“The ruling is shameful,” Oran Martz, who has been living in France for 19 years, told the Anatolia news agency on Wednesday. “It is a completely political decision that goes well beyond law, and I don’t think it will do anyone any good,” she said, explaining that the ruling will have negative effects in France, Turkey and Armenia and for Armenians living in Turkey and Turks living in France.
Turkey and Armenia signed two protocols in October to normalize their relations, agreeing, among other things, to establish a board of scholars to study Armenian claims of genocide, rejected by Turkey. Oran Martz said the reconciliation process did come up during court debates but the judges did not take it into consideration when ruling on the case.
Oran Martz had to withdraw her candidacy for city council in Villeurbanne, Lyon, after she had been pressed by Mayor Jean-Paul Bret to visit an Armenian “genocide” monument in Lyon and make a public statement backing the genocide charges. Oran Martz, the daughter of Professor Baskın Oran, a liberal who campaigns in Turkey for reconciliation with Armenians, then filed a complaint against Bret at a Lyon court on charges of discrimination, saying no other candidate had been subject to a similar treatment.
“If you translate this ruling, it means the court is telling me ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’” Oran Martz said, promising to appeal the ruling first in France and eventually at the European Court of Human Rights.
