Who Today Remembers the Armenian Extermination?

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Your daily dose of irony: France is trying to crack down on denialists of the Armenian genocide as a way of screwing Turkey out of a European Union membership.

The draft law, to be debated by the National Assembly Thursday, was submitted by the opposition Socialist Party and has strong support among those on the political right who hope to derail Turkey's candidacy for European Union membership.

The EU has not made recognition of the Armenian genocide a condition for Turkey to join the union. But with popular opinion across Europe skeptical about accepting Muslim Turkey into the EU fold, the genocide issue has been seized upon by politicians as justification for denying it membership.

During a visit to Armenia last month, French President Jacques Chirac became the latest European leader to insist that Turkey could never join the EU until it agreed that Armenians were the victims of genocide.

It's already a crime in France to deny the Holocaust. I'm not sure if that ban was passed as a way of screwing over another Arab Muslim country, but odds are even.

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