Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News

French firms complain of Turkish red-tape after genocide vote
by Sibel Utku, Agence France Presse - February 2, 2001, Friday
Posted: Tuesday, February 06, 2001 01:26 am CST

ANKARA, Feb 2 -- French firms are being forced out of the running for lucrative tenders and facing bureaucratic obstacles in Turkey, because of France's official recognition that the Ottoman Empire committed genocide against Armenians.

Turkey threatened economic reprisals against France after its parliament passed on January 18 a bill recognizing as genocide the controversial massacres of Armenians in the early 1900s.

When French President Jacques Chirac approved the law Tuesday, Ankara excluded several French companies bidding in multi-million-dollar tenders opened by Turkish ministries.

But the boycott mood has also spread to the lower levels of Turkey's bureaucracy.

Officials are often posing extra difficulties to the import of French goods without any official decision on sanctions, a French businessman told AFP.

Food producer Danone and carmaker Peugeot were among those hit by the bureaucratic obstacles, he said on the condition of anonymity.

"In the cement sector, every small step has become a problem. Before problems were solved in a good mood and small baksheesh, now it requires a big baksheesh," he added.

Last week, a ship carrying barley from France to Turkey was barred from unloading at the Mediterrenean port of Mersin on the orders of the agriculture ministry, an Istanbul-based French economist said.

It took the intervention of Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit to get the cargo unloaded after Turkey's influential businessgroup, TUSIAD, warned that Ankara could not dictate a boycott on the private sector, he added.

Ecevit himself has said that any retaliatory moves Turkey introduces should not harm its own economic interests.

But some Turkish companies have followed in the steps of the government by voluntarily pulling out of joint ventures with French partners.

A prominent Turkish contractor, Ali Haydar Veziroglu, told AFP he had asked the minister of civil works and housing to cancel a highway tender in which his company was bidding together with French construction giant Bouygues. The ministry scrapped the tender on Thursday.

Leading furniture company Tepe announced it had halted imports from France, the mass-circulation daily Hurriyet reported Friday.

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

Last week, Ankara cancelled a preliminary contract with the French firm Alcatel for a spy satellite worth some 200 million dollars.

Officials have also decided to scrap a deal with French firm Thales for 200-million-dollar warplane electronic gear, while the State Grain Board excluded two French bidders from a tender for the sale of 315,000 tons of wheat, according to media reports.

Turkish Telekom, meanwhile, was set to announce the exclusion of Alcatel from a tender for the infrustructure of a GSM network, Hurriyet said Friday.

But some observers downplayed the reprisal moves.

"There are lots of reactions, but after a month everything will be forgotten just as in the Ocalan affair with Italy," a European diplomat said.

He was referring to a spat between Turkey and Italy two years ago when Kurdish separatist leader Abdullah Ocalan stayed in Rome for several months, triggering Turkish threats of boycott of Italian goods, which were forgotten soon after the rebel left the Italian capital.
Ankara cancela contratos de armame

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