ANKARA: Erdoðan’s response to Sarkozy

Sabah, Turkey
23 Dec 2011

Erdoðan’s response to Sarkozy
Breaking News

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoðan accused France of genocide in Algeria
in the 1940s and 50s, responding to a French parliament vote to make
it a crime to deny that the mass killings of Armenians in Ottoman
Turkey was ‘so-called genocide’.

Erdoðan also said President Nicolas Sarkozy’s father might have direct
knowledge about French “massacres” in Algeria. “In Algeria from 1945,
an estimated 15 percent of the population was massacred by the French.
This is genocide,” Erdoðan said on live television.
“If the French President Mr. Sarkozy doesn’t know about this genocide
he should go and ask his father, Paul Sarkozy. “His father served in
the French Legion in Algeria in the 1940s. I am sure he would have
lots to tell his son about the French massacres in Algeria,” Erdoðan
said.
Parliamentarians in France’s lower house of parliament voted
overwhelmingly in favour of a draft law outlawing the denial of
Armenian allegations on Thursday, which the Senate will debate next
year. If passed, the bill would make it illegal to deny the 1915 mass
killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks amounted to ‘so-called
genocide’.
The issue has caused outrage in Turkey, which argues killings took
place on all sides during a fierce partisan conflict. Erdoðan
condemned the bill shortly after the vote, recalled Ankara’s
ambassador to France for consultations and cancelled all joint
economic, political and military meetings.
On Friday, he vowed to take more steps. “We will take gradual measures
as long as the current (French) attitude is maintained,” he said,
without elaborating. “The vote in the French parliament has shown how
dangerous racism, discrimination and Islamophobia have become in
France and Europe.”