EurActiv.com, Belgium
Oct 13 2006

France lays genocide bill in way of Turkey’s EU bid

In Short:

The National Assembly has passed a draft law that would sanction the
denial of mass killings of Armenians in Turkey during the First World
War, causing uproar in Ankara and condemnation from Brussels.

The bill, which still needs a second reading before it becomes law,
has triggered angry reactions from Ankara, with Economics Minister
Ali Babacan saying that he could not rule out commercial consequences
for France.

In a statement, the Turkish Foreign Ministry described the vote as "a
severe blow" to "long-standing historical relations between Turkey
and France" and blamed the attempt as "irresponsible".

In Brussels, the spokeswoman for enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn,
Krisztina Nagy, said the bill "would prohibit dialogue which is
necessary for reconciliation on the issue."

"It is not up to law to write history. Historians need to have
debate," Nagy said.

The vote comes on the heels of a visit by President Chirac to Yerevan
in September 2006 where he called for Turkey to recognise the mass
killings as genocide.

In a related development, Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk was awarded
the Nobel Prize for Literature on 12 October. Ankara had charged
Pamuk for "denigrating Turkishness" in public remarks about the
Armenian killings but had later dropped the case following European
pressures.

Turkish lawmakers on 11 October proposed a counter-bill that would
recognise an "Algerian genocide" carried out by colonial French
forces in 1945.