Erdogan lambasts France on genocide law

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan attacked the French parliament on Tuesday for passing a "discriminatory and racist" bill which makes it illegal to deny the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a century ago was genocide. With passions running high in Turkey on Monday's Senate vote, one newspaper denounced the French president as "Satan Sarkozy" and some politicians have already suggested dredging up France's own colonial history.
However, Erdogan appeared keen to avoid an immediate rupture with Paris, saying there was still hope that Nato ally France "would correct its mistake" and that any retaliatory measures would be held back, depending on French actions. "We will not allow anyone to gain political benefit at the expense of Turkey; the bill which was passed in France is clearly discriminatory, racist," Erdogan said.
"We will adopt a rational and dignified stance, we will implement our measures step by step. Right now we are still in a period of patience," he told parliamentary deputies of his AK Party. Encouraged by their success in Paris, the influential Armenian diaspora is expected to re-double its efforts in the United States, which like France is in a presidential election year, to have Washington call what happened a genocide.
Many Turks see the French bill, which the lower house of parliament also backed in December, as an insult to their nation, a travesty of history and an infringement on free speech. As Erdogan spoke, a couple of hundred protesters gathered outside the French embassy in Ankara and consulate in Istanbul in peaceful demonstrations.
The bill now goes to President Nicolas Sarkozy to be ratified. Mostly Muslim Turkey accuses Sarkozy of trying to win the votes of 500,000 ethnic Armenians in France in the two-round presidential vote on April 22 and May 6. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, who was personally against the bill proposed by Sarkozy's party, said the new law was "ill-timed", but called on Ankara to remain calm.
"We need good relations with it and we need to get through this excessive phase," Juppe said on Canal+ television. "We have very important economic and trade ties. I hope the reality of the situation will not be usurped by emotions." Turkey, a member of Nato and the World Trade Organisation, may be limited in its response by its international obligations. However, newspapers listed possible measures that Ankara might take against France. These included recalling its ambassador from Paris and telling the French ambassador to go home, reducing diplomatic ties to charge d'affaires level, and closing Turkish airspace and waters to French military aircraft and vessels.