Sarkozy Urges Ankara to Quickly Recognize Armenian 'Genocide’, Turkey Rebuffs
French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged Turkey on Friday to recognize the World War I-era massacres of Armenians as genocide within a "very brief" period before his term ends in May 2012.
"From 1915 to 2011, it seems to be enough (time) for reflection," Sarkozy told reporters in Yerevan on the second day of his visit to Armenia.
However, Ankara's European Affairs Minister Egemen Bagis rejected Sarkozy's call for Turkey to recognize the massacres.
Speaking alongside his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sarkisian, Sarkozy noted that "it is not up to France to give an ultimatum to anyone.”
Bagis said during a visit to Sarajevo that Sarkozy would do better to concern himself with getting France out of its economic crisis than to play historian over the Armenian question , the Anatolia agency reported.
"It would be better... if Monsieur Sarkozy abandons the role of historian and puts his mind to getting his country out of the economic gulf in which it finds itself and comes up with plans for the future of the European Union," he said.
"Our mission, as politicians, is not to define the past or past events. It is to define the future," he added.
He accused Sarkozy of exploiting the Armenia question for electoral reasons in the run-up to next year's presidential election, he said.
Sarkozy on Thursday urged Turkey to "revisit its history" over the killings of hundreds of thousands of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, calling its refusal to recognize the deaths as genocide as "unacceptable.”
The French president said that if Turkey did not make this "gesture of peace" and "step towards reconciliation,” he would consider proposing the adoption of a law criminalizing denial of the killings as genocide.
He said that he was still hoping that Turkey would act before the end of his term in office.
Sarkozy angered Turkey ahead of his election in 2007 by backing a law aimed at prosecuting those who refused to recognize the massacres as genocide.
The French lower house of parliament later rejected the measure, infuriating the Armenian diaspora in France which is estimated at around 500,000 people.
Armenians say that up to 1.5 million of their kin fell victim to genocide during World War I under the Ottoman Empire.
Turkey counters that 300,000 to 500,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians rose up against their Ottoman rulers and sided with invading Russian forces.
Source: Agence France Presse
| Copyright © 2012 Naharnet.com. All Rights Reserved. | https://cdn.naharnet.com/stories/en/16837 |