By Osman KAVALA

(ISTANBUL, December 22, 2011)

The French Parliament aims to pass a bill that will criminalize defending, denying, disputing and deeming inferior the crimes against humanity, genocides and war crimes.

Defending or legitimizing crimes against humanity, genocides or ethnic cleansing can also be seen as hate crimes; therefore the argument that places these efforts under the protection of freedom of speech is highly disputable.

Yet, any intellectual activity or scientific work that doesn't propagate such intent should be excluded from the scope of those legislations.

The French legislation and its predecessors in other countries remain problematic because they don't make this distinction.

As a result, those who demand the massacre and exile of Anatolian Armenians to be recognized as genocide could utilize this legislation without making the distinction mentioned above. The French courts should be aware of this distinction.

Nonetheless, during the debate around the legislation in question, we should not overlook the fact that its scope isn't limited to the events of 1915 but universal.

Theoretically, the same legislation could be used regarding the war crimes or crimes against humanity committed by France or the US.

This is why the Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's reaction, saying "They should mind their own business", doesn't make sense. Each and every state should look into its own history, face up to the realities and invite others to do the same.

The Turkish government can only do good to progress the international humanitarian law by bringing up the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Rwanda, Iraq or Algeria.

Yet, if these efforts are aimed at creating a rationale for the insensitivity towards the events of 1915 or legitimization of what had happened, the sincerity of those who bring up these issues would be scrutinized and they could lose their plausibility.

The dimension of the forced exile, massacre and despoliation of hundreds of thousands of people living in Ottoman land in and following 1915, just because they are Armenians, is surely wide ranging than those committed later in Dersim.

Therefore, in order to develop the necessary juridical and ethical norms in Turkey, it is imperative to accept the notion that the brutality imposed upon Armenians by those who held political power in the Ottoman state in 1915 cannot be legitimized, rationalized, defended nor downplayed.

Only with this acceptance, debating if what happened in 1915 can be classified as genocide or not, could be seen as an effort within the realm of freedom of speech.

Osman Kavala is the chairman of Anadolu Kultür a nonprofit company and the Association to Promote Social and Cultural Life. He is also a member of the board of TESEV (Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation) and the advisory board of the liaison office of the Open Society Institute in Turkey.