Legislating History and its Effects on Foreign Policy

When the French National Assembly approved a bill that stipulated that those who denied the occurrence of an event accepted as genocide by the French parliament would be penalized with up to one year in prison and up to €45,000 in fines, it touched off a flurry of activity in Turkish-French relations, which reached a new low point. While the excitement appeared to have died down then, how much lasting damage the relationship had suffered could only be assessed over a longer period. It appeared unlikely that the bill that had cleared the French National Assembly would become law before the French parliament went on presidential election recess at the end of February 2012. Yet the issue of Western allegations of an Armenian genocide would haunt Turkey’s relations with other countries.