A top US State Department official with responsibility for Turkey said the administration was committed to dissuading Congress from passing a resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire in 1915, but said that it was difficult to make this case while Turkey still kept in its penal code laws which restricted freedom of speech.
“Deep introspection” was the best way to honor victims of the episode and to prevent a recurrence of future,” according to Matthew Bryza, Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs. He said that a resolution of Congress would simply lead to a retrenchment inside Turkey and a hardening of attitudes that would make internal discussion more difficult.
He called for widespread debate on the issue among philosophers, archival historians and ordinary people and cited the popular wave of sympathy for the murdered Armenian editor Hrant Dink as evidence that many in Turkey wished to achieve a reconciliation with their past. A resolution of Congress would “kill that process,” he said. At the same time he suggested that it was impossible to convince the outside world that Turkey could engage in a “candid and heartfelt discussion” while people who spoke their minds were being prosecuted. “Article 301 has to go away,” he said. This is the clause of the Turkish penal code making it an offense to “insult Turkishness” under which Dink was successfully prosecuted, reports Today’s Zaman.
