The Daily Telegraph
Oct 13 2006
Turkey angered over France genocide denial move
By David Rennie, Europe Correspondent
(Filed: 13/10/2006)
The French parliament triggered a fresh crisis yesterday 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 in the French Assemblée
Nationale had dealt "a heavy blow" to bilateral relations.
Patrick Devedijan, a French deputy of Armenian descent, addresses the
National Assembly
Turkey denies that massacres of Armenians between 1915 and 1923
amounted to genocide, saying large numbers of Turks and Armenians
died in civil war.
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 Socialist-backed law was widely criticised in Turkey as another
attempt by European politicians to place obstacles in the path of
Ankara’s painful progress towards membership of the European Union.
Polls have shown that 60 per cent of the French public is opposed to
Turkish entry into the EU.
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France would impose a one-year prison term and a 45,000 euro
(£30,000) fine for anyone denying the Armenian genocide, following
the lead of an earlier law on denying the Nazi Holocaust.
The vote came months ahead of French presidential and parliamentary
elections, in which the 400,000-strong Armenian community in France
will form a formidable voter bloc.
The bill does not have government support and it seems likely to fall
in the upper house, the Senate.
Both President Jacques Chirac, and Segolene Royal, the Socialist
presidential front-runner, say that Turkey must acknowledge the
genocide of the Armenians before joining the EU. Nicolas Sarkozy, the
conservative front-runner, is opposed to Turkey’s EU entry under any
conditions.
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 jointly to research the killings by
opening the historical archives of both countries to historians.
The European Commission, which will next month unveil a key report on
Turkey’s progress towards meeting EU admission standards, said the
vote threatened to silence the first signs of debate inside Turkey on
the Armenian issue.
Krisztina Nagy, the EC’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".
Ankara is under intense pressure to improve free speech rights, and
abolish the notorious Article 301 of its penal code, which allows for
the prosecution of anyone who insults "Turkishness".