Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Jan 7 2010
French court fines Turkish woman in `genocide’ case
A French court has rejected a complaint of discrimination from an
ethnically Turkish woman who had to withdraw her candidacy in a local
election last year amid pressure to publicly recognize claims of an
Armenian genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. Sırma Oran Martz
was also sentenced to pay a fine of 1,500 euros, reportedly for abuse
of the right to petition.
`The ruling is shameful,’ Oran Martz, who has been living in France
for 19 years, told the Anatolia news agency on Wednesday. `It is a
completely political decision that goes well beyond law, and I don’t
think it will do anyone any good,’ she said, explaining that the
ruling will have negative effects in France, Turkey and Armenia and
for Armenians living in Turkey and Turks living in France.
Turkey and Armenia signed two protocols in October to normalize their
relations, agreeing, among other things, to establish a board of
scholars to study Armenian claims of genocide, rejected by Turkey.
Oran Martz said the reconciliation process did come up during court
debates but the judges did not take it into consideration when ruling
on the case.
Oran Martz had to withdraw her candidacy for city council in
Villeurbanne, Lyon, after she had been pressed by Mayor Jean-Paul Bret
to visit an Armenian `genocide’ monument in Lyon and make a public
statement backing the genocide charges. Oran Martz, the daughter of
Professor Baskın Oran, a liberal who campaigns in Turkey for
reconciliation with Armenians, then filed a complaint against Bret at
a Lyon court on charges of discrimination, saying no other candidate
had been subject to a similar treatment.
`If you translate this ruling, it means the court is telling me `Who
the hell do you think you are?” Oran Martz said, promising to appeal
the ruling first in France and eventually at the European Court of
Human Rights.
07 January 2010, Thursday
TODAY’S ZAMAN Ä°STANBUL