Dispute over Mass Killings of Armenians: French Law Outrages Turks

From Dispute over Mass Killings of Armenians: French Law Outrages Turks:

French lawmakers have made it a crime to deny that the mass killings of Armenians that occurred in Turkey during World War I amounted to genocide. The decision has caused outrage among both politicians and critical intellectuals in Turkey. Now France faces economic retaliation from Ankara.

"There is a century-long friendship between Turkey and France. Now, with this decision, France is destroying the basis of that friendship," says Onur Oymen, a Turkish parliamentarian and member of the opposition Social Democrats. Oymen, who was visibly shaken as he spoke, is one of three Turkish members of parliament who travelled to Paris in response to French lawmakers debating a bill on the mass killings of Armenians that occurred in Turkey during World War I.