Turkish Daily News

The French Senate will not adopt the bill aiming to criminalize the denial of the Armenian claims of genocide, a prominent leader in the French Senate told the Turkish Daily News yesterday.

“This issue is over. It is impossible for the Senate to adopt this law,” said Hubert Haenel, president of the Senate’s Commission for European Union Affairs.

  In 2006 the French National Assembly adopted the bill criminalizing the denial of the mass killings of Armenians at the hands of the Ottomans as genocide.

The bill would have to be passed by the Senate to become a law, but the vote in the lower house of the parliament dealt a heavy blow to bilateral relations.

Haenel, in Turkey to attend a seminar titled, “The Republic in France and Turkey,” at Bilgi University in Istanbul, told the TDN that the bill was blocked in the Senate, adding that French intellectual circles had also criticized the bill, as it prejudged the studies of historians. Haenel said the atmosphere between the two countries had changed, implying also that there was a different conjecture that would also make it difficult for the Senate to make a decision that would damage bilateral relations.

France discovers Turkey’s strategic importance

Haenel, who spoke at the seminar organized jointly by the French Institute for Anatolian studies and the Institute of Political Studies of Grenoble, gave optimistic messages on France’s outlook on Turkey. “The crown makes the king wiser,” said Haenel, talking about French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is known to be a vocal opponent of Turkey’s entry into the EU.

“With all the crises going on near the borders of Turkey, the stand-off in the Caucasus being the most recent one, we rediscover Turkey’s strategic importance,” said the French senator. Referring to the meeting Sarkozy had with all the French ambassadors during the summer, Hanael said it was significant that the French president said during the meeting that French troops in Afghanistan were serving next to Turkish troops.

“The French leadership is rediscovering Turkey’s historic, economic, political and cultural place,” he told the TDN after the panel. Referring to the meeting between the leaders of Turkey, France, Qatar and Syria in Damascus last month, Hanael said the pictures of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan next to Sarkozy along with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Qatar’s Khalifa al-Thani made a big impression in France.

He did admit though that it would be wrong to expect a change in Sarkozy’s views on the Turkish EU bid. Hanael said, however, that the French presidency has not taken any step to obstruct membership negotiations.

France currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency until January.

“We in the Senate rejected a measure that would have made a referendum on Turkey’s membership in the EU mandatory. The vote was 297 to seven,” he said, giving this as an example that France is not blocking Turkish membership.

“Who can have the legitimacy of saying no to Turkey? Turkey has its place in the EU. To those skeptics of Turkey I ask: ‘What will become of Turkey and the EU and the world in 10 years time?” he said at the seminar.

When asked about the slow pace in the negotiation process, Hanael said Turkey has also slowed down its reform process. “I am not being judgmental. For understandable reasons, Turkey has not been able to continue the reform process,” he said. 

Source: turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=118386