French parliament prepares vote on Armenian genocide law

Franco-Turkish relations have taken a hit this week as the French parliament prepares to vote on Thursday on a law making the denial of the Armenian genocide illegal.

Reuters/Charles Platiau

The law has support from both the right and the left and is likely to pass. Turkey has threatened sanctions.

The law would make it illegal for anyone to publically deny that the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1917 was genocide.

Anyone denying the genocide could face up to a year in jail and a 45,000-euro fine.

There are between 300,000 and 500,000 Armenians in France, many of whose families emigrated immediately after the massacre.

Ara Toranian, co-president of the council of Armenian organizations in France, says that the law is just applying a European anti-racism directive to French law.

“Negationism is considered to be a form of racism and discrimination,”he told RFI. Holocaust denial is illegal in France, and it is considered a form of anti-Semitism. For Toranian, denying the Armenian genocide is the same thing.

“Particularly as it was state policy, so it is a form of ‘Armeni-phobia’, which must be stopped," he said.

Turkey has warned that if passed, the law would damage Franco-Turkish relations. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Saturday that it would “irreparably” damage ties between the two countries.

“For us, the third generation living in France, this law is important,as a sign of respect to all the victims”

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Julien Harounyan

Some say it already has. Volkan Bozkir, a Turkish lawmaker who came to Paris on Tuesday as part of a delegation to convince lawmakers to vote against the law, says people in Turkey are already angry.

“We have already felt offended, because the draft of the law was leaked to the public, so we are not doing pre-damage control, but damage control,” he told RFI.

He added that if the law passes “this damage will be even greater”, though he would not elaborate.

A diplomatic source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the AFP news agency that Turkey would recall its ambassador to Paris and ask the French ambassador in Ankara to leave.

Dorothée Schmid, who runs the contemporary Turkey programme at France’s Foreign Relations Institute, says there will likely be economic repercussions as well.

“There is the possibility of economic sanctions. France would be excluded from Turkish public procurements and there will be a boycott of French products,” she told RFI, adding that this has already happened to some extent following France’s recognition of the massacre as a genocide in 2001.

“What is of more worry to French diplomats and the French community in Turkey is that there would be acts of violence in Turkey against French citizens who live there.” she added.

Erdogan accused France of playing electoral politics, saying that French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling UMP party, which controls the National Assembly, is pushing to pass the bill in an appeal for the Franco-Armenian vote.

MP Volkan Bozkir sees it that way. “I can’t find any other excuse for this kind of an attempt,” he said.

Dorothée Schmid says some of the Armenian Diaspora in France has already pledged its support to opposition Socialist candidate François Hollande.

“So there is a kind of competition to gain the Armenian vote,” she said.

“But I think the Armenian vote is sort of a fantasy, like the Jewish vote. There is no Jewish vote, some Jews vote for the left, some for the right," she explains. "Some Armenians vote for the left some for the right. I don’t think there is such thing as an ethnic community vote in France.”

That said, she recognises the French presidential race will be tough, and the candidates will go after every vote they can get. “So we’ll see if this is a marginal issue or not,” she said.

And for Julien Harounyan it goes beyond French politics: “It is very important for a country like France to pass this law,” he said. “It will have an echo worldwide.”