Ankara threatens sanctions if Paris adopts Genocide bill

PanARMENIAN.Net - Ankara is ready for reprisals should Paris approve the legislation punishing the denial of Armenian Genocide.

“Probably tomorrow I will announce what we will do at the first stage and we will then announce the sanctions to follow,” Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday, December 21.

He said the move by French President Nicolas Sarkozy was aimed at electoral gains and would "harm French-Turkish relations" and called on Paris to quash the bill, Itar-Tass reports.

“France is home for 500 thousand Armenians in line with 550 thousand ethnic Turkish citizens. Apparently, other 2, 3, 4 million of other people in France would share our point of view. If the bill is approved protests will grow among French citizens as well,” said Erdogan, adding that Sarkozy’s isolation from Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul during the time Turkey intensified criticism of the bill is a “diplomatic blunder”.

“We do not make such miscalculations and blunders in international diplomacy,” he said.

Today, December 22, the French parliament is to debate the bill, which envisages a year in jail and a fine of 45,000 euros for those who publicly deny the Armenian Genocide in France.

Turkey has piled pressure on France to drop the law ahead of the vote, with President Abdullah Gul and a Turkish delegation to Paris warning its adoption will spark a diplomatic crisis and have economic consequences.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu threatened to introduce a bill on “the genocide committed by France in Algeria, where 45000 local residents died in 1945.” PACE President Mevlut Cavusoglu laid “the responsibility of possible worsening of relations between Paris and Ankara on Nicolas Sarkozy.”

Meanwhile, many French politicians stand for adoption of the bill. “The Armenian Genocide is a fact of history and a proposed French law making it illegal to deny this has nothing to do with forthcoming elections,” France's Minister for Europe Jean Leonetti has said.