Turkey has accused French presidential candidates Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande of exploiting World War I-era killings of Armenians at the hands of Ottomans to get the support of its sizeable Armenian community in the second round of the presidential election.
Turkish media quoted a Foreign Ministry statement as saying on Tuesday that statements by French presidential rivals over the 1915 events were "another example of exploiting of controversial historical issues for political calculations."
Turkey denies Armenian claims of genocide, saying there were deaths on both sides as Armenians revolted against the Ottoman Empire in collaboration with the Russian Army, which was then invading eastern Anatolia, to establish an independent Armenian state.
It is unfortunate that history is politicized based on various goals and that discriminatory behaviors will not help justice and understand history better, the Ministry said in a statement and urged French politicians to exercise restraint as statesmen. It is impossible to get results from outside artificial imposition in a subject where relevant states should reach a solution, it said and added that similar statements are detrimental to peace efforts in the region.
Turkey recalled its Ambassador to France and halted official contact in retaliation for a vote in the French Parliament making it a crime to deny the World War I-era mass killings of Armenians was a genocide.
An estimated 500,000 Armenians live in France and many have pressed to raise the legal statute regarding the massacres to the same level as the Holocaust by punishing denial of genocide.
France formally recognized the killings as genocide in 2001, but provided no penalty for anyone denying that. The bill, which rejected by the French Constitutional Council, sets a punishment of up to one year in prison and a fine of EUR 45,000 ($59,000) for those who deny or "outrageously minimize" the killings by Ottoman Turks, putting such action on a par with denial of the Holocaust.
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