France's Armenian Genocide law

Must be slipping; hadn't even heard a whisper about this until now?
"In any spat between Turkey and France, we surely know whom to back. Ankara has recalled its ambassador following the passage of a French law which makes it a criminal offence to deny that the massacres of Armenians in 1915 constituted a genocide.
They were tangled and tragic events, and historians have wrangled ever since about precisely what occurred. When the Ottomans joined the First World War, and fighting began along the Caucasian frontier between the two empires, many Armenians threw in their lot with the Russians. The Young Turks, at war on two fronts and foreseeing the overthrow of their regime, feared that their entire Armenian population would rise in revolt. Brutal repressions ensued, with arrests, executions, evacuations, forced marches and at least some deliberate pogroms."
Armenians suffered terribly in 1915, but France is wrong to insist on labels – Telegraph Blogs

And here's more. Seems to be turn ing into diplomatic fisticuffs.
"Turkey deepened its acrimonious rift with France yesterday by accusing the country of genocide.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan claimed French forces burned people in ovens during their colonial occupation of Algeria.
He told President Nicolas Sarkozy he should ask his ex-Foreign Legion father about atrocities carried out during French imperial rule in the 1940s and 1950s."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...15-Ottoman-Empire-genocide.html#ixzz1hPLUDIIj

 

The official truth comrade, Dawai Towarish!

 

Wise words.

 

It is sad because I like both communities

 

Aye. Not like politicians to miss a chance to grandstand just 'cos it's Christmas.

 

French lawmakers are making their American Lawmaker cousins look wise, and that is saying something! And now the Turkish lawmakers are trying to out do both! Somebody has got to hit bottom sometime, right?

 

Louis XIV will send you to the galleys and you'll end up in the Americas. Oops you already have.

 

..well the Turks certainly have a point with regard to Algeria....torture was endemic there. I hadn't realised that Maurice Papon was in charge there for long periods - fresh from rounding up French Jews for the camps on behalf of the Germans. And Sarkozy's "we don't need lessons from anyone.." is a typically arrogant response...

 

From the little I've read on what happened with the Armenians was pretty horrible, but once you start calling every "ethnic cleansing" a genocide you enter a minefield, if you add harsh (according to early XXI century western sensibilities) methods I think no country will come out clean. IMO there is a difference between ethnic cleansing and heavy handed counter insurgency but .... not for the innocent victims.

 

Algeria was a war (with torture, granted) , not a Genocide .

Also this law is not specifically aimed at Turkey but to all genocide deniers.

 

This is a misstatement of the recent facts. There is as yet no such "French law". The French lower House, the Chamber of Deputies, has approved a Bill to the effect stated, but the Bill has yet to be debated by the upper House, the Senate, where it is by no means certain that it will pass. It is true that Ankara has recalled its Ambassador from Paris. One can make of that what one will.

 

Thanks for the clarification, Coder.

 

Sorry Belesar, but I think the French have got it right.
The problem is that the Turks are trying to deny that the Armenians (and later Pontic Greeks) were deliberatly brutalized & exterminated, which is what happened.

If it's wrong for folks to insist that the Jews weren't killed under the Nazi regime (they were all sent to Madagascar, right?), then it's also wrong for the Turks to try to sweep the events under the rug.


Call it what it is, and live with the consequences. If France also has to admit to wrongdoing in Algeria, so be it.

 

Let's all wait until the April 2012 elections, maybe this bill will never pass

 

Seems to be a very sore point though. I've found at least one Turkish source blaming the whole thing on British propaganda, presumably because it was part of a report by the same Viscount Bryce who overstated the 'eyewitness' reports of German atrocities in Belgium in 1914-
The Bryce Report: British Propaganda and the Turks / Rep. of Turkey Ministry of Foreign Affairs

 

That explains it ...Perfidious Albion!

 

You can take us nowhere!

 

I heard on the news Israel is considering voting a similar bill regarding the Armenian genocide.

 

I can see the point in that, but not the French one.

 

A 450.000 Armenian diaspora and potential votes for the next election might give a hint.