ANKARA, BAKU—Official Turkey and Azerbaijan voiced condemnation over Monday’s passage by the French Senate a bill that criminalizes the denial of the Armenian Genocide.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking at his party’s congress Tuesday, said that Turkey regarded the French Senate’s Jan. 23 approval of a bill criminalizing the denial of Armenian genocide claims as “null and void.”
Erdoğan said Turkey had previously warned France against the “mistake” of passing the bill and added that the government hoped France would make amends for the mistake.
The Turkish prime minister called on “right-minded” members of the French Parliament and French intellectuals to oppose the bill and said the approval of the law was outright racism and destroyed free speech.
It is up to citizens of France to judge French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his associates, Erdogan said.
“Those who fall silent against such measures [such as the approval of this law] will be turning a deaf ear to the footsteps of approaching fascism in Europe,” Erdogan said.
Erdoğan said the Turkish government was waiting patiently for the legal process in France to run its course before it would share its plan of action against the law with the public.
Official Baku also chimed in by denouncing the French decision.
“The Republic of Azerbaijan deplores the law adopted by the French Senate to criminalize the denial of the ‘Armenian genocide’ and expresses strong protest over this,” the foreign ministry in Baku said in a statement.
The move was “against the principles of democracy, human rights, freedom of speech and expression”, the statement said.
Erdogan should be last guy to say this bill is against freedom of speech. Orhan Pamuk & Altug Akcam went to prison/faced jail time because they spoke out about the armenian genocide, and Hrand Dink was murdered.
needs a face transplant. Second in turkey.
look who’s talking about freedom of speech, how about if Turkey removes penal code 301……
It is clear that the Turkish State has not overcome 20th century nationalism, with all the lowlife type of passions that define it (i.e. national-socialism). This is the only way they have known to go non-Islamic centered, their only way to access secularism in their government and politics. But this doesn’t work, so now they try to go back, only “halfway”, to an Islamic centered political derivation. Now, this is stupid. Egypt, Libya and all the problems facing Syria prove it, not so the case of Iran, standing strongly –they are an Islamic theocratic nation without any mitigations. The Arab Emirates would seem only an exception, however given the fact that their politics are completely controlled by foreign powers. This has to be central in Armenian strategy against that crazy and stupid enemy, though still powerful; France seems to know this, and I think Armenian government and armed forces know it too.
“Those who fall silent against such measures [such as the approval of this law] will be turning a deaf ear to the footsteps of approaching fascism in Europe,” Erdogan said.
…..approaching fascism in Europe????? Turks were a model for German Army officers and for the future NAZI Fuhrer Adolf Hitler when they executed the Armenian Genocide……and this hateful tyrant of a man, Erdogan, is talking about “approaching fascism in Europe”?!?!?!?!?!
During World War One’s Armenian Genocide, for the first time ever poison gas was used for killing Armenian children, paving the way for the NAZI use of Zyclon B gas in the Holocaust…..and Erdogan speaks of “approaching fascism in Europe”?!?!?!
In the Syrian Desert, Der Zor, mass asphyxiation of civilians was for the first time ever used in the Al-Shedadiye cave complex, where huge bonfires were lit and the deadly fumes channeled in the caves using canvas ducting, while German officers watched and took notes….and Erdogan speaks of “approaching fascism in Europe”?!?!?!?!
As Harout Sassounian put it in one of his articles, Turks and Germans were allies in World War One and partners in GENOCIDE…..and to this day German financial institutions are profiting from the looted assets and life insurance policies of Armenians….ultimately Turks and Germans are allies in trying to get away with their cover-up, their alliby, obstructing justice and thereby making the crimes of WWI into the crimes of today……making the crimes of the generation that lived under Talaat Pasha into the crimes of the Turks of TODAY…….and what have they done???…….all they have done is make the cover-up worse than the crime itself!!!
If you take the Germany of the Kaisers and the Germany of today and also take the Turkey of the Ottoman Sultans and the so-called ‘modern and secular’ Turkey of today, startlingly what they both have in common is that there was a murderous, ultra-intolerant, ultra-nationalist, ultra-criminal, warmongering regime in each country… (Hitler’s Nazis in Germany, and the CUP’s Talaat, Jemal, and Enver Pashas in Turkey). The only difference is that Germany has confessed to the Holocaust, paid billions in reparations, admitted that they were (at the time, at least) despicable murderers, faced its history and moved on. There is a Holocaust memorial in Berlin, and many other locations in Germany. Will there ever be a memorial to the Armenian Genocide in downtown Istanbul?????? After all, that’s where the Armenian Genocide began, on April 24, 1915, with the execution of several hundred Armenian leaders.
In Germany, Adolf Hitler’s ashes were poured down the gutter of the street nearest to his bunker, and today, above his bunker, his final habitation in the last days of WWII, there is a parking lot. There’s no memorial to Hitler.
What about the infamous Turkish Talaat and Enver Pashas??? They have white marble mausoleums in Istanbul. Their resting places have official state honors. Important streets in downtown Istanbul bear the names of Talaat and Enver. After WWII, Germany entered an important de-Nazification process. I’m not sure Turkish society will do a 180 and stop idolizing the CUP’s 3 Pashas. I’m not sure Turkish society will be ready to ‘pour their ashes down a gutter’ as Germans did with Hitler. The burning Turkish chauvinism and ultra-nationalism will never allow a parking lot to be built on top of Talaat Pasha’s white marble Mausoleum. Taner Akcam put it bluntly and honestly, giving a piece of realistic advice to his Armenian audience once, telling them not to expect an apology from Turkey, neither in the near term, nor in the future.
Turkey and Azerbaijan can decry everythig and anything they wish to decry. Too bad, no one will be listening to them anymore!
What a bunch of horse manure! Both countries are lecturing about freedom of speech in a European country when if you mention the word Armenian Genocide in their own country you go straight to jail or worst, you get shot (Hrant Dink) and the ones that shoot you are portrayed as heroes on the front pages of their newspapers and are never punished. History can be written by historians but it does not have too just as you do not have to be a scientist to figure out that the world is round, all you have to do is simply travel in one direction and you can figure it out.
Thank you.
Ha Ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaaa, look who are talking about human rights, freedom of speech and expression. If freedom of speech and expression existed in Turkey and Azarbaijan their own parlaments would have recognized the Armenian Genocide dacades ago.