 |
France Tries to Appease Turkey After Senate Vote
France tried to appease Turkey on Wednesday after the French Senate voted to recognize the 1915 Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Turkish army.
Turkey has reacted angrily to the French Senate's motion and describes the vote as "wrong and regrettable."
According to a statement issued by the French government and President Jacques Chirac, France wants to uphold bilateral relations with Turkey in all fields.
"This vote, cast at the initiative of the parliamentary power which is responsible for it, does not represent an evaluation of today's Turkey (by France)," said the statement.
The statement says that France will continue to work for rapprochement between Turkey and the European Union (EU), within the framework defined by the EU Helsinki summit in December 1999.
France will also continue to work for peace, based on dialogue and mutual understanding, in the Caucasus region, it said.
At the Helsinki summit, Turkey agreed to become a candidate for EU membership, but the EU has not yet begun relevant negotiations with Ankara.
There is a strong Armenian lobbying force in both the French National Assembly and the Senate.
According to Armenia, more than one million Armenians were killed by the Turkish army in 1915, when they were forcibly displaced from their homes to the Syrian desert.
However, Turkey has accused the Armenians of collaborating with Russia, which was an enemy nation of Turkey during World War I, and said that only 300,000 Armenians died during the evacuation.
In This Section
|