Mick Hartley

One of Israel's less inspiring political positions has been its refusal, to date, to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. It's understandable of course, since Turkey until recently has been Israel's best if not only friend in the region, and it must have seemed a small price to pay to avoid antagonising the Turks on a point on which they've shown themselves to be particularly sensitive. On the other hand this genocide denial will have seemed to many Jews a cynical betrayal of their own history.

Now that may be changing. Relations with Turkey's Islamist government have deteriorated. On Monday the Israeli Parliament held its first public debate on whether to commemorate the Turkish genocide of Armenians. The arguments were familiar: principle against pragmatism…

“As a people and as a country we stand and face the whole world with the highest moral demand that Holocaust denial is something human history cannot accept,” Reuven Rivlin, the speaker of the Parliament, who has favored official recognition of the genocide, said in his testimony. “Therefore we cannot deny the tragedy of others.”…

Otniel Schneller, a legislator from the opposition Kadima Party, spoke against the commemoration, saying the region was growing more hostile to Israel in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings and that Israel had to be pragmatic.

“This is the time when we must rehabilitate our relations with Turkey because this is an existential issue for us,” he said. “Sometimes our desire to be right and moral overcomes our desire to exist, which is in the interest of the entire country.”

No decision was reached, but the subject has now been aired publicly. The Turks will not be pleased.

Claire Berlinski, meanwhile, in a one-woman protest against both the recent French decision to make denial of the Armenian genocide illegal, and Turkey's long-standing laws making affirmation of the genocide illegal, has both denied the genocide in France, and affirmed it in Turkey. 

In the latter post she suggests that the Turks' adamant refusal to label as genocide what they acknowledge as slaughter may be because they assume that genocide means "just like the Nazis", and, quite rightly, see differences between the Holocaust and what happened to the Armenians – despite the fact that by the internationally agreed definition of genocide, what happened to the Armenians was indeed genocide. She also suggests, in a comment, that the Islamist government may in fact end up pushing for recognition of the genocide, as a stick with which to beat their secular predecessors – by labelling them genocide deniers. It's possible, perhaps, but surely one factor which is ignored in all this is that, beyond the question of nationalism and perceived insults to Turkishness, there's the religious dimension. One of the most powerful stories that Islamists tell themselves is that Muslims are persecuted, and have always been persecuted, by other forces: Christians, Jews, the West. It would be a most unwelcome break with that illusion to go ahead and acknowledge that, just one hundred years ago, the first modern genocide was instigated by Muslims, against Christians.