Spiegel Online, Germany
Oct 13 2006

French Law Outrages Turks
By Jürgen Gottschlich in Istanbul

French lawmakers have voted to make it a crime to deny that the mass
killings of Armenians that occurred in Turkey during World War I
amounted to genocide. The decision has caused outrage among both
politicians and critical intellectuals in Turkey. Now France faces
economic retaliation from Ankara.

"There is a century-long friendship between Turkey and France. Now,
with this decision, France is destroying the basis of that
friendship," says Onur Oymen, a Turkish parliamentarian and member of
the opposition Social Democrats. Oymen, who was visibly shaken as he
spoke, is one of three Turkish members of parliament who travelled to
Paris in response to French lawmakers debating a bill on the mass
killings of Armenians that occurred in Turkey during World War I.

Turkey didn’t give up hope until the very last moment that lawmakers
in the lower house of the French parliament would vote against the
bill, which criminalizes statements denying that Turkish mass
killings of Armenians during World War I constitute genocide. The
bill passed by 106 votes to 19, despite the fact that the government
of French President Jacques Chirac opposed it. Many lawmakers simply
chose not to attend the session during which the vote took place.

Now, intense outrage is expected to erupt on Turkish streets.
Followers of the far-right National Movement Party (MHP) have already
staged demonstrations during the past days, and popular outrage at
France is expected to peak during the days to come. Most Turks view
the bill as just the latest humiliation from France — a symbolic
rejection of Turkey’s bid for membership in the European Union.

A broad majority of people in the West believe the mass killings of
Armenians that occurred in Turkey during the decline of the Ottoman
Empire fit the definition of genocide. But criminalizing the opposing
viewpoint is unlikely to change the minds of Turks who feel their
country is being unjustly accused.

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By Conrad J. Boogeyman Prior to the French vote, Turkish Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that "a lie is still a lie, even
if another parliament decides otherwise." Of course, he made that
statement with support from a majority of the Turkish population. At
the same time, Erdogan also sought to assuage tensions between France
and Turkey, explicitly rejecting a proposal from his governing
faction to respond to Paris by declaring French war crimes in Algeria
to be a case of genocide. But Turkey has officially said it will
respond to the French law by means of economic retaliation.

The Turkish government has announced it will call off a
French-Turkish business deal involving military technology, in
addition to excluding French companies from the bidding process for
construction of a planned nuclear reactor in Turkey. Political
parties, patriotic groups and other associations will also demand a
boycott of French products — a move that will likely have even more
serious effects on French-Turkish economic relations. If the boycott
gains traction, French companies stand to lose a great deal. For
example, car-maker Renault has a major plant near Istanbul. Turkey is
also an important market for the French supermarket chain Carrefour.
In the run-up to the vote, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul
alluded to France’s economic dependence on Turkey. "If this bill is
passed, Turkey will not lose anything," he said, "but France will
lose Turkey."

Turkish intellectuals reject French decision

But it’s the democratic forces that have been fighting to defend
freedom of expression in Turkey for years who have been most damaged
by the bill. These groups have long tried to raise public awareness
of the mass killings of Armenians, and the fact that freedom of
expression will now be curbed in France creates a paradoxical
situation for these groups. "How are we supposed to argue against
laws that prohibit us from talking about genocide, when France is now
doing exactly the same, just the other way round?" asks Hrant Dink,
one of Istanbul’s most prominent Armenian intellectuals. "It’s
completely irrational."

Dink is editor-in-chief of the Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, which
has tried in recent years to promote a public debate on Turkish
crimes against the Armenians. Along with other Turkish and
Turkish-Armenian intellectuals, Dink organized a conference on the
Armenian question in Istanbul last year. It was the first time that
the official version of Turkish history was publicly debated in
Turkey. "If this law goes into effect, I’ll be the first to travel to
Paris to violate it," says Dink.

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He is unlikely to be the only one. Take former Maoist Dogu Perincek,
now the leader of a nationalist sect, who may prove unable to resist
the opportunity to stir up trouble in France. Last year in Berlin, he
organized a demonstration to mobilize Germans against the "genocide
lie." He has also already been arrested in Switzerland, where a law
similar to that voted through in France has already been in effect
for some time. The arrest was a propaganda coup for Perincek, and
Swiss Justice Minister Christoph Blocher confessed during a visit to
Turkey two weeks ago that the law has been a major headache for the
country.

Additionally, the Armenian minority population in Turkey is expecting
trouble. The Armenian patriarch in Istanbul, Mesrop Mutafyan, says
the French law will have a detrimental effect on attempts to
establish a dialogue and a sense of mutual understanding between
Armenians and Turks. In recent years, Armenians have been viewed more
positively than they used to be, and the same has been true for
Turkey’s other Christian minority, the Greeks — especially in
Istanbul. But the French vote could now prove to be a setback for
these minority groups.

Relations between Turkey and the neighboring state of Armenia may
also be negatively affected. The informal talks initiated between the
two countries last year will probably be discontinued. The talks
represent an attempt to explore the possibilities for normalizing
Turkish-Armenian relations, if only at a purely bureaucratic level.
Turkish nationalists are already demanding that the roughly 70,000
Armenians who work illegally in Turkey — and who have until now been
quietly tolerated by the government in Ankara — be expelled.

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