FRANCE DEFERS ARMENIAN ISSUE
Lara Marlowe in Paris
Irish Times
May 19, 2006
FRANCE: There were cries of protest from left- and right-wing benches
when Jean-Louis Debre, the speaker of the French National Assembly,
suspended a stormy debate on the Armenian genocide yesterday.
Armenian visitors in the public gallery chanted in unison:
“Vote! Vote! Vote!” as gendarmes removed them.
When the socialist parliamentary group filed the proposed law last
month, few imagined it would be so divisive. The law is an addendum
to that of January 2001, which publicly recognised the Armenian
genocide of 1915. The new law, which may now never come to a vote,
would make denying the Armenian Holocaust an offence punishable by
up to one year’s imprisonment and a fine of 45,000.
After the national assembly voted the 2001 law, Turkey cancelled
contracts with the French groups Thomson, Alcatel and Bouygues. Some
French products were boycotted, and taxi-drivers in Istanbul and
Ankara refused to take French passengers.
This time the French and Turkish governments did their utmost to
prevent the law passing. President Jacques Chirac appealed for a
“spirit of responsibility” on this “sensitive question”. The French
ministry of trade circulated a list of French contracts with Turkey –
worth $4.7 billion (3.7 billion) last year.
The French nuclear power company Areva hopes to build Turkey’s first
reactors soon, and the French minister for foreign trade will visit
Turkey with the heads of 40 companies on June 14th.
The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, threatened trade
sanctions if the law passed, while the Turkish foreign minister warned
of “irreparable damage” to relations.
“Dear colleagues, we resisted the United States during the Iraq
crisis,” the right-wing UMP deputy Roland Blum said. “Surely we can
stand up to the Turks!” His outburst was widely applauded.
Western historians are nearly unanimous in recognising that, as the
centre-right UDF deputy Francois Rochebloine recounted yesterday:
“From April 1915, the Young Turk government unleashed the horrible
process of the extermination of 1.5 million Armenians, through
organised massacres . . . which prefigured the Jewish Holocaust
two decades later.” French deputies who followed their heads –
and pocketbooks – opposed the law. Those who followed their hearts
supported it. The main parties splintered, and there was plenty of
hypocrisy to go around. The right dragged out debates on two other
laws, to eat up the socialists’ time slot before the Armenian debate.
French opponents of the law do not deny the Armenian genocide
happened. But many were burned by a 2005 law praising the alleged
benefits of colonialism, which had to be rescinded due to public
outrage.
Jean-Marc Ayrault, the leader of the socialist parliamentary group, who
accused the right of obstruction, is known to be at best a reluctant
supporter of the law, because he wants historians – not politicians
– to judge history. Mr Ayrault and fellow group presidents must
now decide whether to continue the Armenian debate during the next
socialist slot in November.
In the meantime, there is bitter disappointment among many
parliamentarians, not to mention the Armenians who demonstrated
outside the assembly yesterday.
“They gave [ the law] a third class funeral,” said Patrick Devedjian,
a UMP deputy of Armenian origin. He alluded to the defacing of
memorials to the Armenian Holocaust this spring. “Memorials abroad
are the only sepulchres we have, so it felt like a desecration to
Armenians,” he said.
Mr Devedjian corrected the foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy,
when he alluded to “the memory of massacres committed in 1915”,
emphasising, “The genocide, Monsieur le Ministre”.
“The Armenian cause is just,” Mr Douste-Blazy continued. “It must
be defended and respected. But national representatives must take
account of the interest of France . . . The text submitted to you
would be considered, like it or not, as a hostile act by the vast
majority of Turkish people.”