France, April 23 -- "Memory laws are about recognition," says Christophe Premat, a former MP for the French Socialist Party and now an expert in memory studies at Stockholm University.

Under a 2019 French law, 24 April is designated the official day for the yearly commemoration of the Armenian genocide.

The date marks the beginning of the arrest, deportation and execution of Armenian intellectuals by Turkish forces on the night of 24 April 1915, which over the following years would turn into a concerted campaign that Armenia says eventually cost the lives of as many as 1.5 million people.

Oriental Orthodox and Greek Orthodox Christians were also subjected to mass murder and expulsion as part of the same drive to create a nationalist Tu...