Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News

Turkey lashes out over genocide charges
by WorldNetDaily - February 9, 2001
Posted: Tuesday, February 13, 2001 01:37 am CST

Threatens France with retribution for recognizing killings of Armenians

While filing charges yesterday against a leading human rights activist for suggesting it apologize for killing 1.5 million Armenians nearly a century ago, Turkey is also vehemently protesting France's recent decision to publicly recognize the Armenian killings as genocide.

The human rights activist, Akin Birdal, faces a possible sentence of six years in prison for the offense of ''openly insulting and vilifying Turkishness'' during a panel discussion in Germany last year. According to the Anatolia news agency, the Turkish prosecutor quoted Birdal as having said: ''Everybody knows what was done to the Armenians. Turkey must apologize for what it did to the minorities.''

On Jan. 18, the French National assembly unanimously passed a bill affirming that the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turkey in 1915 constituted genocide. "France publicly recognizes the Armenian genocide of 1915," the bill stated.

In response, after earlier canceling a spy satellite contract with the French firm Alcatel, Turkey's army yesterday suspended until further notice all military contracts with France – formerly a major trading partner -- while the Turkish Defense Ministry specifically banned Alcatel from all business contracts for a year. Alcatel had successfully beaten an Israeli company also in competition for the contract, worth $259 million according to Turkey's Defense Minister Sabahattin Cakmakoglu.

The Turkish government in Ankara is also considering excluding French companies from 10 other projects, including Gait Industries, from a deal to build 1,000 combat tanks, estimated to be worth $7 billion, according to a report in the Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

In addition, Turkey has withdrawn its ambassador to France.

The vote in the French parliament came despite dire warnings from the Turkish government that France's approval of such a bill would constitute a crime against history.

A similar resolution before the United States Congress last year was all but confirmed by a wide margin, when at the 11th hour House Speaker Dennis Hastert pulled the plug on the resolution after having received a last-minute call from President Clinton.

"I have accepted this request," Hastert said in his statement, after receiving Clinton's call just 15 minutes before the scheduled vote. "The president believes that the passage of this resolution may adversely impact the situation in the Middle East and risk the lives of Americans. This is not an idle request. We all know that the situation in the Middle East is unusually tense."

The Turkish government – unlike the German government, which has acknowledged the genocide of the Jews during World War II under Hitler's reign – has never acknowledged that the deaths took place.

Ever since 1915, the worst year of the Armenian genocide in which approximately 1.5 million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Turks, Turkey has fought any recognition of its World War I deeds.

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