It has nothing to do with history; the event is taking place today

First of all, we must know that the law passed by the French parliament, which provides penalties for those who deny that the events of 1915 constitute genocide, has nothing to do with the Armenians. France has not tried to pass this law "in the name of humanity" simply because it wanted to make a gesture to the Armenians in its own country, or because it wanted to win those Armenians' votes.

At this hour, we must know that turning to history and asking "what actually happened" will enlighten neither us nor those who will take an interest in history because of these events, in any way. Just as this affair has nothing to do with the Armenians, it has nothing to do with history either. Both history and the Armenians are being put forward as a cheap instrument of French politics.

Indeed, as we said earlier in the context of understanding France's interest in the Armenians, which had been caught up in a similar agenda before, in September 2006: "France has a far more meaningful history with regard to the Armenians in its own country. For this it is enough to look at what the first Armenians who came to France experienced in this country. Do you think the Armenians were accepted very easily in France? From the lives of each of them you can read plenty of stories of various kinds of discrimination that were certainly no less than what the Jews were subjected to in pre-war Germany.

The first generations of Armenians received a far greater share of the racist and classist policies that France, which now appears to have taken on the role of patron of the Armenians, applies today to its citizens of Moroccan and Algerian origin. In the end, the discriminatory treatment it deemed fit for this "black race," which racially has no appearance different from that of Turks and Arabs, is of the hair-raising kind. In World War II they were driven to the front lines and the great majority of them were destroyed. No one has even recorded this genocide."

Today too, in its attitude toward Turkey, it is putting forward the same Armenians to clear mines. The fact that the Armenian diaspora in France is very eager has no importance in this.

Actually, there is not much point in citing France's other genocide records on the occasion of this affair either. The affair has nothing to do with history or with the Armenians. For today the affair is entirely about France's view of Turkey. France has expressed its feelings toward Turkey on the occasion of this affair, that is all.

If we look at the context of the relations that give rise to these feelings, we see the advance in Turkey's foreign policy in recent times, especially in the Middle East, along a line of policy that narrows all of France's sphere of activity. At the starting point of the Arab spring, when demonstrations began in Tunisia, Sarkozy, who declared that he stood behind the Tunisian dictator, was left with nothing to do but pick up horseshoes when he did a U-turn after quickly seeing the course of events. At that moment the revolutionary process that had begun in Egypt had already begun to bring Turkey to the fore in the whole of the Arab spring.

The "dream of Libyan oil" that he hoped for from the military operation he officiously tried to organize in Libya to make up for all his losses was also rejected three days ago by Libya's current administration. Sarkozy, who holds Turkey primarily responsible for the collapse of his dreams, trying to occupy Turkey with an agenda of "massacre and genocide" through the Armenian card is crazy but not entirely without calculation. He hopes, by presenting to the Arab world a "genocidal" past for Turkey, to clear himself in a way, since the Arab world harbors great distrust toward France, recalling its history with its massacres in Algeria, Syria and Africa. By this means he calculates that he can spoil Turkey's place in the Arab world and put himself more firmly there.

Sarkozy is so far removed from facts that he does not notice that this calculation, which he thinks can hold with simple logic, on the contrary reminds everyone more of his own genocidal history. For three days I have been following the readers' comments on all the Arab websites that reported this move by France, headed by Al Jazeera. I have read very few comments that considered Turkey in the wrong over this affair; by contrast the overwhelming majority of readers' comments recall France's record in Algeria and ask with what face they are now championing the Armenians. All of them say that they stand with Turkey and especially with Erdoğan. Many of them also see this thrust by France as a manifestation of the hostility displayed toward Turkey in the name of Zionism. By displaying this hostile attitude, France seems to be about to lose even whatever small chance it had in the Arab spring.

Therefore it does not seem possible for France, which is trying with a calculation to drag Turkey into a genocide agenda, to come out profitable from this either. Yet in this affair France staked, from its own founding values (let alone fraternity and equality), "freedom of thought." It staked the memories of its Armenian citizens, it staked its own history, it staked all the possible profits of potential alliances with Turkey (presumably, out of profit, loss). If this too is called the "rationality" peculiar to the French, what more can we say.