French PM Raffarin Uses ‘Genocide’ Term in Turkey-EU Debates

Journal of Turkish Weekly
Dec 22 2004

French Prime Minister Jean Pierre Raffarin has followed the lead of
his Foreign Minister, Michel Barnier, in using the expression
“Armenian Genocide” publicly.

At a session organized at the French Parliament to discuss the
opening of membership negotiations between the European Union (EU)
and Turkey, Raffarin disclosed that they have prepared a law on
“Armenian Genocide” at the parliament and that the Armenian and
Kurdish issues will be raised with Turkey.

Raffarin pointed out that Turkey’s EU perspective was assigned in
1963 and that no French administrations have considered Turkey’s EU
membership as a subject worth discussing since then.

He emphasized that nothing can keep Turkey out of Europe once Turkey
fulfills all the requirements and it will become an EU member.

There is a strong Armenian diaspora in France and the radical
Armenian lobbying groups make pressure on the French Government.
Turkey does not recognise the Armenian ‘genocide allegations’ and
condemns France for its attitude on the Armenian issue.

Turkish officials argue that it is not understable French Government
gives more importance to the events claimed happened about 100 years
ago than the current hot issues, like the Armenian occupation of the
20 per cent of Azerbaijani territories. Gulcan from ISRO saida “it is
strange, for the French politicians the only problem with Turkey’s EU
bid is the 1915 events. French Government just focuses on the
Armenian allegations instead of cultural dialogue, minority problems
in France, French-Turkish economic and political relations etc. If
France considers 3 million Armenia is more important than 75 million
Turkey, so, there is no problem then. Today’s France simply igonres
Turkish reality. Theye are talking about history, but if they
continue to lose time, cultural harmonization and European security
will be history”.

22 December 2004
JTW