Ottawa Citizen
October 13, 2006 Friday
EARLY Edition

France passes law on Armenian genocide

by David Rennie, The Daily Telegraph

LONDON – The French parliament yesterday triggered a fresh crisis in
Turkey’s relations with Europe by approving a bill that would make it
an offence punishable by jail to deny that Armenians suffered a
genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turks.

The Turkish foreign ministry said the vote had dealt "a heavy blow"
to bilateral relations.

Ali Babacan, Turkey’s economics minister, said it was too soon to
know whether the Turkish public would heed calls from nationalist
groups to boycott French goods.

"As the government, we are not encouraging that, but this is the
people’s decision," he said. "I cannot say (the vote) will not have
any consequences."

The Turkish parliament scrapped plans for a tit-for-tat law that
would have made it illegal to deny that French colonialists committed
genocide against the Algerians in their war for independence. Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told MPs, "you don’t clean up dirt with
more dirt."

He repeated calls to Armenia to jointly research the killings by
opening the archives of both countries to historians.

The European Commission, which will next month unveil a key report on
Turkey’s progress toward meeting EU admission standards, said the
vote threatened to silence the first signs of debate inside Turkey on
the issue of Armenia.

Krisztina Nagy, the commission’s enlargement spokesman, said, "it is
important to see that there is an opening in Turkey to conduct debate
on that issue." The bill, if it became law, "could have a negative
effect on debate".

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress