Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Oct 6 2011
Sarkozy threatens to criminalize ‘Armenian genocide’ denial
06 October 2011, Thursday / TODAYSZAMAN.COM,
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is seen together with Armenian
President Serzh Sarksyan during his visit to Armenia on Thursday.
(Photo: Cihan)
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, on a brief trip to the Caucasus,
urged Turkey on Thursday to recognize the 1915 massacre of Armenians
as genocide, threatening to pass a law in France that would make
denying this a crime.
Visiting a genocide memorial and museum in Yerevan, Armenia, with
Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan, Sarkozy challenged Turkey — which
is seeking membership in the European Union — to face up to its past.
`The Armenian genocide is a historical reality. Collective denial is
even worse than individual denial,’ Sarkozy told reporters.
`Turkey, which is a great country, would honor itself to revisit its
history like other great countries in the world have done,’ the French
president added. Armenia was the first stop on a two-day trip to the
region by Sarkozy, who is keen to raise his profile on the
international stage before an April presidential election. He visits
Azerbaijan and Georgia on Friday.
France is opposed to Turkey’s bid for EU membership and his comments
on the sensitive subject are likely to be viewed as unwelcome meddling
by Ankara. Turkey denies the deaths of Armenians in 1915 was a
genocide. It says both Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks died in
large numbers as the Ottoman Empire collapsed.
Sarkozy suggested that French Parliament might consider a law making
denial of the deaths of Armenians as genocide a crime, similar to the
French law against Holocaust denial.
While in the region, Sarkozy will try to encourage Sarksyan and the
president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, to resolve a conflict over
Nagorno-Karabakh, a mainly Armenian-populated enclave in Azerbaijan.
France plays a leading role in the Minsk Group of countries from the
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which is
trying to resolve the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenian-backed
forces wrested Nagorno-Karabakh from Azeri control after the Soviet
Union collapsed. When the conflict ended in a ceas-efire in 1994,
30,000 people had been killed and about 1 million had been driven from
their homes.
During a three-hour visit to Georgia, Sarkozy will also urge Georgia
to improve relations with Russia, reviving memories of his mediating
role when the two countries went to war in 2008. Sarkozy’s success in
brokering a cease-fire in that conflict guarantees a warm welcome in
the capital Tbilisi, where he will meet President Mikheil Saakashvili
and address a crowd in the central Freedom Square.
Sarkozy will urge Saakashvili to look beyond the countries’
differences, including over how they interpret the cease-fire terms,
and rebuild trust in relations with Moscow. Each side accuses the
other of acting provocatively and sabotaging relations. Moscow has
angered Tbilisi and the West by recognizing Georgia’s breakaway
Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions as independent states.
In Moscow on Thursday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met
Abkhazia’s new president and signed legislation ratifying treaties
that enable Russia to operate military bases in the two separatist
regions for at least 49 years. It was not clear whether Sarkozy would
discuss Russia’s bid to join the World Trade Organization which
Georgia, as a member, could block. Moscow hopes to complete its entry
to the 153-member trading body this year.
Sarkozy mediated the 2008 cease-fire on behalf of the EU as France
held the bloc’s presidency at the time. That ended the war over
Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but Georgia says Russia has violated the
terms by not withdrawing troops to the positions they held before the
war.
TV images of Sarkozy addressing jubilant crowds will do him no harm as
he tries to improve his poor ratings before the two-round election on
April 22 and May 6. An opinion poll on Tuesday put Socialist Francois
Hollande well in the lead. Sarkozy will also promote business during
his visit to the region, but officials gave no details of any planned
contracts.
French oil group Total said last month it had made a major gas
discovery at Azerbaijan’s Absheron block in the Caspian Sea. French
companies could also be in the running to help extend the Baku metro,
or subway.
Sarkozy has also added fuel to a perennial debate between Turkey and
France over Armenians’ genocide claims, suggesting that everyone
should call tragic events of Armenians at the hands of Ottomans by its
own name — genocide. Sarkozy told an Armenian news agency in an
interview published on Wednesday that the friendship between France
and Armenia is rooted in history, but it was tempered in the what he
called the `genocide tragedy,’ when France became a refuge for dozens
of thousands of Armenians who had survived the massacre. Sarkozy is
also `proud that France was the first country to have officially
recognized the genocide by law.’
Most Armenians use the term genocide for a series of tragic events
during a war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire that played out in
east Anatolia. France has been determined to push Turkey to
acknowledge that the Armenian allegations are true. Turkey, in turn,
has proposed that a committee of historians, not politicians, should
decide what transpired in 1915.
The French Parliament recognized the so-called Armenian genocide in
2001, which resulted in short-lived tension between France and Turkey.
In 2006 the French National Assembly adopted a bill proposing a
punishment for anyone who denies the Armenian genocide. The bill was
dropped this summer before coming to Senate.
Sarkozy also expressed his deep regret over a deadlock in
Turkish-Armenian reconciliation process and said the protocols on
establishing diplomatic relations and normalization of ties between
Turkey and Armenia aroused many hopes. He recalled that Armenian
President Sarksyan exhibited wisdom and foresight, saying the next day
after meeting in Paris with him that Armenia is ready to ratify the
protocols when Turkey is ready for it. He hoped that the process will
resume soon.
Speaking about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Sarkozy said the time
has come for both Armenians and Azerbaijanis to make a risky choice
for peace, as there is no bigger danger than the preservation of
status-quo which gives birth to illusions, provokes revenge and moves
off all the prospects for peace.
`No other country, but France, can imagine what Nagorno-Karabakh means
for Armenia,’ Sarkozy said, adding that however, 17 years after the
war, which had caused so many deaths and sufferings, the time has come
to resolve the conflict and find the way to reconciliation. `I’ll also
deliver this message to President Aliyev in Baku, where I am leaving
after my visit to Armenia,’ he added.
Sarkozy said Armenians and Azerbaijanis themselves should find the
path to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict first of all. `We can
help, escort, but we can never establish peace instead of you,’ he
stressed.