EUobserver.com, Belgium
May 9 2006

Turkey and France clash over Armenia ‘genocide’
09.05.2006 – 10:34 CET | By Teresa Küchler

Turkey has recalled its ambassador to France in protest against a
French bid to criminalise denial of the alleged Turkish genocide of
Armenians in the early 1900s.

Turkey has always rejected claims by international historians that
1.5 million Armenians died between 1915 and 1923 as a result of
systematic genocide while modern-day Armenia was under Turkish
Ottoman control.

A spokesperson for the foreign ministry in Ankara said on Monday (9
May) that the ambassador was recalled for a short time to discuss
what Ankara calls the “baseless allegations of Armenian genocide” in
France.

Later this month French parliamentarians are set to discuss and vote
on a law that would make denial of the so-called Armenian genocide a
crime.

The law would mirror existing French legislation against
holocaust-denial, carrying a sentence of up to five years’ prison and
a 45,000 fine.

“The adoption of these texts will provoke irreparable damage to
Franco-Turkish relations,” a Turkish government spokesperson said,
according to French media.

Ankara recognises just 500,000 Armenian deaths during “the Ottoman
war,” and rejects the “genocide” tag saying both sides suffered
severe losses, with Armenia allied to Russia at the time.

Brussels MEPs, acting on a French initiative late last year, also
demanded that Ankara recognises the genocide of Armenians as a
“prerequisite for accession to the European Union.”

The European Commission’s translation database, IATE, defines
genocide as “harmful acts…committed with intent to destroy, in
whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

A commission official told EUobserver that Brussels’ enlargement unit
avoids using the word because “the commission is a forward-looking
institution.”

Trade sanctions mooted
The head of the Turkish parliament’s foreign affairs commission,
Mehmet Dulger, said this weekend that Turks could boycott French
products and French firms could lose lucrative contracts if the
legislation is passed, according to Reuters.

“Turkey will not accept becoming a toy in the French election
campaign,” Dulger said, with a nod toward the French presidential
race in 2007.

He added that he would lead a group of Turkish lawmakers to Paris
this week to lobby against the bill.

In 2001, Turkey cancelled multi-million euro deals with French
enterprises after the French parliament officially recognised the
genocide.

Turkish lawmakers are also preparing a rival law accusing France of
committing genocide during its colonial rule in Algeria.

The legal proposal has also come under fire from less politicised
voices, with Turkish and French intellectuals protesting over the
“inflation of laws of memory” and criticising the government’s
“promulgation of official truths.”

Meanwhile, an open letter to “our French friends” signed by nine
groups of Turkish entrepreneurs and trade unions, published in
several French daily newspapers, said “it is not up to the law to
describe history.”

Turkey and Armenia have no diplomatic relations and closed borders,
with the landlocked country keen for Turkey to open up highways for
trade to western Europe.

“We are too small to have enemies,” an Armenian diplomat said.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress