Mr. Speaker, I hope to convince the parliamentary secretary to try to change the government's position on this.
First, I want to say that I am proud to rise, on behalf of the Bloc Quebecois, to speak to this motion, which we support. I must point out that the member for Laval Centre brought forward a similar motion in the House. That motion was debated on two occasions. It read as follows:
That this House recognize the Armenian genocide of 1915 and condemn this act as a crime against humanity.
I will remind members that Mr. Daviault, who was the member for Ahuntsic—I can refer to him by name since he is no longer with us—had also brought forward such a motion, which was debated in the House in 1995 and 1996.
A lot has been said in the House in support of recognition of the Armenian genocide. I would not want to repeat everything, but I do want to talk about an article that I read and that I must share with my colleagues.
This article is at the heart of a new trend that emanates from Turkish and Armenian historians who do want the recognition of the genocide, and again I draw the attention of the parliamentary secretary to this most important issue, but who also want to go beyond that and to promote dialogue between the two communities and between the two countries as well.
I remember going through Armenia and Turkey. Armenia greatly needs Turkey. And people in Turkey would come to realize that things would be better if they had more contact with Armenia.
The author that I will be talking about is Taner Akcam and he currently works, from what I understand, out of the Zoryan Institute, in Toronto. A Turkish historian, he has published and is still publishing reports on his work at the Zoryan Institute.
In July 2001, the prestigious Monde diplomatique published one of his articles entitled “Turkey's carefully forgotten history”. I want to point out to the parliamentary secretary that the article was written after France got into serious trouble with Turkey following the recognition by the French Assembly and Senate of the Armenian genocide.
The author reminds us that the French Ambassador was summoned to Ankara by the Turkish government. Demonstrations were held and French products were boycotted. “The recognition by Paris of the Armenian genocide led to official reactions and popular backlash”, he said. I remember seeing and reading that.
Mr. Akcam also said, “In fact, for Turkey to acknowledge this bloodbath would force it to recognize that some of the heroes who helped build its modern State were also killers. The whole vision of the country would then crumble”.
This is what he explains throughout his article.
He writes:
Regardless of the decision by France, it cannot serve as a pretext for once again cevering up what was done in 1915-17 by the party forming the Ottoman government, the majority of which was Turk, to the Armenian population.
He goes on:
There are many instances that support the view that the reaction against France is intended to conceal the facts and not as defence against a false accusation. One of the most telling of these might be these inflammatory words by a journalist, “Let it be made clear for world public opinion, in the past we chastised all those vile mixed bloods who, not content just to take over our lands, also moved against Turks' assets, lives and honour. We know our forefathers were right, and today, if such threats were to recur, we would do what was necessary, without a moment's hesitation”. There is nothing exceptional about these words, said in a moment of great anger. There have been works with a claim to a scientific nature that have said something similar.
He follows with an important question in an attempt to guide us in the response:
Why such anger in reaction to the term “genocide”? Such a reaction is all the harder to grasp when Turkey could, if it wanted to, acknowledge that such massacres did take place while declaring its non-responsibility. Mustafa Kemal, the country's founder, spoke dozens of times on this matter, condemning what he termed the infamous massacres, and calling for punishment of the guilty parties. The leaders of the Ottoman Ittihad ve Terakki (Union and Progress Party) who organized the massacres were judged in 1926, although the proceedings addressed other crimes. A number of them were executed. In light of these facts, Turkey could have regretted the crimes committed against the Armenians and explained that they were acts committed by the Ottoman state and not the Republic.
Why? The historian in him responds, by saying the following:
The collective amnesia from which the country suffers is one of the major obstacles to any public debate. This shared loss of memory comes of the fact that the historic conscience of the Turks has been paralyzed for decades. The founders of the Republic have literally broken the country's ties with its past.
This is interesting, because it brings up Turkey's history. In creating a new modern republican state almost from scratch, Kemal Atatürk and those with whom he founded the country had to make it forget 600 years of its history, or so the historian tells us. The creators of this new Turkey are so important in present Turkish history that they are considered heroes. Kemal Atatürk is a great hero. If you go to Turkey, you will see pictures of him everywhere, and everyone speaks highly of him.
It is said that he could not have built the country surrounded by criminals. That is what the author tells us, meaning that it was better to forget the past than to acknowledge the crimes committed.
I think that the idea is clear. I believe that our debates can be useful not only because they will afford Armenians from the diaspora or from Armenia some small measure of solace, but because, by calling on people such as Mr. Atcam, they will also foster a rapprochement, which is what the parliamentary secretary said she wanted.
Mr. Akcam also said:
Eighty-six years of forgotten past have not produced the yearned-for democracy in Turkey. Quite the opposite.
So, he is proposing, and this is what I am working toward, that the genocide be acknowledged and that, at the same time, an effort be made to understand and help the Turks to see their history in a different light, in all humility. Similarly, we still hope that the House will recognize the wrongs done to the Acadians in 1755.