Turkey's main opposition party submitted to parliament Tuesday a draft bill recognizing as genocide the massacres that France committed during Algeria's war of independence, a party official told AFP.
The proposal, signed by 42 MPs from the pro-Islamic Virtue Party, came as a tit-for-tat move against the French parliament's adoption last Thursday of a bill acknowledging as genocide the killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire.
The draft text read that, "Turkey openly recognizes the genocide France committed in Algeria." In the proposal cited by the Anatolia news agency, the deputies said the Algerians "expelled France from Algeria after giving away two million martyrs" before gaining independence in the early 1960s.
The aim of the bill was "to keep alive the memory of Algerian martyrs, to acknowledge the massacres and crimes against humanity France committed in Algeria and to leave it alone with its attitude against international peace and courtesy."
The Armenian genocide bill passed by French MPs triggered a wave of outrage in Turkey with the government saying that the traditionally warm ties between Turkey and France were dealt a "serious and lasting" blow.
In a first concrete counter-move, Ankara said Tuesday it has scrapped a spy satellite contract with French firm Alcatel, worth around $200 million (€212 million).
Defense Minister Sabahattin Cakmakoglu said Turkey would also consider excluding French companies from other defense projects, including a giant tender for the joint production of 1,000 battle tanks, estimated at some seven billion dollars.
His announcement came amid continuing protests in front of the French embassy here and calls for boycotts of French goods.
Turkey believes the genocide bill was politically motivated to please France's influential Armenian Diaspora ahead of municipal elections in March and general polls next year.
Ankara categorically rejects claims of genocide, saying that some 300,000 Armenians and thousands of Turks were killed in what was internal fighting between in the dissolution years of the Ottoman Empire. Armenians, however, maintain that 1.5 million people died in orchestrated massacres between 1915 and 1917. — (AFP, Ankara)
© Agence France Presse 2001
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
