Europe

Europe

France made unforgivable mistake, Turkish President

28 December 2011 04:11 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Turkish president has said France made an unforgivable mistake by supporting a vote in the French Parliament last week making it a crime to deny the WWI-era mass killings of Armenians was a genocide, APA reports quoting Todayâ€™s Zaman.

In an interview with a Turkish TV network on Tuesday, Abdullah GÃ¼l said French President Nicolas Sarkozy took unbelievable steps for what he said â€œsmall [political] calculations,â€ referring to impending elections in France in April.

â€œI hope they will turn back from their mistakes,â€ GÃ¼l stressed.

Turkey vehemently rejects the term "genocide" for the World War I era-mass killings of Armenians, saying the issue should be left to historians. It contends that France is trampling freedom of expression and that Sarkozy is on a vote-getting mission before April presidential elections.

An estimated 500,000 Armenians live in France and many have pressed to raise the legal statute regarding the massacres to the same level as the Holocaust by punishing denial of genocide.

France formally recognized the killings as genocide in 2001, but provided no penalty for anyone denying that. The bill sets a punishment of up to one year in prison and a fine of 45,000 euro ($59,000) for those who deny or "outrageously minimize" the killings by Ottoman Turks, putting such action on a par with denial of the Holocaust.

Noting that Turkish-French relations are very deep, GÃ¼l said the bill criminalizes speaking and writing about something that is different from stateâ€™s official position. He recalled Turkeyâ€™s reform process in which he said as a country â€œwe freed ourselves from these bans.â€ He said people are being punished for their views that is different from state position in a country where he said is known to be â€œland of freedoms.â€

Turkey, a NATO member, is a strategic ally of France and valued trading partner, and the moves diminish ties at a particularly crucial time. Paris and Ankara are both deeply involved in international issues from the uprising in Syria to Afghanistan.

GÃ¼l said what makes him angry is that France says â€œI will punish those who believe otherwise.â€

â€œA history professor will not be able to say that this is the truth [about 1915 events],â€ the president said, adding that cheap politics brings countries to an â€œunexpected point.â€

GÃ¼l also complained of a situation in Turkeyâ€™s neighborhood and recalled that he wrote a letter to his Armenian counterpart earlier and had talks with Armenia and Azerbaijan to bury hostilities. He said todayâ€™s situation in the region, where Azerbaijan and Armenia are officially at war and there are no diplomatic or commercial relations between Turkey and Armenia, are not in favor of any these three countries.

He said Turkey is the most powerful country in the region and must see countries in its vicinity as its hinterland. He added that Turkey must build cultural, economic and political ties with its neighbor and acknowledged that efforts in this regard slowed down recently. GÃ¼l also stated that Turkey is not competing with France in these areas.

Turkey and Armenia signed twin protocols in 2009 to normalize relations and establish diplomatic ties but both countries failed to ratify the documents in the parliaments. Turkey pegged the ratification of the protocols to an Armenian-initiated breakthrough in the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan and Armenia suspended the process after accusing Turkey of failing to live up to its committments.

Speaking about the unrest in the Middle East, GÃ¼l said what Turkey wants amid this political turmoil is to see people of these nations happy. Stressing that people cannot be happy under repressive regimes, warning of risks in the Arab Spring.

Turkish president said demands for change will go easily if rulers lead the change but said these changes are made after peopleâ€™s revolt or foreign intervention which has huge costs.

The president also acknowledged that he always distanced himself from the Syrian regime and believed that Turkeyâ€™s reconciliation with Syria may transform the country.

WikiLeaks cables also showed that GÃ¼l frequently expressed his uneasiness about the Syrian regime and Assad family.

GÃ¼l said Turkey believed that the Assad regime may change the country but he said Syrian President Bashar Assad may not be powerful in the Baath party.