French Legislation Calls Armenians’ Deaths Genocide

In a landmark victory for the Armenian diaspora, France on Thursday became the first major Western nation to pass legislation branding as genocide the deaths of up to 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Turks during and after World War I.

As well as setting the historical record straight, in the view of Armenians, the legislation could open the floodgates to lawsuits against Turkey and demands for large-scale legal compensation akin to that paid to Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust.

Turkey reacted instantly to the unanimous vote in the National Assembly, recalling its ambassador to France for consultations. “This law, greeted with great disappointment by the Turkish people, is going to seriously and durably damage Turkish-French relations and could cause a serious crisis,” the Turkish government said in a communique.

In October, Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives abruptly canceled a vote on a similar resolution after President Clinton warned that it could harm relations with Turkey, a key North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally and longtime friend at the strategic crossroads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine had voiced grave qualms last year over the action, which could set France and Turkey at loggerheads, as well as harm French business interests. Many lawmakers insisted Thursday that their decision shouldn’t be taken as a hostile act against present-day Turkey. The text they adopted, in fact, made no specific mention of Turkey, saying only that “France publicly recognizes the Armenian genocide of 1915.”

“By approving such a text, in no way are we condemning a country that is knocking on the door of the European Union,” said Francois Rochebloine of the center-right Union for French Democracy, who sponsored the bill. “Quite to the contrary, this is tracing for [Turkey] the way of an opening toward respect of human rights and the establishment of confident relations with its neighbors.”

In Turkey, some observers worried that the resolution plays into the hands of the anti-European lobby in that country.

Hrant Dink, an ethnic Armenian and the managing editor of the Turkish-Armenian Agos newspaper, said: “I don’t understand what France is trying to do. What is Europe trying to do? On the one hand, a Europe that invites Turkey--on the other, one that seeks to alienate Turkey at all costs without openly saying so.

“I don’t want the Armenian people to become a political pawn between governments. For me, it is a thousand times more valuable and important for the Turkish to investigate their own past honestly and openly, to show empathy with the Armenians, than for a thousand European parliaments to pass a genocide resolution.”

Only about 50 of the 577 members of the National Assembly, the lower house of France’s bicameral legislature, were present for the vote Thursday. The deputies gave themselves a standing ovation. Outside Parliament, hundreds of men and women of Armenian origin gathered to clap and to shout, “Thank you, France!”

The measure, which had been under debate in the French Parliament for 2 1/2 years, passed the Senate in November. President Jacques Chirac must sign the legislation for it to become law. Asked Thursday if Chirac would do so, Patrick Devidjian, spokesman for the president’s Rally for the Republic Party and a Frenchman of Armenian descent, replied, “Of course.”

“When the United States has recognized the Armenian genocide, Turkey will have to do the same itself--that’s the ultimate goal,” Devidjian said. “From that moment on, a page in history will have been turned, and a different kind of relation can begin between the survivors and Turkey.”

At a news conference, Ara Krikorian, president of the Defense Committee for the Armenian Cause, said he hopes that the legislation will mean that people questioning the reality of the Armenian genocide could henceforth be prosecuted under the same legislation that makes it a crime in France to deny the Nazi campaign to annihilate European Jewry. He said school history books also should be revised to mention the Armenian genocide more explicitly.

From 1915 to 1923, according to most historians, the Ottoman Empire, then in its death throes, organized massacres and large-scale deportations of Armenians to Syria. The Armenians were accused of collaboration with Russia, which occupied northern Turkey. The Armenians put the number of lives lost at 1.2 million to 1.5 million.

Turkey has denied that a genocide of its ethnic Armenians took place. Although Turkey acknowledges that as many as 600,000 Armenians were left dead, Turkish officials say most died of exposure to the elements and starvation during their forced displacement by Ottoman forces.

In 1994, the Belgian Senate referred to the genocide at a time when Brussels was appalled by massacres in Rwanda. In 1996, Greece’s Parliament designated April 24 as a day to remember the “genocide of Armenians by the Turkish regime.” Two months ago, the Italian Chamber of Deputies adopted a resolution asking Italy’s government to request that Turkish authorities recognize the Armenian genocide before Turkey can join the European Union.

Turkish officials, however, said Thursday’s action was the most direct and potentially damaging of the actions. The widespread fear in Ankara, the Turkish capital, is that other European parliaments will follow France’s lead--and that members of the Armenian diaspora whose relatives died or were forced to flee Turkey between 1915 and 1923 might file compensation and territorial claims against the Turkish government.

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Special correspondent Amberin Zaman in Ankara contributed to this report.