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• Genocide and Demographics: Moral and political aspects guiding French lawmakers

Don't hold your breath. The geopolitical location of Turkey, including, The Straits of Istanbul, and the Straits of Dardenelles, are of vital interest to the Westerners. Values, Morals, and Ethics are meaningless to them. At the End of the WWII, in June of 1945, When the Soviet Foreign Minister, Mr. Molotov, asked Turkey to return the Armenian territories back to the USSR, Mr. Winston 'Town Drunk...

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There is a widespread opinion among Turkish political circles and expert communities that the steps and intentions of the ruling political party in France are dictated by campaign considerations meant to win over the electorate who are of Armenian descent.

Meanwhile, plain arithmetic speaks against it: there are half a million Armenians residing in France against that country’s 10-times bigger Muslim population.

And, although the lion share of them come from Arab countries, the number of Turks in France is quite comparable with the number of Armenians. Moreover, considering the fact that over the past several years Turkey has been on a self-appointed mission of the “main defender of the Muslim world interests”, it is obvious that the “Armenian electorate” cannot objectively vie with a united Turkish contingent.

Hence, by adopting the law criminalizing the denial of the Armenian Genocide the ruling party is, actually, risking to lose more than it might gain.

This issue, however, is more multi-dimensional, including both moral and practical factors.
First of all it’s the obvious intensification of Turkish-French relations in the highlight of Ankara’s policy of “neo-Ottomanism”.

It’s worth recalling what Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu said before the French parliament discussion of the “Armenian bill”: “We are neo-Ottomans. Super powers are perplexed watching us. First of all it’s France which is trying to understand why we are working in Africa. I have made an assignment that every African country should have a Turkish embassy so that every time Sarkozy visits any of them he would raise his eyes and see the Turkish flag. I have assigned to rent embassy buildings in the best spots”.

Hence, one of the pragmatic factors that contributed to the French parliament’s approval of the bill was the Turkish authorities’ downright disregard of French interests along Turkey’s new political course on a vast geographic area covering practically all of the former Ottoman Empire.

So far the only recognition of the Armenian Genocide on a presidential level (Jacques Chirac) as well as the intentions of the current president to include the bill criminalizing the denial of genocides in the Framework Agreement on combating racism and xenophobia and circulate it in all of European Union (following the example of EU countries adopting a similar law regarding the Holocaust) fit well into this context.

However, the moral side of the issue cannot be ignored and fudging everything to suit the logic of political expediency and cold pragmatic calculation would be wrong. After all, France is one the most hospitable countries were a large Armenian community has been residing comfortably; it is, perhaps the most favorable country for Armenian residents that has nurtured a great number of brilliant musicians and artists, film directors and actors, politicians and businesspeople of Armenian descent.

And if not by quantity, at least by quality it is indeed an “elite electorate”, an inseparable part of French creative and constructive spirit, which objectively by the laws of nature cannot help but influence (to this or that extent) on the positions and sentiments of all of the French elite.