"Turkey outraged at French vote" December 23, 2011|By Elaine Ganley and Suzan Fraser
PARIS - Ties between France and Turkey, strategic allies and trading partners, abruptly unraveled yesterday after French legislators passed a bill making it a crime to deny that the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a century ago constitute genocide.
The French going to own up to theirs?
The bill strikes at the heart of national honor in Turkey, which denies the genocide label and insists the 1915 massacres occurred during civil unrest as the Ottoman Empire collapsed, with losses on both sides. But it is seen as a matter of principle for some French politicians and a matter of long-overdue justice for the half-million people in France of Armenian descent, many of whom had relatives among the 1.5 million Armenians killed.
The French bill still needs Senate approval, but after it passed the lower house, Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, halted bilateral political and economic contacts, suspended military cooperation, and ordered his country’s ambassador home for consultations. Turkey contends that France is trampling freedom of expression, and that France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is on a vote-getting mission before April presidential elections.
France formally recognized the 1915 killings as genocide in 2001 but provided no penalty for anyone who denies it. The bill passed yesterday sets a punishment of up to one year in prison and a fine of $59,000 for those who deny or “outrageously minimize’’ the killings, putting such action on par with denial of the Holocaust.
So when does what AmeriKa has done in Iraq and Afghanistan fall into that category?
The diplomatic riposte by Turkey over the vote by lawmakers in France’s lower house, the National Assembly, may get even tougher. It hurts ties, as both NATO members are involved in international efforts to foster peace from Syria to Afghanistan....
Did I read that right? Bombing the crap out of people and destroying their nations is an effort to "foster peace?"
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I've turned the page on the Boston Globe.
