Turkey Issues "Final Warning" To France Over Armenian Genocide Bill
ANKARA (News Agencies) - Turkey urged France Friday "for the last time" to scrap a bill recognizing the killings of thousands of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as "genocide" and warned of unspecified reprisals.
"We are warning France for the last time on this issue and urging it to abandon this erroneous path which is aimed at hurting the Turkish nation in front of history," foreign ministry spokesman Huseyin Dirioz told a news conference here.
The bill, which has unleashed a torrent of criticism from Turkey, is scheduled to be debated in the French parliament's lower house, the National Assembly, on January 18th.
It has already been adopted in the French upper house, the Senate, in November despite opposition from the government, which fears it would damage France's relations with Turkey.
On Monday, a delegation of Turkish parliamentarians visiting Paris warned of unspecified "reprisals" if the bill becomes law.
The Turkish parliament on Tuesday issued a joint declaration condemning the bill, accusing French legislators of distorting history for political ends and warning that its adoption would not help Turkish-French ties.
One of Turkey's biggest-selling daily newspapers, Milliyet, on the other hand, launched a campaign on Thursday for readers to "bombard" French MPs with messages warning them not to support the bill.
Ankara categorically rejects genocide claims and says that some 300,000 Armenians and thousands of Turks were killed in what was internal fighting during the dissolution years of the Ottoman Empire.
Armenians, on the other hand, maintains that 1.5 million Armenians were massacred between 1915 and 1917.
