ANKARA (Today’s Zaman)–Turkish officials are closely following developments after a US federal appeals court on Friday reversed itself and now says the heirs of Armenians slaughtered by the Ottoman Turks during the 1915 Armenian Genocide can seek payment from insurance companies that sold their relatives life insurance.
The news came from unnamed sources cited by the Anatolian News Agency, who said merely that Ankara is following the developments.
The reversal came in a 2-1 vote. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the law last August, saying it amounted to unconstitutional meddling in US foreign policy. It based its 2-1 ruling on a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down another California law designed to help Holocaust survivors collect on Nazi-era insurance policies.
The law entitles heirs to seek redress in California courts based on the California Code of Civil Procedure Section 345.5, which allows claims to be filed against the insurers who have withheld policy proceeds from the heirs of Genocide victims since 1915.
