It is not really an inquisition! The French bill that makes denying the Armenian Genocide of 1915 a crime is an extension of France's unyielding opposition to Turkey's joining the European Union (EU). The French always blasted the Turkish governments for widespread torture in Turkish prisons, for failure to rein in a military that disposed elected governments on a whim, and for still living in the culture of the Ottoman Empire that was utterly brutish. The current prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has reined in the military, and Turkey is today a laudable democracy. But now France also wants Turkey to accept its brutal past, while the Turks want to sweep it under the rug! The French law denying the Armenian Genocide, therefore, is just another legal block to Turkey joining in the EU.

Surely the present Turkish leaders cannot accept it. Firstly, they were not responsible for the events of 1915, and, secondly, they cannot officially admit that their ancestors were so brutish and so inhuman! It would be political suicide! But France wants Turkey to accept a cathartic admission of its brutish past, just as present-day Germany has accepted the past crimes of the Third Reich and of Adolf Hitler!

Nikos Retsos, retired professor