ArmeniaNow  --  Turkish President Abdullah Gul has unsuccessfully tried to get in touch with his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy on the phone for two days, reports CNNTurk. The Turkish president’s spokesman Ahmet Sever said “under various pretexts the French president has refused to talk to Gul.” On December 20, Gul issued a written statement expressing the hope that France “will not sacrifice the long-term friendly relations to petty political calculations.”

France has shown serious intention to pass a law criminalizing the denial of the Armenian Genocide that it recognized in 2001. The law, which is due to be discussed on December 22, has already caused an international scandal. Turkey has declared it will take retaliatory steps, in particular, that it may recognize France’s responsibility for the deaths of thousands of people in Algeria and even in Rwanda.

More than 40 countries, including Turkey itself, may, at the legislative level, recognize the actions of official Paris in May 1945 in Algeria, when up to 45,000 people were killed in an Algerian insurrection, as “the genocide of Algerians by France.” This was stated by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Turkey warns France also about the economic damage of such a move. Davutoglu called more than 20 leaders of local businesses, including such companies Credit Agricole SA and Groupama SA, to lobby against the French bill. There are 960 French firms with direct investments in Turkey.

The Turkish government is trying to ascribe the possible adoption of such a law exclusively to the electoral campaign in France.

“The claims of other countries should not affect Franco-Turkish relations,” said Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, implying the desire of the French authorities to enlist the support of France’s estimated 500,000-strong Armenian community in the April and May 2012 presidential election.

The Armenian community in France is also of the same opinion. The text of the same Act, passed by the National Assembly of France in October 2006, was adopted under the leadership of Francois Hollande, the first secretary of the Socialist Party, who in 2012 will also run for president. Since then the text has been blocked by the Senate’s right-wing majority. In 2007, still as a candidate, Sarkozy promised to the Armenian community that after his election he would make every effort for the text to be adopted by the National Assembly. But the majority successfully led to the parliamentary stymie. On April 30, French President Sarkozy made it clear that he would not promote the adoption of the bill. This is clearly stated in an interview of representative of the Central Committee of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) in Western Europe and co-chairman of the Coordinating Council of Armenian Organizations of France Mourad Papazian that was published in the Nouvelles d`Arménie magazine.

At a meeting organized in Alfortville on September 26 by the ARF, Hollande reaffirmed his support for the passage of the bill and pledged to take it through the Senate. “In the run-up to the presidential election, including during his official visit to Yerevan, Nicolas Sarkozy, who has sought to boost his popularity, promised that the bill would be passed if Turkey did not recognize the Armenian Genocide by the end of the year. French political observers arrived at the conclusion that the republic’s president joined the election campaign and that he does not want to leave this initiative of Francois Hollande,” said Papazian.