ANKARA – Turkish president Abdullah Gul called on France yesterday to drop a parliamentary Bill making it illegal to deny the 1915 mass killing of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey was genocide.
Tension has risen between Paris and Ankara in the last week over a draft law put forward by a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party to be debated in parliament tomorrow.
Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan wrote a letter to Mr Sarkozy last week warning political and economic relations would suffer grave consequences if the Bill is passed. But it is not clear what unilateral steps Turkey, a World Trade Organisation member, can take. – (Reuters)