Let me say this Turkey needs to own up to what they have done a century ago. However, my interpretation of this comes from my perspective. Here in America if we made it a crime to deny anything that the government wants us to accept it would be deemed unconstitutional. France is different then America and they do not have the same protections as we do. On the other hand, France did direct this legislation towards Turkey and now they are going to be hurt by the sanctions that are going to be put into place and the other sanctions that will come into play in the future. Turkey needs to acknowledge that what they did was wrong.
France passed a law making it a crime to deny the Armenian Genocide. If you do then you are to spend up to a year in jail and pay 45,000 fine. That figure I did not convert to Euros. That is more then getting caught drunk driving.
You know I knew that this was going to happen that they would pass the law. However, this goes against everything the French have stood for in recent years. They passed the Declaration of Human Rights in the UN. There they protect freedom of speech in the declaration. They are violating the rights of free speech by not allowing anyone that believes it did not happen. Some are never going to believe. Many people still think the Holocaust did not happen even though their are thousands of documents that prove it had happened. Example, President Ahmadinejad of Iran he does not believe it happened.
I do think that Turkey needs to stop denying it. However, I think that they choose to forget about it because they see it as a terrible time in history. They choose to forget, they just do not want to deal with it. I think it is partially because many of them were given the stolen goods of the Armenians when they were deported from their towns. I think they feel that the earlier generations of the whole society was responsible and they just do not want to deal with it.
I do think that they need to own up to it. On the other hand, France needs to stop thinking that they are better then everyone because they have plenty of history where they killed massive amounts of people. For instance, in the French Revolution, they executed many of the aristocrats. They also led a war against the Protestants and the Protestants led a war too. The Crusades were pretty bad to, they had their own jihad against people of the Islamic Faith.
France is not totally innocent nor is the United States. I am not a representative of the US and I am not arguing for the US. I am just an individual who thinks that France has got some nerve to place judgment and forgo the freedom of speech just so they can make a statement. By making this law you are likely going to inhibit recognition and you are going to make it bad for the Armenians again. You are not making it any easier on both sides of the issue.
Another thing, France where were you when the genocide happened? You had the opportunity to help the Armenians, but you chose to ignore it. You could have invaded the Ottoman Empire and helped the Armenians. You could have influenced trials to be held and make them stick when it came time to deal with Turkey after the end of the war. The only country that really tried to help was England. You could have helped, but you ignored it just like the United States did. You could have told Turkey that part of their defeat was that they will have to punish those that hurt the Armenians.
You did nothing before, why are you trying to now? Do you feel that you are responsible for the Genocide because you did nothing before?
