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Belfast Telegraph
December 23, 2011 Friday
First Edition
Genocide row: Turks pull envoy from Paris
TURKEY has retaliated against France after MPs there passed a bill to
make it a crime to deny the mass killings of Armenians in 1915 by
Ottoman Turks amounted to genocide.
Ankara ordered its ambassador home and halted official contacts,
including some military co-operation.
Turkey, a Nato member, is a strategic ally of France and valued
trading partner, and the moves diminish ties at a particularly crucial
time. Paris and Ankara are both deeply involved in international
issues from the uprising in Syria to Afghanistan.
Turkey vehemently rejects the term "genocide" for the First World War
era-mass killings of Armenians, saying the issue should be left to
historians. French MPs denounced what they called Turkey's propaganda
effort in a bid to sway them.
But last weekend the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
said: "Those who do want to see genocide should turn around and look
at their own dirty and bloody history."
December 23, 2011 Friday
First Edition
Genocide row: Turks pull envoy from Paris
TURKEY has retaliated against France after MPs there passed a bill to
make it a crime to deny the mass killings of Armenians in 1915 by
Ottoman Turks amounted to genocide.
Ankara ordered its ambassador home and halted official contacts,
including some military co-operation.
Turkey, a Nato member, is a strategic ally of France and valued
trading partner, and the moves diminish ties at a particularly crucial
time. Paris and Ankara are both deeply involved in international
issues from the uprising in Syria to Afghanistan.
Turkey vehemently rejects the term "genocide" for the First World War
era-mass killings of Armenians, saying the issue should be left to
historians. French MPs denounced what they called Turkey's propaganda
effort in a bid to sway them.
But last weekend the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
said: "Those who do want to see genocide should turn around and look
at their own dirty and bloody history."