472) You cannot legislate history

A case has been filed in Massachusetts concerning the way the 'Armenian genocide' is taught in schools. The plaintiffs, including a bright student, argue that teaching just the Armenian side of the story and omitting the Turkish side from textbooks is depriving students of their right to have the whole picture, especially when there are respectable historians such as Bernard Lewis, Justin McCarthy and Guenter Lewy who have dissenting views on the events of 1915. . . .

A case has been filed in Massachusetts concerning the way the “Armenian genocide” is taught in schools. The plaintiffs, including a bright student, argue that teaching just the Armenian side of the story and omitting the Turkish side from textbooks is depriving students of their right to have the whole picture, especially when there are respectable historians such as Bernard Lewis, Justin McCarthy and Guenter Lewy who have dissenting views on the events of 1915.

The plaintiffs are not saying “there was no genocide.” They are saying, “We don't know what happened but want to listen to all sides, as is our right.” There is nothing more reasonable than this, even if some historians are now scurrying to the Armenian defense by arguing that the Turkish side of the story is mere propaganda, of no historic value, and should therefore not be taught at all.

Obviously approaching the matter from a philosophical and ethical dimension, there are historians who strongly disagree. In the meantime 19 historians in France have issued a declaration calling on politicians to leave history-writing to historians.

They also want the laws that have been enacted and which criminalize certain opinions on historic matters to be annulled. This of course includes the law on “Holocaust revisionism” and the “Armenian genocide law.”

The motive for these historians is not, however, to curry favor with Turkey. Otherwise these historians would have made their view known when Bernard Lewis was convicted a few years ago by a Paris court of “denying the Armenian genocide.”

What motivated the French historians to take this “principled” stand is a law the French government quietly passed in February that makes it legally binding on schools to glorify France's colonial past, especially in North Africa. How the French government failed to see the reaction this would elicit from the people of the former colonies is a mystery. Whether this is an expression of traditional self-centered French arrogance, as some maintain, or of something else, that is for the French to answer.

What happened in the end is that a bill was submitted by the Islah Party to the Algerian Parliament a few days ago that criminalizes the 123-year French occupation of the country and demands compensation for the 3 million Algerians killed during this period. The bill also demands a public apology from France and says the matter is not subject to the statute of limitations.

In addition to this the right-hand man of the French ultra-right-wing politician Jean Marie le Pen is to stand trial in May in Paris for saying that “the question of the Nazi gas chambers is for historians to decide.” Given the growing popularity of Le Pen's National Front, one can assume there are a considerable number of French people who think along these lines -- including Le Pen himself, who has been convicted of anti-Semitism in the past for expressing similar views.

Put another way, it is clear that the trial in May will also cause controversy in France. In the background to all this is the growing criticism of the incarceration in Austria of the Holocaust revisionist historian, David Irving, with even historians who hate his ideas saying that this is contrary to the principle of freedom of expression and academic research.

Put another way, historians in America and Europe are increasingly realizing the stupidity of trying to legislate history and are returning to the age-old formula of responding to unsavory ideas with ideas, not the law -- provided, of course, there is no incitement to violence involved in the ideas expressed.

So is this good news for Turkey? Not for the ultranationalist mob that tried to lynch Orhan Pamuk last week. Obviously it is good that, for example, the way is opening for the Turkish side of the story to be told. But consistency here requires that the same is done in Turkey. In other words, that the Armenian side of the story is taught in Turkish schools for the sake of the whole picture. Consistency also requires that history not be legislated in Turkey, either, with laws that make it a criminal offense to say “the Armenian genocide happened.”

The long and the short of all this is that you cannot legislate history without destroying the concept of freedom of expression and academic research. So the French historians who issued their declaration last week, albeit belatedly and only when the subject started to be a headache for France, are right. History should be left to professional historians.

Semih �diz
www.tdn.com.tr