ANKARA, 14 October 2006 — Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday Turkey was studying retaliatory measures against France following approval of a law making it a crime to deny Armenians suffered genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turks.
“Turkey’s foreign trade volume with France is $10 billion and this is equal to 1.5 percent of France’s whole foreign trade volume. We’re going to make the proper calculations and then take necessary steps,” Erdogan said in a speech. He did not elaborate, but said the center-right government would take measures within Turkey and abroad.
But the ruling AKP, facing a rise in nationalism ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections, must tread a careful line not to damage its success at bringing political and economic stability to the Muslim country seeking EU membership.
France’s lower house of Parliament voted for the bill on Thursday, despite warnings from French firms that it would create repercussions for their business in Turkey, a fast-growing market which imported 4.7 billion euros’ worth of French goods in 2005. “There are no real threats in current trade, though perhaps (there could be) with some big contracts,” a French Foreign Ministry spokesman told reporters at a regular briefing in Paris.
Meanwhile, the head of Turkey’s Parliament challenged Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, tried for commenting on the killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks, to declare his stand on a French vote banning the denial of the Armenian genocide. Pamuk was awarded the literary world’s most coveted prize on Thursday.
“We want to learn what our valued, Nobel laureate writer thinks of the bill known as the genocide law in France. What he will say will guide our society,” Bulent Arinc, Turkey’s powerful speaker of Parliament and leading member of the ruling AKP, said in televised remarks yesterday.
“Not only I or the Turkish people, but the whole world is curious about his opinion,” said Arinc, a known Pamuk critic.
Nationalist prosecutors took Pamuk to trial in January on charges he insulted Turkey’s identity by telling a Swiss newspaper one million Armenians had died in Turkey and 30,000 Kurds had perished in recent decades.
Erdogan and President Ahmet Necdet Sezer have not yet publicly commented on the award, a signal of how deep the Armenian issue runs and how divisive a figure Pamuk is in Muslim but secular Turkey.
But a spokesman for Erdogan said he had spoken to Pamuk, congratulating him and saying it was good a Turk had won.
