Barçın Yinanç – Hurriyet Daily News
The French senate’s legal commission has ruled on the inadmissibility of the law penalizing denial of Armenian genocide claims, a decision that, if endorsed by lawmakers, will remove a major irritant in relations with Turkey.
“The decision was taken unanimously,” Jacques Blanc, the president of the France–Turkey friendship group in the senate said Monday. The commission, presided over by a former judge, ruled that the draft law was inadmissible because it violated freedom of expression, according to Blanc.
“The decision of the commission means that we can’t even have a debate on the issue and if this decision is accepted by the senators it will be impossible to bring it back to the agenda. That will enable us to turn the page on the issue,” he told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review
The French National Assembly, the lower chamber of the country’s parliament, endorsed a law in October 2006 criminalizing the denial of genocide claims, dealing a serious blow to the already-strained relations between Turkey and France due to the latter’s opposition to Turkey’s bid to join the European Union.
The bill needs to be ratified by the senate in order to be put into force, but has not been brought to the legislative body’s agenda due to French government opposition.
“The French government is against the bill,” said Blanc, who is a member of the ruling Union for a Political Movement, or UMP.
The issue was brought to the agenda of the senate by 30 senators from the opposition Socialist Party.
“We need to let historians do their job. We as politicians we should concentrate on the future,” Blanc said, speaking at a working lunch organized by the Turkish-French Trade Association. Blanc is heading a delegation to Turkey within the France-Turkey friendship group that will hold talks in Ankara and also visit the Gaziantep province in the Southeast.
The bill criminalizing denial of Armenian genocide claims has been hanging over Turkish- French relations and has led to French companies being barred from participating in big projects in Turkey.
The bill envisions five years’ imprisonment and a fine in the amount of 45,000 euros for in the territory of France who denies Armenian genocide claims.
Armenia claims up to 1.5 million Armenians were systematically killed in 1915 under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey denies this, saying that any deaths were the result of civil strife that erupted when Armenians took up arms for independence in Eastern Anatolia.
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