Turkey suspends all ties with France over alleged Armenian genocide row
French’s Alleged Armenian Genocide atrocity forces Turkey to halt diplomatic consultations and military dealings in a major rupture with France on Thursday after the lower house of the French Parliament approved legislation making it a crime to deny Ottomans Armenian Genocide in 1915.
Paris / NationalTurk – The Turkish Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan, announced Ankara government has rescinded an agreement allowing French military planes to land, and warships to dock, in the country, whichs brings the conflict over a “Armenian genocide bill” proposed in France to the NATO level.
French Armenian Genocide Bill : Only 50 MPs of 577 voted the bill
There was no official vote count since lawmakers simply voted by raising their hands. The measure now goes to the Senate, where its fate is less clear. There were only 50 deputies out of 577 present in French Parliament’s lower house during the bill vote. Only less than 10 % of the French cabinet had participated in the vote, which reflects how one sided the vote is regarded even by French deputies. 6 of them voted against the bill, the rest of 44 members, including Nicolas Sarkozy, and Valerie Boyer the mastermind behind the bill along with Sarkozy’s lackeys.
Sarkozy the ever coward : Abuse of Algerian Genocide Claim for his Presidential seat
Turkey announced it cancelled bilateral military and economic cooperation and suspended all bilateral political consultation with France, describing the French vote as doing politics via racism and xenophobia ahead of presidential elections to gain the votes of Armenians in France. Sarkozy is clearly calculating for votes of Armenians in France for the upcoming France Presidential Elections.
“It is impossible for Turkey to remain silent in face of this extremely intentional decision taken on false motives in France,” Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, declared in a televised statement. “We stop all kinds of political dialogue with France, cancel bilateral military functions and joint exercises with that country as of now.”
Armenian Genocide Bill passed by France : Turkey furious & cuts ties with imprudent French
“We are re-evaluating our relations with France. We will take step-by-step measures, depending on how the situation unfolds”, continued PM Erdogan, accusing French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling party of “politics based on racism, discrimination, xenophobia.”
Turkey has frozen all contacts with France, and canceled any joint political, economic and military projects with the EU country. This includes joint maneuvers and an economic committee meeting in Paris in January.
Relations between Turkey and France began taking a turn for the worse after President Nicolas Sarkozy took office in 2007, and Turkish officials see political motives in his increasingly nationalist stance against Turkish accession to the European Union and his support for the genocide denial law, despite the fact that Sarkozy’s opposition to full membership for Turkey is shared across the French political spectrum. Though the proposed bill cites genocides in general, Ankara believes the law targets the 1915 ethnic cleansing of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire – which Ankara denies to qualify as genocide. In 2006, France’s National Assembly passed a similar bill, though it was voted down by the Senate.
The French bill requires a fine of 45,000 euros, or about $58,700, and a year in jail for “those who have praised, denied or roughly and publicly downplayed genocidal crimes, crimes against humanity and war crimes.” It is not expected to be considered by the upper house until after the new year.
Turkish PM Erdogan has confirmed Ankara is withdrawing the country’s Ambassador to France. The ambassador, Tahsin Burcuoglu, is to leave on Friday. Access to Turkish airspace and military bases has been reduced to case-by-case scheme.
French Foreign Affairs Minister Alain Juppe has called Turkey not to “overreact” to the outcome of the vote, urging for “good sense and moderation,” reports Reuters.
Turkey : French committed Genocide in Algeria
Underscoring Turkey’s anger, Erdogan accused France on Friday of committing genocide in Algeria during its rule there before independence in 1962. The Associated Press quoted him as saying that French colonists massacred Algerians and burned their bodies in ovens.
The bill, proposing a penalty of up to one year in jail and a fine of 45,000 euro ($58,870) to those who deny or “outrageously minimize” sufferings due to genocide, now awaits ratification in the French Senate. The law may just as well die there, as was the fate of an earlier draft this year.
Before the vote in the French Parliament, Turkey warned of “grave consequences” for France if the law is adopted. As both countries are members of NATO, the row could complicate relations within the bloc.
France and Turkey have been cooperating on dealing with the Iranian nuclear stand-off, and crises in Syria and Afghanistan. Paris still considers Ankara a key partner in the NATO bloc, despite frictions between the two during the Libyan campaign, when Turkey contested France’s leadership over the operation.
France is Turkey’s fifth biggest export market and the sixth biggest source of its imports, so the effects of a breakdown in relations could be major both for politicians and businessmen.
Turkey never will pay one cent to Armenia for Alleged Genocide, because ever mischief-maker France says so
Turkey had no choice but to react strongly to the bill, as it raises risks that the country will have to pay massive reparations to Armenians. In the US, several individual lawsuits against Turkey have been already ruled in the Armenians’ favor, obliging Ankara to pay damages to the victims of the genocide, the analyst says.
That Erdogan took such pronounced steps before the bill had become law underscores the obstacles facing Turkey’s reach for a new international profile and its long-frustrated efforts to join the European Union.
Saying ‘There is no Armenian Genocide’ is a crime in these countries !
More than 15 countries have officially recognized the slaughter of about 1.5 million Armenians in the chaos surrounding World War I and the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire as genocide, and its denial is already a crime in Switzerland and Slovenia.
Turkey acknowledges atrocities without any specific death toll, but says that they did not constitute systematic genocide. It argues that such a declaration should be a matter before an international committee of historians with access to state archives.
Turkey’s own penal code makes affirming the genocide a crime on the grounds that it is an insult to Turkish identity. In March, Orhan Pamuk, a Nobel Prize winner, was fined 7,000 lira, about $3,700, for his statement in a Swiss newspaper that “we have killed 30,000 Kurds and 1 million Armenians.”
France has cowardness written all over its DNA, just as France’s moves to outlaw denial of the Armenian genocide carry special weight, given the leading role Paris has played for the last six years in assessing Turkey’s readiness to join the European Union.
Television stations here followed the vote in live broadcasts from Paris, showing parliamentary debates in a barely filled hall and people protesting outside, waving Turkish flags behind security barriers. Another group of protesters gathered in front of the French Embassy in Ankara to lay a black wreath and chant slogans against France, according to NTV, a private television network.
Turkish lawmakers joined to denounce the bill and called on France to investigate its own atrocities in Algeria and Rwanda. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the bill violated the spirit of the French Revolution and European principles like freedom of speech.
Turkey France Relations Hit Rock Bottom
Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan said he had recalled Turkey’s ambassador and canceled the annually issued permission for French military planes to use Turkish airspace and French naval vessels to enter Turkish harbors. The move means that French military planes will need to apply for permission for each flight. Turkey also refused to cooperate with France in joint European Union projects or participate in a joint economic summit meeting scheduled to take place in Paris in January.
“We will go and talk to every single Armenian against the bigotry stance France has taken. We will tell them how France and other countries create trouble among us,” Turkish Foreign Minister Davutoğlu added.
Bernard Valero, the spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry, said that France “deplored all the announcements” made by Mr. Erdogan and regretted the recall of the Turkish ambassador from Paris, and he stressed the need for cooperation on a range of issues, including the unrest in Syria, the future of Afghanistan and Iran’s nuclear aspirations.
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In 1934, Italy adopted the name “Libya” (used by the ancient Greeks for all of North Africa, except Egypt) for its colonies of Italian Cyrenaica and Italian Tripolitania, both having been run separately by Italian governors. Italy had conquered both from the Ottoman Turks in 1911. From 1943 to 1951, Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were under British administration, while the French controlled Fezzan and the United States maintained the large Wheelus Air Base.
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By 1956 France had committed more than 400,000 troops to Algeria. Foreign Legion bore the brunt of offensive counterinsurgency combat operations, France also sent air force and naval units to the Algerian theater, French forces utilized the helicopter for the first time in a ground attack role in order to pursue and destroy fleeing FLN guerrilla units. The American military would later use the same helicopter combat methods in Vietnam. The French also used napalm,
Benjamin Stora, “Avoir 20 ans en Kabylie” , in L’Histoire n -324, October 2007, pp.28–29 L’Histoire is a monthly mainstream French magazine dedicated to historical studies, recognized by peers as the most important historical popular magazine (as opposed to specific university journals or less scientific popular historical magazines).
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Druze Revolt of 1925 — 27 and French Air Power
When the French occupied their Mideast colonies of Lebanon and Syria in 1919, they faced the same sort of nationalist unrest that the British faced in Iraq. Initially, the French sent a larger air contingent to garrison Syria than the British sent to Iraq and by the end of 1919 had built up a force of four squadrons in Syria. French Breguet 14 light bombers, sturdy aircraft from the Great War, played the same role that the RAF’s DH-9s played in British colonial operations. Gen Maxime Weygand, commander of the garrison in Syria, argued that airpower was “indispensable” and requested more air squadrons so that he could withdraw ground troops. In 1924 Weygand issued directives to his air units that closely resembled British air-control doctrine. He intended to use aircraft to bomb tribal groups when incidents occurred as a means of intimidating them into complying with the French regime. The French increased their air presence in Syria and by the end of 1923 had several squadrons organized into the 39th Air Regiment. 39ème RAO.
Posting on War and Game a huge array of military resource Internet sites assembling factual investigation of details of war from ancient times onward by Mitch Williamson, a technical writer with an interest in military and naval affairs. He has published articles in Cross & Cockade International and Wartime magazines.
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September 14, 1859 French gunships, 3,000 men and 300 Filipino troops provided by the Spanish, attacked the port of Da Nang. Sailing south, De Genouilly then captured the poorly defended city of Sai Gon (present day Ho Chi Minh City), on 18 February 1859. On 13 April 1862, the Vietnamese government was forced to cede the territories of Biên Hòa, Gia Äá»nh and Dinh Tuong to France. In 1862, France obtained concessions from Emperor Tá»± Äức, ceding three treaty ports in Annam and Tonkin, and all of Cochinchina, the latter being formally declared a French territory in 1864. In 1867 the provinces of Chau Doc, Ha Tien and VÄ©nh Long were added to French controlled territory. In 1862, France obtained concessions from Emperor Tá»± Äức, ceding three treaty ports in Annam and Tonkin, and all of Cochinchina, the latter being formally declared a French territory in 1864. In 1867 the provinces of Chau Doc, Ha Tien and VÄ©nh Long were added to French controlled territory. In 1862, Emperor Tá»± Äức was forced to ceding three treaty ports in Annam and Tonkin, and all of Cochinchina, declared a French territory in 1864. In 1867 the provinces of Chau Doc, Ha Tien and VÄ©nh Long were added to French controlled territory. Commandant Henri Rivière stormed the citadel of Hanoi on 25 April 1882. On 20 August 1883 Admiral Amédée Courbet stormed the forts which guarded the approaches to the Vietnamese capital Huế and forced the Vietnamese government to cede Tonkin to French control. Courbet, attacked Son Tay in December 1883. Tucker, Spencer C. (1999) Vietnam. University Press of Kentucky. pp. 29.
In September 1930, French had realized the seriousness of rural uprising and brought in Foreign Legion troops to suppress the rebellion. On September 9, French planes bombed a column of thousands of peasants headed toward the Nghe An provincial capital. Security forces rounded up all those suspected of being communists or of being involved in the rebellion, staged executions, and conducted punitive raids on rebellious villages. History, Libcom.orgSeptember 14, 1859 French gunships, 3,000 men and 300 Filipino troops provided by the Spanish, attacked the port of Da Nang. Sailing south, De Genouilly then captured the poorly defended city of Sai Gon (present day Ho Chi Minh City), on 18 February 1859. On 13 April 1862, the Vietnamese government was forced to cede the territories of Biên Hòa, Gia Äá»nh and Dinh Tuong to France. In 1862, France obtained concessions from Emperor Tá»± Äức, ceding three treaty ports in Annam and Tonkin, and all of Cochinchina, the latter being formally declared a French territory in 1864. In 1867 the provinces of Chau Doc, Ha Tien and VÄ©nh Long were added to French controlled territory. In 1862, France obtained concessions from Emperor Tá»± Äức, ceding three treaty ports in Annam and Tonkin, and all of Cochinchina, the latter being formally declared a French territory in 1864. In 1867 the provinces of Chau Doc, Ha Tien and VÄ©nh Long were added to French controlled territory. In 1862, Emperor Tá»± Äức was forced to ceding three treaty ports in Annam and Tonkin, and all of Cochinchina, declared a French territory in 1864. In 1867 the provinces of Chau Doc, Ha Tien and VÄ©nh Long were added to French controlled territory. Commandant Henri Rivière stormed the citadel of Hanoi on 25 April 1882. On 20 August 1883 Admiral Amédée Courbet stormed the forts which guarded the approaches to the Vietnamese capital Huế and forced the Vietnamese government to cede Tonkin to French control. Courbet, attacked Son Tay in December 1883. Tucker, Spencer C. (1999) Vietnam. University Press of Kentucky. pp. 29.
In September 1930, French had realized the seriousness of rural uprising and brought in Foreign Legion troops to suppress the rebellion. On September 9, French planes bombed a column of thousands of peasants headed toward the Nghe An provincial capital. Security forces rounded up all those suspected of being communists or of being involved in the rebellion, staged executions, and conducted punitive raids on rebellious villages. By 1931, the uprisings that had begun with the Yen Bai mutiny had been quelled. On its face, the war had been grotesquely one-sided: 1,000 killed and 50,000 captured (of whom 10,000 subsequently died) at the cost to French forces of a single soldier. History, Libcom.org & pagerankstudioinfo
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Millions starved in a famine that occurred in northern Vietnam from October 1944 to May 1945. the mismanagement of the French administration in Vietnam played a role. The French reformed the economy in order to serve the administration and to meet the needs of war. The Vietnamese Starvation of 1944-45 , Bui Minh Dung, U. of Cambridge, U. of Tokyo.
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The 1946 -1954 French Indochina War, (also known as the Dirty War in France) and in contemporary Vietnam, as the French War) was fought between the French Union’s French Far East Expeditionary Corps (brought into Vietnam on U.S. ships) against the Viet Minh led Vo Nguyen Giap. Ho Chi Minh saw the war as an independence struggle against colonialism, and expected the free world to support him. in 1949, the conflict became a conventional war between two armies equipped with modern weapons supplied by the two superpowers.
French Union forces included colonial troops from the whole former empire (Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, African, Laotian, Cambodian, Vietnamese, and Vietnamese ethnic minorities) and professional troops (European of the French Foreign Legion). The use of metropolitan recruits was forbidden by the governments to prevent the war from becoming even more unpopular at home. It was called the “dirty war” (la sale guerre) by Jean Paul Sartre) during the Henri Martin affair in 1950 because it aimed to perpetuate French imperialism.
In testimony at Military Tribunal 1953, Martin, a navy mechanic, deplored the atrocities committed by the Foreign Legionnaires who burn and plunder villages. “Why do our planes machine-gun every day defenceless fishermen? Why do our soldiers loot, burn and kill?”
2003-08-02). “Guerre d’Indochine: Libérez Henri Martin,” l’Humanité .
By 1954, the United States had supplied 300,000 small arms and spent US$1 billion in support of the French military effort and was shouldering 80 percent of the cost of the war.Vietnam. There were talks between the French and Americans in which the possible use of three tactical nuclear weapons was considered. The Ten Thousand Day War , Thames 1981, Michael Maclear, p. 57
One version of plan for the proposed Operation Vulture envisioned sending 60 B-29s from U.S. bases in the region, supported by as many as 150 fighters launched from U.S. Seventh Fleet carriers, to bomb Viet Minh commander Vo Nguyen Giap’s positions. The plan included an option to use up to three atomic weapons on the Viet Minh positions. Admiral Arthur W. Radford, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave this nuclear option his backing. U.S. B-29s, B-36s, and B-47s could have executed a nuclear strike, as could carrier aircraft from the Seventh Fleet.[Dien Bien Phu, Air Force Magazine 87:8, August 2004.
U.S. carriers sailed to the Gulf of Tonkin, and reconnaissance flights over Dien Bien Phu were conducted during the negotiations. According to Richard Nixon the plan involved the Joint Chiefs of Staff drawing up plans to use 3 small tactical nuclear weapons in support of the French.
At the Geneva Conference the French negotiated a ceasefire agreement with the Viet Minh. Independence was granted to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. The U.S. Navy: a history, Naval Institute Pres s, 1997, Nathan Mille
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Haiti experienced three centuries of slavery. In the history of the Atlantic slave trade, the French turned four times as many Africans into slaves as the Americans did, they used them far more brutally. Slaver voyages: France, 4,200; British North America/United States, 1,500. Slaves delivered to: French West Indies: 1,600,000, British North America/United States, 500,000.*
Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade, Simon & Schuster, 1997.
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The French colonial slave system was particularly brutal, worse that virtually any other place in the Western world. Slaves were routinely treated with great brutality and inhumanity. Short and Oversimplified History of Haiti by Bob Corbett
For decades the general policy for plantation owners was to work their slaves to exhaustion, illness and death, for replacements were so cheaply available. Armed guards would abuse and torture for pleasure and to instill fear – bayonets jabbed at the bellies until blood spurted, whereupon the dogs leaped at the men, tore them apart, and devoured them. audience applauded.” Caribbean by James Mitchner
So great was the wealth produced by slave labor, with losing Haiti, France lost 2/3rds of its world trade income.
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150 thousand out of a population of 465 black slaves died fighting the French for their liberty. 150 thousand out of a population of 465 black slaves died fighting the French for their liberty. (long after the French Revolution). Many gassed with sulphur dioxiede before Napoleon’s humiliating defeat at the hands of Toussaint’s and Dessalines’s armies. Captured, Toussaint L’ouverture captured in a raid was imprisoned in the high Jura mountains, left to freeze to death without blankets.
An Unbroken Agony by Randall Robinson
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Today, the people of Haiti have joined with their democratically elected government to demand that France restitute to the Haitian people this for the Ransom Paid for its Independence – 21.7 billion dollars in today’s currency. On behalf of the people of Haiti, President Jean Bertrand Artistide has made an official request to France, which has formally recognized slavery to be a crime against humanity; French legislators have verbally recognized the legitimacy Haiti’s request for restitution. Unfortunately, in an echo of the ugly “1825″ past, the French government has reacted to this just request by placing Haiti on a list of “undesirable” countries not to be visited; this vindictive and unjustifiable response is being protested by people of conscience, particularly in France and Haiti. Restitution by France to Haiti, Haiti Action
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The French colonial empire at its height saw the total amount of land under French sovereignty to cover 8.7% of the Earth’s total land area, and in 1931, also 8.7% of the world population under French suzerainty.
Institut National de la Statistique et des Ãtudes Ãconomiques
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In 1914, excepting Ethiopia, every inch of Africa was controled by Europeans. Ethiopia was invaded and occupied by Italy in 1936. Africa, Imperial Boundaries
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Most respected investigative journalists have spoken or wrote expressing this observation or opinion, including Robert Fisk, John Pilger and Noam Chomsky very recently. On Feb. 21, two days after the violence in Benghazi had begun, an elderly experience Fidel Castro told Associated Press that he suspected what was happening would be used by NATO for invading Libya.
Genocide in Haiti: Fulfilling Lecler’s imperative through debt, free trade, privatization and wage slavery