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A French Proposal To Outlaw Genocide-Denial Infuriates Turkey

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  • A French Proposal To Outlaw Genocide-Denial Infuriates Turkey

    A FRENCH PROPOSAL TO OUTLAW GENOCIDE-DENIAL INFURIATES TURKEY

    http://www.economist.com/node/21542225
    Dec 31st 2011

    Watch your words

    No closer to resting in peace

    FEW Turks had heard of Valerie Boyer, a deputy for Nicolas Sarkozy's
    ruling UMP party in France. That was until she sponsored a bill
    that would make it a crime in France to deny that the mass killings
    of Ottoman Armenians in 1915 constituted genocide. On December 21st
    France's lower chamber approved the bill, which would make denying any
    officially recognised genocide punishable by a one-year prison sentence
    and a fine of ~@45,000 ($59,000). Within hours Turkish hackers had
    defaced Ms Boyer's website. The deputy says she has been inundated
    with death and rape threats. (Separately, the Israeli Knesset has
    begun discussing whether to recognise the 1915 killings as genocide.)

    "This is politics based on racism, discrimination and xenophobia,"
    thundered Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, before
    announcing a set of sanctions. These included recalling the ambassador
    in Paris, banning French military aircraft and warships from landing
    and docking in Turkey, freezing political and economic consultations
    and deciding on a case-by-case basis whether to let French military
    aircraft use Turkish airspace.

    Mr Erdogan has threatened to take further action should the French
    Senate approve the bill. Turkish officials have ruled out trade
    sanctions because they would violate Turkey's customs union with
    the European Union, but have suggested that "consumers might take
    matters into their own hands." A popular Bosphorus fish restaurant
    soon declared it was no longer calling itself "Le Pecheur".

    France is Turkey's fifth biggest trading partner. Two-way trade
    is worth around $14 billion and France is lobbying to build a
    multi-billion nuclear plant on Turkey's Black Sea coast. French
    manufacturers account for a fifth of Turkey's lucrative car market.

    The chill in relations has been prompted largely by Mr Sarkozy's
    fierce opposition to Turkish membership of the EU. Expanding the
    club to take in a large, poor and Muslim country would dilute French
    influence. Moreover, Mr Sarkozy is facing a difficult re-election
    battle in the spring and may be seeking to exploit the genocide to
    court ethnic-Armenian votes. Not everyone in France is convinced by
    the merits of the bill. Alain Juppe, Mr Sarkozy's foreign minister,
    describes it as "unhelpful and counterproductive".

    But Turkey is hardly in a position to preach about free speech. Its own
    laws, in a mirror image of the French proposal, prohibit descriptions
    of the 1915 killings as genocide. More than 100 journalists are in
    jail, many of them on flimsy charges of backing terrorism.

    As for Mr Sarkozy's manoeuvres, many Armenians would say they
    are no more cynical than Turkey's decision in 2009 to sign a set
    of protocols establishing formal ties and reopening borders with
    Armenia just as the United States Congress was gearing up to pass
    a genocide-recognition bill. In the event Barack Obama convinced
    American lawmakers to desist. Turkey promptly shelved the protocols,
    reverting to its old line that they could be enacted only if Armenia
    withdrew from territories it occupies in Azerbaijan.

    Yet civil-society initiatives between Turkey and Armenia are
    flourishing. Debate about the fate of the Ottoman Armenians in Turkey
    is louder and more vocal than ever. But the passage of the French bill
    has rekindled nationalist anger, and with it fears of reprisal among
    Turkey's tiny ethnic Armenian community. One of the loudest critics
    of the French law, which first came before parliament in 2006, was
    Hrant Dink, an Armenian newspaper owner who was murdered in Istanbul
    by an ultranationalist youth in 2007. Mr Dink had said that he was
    willing to be jailed in France for denying that the events of 1915
    counted as genocide, just as he was willing to be jailed in Turkey
    for saying the opposite. Healing the wounds of history was best left
    to Turks and Armenians, he said, not to vote-mongering politicians.




    From: A. Papazian
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