Associated Press Worldstream
December 13, 2004 Monday 2:06 PM Eastern Time
French minister: Turkey must come clean with its Ottoman record in
Armenia
ROBERT WIELAARD; Associated Press Writer
BRUSSELS, Belgium
France will insist Turkey acknowledge its record regarding the
killing of Armenians in the early 20th century if it wants to join
the European Union, France’s foreign minister said Monday.
EU leaders holding a summit on Thursday and Friday are to discuss
setting a start date for negotiations for Turkey to join the
25-nation bloc.
“In the course of the accession negotiations, France will ask for a
recognition of the tragedy at the outset of the 20th century,” Michel
Barnier said.
Armenia accuses Turkey of genocide in the killings of up to 1.5
million Armenians as part of a 1915-1923 campaign to force them out
of eastern Turkey. At that time, Armenia was part of the Ottoman
Empire.
Turkey remains extremely sensitive to the issue. It denies the
genocide, says the death count is inflated and that Armenians were
killed or displaced along with others as the Ottoman Empire tried to
quell civil unrest.
Barnier was careful to avoid using the term “genocide,” but said that
“Turkey must reconcile itself with its past.”
Barnier said that “The European (unification) project is built on
reconciliation,” citing Germany and France, two EU members with a
rich history of wars that led to enormous loss of life.
Under EU rules, countries can only join if they are democracies, have
functioning market economies and live in peace with their neighbors.
Armenia and Turkey do not have diplomatic relations at the moment
because of past friction.
They are also at odds over Nagorno-Karabakh, a region within
Azerbaijan that has been under ethnic Armenian control since a war
that ended in 1994 without a political settlement. Azeris and Turks
share close ethnic ties, although recently Turkey has expressed a
willingness to improve relations with Armenia.
French-Turkish ties became strained in 2001, when French parliament’s
recognition of the killings as a genocide sparked a boycott of French
goods and an exclusion of French companies from Turkish defense
contracts.