The Associated Press
October 12, 2006 Thursday 4:43 PM GMT
French lawmakers infuriate Turkey with Armenia genocide vote
By EMMANUEL GEORGES-PICOT, Associated Press Writer
Infuriating Turkey, a thin turnout of French lawmakers Thursday
approved a bill that would make it a crime to deny that mass killings
of Armenians in Turkey during the World War I era amounted to
genocide.
In Ankara, angry Turks threw eggs at the French Embassy amid growing
calls to boycott French goods, although the bill could face an
impossible struggle to become law or even make it to the upper house
for further discussion.
"No one should harbor the conviction that Turkey will take this
lightly," Turkey’s Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said.
The bill passed 106-19, but the majority of the 557 lawmakers in
France’s lower house did not take part in the vote.
President Jacques Chirac’s government opposed the bill, although it
did not use its majority in the lower house to vote it down. Instead,
most ruling party lawmakers did not vote on the text that was brought
by the opposition Socialist Party.
Chirac’s government is thought to be unlikely to forward the bill for
passage by the Senate.
The French president did not comment on the vote Thursday, although
he previously has said that the bill "is more of a polemic than legal
reality."
His former spokeswoman Catherine Colonna, now France’s minister for
European affairs, told parliament Thursday that the government did
not look favorably on the bill.
"It is not for the law to write history," she said shortly before the
vote.
The Armenia genocide issue has become intertwined with ongoing debate
in France and across Europe about whether to admit mostly Muslim
Turkey into the European Union. France is home to hundreds of
thousands of people whose families came from Armenia.
On Thursday, Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel literature
prize for his works dealing with the symbols of clashing cultures.
Pamuk was charged last year for telling a Swiss newspaper in February
2005 that Turkey was unwilling to deal with two of the most painful
episodes in recent Turkish history: the massacre of Armenians and
recent guerrilla fighting in Turkey’s overwhelmingly Kurdish
southeast. The charge was later dropped.
Chirac says he favors Turkey’s membership in the EU. But on a visit
to Armenia last month, he also urged Turkey to recognize "the
genocide of Armenians" in order to join the EU.
"Each country grows by acknowledging its dramas and errors of the
past," Chirac said.
Gul, the Turkish foreign minister, said the bill dealt a serious blow
to Turkish-French relations and damaged the credibility of France as
an EU member which defends freedom of expression.
"From now on, France will never describe itself as the homeland of
freedoms," Gul said.
France has already recognized the killings of up to 1.5 million
Armenians from 1915 to 1919 as genocide; under Thursday’s bill, those
who contest it was genocide would risk up to a year in prison and
fines of up to $56,000.
A law passed in 1990 makes it a crime to deny the Holocaust.
Armenia accuses Turkey of massacring Armenians during World War I,
when Armenia was under the Ottoman Empire. Turkey says Armenians were
killed in civil unrest during the collapse of the empire.
Outside the French parliament building, a few dozen protesters of
Armenian descent celebrated.
"The memory of the victims is finally totally respected," said Alexis
Govciyan, head of a group of Armenian organizations in France.
The vote on the bill in Paris dominated front pages of most Turkish
newspapers, with some reporting that thousands of Turks have promised
to go to France and deny genocide in hopes of getting arrested if the
bill passes. Two TV networks in Turkey broadcast the parliamentary
floor debate live.
Associated Press writer Selcan Hacaoglu contributed to this report
from Ankara, Turkey.