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Algeria PM tells Turkey to stop citing French colonisation

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  • Algeria PM tells Turkey to stop citing French colonisation

    Agence France Presse
    January 7, 2012 Saturday 6:04 PM GMT


    Algeria PM tells Turkey to stop citing French colonisation

    ALGIERS, Jan 7 2012


    Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia urged Turkey Saturday to stop
    trying to make political capital out of France's killing of thousands
    of Algerians during the colonial period.

    He made the call as Turkey continued to assail Paris ahead of a French
    Senate vote on a bill that would make it a crime for anyone to deny
    that the killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks 1915-17 amounted to
    genocide.

    Turkey has accused France of hypocrisy for its own hand in killings
    committed in its former colony, Algeria, in 1945 and during the north
    African nation's struggle for independence between 1954 and 1962.

    "An estimated 15 percent of the Algerian population was massacred by
    the French from 1945 onwards," Erdogan has said. "This is a genocide."

    Ouyahia said every country has the right to defend its interests, but
    "nobody has the right to make the blood of Algerians their business."

    French forces cracked down on a protest in the east Algerian city of
    Setif on May 8, 1945, to call for an end to French colonial rule,
    leaving 45,000 people dead, according to Algerian historians.

    Western researchers put the death toll at between 8,000 and 18,000.

    Ouyahia noted that Turkey had been a member of NATO during the war in
    Algeria and as such had provided material support to France.

    "We say to our (Turkish) friends: Stop making capital out of Algeria's
    colonisation," Ouyahia said at a press conference.

    The French lower house approved the genocide bill December 22 and the
    Senate is expected to vote on it by the end of January.

    If it is enacted, anyone denying that the 1915-1917 massacre of
    Armenians by Ottoman Turk forces amounted to genocide, could face jail
    time.

    ad-abh/wat/mlr




    From: A. Papazian
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