorist with extreme prejudice (great scene). Women don’t normally get roles like this in Turkish movies, so it seems. I don’t know how the film was received in Turkey—though the Gülenist Today’s Zaman gave it a good review, which is interesting—or how well it did at the box office. Outside Turkey it has opened only in Germany. So if one wants to see it, it will have to be done so via DVD or streaming (Turkish films are usually pretty good with subtitling).

Tolga Örnek was also the director of a fine film from 2008, ‘Devrim Arabaları’ (Cars of the Revolution), based a true story from the early 1960s, as Turkey was orienting its economic strategy toward import substitution industrialization. Here’s a description, culled from IMDB

It is just after the military take over of the administration in 1960. The new head of state believes Turkey can only be independent if it is economically strong. After sounding out the weak private sector and most of the senior bureaucrats, it is clear that nobody has a similar view. So, he dares the government sector to see if anyone can design and produce a 100% original car within 4 months… Well, one engineer shares this vision and a small and dedicated team start working in a locomotive factory. Time is short and resources are limited. Many believe this can not be achieved. This is the story of a team of idealist engineers working on this vision.

We really enjoyed this movie, as have others to whom I’ve passed on the DVD. It’s a nice portrayal of the new generation of engineers and technocrats of the period, who were driven by service to the state and nation. The film has done the festival circuit—and won a few awards—but has not been released outside Turkey. It can no doubt be downloaded from the Internet. Örnek has also directed feature-length documentaries on the Battle of Gallipoli (‘Gelibolu‘)—for which he received a medal in Australia—and Ataturk. I own the DVDs for both but haven’t watched them yet. I will soon.

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A Moscow show trial on the Bosphorus

[update below]

This is the title of a post on Paul Krugman’s NYT blog today, where he posts in turn an analysis by Harvard economist Dani Rodrik of the trumped-up Ergenekon/Sledgehammer affair in Turkey. Rodrik’s piece thus begins

In what is probably the country’s most important court case in at least five decades, hundreds of Turkish military officers are in jail and on trial for allegedly having plotted to overthrow the then newly-elected Justice and Development Party back in 2003. The case also happens to be one of the most absurd ever prosecuted in an apparent democracy. The evidence against the defendants is such an obvious forgery that even a child would recognize it as such. Imagine, if you can, something that is a cross between the Moscow show trials and the Salem witchcraft hysteria, and you will not be too far off.

I’ve posted a few items on this affair, notably here. On the subject, Dexter Filkins has a good article in the current issue of The New Yorker on Turkey and “the deep state,” plus a shorter item on “Turkey’s jailed journalists.”

UPDATE: Istanbul-based writer Suzy Hansen writes in TNR on how “the assault on Turkish journalists continues.” (March 15)

(image credit: Newsetc)

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Franco-Turkish follies – IV

[update below]

The French Constitutional Council has ruled that the law passed by parliament last month criminalizing negation of the Armenian genocide is unconstitutional. Alhamdulillah. The reason: it violates freedom of expression. Duh. Full text of the ruling is here. Judges of the Constitutional Council are nicknamed “les Sages“: the wise men. In this particular case they were definitely wise. But now we read that Nicolas Sarkozy wants a brand new bill that criminalizes Armenian genocide negation and before the National Assembly adjourns next month. Not only is Sarkozy not wise but he is the opposite of wise. Worse, he is unhinged. Get him out of there! He absolutely positively needs to lose the election. And inshallah he will.

UPDATE: François Hollande, engaging in base electoralism, says that he’ll take up the Armenian genocide negation question if elected. Borrowing from a former Président de la République, Monsieur Hollande a perdu une bonne occasion de se taire. But I’ll bet he won’t do it. Les promesses n’engagent que ceux qui y croient.

(Photo: Three of the Sages: Council President Jean-Louis Debré (middle) and ex officio members Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and Jacques Chirac. They aren’t necessarily sage—and definitely not two of them—but that’s another matter.)

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Franco-Turkish follies – III

The French Constitutional Council announced on Tuesday that it would take up the law passed by the parliament criminalizing negation of the Armenian genocide. The news almost passed under the radar screen, receiving relatively little attention in the media. Le Monde covered it on its web site (here) but with only a short item in the print edition (the NYT had an article here). Two groups of parliamentarians—71 deputies and 77 senators—signed petitions referring the law to the Council (only one petition of 60 signatures is necessary). The parliamentarians come from across the political spectrum, from the UMP—including its hard right caucus—through the center and to the Socialists, écolos, and MRC (the full list is here). Many deputies and senators are clearly concerned about the disastrous consequences of the law for Franco-Turkish relations and for French national interests. But President Sarkozy told UMP parliamentarians that the recourse to the Constitutional Council “ne me rend pas service,” i.e. is not doing me a favor. He really wants to sign the bill into law and continue piling it on the Turks. Amazing. Robert Badinter, who has been speaking out on the manifest unconstitutionality of the law, had another tribune on it, this time in the new French Huffington Post (here). Let’s hope his arguments prevail when the Council hands down its ruling.

ADDENDUM: Le Carnard Enchaîné reports in its February 1st issue that the Elysée sought—unsuccessfully—to persuade UMP parliamentarians from signing the petition to the Constitutional Council. Its argument: the law represents “a commitment of the President of the Republic toward the Armenian community (la communauté arménienne).”  Haro sur le communautarisme ! as Sarkozy would no doubt say in any other circumstance…

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Franco-Turkish follies – II

So the French Senate passed the loi scélérate criminalizing negation of the Armenian genocide (or “genocide,” depending on one’s perspective). I didn’t think it would do so, as a number of senators had expressed doubts in recent days about the bill’s constitutionality. Moreover, the Senate’s commission des lois—presided by the Socialist Jean-Pierre Sueur—had voted last Wednesday to reject the bill and by a wide majority, though which did not prevent it from going to the floor for a vote by the full Senate. As the Senate in France is indirectly elected and in thirds, it is thereby not susceptible to base electoralist considerations—presumably not, at least—or to pressures from the Elysée or Matignon, and is moreover controlled by the Socialists, the current opposition. Now it is true that the PS has largely supported the bill but insofar as the current legislative initiative was remote-controlled by Sarkozy the Socialist senators were not obliged to indulge him. And many PS senators did oppose the bill, not only for constitutional reasons or political opportunity but as a matter of principle (see this report in Mediapart). As it was, 26 of the 130 PS senators voted against and 48 abstained or did not participate in the vote (for the record, only 57 of the 132 UMP senators voted for, with 19 against). And the two previous presidents of the Senate, Gérard Larcher and Christian Poncelet, announced in advance that they would be voting against the bill.

I already expressed my dim view of this proposed law after the National Assembly approved it last month (here). I just find it unbelievable that the French government is going through with this, in view of the crisis—needless and totally avoidable—that the law has provoked in France’s relations with Turkey. The Turks are hopping mad, of course, and threatening all sorts of retaliatory measures, mainly in contracts with French companies. And they will follow through on it. If the law ends up on the books, it will poison relations between the two countries for a long time to come. One can only imagine the reaction in Turkey when the inevitable judicial prosecutions take place in France of Turks and others espousing the official Turkish position. The law will certainly be put to the test, and likely sooner rather than later. In its January 4th issue Le Canard Enchaîné had an article by Claude Angeli, the paper’s longtime editor-in-chief—and who has excellent sources in the foreign policy and defense establishment—, on the fury of foreign minister Alain Juppé and the Quai d’Orsay over the law. Juppé, who has seen his painstaking efforts to work with the Turks over the Syrian issue go up in smoke, had not calmed down in the two weeks after the National Assembly vote. Before the vote he told his staff that the bill was a “connerie sans nom” (i.e. a complete idiocy) and let his sentiments be known to the rest of the government. But Sarkozy paid no attention. Amazing.

Another thing about the law that is so perverse: the way it is worded—and it does not specifically mention the Armenians or Turkey—, it criminalizes only genocides recognized by French law, i.e. that have been voted by the French parliament in one of its “memorial laws.” This means the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide, but not what happened in Rwanda in 1994, which is recognized as a genocide by the United Nations, as well as by just about everyone else, but which has been a delicate and problematic matter in France, given French support of the Rwandan Hutus at the time. À propos, President Mitterrand’s attitude—that massacres were committed by both sides in Rwanda—sounded very much like the official Turkish position on what happened with the Armenians in eastern Anatolia in 1915. And this “negationist” position toward the Rwandan genocide has been advanced in two books published in the past decade by the best-selling author Pierre Péan.

The only way the law can be stopped now is if it is referred to the Constitutional Council, which will likely strike it down. Robert Badinter, a former president of the Council and one of the most respected jurists in the country, had a tribune in Le Monde ten days ago arguing the bill’s unconstitutionality (and Badinter, it should be noted, is one of the few Socialists who is publicly opposed to Turkish membership in the EU). The only parties that can petition the Constitutional Council are the President of the Republic, Prime Minister, President of the Senate, President of the National Assembly, or a group of 60 senators or 60 deputies. In this case it could be the latter two and just possibly the President of the National Assembly, Bernard Accoyer, who is, of course, in the UMP and an ally of Sarkozy but is opposed to “memorial laws” and has called for an end to such legislative initiatives. He could maybe save the day. Whatever the case, this whole crazy affair is the doing of Sarkozy. As such, it definitively discredits him as President of the Republic, in my book at least. He is unworthy to hold the highest office of this land. And he must absolutely not be reelected. Get him out of there!

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English-language news about Turkey

Claire Berlinski has a very useful annotated list here of English-language news sources about Turkey.

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France & Turkey: the empires strike back?

I want to react to a high-profile article from the NYT’s Sunday Review of last weekend, “The Empires Strike Back,” by Soner Çağaptay, a well-known Washington-based Turkish historian and political analyst. Çağaptay argues that

two old imperial powers are competing to exert their political influence over Arab countries in upheaval. And they are not America and Russia. After years of cold-war competition over the Middle East and North Africa, it is now France and Turkey that are vying for lucrative business ties and the chance to mold a new generation of leaders in lands that they once controlled.

Çağaptay then goes on to describe this geopolitical bras de fer in the southern and eastern Mediterranean between the two ancient rival powers, France and Turkey, though France is, in point of fact, not so great of a power anymore and Turkey is still in the wannabe stage—and that during their centuries of greatness, France and the Ottoman Empire were in fact allies (against the Hapsburgs, their mutual enemy) more than they were adversaries. Mais peu importe. I found Çağaptay’s perspective odd, and particularly his view of France and its role in the region. Viewed from Paris, a lot of what he said was off base or just didn’t make sense. I’ll work my way though his piece and comment on its odd or problematic assertions. First point. Çağaptay observes that

Even Turkey once looked to France as a model: when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded modern Turkey in 1923, he championed the French model of hard secularism, which stipulates freedom from religion in government, politics and education.

Absolutely correct. When teaching Turkey to my French students I inform them that the Turkish term for secularism, laiklik, was rather obviously inspired by laïcité, one of the most hallowed words in the French language. And one sees many words of French origin in Turkey, which was the doing not just of Ataturk but also the Ottomans. But the admiration has not been unidirectional. From the mid-1920s onward Turkey has been highly regarded in France as well, not only for its laiklik—which actually differs in important respects from French laïcité—but also for the whole Kemalist project of state-directed modernization—a sort of Jacobinism on steroids—, which so closely resembled the French model from the Third Republic onward. The French admiration for Turkey was manifest in De Gaulle’s triumphal state visit there in 1968 (e.g. see the videos here). Turkey started to get some bad press in France with the 1974 Cyprus invasion—but then, Turkey didn’t get good press anywhere on Cyprus—and with the repression following the 1980 coup and then against the Kurds. And there was, of course, sympathy with the Armenians on that issue (though which did not stop the Armenian terrorist group ASALA from carrying out a terror bombing at Orly airport in 1983). But the view of Turkey as a (geo)political problem by a part of the political spectrum in France is recent and linked to its candidacy to join the European Union.

While France has dominated much of the region over the past two centuries, that is now changing. And if Turkey plays its cards right, it could match France’s influence or even become the dominant power in the region.

France having dominated “much” of the region? The only parts of MENA where French influence was preeminent were its former colonies and protectorates, i.e. the Maghreb—Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco—and, for a brief period after WWI, Lebanon and Syria. But the French did not gain a lasting foothold in Syria—where there is little trace of the French mandate and even less of the French language—and in Lebanon French influence has mainly been with the Christians—and particularly the Maronites, in a relationship that goes back several centuries. France’s ascendency in Egypt was ephemeral and it never had anything in the Arabian peninsula or Mesopotamia. There was, of course, a certain French cultural influence among elites—in Egypt, Turkey, and among the Jews of the Mediterranean via the Alliance Israélite Universelle—but outside the Maghreb the British and Americans were the big players.

As for Turkey becoming a dominant power in the region, I think Mr. Çağaptay, who has been a biting critic of the AKP up to now, is getting caught up in Ankara’s ambient neo-Ottomanism. A player, yes, but dominant? Dream on.

As…economic meltdown devastates much of Mediterranean Europe, Turkey and France have largely been spared.

France is not one of the PIGS but it’s not Germany either. Or the US. France is in bad economic straits and whose future is not rosy. Even if the French economy does not go the way of Italy’s or Spain’s, France will no longer have the means to pursue whatever ambitions Gaullist nostalgics in Paris may have of being a major player in the southern and eastern Mediterranean. If France can preserve its position in Tunisia, that will be good in itself.

And their growing rivalry is one reason France has objected to Turkey’s bid for European Union membership.

Nonsense. I don’t know where Cagaptay gets this. Something that outside observers of France seem to lose sight of is that the French political class has not been uniformly opposed to eventual Turkish membership in the EU. The French left—and which has an excellent chance of coming to power this spring—has been supportive of Turkey’s EU candidacy, sometimes even vigorously so. And former President Chirac and his neo-Gaullist protégés (Alain Juppé, Dominique de Villepin, Jean-Louis Debré…) have also been pro-Turkey. Opposition to Turkey has come from the right (post-Gaullist, conservative, and extreme) and center (the part of it issuing from a Christian democratic tradition, such as François Bayrou’s MoDem). Islam is of course a factor in this opposition—and particularly on the hard right—but it’s not the only one. There are, in fact, serious arguments against Turkish entry to the EU: e.g. that Turkey is both too big and too poor relative to the rest of Europe, too nationalistic, not sufficiently democratic or respectful of minority rights… And, as Valéry Giscard d’Estaing has insisted, that Turkey—96% of it—is not even geographically a part of Europe—that Europe does not border Iran and Iraq—and that if a geographically non-European country is allowed to join the EU then what is to prevent, say, Georgia or Azerbaijan (already members of UEFA, BTW), or even Russia, from legitimately applying for EU membership at some point down the road? I do not necessarily adhere to these arguments but some of them are valid—see, e.g. this book—and cannot be dismissed out of hand by Turks or proponents of it joining the EU. But one argument I have never seen is the necessity of countering Turkish designs on a French-dominated Mediterranean. Soyons sérieux.

one thing has become obvious to the Turks: Paris won’t allow Turkey into the European Union or let it become a powerful player in a French-led Mediterranean region.

Paris will definitely not allow Turkey into the EU so long as Nicolas Sarkozy is president. But if the fateful day ever does come when a decision on Turkey and the EU must be made, Sarko will be long gone. As for a French-led Mediterranean region and which can thwart the ambitions of others, hah! Only in Dominique de Villepin’s dreams…

Turkey threw its support behind the Arab revolts early on, winning fans across the region.

Huh? Turkey managed to jump on the train before it left the station but, like everyone else, was taken by surprise when the revolts began. And there was a period of dithering on Libya before the change in policy. As for winning the hearts and minds of the Arab masses, that was accomplished with Erdoğan trash talking Shimon Peres in Davos in ’09 and then the Mavi Marmara in ’10. Erdoğan was no doubt appreciated in Tahrir Square last February but I doubt the crowds there were paying much attention to communiqués coming out of Ankara.

Until it backed Libya’s rebels last year, France had bet on the enduring nature of dictatorships and never forged ties with the democratic forces opposing them

In regard to France and dictatorships, this is precisely true, and nowhere more than in Tunisia, which was a French foreign policy fiasco of the first order. But without defending the French here—who have been soul searching and doing mea culpas for the past year—it is not totally the case that France ignored democratic forces in the MENA countries. French diplomats en poste had instructions from the Elysée not to meet with Ben Ali opponents—Moncef Marzouki et al—and who were not received at the Quai d’Orsay when visiting Paris, but these opponents—the non-Islamist ones—did regularly visit Paris, participated in public meetings and rallies, and had extensive contacts with civil society groups and the political left. The French networks of Arab world non-Islamist opponents were dense and which French officialdom could readily tap into once the policy changed. And not just with the Maghreb countries. E.g. the chairman of the Syrian National Council, Burhan Ghalioun, has been a longtime professor at the University of Paris.

As France’s business ties with the old secular elite fray, its influence is waning. It remains a military and cultural power, and will continue to attract Arab elites, even Islamist ones, seeking weapons and luxury goods. However, France will find it hard to market its brand of secularism across the region

The bit about weapons and luxury goods is a cliché. France sells a lot more than that to MENA countries. As for secularism (laïcité), it’s been a long time since France tried to market this anywhere, let alone in MENA.

In September, when Mr. Erdogan landed at Cairo’s new airport terminal (built by Turkish companies), he was warmly met by joyous millions

He was indeed. But President Chirac, who earned the eternal gratitude of the Arab masses with his coup de gueule against the Israelis in the Jerusalem Old City in ’96 and in standing up to Bush on Iraq in ’03, was also warmly met by joyous millions—well, maybe not millions but five- and six-figure crowds nonetheless—on visits to the Arab world, notably in Algiers in March 2003. And Sarkozy received a rapturous welcome in Benghazi last September (more than he would ever get at home these days).

but France has more hard power, as the recent war in Libya…make[s] clear.

France’s military engagement in Libya was an impulsive roll of the dice by Sarkozy. The French could have never pulled it off had the Americans not gotten involved. And even then, had the Libya war not ended in September the situation would have become untenable for the French military, which could materially not sustain its already modest commitment for much longer. France’s hard power is not so hard anymore.

The recent discovery of natural gas off the south coast of Cyprus is a major opportunity. Turkey could rise above the fray by proposing unification of the island in exchange for an agreement to share gas revenues.

This would be an excellent initiative on Erdoğan’s part. Settling the Cyprus issue—on which Turkey is totally isolated, with no support even in the Arab world—and on terms acceptable to the Greek population of the island would be huge game changer in Turkey’s relations with Europe, removing the most redhibitory obstacle to eventual EU membership. If Erdoğan were to propose this and succeed, I’d nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Such a deal, coupled with improved Turkish-Israeli ties, could facilitate cooperation in extracting even larger gas deposits off Israel’s coast; Turkey is the most logical destination for a pipeline from there to foreign markets.

Improving relations with Israel would also be a good idea. It would be in Turkey’s interest on several levels, one being that the Turks could once again act as an intermediary between the Israelis and Palestinians (and Syrians, after regime change there).

Turkey will rise as a regional power only if it sets a genuine example as a liberal democracy

I totally agree. 100%.

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Behind bars in the Deep State

[updates below]

Justin Vela, an Istanbul-based journalist, has a very good piece in Foreign Policy on the increasing repression against journalists in Turkey and the link with the Fethullah Gülen movement, which now looks to be replacing the military as Turkey’s “deep state” (for background see here, here, and here). Between Tayyip Erdoğan’s authoritarian drift and the tentacles of the Gülen movement, democracy is increasingly at risk in Turkey. An awareness of what’s happening there finally seems to be dawning in the US and Europe.

(The above photo is of journalists Mehmet Baransu, Nedim Şener, and Ahmet Şık, who have been caught up in the judicial witch-hunt in the Ergenekon Affair. The header caption translates as “He deciphered the real culprits.”)

UPDATE: There’s an article in the Fall 2011 issue of Middle East Report on “Media Wars and the Gülen Factor in the New Turkey,” by Joshua D. Hendrick (for full text in PDF, see here).

2nd UPDATE: Kaya Genç, a novelist and commentator, says that it’s “Time for Turkey to question its militarist culture.”

3rd UPDATE: The pro-Gülen Istanbul daily Today’s Zaman has an op-ed on “Foreign Policy’s emotional and biased journalism on Turkey,” by İhsan Yılmaz. (January 15)

4th UPDATE: The New York Times has an article on the Gülen movement: “Turkey Feels Sway of Reclusive Cleric in the U.S.” (April 24)

5th UPDATE: Former Istanbul-based journalist Nicholas Birch has an article in The Majallah on “Turkey’s Biggest Export: The many problems of Fethullah Gulen.” (May 15)

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The so-called “Turkish model”

Yusuf Kanlı, a well-known Turkish journalist and commentator, has an excellent column in the Hürriyet Daily News on the relevance of the “Turkish model”—or, rather, the limits of its relevance—for the Arab world. For those who are too lazy neglect to click on the link, here’s the whole thing

 Though countries of the so-called “Arab Spring” are reluctant to embrace it, particularly the secular aspect of it, for some ambiguous reason people love talking about Turkey as a model for its Muslim and Arab neighborhood. Is the so-called Turkish model, the “secular democracy,” being gradually replaced in Ankara with a post-modern model of the Caliphate confederation utopia of Sultan Abdülhamid, or the latter itself?

There is some degree of confusion in this discussion, as most of the participants in this “Turkish model for Arab Spring discussion” are totally unaware – if not ignorant altogether – of what indeed they have been debating. First of all, each and every society has its own developmental pattern socially, culturally, historically and even as regards the perception of religion despite the fact that many of them subscribe to the same religion or religious philosophy.

What may appear a perfect and just fit for one society might be too loose or tight for another almost identical society. This was one reason that throughout the past nine years this writer, for example, has been so adamantly opposed to claims Turkey under the current political Islamist governance would become a second Iran, or a second Malaysia or second whatever. Turkey shall always be a Turkey, yes, with some deviances reflecting the changed political climate. That is all.

The fundamental difference between the Turkish and the neighboring Muslim societies is not the language or the script. Even though the current Islamist political elite of the country might hate to concede it, the republican revolution of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk succeeded in transforming Turkish society from being subjects of a divine sultan into individuals, with individual preferences in all walks of life and thus, agendas of their own. That is, the fundamental difference between Turks of the Turkish Republic and the Arabs of the neighboring region is that they have nothing in common beyond subscribing to some nuances to the same holy book and living under the same sun. Over the past nine years Turks have become individuals, while Arabs culturally remain a tribal society as they have always been, since and before the dawn of Islam.

Now, if anyone hopes to believe a handful of individuals in Egypt’s Tahrir Square and not the tribal network would decide the future of the huge Arab country, I would only say I wish it would be the case. If Egypt and other countries of the region, particularly neighboring Syria, could have societies composed of individuals, rather than ethnic, religious or whatever clans, indeed there might be a spring, a dawn heralding the start of a new and democratic era in the Middle East. Unfortunately, that is not the case. And it will not be the case unless Arab societies start taking action to liberate themselves on an individual basis from the chains of tribalism.

For Turkey, breaking those chains and becoming individuals has been rather costly. Indeed, after 87 years or so there is still some residual tribalism, particularly in the eastern and southeastern parts of the country. This is due to the extravagant political concessions of conservative governments who preferred to buy votes from the feudal sheikhs rather than try to answer the demands of the individuals.

And, despite all those great successes of the Republic, sometimes an oppressive tyranny may rear its head from the shadows of the past. That head of the oppressive tyrant can be seen in the detention in one week of some 46 journalists and the subsequent court arrest of 36.

In the end, democracy is the regime where the minority is not just protected but encouraged to make demands on the majority.

The fourth paragraph is the key. Kanlı overstates his argument a bit but a fundamental difference between the Arab world and Turkey—and with important implications—is societal: the roots of Arab culture are tribal, in Turkey they are not (for Kurds, yes, but not for ethnic Turks). The notion of the autonomous individual—of the individual existing independently from the group (not just the family but the group writ large)—is not culturally admitted in Arab societies (in some it is partially—in certain social categories—, in others not at all). In Turkey it largely is (and for longer than Kanlı’s nine years). This does not preclude an evolution toward democracy in the Arab world but if some of the Arab states get there, their democracies are not likely to be liberal. This merits a much more extensive argument than I can give it this morning—and I know I’m going to get into trouble with some for what I say here—, so I’ll come back to it at a later date.

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Lois mémorielles

Je prends la liberté de publier le texte entier de cette importante tribune de Pierre Nora dans Le Monde sur la loi liberticide que l’Assemblée Nationale a voté la semaine dernière

Lois mémorielles : pour en finir avec ce sport législatif purement français

Point de vue | | 27.12.11

par Pierre Nora, Historien, président de l’association Liberté pour l’histoire

On ne pouvait imaginer pire. Et si le Sénat devait confirmer cette funeste loi sur “la pénalisation de la contestation des génocides établis par la loi”, ce sont les espoirs de tous ceux qui ont désapprouvé la généralisation des lois mémorielles et tous les efforts de l’association Liberté pour l’histoire depuis 2005, qui se trouveraient anéantis. A peine y avait-il une cinquantaine de députés en séance pour voter à main levée. Je ne doute pas que les plus conscients d’entre eux ne tarderont pas à se mordre les doigts devant les conséquences de leur initiative. L’ampleur du désastre est telle qu’il faut reprendre la question à zéro.

Il y a en effet dans cette loi deux aspects très différents : la question arménienne, sur laquelle on s’est focalisé ; et un aspect de portée beaucoup plus générale, qui n’a pas été mis en relief.

Versant arménien, l’affaire est claire. Le parallèle historique entre le “génocide” arménien et la Shoah, qui justifierait l’alignement de la législation française sur la loi Gayssot – pénalisant en 1990 la contestation du génocide juif -, ne tient pas. Pour la Shoah, en effet, la responsabilité de la France vichyste est engagée, alors que, dans le cas de l’Arménie, la France n’y est pour rien. Et s’il s’agissait de faire pression sur la Turquie, le résultat est concluant : la décision française ne peut qu’exacerber le nationalisme turc et bloquer toute forme d’avancée vers la reconnaissance du passé. La Turquie avait proposé, en 2005, la création d’une commission bipartite d’historiens et l’ouverture des archives ; les Arméniens avaient refusé au nom de leurs certitudes : génocide il y avait, et donc rien à ajouter, comme si le mot seul dispensait d’explorer les conditions de la chose. Le gouvernement français aurait dû faire pression pour qu’Ankara installe une commission internationale, dont la Turquie se serait engagée à suivre les conclusions, pour sortir du fatal tête-à-tête.

Le mot génocide a une aura magique, mais il faut rappeler que tous les historiens sérieux sont réticents à l’utiliser, lui préférant, selon les cas, “anéantissement”, “extermination”, “crimes de masse”. L’expression, élaborée pendant la guerre, a été dotée d’une définition juridique en 1948, fondée sur une intention exterminatrice. Elle a pris une connotation extensive aux frontières floues, et son utilisation n’a plus qu’un contenu émotif, politique ou idéologique. Si les Arméniens souhaitent l’utiliser, pourquoi pas ? Il peut se justifier. Mais ce génocide était déjà reconnu par la République française depuis 2001. Alors ?

Ce qui frappe dans la loi adoptée le 22 décembre, son urgence, son téléguidage par l’Elysée, c’est le cynisme politicien, la volonté de couper l’herbe sous le pied d’une initiative parallèle de la gauche au Sénat, son arrière-pensée d’en finir avec toute candidature à l’UE de la Turquie, ainsi diabolisée, et pratiquement “nazifiée”.

Il en va de même de la notion de crime contre l’humanité, associée dans la loi à celle de génocide. La notion est entrée dans le droit en 1945 au procès de Nuremberg, et son imprescriptibilité signifiait qu’aucun des auteurs du crime n’était à l’abri de poursuites jusqu’à sa mort. On l’a vu pour les nazis. Mais l’Arménie ? Aucun des acteurs n’étant encore en vie et le crime datant de près d’un siècle, faut-il que ce soient les historiens qui en portent la responsabilité ? Comment ceux-ci pourraient-ils travailler sur un sujet désormais tabou ?

L’aspect arménien n’est pas le plus grave. Cette loi prétend n’être que la mise en conformité du droit français avec la décision-cadre européenne du 28 novembre 2008 portant sur “la lutte contre certaines formes et manifestations de racisme et de xénophobie au moyen du droit pénal”. C’est faux : elle va plus loin. Devant la décision de Bruxelles, la France avait choisi une “option” qui consistait à ne reconnaître que les crimes contre l’humanité, génocides et crimes de guerre déclarés tels par une juridiction internationale. C’était admettre l’éventualité d’une criminalisation des auteurs du génocide au Rwanda, au Kosovo et autres crimes internationaux contemporains, mais mettre les historiens qui travaillent sur le passé à l’abri de toute mise en cause. La loi actuelle s’applique à tous les crimes qui seraient reconnus par la loi française.

En termes clairs, la voie est ouverte pour toute mise en cause de la recherche historique et scientifique par des revendications mémorielles de groupes particuliers puisque les associations sont même habilitées par le nouveau texte à se porter partie civile. La criminalisation de la guerre de Vendée était d’ailleurs sur le point d’arriver sur le bureau de l’Assemblée en 2008 lorsque la Commission d’information sur les questions mémorielles avait conclu à la nécessité pour la représentation nationale de s’abstenir de toute initiative future en ce sens. D’autres propositions de loi se pressaient : sur l’Ukraine affamée par le pouvoir stalinien en 1932-1933 et les crimes communistes dans les pays de l’Est, sur l’extermination des Tziganes par les nazis, et même sur le massacre de la Garde suisse, aux Tuileries, en 1792 ! A quand la criminalisation des historiens qui travaillent sur l’Algérie, sur la Saint-Barthélemy, sur la croisade des Albigeois ? Mesure-t-on à quel degré d’anachronisme on peut arriver en projetant ainsi sur le passé des notions qui n’ont d’existence que contemporaine, et de surcroît en se condamnant à des jugements moraux et manichéens ? D’autant plus que la loi n’incrimine plus seulement la “négation” du génocide, mais introduit un nouveau délit : sa “minimisation”, charmante notion que les juristes apprécieront.

La loi Gayssot avait sanctuarisé une catégorie de la population, les juifs ; la loi Taubira une autre catégorie, les descendants d’esclaves et déportés africains ; la loi actuelle en fait autant pour les Arméniens. La France est de toutes les démocraties la seule qui pratique ce sport législatif. Et le plus tragique est de voir l’invocation à la défense des droits de l’homme et au message universel de la France servir, chez les auteurs, de cache-misère à la soviétisation de l’histoire. Les responsables élus de la communauté nationale croient-ils préserver la mémoire collective en donnant à chacun des groupes qui pourraient avoir de bonnes raisons de la revendiquer la satisfaction d’une loi ? Faut-il leur rappeler que c’est l’histoire qu’il faut d’abord protéger, parce que c’est elle qui rassemble, quand la mémoire divise ?

C’est ce que défend Liberté pour l’histoire. Nous avions lancé en octobre 2008, aux Rendez-vous de l’histoire de Blois, un appel aux historiens européens que plus d’un millier d’entre eux avaient signé en quelques semaines. “L’histoire, proclamait-il, ne doit pas être l’esclave de l’actualité ni s’écrire sous la dictée de mémoires concurrentes. Dans un Etat libre, il n’appartient à aucune autorité politique de définir la vérité historique et de restreindre la liberté de l’historien sous la menace de sanctions pénales (…). En démocratie, la liberté pour l’histoire est la liberté de tous.”

C’est le moment de rappeler cet appel. Que tous ceux qui l’approuvent prennent l’initiative de nous rejoindre. Il est des revers qui ne font que relancer l’ardeur au combat. Il est des lois que d’autres lois peuvent défaire, des institutions politiques que d’autres institutions politiques peuvent corriger. Rien ne peut davantage prouver le bien-fondé de notre cause, appuyée sur le simple bon sens, que cette attaque en rase campagne. Ou plutôt en pleine campagne électorale.

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Historien, président de l’association Liberté pour l’histoire, Pierre Nora est l’auteur notamment de “Présent, nation, mémoire” (Gallimard, 420 p., 25 euros) Pierre Nora, Historien, président de l’association Liberté pour l’histoire

Article paru dans l’édition du 28.12.11

Je reviendrai sur le sujet. C’est pas possible cette loi. AMHA, elle ne sera pas promulguée. L’Elysée, le gouvernment et le parlement trouveront le moyen de la jeter aux oubliettes.

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Franco-Turkish follies

[update below]

I am quite mad about this. Pissed off in fact. The French National Assembly has just passed a bill that criminalizes denial of the Armenian genocide. If the law enters into force, anyone violating it risks one year in prison and a fine of €45,000. Turkey is enraged, not surprisingly, has recalled its ambassador in Paris, and is threatening all sorts of retaliatory action (voilà the headline in Le Monde dated today: “La Turquie menace la France de sa colère”). Now these are two countries I know and love but I have no sympathy for either in this affair. Or, I should say, I have no sympathy for the Turks but even less than no sympathy for France. When it comes to this particular issue, I have total antipathy for the French (N.B. as a French citizen I have a right to say anything I please on this otherwise lovely country). The Turks may be a pain, with their hypersensitivity to what Europeans say about them, hysterical nationalism, and extreme difficulty in confronting the many dark episodes of their past. But all that is the Turks’ affair. The problem here is with France.

There are five specific problems with the bill. The first is the very idea that speech should be criminalized. The current bill is an extension of two “memorial laws”: the 1990 Loi Gayssot, that outlaws denial of crimes against humanity, and the 2001 law recognizing, in the name of the French state, the Armenian genocide. The Gayssot law, which has been mainly used to criminalize Holocaust negationism, is uncontroversial in France and supported across the board by the left and right (minus the Front National). As a First Amendment purist, I find both laws unacceptable and liberticide (i.e. liberty-killing). No further explanation is necessary, not for an American at least. I can accept that France, for reasons having to do with its recent history, would ban public displays of the swastika. But for a mature democracy to proscribe speech of a political nature is inadmissible. Period. In addition to being liberticide such laws engender the inevitable perverse consequences, which, in the case of the Gayssot law, was seen most starkly in the 1996 brouhaha over Roger Garaudy’s negationist pamphlet Les Mythes fondateurs de la politique israélienne. If it hadn’t been for the lawsuit against him for violating the Gayssot law, the pamphlet would have gone unnoticed by all. But thanks to the Gayssot law and the consequent lawsuit, Garaudy gained major publicity and became a hero in the Arabo-Muslim world—where his pamphlet was translated into numerous languages and sold like hot cakes—, as well as a martyr for the cause of free speech. Great! Moreover, once politicians start interdicting speech, where does it end? E.g. why not a law—if not in France, say in Belgium or Spain, with their laws of universal jurisdiction—criminalizing denial that France committed crimes against humanity in the numerous massacres it carried out in its colonial empire over the years and centuries (and with the inevitable demands for reparation by the successive generations of the victims)? Massacres of which, it may be added, the average French citizen is entirely ignorant. What goes around can come around. E.g. in America, when the idiots of the Communist Party USA enthusiastically supported the enactment of the Smith Act in 1940—that criminalized advocating the overthrow of the US government by force—, as it was immediately used to prosecute fascists, Nazis, and Trotskyists, but then boomeranged against the Communists with the onset of the Cold War (before being gutted of its substance by the Supreme Court). Clearly the French have not taken to heart the line that Voltaire never said, about disagreeing with what one says but defending to the death one’s right to say it.

The second problem with the bill is that legislators simply have no business legislating on such matters to begin with. This is the most common reproach in France, that interpretations of history should be left up to historians, not politicians, who lack the professional credentials or competence to weigh in on what happened in Asia Minor a century ago—or even in France a half century ago—, let alone pass laws on it. In this vein, two former members of the French Constitutional Council—Georges Vedel and Robert Badinter—affirmed that the 2001 law recognizing the Armenian genocide would have been ruled unconstitutional had it been referred to the said council, as the National Assembly was manifestly exceeding its constitutional mandate in legislating on the question (e.g. see here and here). This would seem second nature but for French politicians it manifestly is not.

The third problem is that the bill implicitly equates the Holocaust with the Armenian genocide. Or maybe I should say the Armenian “genocide.” On the Holocaust—on what the Nazis did to the Jews during WWII—there is no dispute whatever. Historians disagree over interpretations, not over the fact that it happened and that it was a genocide. There is not a single trained historian anywhere, now or in the past, who denies that the Holocaust happened or that the Nazis set out to exterminate the Jews—every last one of them—from 1942 onward. Not a single Holocaust negationist is an historian. Robert Faurisson was a professor of French literature. Arthur Butz teaches electrical engineering. David Irving was a physics major before dropping out of college. The negationist Journal of Historical Review has never published an article by anyone with a doctorate in history. Professional negationists are professional anti-Semites, not professional historians. All this is uncontroversial, having been fully explicated in the work of Pierre Vidal-Naquet and Deborah Lipstadt, among others.

What happened to the Armenians is another matter. I have personally read enough on the subject to be convinced that a genocide—such as defined by the UN’s 1948 Genocide Convention—did indeed occur in 1915 in the Ottoman Empire, but there is, in point of fact, a legitimate debate on this. The Turkish state has not helped its case by imposing an official history on the question—not to mention criminalizing denial of its version—or having imposed a blanket taboo on free discussion of the subject until only the past decade. But there are bona fide historians—who are specialists of Turkey and know Turkish, both modern and Ottoman—who do reject the term genocide for what happened to the Armenians in 1915, arguing that there were massacres committed in the context of war but that there was no plan hatched in Istanbul to exterminate the Armenian population, even in part, let alone in full. These historians include Justin McCarthy, who has published much on the question (notably this; also see this); Guenter Lewy, who published this, among his many works of history; and Bernard Lewis, who has not written on the matter but has publicly stated his view—most famously in a 1993 interview in Le Monde—that the Armenians were victims of massacres but not genocide, and for which he was hit by a lawsuit in France. McCarthy and Lewy are in a minority among scholars of the Armenian genocide and their work is hotly contested, but their scholarly credentials and competence are not in doubt. Vigorous debates on their work have unfolded in academic journals—e.g. the Journal of Genocide Research and Middle East Quarterly—and where, it should be said, one of their principal detractors in recent years has been the Turkish historian Taner Akçam, who has famously broken the Turkish taboo in asserting that the Ottomans did indeed commit genocide against the Armenians (e.g. here and here). That McCarthy and Lewy could be legally prosecuted in France for their scholarship is both outrageous and unthinkable. Their work on the Armenians has not been translated into French and published here but now it should be, just to put the inevitable perverse consequences of the new law, should it come into force, to the test.

The fourth problem with the bill is the base electoralist considerations that are driving it. As numerous commentators and pundits have pointed out, a presidential election is taking place in four months time and there are several hundred thousand Armenian-origin voters out there (and who, politicians seem to presume, will put this issue above all others in deciding for whom to cast their ballots). As it happens, ten days prior to Sarkozy’s visit to Armenia in October—where he declared that Turkey “must face up to its history” (doit regarder son histoire en face) and threatened to have enacted a law criminalizing Armenian genocide denial—François Hollande gave a speech in Alfortville, a Paris banlieue with a sizable Armenian-origin community, announcing that if elected president he would push for such a law. Sarko just couldn’t let Hollande outflank him on this; and knowing Sarko he most likely consulted briefly with just one or two aides in his PR staff before making the decision.

Another issue. The existence of an Armenian lobby and of a supposed Armenian electorate has been evoked in a matter-of-fact way for years by commentators in France. This in a polity that has ideologically rejected the notion of ethnicity and that blocs of voters could be defined by sub-national identities (and courted by politicians based on these). One of the most pejorative terms in the French political lexicon is communautarisme, a neologism devoid of social scientific value and for which there is no precise English translation—”communalism” comes the closest but doesn’t really do it—, signifying groups based on ascriptive criteria—mainly ethnic or confessional—that publicly invoke sub-national identities that differentiate them, even symbolically, from the larger French nation and then go on to use these as a resource to advance specific political or social revindications. Communautarisme is regarded as a scourge by French politicians, intellectuals, and media talking heads, and which is seen as afflicting immigrant communities from former colonies on the African continent. When French citizens of Maghrebi or African origin seek to organize on the basis of what Americans call ethnicity or race, they are invariably accused by the political mainstream of engaging in the despised communautarisme. But when Armenians do likewise, it occurs to no one to trot out the communautariste bogeyman. Curieuses mœurs politiques dans ce pays…

The fifth problem with the bill is that it highlights the most unattractive donneur de leçons side of France’s face to the world—a.k.a. French arrogance—, not to mention being so inimical to France’s higher national interests. Given the execrable state of Franco-Turkish relations over the past few years, but which have been improving of late, it is mystifying that Sarkozy would risk poisoning them even more by giving the National Assembly the green light to pass the bill, particularly in view of Turkey’s increasingly important diplomatic role in the region (notably with Syria) and the fact that it is France’s third leading economic partner outside the EU (after the US and China). It’s makes no sense. Alain Juppé, the foreign policy establishment, and business community have been arguing against the law but to no apparent effect. In backing the bill, Sarkozy has demonstrated yet again that he is not an homme d’Etat. François Hollande, Sarko’s probable successor, has not been acting much like an homme d’Etat either. Triste France.

UPDATE: Claire Berlinski links to my post and adds an important statement by the historian Norman Stone, who will risk legal prosecution in France if the law passed by the National Assembly enters into force.

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Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Saw this yesterday. Is directed by Über-auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey’s answer to Abbas Kiarostami (Ceylan is far more interesting), and won the Grand Prix award at Cannes this year. It’s Ceylan’s sixth film. I’ve seen the previous four, ‘Clouds of May‘, ‘Distant‘, ‘Climates‘, and ‘Three Monkeys‘. Didn’t care for the first but the others were quite good (and I particularly liked ‘Distant’). These are not films for the masses, and definitely not this one. It is, to quote one critic,

a long, slow, hypnotic film that explores the human condition through side glances and offhand remarks, caring very little about time, especially the viewer’s time, in eventless sequences without conventional action.

Though it’s over 2½ hours long—and with the first hour-and-a-half taking place at night—, it held my attention throughout. Quoting another critic, the film proceeds

at a slow, measured pace, telling a story that in anyone else’s hands would have barely been enough for a short, this is however a visually mesmerising piece of work whose quiet, apparently placid, uneventful surface, covers a myriad of themes which the attentive spectator should be only too happy to explore… For, in Anton Chekhov’s spirit, which is hovering all over this picture, it is not to the plot itself one should pay attention, but to the countless, presumably irrelevant details strewn along the way… It takes time – and indeed time is of essence all through this film… Patience is amply repaid by the end, when all those details come together, and one realises there is much they have learned in the course of the film about all these predictable, unspectacular individuals who end up by being both touching and affecting. The outcome is fascinating, not only on a personal level, but also as a profoundly perceptive portrait of the Turkish multi-leveled culture and society… This is not just consummate cinematography, though of course it is, but the kind of creative, painterly talent echoed in all of Ceylan work as a still photographer.

I agree. For more reviews, see here, here, and here. Et pour les critiques françaises, voir ici.

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Istanbul Crime and Punishment Film Festival

This looks like one interesting film festival. Too bad I’m not in Istanbul right now. The New York Times has an article on the festival, informing us that

The program includes presentations by Chilean, Polish and Greek scholars on the legal aspects of coming to terms with the legacy of military dictatorships and repressive regimes, as carried out in their respective countries.

Other panels, with leading German scholars, focus on Germany’s transition from the Nazi period to democracy and on the constitutional problems posed by that country’s reunification after the collapse of Communism.

“The problem of military coups is extremely difficult in terms of jurisprudence, almost impossible to solve — perhaps art and cinema can come up with answers that we as legal scholars cannot provide,” Walter Gropp, a German law professor and member of the festival’s advisory board, said in Istanbul last week.

“The transition to a new system, a new constitution, poses the question of who should be held accountable” for the deeds of preceding system, Mr. Gropp added. “It is an endless question to which jurisprudence can provide no answers, to which we must seek the answers outside of the law: What is right and what is wrong?”

This is where the festival comes in.

“We legal scholars see the general principles, but cinematic art focuses on the human beings,” Mr. Gropp said. “This is a different approach that I believe could inspire new ideas.”

While the festival’s theme is clearly geared toward Turkish concerns, it resonates with other countries around the region, particularly those that are looking for new constitutions of their own.

“There is great interest from those countries, from Egypt, from Algeria, from Tunisia,” Mr. Sozuer said.

One festival session will focus on the transition process in Egypt and Tunisia, with presentations by legal scholars from those countries.

The festival program is here.

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Turkey & Israel

I’ve been closely following the crisis in Turkish-Israeli relations over the past week, since the leak of the UN Palmer report on the 2010 Gaza flotilla and the Israeli commando raid on the Mavi Marmara. Erdoğan and Davutoğlu’s surenchère is potentially dangerous—and the Turks are hardly blameless in the affair—but it seems clear that the main responsible party in the latest deterioration of relations between the two states is the Israelis, and notably the charming foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman and his associates. As Zvi Bar’el wrote in Haaretz

…Turkey’s demand that Israel apologize, compensate the victims and lift the Gaza blockade is rooted primarily in Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s obligation to his electorate. It has become a common, uniting, national denominator, an integral part of Turkey’s national prestige and its domestic policy.

The concept of national prestige has also trapped Israel, which on at least two occasions rejected a skillfully crafted apology to Turkey due to the objections of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon.

Henri J. Barkey, in an excellent commentary on the The National Interest web site, likewise asserted that Lieberman “at every turn tried to prevent a negotiated outcome from being finalized.” Alon Liel, the director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry in Ehud Barak’s government, further explained the Israeli attitude

Our new diplomacy, which puts Israeli honor very high on our priority list, does not believe that it can maintain friendly relations with Muslim countries in the long run. The reason is very simple: this Israeli government has no concrete plans to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and consequently the Israel-Arab conflict. This is the sad truth behind the working assumption that real friendships with the Muslim world are practically impossible. This is the undeclared policy that has led to the latest rift in the Turkish-Israeli bilateral link.

Again, this thinking is no doubt driven by Lieberman & Co. And that Co., pour mémoire, includes deputy FM Danny Ayalon, who infamously humiliated the Turkish ambassador to Israel and for the TV cameras to boot. It is known that the Turkish foreign ministry—the diplomatic corps, if not Davutoğlu—has been supportive of Turkey’s erstwhile good relationship with Israel and has not favored the AKP’s move away from this—my source on this is this brilliant former Turkish diplomat—, which makes Ayalon’s arrogant act even more incomprehensible. The haughty Israeli attitude toward Turkey was expressed by the Israeli guest—who is associated with this right leaning think tank—in an Al Jazeera English debate on the issue earlier this week (some of his digs against the Turks were both gratuitous and irrelevant).

As for reasonable Israelis—i.e. those not associated with the current governing coalition—, there were calls for Israel—notably in this Haaretz editorial and op-ed by Shlomo Avineri—to swallow its pride, express regret for the deaths on the Mavi Marmara, and set up a compensation fund. But reasonable people are not running the show in Israel these days, hélas.

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Turkish election: analyses

Voilà some post-election analyses, one from the Istanbul Calling blog, another from Istanbul Notes (which is pessimistic for the future of the CHP). And then there’s this by Soner Cagaptay (who is more optimistic for the CHP), on “Turkish lessons for the Arab spring.” The last paragraph is key

The sine qua non of a potentially successful marriage between Islamist politics and democracy is a strong liberal partner. The new CHP could not only protect Turkish democracy, but also, ironically, might save the AKP from itself by checking the very popularity that lies at the root of that party’s authoritarianism. The lesson for the rest of the Middle East is exactly this: Islamist parties can moderate their platforms, but only if elections are free, if media is independent and if there is a strong liberal party that counters the Islamists’ desire to equate democracy with unchecked power.

A strong liberal partner. Arab politics and liberalism are an oxymoron. Now the CHP didn’t used to be liberal but is becoming so. Does one imagine a former ruling party in an Arab state—e.g. the FLN in Algeria, a Tunisian post-RCD or Egyptian post-NDP—taking the liberal road? Or some other significant liberal Arab force emerging in any given state? To pose the question is to answer it, methinks.

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