Hinting at France’s recent genocide bill, US envoy tells Turkey that it must confront its past if it wants to rank among top economies by 2013.
Turkey must deal with the ghosts of the past if it wants to become one of the world’s top 10 economies by 2023, Washington’s envoy to Ankara has said following controversy over a French bill to criminalize denials of Armenian genocide claims.
“Every great country has brilliant moments of which we are proud in our pasts and moments of pain,” Francis Ricciardone, the US ambassador to Turkey, told a group of Ankara bureau chiefs. “We think that historians need to grapple with this in an open and honest way so that you can come to a full and frank acknowledgement of what happened. We believe that you are beginning to do that.”
The ambassador’s statement comes amid deep Turkish-French conflict over a law penalizing the denial of the 1915 events as genocide in France; similar attention over the claims affects Turkish-US ties almost every day before April 24, the day Armenians commemorate the events.
“We like to see our friends get along and we hope that you will overcome this dispute,” Ricciardone said without commenting on the nature of the French legislation. Instead, he reiterated Washington’s objective of launching a new dialogue process between Turks and Armenians.
“There needs to be a conversation. You need to get the historians together on both sides. I’ve been glad to see since I’ve come back to Turkey this past year that there is much more public conversation and debate. It’s no longer a closed box,” he said.
“Turks have greater confidence now to look into the past and to a painful chapter and decide what it means. There is more contact between Turks and Armenians to wrestle with this terrible period of time. So we support that and we hope you will arrive at it,” he said.
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