Turkey: Genocide Legislation Brings New Franco-Turk Tensions

Relations between Turkey and France over the last year have been nothing but rocky. Of course, there is French President Nicolas Sarkozy's continuing opposition to Turkey's bid to join the European Union. The two countries were also at odds during the start of the NATO military campaign against Libya earlier this year, with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan vocally criticizing France's role in the operation and questioning Sarkozy's intentions. Ankara, meanwhile, was dismayed when during an October trip to Armenia, Sarkozy called on Turkey to "face up" to its past regarding what happened to the Armenians who were citizens of the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

Ankara has warned France of the “irreparable damage” that could ensue should France’s latest move to criminalize denying that an alleged Armenian genocide took place in Turkey in 1915 be passed next week in the French parliament.
“Turkish efforts and contact [with French officials] are ongoing at the moment,” Turkish officials told Today’s Zaman on Monday, as they recalled statements from Ankara that urge France not to politicize a historical matter that is very sensitive for both Turks and Armenians. “The French administration is well aware of the sensitivity of this issue [the Armenian genocide] for our country. We hope that no steps that could cause irreparable damage will be taken at a time when Turkey and France have entered a stable phase that could increase opportunities of cooperation at bilateral and international levels,” a statement released by the Foreign Ministry said on Friday, as Ankara repeated once more that it regarded such attempts as “reoccurring events” ahead of elections in France.

Turkey’s reaction to the move has been revived as the French parliament readies to vote a legislation that could make denying the 1915 events that took place in Turkey as genocide punishable by up to one year in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros, the Anatolia news agency reported on Monday. The voting, however, is not the first time France has mulled over criminalizing the denial of the events as genocide, as the French National Assembly adopted a bill in 2006, proposing that anyone who denied the “Armenian genocide,” would be punished, but the bill was dropped the same year before coming to the senate.

Since France officially recognized the genocide in 2001, stirring up heated but short-lived tension between France and Turkey, French governments have attempted to introduce penalties for denying the alleged Armenian genocide several times, all of which were turned down before gaining full force.

Beyond stoking Turkish-French tensions, the legislation move could serve as another nail in the coffin of the now dead Turkey-Armenia reconciliation process that started in late 2009 with the signing of protocols between the two countries designed to restore relations between them. The protocols have languished in the parliaments of both countries, while the rhetoric in each capital has sharpened in recent months. As reported in the Turkish press, Cemil Cicek, Turkey's Speaker of Parliament, on Monday accused Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan of taking part in the 1992 massacre of Azeris by Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh.