For the complete report in the New Republic Online click on this link
Why France shouldn't legislate Turkey's history - by Philip H. Gordon & Omer Taspinar
"As European nations debate the idea of accepting Turkey into their ranks, vestiges of the country's authoritarian nationalism--particularly its tendency to constrain free speech in the name of national honor and unity--have antagonized proponents of the European Union's accepted liberal values. The French parliament's vote is a dangerous step down a slippery slope. If it is a crime to disagree that what happened to Armenians 90 years ago should be considered genocide, why stop there? Shouldn't it be a crime to minimize the impact of other historical tragedies, such as colonialism or the slave trade? Should the Turkish parliament pass a law making it a criminal offense to deny that France practiced torture in Algeria or that a million Muslims were killed there? Should African governments make it illegal to deny that genocide took place in Rwanda? Once you go down that road, it is hard to see where the line should be drawn.
Indeed, the new French legislation is just the latest illiberal policy in Europe masquerading as liberalism. Since the end of World War II, a number of European countries, including Germany, Austria, and France, have passed laws against Holocaust denial. Proponents of the laws argue that they allow these nations to atone politically for their past sins, while working to ensure that Holocaust deniers could not foster the same sort of anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust in the first place. Now, however, they could also serve as inspiration to scores of different ethnic and religious groups that wish to win legal acknowledgement of their own past suffering and historical grievances, as the Armenians have. But parliaments across Europe would be better off taking the current legislation off the books than giving equal treatment to every group's claims. Do we really want the government to start deciding that some historical views are acceptable but others merit prison sentences?"
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