TURKEY IN LAST-DITCH APPEAL FOR FRANCE TO DROP ‘GENOCIDE’ BILL

Agence France Presse — English
October 11, 2006 Wednesday 4:31 PM GMT

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul Wednesday launched a last-ditch
appeal to France to drop a bill on the World War I massacres of
Armenians which has threatened to poison bilateral ties.

"I hope France, the homeland of freedom where everyone is able to
express their opinions freely, will not turn into a country where
people are jailed for expressing their opinions and publishing
documents," Gul told reporters here.

"If the bill is adopted, Turkey will not lose anything, but France
will lose not only Turkey, but something of itself as well."

The French national assembly is scheduled to vote Thurday on the bill,
which provides for a year in prison and a 45,000-euro (57,000-dollar)
fine for denying that Armenians were the victims of genocide between
1915 and 1917 under the Ottoman Empire, Turkey’s predecessor.

If the bill passes through the assembly, it will have to be approved
by the Senate and the president before it becomes law in what is
expected to be a lenghty process.

Ankara has warned that bilateral ties will suffer a serious blow and
French companies will be barred from economic projects if the bill
is adopted.

Turkish officials largely see the draft law as a gesture to France’s
large Armenian community before legislative elections next year.

The French government has described the bill as unnecessary, while
the ruling UMP party bloc has distanced itself from the draft, which
was tabled by the Socialist opposition.

Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered in
orchestrated killings between 1915 and 1917.

Turkey rejects the genocide label, arguing that 300,000 Armenians
and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians took
up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia and sided with invading
Russian troops as the Ottoman Empire was falling apart.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress