Turkey has acknowledged power of French-Armenian community

YEREVAN, MARCH 23, ARMENPRESS. Rallies and other events will be held in all major cities of France on April 24. Co-chairman of the Coordination Council of Armenian Organizations of France, ARF Bureau member Murad Papazian told about this in a press conference at “Armenpress” media hall, stressing that all the all the events will be demanding in their nature.

“Events organized in Paris are governmental in their form. This will be another year that we organize the April 24 events in collaboration with the French government, in which representatives of the government participate. The theme is “March for justice”. We want to display that nothing ends with the centennial. We have our demands and Turkey must recognize the Armenian Genocide. We did hard work during the previous years to gain the trust of the government. The Armenian community has established firm ties with President Francois Hollande”, Murad Papazian said.

Not only the Armenian community, but also the Turkish one vigorously works in France. Murad Papazian stated that political competition exists between the Armenian and Turkish communities. In his words, ever since Hollande became the President of France, Turkey aims to spoil the relations between the President and the Armenian community.

“Turkey wishes to create an impression that Francois Hollande has betrayed the Armenians, but the contrary happened. Francois Hollande stood by the Armenian community. When he went to Turkey, he raised the issue of Armenian Genocide recognition, and arrived in Armenia in the sidelines of events dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Genocide. He also tries to put the emphasis on further development of relations with Armenia. We insisted on France to level up its influence in OSCE Minsk Group. France made proposals and is the advocate of peaceful conflict settlement”, Murad Papazian added.

He mentioned that the Armenian community is strong in its positions in the political competition with the Turkish community. In his words, Turkey has acknowledged that the Armenian community is a serious player and now they invest huge resources together with Azerbaijan to wage anti-Armenian campaign.

Referring to the process of elaboration of the bill criminalizing the denial of the Armenian Genocide by France, Murad Papazian mentioned that Armenians have the support of the French President in this regard.

“We face a legal issue regarding freedom of speech and as we know, during the trial of Perinçekthe emphasis was put precisely on that factor. Now we must do so that the bill is based on firm legal grounds. We are in touch with Jean-Paul Costa who is engaged in issues of the elaboration of the bill. Probably, the bill will be ready by mid-April. But we have another problem here. Turkey has raised its importance for the EU in the context of the migrant crisis and it can have its impact on our goals. Maybe there will be attempts to suspend the process, but we follow the developments”, Murad Papazian said.