ISTANBUL – Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan accused France of genocide in Algeria in the 1940s and 1950s, in his latest response to a French parliament vote to make it a crime to deny that the mass killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey was genocide.
Mr Erdogan also said French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s father might have direct knowledge about French “massacres” in Algeria.
“In Algeria from 1945, an estimated 15 per cent of the population was massacred by the French. This is a genocide,” he said. “[Mr Sarkozy’s] father served in the French legion in Algeria in the 1940s. I am sure he would have lots to tell his son about the French massacres in Algeria.” – (Reuters)
