Turkey slams France over genocide bill

Turkey's prime minister on Saturday sharply criticized France for a bill that would make it a crime to deny the World War I-era mass killing of Armenians was genocide.           

Saying France should investigate what he said was its own "dirty and bloody history" in Algeria and Rwanda, Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted Turkey would respond "through all kinds of diplomatic means."            

Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks as their Empire collapsed, an event many international experts regard as genocide and that France recognized as such in 2001. Turkish leaders reject the term, arguing that the toll is inflated, that there were deaths on both sides and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.             

On Dec. 22, the lower house of French Parliament will debate a proposal that would make denying that the massacre was genocide punishable by up to a year in prison and 45,000 ($58,500) in fines, putting it on par with Holocaust denial, which was banned in the country in 1990.          

Erdogan lashed out at France during a joint news conference with Mustafa Abdul-Jalil  the chairman of Libya's National Transitional Council  saying there were reports that France was responsible for the deaths of 45,000 people in Algeria in 1945 and for the massacre of up to 800,000 people in Rwanda in 1994.           

"No historian, no politician can see genocide in our history," Erdogan said. "Those who do want to see genocide should turn around and look at their own dirty and bloody history."                  

AP