Analysts: Turkey’s threats to France over Genocide will backfire

PanARMENIAN.Net - Turkey’s attempts to intimidate France and other countries over the question of the Armenian Genocide are bound to backfire, analysts said as the 100th anniversary of the bloodshed approaches, AFP reported.

“This negative and reactive strategy has failed, and no one is ready to admit it,” said Cengiz Aktar of Istanbul’s Bahcesehir University.

“I hope that the authorities will think about it and come up with a different tack by the time of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide that is coming up in 2015,” said Aktar, an international relations professor, using the term Ankara condemns.

Hugh Pope of the International Crisis Group agreed, saying: “There are many people in Turkey that are worried about how Turkey is going to handle the situation in 2015.”

He said Ankara should “get on a path of reconciliation with the Armenians so that they can be on the side of the people who are going to be remembering the lost communities of Armenians” in the anniversary year.

“Turkey is making more and more threats against France,” wrote editorialist Semih Idiz in the Milliyet daily. “But in a few weeks the issue will rear its head again in the U.S. Congress. There are other countries waiting in the wings. Will Turkey recall its ambassador each time?” he asked. “It’s an absurd situation.”

Turkey can no longer escape its duty of contrition for the Genocide, said Soli Ozel of Istanbul’s Kadir Has University.

“First and foremost it must express chagrin, and the Turkish state has never done that,” the international relations professor wrote in the daily HaberTurk.

The French Senate on Monday, January 23 approved legislation under which anyone in France who denies that the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turk forces amounted to Genocide could face imprisonment.

On Tuesday, Paris brushed off angry threats of retaliation by Turkey and said the bill would become law in two weeks.

Ankara has already halted political amid military cooperation and is threatening to cut off economic and cultural ties.