On Tuesday, François Hollande completed the first official visit to Turkey by a French president since François Mitterrand in 1992. Hollande's objective was to smooth over French-Turkish relations which have deteriorated over the past few years, reports FRANCE 24.
Hollande has been meeting with the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Their two countries have a complicated history. The ties are economic and cultural. France is Turkey’s eighth largest export markets. And, even though English has become the global language, Turkey’s elite is still educated in French and speaking French remains a mark of distinction.
Yet Turkey’s attitude to France soured after President Nicolas Sarkozy led the European opposition to Turkish membership of the European Union and France passed a law that, briefly, made denying the Armenian genocide a crime. That sparked a diplomatic crisis.
In 1915, embroiled in the First World War the tottering Ottoman Empire accused the Armenians of treason and began systematic deportations and large-scale massacres.
France officially calls this a genocide. Turkey rejects the term.
Even those in Turkey who are critical of the country’s refusal to acknowledge the genocide are sceptical of the value of foreign legislation.
“When such laws are passed in France or other countries, it plays into the hands of Turkish nationalists, because they believe that the whole world has conspired against the Turks to spread what they believe to be a lie,” Rober Koptas, the editor-in-chief of a Turkish-Armenian newspaper, told FRANCE 24.
Just over seven years ago, his predecessor, Hrant Dink, was murdered by a Turkish nationalist in the middle of the street in front of his office in Istanbul. Like Dink, Koptas receives regular death threats for writing about the Armenian question.
The proposed French law was struck down by the Constitutional Council which ended a boycott in Turkey aimed at French companies and brands in Turkey.
Read more of this report from FRANCE 24.