Epress.am News from Armenia
Turkey has slammed France for what it calls attempts to judge Turkish history before coming to terms with its own “dirty, bloody past” and repeated warnings of consequences in response to a bill the French legislature is readying to vote on that would criminalize denial that the Ottoman-era killings of Armenians in 1915 was genocide, Today’s Zaman reports.
“Today, nobody talks about the 45,000 Algerian deaths in 1945, or the role of France in the massacre of 800,000 people in Rwanda in 1994,” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said of France on Saturday with a bitter criticism as he urged the country to face its own history before judging the history of others with strictly political motives.
“Those who do not wish to see genocide should take another peek at their own dirty and bloody histories,” Erdoğan said during a joint press conference with Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, chairperson of the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC).
Accusing France of insincerity due to its “attack against Turkish history based on unfounded allegations,” the Turkish prime minister repeated Turkey’s official stance regarding the Armenian deaths of 1915 as an historical matter that calls for the judgment of historians and academics rather than as a matter of politics to be voted on in parliaments. Ankara has also raised doubts regarding Sarkozy’s motives in changing his stance regarding the Turkish-Armenian conflict, speculating that the French president might be seeking votes from the strong Armenian community in France to gain an advantage over his Socialist Party rival, François Hollande. Hollande is also a known defender of the Armenian Genocide and voiced throughout his election campaign that he would support a law to make genocide denial punishable in French courts.
Unmoved by Ankara’s warnings, Sarkozy’s ruling party reaffirmed its faith in the bill, expressing support for its passage. Lawmakers interviewed by Agence France-presse (AFP) said that they were “determined at this time” that the bill not return from the Senate, as it did back in 2006. France had previously brought the same bill to the agenda five years ago, but the French Senate refused to discuss it even though France recognized the Armenian deaths of 1915 as genocide in 2001.
According to a Cihan news agency report on Sunday, regarding the Turkish warnings as “blackmail,” French Senator Philippe Kaltenbach said, “France should not give up on its values in the face of this [Turkey’s] attitude.” Kaltenbach also suggested Turkey is not sincere in its warnings, since the country issued similar statements back in 2001 when France recognized the Armenian Genocide, but none of its warnings were realized. “Turkey is after the same strategy [of issuing threats],” Kaltenbach said.