ANKARA GETS ANOTHER “SURPRISE” FROM FRANCE
PanARMENIAN.Net
September 1, 2012
French students will hardly miss the opportunity to learn true history
of Ottoman Empire, while Ankara again compromised itself.
Poor knowledge on legislation and governmental system of other
countries played a mean trick on Turkey and, unfortunately, on Armenian
media as well. The decision of the French ministry of education,
which has nothing to do with the country’s president, to include
study of the Armenian Genocide into the secondary school curriculum,
sparked a new splash of hatred towards France in Ankara.
Turkey met this move with an immediate rebuff, and this is not the
first case. The Turks seem to be just busy finding fault with the
whole world over the Armenian Genocide.
PanARMENIAN.Net – They keep nagging and grudging, send notes [of
protests] and try to intervene into internal affairs of France,
Switzerland and several other countries. Actually, Turkey’s EU
Minister Egemen BagıÅ~_ has no right to demand anything from
the French ministry of education. Weakness of French ex-president
Nicolas Sarkozy who did not sign the bill criminalizing the denial
of the Armenian Genocide and sent it to the Constitutional Court
unleashed Turkey which started to believe it can impose its rules of
game. Furthermore, BagıÅ~_ claimed no other country in the world
can boast a history as simple and transparent as Turkey’s.”Turkey
does not know what Genocide is; Turks take pride in their history
and ancestors,” he said. Indeed, the Ottoman Empire based on other
concepts – deportation, the way to nowhere, annihilation of Christian
nations of the empire, especially the Armenians. The minister should
have been reminded of the fact that the modern Turkish republic was
built on bones and money of the Armenians.
Now, lets’ get back to the Turkish minister who has urged Paris
against testing bilateral relations once again. “I call on the French
authorities to intensify efforts in resolving the Nagorno Karabakh
conflict in the framework of OSCE Minsk Group rather than distort
the historical facts,” Hurriyet Daily News quotes BagıÅ~_ as saying.
He also urged the French government to “face own history rather than
check-up fictitious facts.” This was an obvious blunder by the Turkish
official, of course.
France equally mentions both the bloody pages of its history and its
victories. No one in France ever denies the massacre of St.
Bartholomew’s Day, brutalities of the Great French Revolution, or the
conquest of Algeria. BagıÅ~_ may be unaware of this, anyway… As
to the settlement of the Karabakh conflict, Turkey has no chance to
be ever dealing with this issue.
The most ridiculous part of this story is that Turkey, for some
reason, is addressing the French leader Hollande with an urge to
“intervene”. According to the Turkish media, the decision of the
French minister of education may again have a negative impact on
the ties between France and Turkey; the latter hoped the new French
president would support restoration of contacts with Paris.
There is nothing new in the “squabble” that started between France and
Turkey back in 2001. Turkey is again trying to rehabilitate itself
through blackmail; this works with regard to U.S. and Great Britain
only, and totally fails in Europe.
The French students will hardly miss the opportunity to learn the
true history of the Ottoman Empire, while Ankara has again compromised
itself.
However, since attack is the best form of defence, Turkey rushed to
protect itself, trying hard to position its country as a “beacon of
democracy in the Islamic world”. Still, this becomes increasingly
harder. No doubt, in 2015 Turkey will again deny the Armenian
Genocide. Also, this atrocity against the humanity will undoubtedly
gain recognition by many other states in the upcoming two years. So,
instead of demonstrating wishful thinking and threatening others,
Ankara will have to take more reasonable moves.
Karine Ter-Sahakian