Israel Matzav

Faster, faster: France and Turkey at loggerheads

In 2001, France recognized the slaughter of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire nearly 90 years earlier as a genocide. Now, France is about to criminalize the denial of any genocide, including the Armenian one. And the Turks are outraged.

Faced with French President Nicolas Sarkozy's open hostility to Turkey's all-but stagnant bid to join the European Union, and buoyed by a fast-growing economy, Ankara has little to lose by picking a political fight with Paris.

With Turkey taking an increasingly pivotal and influential role in the Middle East, especially over Syria, Iran and Libya, France could experience some diplomatic discomfort, and French firms could lose out on lucrative Turkish contracts.

Even though nearly 100 years have passed since the killings that coincided with World War One, successive Turkish governments and the vast majority of Turks feel the charge of genocide is a direct insult to their nation.

Turkish leaders also argue that the bill, proposed by 40 deputies from Sarkozy's party, is a blatant attempt at winning the votes of 500,000 ethnic Armenians in France in next year's elections, limits freedom of speech and is an unnecessary meddling by politicians in a business best left to historians.

"This proposed law targets and is hostile to the Republic of Turkey, the Turkish nation and the Turkish community living in France," Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan wrote in a tersely worded letter to Sarkozy last week.

"I want to state clearly that such steps will have grave consequences for future relations between Turkey and France in political, economic, cultural and all areas," he said.

The volume of trade between France and Turkey from January to November this year was more than $13.5 billion, according to Turkish government statistics. France is Turkey's fifth biggest export market and the sixth biggest source of its imports.

Both Turkey and France are members of the World Trade Organization, which is supposed to eschew boycotts. Given the membership of the WTO, and the boycotts currently in effect (how much trade does Saudi Arabia do with Israel?) I would not count on that preventing a boycott.

Sounds like good news to me.

Labels: Armenian genocide, France, Turkey

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:56 AM