EurActiv Logo
EU news & policy debates
- across languages -
Click here for EU news »
EurActiv.com Network

BROWSE ALL SECTIONS

France backpedals on Armenian genocide

Printer-friendly version
Send by email
Published 01 February 2012

French lawmakers appealed to their country's highest court yesterday (31 January) to overturn a law that makes it illegal to deny that the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a century ago was genocide.

The move raises the possibility that the law, which sparked an angry reaction in Turkey, will be dismissed as unconstitutional.

The legislation, which received final parliamentary approval on 23 January, prompted Ankara to cancel all economic, political and military meetings with Paris.

More than 130 French lawmakers from both houses of parliament and across the political divide, who had originally voted against the bill, appealed to the Constitutional Council.

The court has one month to make its decision.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who branded the legislation "discriminatory and racist," thanked the lawmakers who opposed it.

"On behalf of my country, I am declaring our heartfelt gratitude to the senators and deputies who gave their signatures," he said. "I believe they have done what needed to be done."

The lawmakers argued in their appeal that the event was still the subject of historical contention, and therefore the legislation infringed on the freedoms of historians, analysts and others to debate it, ultimately violating the right to free speech.

They insisted their move did not aim to deny "the suffering of our compatriots of Armenian origin and of all Armenians across the world."

'Patience'

Last week, Erdoğan said Turkey was in a "period of patience" as it considered what measures to take.

As a member of NATO and the World Trade Organisation, Turkey may be limited in its response by its international obligations. However, newspapers have listed possible measures that Ankara might take against France.

These included recalling its ambassador in Paris and expelling the French ambassador in Ankara, thus reducing diplomatic ties to charge d'affaires level, and closing Turkish airspace and waters to French military aircraft and vessels.

President Nicolas Sarkozy must still ratify the law, a move now on hold pending the court's decision.

Mostly Muslim Turkey accuses Sarkozy of trying to win the votes of 500,000 ethnic Armenians in France in the two-round presidential vote on April 22 and May 6. France's Socialist Party, which has a majority in the upper house, and Sarkozy's UMP party, which put forward the bill, supported the legislation.

AFP agency quoted Sarkozy as saying that the move of the French parliamentarians to seize the Constitutional Council was not in his favour ahead of the April-May election.

"French companies in Turkey ... wanted the Constitutional Council to be involved because it's the best solution to calm the Turks," said Dorothée Schmid, head of the Turkish program at the French Foreign Relations Institute in Paris.

"The Turkish government accused the French government of being racist and discriminatory, yet this matter stems from the inability of the Turks to handle the genocide case. Now there is a discussion on it."

France is Turkey's fifth biggest export market and sixth biggest supplier of imports of goods and services, and bilateral trade was €10.3 billion in the first 10 months of last year.

EurActiv.com

COMMENTS

  • Pour de multiples raisons, le vote de cette loi - soutenue par le Gouvernement - est déconcertant sur les plans politique et juridique. Il faut espérer - quelle que soit l'issue de ce texte - que les relations Euro-turques n'en seront pas affectées et que cette question sera sans incidence (négative ou positive)sur le dossier adhésion. JG GIRAUD

    By :
    Jean-Guy Giraud
    - Posted on :
    01/02/2012
  • C'est le devoir de la France d'agir pour la recognition du fait de la génocide Arménienne! La Turquie doit elle-même répudier cette acte de l'empire ottomane!
    Que les relations Euro-turque s'améliorent!

    By :
    Morgan-LynnGriggs Lamberth
    - Posted on :
    17/02/2012
Sarkozy: Regrets the move to dismiss the law
Background: 

Hundreds of thousands of Christian Armenians died during forced removals in 1915 by the Ottoman army from what is now Eastern Turkey, but Turkey denies that the move constituted genocide.

The country's attitude vis-à-vis the bloodshed in 1915 is one of the defining aspects of modern Turkish diplomacy, with any use of the term ‘genocide’ either within Turkey or abroad swiftly denounced by Ankara.

Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was killed in 2007 after openly saying that the events of 1915 were genocide.

More on this topic

More in this section

Advertising

Videos

Video General News

Euractiv Sidebar Video Player for use in section aware blocks.

Video General Promoted 2

Euractiv Sidebar Video Player for use in section aware blocks.

Advertising

Advertising