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Gül urges France to withdraw from Minsk Group if genocide bill enacted
France, along with the US and Russia, co-chairs the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's (OSCE) Minsk Group, which has been trying to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute since 1990s but has thus far failed to provide a viable solution to the issue.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, a day after the approval of the highly controversial bill in the French assembly despite strong Turkish opposition, Gül said France should withdraw from the Minsk Group if the bill is approved by the Senate and becomes law because the country will lose its impartial position in the settling of the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute.
Ethnic Armenian separatists, backed by Armenia, fought a war to overthrow Azerbaijani control over Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Separatists also seized land surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh. Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 in support of Azerbaijan during its conflict with Armenia. Turkey backs Azerbaijani claims to Nagorno-Karabakh, which has a large number of ethnic Armenian residents.
Gül also criticized French President Nicolas Sarkozy for “being prejudiced against Turkey.” Recalling that the French president has not responded to Gül's phone calls for days, Gül complained that “heads of state talk to each other even during war time.” He said Sarkozy's stance reveals his prejudices against Turkey.
The lower house of the French parliament voted on Thursday in favor of a controversial bill penalizing the denial of the alleged Armenian genocide, ignoring massive Turkish protests against the measure.
The bill sets a punishment of up to a year in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros ($59,000) for those who deny or "outrageously minimize" the alleged genocide of Armenians in eastern Anatolia during the final years of the Ottoman Empire, putting such action on par with denial of the Holocaust.
The measure now needs to be passed in the senate, the upper house of parliament, before it will come into effect.
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