Financial Times (London, England)
October 13, 2006 Friday
London Edition 1
Threat to free speech France should renounce an attempt to legislate
history
Yesterday’s vote by France’s National Assembly was an act of
diplomatic folly and electoral opportunism. It dealt a blow to
Turkey’s hopes of joining the European Union and damaged the cause of
free speech within theEU itself.
By a margin of 106 to 19, the chamber backed a bill that could jail
people for a year for denying that there was an Armenian genocide
early last century. The move is an attempt to use legislation rather
than persuasion to change others’ beliefs – a tactic already proving
counterproductive in Turkey and running counter to Europe’s
traditions of free expression and open debate.
The vote was the result of transparent electioneering. French
Socialists insisted on pushing the bill through, while most deputies
kept away. Characterising the murder of up to 1.5m Armenians in
Anatolia in 1915-18 has no bearing on France’s vital interests. But
it is an issue of great concern for the 450,000 French citizens of
Armenian origin ahead of the 2007 elections.
This comes at a terrible time for Turkey’s troubled EU negotiations
and all they symbolise for an accommodation between Europe and the
Islamic world. If the bill ever became law, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
Turkey’s prime minister, could run the risk of arrest while on French
soil.
Fortunately, the legislation is likely to die in the French Senate.
But by allowing the measure to get this far, France’s politicians
have damaged the case for sorely needed reform in Turkey itself.
Officials and politicians in Ankara demur from ditching Turkey’s own
rules against "denigrating" the Turkish state, arguing that the
French proposal shows the limits of the EU’s own respect for free
speech.
Europe’s record is already blotted. Austria imprisoned the historian
David Irving for denying the holocaust, making him a martyr for
far-right sympathisers. Britain’s government sought – but luckily
failed – to pass legislation that would have restricted the right to
criticise religion.
The risk is that France’s strong-arm tactics will only bolster
Turkey’s intolerance of any mention of Armenian genocide. As a
result, it is now more likely that Turkish writers will continue to
be prosecuted for such references – the indignity suffered among
others by Orhan Pamuk, the novelist who yesterday won the Nobel
prize.
Turkey’s combination of prickliness and authoritarianism means it
will have to change radically if it is to join the EU one day. The
country needs to address the massacres of Armenian families that
preceded the creation of the modern Turkish state – whether they are
called genocide or not.
That does not excuse France’s pandering politicians. President
Jacques Chirac’s government was right yesterday to repudiate the
genocide bill. The rest of the political class must now follow – and
renounce the idea of legal curbs on what people say or think.