450,000 TURKS IN FRANCE: WILL YOU IMPRISON US ALL?
By Ali Ihsan Aydin, Paris
Zaman, Turkey
May 16 2006
The bill, punishing those who deny the Armenian genocide due for
discussion in the French Parliament on Thursday, is worrying the
450,000 Turks living in France.
If the bill is enacted, tens of thousands of Turkish expatriates will
become potential offenders.
Turkish-French citizens say the denial bill cannot be enforced say,
“Will you put in prison tens of thousands deniers of the genocide?”
Turkish expatriates have been reacting against the Socialist Party
(PS), which prepared the bill, and will organize protests on May 18
before the French Assembly.
They will send their message to the French parliamentarians by chaining
themselves and taping their mouths.
Turkish-origin head of the PS’s Strasbourg-Neuhof town regional office
Saban Kiper, protests his party’s attempt and said, “I find it really
unnecessary.” Kiper has been conducting negotiations for three weeks
with the party’s regional office and headquarters, as well as evoking
Turkish-French citizens to protest the bill.
“Tens of thousands of Turkish-French citizens like me want to be proud
of this country. However, how can you feel proud of it; it calls your
ancestors murderers,” said Kiper, PS’s only Turkish origin regional
branch president.
Saban, also a member of the French Joint Culture Youth Council, says
tens of thousands of Turks in France may be imprisoned, if the bill
is enacted.
Cojep President Ali Gedikoglu said they protested the motion with
the slogan, “Don’t restrict freedoms, don’t keep the truth in the
dark,” and thousands of Turks sent letters of protest to the French
authorities.
Gedikoglu announced they will protest outside the French Parliament
while the motion is being discussed on May 18; sending their message
to parliamentarians by chaining themselves to the gates and tapping
their mouths shut.
The Cojep president indicated they were able to make contact with
leading figures from the Socialist Party and may possibly meet with
party leader Francois Hollande.
Paris Anatolia Cultural Center Chairman Dr. Demir Onger thinks the
motion is “a result of the effective lobbying activities the Armenian
Diaspora in France has been conducing for 80 years,” and says, “This
attempt is a shame for France that pretends to be the champion of
freedom of expression.”
“France, which refers the past to the historians when the issue is
its own history, passes a law on the history of another country and
displays a paradoxical attitude,” cardiologist Dr. Onger defends,
accusing France of “playing with the fire.”
Demir Onger noted they established the “Union for Freedom of
Expression” in order to protest the motion and sent thousands of
protest letters to the French authorities.
Onger criticized Turkey’s ineffective lobbying, describing it as
“a vertical lobbying” conducted by top level bureaucrats or company
bosses. Onger stated the Armenians follow a policy from the bottom
up and said Turkey must initiate activities in an effort to persuade
the French people in the long term.
Yuksel Bilici, an expatriate graduate student on “Turks’ political
participation in France” living in the capital Paris, termed the
proposal as an “election present” for the Armenian Diaspora asking,
“Will they put 500,000 Turks in Jail?”.
Suleyman Toppeker, an official translator, said, “If 15,000 people
sign a petition claiming ‘We do not believe in the genocide’, they
will be immediately jailed”.
Marc Semo, an expert on Turkey from the leftist French paper,
Liberation, advocating that the draft, which will cause problems over
freedoms, concerns France a great deal and emphasizes the difficulty
in the implementation of such a law.
There is no political integrity in France prior to the election due
in 2007, Semo revealed, and added French President Jacques Chirac,
favoring Turkey, will not be able to do anything because the law
could be acceded in parliament on May 18.
The notice of motion leads to some concerns among expatriates, while
several Turkish foundations and institutions in France have noticeably
remained silent.
Some other foundations referring to Zaman’s view avoided sharing
their assessments on the issue. Few pay attention to the case except
for a number of foundations in France, where nearly 450,000 Turkish
people reside.