BY OKTAY EKSI
HURRIYET- Last year on May, Yusuf Halacoglu attended a meeting where he insisted that the Armenian ‘genocide’ claims are baseless and false. However, Swiss law considers it a crime to reject the ‘genocide’ claims. Therefore, a legal investigation was begun into Halacoglu. Assuming the reverse, what if a Turkish court had opened an investigation against a citizen of Switzerland?
There’s little doubt what would happen. We’d be getting letters of protest from Europe complaining, ‘There’s still no freedom of speech in Turkey.’ The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly would condemn the decision of Turkish courts, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) would eagerly wait in line to take their shots at Turkey. We’d be listening to European Parliament members lecturing us on learning the rules of the Union, and most of us would be thinking they were right.
But now, Switzerland, which often brags to be the most civilized country in the world, opened a legal investigation against a Turkish historian who merely expressed his own point of view…
The reason? According to the Swiss Parliament, the Ottoman Empire is guilty of ‘genocide’ against the Armenians. Therefore, it’s a crime to reject this ‘genocide.’ However, there’s no court precedent saying that the Armenian ‘genocide’ claims are true. Without a court ruling on the Armenian ‘genocide,’ how can they ever accuse Halacoglu of rejecting a crime? That seems quite impossible.
However, each day we witness another double standard in our relations with the EU, so we shouldn’t really expect Europe to come up with a fair ruling.