Turkey Assails France for Genocide Law

The Defense Ministry scrapped a $200-million deal with a French company Tuesday as Turkey swiftly retaliated against a new French law recognizing as a genocide the killings of Armenians during the Ottoman Empire.

The decision to cancel Dassault Aviation’s contract to upgrade electronic warfare systems on 80 Turkish F-16 warplanes came immediately after French President Jacques Chirac signed the law, which was passed by Parliament on Jan. 18.

Turkey had hoped that its warning of a breakdown in economic and political ties would dissuade Chirac. But Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said: “We’re not surprised. We face more disappointment in our relations with France.”

Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem called Chirac’s action “anti-Muslim, anti-Turkish.” He said the law was an effort “to deflect public opinion away from French atrocities” during its colonial war in Algeria that ended with that country’s independence from France in 1962.

Ankara Mayor Melih Gokcek said he will erect a monument in the Turkish capital to commemorate “the massacre of our Muslim brothers” in Algeria and give new names to the city’s Strasbourg and Paris avenues.

Turkey had already recalled its ambassador to Paris, canceled a $149-million tender from a French company to launch a spy satellite, excluded two French companies from bidding to buy about $40 million worth of Turkish wheat and stopped imports of French wine and cheese.

Public reaction has been equally strong, with taxi drivers refusing to carry French passengers, vacationers canceling holidays in France, and other Turks lobbing eggs and rotten tomatoes at the French Embassy almost daily.

Armenians say about 1.5 million of their people were killed in an Ottoman military campaign to drive them from eastern Turkey between 1915 and 1923. Turkey rejects that claim and says the death count is inflated. Turkish officials and historians acknowledge that 300,000 to 600,000 Armenians died of exposure to the elements and starvation during forced displacement by Ottoman troops.

Anti-European sentiment in Turkey could widen if other European parliaments follow France’s lead, Turkish commentators warn, and this shift could weigh against the Ankara government’s long-standing aspiration to join the European Union.

The European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, and the Belgian Senate have approved bills that call on Turkey to recognize the massacre of Armenians as a genocide but have stopped short of doing so themselves.

In October, the U.S. House of Representatives shelved a similar resolution after President Clinton warned that it could harm ties with Turkey, a strategic ally in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.