Ankara slams Sarkozy: Don’t use Turkey as a “TOOL” in your election campaign

In the view of upcoming presidential elections, the Ankara government has urged French politicians not to use Turkey as a tool in their campaigns following both French President Nicholas Sarkozy and prominent Socialist candidate François Hollande exploiting the Armenian “genocide” claims last week.

Turkey’s Ambassador to Paris Tahsin Burcuoğlu expressed Ankara’s uneasiness with Sarkozy’s remarks in a meeting with the French President’s foreign policy advisor Jean-David Levitte on Saturday.

Burcuoğlu sent a letter to Hollande urging him to avoid making Turkey a daily domestic political issue after the prominent socialist candidate promised backing the draft of a law criminalizing denial of Armenian genocide, the Hürriyet Daily News learned.

“The message we have conveyed does not solely refer to Sarkozy, but to the entire French political class,” a senior Turkish diplomat told the Hürriyet Daily News yesterday.

“We have underlined that this kind of rhetoric does not serve anything other than to ruin our bilateral relations. We want to improve our relations, but these statements are not helpful to this end.” Up to 400,000 French citizens of Armenian descent reside in France and comprise an influential political group.

Sarkozy, who risks losing his seat to Socialists, visited Armenia last week from where he threatened Turkey to recognize the killings of Armenians during the World War I at the hands of Ottoman Empire as genocide before his presidential mandate expires next May or he would adopt a law criminalizing the denial of genocide.

“We know all French politicians are making similar statements, but Sarkozy was very careless in doing so as he tried to threaten Turkey just a few steps away from our soil,” the diplomat said. Levitte tried to depict Sarkozy’s words as candid advice from a friendly country.

Burcuoğlu rejected the comparison, saying that Algeria was a French colony at the time whereas the incidents of 1915 took place within the country’s own sovereign territory. Turkey imposed economic sanctions on France in the past after Paris recognized the Armenian genocide.

October 10, 2011
SOURCE: Hürriyet Daily News