TURKISH PRIME MINISTER BLASTS FRENCH PARLIAMENT FOR GENOCIDE BILL
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
October 10, 2006 Tuesday 9:51 AM EST
DPA POLITICS Turkey Diplomacy France Turkish prime minister blasts
French parliament for genocide bill Ankara Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan launched a scathing attack Tuesday on a bill before
the French parliament that would make it a crime to deny the massacres
of Armenians by Ottoman forces during and after the First World War.
Speaking to party colleagues in Ankara, Erdogan said the proposed law
was a blow for freedom of speech and tjat a "populist and cheap game"
was being played by French politicians.
"This wrong move will change nothing for Turkey but it will change a
lot for France… When did it become France’s duty to get involved
in a problem between Turkey and Armenia. The world is not a campus
for colonisers any more. That era is over," Erdogan said.
Turkey admits there were massacres of Armenians during the last
years of the Ottoman Empire but vehemently denies that the killings
constituted a genocide.
Armenian historians claim that as many as 1.5 million Christian
Armenians were killed during and after the First World War and that
the massacres were a clear genocide.
Turkey counters that Armenians sided with invading Russian forces
and that the numbers of Armenians killed was around 300,000.
On Tuesday Erdogan repeated his call for a joint Turkish-Armenian
conference of historians and lawyers to look into the claims, a call
that has been previously rejected by Armenia.
"Leave these decisions to historians, not politicians… We have no
fears," Erdogan said.
The government, opposition parties, business leaders and non-
governmental organizations have all strongly criticized the proposed
law that is to be debated by the French parliament on Thursday.
Although the government has not explicitly outlined what action it
may take if the bill passes.
Public boycotts of French-owned companies would almost certainly be
organized while official government actions such as banning French
firms from taking part in military tenders would probably not be
implemented until after the bill is signed into law by President
Jacques Chirac.