Al-Jazeera, Qatar
May 8 2006

Genocide term prompts Turkish snub

Monday 08 May 2006, 16:18 Makka Time, 13:18 GMT

Turkey has recalled its ambassadors to France and Canada for
consultations in a row over Armenian deaths during the first world
war.

Both France and Canada acknowledge the mass killings of Armenians was
a genocide.

The temporary recall of the diplomats was Turkey’s latest move
against increasing international pressure on the country to recognise
the killings as genocide.

Turks say the death count is inflated and insist that Armenians were
killed or displaced as the Ottoman Empire tried to secure its border
with Russia and stop attacks by Armenian militants.

Turkey recently criticised Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime
minister, for remarks he made in support of recognising the mass
killings as genocide, and said that such statements threatened
Turkish-Canadian relations.

Turkey has also warned French politicians not to approve a draft law
which would make the denial of the genocide a crime.

France’s parliament is set to consider next week a one-article bill,
which would make it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide of 1915. It
is already an offence in France to deny the Holocaust of the second
world war.

Armenians say 1.5 million of their people were killed as the Ottoman
Empire forced them from eastern Turkey between 1915 and 1923 – and
that this was a deliberate campaign of genocide by Turkey’s rulers at
that time.