By
EMMANUEL GEORGES-PICOT, Associated Press
PARIS (January 18, 2001 6:01 p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com)
- Turkey angrily recalled its ambassador to France on Thursday after French
lawmakers voted unanimously to recognize the 1915 killings of Armenians in
Ottoman Turkey as genocide.
Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit warned that the vote
would further damage relations with France.
"The French parliament has made an extremely unjust
decision, accusing Turkey of an imaginary genocide," Ecevit said. "It
is not possible to accept this unfair decision. The necessary reaction will be
shown."
Despite French government opposition to the measure, the
National Assembly, the Lower House of parliament, unanimously gave final
approval to a text reading: "France publicly recognizes the Armenian
genocide of 1915."
The Senate had given its approval in November.
Armenians say 1.5 million of their people were killed as
part of the Ottoman Empire's campaign to force them out of eastern Turkey
between 1915 and 1923. Turkey says the death count is inflated and that
Armenians were killed or displaced as the Ottoman Empire tried to quell civil
unrest. Modern-day Turkey was born in 1923.
The U.S. House of Representatives shelved a similar
resolution last year after President Clinton warned that it could seriously
damage ties with Turkey. Turkey put intense pressure on the United States,
including threats not to renew the mandate for U.S. aircraft patrolling northern
Iraq.
In a sign that Turkish reaction to the French vote could be
economic as well as political, Sinan Aygun, the head of Ankara's trade chamber,
called for a boycott of French goods, Turkey's Anatolia news agency reported.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem hinted to reporters in
Istanbul that France could be excluded from state tenders and military
transactions.
"It is a pity the French parliament has taken a
decision which I believe did not stand with the values to which France is
presumed to adhere," Cem said.
The French government had opposed the measure, expecting
Ankara's anger.
"France is Armenia's friend," the government's
minister for parliamentary relations, Jean-Jack Queyranne, said Thursday.
"We are also a friend of modern Turkey, which cannot be held responsible
for events which happened during the upheavals of the Ottoman Empire."
But Patrick Devedjian, spokesman for the conservative Rally
for the Republic party - and himself of Armenian origin - said, "Those who
want Turkey to enter the European Union should at least have the decency to ask
it to be presentable."
Turkey has been accepted as a candidate for EU membership
but has not yet opened negotiations.
The European Parliament, Italy, Belgium and Argentina have
also recognized the Armenian killings as genocide.
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