ISTANBUL: Turkey has accused France of committing genocide during its colonial occupation of Algeria.
The comments Friday by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan are the latest response to French legislators passing a bill making it a crime to deny that the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a century ago constitute genocide.
Erdogan says massacres were carried out by French colonialists in Algeria and that Algerians were burned in ovens.
The French bill still needs Senate approval. But after it passed the lower house, Erdogan halted bilateral political and economic contacts, suspended military cooperation and ordered his country’s ambassador home for consultations.
Note by the editor: It seems that France has no problems to solve these days that they have time to waste discussing what happened nearly 100 years ago (and far from their own country). Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)