On a visit to Armenia on 7 October, Sarkozy said he wanted Turkey to recognise, before the end of his mandate in May 2012, that the mass killings of hundreds of thousands of Armenians amounted to genocide, as France did in 2001.
"It is not the role of France to set an ultimatum to whoever, it is not the right way to do things […] but for reflection, I thing the time from 1915 to 2011 is sufficient," he said.
If Turkey does not recognise the genocide claims and step toward reconciliation, the French president said he would consider proposing the adoption of a law criminalising the denial of the killings as genocide.
An earlier attempt by the French government was rejected by the French Senate in 2009.
Turkish EU Minister Egemen Bağış criticised Sarkozy, describing him as "totally helpless" and adding that the French president would do better extricating the euro zone from the economic crisis rather than play historian on the Armenian question.
“It would be better... if Mr. Sarkozy abandons the role of historian and looks for ways to solve the economic problems of the European Union, of which his country is a member,” Bağış said, calling Sarkozy’s recent remarks “attempts to abuse the domestic politics” of France.
Bağış suggested that Sarkozy was trying to use international issues to rally support at home ahead of the Presidential elections next year.
"Sarkozy must have been frightened with the results of recent political surveys in France so that he is assuming such approaches," Bagis said, apparently referring to polls which indicate that Socialist François Hollande would win the presidential election if it was held today.
According to commentator Murat Yetkin writing for the daily Hürriyet newspaper, Sarkozy's aim at Turkey could be explained by the assertive role of Ankara in the Mediterranean, where he said France was losing influence.
"This year marked the 100th year of Turkish withdrawal from Libya and Algeria to leave the rule of the lands to Italy and France respectively. Perhaps that was the reason why Sarkozy, having British Prime Minister David Cameron as a companion, rushed to Benghazi a day before Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited the Libyan city," Yetkin writes.
According to the journalist Sarkozy sees Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan as an obstacle to France's comeback in the Maghreb following the Arab Spring.
"Perhaps it was a subconscious reflex that pushed Sarkozy to the Turkish and Russian backyard of the Caucasus to disturb Turkey’s balances there," he wrote.
COMMENTS
The only helpless people are the Turks, what do you think the world is full of idiots who don't have any historic references. Every historian or every smart person for that matter that I know absolutely accepts the Armenian Genocide, you'd have to be blind not to.
Recognition of the genocide is not the only thing EU should ask Turkey, but also devolution of occupied territory in Armenia, cyprus and Bulgaria.
theory of genocide is a tool imperialism as a threat to divide turkey, as was intended following WWI, and as was implicated by two previous anonymous comments. it is a threat brought up every time a country wants to shake the grounds where turkey stands.
it is because of the propaganda and hypocricy you live within that you don't know the sufferings of turks and muslims as refugees at the hands of christian communities and massacres committed by christian commmunities, including armenians in russian army, on them as the empire was divided, and the fact that armenians were recrutied by french and russian armies as members of invasion forces in turkey.
there are historians who disagrees to the theories of genocide. it is because of historical facts that armenia does not agree to open all archives and prefers to develop political alliances with competitor countries as attempt to narrow turkey's ground on the matter.
It is time for the Kurds to have country of their own.Take a look at today's history and you will see that the Turks are murdering enmass Kurdisg men, women and children. We don't need to go and look at the Amenian Genocide to see that the murder of christians in Turkey has been on going well and truely since 1915.
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