France’s national assembly on Thursday approved legislation making it a crime to deny that Armenians suffered a genocide during the Ottoman empire, provoking a furious reaction from Turkey and adding to doubts over Ankara’s bid to join the European Union.

The vote triggered anger in Turkey, reflecting a growing feeling among politicians, officials and commentators that France was now permanently opposed to Ankara’s bid to join the European Union. Bulent Arinc, speaker of parliament, criticised France’s “hostile attitude” towards Turkey.


The bill may never become law as it must still be approved by the senate, France’s upper house of parliament, and signed by president Jacques Chirac, who is opposed to the initiative and whose government ultimately controls the agenda of the senate.

But French historians condemned it as counter-productive, comparing it with a contentious law forcing schools to teach the positive side of French colonial history, which was repealed this year.

Only minutes after the vote, Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s best-known novelist, was awarded the Nobel prize for literature. Mr Pamuk was once put on trial for saying in an interview that nobody in Turkey dared mention the Armenian genocide.

“This is a shameful decision,” said Mr Arinc. “We are very sorry to see that this [bill] was passed only because of internal [French] politics.”

Hurriyet, the leading Turkish newspaper, ran a front page headline “Liberté, egalité, stupidité.” Ankara politicians have threatened to retaliate with economic sanctions and even toyed with a law making it a crime to deny that North Africans were massacred by French colonial rulers.

The vote exposed deep divisions at the top of France’s government against a background of rising French public opposition to Turkey’s bid to join the EU.

Politicians in Paris are split on the issue, with Mr Chirac in favour, but prominent ministers like Nicolas Sarkozy are firmly opposed. Ségolène Royal, the Socialists’ leading presidential candidate, has sat on the fence, saying this week she would defer to public opinion on the Turkish question.

Catherine Colonna, minister of European affairs and former spokeswoman for Mr Chirac, condemned the bill on Thursday. She was jeered in the national assembly for saying: “It is not for the law to re-write history.”

The vote had little impact in Turkey’s financial markets. But diplomats and political commentators said French companies could be frozen out of the bidding as Turkey prepares to build three nuclear power stations and to replace parts of its defence infrastructure.

Passage of the bill also makes it much harder for the EU to push Turkey to reform or abolish article 301, the clause in the penal code that allows prosecution of writers and journalists. Richard Howitt, an MEP with a close interest in Turkey, said it would be “the worst kind of hypocrisy and provocation” for France to insist that Turkey “do as we say, not as we do.”

Mr Chirac said on a visit to Armenia at the start of the month that Turkish recognition of the Armenian genocide should become a pre-condition of EU membership.

The Armenian issue is particularly sensitive in France because of its 450,000-strong Armenian community, which has grown increasingly rich and influential. Armenians claim up to 1.5m people died in 1915-18. Turkey denies genocide, and admits only that hundreds of thousands of both Armenians and Turks died, largely as a result of civil war and famine.

Patrick Devedjian, a UMP deputy and adviser to Mr Sarkozy, who has led the push on the right for the bill, said: “Turkey cannot give us lessons about repressing public opinion, as it was the Erdogan government that adopted the law 301, putting people in prison just for talking about the genocide.”

France has strong economic ties with Turkey. About 250 French companies operate there, including Renault, Danone and Carrefour. France is the fifth exporter to Turkey with $4.7bn of French goods sold there in 2005.

The French lower house of parliament today passed a bill making it a crime to deny that Armenians suffered genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turks after the first world war.

Although the bill is unlikely to become law because the upper house, the Senate, has no plans to consider it, it has sparked widespread anger in Turkey.

Ankara believes the issue is being used to whip up French sentiment against Turkish entry into the EU.

French public opinion already opposes Turkey joining the 25-nation bloc, and the prospect of its membership was a key factor in the shock rejection of the EU constitution in a referendum in France last year.

Some Turkish newspapers reported that thousands of Turks had promised to go to France and deny genocide in order to be arrested if the bill was passed, while two Turkish television channels broadcast the Paris parliamentary debate live.

"If this bill is passed, Turkey will not lose anything, but France will lose Turkey," the Turkish foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, said yesterday. "[France] will turn into a country that jails people who express their views."

The French government did not support the motion, but the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) gave its members a free vote. "Imagine for a second that Germany today denied the Holocaust. It is totally unacceptable," the UMP MP Patrick Devedjian, who is of Armenian origin, told RTL radio.

However, Michel Barnier, a fellow UMP MP and a former foreign minister, disagreed on the need for the bill. "Let's beware of this French attitude of being the prosecutor of the history of others," Mr Barnier told LCI television.

Both the outgoing French president, Jacques Chirac, and the socialist presidential frontrunner, Segolene Royal, say Turkey must acknowledge the genocide before joining the EU. The conservative presidential hopeful, Nicolas Sarkozy, is opposed to Turkish membership.

In an editorial, Le Monde newspaper described the bill as counterproductive. Turkish academics and journalists who had succeeded in breaking the taboo of genocide argued that it would strengthen the hand of nationalists in Turkey, who would press for economic reprisals against France.

France is home to a large Armenian immigrant community, with up to 500,000 people of Armenian descent. The community is a powerful political lobby that has to be taken into account seven months ahead of presidential elections.

In 2001, France approved a bill officially recognising the Amernian genocide. The new motion, put forward by the opposition Socialist party, establishes a one-year prison term and €45,000 (£30,400) fine for anyone denying the massacres.

Ankara strongly rejects accusations that around 1.5 million Armenians died in genocide in 1915. It argues that large numbers of both Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks died in a partisan conflict that was raging at that time.