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Former Turkish ambassador to France: If French Senate passes the law envisaging punishment for expression of opinion, it will have negative influence on Turkey-France relations

14 December 2011 14:49 (UTC +04:00)

Ankara. Mayis Alizadeh â€“ APA. â€œWe will leave for Paris on Monday and speak with the members of the French parliament about this issue. Nicolas Sarkozy said in 2006 that historians, not politicians should deal with the â€œArmenian genocideâ€ issue. In 2008 a minister of Sarkozyâ€™s government also made a similar statement. Now they have changed their positions and included this issue into the agenda of the parliament. We will object to it and once more say that historians should deal with these issues,â€ parliamentarian from the Republican Peopleâ€™s Party (CHP), member of the foreign affairs commission, Turkeyâ€™s former ambassador to France Osman Koruturk told APA while commenting on the discussion by the French Senate of the bill criminalizing the so-called â€œArmenian genocideâ€ denial.

Koruturk mentioned the statement issued by the Turkish parliament regarding it.

â€œThe statement says addressing Armenia, Russia, France, Germany, UK and US that Turkey has opened all its archives, you should also open your archives so that objective, independent historians can study the issue thoroughly. Turkey will obey any decision that will be passed by the historians. But these countries refuse to do it and politicize the issue. We will tell the French parliamentarians if they pass the law envisaging punishment for expression of opinion, it will have negative influence on Turkey-France relations. We will return on Wednesday and will prepare our decision regarding Turkey-France relations taking into account the decision that will be passed by the French parliament. Fraternal Azerbaijan also knows these issues very well, there are serious scientists there dealing with these issues. Armenia has occupied 20% of Azerbaijani territories, Khojaly genocide was committed 20 years ago. In stead of attempting to blame Turkey unfairly for what happened 100 years ago, the countries of the world should pay attention to the release of the occupied Azerbaijani territories. Turkeyâ€™s position is that no genocide was committed in 1915, any change in this position is out of the question,â€ he said.