PARIS: The issues that have dogged Turkey's application for EU membership resurfaced during a two-day visit to Paris by the Turkish Prime Minister, Mr Recep Tayyip Erdogan writes Lara Marlowe in Paris.
Though rarely said, the main issue is that Turkey's 70 million people are almost all Muslim.
In the week that French schools began expelling Muslim girls who insisted on wearing Islamic headscarves, Mr Erdogan, the leader of the moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party, won no friends in France by telling LCI television station that his daughters study in the US to escape the ban on headscarves in Turkish universities.
At a press conference yesterday, Mr Erdogan tried to evade a question from The Irish Times about article 305 of the new Turkish penal code by saying that offences which constitute "anti-national activities" are not specifically defined in the law. The EU demanded that Ankara withdraw another article that would have made adultery a criminal offence, but article 305 apparently went unnoticed.
An explanatory memorandum drawn up by the Turkish Justice Commission provided only two examples of "anti-national activity": demands for the recognition of the Armenian genocide, and support for the withdrawal of Turkish troops from Cyprus. The commission's findings would serve as the basis for implementing the law. "Anti-national activity" is punishable by 10 years in prison, 15 years for publishers and journalists.
In 1987 the European Parliament made recognition of the killing of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915, the resolution of the Cyprus and Kurdish conflicts, and an end to human rights abuses, conditions for Turkish accession to Europe. In 2001 the French National Assembly voted for a law recognising the Armenian genocide.
But Mr Erdogan showed no sign of budging on the Armenian issue. "It has never been studied on the basis of Ottoman archives," he said. "We say, 'leave it up to the historians'. The archives are open. Let them come and examine the archives in an objective fashion." Ankara has welcomed the work of a British historian who claims that "only" 600,000 Armenians were slaughtered by Turks, and that Turkish Muslims were also victims.
Though Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974, Mr Erdogan said, "Turkey should not withdraw its troops from Cyprus" because a 65 per cent majority of Turkish Cypriots voted to accept a reunification plan drawn up by UN Secretary General Mr Kofi Annan.
Mr Erdogan said he was "saddened" by French opposition to Turkey's application and objected to the holding of a referendum. He appealed to President Jacques Chirac to stop the issue being exploited in domestic politics.