ANKARA, Jan 11, 2012 (AFP)
ANKARA, Jan 11, 2012 (AFP)
Officials in Turkey’s capital threatened Wednesday to rename any streets with French names and erect a monument to Algerian victims of French colonial violence because of the “genocide” row with Paris.
A Turkish minister threatened other unspecified reprisals if France went ahead with plans to pass a bill that would outlaw denial that the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turk forces amounted to genocide.
French senators will debate the bill on January 23 and if passed, it would go to President Nicolas Sarkozy for approval. France’s lower house, the national assembly, approved the bill last month.
Kavlak, a spokesman for the Ankara city council, said local politicians were waiting for the Senate’s decision before acting.
“Municipal councillors will adopt the decision by a very large majority,” Kavlak predicted. Kavlak said Turkey’s reprisals were the idea of Ankara’s mayor, Melih Gokcek.
If officials went ahead with the reprisals, it would mean renaming streets named after De Gaulle, Paris and Strasbourg, he added.
Turkey accuses France of hypocrisy for its own hand in thousands of killings committed in its former colony in 1945 and during Algeria’s struggle for independence between 1954 and 1962.
The memorial to Algerians “massacred by the French”, would be erected near the French embassy.
But Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia last week urged Turkey to stop trying to make political capital from France’s colonial past.
He said Turkey had been a member of NATO during the war in Algeria and as such had provided material support to France. Turkey’s European affairs minister also warned Wednesday of further sanctions if the French bill is passed into law.
“We have already introduced some sanctions in our relations with France,” Egemen Bagis told AFP.
“In the case that this illogical bill becomes law, then there will be further sanctions.”
As to what that would entail, he said only: “I would leave it to imagination of the French decision-makers.”
Ankara has already hit back by freezing political and military ties with Paris. Armenians and their supporters say up to 1.5 million of their forebears were killed in a coordinated campaign of genocide in 1915 and 1916 by what was then the Ottoman Turkish Empire.
Turkey disputes the figure, saying 500,000 died, and denies this was genocide, ascribing the toll to wartime fighting and starvation and accusing the Armenians of siding with Russian invaders.
France recognised the killings as a genocide in 2001, drawing the ire of Turkey.
