Mr. Speaker, it is kind of with a heavy heart that we are in this place today discussing very difficult, sad and tragic events that occurred back in 1915, the earlier part of the last century. Very troubling to me is the fact that we want to bring conflicts from abroad in a very calculated and deliberate manner into this place.
I have always had a bit of a concern about bringing some of the ethnic clashes in other parts of the world into this place, be it from Sierra Leone or wherever it happens to be. That we do it here without the careful kind of thought and attention we should is a somewhat troubling thing as well as the fact that it occurred so many years ago when there were things that occurred in history at that time that are in dispute. There are two different sides to it.
Also, what we tend to see here most often, and on this particular issue as it comes up time and again, is one side of it. Then we draw into the whole issue conflicts that the Greek people had with the Turks. We had a member today speaking from that perspective. We bring all of these conflicts into this present place. I do not think it is helpful. I do not think it is constructive or productive for this place. I think it would be much better for Armenian and Turkish people to be getting together and working through this. There were many lives lost on both sides, and that is to be regretted.
I have talked with individuals from the Turkish community who would like to meet with people from the Armenian community and in fact proposed this to an individual and asked if they could go on from here and heal respectively in regard to the losses and terrible tragic time back then. This individual was declined. I hope that is not reflective or symbolic of all Armenian people. I would hope it not to be true, but I know in this one case there was that invitation offered and there was just a flat refusal.
We need to go back very quickly in history to recognize that at that period in time there was the collapse of the Ottoman empire. Indeed, for all intents and purposes, it was an empire that was fairly benevolent. If we look at history one understands that they allowed a fair bit of local control throughout that vast empire. They sheltered the Jewish people. They provided refuge to them when the Jews were expelled en masse from Spain. It is a kind of cultural legacy that is much to be proud of. It contradicts to some degree the Armenian claims that the Turks had waged a war of total ethnic cleansing.
Of the multitude of ethnic groups which resided within the borders of the Ottoman empire, have any other people made claims of genocide as we have here to date? In fact, many of our Greek neighbours in Canada have told us that Ottomans had sheltered them from the conflicts that raged among the European Christians, Orthodox and Catholics at the time.
Stepping back in history it was a time when Russia, on the east and Great Britain were instigating one of the main ethnic groups of the Ottoman empire, the Armenians, to rise up against the Ottomans, in the eastern part of the empire. We were individuals who operated in a fairly violent fashion, Armenian terrorist gangs. Let us be honest. I am almost hesitant to go out on a limb when I say these things because I know that there could well be reprisals against people who speak. There have been within our own country. There were assassinations in our own country back in the 80s and in places around the world by Armenian terrorist gangs. That does not make me feel really comfortable, even here, speaking today on such a matter.
These Armenian terrorists back at that time intensified their actions. There were sporadic clashes between the Muslim and Armenian settlements in Turkey. Then when the Russian army invaded eastern Anatolia in 1915 those Armenian terrorist gangs, side by side with the Russian army, started launching systematic attacks against the Ottoman troops, but also against their civilian Muslim fellow countrymen. In addition to those attacks, the Armenian gangs also assisted the Russians by cutting supply lines of the Ottoman army, which was fighting with an invading force.
Under those circumstances the Ottoman government decided to relocate the Armenians who were living in that war theatre to other provinces in the empire. The rationale for that decision was two-fold: to prevent the inter-communal massacres, to keep these two conflicting communities apart, and to cut the support extended by those Armenian towns to the Russians.
During the period in discussion there were hostilities, famine, ailments, banditry and so on. It heavily affected all those communities in eastern Anatolia.
Innocent civilians lost their lives during that migration which took place under some very difficult winter conditions and those are the consequences of a war of unprecedented magnitude. But neither the distress of the Turks nor the Armenians should be solely singled out. It was a tragic and sad time in the course of history. These painful experiences were only part of the tragedy to which the whole of the Anatolian population was subjected.
I could go on a great length, but I do want to allow some time for other members. I am rather concerned when I hear genocide kind of statements that we have around the world. Generally we are going after somebody to prosecute them in the criminal courts in the international tribunals at the Hague or wherever. I am not exactly sure, even if this were to pass today, who we would be prosecuting or going after.
Another concern is when this is passed in other countries. It is interesting in noting the countries that have passed this; not the U.S., not the U.K., and not the United Nations. They have never passed a motion or resolution to this effect. Other countries may have had their own vested motions for doing so. In France, particularly, when as a result of passing a law somewhat to this effect, a lawsuit was brought against anybody who questioned that. A professor is now being sued because he differs with the Armenian perspective on this tragic time in history.
I am going to leave it there. I hope all members across the House, when they cast their ballot tomorrow, would recognize that often we have heard only one side of the story. There were Armenians trying to destabilize the empire at that time. They were collaborating with the orthodox Russians in the east. There were many tragic violent events occurring at the time. War is awful; war is ugly.
It is a mistake, though, at this time in history, so many years later, to be dragging that conflict here. We should leave those things to the historians to work out and to come to some agreement in terms of what the actual facts were. But there is not that clear agreement. The term genocide is far too strong a case to use in respect to what occurred--the tragic events that affect the Armenian community and likewise affect the Turkish community.
I rest my case and leave time for others at this point.