Faut-il une loi contre le négationnisme du génocide des Arméniens ? Un raisonnement historien sur le tournant de 2012

Official memories and legal constraints: A classification of memory instruments in France and Belgium

“…It should be noted that this article’s proposal flows directly from the adoption of the Law of 21 January 2001 (see below), which led to strong Turkish lobbying (particularly diplomatic). Confronted with this lobbying, the Armenian associations in France emphasised the need to adopt a penalising mechanism comparable with the Gayssot Law (Duclert, 2013: 190). After failure of the two draft laws, one in October 2006 and the second in May 2011, a third draft law was submitted, which was fully supported by Nicolas Sarkozy (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, hereafter UMP) while president of the Republic.…”

“…After failure of the two draft laws, one in October 2006 and the second in May 2011, a third draft law was submitted, which was fully supported by Nicolas Sarkozy (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, hereafter UMP) while president of the Republic. Moreover, Armenian organisations, who had been calling for such a law since 2001, were broadly supported by many parliamentarians who were ‘generally elected in constituencies of strong Armenian communities or themselves of Armenian descent’ (Duclert, 2013: 191). Valérie Boyer (UMP), who authored the draft, was herself elected in Marseille and became vice-president of the French–Armenian friendship.…”

“…The first two instruments relate to the recognition of the Armenian genocide. If the reasons for the progressive politicisation of this recognition in France (Duclert, 2013) and Belgium have already been studied, in particular by the more or less strong presence of Turkish and Armenian communities (Grandjean and Macq, 2017), the nature of the adopted instruments has not yet been analysed. First, in France, the Law of 29 January 2001 on the recognition of the Armenian genocide of 1915 only contains one article which declares that ‘France publicly recognises the Armenian genocide of 1915’.…”