Hollande to stand by ban on Armenian genocide denial

French President Francois Hollande will stand by a campaign pledge to make it illegal to deny that the killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915 was genocide, his office said, days after his foreign minister said the law had been abandoned. Franck Papazian, co-president of the Coordinating Council of Armenian Organizations of France (CCAF), told AFP he would meet with Hollande in the second half of this month to discuss the bill “which will be prepared by the government and proposed in the autumn.” Relations between Paris and Ankara had begun to thaw after a decision in February by France’s constitutional court to strike down the genocide denial law as contrary to free speech. Turkey had cancelled all economic, political and military meetings with France in December after the French parliament voted in favor of the draft law. At a joint news conference last week, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said the law was unlikely to be resurrected and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu hailed the opening of a warmer phase in relations with France. But Hollande’s office said on Monday the president would stand by his pledge, made to French Armenians while on the campaign trail ahead of his election in May. “The position is very clear, the commitment will be met,” a source at Hollande’s office said. Given the likelihood that the constitutional court would reject a new law, weekly newspaper JDD reported that Hollande’s government was examining alternative legal means, including penalizing denial via official decree. The historical question has long been a hot-button issue between Turkey and Armenia, a dispute that has also drawn in other countries and earlier this year sparked a diplomatic crisis between Paris and Ankara. Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their forebears were killed in a 1915-16 genocide by Turkey’s former Ottoman Empire. Turkey says 500,000 died and ascribes the toll to fighting and starvation during World War I. Turkey says there was heavy loss of life on both sides during the fighting in which Armenian partisans supported invading Russian forces. The Ottoman Empire collapsed after the war. Successive Turkish governments and the vast majority of Turks feel the charge of genocide is an insult to their nation. Turkey hopes Hollande’s election might mean France is more open to its joining the European Union than under his conservative predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy, but has so far received no public support for its EU bid from Paris.