News that the Turkish Republic has (too put it mildly) “reacted with anger” to news that the French Senate has (finally) approved a bill making it a crime to deny that genocide was committed by Ottoman Turks against the Armenian's during World War I should not come as much of a shock. So it would not be much of a surprise that the Turkish foreign ministry has loudly branded the decision "irresponsible" and threatened swift retaliatory measures.
Most historians and the Armenian's recognise that up to 1.5 million people died in 1915-16 under Ottoman rule during the First World War deported en masse from eastern Anatolia to the Syrian Desert and elsewhere in 1915-16. They were killed or died from starvation or disease during a brutal deportation ordered by the Ottoman Government.
The total number of Armenian dead is disputed, but, historians and the Armenian Government says approximately one and half million people died in pretty grim circumstances. Turkey (a republic since 1920) has repeatedly rejected the term genocide and argued that the number of Armenian's who died was around estimates the total to be 300,000. According to the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), the death toll was "more than a million".
Now this may all sound somewhat semantic, a bit like the Brits saving that they only developed the concept of the concentration camp during the Boer war and that those Africans and Afrikaners who died, died of neglect and incompetence rather than from malice aforethought. Or perhaps its a bit like saying that the six million who died in the Bengal famine (1943/1944) did so because the Brits were busy at the time, but, generally they did a good job in India.
The French bill will now be sent to President Nicolas Sarkozy to be signed into law, which he is expected to do before the end of February. The Turkish government argues that judging what happened in eastern Turkey in 1915-16 should be left to historians, and that the new French law will restrict freedom of speech.
The current Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to outline possible retaliatory measures against Paris in parliament on Tuesday. France has already recognised the killing of the Armenian's as genocide but the new law will mean that anyone denying it faces a year in jail and a fine of 45,000 euro's ($57,000).
The Turks have already frozen diplomatic ties with France after the lower house passed the bill last month. The proposed law had been watered down and made more general - outlawing the denial of any genocide - but naturally this failed to appease the Turkish authorities in Ankara.
The current disagreement between France and Turkey may have much to with modern French politics and the current President than historical events. This, while recognising a historical genocide and an injustice, may have more to do with finding an easy way to delay Turkish entry into the EU and also be something that plays well with sympathetic French voters.
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