This week, French leader Nicolas Sarkozy will likely sign into law the controversial bill making it a criminal offense to deny that genocide was committed by Ottoman Turks against Armenians during World War I. The president is supposed to decide on bills approved by the Senate within 15 days since their passage, and sources in the Élysée Palace indicate that Sarkozy will pen the document accordingly. The upper house of the French parliament voted in favor of the bill in the evening of January 23.
Debates over the legislation are raging with unwavering intensity even though at the moment Sarkozy's signature on it is in essence an accomplished fact. Outpourings of ire directed at Paris predictably dominate the Turkish media: for example, Turkey's Vatan charged in a condemnatory piece that “the country where the ideal of freedom was born dealt the heaviest blow to free speech”. Amnesty International backed Ankara on the occasion, with director of Amnesty International's Europe and Central Asia Programme Nicola Duckworth projecting that “This bill, if implemented, would have a chilling effect on public debate and contravene France’s international obligations to uphold freedom of expression”. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) released a statement saying the French law about to be born “is inconsistent with historical facts” and reflects "double standard in the treatment of major historical issues”, while OIC secretary general Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu personally took an even stronger stance and slammed the bill as “a sign of Islamophobia in France”.
In the post-Soviet space, some of the furious comments in Azerbaijan, the republic locked in a chronic conflict with Armenia over the Karabakh province, included calls for revoking France's mandate of a mediator in the standoff. Several groups in Azerbaijan also floated an idea that Baku should in response freeze all types of economic cooperation with France, notably pressing for the expulsion of the French energy giant Total from the fuel-rich republic.
Even Lithuania's Geopolitica, an outlet otherwise maintaining undivided loyalty to Brussels, featured a fairly biting paper which placed in the present-day geopolitical context the French recognition of the genocide against Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. One of the points made in Geopolitica is that the EU could advance its agenda in North Africa and the Middle East with much wider success if it opted for tight coordination with Turkey, which nominally has the status of Europe's associated partner. Saying that, instead of the above, Ankara got a slap in the face from Paris in the form of the law prescribing punishment for the denial of the anti-Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire, Geopolitica stresses that the genocide recognition as such had actually been granted by France a few years ago and therefore is not the core of the story that is currently unfolding. It may be far more important that the theme to which Turkey traditionally has a thin skin is being reopened at the time when the country is trying to outpace Iran in the race for regional leadership, and under the circumstances Ankara may be tempted to think of the French policies as backstabbing. According to Geopolitica, by having practically turned down Turkey's bid for the EU membership in the past and by ignoring its regional leadership ambitions at present, the European bureaucracy deliberately alienates Turkey and sends to other countries of the region a lucid message to the effect that no reforms or economic achievements would lead the EU to treat them as equal partners. Thus, the region's countries are demotivated to implement reforms and to comply with the European standards, plus the Muslim nations are taught deeper mistrust of Europe, holds Geopolitica. Curiously, the assessment found in the Lithuanian outlet differs minimally from those aired by Azerbaijan's Trend News Agency which also described the bill passed by the French Senate as “a triumph of Islamophobia in France” and expressed a view that, not for the first time, the Issues of Armenia and the genocide were exploited by great powers preoccupied with their own problems.
It does appear, though, that, knowingly or unwittingly, the critics of the French bill on the anti-Armenian genocide tend to overemphasize just one of the many aspects of the legislation, perhaps viewing the whole document through the prism of intricate and at times unsavory geopolitical interests. The French media, in the meantime, suggest restraint and careful scrutiny of the legal meaning carried by the document. Le Figaro remarks in a clear attempt to adequately reframe the discussion that the bill confirms not one but two genocides – one against Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I, another – against Jews during World War II. It has to be taken into account that those were recognized by Paris back in 2001 and 1990, respectively, and the French parliament's recent mission, warranted by the national legislation, was limited to reiterating the obligations already owed by France and to upgrading them to include responsibilities for the corresponding violations. As noted in Le Figaro, the denial of either of the two genocides entails identical punishment, namely a jail term of one year combined with a Euro 45,000 fine. The pro-Armenian leanings of the current French president and his plan to win the support of the 500,000 Armenian community resident in France possibly factored into the decision-making, but the truth is that the legal procedure which culminated in the passing of the bill was launched by Sarkozy's predecessor Jacques Chirac. In this connection French Minister for Relationships with Parliament Patrick Ollier even opined in Le Figaro that the debates could be appropriate at that time, but as of today the platform for them is completely missing and things are being done simply as the law requires, with nothing left to talk about.
French ambassador to Azerbaijan Gabriel Keller offered an official position to the Azerbaijani media when he said in an interview that the relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan are important to France but the painful and controversial character of historical memories in many parts of the world is a problem that has to be faced. Keller added that France has a lengthy record of difficult admissions of responsibility for slave trade, the French government's support for the deportations of Jews during World War II, and the role the country used to play in the colonial system.
The bill criminalizing the denial of the anti-Armenian genocide is not the first piece of legislation needlessly put in the epicenter of geopolitics debates. The French bill on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools which, not long ago, outlawed the wearing of Muslim headscarves similarly ignited unfounded controversy. The outraged Muslim groups in and outside of France, which leveled at the French administration the charges of infringement of civil liberties if not downright Islamophobia, somehow overlooked the fact that the legislation imposed exactly the same ban on explicitly wearing Christian or Judaic symbols or generally those of any religion. The isolated Islam-related aspect of this type of bills immediately grabs the attention of the Muslim world and of scores of international organizations which take to advocating the Muslims' rights but stay seemingly oblivious to the interests and rights of non-Muslims. Certain circles in a number of important Muslim countries would be well-advised to be more scrupulous about propping up the administrations in Bosnia and Herzegovina or Kosovo considering how they treat their respective Serbian populations. The policies pursued by the regimes distinctly reek of genocide and in any case have nothing in common with the democratic norms eagerly cited by Ankara and the OIC when they decry the French laws perceived as anti-Muslim.
The key role of geopolitics in today's world is an inescapable reality, but the impression is that the critics of France's legislation on the anti-Armenian genocide rather than the French parliamentarians who gave the law the green light are latently driven by selfish geopolitical regards. Concealing the historical truth in the name of fleeting political interests and carving isolated episodes out of their historical contexts are strategies equally loaded with serious risks.
