President Nicolas Sarkozy has ordered his government to draft a new law punishing denial of the Armenian genocide after France’s top court struck it down as unconstitutional.
Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their forebears were killed in a 1915-16 genocide by Turkey’s former Ottoman Empire. Turkeysays 500,000 died and ascribes the toll to fighting and starvation during World War I. France had already recognised the killings as a genocide, but the new law sought to go further by punishing anyone who denies this with up to a year in jail and a fine of 45,000 euros (£38,000).
However, the Constitutional Council labelled the law an “unconstitutional attack on freedom of expression” and it said it wished “not to enter into the realm of responsibility that belongs to historians”.Turkey quickly welcomed the ruling on the law which Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has denounced as “tantamount to discrimination and racism”. Bulent Arinc, Turkey’s deputy prime minister, said on Twitter the ruling “has averted a potentially serious crisis in Turkish-French ties”.
The decision “does not indulge political concerns,” Arinc said after Mr Sarkozy was accused of pandering to an estimated 400,000 voters of Armenian origin ahead of an April-May presidential election.