FRENCH-TURKISH ROW OVER ARMENIAN ISSUE ON VERGE OF GETTING OUT OF CONTROL

Arab Monitor, Italy
Oct 10 2006

Ankara, 9 October – The French-Turkish row over the Armenian issue
risks spinning out of control, as Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul
threatened his country might barr France from all economic projects if
the French Parliament adpoted a proposed bill regarding the massacres
of Armenians during World War I. The draft law, to be debated in
Parliament in Paris on Thursday, would allow to sentence to five years
in prison and to a fine of 45.000 Euros anybody who denies that the
massacre of Armenians during World War I constituted a genocide.

Gul announced that if the French Parliament adopts the bill, Turkey
would reconsider French participation in major economic projects,
such as the planned construction of a nuclear industrial facility.

French-Turkish relationships began to become clouded in 2001, when
Paris first adopted a law branding the mass killings of Armenians as
genocide. Faced with a second draft that would make the genocide-issue
Holocaust-denial-proof, Turkish parliamentarians have hinted that
Turkey might retaliate adopting a law branding as genocide the
massacres committed by French military against Algerians under French
colonial rule and by providing for prison sentences for those who
deny an Algerian genocide had taken place.