Turkey and France tussle over genocide bill:?Turkey, angered by a French bill forbidding denial of the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide, accused France of committing genocide during its occupation of Algeria.
Turkey responded to French genocide allegations with a charge of its own Friday, accusing France of committing genocide during its colonial occupation of Algeria.
Skip to next paragraphFrench lawmakers passed a bill Thursday making it a crime to deny that the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks constitute genocide.
The deepening acrimony between two strategic allies and trading partners could have repercussions far beyond the settling of accounts over some of the bloodiest episodes of the past century.
Turkey was already frustrated by French opposition to its stalled European Union bid, and hopes for Western-backed rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia seem ever more distant ahead of 2015, the 100th anniversary of the Armenian killings.
The bill strikes at the heart of national honor in Turkey, which maintains there was no systematic campaign to kill Armenians and that many Turks also died during the chaotic disintegration of the Ottoman Empire.
The French bill still needs Senate approval, but after it passed the lower house, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan halted bilateral political and economic contacts, suspended military cooperation, and ordered his country's ambassador home for consultations.
Turkey and France worked closely together during NATO's operation against Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, and had been coordinating policy on Syria and Afghanistan.
"What the French did in Algeria was genocide," Mr. Erdogan said Friday in a heavily personal speech, laced with criticism of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
He alleged that beginning in 1945, about 15 percent of the population of Algeria was massacred by the French. He also said Algerians were burned in ovens.
"They were mercilessly martyred," he said.
Erdogan appeared to be referring to allegations that the French burned the dead in ovens after a 1945 uprising that began in the Algerian town of Setif. Algerians say some 45,000 people may have died. French figures say up to 20,000.
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