Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News

Turkish security body to meet over Armenian genocide bill
by Jerome Bastion - Agence France Presse, January 21, 2001
Posted: Tuesday, January 23, 2001 00:34 am CST

ISTANBUL, Jan 21 -- Turkey's top security body will meet Monday to consider sanctions against France, after deputies there passed a controversial bill describing Turkish massacres of Armenians more than 80 years ago as genocide.

The Supreme Council of National Security will discuss the sanctions in its monthly meeting, Turkish television reported. The council is made up of Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, five other members of the government and the five heads of the military.

Koksal Sonmez, Turkey's ambassador to France, recalled for consultations after the bill was passed last Thursday, will also attend the meeting.

Meanwhile, Turkey's former prime minister Tansu Ciller urged French President Jacques Chirac in a letter to overturn the bill. Chirac should take "every measure to oppose and stop it," she said.

The decision by French deputies has sparked outrage and demonstrations at French institutions in Turkey.

On Sunday, angry demonstrators gathered for a third day in a row to protest. At the French embassy in Ankara, they laid a funeral wreath, burned a French flag and threw eggs at the building.

Protesters have also demanded that Turkey withdraw its candidature for membership of the European Union over the row.

Ecevit said Saturday that sanctions against France would be announced within days.

"We are preparing a plan which will not cause us too much harm," the Turkish leader told journalists in Ankara.

Dozens of Turkish trade and industry bodies, unions, and professional associations have called for a boycott of French goods.

A large food market in Istanbul has halted imports of French fruits and vegetables, and announced it will distribute its remaining stocks of French apples to the poor.

Press reports Sunday said several Turkish universities had decided to cancel French classes. The University of Istanbul had reportedly frozen its exchanges with French institutions and cancelled a visit by students from a French university.

Ankara and Paris had previously enjoyed warm ties, with Turkey looking to France as one of its chief supporters in its bid to join the European Union.

France is among Turkey's main economic partners, with bilateral trade in 1999 standing at some 4.5 billion dollars (4.8 billion euros).

Ciller, now head of the opposition center-right True Path Party, wrote in her letter to Chirac: "This decision has deeply hurt the Turkish people.

"I want to believe that your personal commitment will make it possible to put an end to this unfriendly and unjust gesture against my country."

Ankara says the French bill was passed for political motives, aimed at wooing the country's half-million people of Armenian descent ahead of municipal elections in March.

On Friday, Turkey's Foreign Minister Ismail Cem said public tenders and defence contracts were generally affected by such sanctions -- an apparent hint that French firms might be excluded from defense tenders.

About 50 deputies attending the French National Assembly's morning session voted unanimously in favour of the bill, which was the private initiative of a cross-party alliance and had been disavowed by the French leadership.

The bill, which states simply that "France publicly recognises the Armenian genocide of 1915," now looks certain to become law, after a difficult two-year passage through parliament.

Ankara categorically rejects claims of genocide, saying that some 300,000 Armenians and thousands of Turks were killed in what was internal fighting in the dissolution years of the Ottoman Empire.

Armenians, however, maintain that 1.5 million people died in orchestrated massacres between 1915 and 1917.

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