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French in Armenia 'genocide' row - Turkish protests in Ankara |
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Written by BBC
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Thursday, 12 October 2006 09:10 |
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  The French parliament has adopted a bill making it a crime to deny that Armenians suffered "genocide" at the hands of the Turks, infuriating Turkey.
The bill, which provides for a year in jail and a heavy fine, still needs approval from the Senate and president.
Turkey called the decision a "serious blow" to relations with France. It has already threatened economic sanctions.
Armenia says Ottoman Turks killed 1.5 million people systematically in 1915 - a claim strongly denied by Turkey.
Turkey has been warning France for weeks not to pass the bill.
"Turkish-French relations, which have been meticulously developed over the centuries, took a severe blow today through the irresponsible initiatives of some short-sighted French politicians, based on unfounded allegations," the Turkish foreign ministry said.
The vote, in the lower house of the French parliament on Thursday morning, was sponsored by the opposition Socialist party.
 The ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) did not back the law, but gave its deputies a free vote. It passed by 106 votes to 19.
The official Turkish position states that many Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks died in fighting during World War I - but that there was no genocide.
France's President Chirac and Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy have both said Turkey will have to change that position and recognise the Armenian deaths as genocide before it joins the EU - though this is not the official EU position.
Turks argue that while the EU is putting pressure on Turkey to improve its legislation to ensure full freedom of speech, France seems to be moving in the opposite direction.
The European Commission has said that the bill, if passed into law, will "prohibit dialogue which is necessary for reconciliation" between Turkey and Armenia on the issue.
Wednesday saw Turkish politicians consider a law that would make it a crime to deny that French killings in Algeria in 1945 were genocide.
But Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan objected, saying: "You cannot clean dirt with dirt; you can only clean dirt with clean water."
France has about 500,000 people of Armenian descent - thought to be the largest Armenian immigrant community in Western Europe.
There are accusations in Turkey that the Armenian diaspora and opponents of Turkey's EU membership bid are using this issue to prevent Turkey joining the 25-member bloc. |