Category: France

Turkish hackers target French websites before genocide vote

By Nicolas Cheviron

Agence France Presse

ISTANBUL: Turkish hackers are threatening to unleash a wave of cyber attacks against French websites after legislators in Paris voted to approve a law that would ban the denial of the Armenian genocide.

Already, hackers have assailed dozens of French websites, including that of Valerie Boyer, the French politician who introduced the law that could punish genocide deniers with jail time.

Some attacks have been blamed on a hacking group known as AyYildiz, which says it fights for Turkish values.

“AyYildiz has nothing against the French,” he said. “But if this carries on, there will be far more serious attacks from many groups,” said Ishak Telli, a spokesman for the group.

The French lower house approved the law on December 22 and the Senate is expected to vote on it by the end of January.

If it is enacted, anyone denying that the 1915-1917 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turk forces amounted to genocide could face jail time.

Telli said hackers could initiate attacks causing millions of euros in damage.

“You can close commercial and banking sites,” Telli said. “You can take down government websites … The AyYildiz team has that capability.”

Ankara reacted angrily when the National Assembly passed the bill, quickly freezing political and military ties with France. Turkey withdrew its ambassador to Paris, but embassy officials say he will return Monday to monitor the Senate’s handling of the bill.

Starting in 1915, during World War I, many thousands of Armenians died in Ottoman Turkey. Armenia says 1.5 million were killed in a genocide where many perished after being forced to march into the desert without adequate supplies.

Turkey says around 500,000 died in fighting after Armenians sided with Russian invaders.

France recognised the killings as a genocide in 2001, but the new bill would punish anyone who denies this with a year in jail and a fine of 45,000 euros ($60,000).

Modern Turkey is still very sensitive about the issue, and has accused France of attacking freedom of expression and free historical enquiry.

Akincilar, another Turkish hacking group, was blamed on attacking Boyer’s site and that of French-Armenian politician Patrick Devedjian.

Such lawmakers would do better to “study Ottoman history,” the group said in a video sent to AFP.

“Our goal is to expose the arrogance shown by France when it legislates in its own parliament about the affairs of other countries,” the group said.

Web hacking is illegal in Turkey and hackers run the risk of prison.

But for those that do it, hijacking a website attacking Turkish beliefs and morals is not a crime, and no nationalist hacker has been targeted by authorities, said Ozgur Uckan, new media expert at the Istanbul Bilgi University.

“This type of hacking isn’t really punished,” Uckan said. “But if they attack Turkish government sites, the police will do everything in their power … It’s a kind of double standard.”

via THE DAILY STAR :: News :: Middle East :: Turkish hackers target French websites before genocide vote.

January 8, 2012
Turkey pressures France to stop Armenian genocide bill

As the French Senate rushes to consider a bill that would penalise denial of the massacre of over 1 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire, Turkey is lobbying to stop the effort, warning of economic consequences.

The Senate is set to vote by the end of January on a bill that would make it illegal to deny that the 1915 mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks amounted to genocide, Turkish and French news media reported yesterday (4 January), quoting parliamentary and government sources.

The French National Assembly voted in favour last month of a bill that would penalise denial of the Armenian massacre by a maximum one-year prison sentence and a €45,000 fine. The punishment would be on par with denial of the Holocaust.

This led Ankara to cancel all economic, political and military meetings with Paris and to recall its ambassador for consultations. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hit back at France, denouncing 45,000 Algerian deaths in 1945, at that time under French rule, as well as the alleged role of France in the massacre of 800,000 people in Rwanda in 1994.

Turkey rejects qualifying the killings as “genocide” in the same category as the Jewish Holocaust. Ankara also says the Turkish republic founded in 1922 shouldn’t be held responsible for actions of Ottoman rulers, and inisists that the issue should be left to historians.

Supporters of the bill want to see the legislation approved before parliament adjourns at the end of February ahead of presidential elections in April and May.

Final hearings

In the meantime, Turkey indicated that it would use the time available to lobby against the legislation, the daily Zaman reported. The Turkish ambassador to France is expected to return in Paris anytime soon, and is to attend hearings on the bill in the Senate.

Legal experts, officials from Turkish and Armenian groups and the Turkish and Armenian ambassadors to Paris are also expected to be present.

Despite earlier angry calls for a boycott of French goods, Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek said Ankara would not launch a pressure campaign.

But Many Turks reportedly said they would not buy French goods, and a businessman reportedly set up a €1-million fund from which fines for genocide denial would be paid.

Turkish economic experts say the genocide legislation could be detrimental for the French economic interest in Turkey, mainly for the public contracts. Turkey’s adoption of the EU’s environmental policies is opening huge market opportunities for the French companies. Together with other opportunities in energy, transport, defence and aviation, almost €100 billion worth of market activity is now becoming difficult to access for the French companies because the country’s image and credibility in Turkey are getting negative, a Turkish expert told EurActiv.

Positions:

Bahadir Kaleagasi, president of the Paris-based Bosphorus Institute, told EurActiv that he saw a link between the push by “some French politicians” for the bill, and the presidential elections in April and May.

“It is interesting to observe that a great majority of the French media and public are against this move that they judge as a political manipulation harming the freedom of expression and the democratic credentials of France.”

Kaleagasi said the Armenia massacres could not be put into the same basket as the genocide of the Jews.

“This [bill] criminalises the ongoing historical research and opening of the archives of all the countries involved in the First World War to enlighten all aspects of the ethnic violence and human tragedies of the same era. This project of the bill undermines also Turkey’s current public debate for a better reconciliation with the history and Armenia. France could have played a constructive role in this process. Moreover, the French attitude is perceived by the Turkish population as hostile. It is really pity, because there were no tangible conflicts between two countries which have great joint interests in an increasingly challenging global economic and political context,” Kalegasi said.

“The so-called Armenian genocide problems” cannot be resolved by a vote in the French Parliament, Ramazan Gözen from the Abant İzzet Baysal University argues in a commentary published by the daily Zaman.

“If the aim of the French National Assembly is to politically isolate Turkey, tear it away from the EU and put pressure on its foreign policy – if there is such a deep scheme behind all that manoeuvring – the country to be harmed the most is firstly France. The signals of that have already been seen in the international media. The world media have come up with views that France’s move will draw reactions from almost all countries, Turkey in particular,” Gözen writes.

Turkey has fallen in Sarkozy’s trap, writes Etyen Mahçupyan, chief editor of the Armenian daily Agos, in a commentary published by the French website Mediapart.

According to Mahçupyan, the French president aims at provoking the authorities in Ankara to a response out of proportion, which would ultimately dishonour Turkey.

The author advises that instead of overreacting, Turkey should show France that its stands on higher ground. The Turkish prime minister could even make a statement and offer French tourists discount prices, he writes.

via Turkey pressures France to stop Armenian genocide bill | EurActiv.

January 7, 2012
French ‘genocide’ bill: Senate set for January vote

The French Senate is to vote by the end of the month on a bill making it illegal to deny that the mass killing of Armenians was genocide, reports say.

Protesters from France's Turkish community voiced their anger about the bill

The lower house of parliament backed the proposal on 22 December, prompting a freeze in relations with Turkey.

Despite Ankara’s angry response, government officials have told French media that the vote will go ahead.

Turkey rejects the term “genocide” to describe the killing of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire in 1915-16.

Armenians say 1.5 million people were either slaughtered or died of starvation or disease when they were deported en masse from eastern Anatolia.

Turkey says the number was closer to 300,000.

France is one of more than 20 countries that have formally recognised the killings as genocide.

Under proposals backed by the National Assembly last month, anyone publicly denying it was genocide would face a year in jail and a fine of 45,000 euros ($58,000; £29,000).

A similar punishment for Holocaust denial has been in place since 1990.

‘Useless’ bill

Although the bill secured cross-party support among MPs, concerns have been raised among some ministers.

Foreign Minister Alain Juppe has condemned it as “useless and counter-productive” and predicted serious repercussions for relations with Turkey.

Protesters from France’s Turkish community rallied outside parliament against the bill last month and Turkey’s ambassador to Paris, Tahsin Burcuoglu, was recalled to Ankara. He is now thought likely to return to campaign against the bill’s approval in the senate.

If ratified by the upper house, the bill would then go to President Nicolas Sarkozy. Ankara has already halted military and diplomatic relations and has threatened further measures if its passage continues.

The decision to proceed with the senate vote five years on is being seen as an attempt to speed up the progress of the bill.

A similar proposal was backed by the lower house in 2006 but was voted down in the senate the following year.

French businessman Rachid Nekkaz launched a fund on Tuesday to pay the fine of anyone convicted of the offence if it secures parliamentary approval.

via BBC News – French ‘genocide’ bill: Senate set for January vote.

January 5, 2012
Turkish human rights activists appeal to Valerie Boyer: We stand by you

Human Rights Association Istanbul branch, Committee Against Racism and Discrimination appealed to French MP Valerie Boyer, author of the bill criminalizing the Armenian Genocide denial.

The association issued a statement condemning threats voices against MP by Turkish nationalists.

“Being the human rights defenders of a country which has directly witnessed how closely intertwined are both nationalism and racism with sexist violence, we know very well the crime committed against you and consider it to be committed against ourselves.

Believing that denial of crimes against humanity such as genocide means accomplicity in the crime itself, we would like you to know that we stand by you and we deeply share your rightful indignation against this act of violence because of the bill you have prepared against the denial of genocide,” the statement reads.

via Turkish human rights activists appeal to Valerie Boyer: We stand by you | Armenia News – NEWS.am.

December 31, 2011
When free countries ban opinion, they’re not free

George Jonas, National Post · Dec. 28, 2011 | Last Updated: Dec. 28, 2011 3:09 AM ET

A man holds a placard reading "I boycott French goods" during a demonstration in front of the French consulate in Istanbul to protest a new law in France outlawing denial of the 1915 Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey.

With the European Union in crisis mode, Iran conducting naval exercises in the Persian Gulf and a morose youth toying with the Hermit Kingdom’s nuclear button in the Far East, you’d think France has enough on its plate without picking a fight with Turkey over history. That’s what you’d think – but you’d be wrong.

Last Thursday, France’s National Assembly voted for a law that would imprison and fine anyone who denied that the atrocities against Armenians committed by the Ottoman authorities in Turkey 100 years ago amounted to genocide.

By Friday all hell broke loose. Turkey’s ambassador left Paris. Political visits between the two countries are suspended. The two NATO allies aren’t talking to each other, but they have plenty to say to the press.

“We have been accused of genocide! How could we not overreact?” demanded Turkish ambassador Tahsin Burcuoglu before boarding his plane. He wasn’t trying to be funny. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan went directly to the heart of the matter, demonstrating that “genocide” was a game at which two could play:

“France massacred an estimated 15% of the Algerian population starting from 1945. This is genocide,” he said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy couldn’t muster much more in reply from Prague, where he was attending former Czech leader Vaclav Havel’s funeral, than a sentence whose second half was true: “France does not lecture anyone but France doesn’t want to be lectured.”

Only Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian seemed happy. “Once again,” he said, “[France] proved its commitment to universal human values.”

Hmm. Maybe France did so 10 years ago, in 2001, when it took the official position that Turkish atrocities against Armenians in 1915 amounted to genocide, but last week, when French deputies initiated a process to jail everyone who disagreed, France only proved its commitment to universal human myopia.

Viewing the atrocities committed against Turkey’s Armenian minority in 1915 as genocide was defensible historically – and even if it hadn’t been, France would have been entitled to view them as it pleased. Nations, like individuals, aren’t obliged to pass tests of accuracy to hold historical views. In this case, though, France could in all likelihood have passed a test of accuracy for a bonus.

Last Thursday the French National Assembly went a giant step further. The deputies proposed a law that, if the Senate approves it, will make France’s official view everyone’s obligatory view.

Criminalizing contrary opinion doesn’t illustrate France’s commitment to universal human values. If it illustrates anything historically French, it’s the guillotine and the Reign of Terror. But what it really illustrates is President Sarkozy’s willingness to trade his country’s tradition of liberty for a perceived electoral advantage. There are an estimated half-million French voters of Armenian descent.

What France did in 2001 was compatible with a free society. Whether or not countries need to have “official” designations for historical events, many do. America recollects Pearl Harbor as “A Day of Infamy,” which it was. Some recollections are undisputed; others aren’t. In any event, to murder and dislocate an estimated one million human beings, as the Ottoman authorities did, may be fairly described as genocide, even if it irks the Turks – and even if some Armenians did, in fact, side with the Russian invaders as the First World War began, as Turkish apologists assert they did.

Being entitled and even justified to view Turkish atrocities against Armenians in 1915 as genocidal, however, doesn’t add up to a licence to de-legitimize other views. There can be no crime called genocide-denial in a free society because when such a crime appears in the law books the society is no longer free.

Saying this upsets some people. Does it apply, they ask, even to Holocaust deniers, or to members of the Flat Earth Society? I’m afraid so. Well, cannot free societies outlaw demonstrable error? Not if they want to remain free. Is freedom worth it, in this case? Yes, sure. We don’t outlaw the Flat Earth Society, yet we keep launching space vehicles. Very few people think the Earth is flat.

Like the President of France, I believe the atrocities committed against the Armenians in Turkey nearly 100 years ago amounted to genocide. Unlike the President of France, I don’t think it’s necessary to jail people who say otherwise. For one thing, I don’t think it should be a punishable offence; for another, cooperation within NATO seems to me far more important. Those who are too preoccupied with the last atrocity, risk walking headlong into the next one.

I suspect France’s foreign minister, Alain Juppe, would agree with me about this particular point more than he does with his boss. Juppe told the press that the vote on the genocide law had been “badly timed.” It sounded like a gigantic understatement.

via When free countries ban opinion, they’re not free.

December 29, 2011
Is the bill passed by the parliament a violation of the right to freedom of expression?

According to Mikael Danielyan, the chairman of the Helsinki Association, the bill banning the denial of genocides passed by the French parliament is a violation of the right to freedom of expression. He expressed such a notion during a conversation with Aravot.am. M. Danielyan thinks that it should not be in a form of a bill and aim at holding people accountable, “It is human’s right to freedom of expression to admit or not admit something. I am against such bills and I think that if someone denies, it should not be a subject of criminal responsibility. Human’s right to freedom of expression remains higher.”

Political scientist Stepan Grigoryan, the director of the Analytical Center on Globalization and Regional Cooperation, expressed an opposite idea during a conversation with us, “I don’t think that it can be perceived as a violation of the right to freedom of expression. Provided the Holocaust is recognized around the world, almost in every country the denial of the Holocaust is criminalized. It means that not recognizing or denying the Holocaust is punishable. It has nothing to do with restraining the human rights. It is obvious that people who deny that must be held accountable both internationally and in their own country. The fact of the Armenian Genocide is recognized by around 20 countries, also by EU, various international organizations, therefore that fact is well-known.”

Let us mention that according to the Turkish Zaman newspaper, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan severely criticized the decision of the French Senate, “Unfortunately, all this was related to Sarkozy’s political ambitions. Now I ask is there a freedom of speech in France? And I answer no. They have destroyed the atmosphere of free debate.”

He is convinced that the bill will be finally ratified, “President Sarkozy will not use the right to veto, and that bill passed by the Senate will be ratified and will finally become a law. If Nicolas Sarkozy had been against, the government of France would have actively worked with the members of the Senate in order that it wasn’t passed. It is obvious that there has been no pressure on the MPs imposed by the government, so we have no doubt that this law will be finally ratified.”

In response to a question what impact would the passing of this bill have, S. Grigoryan said that Turkey’s first reaction would be painful, but eventually, that country would reconcile to the fact that France was a powerful country, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and messing with such a country would have serious repercussions. According to him, the political fuss may be big, by calling back the ambassador, the relations may transfer to the level of the ambassador’s deputy, but S. Grigoryan doesn’t think that France will suffer big losses in the field of economics. On the contrary, it is not ruled out that showing such an attitude, Turkey may face problems herself.

Turkey has already stated about stopping military cooperation with France. As for imposing various sanctions by that country, the political scientist thinks that France doesn’t fear those steps, “Let us not forget that France is a powerful country herself. France is backed by EU. What is a sanction against France – e.g. if Turkey tries to impose some economic or commercial sanctions against France, she will automatically confront the European Union.”

In response to our question whether the step of passing the bill by France was not conditioned by the fact that the country tried to attract the attention of the Armenian community during the upcoming election and thereby win votes, the political scientist noted that it was not the main factor, “There are roughly half a million Armenians in France, they have nearly 200 thousand votes. It is not such a big influence, so that to make France oppose Turkey.” According to the political scientist, France had a few reasons for passing that bill, one of which, according to him, was related to restoring historical justice and the main reason was, “Turkey has shown big ambitions in the Arab, Muslim world recently. Turkey tries to become a leader in the region in regard to the Arab Spring and revolutions, including the countries of North Africa. It is obvious that France doesn’t like it.” Our interlocutor thinks that passing the bill is not the last step taken by France against Turkey. In his words, the period of rivalry has just started, “Turkey is becoming more powerful and clashing with the interests of other countries, first of all France and Italy and there will be new steps taken by those countries in the short-run.”

Lusine KHACHATRYAN

www.aravot.am, DECEMBER 22, 2011

December 27, 2011