PARIS, 13 October 2006 — French lawmakers approved a bill yesterday that would make it a crime to deny that mass killings of Armenians in Turkey in the World War I-era amounted to genocide, a decision described by Turkey as a “great disappointment in our country.”
Ankara quickly said the vote would harm bilateral relations, but the bill could face an impossible struggle to become law — or even make it to the upper house for further discussion.
The majority of the 557 lawmakers who sit in France’s lower house did not take part in the vote. The bill passed 106-19.
President Jacques Chirac’s government opposed the bill, although it did not use its majority in the lower house to vote it down. Instead, most ruling party lawmakers did not vote on the text that was brought by the opposition Socialist Party. But Chirac’s government is thought unlikely to forward the bill for passage by the Senate.
Chirac’s former spokeswoman Catherine Colonna, now France’s minister for European affairs, told Parliament that the government did not look favorably on the bill.
The Armenia genocide issue has become intertwined with ongoing debate in France and across Europe about whether to admit mostly Muslim Turkey into the European Union. France is home to hundreds of thousands of people whose families came from Armenia. Chirac says he favors Turkey’s EU accession bid. But on a visit to Armenia last month, he also urged Turkey to recognize “the genocide of Armenians” in order to join the EU.
In Brussels, the EU’s executive Commission said the, bill, if ever it became law, would hamper reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia.
France has already recognized the killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians from 1915 to 1919 as genocide. Under the bill approved yesterday, those who contest it was genocide would risk up to a year in prison and fines of up to 45,000 euros ($56,000).
Armenia accuses Turkey of massacring Armenians during World War I, when Armenia was under the Ottoman Empire. Turkey says Armenians were killed in civil unrest during the collapse of the empire.
In Ankara, angry protesters pelted the French Embassy with eggs, while others laid a black wreath at the gate of the French Consulate in Istanbul.
“No one should harbor the conviction that Turkey will take this lightly,” Turkey’s foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, said. “The Parliament will meet on Tuesday with a special agenda and no doubt we have measures to take in every field.”
Gul did not elaborate but his comments were interpreted by many as also being a reference to proposals currently being debated by Turkish lawmakers to recognize an “Algerian genocide” by France.
