Genocide: - DIIS

The Turkish Media Debate on the Armenian Massacre
citizenship in the countries they live in. In an interview from January 29,
2001, he said with barely concealed contempt for the French politicians: “If
the 450,000 Turks who live in France became French citizens, and united
and coordinated their efforts, the French Parliament would pass a resolution
claiming that it was not Turks who murdered 1,5 million Armenians
but on the contrary the Armenians who massacred the Turks”. His calculation
was thus: In France there are 330,000 legal Turkish immigrants who
still have Turkish passports, 90,000 “economic immigrants”, that is illegal
immigrants, and 30,000 Turks with French passports. Both expressions,
“economic refugees” and “Turks with French passports” are Evren’s own
words. Furthermore, he claimed that the number of Turks in France exceed
the number of approximately 200,000 Armenians.
It would be wrong to consider the interest of the Turkish immigrants in the
campaigns on the Armenian question as something which is exclusively
being manipulated and organised by the Turkish state. The interest of the
Turkish immigrants in resolutions and monuments commemorating the
genocide is to be expected, in the same sense that nobody has any interest
in having their grandparents – as one Turkish professor put it during
a meeting arranged by a Turkish organisation in Germany – “depicted as
murderers”. The professor, Ercan Citlioglu, added, “There is nothing in
our history which stains our honor as a nation. There is absolutely no reason
for us to bow our heads in shame” during the meeting, “Armenians in
Anatolia in 1915 and the Realities” arranged by the Association for Turkish
and German Friendship.
Already when the French Parliament started the debate on the Armenian
resolution a number of Turkish immigrant organisations began collecting
signatures and arranging demonstrations. The Turkish internet network
Turkish Forum (http://www.TurkishForum.com) which contains one of
the virtual global communities of the Turkish immigrants, gathers and
distributes nearly all the articles which have been published in major papers
and journals in English and Turkish on the Armenian issue. Likewise
Turkish Forum has in its daily electronic newsletter called on its members
to protest to the politicians and parliaments who mention or discuss the
genocide.
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