Tag: denial of Armenian Genocide

AFP: Turkey accuses France of genocide in Armenia row

By Nicolas Cheviron (AFP) – 17 hours ago

ISTANBUL — The war of words between France and Turkey escalated dramatically on Friday, when the Turkish premier accused Paris of committing genocide in Algeria and of stirring hatred of Muslims.

Furious that French lawmakers had voted on Thursday to outlaw denial of the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey in 1915, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan hit back directly at France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Earlier, Turkey’s ambassador to France had left Paris and Ankara had announced diplomatic sanctions — banning political visits between the countries — and frozen military ties between the nominal NATO allies.

“France massacred an estimated 15 percent of the Algerian population starting from 1945. This is genocide,” Erdogan told reporters, accusing Sarkozy of “fanning hatred of Muslims and Turks for electoral gains.”

“This vote that took place in France, a France in which five million Muslims live, clearly shows to what point racism, discrimination and Islamophobia have reached dangerous levels in France and Europe,” he said.

Demonstrators gathered in front of the French consulate in Istanbul, chanting “Down with France” and “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest).

Paris appeared to have been caught off guard by the fury of Turkey’s response. Sarkozy, in Prague where he was at the funeral of late Czech president Vaclav Havel, was on the defensive.

“I respect the views of our Turkish friends — it’s a great country, a great civilisation — and they must respect ours,” he said.

“France does not lecture anyone but France doesn’t want to be lectured. France decides its policy as a sovereign nation. We do not ask for permission. France has its beliefs, human rights, a respect for memory.”

But back in France, Foreign Minister Alain Juppe admitted that the vote on the genocide law had “without doubt been badly timed”. He urged calm, while adding that “certain declarations have been excessive”.

France fought a long guerrilla war between 1954 and 1962 to try to hang on to its Algerian colony. Estimates for the number of dead vary wildly. Algeria puts it at more than a million, French historians estimate 250,000.

Citing earlier French action against Algerian rebels in the aftermath of World War II, Erdogan said Sarkozy’s father Pal Sarkozy had been a French legionnaire and should be able to tell his son of “massacres”.

But Sarkozy senior appeared on French television to mock this claim, pointing out that he had been in the Foreign Legion for only four months and had never been deployed to Algeria.

In 1915 and 1916, during World War I many Armenians died in Ottoman Turkey. Armenia says 1.5 million were killed in a genocide. Turkey says around 500,000 died in fighting after Armenians sided with Russian invaders.

France is home to around 500,000 citizens of Armenian descent and they are seen as a key source of support for Sarkozy and his UMP ahead of presidential and legislative elections in April and June next year.

France recognised the 1915 killings as genocide in 2001 and on Thursday the National Assembly approved a first step towards a law that would impose a jail term and a 45,000 euro(($60,000) fine on anyone in France who denies this.

The bill will now go to France’s upper house, the Senate, and could become law next year — although Turkey will lobby hard to prevent this.

“We are really very sad. Franco-Turkish relations did not deserve this,” Ambassador Tahsin Burcuoglu said before taking a flight home. “When there is a problem it always comes from the French side.

“The damage is already done. We have been accused of genocide! How could we not overreact? Turkey will never recognise this story of an Armenian genocide. There are limits. A country like Turkey cannot be treated like this.”

Turkey will now boycott an economic committee meeting in Paris in January — a move that will worry business leaders in both countries fearful for the fate of 12 billion euros ($16 billion) in annual trade.

And the freeze in military and political ties will hamper France’s ambition to work with fellow NATO power Turkey to bring stability to Afghanistan and Syria and to face down Iran over its nuclear programme.

Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian thanked France, which had “once again proved its commitment to universal human values”.

Franco-Turkish relations are often tense — Sarkozy is opposed to allowing Turkey to join the European Union — but 1,000 French firms work there.

Much of Europe, including France, is facing recession amid a sovereign debt crisis, but Turkey enjoys growth rates in excess of eight percent and, with 78 million people, it is a huge potential market.

via AFP: Turkey accuses France of genocide in Armenia row.

December 24, 2011
Turkey cuts some ties with ‘racist’ France over genocide law

By Agence France-Presse

A woman holding the Turkish and French flags takes part in a rally next to the French National Assembly in Paris. Photo: AFP.

Turkey reacted with fury Thursday to a vote by French lawmakersto outlaw denial of the Armenian genocide, immediately cutting military ties and warning of “irreparable damage” to relations.

“This is politics based on racism, discrimination and xenophobia,” thundered Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, ordering home Ankara’s ambassador to Paris and banning political visits between the two NATO allies.

“From now on we are revising our relations with France,” he added. “There was no genocide committed in our history. We do not accept this.”

Turkey will rule on a case-by-case basis on any request made by France to use Turkish airspace or military bases and will reject any French demand for its military vessels to dock at Turkish ports, he said.

He said Turkey would boycott a joint economic committee meeting in Paris in January, a move that will worry business leaders in both countries, fearful for the fate of 12 billion euros in annual trade between the two powers.

Erdogan accused France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy of pandering to domestic voters, hundreds of thousands of whom are ofArmenian descent, and warned that these measures were the first in an escalating scale of sanctions.

“History and people will never forgive those exploiting historical facts to achieve political ends,” said Erdogan, reflecting a view of Sarkozy’s motives that is shared by many of his domestic critics.

Sarkozy’s government has insisted the law was a parliamentary idea, but it was drafted by members of his UMP party and was passed in the first of a series of votes by a small number of lawmakers in a sparsely attended house.

In Paris, Foreign Minister Alain Juppe’s office issued a statement to “express regret” over Erdogan’s decision and calling for dialogue.

“Turkey is an ally of France and a strategic partner,” Juppe said, citing work done by the states in NATO and the G20 to address the crisis in Syria, bring peace to Afghanistan and develop security in the Mediterranean.

“It is important in the current context to keep open all paths to dialogue and cooperation,” he said, having earlier urged Turkey not to “overreact”.

The National Assembly voted to approve a first reading of a law that would ban anyone from denying that the 1915 killings of hundreds of thousands of Armenians by Ottoman Turk forces amount to genocide.

Supporters argue that the law — which will impose a 45,000 euro fine and a one-year jail term on genocide deniers — is an overdue measure to protect the memory of one of the 20th century’s worst massacres.

But Turkey argues that Armenia’s estimate of 1.5 million dead is exaggerated and that the deaths were caused by World War I fighting.

The Turkish embassy in Paris said its ambassador had been recalled and would leave Friday, and angry crowds in Ankara chanted: “We have not committed genocide, we defended the homeland. Wait for us France, we will come.”

The draft law will now be debated by the Senate and parliamentary committees, and may be enacted early next year.

“We’re not trying to write history but to make an indispensable political act,” Patrick Devedjian, a lawmaker of Armenian descent, told parliament. “Now, Turkey is falling into revisionism and denies its own history.”

The debate was held under tight security, after around 4,000 Turkish expatriates living in France gathered outside parliament to protest.

France is home to around 500,000 citizens of Armenian descent and they are seen as a key source of support for Sarkozy and the UMP ahead of presidential and legislative elections in April and June next year.

Sarkozy’s main opponent in the upcoming vote, Socialist flag-bearer Francois Hollande, denounced the genocide bill as a cynical “electoral operation” and predicted it would never clear both houses of parliament before the vote.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their forebears were killed during World War I by the forces of Turkey’s former Ottoman Empire.

Turkey disputes the figure, arguing that only 500,000 died, and denies this was genocide, ascribing the toll to fighting and starvation during World War I and accusing the Armenians of siding with Russian invaders.

Franco-Turkish relations are often tense — Sarkozy is a firm opponent of allowing Turkey to join the European Union — but 1,000 French firms work there and trade between the two is worth 12 billion euros per year.

Much of Europe, including France, is facing recession amid a sovereign debt crisis, but Turkey enjoys growth rates in excess of eight percent and, with 78 million people, it is a huge potential market.

Agence France-Presse

Agence France-Presse

AFP journalists cover wars, conflicts, politics, science, health, the environment, technology, fashion, entertainment, the offbeat, sports and a whole lot more in text, photographs, video, graphics and online.

via Turkey cuts some ties with ‘racist’ France over genocide law | The Raw Story.

December 23, 2011
France And Turkey in Genocide Brawl: Both Wrong

Walter Russell Mead

The Armenian genocide has become a serious sticking point between the French and Turks. As our readers probably know, Turkey refuses to officially recognize the massacre of Armenians during and after WWI as a “genocide.” Paris takes another view, and last night legislatures voted to make it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide.

Readers whose memories of World War I have grown a little rusty may not have all the details concerning the Anatolian massacres of the era. Christian Armenians, then a significant minority in what was still the Ottoman Empire’s Turkish territory, had been the victims of massacres going back decades. Turks and other Muslims in the collapsing empire had grown suspicious of Christian minorities who sought the protection of European countries and the US, often gaining exemption from local laws, and who, when the opportunity arose, sought independence from an empire they loathed. As the Russians pushed through the Caucasus into eastern Turkey during World War I, the Armenians were suspected of sympathizing with the Christian Russian empire and looking to the tsar and the allies to establish a large Armenian state that would include perhaps as much as a third of what is now Turkey. The situation quickly deteriorated and while estimates vary, it is generally thought that somewhere between a million and a million and a half Armenians died in a variety of unpleasant ways. Greeks and Assyrians, two other Christian minorities, were also slaughtered in significant numbers.

The events were widely publicized in the west at the time. American missionaries worked among the Armenians, and they did their best to raise a storm of anger in the US about the brutal treatment of their pupils and associates. The story also fit well with allied needs in the war; it showed Germany in alliance with a murderous, bigoted and backward Ottoman government and allied propagandists lost no opportunities to spread extremely harrowing (and often, though not always) well-documented reports of beatings, dispossession, rape, mutilation and murder through the world.

Armenian civilians are marched to prison by armed Ottoman soldiers, 1915

Republican, post-Ottoman Turks could have chosen to blame these atrocities on the deficiencies of the empire, but they chose another path. One of the hallmarks of Turkish nationalism ever since has been a rigid and hardline refusal to consider this tragedy in the same light as the West. Massacres and the forced exile of Muslims from Europe also occurred as the Ottoman Empire was gradually pushed back out of Europe, they note. (The massacres of Muslim Bosnians by Orthodox Serbs in the recent Yugoslav wars are a contemporary example of this well-attested reality.) Turks saw themselves as victims and raged that the western world ignored Muslim and Turkish suffering, while, in their view, over-stressing and credulously exaggerating the crimes of what westerners then frequently called “the terrible Turk.”

Turkey to this day has strict laws against anybody calling what happened to the Armenians a genocide. Many educated Turks consider this law an embarrassing absurdity and favor free discussion of this and any other issues in Turkey’s past, but the law has not changed and there seems little prospect of repeal anytime soon, especially now that the increasingly desperate Sarkozy re-election campaign has decided to play the anti-Turkish, genocide card in the run up to an election Sarkozy is widely expected to lose.

The French law reflects a longstanding campaign by the Armenian diaspora (many Armenians emigrated to the west before and after these terrible events) to establish in law that a genocide occurred. This is partly about understandable lingering bitterness, partly about seeing some kind of justice rendered to the victims and preventing future episodes of this kind, partly about a hope of lawsuits and compensation for the wholesale destruction and thievery of the property of the community, and partly about watching how Jewish groups have made a response to the Holocaust an important and effective element in their political work. (France already has a law making it a crime to deny the Holocaust. The argument that the Armenians deserve no less has been an important one as Armenian advocates struggle in Europe and the US to establish their claim.)

Another force behind the new law in France is that country’s campaign to keep Turkey out of the EU. This meshes will with Sarkozy’s interest in capitalizing on public concern about Islam in France and elsewhere. French popular opinion is very concerned about the inclusion of a large (and increasingly pious) Islamic country in the EU. Elite opinion often shares those fears and also worries that the inclusion of Turkey would further weaken France’s EU power and role by diluting its voting strength in EU institutions. Passage of the law is seen by many as a kind of wedge issue that will make the EU less likely to offer Turkey membership — and make the proud Turks more reluctant to join a club whose members brand their ancestors as genocidaires.

Via Meadia thinks both sides have gotten this wrong. Genocide and Holocaust denial laws are crimes against liberty and should never be passed. There are other ways to deal with these people; the US has no such laws and as far as Via Meadia knows there are absolutely no serious problems that come out of it. Nasty cretins write and say nasty things, but concentration camps and gas chambers show no signs of rising up across the American landscape. Denying the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide is a crime against society but not something that needs to be persecuted in a court of law.

The French law requiring people to refer to the massacres as a genocide is wrong; the Turkish law that prohibits people from calling the massacres a genocide is also wrong. Neither law should exist; both countries should step down. It is irresponsible and counterproductive for the French to have passed this law; Nicolas Sarkozy’s increasingly desperate election campaign has done lasting damage to France and to Europe.

On the flip side, Ankara needs to face this issue. It’s been too long. For far too many years, Turkish officials have dodged, dismissed, or denied the Armenian massacre. If Turkey wants to play in the big leagues, it has to understand that its attitude on this question strikes the rest of the world as backward and neurotic. Regardless of the merits about what did or didn’t happen in the waning days of Ottoman power in Turkey, nobody doubts that terrible massacres took place — a huge tragedy. As Turkey emerges from its Kemalist cocoon, this past must be frankly faced and discussed — without taboos. Turkish laws on the subject look ridiculous to virtually everyone in the world and exhibit a defensive and immature nationalism that causes people everywhere to look down on the Turks. A country that passes and, worse, enforces such a law humiliates and demeans itself even as it impoverishes its intellectual life and reduces the credibility of its scholars worldwide.

Turkey’s newly assertive foreign policy is going to force this kind of discussion into the open. If Turkey wants to talk about Gaza and the Palestinians more, it will have to talk about the Armenians. If Turkey is going to revive a kind of neo-Ottoman approach to the region, it is going to have to come to grips in a much deeper way with the uglier side of the Ottoman legacy. Turkey, like France, Russia, Britain and the United States is among other things an ex-colonial power. What the Armenians suffered at the hands of the Turks and Kurds was worse than what the Palestinians have suffered at the hands of the Israelis. As Turkish public opinion seeks to play a wider regional role, it must understand that its failure to grapple fully and openly with the problems of the past seriously undermines Turkey’s ability to lead.

December 23, 2011
IS TURKEY AN ECONOMIC EXCEPTION?

RÉMI BOURGEOT: CAN TURKEY DO WITHOUT EUROPE?

One of the available explanations accounting for recent Turkish performance would supposedly be Turkey’s distancing itself from Europe and gaining alternative markets, especially in the Middle East. Rémi Bourgeot, an economist expert on emerging countries, thus tackled the theme of the Turkish economy’s progressive “orientalisation”.
Indeed, there would be no point in denying that Europe’s crisis could hamper the development of Turkey/EU economic relations. Turkey’s attempts to explore alternatives to European demands are legitimate in such a depressing context. In the last 10 years, the Middle East rose from approximately 10 to 20% share in Turkish external trade. Yet, talking about “orientalisation” does not really make sense. The EU still accounts for half of Turkey’s exports, around 40% of its imports and half of FDIs directed to Turkey come from Europe. Besides, Turkish trade with the Middle East is not of the same nature as Turkey/EU economic ties: it is not composed of the same type of products and comes from different regions. Turkey’s North, with the industrial region of Bursa, essentially produces industrialized goods that are exported towards Europe. Turkey’s South, mostly around Gaziantep, is specialized in low-technology products like cement and exports to the Middle East, especially Iraq.

Hence we are not talking about the same structures and there is no substitution between one and the other; they can at best be complementary.
The idea of an “orientalisation” of Turkey’s economy has also been supported by the AKP’s Middle Eastern diplomatic moves and policies, notably the visa lifting and the Free Trade Agreements (FTA) signed with Syria, Iran, Iraq… There was even a discourse on economic integration à l’européenne: Erdoğan brought up the idea of a “Şamgen” union, in reference to the Shengen zone (Şam meaning Damascus). Yet such prospects seem to be rather far-fetched given the economic disparity and the diversity of political regimes in the region, not to mention the high current political tensions.

In fact, energy is the most important factor driving Turkey’s relations with its non-European neighbors. The “zero problem” policy was notably aimed at pacifying relations with energy-provider countries so that Turkey can trade more easily with them. In order to reduce the energy burden (which weights a lot on the current account deficit), Turkey tried to export its middle-technology goods: textile, construction… to countries that were important energy producers and financially solvent. In geopolitical terms, one of the objectives of Turkey’s Foreign Policy is to position itself as a regional hub. Located between the main energy resources (Russia, Central Asia, the Middle East), Turkey shares the same essential goal as its neighbors: transporting energy to Europe via Turkey. At the end of the day, the paradoxical outcome of this hub strategy is that it might turn Turkey even more dependent on European demand.

Can Turkey be considered as an economic success story?

Thanks to a closed economy, major Turkish companies emerged and were able to compete internationally when the economy was opened in the 1980s. Today, Turkey’s economy is dominated by the private-sector, with main conglomerates leading the way. Ünal noted how the most important groups, gathered in TÜSIAD (Turkish Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association, Türk Sanayicileri ve İşadamları Derneği) provide a model not only in terms of economic development but also to encourage women’s labor (TÜSIAD’s current president, like its predecessor, is a woman). Nevertheless, if Turkey has succeeded in becoming a medium-technology economy, more needs to be done to acceed the next level. The reform agenda should be pursued seriously if Turkey wants to keep growing.

Can we forecast the emergence of national şampiyons (champions) with the rise of Turkish FDI abroad?

Çağlar warned against lacks in the economic environment that could prevent Turkey’s main companies to produce sophisticated goods and grow worldwide. A bad performing tax system, informal activity, bureaucracy are still blocking economic development in Turkey. A major leap in the conception and implementation of economic policies is still needed in order to support Turkish companies on the international level.
As far as investment abroad is concerned, even though there are some successes (Gründig bought by Beko, Godiva acquired by Yıldız Holding…), there is a also need of a real investment policy. At the moment, the only large scale investment program abroad is about rebuilding ancient ottoman mosques and houses.

Whither Turkey’s economic relations with the Middle East?

The economy is now being used by the AKP as an instrument of foreign policy. Turkey has become a major economic power in Iraq; Economic sanctions were recently announced against Syria (even though they will apply to small trade quantities), and the relationship with Iran is essential to secure Turkey’s energy needs. In fact Turkey is very keen on engaging economically with Iran, as it can help lowering its dependency on Russian gas (which amounts to more than 60% of Turkish gas imports). Yet, significant challenges lie ahead. The lack of energy is a major disadvantage for Turkey and the recent upheavals in the Arab world cast uncertainty to the prospect of energy transportation from the Middle East to Europe via Turkey. The Kurdish issue could also be a destabilizing factor both at the internal and external level.

Does the Prime Minister manage economic policy alone, or does he rely on a broader team of decision makers?

One has to stress that Prime Minister Erdoğan is not the only leading figure in the AKP. President Abdullah Gül is also a prominent personality who could also take responsibilities should the necessity arise, as already happened in the past (Gül was briefly Prime Minister in 2002, when Erdoğan was temporarily impeached to do politics). The AKP’s economic policies have been relatively pragmatic so far, but it remains to be seen if the party will stick to its reform agenda, which was apparently left apart over the last years.

Does Turkey compete economically with France?

Politics affect negatively Turkish-French economic relations. President Sarkozy’s decision to block Turkey’s EU membership bid and France’s position on the Armenian genocide have in certain cases excluded French companies from call for tenders in Turkey. Furthermore, in regions like the Caucasus, Central Asia and especially in Africa, Turkish companies are gaining economic grounds, sometimes at the expense of French companies. Nevertheless, France is an old-time economic partner of Turkey and one of the main investors in the country the Renault-Oyak partnership is one example among many. The two economies complement each other: France and Turkey can thus be partners in terms of high technology products and compete as far as low and middle-technology products are concerned.

© copyright StarAfrica.com

December 22, 2011
French National Assembly passes Armenian genocide bill – CNN.com

Paris (CNN) — Turkey is fuming over French legislation that would criminalize any public denial of what the bill calls the Armenian genocide last century in Ottoman Turkey.

A man waves a Turkish flag as he takes part in a rally in front of the French Consulate in Istanbul on December 22

“We are reviewing our relations with France,” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said after the French National Assembly passed the so-called Armenian genocide bill. “We will take our measures phase by phase depending on France’s behavior from now on.

Erdogan said Turkey is recalling its Paris ambassador for consultations to Ankara, is canceling bilateral visits, and won’t cooperate with France in joint projects within the European Union.

“We are stopping all kinds of political consultations with France. We are canceling bilateral military activities and joint exercises from now on. We are canceling the permission granted annually for all military overflights, landings and take-offs. We are starting permission process for every military flight individually. From today on, we are rejecting the permission requests of military ships to visit ports. We will not attend and held the bilateral Turkey-France joint economic and trade partnership committee meeting that was planned for January 2012 under the co-chairmanship of the economy ministers of the two countries,” Erdogan said.

“I am underlining this. This is the first phase.”

The bill — applauded by Armenians — must now be voted on by the country’s senate. Erdogan said he hopes the French Senate will vote down the bill.

“New measures will come to the agenda depending on the progress of the bill in France and we will apply them with determination without any hesitation.”

Armenian groups and many scholars argue that starting in 1915, Turks committed genocide, when more than a million ethnic Armenians were massacred in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire.

But modern-day Turkey officially denies that a genocide took place, arguing instead that hundreds of thousands of Armenian Christians and Muslim Turks died in intercommunal violence around the bloody battlefields of World War I.

The genocide debate is an annual source of tension between Turkey and the United States, two NATO military allies.

The White House annually beats back efforts in Congress to pass a resolution which would formally recognize the 1915 massacre of Armenians as genocide.

“The issue should be researched not by politicians, but by historians,” Turkish Parliament Speaker Cemil Cicek said.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told Turkish lawmakers Thursday that Turkey is a friend and ally of France and strives to maintain a dialogue.

Armenia’s foreign minister, Edward Nalbandian, hailed the move, saying France “reconfirmed its high place of being the cradle of human rights and once again proved its commitment to universal human values.”

“The French people showed that human rights are highest value, and today by adopting this bill,” he said, indicating that crimes against humanity have no statute of limitations and deserve condemnation.

According to official Turkish statistics, the volume of trade between Turkey and France from January to the end of October this year was more than $13.5 billion.

CNN’s Yesim Comert and Saskya Vandoorne contributed to this report

via French National Assembly passes Armenian genocide bill – CNN.com.

December 22, 2011
Turkey to launch sanctions against France over genocide bill | The Raw Story

By Agence France-Presse

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

ANKARA — Ankara will announce sanctions against Paris, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday on the eve of a debate in the French parliament on a law criminalising the denial of the Armenian genocide by Turkish forces.

“Tomorrow probably I will announce what we will do at the first stage and we will announce what kind of sanctions we will have at the second and third stages,” Erdogan said late Wednesday, according to Anatolia news agency.

He said the move by French President Nicolas Sarkozy was aimed at electoral gains and would “harm Franco-Turkish relations.”

France’s estimated 400,000-strong ethnic Armenian population is seen as an important element in Sarkozy’s support base as he prepares for a tough re-election battle in April next year.

The French parliament is on Thursday expected to approve the bill, which would see anyone in France who publicly denies the 1915 genocide face a year in jail and a fine of 45,000 euros ($58,000).

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their forebears were killed during World War I by the forces of Turkey’s former Ottoman Empire, a figure Ankara disputes.

The planned French legislation has united Turkey’s ruling and opposition parties which in a joint declaration denounced it as a “grave, unacceptable and historic mistake.”

“We strongly condemn the proposal which denigrates Turkish history,” the lawmakers said, urging France to consider its own past, including its involvement in bloodshed in Algeria and Rwanda.

Around 100 people demonstrated on Wednesday in front of the French embassy in the Turkish capital, chanting slogans.

The protestors unfurled banners reading, “Genocide master imperialist France,” “What were you doing in Algeria?” “What were you doing in Rwanda?” and “Liar Sarkozy.”

The group later dispersed without incident.

Turkey’s EU Affairs Minister Egemen Bagis said the legislation was against “EU principles, the spirit of the French revolution and reason.”

Turkish media are highly critical of the genocide bill initiated by a lawmaker from the ruling party of President Nicolas Sarkozy.

“Ugly Monsieur,” ran the headline in the opposition newspaper Sozcu, in reference to Sarkozy.

“Sarkozy has nothing to lose,” Semih Idiz wrote in his column in Milliyet daily.

“If winning the votes of French citizens of Armenian origin is eventually going to facilitate his re-election as president, he will end up a winner,” said Idiz.

Turkey and France have enjoyed close ties since Ottoman Empire times, coupled with strong economic links, but relations took a downturn after Sarkozy became president in 2007 and raised vocal objections to Turkey’s EU accession.

A delegation of Turkish lawmakers and businessmen lobbied in France this week in an attempt to head off the genocide bill.

But Turkey’s business sector is advising against a boycott of French products, saying such a move would also harm Turkish interests.

Ankara is considering diplomatic and trade sanctions against Paris, including recalling the Turkish ambassador in Paris for consultations and asking the French ambassador in Turkey to leave.

It is also planning trade sanctions targeting French interests in the country and excluding French companies from public contracts.

Turkey is an important economic partner for France with about 12 billion euros in trade between the two countries in 2010.

Some analysts have criticised the government for brushing aside for years its proposal to set up a commission to probe the 1915 events while Armenian nationalists lobbied hard for recognition of the genocide.

Turkey rejects the term genocide and says between 300,000 and 500,000 Armenians, and at least as many Turks, died in combat or from starvation when Armenians rose up and sided with invading Russian forces.

France recognised the killings as genocide in 2001.

Agence France-Presse

Agence France-Presse

AFP journalists cover wars, conflicts, politics, science, health, the environment, technology, fashion, entertainment, the offbeat, sports and a whole lot more in text, photographs, video, graphics and online.

via Turkey to launch sanctions against France over genocide bill | The Raw Story.

December 22, 2011