While most people know Samantha Power as an Obama adviser who has called Hillary Clinton a “monster,” many genocide awareness and prevention activists consider the Harvard professor a hope they can believe in. The Associated Press has noticed that Power, who officially resigned from Obama’s campaign during the Democratic primaries, is on US President-elect Obama’s transition team. This news has encouraged several Armenian bloggers who now feel assured that the author of “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide” (2002) will remind President-elect Barack Obama to keep his promise of officially recognizing the WWI Armenian Genocide committed by Ottoman Turks.
[…]
Back with Obama, Power has reignited hope among many Armenians. But some have wished for more. Joseph at the ArmenianGenocide forum:
Samantha Power is back on the Obama team and will be working at the State Department. This is good for Armenians, as she will give a direct challenge to Hillary Clinton { Hillary WILL betray us} and will be a honest broker in a institution where honesty and integrity is a very rare commodity. Still, would have loved to have Samantha Power as our Sec. of State.
Carrying a black casket labeled “The Newborn Georgian Democracy,” a group of bloggers in Yerevan have marched toward the Georgian Embassy protesting what they call the destruction and desecration of Armenian cultural monuments in neighboring Georgia. Bloggers tell the story.
Posting a YouTube video of the march, ahousekeepersays the bloggers’ November 27, 2008 action was “[i]n response to regular desecrations, vandalism and attempts (often successful) to appropriate Armenian churches by Georgian clerics.”
Հայերի համար Վրաստանը միշտ էլ մոտիկ երկիր է եղել։ Բայց վերջին 5 տարիների փորձը ցույց տվեց մի բան, որ այդ երկիրը շարժվում է դեպի ֆաշիզմ։ … Մեզ հետաքրքրում է մի բան՝ կատարվում է հանցագործություն, բացահայտ խուլիագնություն. գերեզմաններ են քանդում,
փոշիացնում են պատմական հուշարձաններ:
For Armenians, Georgia has always been a close country. But the experience of the last five years shows that [Georgia] is moving toward fascism… All that interests us is one thing – a crime, blatant hooliganism is going on: [Georgians] are destroying Armenian cemeteries, reducing historic monuments to dust.
The recent controversy surrounds the removal of Armenian gravestones from Norashen, a church that Georgian priests are accused of taking over.
A liberal Turkish newspaper is making fun of their government. According to Radical, Turkey’s government has opened a website titled There is No Armenian Ani.
The sarcastic news is actually confronting the Turkish government for launching a website about the historic Armenian city of Ani – now on Turkish territory. The website features information about Ani’s churches and archaeology.
But the word “Armenian” is absent from the entire content of http://www.ani.gov.tr/, except for some bibliography sources.
While government-controlled AzTV says it will stop broadcasting “Voice of America,” an Azerbaijani court has sentenced Ali Hasanov, editor of Ideal newspaper, to 6-monhts in prison. According to the Russian-language Day.az, Hasanov was subpoenaed after Azerbaijan’s Press Union forwarded written complaints against Ideal to the prosecutor’s office. He was handcuffed during his November 14, 2008 hearing and placed behind bars.
The lawyer of another jailed Azeri journalist says the authorities are not letting him visit his client Ganimat Zahidov, the editor-in-chief of Azadliq.
In this wave of restricting freedom of speech, though, some imprisoned Azeri journalists are using all legal means to defend themselves. Eynulla Fatullayev, according to the Azerbaijan Free Speech Foundation, is suing Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry for not providing him with a list of alleged foreigners who were cited in a case that sentenced the journalist to an 8-year imprisonment. The foreigners in Azerbaijan had supposedly protested an article Fatullayev wrote in jail (while serving another sentence) where the author discussed possible US-led strikes against Iran from Azerbaijan.
Moreover, Azeri journalists don’t seem to give up their fight. According to an Azeri-language announcement, a new newspaper – Ayan – is set to launch in Azerbaijan.
While I have been silent on the recent developments of the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process, it doesn’t mean I have not been following the news. My silence reflects a complicated mixture of cautious optimism, confusion, excitement, fear, cynicism, and a busy schedule (which includes observing the US presidential elections). We live in historic and unpredictable times. These unknown globalized waves can translate into almost anything in Nagorno-Karabakh – from long-term solutions to further conflict.
Internationally, Obama’s election, Georgia’s unsuccessful bid for South Ossetia, Turkey’s continuous struggle to join the European Union, and international – particularly US and Russian – interest in the South Caucasus have contributed to the recent developments in the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace process, which was vocalized in a set of principles that Azerbaijan and Armenia signed in Moscow in early November 2008. One can only hope that Armenian and Azeri leaders will make tough choices and negotiate for a solution. Locally, both countries have a great chance to make the piece.
Background:
For those of you who don’t know, Nagorno-Karabakh is an indigenous Armenian region (called Artsakh by locals) within the country of Azerbaijan. This small territory declared its independence from Soviet Azerbaijan in 1991, less than seventy years after USSR chief Joseph Stalin gave Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan. The conflict escalated into a war between Armenia/Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan, killing thousands of people and leaving many more homeless.
Today, Nagorno-Karabakh is an internationally unrecognized republic with a common border with mother Armenia. Nationalist sentiment is at peak high in Azerbaijan where most people see Armenians as invaders and aggressors. The sentiment was reflected in December 2005, when a contingent of Azerbaijan’s army reduced the largest medieval Armenian cemetery – Djulfa – to dust. (Official Azerbaijan until this day denies the destruction, even though it was videotaped.) While most Armenians are nowadays much less antagonistic against Azerbaijan, during the war, in 1992, armed Armenian groups massacred a few hundred Azeri civilians when fighting in Khojalu, although both official Armenia and some Azeri sources question some of the facts of the tragedy: particularly suggesting that Azeri forces deliberately banned Khojalu’s residents to leave through a humanitarian corridor the Armenian army had left for civilians. Furthermore, Armenians claim that the conflict itself started in Azerbaijan when mobs attacked hundreds of Armenian citizens, killing several dozen, in their homes in Sumgayit in 1988 while the Police stood by. Azeris claim that there were riots against their kin in southern Armenia at the same time.
Armenian and Azeri Attitudes:
In short, both Armenia and Azerbaijan see themselves as the victim and the enemy as the aggressor in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. And while abuses by both sides have been almost always symmetrical in the conflict, official Azerbaijan – until recently – has been using both verbal threats and disproportional acts of destruction. Threats have included official statements by Azerbaijan’s president to win Nagorno-Karabakh back by any price, including by war, and predictions by a senior Azeri military chief that Armenia will not exist in several years. Disproportional acts of destruction by Azerbaijan have included total elimination of all ancient indigenous Armenian monuments on its territory, especially in the exclave of Nakhichevan (another region granted to Azerbaijan by Stalin). This is not only inconsistent with Azerbaijan’s self-promotion as “the world’s most tolerant country,” but is also an act of cultural genocide (what I call “genocidal vandalism” in my honors thesis) which in no way contributes to the peace process.
Armenia’s diplomacy in the conflict has been more moderate, which may be a reflection of the following: Armenia’s victory in the early 1990s war, oil-rich Azerbaijan’s military boom, and limited open international support for Armenia in the conflict. Moderate diplomacy, nonetheless, hasn’t resulted in worldwide condemnation against Azerbaijan for blockading Armenia (although until George W. Bush, the United States didn’t give military aid to Azerbaijan). And in general, the world has been very careful not to take sides in the conflict (neither in the case of the Khojalu massacre by Armenians nor in the recent case of Djulfa’s destruction by Azeris): an approach which is difficult to determine as productive or not.
Ideal Solutions and Militant Positions:
One reason why it has been difficult to defend one position or another has been the polarized Armenian and Azerbaijani demands, a “normal” situation in every conflict.
Azerbaijan wants to return its borders to pre-1991, entirely reversing what the bloody war did before the 1994 cease fire. It says that Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh will be Azerbaijan’s citizens, but that they will never have the right or the option to succeed from Azerbaijan. In short, the legal concept of “territorial integrity” has been the supreme law and the sacred doctrine in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan has about a million refugees who live in horrible conditions. Azerbaijan hopes that all these people will return to their homes, now under Armenian control. Armenians say and an Amnesty International report agreed last year, that Azerbaijan is deliberately ignoring its refugees and making their lives even miserable in order to gain international support.
Armenia says that Nagorno-Karabakh’s return to Azeri control would mean giving 150,000 Armenian lives into captivity. If Azerbaijan reduces unarmed ancient Armenian graves to dust, what will it do with live Armenians? Many, if not most, Armenians insist on also keeping the seven regions around Nagorno-Karabakh that Armenian forces gained control of during the war. While not many Armenians lived on these lands during the war, there are hundreds of ancient monuments that Armenians see as proof for their historic claim to the land. Some Azeris criticize Armenians for capitalizing on history and, thus, denying Azeri inhabitants the right to return to their homes. Some Armenians respond that Azerbaijan is trying to capitalize on rewriting history, and denying indigenous Armenians their right to self-determination.
On surface, Azerbaijan doesn’t agree to any solution that will let Nagorno-Karabakh be separate from it. In the same way, many Armenians consider the possibility of giving much of the seven surrounding territories back to Azerbaijan a loss. Neither party considers all the damage that has happened – and will continue to happen – to people in both countries because of the unresolved conflict. Nationalism has overridden cost-benefit analysis (with a human rights perspective) or mutual respect for the rights of the other.
Undemocratic regimes in both Armenia and Azerbaijan have perhaps contributed to the conflict. Wars unite populations, and perhaps the conflict has worked well for both Azeri and Armenian political elites. A few months ago, a former Azerbaijani serviceman (now studying in the United States) told me that Azerbaijan’s economic elite is using nationalism to hold power in the country. While Azerbaijan’s economy is booming due to oil exports, ordinary people are not experiencing change in their lives. Hatred against Armenia, some Azeris say, is the perfect tool for Azerbaijan’s rich class to distract the majority’s attention. And in Armenia, between 1992 and 1994, people would die from hunger and economic desperation. While the government was blaming everything on the war, several government-protected families were illegally becoming superrich. According to widespread claims, independent Armenia’s regime (both Levon-Ter Petrosyan’s and Kocharyan’s) elites stole billions of dollars from the people of Armenia through neoliberal privatizations of several industries and by other means.
Time for Change?
But even undemocratic regimes can solve problems, especially when their hegemony and reputation is at stake. In the last few months, there have been interesting developments in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. First, Azerbaijan’s ally and Armenia’s historic enemy Turkey demonstrated diplomatic will to cooperate with Armenia. Turkey’s president Abdullah Gul accepted his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sargsyan’s invitation to watch a soccer match between both countries in September 2008. The historic event, deemed as “football diplomacy,” was followed by recent meetings brokered by Moscow between Armenia and Azerbaijan where, for the first time, leaders of both countries seemed to be pleased. More surprisingly, Turkey has been reducing its pro-Azerbaijan rhetoric while trying to become a mediator between its two South Caucasus neighbors.
Many Armenians, who are usually skeptical in international relations given their experience of genocide, are discouraged with the recent development. Skeptics see Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan, who came to power following a bloodshed during the March 2008 post-election protests, as trading his own presidency for a solution unbeneficial for Armenia. Turkey’s involvement in the process is less encouraging for the residents of Armenia, a country that Turkey has been blockading since the Karabakh conflict.
While Turkey may not be a friend of Armenia, it sure has its interest in helping the Nagorno-Karabakh process. Turkey is under enormous pressure to open the border with Armenia (which Turkey thinks will help persuade US president-elect Barack Obama to back off from his pledge to recognize the Armenian Genocide). It will be very hard to open the border, though, without solving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Thus, by helping to broker a deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Turkey’s current regime would silence the United States (and also its own ultranationalist deep state), have better prospects for joining the European Union, and make a claim to sort things out in the region (Turkey has surely expressed interest in brokering a deal between the United States and Iran, and unsuccessfully tried the same with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict).
Azerbaijan may be more interested in solving the problem now than in the past. Authoritarian leader Ilham Aliyev, the son of Azerbaijan’s former, now deceased, president Heydar Aliyev, just won a second (and final term) with the opposition boycotting the election (and giving him a perfect argument for a democratic victory). Not having to worry about reelection, Aliyev may be more interested in toning down his militant rhetoric. More importantly, the recent Georgian-Russian escalation over South Ossetia has likely demonstrated to Azerbaijan that war is not as good of a choice as Azerbaijan thought it might be. After all, Georgia not only didn’t win South Ossetia back, its attempt to get international sympathy faded away, if not being replaced with anger and distrust toward Tbilisi. Furthermore, the United States may want to partner with Azerbaijan even further more, especially in the case of an escalation with Iran, if it solves its problem with Armenia.
Armenia may be more inclined to change not only due to alleged pressure against president Sargsyan, but also due to the fact that an open border with Turkey will be a great asset for Armenia (Turkey thinks it may not be able to afford the border without a Karabakh solution). Furthermore, in two years, there won’t be many 18-year-olds in Armenia to qualify as soldiers. That’s because 1992-1994 are Armenia’s “dark and cold days,” when few families had children. So if there is to be war in the next four years, Armenia will have few bodies to fight.
A fight between Armenia and Azerbaijan, nonetheless, is not desired (at least at this time) by any of the superpowers, especially by the United States. Back in July, when I met with the acting US Ambassador to Armenia, I heard extremely nice remarks about president Serzh Sargysan’s offer of watching football match with his Turkish counterpart. The United States is seeking stability, especially with the mess that the Iraq war has created. Russia is also interested in stability between Armenia (a strong ally) and Azerbaijan (an ally), especially since Moscow’s interest in the Baku oil. Thus, internationally speaking, prospects for a peaceful Karabakh deal are possible, if not real.
Realist solutions:
Both sides need to accept that no solution is going to be perfect for either side. I don’t want to suggest what the solution should or will be, but it is clear what the solution cannot be. Azerbaijan cannot recover all the territories that it had before 1991; Armenia cannot retain all the territories that it gained after 1991. This is not a simple cliché, but a psychology that Azerbaijani and Armenian governments must start embedding in their populations. Any solution, though, would be a hard-sell both in Armenia and Azerbaijan. The governments in both countries might want to employ the same tactic they have used for a long time – information wars. Instead of dehumanizing the enemy this time, Armenian and Azeri TV channels (both are government-controlled to a large degree) should broadcast stories that rehumanize their neighbors. This strategy hardly needs to be called ‘affirmative propaganda,’ because there are so many true stories of mutual help and respect that can help in bringing change. One thing that is clear is that a peaceful solution at this time would be great for Armenia, Azerbaijan, their neighbors and the world.
According to Oleg Kozlovsky’s blog, Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party’s new website featured a computerized image showing riot police shooting at civilians. The image has been removed after bloggers noticed it.
After quickly glancing at the Russian-language Day.az online publication, I came across to an overwhelming number of articles dealing with violence again women in Azerbaijan. This week alone, the publication covers a woman killed by her nephew, a man in prison for having killed his wife, a mother beaten to death by her son, and a 21-year-old in court for having raped his 15-year-old sister.
And this all in a country of less than 9 million people.
Azerbaijan’s neighbor Armenia was condemned by Amnesty International for inaction against domestic abuse last week.
Armenian-American celebritiy Kim Kardashian is at it again: now calling on her supporters to vote “yes” in an online poll that asks whether the United States should officially recognize the Armenian Genocide or not. In her own words:
[…]
I firmly believe the U.S. should officially recognize the horrific and historical atrocity of the Armenian Genocide, also known as the “Great Calamity.”
For those of you who don’t know about it: More than a million Armenian people were marched to their death during World War I and beyond. I know, the number is so staggering, I cannot even fathom it.
Right now MSNBC has posted a poll on the matter and I cannot believe how many people have voted “no.” I’m left to wonder if people are really aware of the gravity of the situation.
I voted “yes” and would appreciate it if you felt it in your heard to vote “yes” too.
As I mentioned earlier this year, Kim Kardashian has been talking about visiting her father’s homeland – Armenia.
While it is encouraging to see an American celebrity getting involved in some serious stuff, perhaps Kardashian should be using her influence in more productive ways. Who cares what an online poll says where hackers can vote one million times?
Here is what Kim can do instead:
1. Organize and host a fundraiser for Armenian genocide awareness in the United States (for instance, to donate the money to the in-progress Armenian Genocide Museum in Washington D.C.)
2. Encourage (personally) Silvester Stalone to keep up his dream of making a movie on the Armenian Genocide
3. Personally call Barack Obama and remind him to keep his promise in April
The editor of Armenia’s Hetq.am publication was attacked on November 17, 2008. A YouTube.com shows Edik Baghdasaryan, one of the few Armenian journalists to openly investigate corruption and human trafficking, in fresh wounds. In the video, Edik says in Armenian that an expensive camera was damaged during the attack.
An Armenian article on Hetq gives more details. Here is my quick translation:
“On November 17, [2008], at 8:00 p.m., two unknown individuals on Byuzand street [in Yerevan] next to Vernisaj open market attacked Edik Baghdasaryan, president of Investigative Journalists NGO and editor-in-chief of Hetq online weekly. As the two individuals pushed Edik around, a third person threw a stone at Edik’s head, causing serious injuries. Attackers tore apart Edik Baghdasaryan’s clothing, which was not later found in the area. They [the attackers] stole Edik’s photo camera. Emergency and one policeman arrived per eyewitness request. Edik Baghdasaryan was transferred to the hospital after receiving first aid. The journalist is having difficulties in pointing to possible reasons behind the attack, but he doesn’t rule out his professional work as the reason behind the incident.”
Update: Unzipped also has a post on the attack. I learned about the video from Oneworld.am blogger Onnik Krikorian’s Facebook profile.
[the post below was a mass-email to an Armenian-Turkish group. It is being republished by the author’s permission]
An interesting report that appeared in the 4 November 2008 issue of Milli Gazete, the mouthpiece of the hardline-Islamist Felicity Party, says that the Turkish government plans to enact a “Law on National Archives” with the principal aim of “enabling Turkey to defend itself better” against “Armenian allegations of genocide.” The report is entitled “Legal Armor Against Genocide.”
The Turkish government has indeed prepared a “Draft Bill on National Archives,” but it does not appear to be overtly related to the Armenian genocide. To the best of my knowledge, Milli Gazete is the only publication that has presented the bill in this light. In view of the political inclinations (extremely anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, and anti-West) and the very poor journalistic standards of this paper, the report may not be taken seriously. Nonetheless, a closer look at the law (whose text in Turkish can be accessed at http://www.memurlar.net/haber/44086/) suggests that public access to key documents may be denied on grounds of “national security and interests” and “secrecy.” Unlike the situation in the past, this denial of access will now enjoy “legal armor,” as Milli Gazete describes it.
The draft bill consists of four sections and 39 articles and, when enacted, will be the first law about state archives. Most of the articles are related to the organization, functions, and responsibilities of a reorganized Directorate General of State Archives (DGSA); definitions of archival documents; and the protection, preservation, and classification of archival documents. The bill states that the DGSA will have supervision authority over archival material in the custody of public institutions such as public universities, libraries, ministries, institutes, local governments, and so forth. However, the bill exempts “the Office of the President, the Turkish National Assembly, the General Staff, the Ministry of National Defense, and the National Intelligence Organization” from direct supervision. These agencies are required “to implement the principles stated in the law through their own organizational units.”
The bill creates four departments within the directorate, the two most important of which are the “Republican Archives Department” and the “Ottoman Archives Department.” The other two departments are related to documentation and relations with foreign archive departments. Several “consultative” entities such as legal counsels, public relations, human resources, and “strategy development” units are also enumerated in the new organization.
On the positive side, the bill establishes principles and guidelines that regulate the sorting and destruction of archival documents at even the lowest levels of government. It also formally criminalizes the theft, willful destruction and adulteration, and trading of archival documents.
However, the bill also contains clauses that codify the potential denial of free public access to archival documents in the custody of all public agencies. The clauses that are of most interest to this group are summarized or translated below. My comments follow those.
The first three paragraphs of Article 25 state that archival documents “cannot be removed from their repositories” except under special circumstances, which are specified; that copies of the documents may be provided under certain circumstances; and that “documents which have been cataloged and whose last procedure is more than 30 years old” will be open for research.
The fourth paragraph of this article is the most interesting. It says:
“(4) Archival documents that have been assigned some level of secrecy classification or whose publication may harm national security and interests, the country’s external relations, or the rights of individuals shall retain these attributes after they are transferred to the Directorate General and may not be opened for scholarly research. The Directorate General may decide to remove secrecy classifications from certain archival documents in consultation with [the agency from which the archival document originated] and within the framework of laws.”
The fifth paragraph is also of interest (though standard):
“(5) Access to archival documents by domestic and foreign real and corporate persons and the implementation of procedures and principles stated in this article shall be governed by a statute of regulations.”
This paragraph is typical of virtually all Turkish laws which pass on the responsibility of “implementation of procedures and principles” to lower levels of administration. This provides deniability and vagueness in the case of laws that are known to be discriminatory in advance. This is exactly the way the “Deportation Law” of 1915 and the “Wealth Tax Law” of 1942 (as well as the “Religious Foundations” laws of 2000 and 2007) were drafted: the laws did not mention the actual targets of the actions taken but statutes of regulations created at lower or local levels of administration targeted only certain groups. This allowed the Ottoman and Turkish governments to deny charges that the laws they enacted were discriminatory against certain groups and to argue that “the laws were justified but the implementation went awry.”
In conclusion, although Milli Gazete’s claim that this bill is aimed at “self-defense” against Armenian genocide allegations is not readily apparent in the language of the bill, it is clear that the law provides substantial leeway to a wide range of Turkish government agencies to restrict selectively access to a very large set of sensitive documents. The exemption from direct supervision given to “power agencies” such as the General Staff, the Presidency, the Ministry of Defense, and the National Intelligence Organization; together with the “secrecy” and “national security” exemptions of Article 25(4) and the vague implementation provisions through “statutes of regulations” provide sufficient tools to a fairly large and deep bureaucracy to deny access to any archival document on an arbitrarily selective basis.
The draft bill is expected to go to the National Assembly for discussion and enactment into law during the current legislative session.
An interesting report that appeared in the 4 November 2008 issue of Milli Gazete, the mouthpiece of the hardline-Islamist Felicity Party, says that the Turkish government plans to enact a “Law on National Archives” with the principal aim of “enabling Turkey to defend itself better” against “Armenian allegations of genocide.” The report is entitled “Legal Armor Against Genocide.”
The Turkish government has indeed prepared a “Draft Bill on National Archives,” but it does not appear to be overtly related to the Armenian genocide. To the best of my knowledge, Milli Gazete is the only publication that has presented the bill in this light. In view of the political inclinations (extremely anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, and anti-West) and the very poor journalistic standards of this paper, the report may not be taken seriously. Nonetheless, a closer look at the law (whose text in Turkish can be accessed at http://www.memurlar.net/haber/44086/) suggests that public access to key documents may be denied on grounds of “national security and interests” and “secrecy.” Unlike the situation in the past, this denial of access will now enjoy “legal armor,” as Milli Gazete describes it.
The draft bill consists of four sections and 39 articles and, when enacted, will be the first law about state archives. Most of the articles are related to the organization, functions, and responsibilities of a reorganized Directorate General of State Archives (DGSA); definitions of archival documents; and the protection, preservation, and classification of archival documents. The bill states that the DGSA will have supervision authority over archival material in the custody of public institutions such as public universities, libraries, ministries, institutes, local governments, and so forth. However, the bill exempts “the Office of the President, the Turkish National Assembly, the General Staff, the Ministry of National Defense, and the National Intelligence Organization” from direct supervision. These agencies are required “to implement the principles stated in the law through their own organizational units.”
The bill creates four departments within the directorate, the two most important of which are the “Republican Archives Department” and the “Ottoman Archives Department.” The other two departments are related to documentation and relations with foreign archive departments. Several “consultative” entities such as legal counsels, public relations, human resources, and “strategy development” units are also enumerated in the new organization.
On the positive side, the bill establishes principles and guidelines that regulate the sorting and destruction of archival documents at even the lowest levels of government. It also formally criminalizes the theft, willful destruction and adulteration, and trading of archival documents.
However, the bill also contains clauses that codify the potential denial of free public access to archival documents in the custody of all public agencies. The clauses that are of most interest to this group are summarized or translated below. My comments follow those.
The first three paragraphs of Article 25 state that archival documents “cannot be removed from their repositories” except under special circumstances, which are specified; that copies of the documents may be provided under certain circumstances; and that “documents which have been cataloged and whose last procedure is more than 30 years old” will be open for research.
The fourth paragraph of this article is the most interesting. It says:
“(4) Archival documents that have been assigned some level of secrecy classification or whose publication may harm national security and interests, the country’s external relations, or the rights of individuals shall retain these attributes after they are transferred to the Directorate General and may not be opened for scholarly research. The Directorate General may decide to remove secrecy classifications from certain archival documents in consultation with [the agency from which the archival document originated] and within the framework of laws.”
The fifth paragraph is also of interest (though standard):
“(5) Access to archival documents by domestic and foreign real and corporate persons and the implementation of procedures and principles stated in this article shall be governed by a statute of regulations.”
This paragraph is typical of virtually all Turkish laws which pass on the responsibility of “implementation of procedures and principles” to lower levels of administration. This provides deniability and vagueness in the case of laws that are known to be discriminatory in advance. This is exactly the way the “Deportation Law” of 1915 and the “Wealth Tax Law” of 1942 (as well as the “Religious Foundations” laws of 2000 and 2007) were drafted: the laws did not mention the actual targets of the actions taken but statutes of regulations created at lower or local levels of administration targeted only certain groups. This allowed the Ottoman and Turkish governments to deny charges that the laws they enacted were discriminatory against certain groups and to argue that “the laws were justified but the implementation went awry.”
In conclusion, although Milli Gazete’s claim that this bill is aimed at “self-defense” against Armenian genocide allegations is not readily apparent in the language of the bill, it is clear that the law provides substantial leeway to a wide range of Turkish government agencies to restrict selectively access to a very large set of sensitive documents. The exemption from direct supervision given to “power agencies” such as the General Staff, the Presidency, the Ministry of Defense, and the National Intelligence Organization; together with the “secrecy” and “national security” exemptions of Article 25(4) and the vague implementation provisions through “statutes of regulations” provide sufficient tools to a fairly large and deep bureaucracy to deny access to any archival document on an arbitrarily selective basis.
The draft bill is expected to go to the National Assembly for discussion and enactment into law during the current legislative session.
