Today’s Zaman<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span> reports.<\/p>\n\u201cThe aim of the law, which will first and foremost be applicable in France and to French citizens,\u201d Sarkozy said, \u201cis 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sarkozy’s letter comes in response to a previous letter Erdo\u011fan sent the French leader to urge him to reconsider the controversial bill. \u201cThe initiative is in the context of a general legal move to criminalize racist and xenophobic remarks,\u201d the letter read, \u201cno nation or state was specifically targeted in the wording of the text.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u201cthe pain suffered by the Turkish nation during World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u201cunspeakable pain\u201d for Algerians.
\nSarkozy’s words apparently targeted Erdo\u011fan’s criticism against France for not facing \u201cits own dirty and bloody history\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
Although Erdo\u011fan’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 Erdo\u011fan with raised hopes of Sarkozy’s bill dropping out of a Senate vote. Erdo\u011fan noted that the French Commission on Laws’ decision earlier this week showed that the denial bill was \u201cagainst the French constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuto\u011flu also agreed on Friday that even if the bill passed through the senate, \u201cit will not be able to survive\u201d and will remain a scar on the intellectual history of France, a scar \u201cTurkey will remind them of all the time.\u201d A day before, Davuto\u011flu also voiced a similar opinion on the commission vote, saying that \u201ceven French law says the bill is unlawful.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently sent a letter to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan urging Turkey not to take personally a bill…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":155360,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[10372,10790,16861,13793,10426,10222],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155411"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}