Epress.am News from Armenia
French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently sent a letter to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan urging Turkey not to take personally a bill that seeks to penalize denial of genocides (including the Armenian Genocide).
Sarkozy’s message to Erdoğan stressed that his country cares about its ties to its ally Turkey, in an attempt to ease tension between the leaders that erupted when the French government took a bill to criminalize genocide denials to the senate, Today’s Zaman reports.
“The aim of the law, which will first and foremost be applicable in France and to French citizens,” Sarkozy said, “is to protect the memories of members of our society who have been carrying along with them for a very long time the feeling of denial toward the realities their ancestors went through and to remedy their wounds that were inflicted a hundred years ago.”
Sarkozy’s letter comes in response to a previous letter Erdoğan sent the French leader to urge him to reconsider the controversial bill. “The initiative is in the context of a general legal move to criminalize racist and xenophobic remarks,” the letter read, “no nation or state was specifically targeted in the wording of the text.”
His words signaled that the denial bill should not be regarded as a personal assault on Turkey, but rather as an attempt at honoring lost lives. In a move to show sympathy to the Turkish side of the incidents of 1915, Sarkozy added that France understood very well “the pain suffered by the Turkish nation during World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.”
The French president also touched on the issue of France’s past mistakes, saying it was painful to address tragic incidents of the past but that France has been able to do that. Sarkozy stressed that France has accepted its responsibility in the slave trade, the transport of Jews from France to concentration camps during World War II and that he officially voiced in 2007 in Algeria the vulgarity of colonialism that caused “unspeakable pain” for Algerians.
Sarkozy’s words apparently targeted Erdoğan’s criticism against France for not facing “its own dirty and bloody history” and judging the history of others with political motives to suggest that France has a clear conscience with regards to the events of the past since it recognized that they had happened.
Although Erdoğan’s office gave no public response to Sarkozy’s letter, a TV show that aired an interview with the Turkish prime minister last night showed an Erdoğan with raised hopes of Sarkozy’s bill dropping out of a Senate vote. Erdoğan noted that the French Commission on Laws’ decision earlier this week showed that the denial bill was “against the French constitution.”
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu also agreed on Friday that even if the bill passed through the senate, “it will not be able to survive” and will remain a scar on the intellectual history of France, a scar “Turkey will remind them of all the time.” A day before, Davutoğlu also voiced a similar opinion on the commission vote, saying that “even French law says the bill is unlawful.”
Recall, the lower house of the French Parliament passed the bill on Dec. 22, 2011. However, the Commission of Laws, which reviews bills before they’re voted on, on Jan. 18 voted in favor of a proposal that rejects the bill, saying it would be unconstitutional. The bill is still set to go to the Senate on Jan. 23 as planned. If the Senate accepts the Commission’s proposal, the bill won’t be put to a vote.