Ankara gets another “surprise” from France

PanARMENIAN.Net - They keep nagging and grudging, send notes [of protests] and try to intervene into internal affairs of France, Switzerland and several other countries. Actually, Turkey’s EU Minister Egemen Bağış has no right to demand anything from the French ministry of education. Weakness of French ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy who did not sign the bill criminalizing the denial of the Armenian Genocide and sent it to the Constitutional Court unleashed Turkey which started to believe it can impose its rules of game. Furthermore, Bağış claimed no other country in the world can boast a history as simple and transparent as Turkey’s.“Turkey does not know what Genocide is; Turks take pride in their history and ancestors,” he said. Indeed, the Ottoman Empire based on other concepts - deportation, the way to nowhere, annihilation of Christian nations of the empire, especially the Armenians. The minister should have been reminded of the fact that the modern Turkish republic was built on bones and money of the Armenians.

Now, lets’ get back to the Turkish minister who has urged Paris against testing bilateral relations once again. “I call on the French authorities to intensify efforts in resolving the Nagorno Karabakh conflict in the framework of OSCE Minsk Group rather than distort the historical facts,” Hurriyet Daily News quotes Bağış as saying.

He also urged the French government to “face own history rather than check-up fictitious facts.” This was an obvious blunder by the Turkish official, of course.

France equally mentions both the bloody pages of its history and its victories. No one in France ever denies the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, brutalities of the Great French Revolution, or the conquest of Algeria. Bağış may be unaware of this, anyway... As to the settlement of the Karabakh conflict, Turkey has no chance to be ever dealing with this issue.

The most ridiculous part of this story is that Turkey, for some reason, is addressing the French leader Hollande with an urge to “intervene”. According to the Turkish media, the decision of the French minister of education may again have a negative impact on the ties between France and Turkey; the latter hoped the new French president would support restoration of contacts with Paris.

There is nothing new in the “squabble” that started between France and Turkey back in 2001. Turkey is again trying to rehabilitate itself through blackmail; this works with regard to U.S. and Great Britain only, and totally fails in Europe.

The French students will hardly miss the opportunity to learn the true history of the Ottoman Empire, while Ankara has again compromised itself.

However, since attack is the best form of defence, Turkey rushed to protect itself, trying hard to position its country as a “beacon of democracy in the Islamic world”. Still, this becomes increasingly harder. No doubt, in 2015 Turkey will again deny the Armenian Genocide. Also, this atrocity against the humanity will undoubtedly gain recognition by many other states in the upcoming two years. So, instead of demonstrating wishful thinking and threatening others, Ankara will have to take more reasonable moves.