TURKISH MPS DROP PROPOSAL TO HIT BACK AT FRANCE WITH ALGERIA LAW

Agence France Presse — English
October 11, 2006 Wednesday

Turkish legislators Wednesday dropped proposals to brand as genocide
the killings of Algerians under French colonial rule.

The drafts had been submitted in retaliation to a French bill that,
if accepted, would provide jail terms for those who deny that Turks
committed genocide against Armenians during World War I.

"We should not fall in France’s position. We should avoid the same
mistake of writing history with parliamentary decisions," Mehmet
Dulger, a senior lawmaker from the ruling Justice and Development
Party, said during the debate at the parliament’s justice commission.

Ibrahim Ozdogan from the opposition center-right Motherland Party,
and the author of one of the three drafts the commission examined,
argued that European countries should rethink the massacres of their
own colonial past.

"The murderer has come to take the judge’s seat," he said.

After a three-hour debate, commission members voted to refer the
proposals to a sub-committee for further discussion, a move that
effectively freezes the proposals.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had urged legislators Tuesday to
refrain from any retaliatory action, saying, "we do not clean filth
with filth."

The French draft, to be debated and voted at the National Assembly
in Paris on Thursday, foresees one year in prison and a 45,000-euro
(57,000-dollar) fine for denying that Armenians were victims of
genocide during World War I.

Infuriated by the move, Ankara has warned that if the bill is adopted,
bilateral ties will suffer and French companies will be barred from
major economic projects in Turkey.

Two of the drafts examined Wednesday call for the recognition of
the killings of Algerians under French colonial rule as genocide and
provide jail terms for those who deny it.

The third draft called for the imprisonment of those who assert
Armenians were victims of genocide under the Ottoman Empire.

The justice commission is the first instance where bills are debated
before being sent to a vote at the general assembly.

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.