Tensions rise on “Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day”

French President Emmanuel Macron in February declared France would hold a national day on Apr 24 to remember the “Armenian Genocide”, drawing analysis from Ankara.

Amid a gathering of the NATO parliamentary get together in Antalya in southern Turkey on Friday, Turkish parliament boss Mustafa Sentop criticized France’s declaration to build up the memorial day. He referenced slaughters submitted in Algeria when it was as yet a French province and in Rwanda whose administration blames Paris for being complicit in the 1994 butcher there.

Going to the gathering, French official Sonia Krimi, from Macron’s LREM party, reprimanded Turkish remarks saying she was stunned. Yet, that incited a sharp reaction from Cavusoglu.

“As far as massacre and history, France is the last nation to offer addresses to Turkey, and we have not overlooked what occurred in Rwanda and Algeria,” the minister said.

“You can hold endeavoring to look down on us, however we will continue talking the truth.”

Krimi and the French assignment left the room in challenge over Cavusoglu’s comments.

What to know?

Algerian rebellion against political repression and massacre led to brutal suppression at the hands of the 400,000 French soldiers whom had been deployed to the country. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed. Following the genocidal massacre, France gained entire control of Algeria. Although this was only achieved in the 1900’s, from this point onwards, hundreds of thousands of French citizens settled in Algeria.

The Armenian genocide was the ruthless slaughter of millions of Armenians by the Turks of the Ottoman Empire. In 1915, during World War I, leaders of the Turkish government set in motion a plan to expel and massacre Armenians.

In a separate French intervention approved by the U.N., French troops entered Rwanda from Zaire in late June. In the face of the RPF’s rapid advance, they limited their intervention to a “humanitarian zone” set up in southwestern Rwanda, saving tens of thousands of Tutsi lives but also helping some of the genocide’s plotters — allies of the French during the Habyarimana administration — to escape.