Reuters

April 02, 2015 7:09 PM

Speaker Yiannakis Omirou,
historical truths.

NICOSIA—Cyprus on Thursday made it a crime to deny that Ottoman Turks committed genocide against Armenian Turks a century ago, a move likely to rile its old rival Turkey as peace talks on the ethnically split island remain stalled.The Cypriot parliament passed a resolution penalizing denial of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, modifying existing legislation, which required prior conviction by an international court to make denial a crime.

“Today is a historic day,” said Yiannakis Omirou, parliament speaker. “It allows parliament to restore, with unanimous decisions and resolutions, historical truths.”

The east Mediterranean island, split in a Turkish invasion in 1974 after a brief Greek-inspired coup, was one of the first countries worldwide in 1975 to recognize the Armenian killings as genocide. It is commemorated on April 24.

The nature and scale of the killings remain highly contentious. Turkey accepts that many Armenians died in partisan fighting beginning in 1915, but denies that up to 1.5 million were killed and that this constituted an act of genocide, a term used by many Western historians and foreign parliaments.

In a statement, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgic said the Cypriot resolution was “null and void to us and not worthy of comment.”

“Those who have tried to exploit the events of 1915 at every opportunity by using base political calculations have not been able to achieve any result until now and won’t do so in the future,” he added.

Armenia accuses the Ottoman authorities at the time of systematically massacring large numbers of Armenians and deporting many more, including women, children, the elderly and infirm, in terrible conditions on so-called death marches.

The issue has long been a source of tension between Turkey and several Western countries, especially the United States and France, both home to large ethnic Armenian diasporas. Cyprus, too, has an Armenian population.

Cyprus has been at loggerheads with Turkey for decades. Its ethnic Greek and Turkish Cypriot populations have lived estranged in the south and north respectively since 1974. Seeds of division were sown earlier when a power-sharing government crumbled amid violence in 1963.

Thursday’s resolution was passed by Greek Cypriot lawmakers, who now make up the island’s only internationally recognized parliament.

Cypriot lawmakers on Monday, March 30, agreed to amend current legislation, criminalizing the denial of a genocide if the given crime against humanity has been recognized by the House, Cyprus Mail reports.

The matter is fundamentally about the Armenian Genocide, and resurfaced last week due to the upcoming visit of Armenian National Assembly speaker Galust Sahakyan to Cyprus to mark the 100th anniversary of the first genocide of the 20th century.

As it stands, the law states that denial of crimes against humanity and genocide is a criminal offence only where the crime in question has been recognized by irrevocable decision of an international court. Cyprus is among 22 countries that have recognized the Armenian Genocide. However, because the International Criminal Court has not recognized it, thus far denial of the genocide was not a criminal offence here.

House Speaker Yiannakis Omirou was keen to add a clause to the legislation, making genocide denial a criminal offence whether it has been recognized by an international court or by a resolution of the Cyprus parliament, the report says.

Following debate at the House legal affairs committee on Monday, the parties took on board Omirou’s legislative proposal, but with a modification – denial of genocide will constitute a criminal offence only where the House resolution recognizing that genocide was unanimous.

Sources from the ruling DISY party told the Mail that the House may hold an extraordinary session of the plenum on Thursday morning, before the scheduled plenary, to pass the legal amendment.

Sahakyan, due on the island on Wednesday, is on Thursday afternoon scheduled to address the House of Representatives.

While on an official trip to Armenia last November, Omirou appears to have promised his Armenian counterpart that Cyprus would criminalize the denial of the Armenian Genocide, as other countries – Switzerland, Slovakia, Greece – have done.

The same DISY sources, according to Cyprus Mail, dismissed the notion, as reported by daily Simerini, that Omirou and the presidency were at odds over amending the law.

The only reservations the president had was that the government was not consulted on the matter, which pertains to foreign policy.

The sources also refuted media reports that DISY MPs had argued in committee against criminalizing denial because it might anger the Turkish Cypriots and Turkey, particularly at this juncture when peace talks may resume.

Cyprus was the first European country (and the second worldwide, after Uruguay) to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide. On April 24, 1975, Resolution 36 was voted unanimously by the House of Representatives.

Given that decision was unanimous, the criminalization amendment now being proposed should automatically apply to the Armenian Genocide.

Under the law, the denial or “flagrant downgrading” of recognized war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, provided the crime has been recognized by an international court, is punishable by up to five years imprisonment and/or a fine of €10,000.

Cyprus Criminalizes Denial of 1915 Armenian Genocide

Cypriot parliament criminalizes Armenian Genocide denial