Turkey Pressures France Over Armenia Genocide Bill
Reuters, UK
Oct 6 2006
Turkey told France on Friday a draft bill that would punish anyone
denying Armenian genocide during World War One would seriously damage
bilateral economic and political ties.
The French parliament is due to debate the bill, proposed by the
Socialist opposition, on October 12.
"Approval of the law will have very negative effects on economic
ties," Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Namik Tan told a weekly
news briefing. "There have been important investments between Turkey
and France through history. With this decision these investments,
built up over years, will be ruined in one (parliamentary) session.
France will, in a manner of speaking, lose Turkey."
Though the conservative majority in France’s parliament opposes the
bill, Turkey fears many opponents will not vote against it for fear of
upsetting France’s 400,000-strong Armenian diaspora ahead of elections
next year.
Tan said Turkey, too, faces presidential and parliamentary elections
in 2007. "The people of Turkey will perceive this development as a
hostile attitude on the part of France," he said. "This draft will
deliver a heavy blow to bilateral relations and to the momentum
previously achieved."
Turkey’s president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, sent a letter this week to
French President Jacques Chirac on the issue and Prime Minister Tayyip
Erdogan will discuss the problem on Saturday with French businessmen
in Istanbul, Tan said. A delegation of Turkish lawmakers also warned
of harm to French trade during a visit to Paris earlier this week.
France, which has already passed a law recognizing the 1915 massacre
as genocide, had 4.55 billion euros ($5.9 billion) of exports to
Turkey last year, French Trade Ministry data show.
Turkey is stinging from comments by Chirac last weekend in the Armenian
capital Yerevan that Ankara must recognize the Armenian massacres as
genocide before joining the European Union. Turkey began EU entry talks
last year, though is not expected to join for many years. Recognition
of the Armenian genocide is not a condition of its EU membership,
though some other EU politicians apart from Chirac want to make it one.
Ankara says it is ironic that France is preparing to punish those who
express a particular view of history at a time when Turkey is under
heavy EU pressure to change some of its own laws which are viewed as
restricting freedom of expression.
Last week, Ankara reacted angrily to news that two Dutch political
parties had dropped three election candidates, all of Turkish origin,
for denying the Armenian genocide. The Netherlands, like the European
Parliament and some other countries, has urged Turkey to recognize
the genocide claims.