Turkey Welcomes French Court’s Armenian Genocide Ruling
By RFE RL
(RFE/RL) — Turkey has welcomed a ruling by France’s Constitutional Council that a law concerning the mass killings of Armenians a century ago violates the country’s constitution.
The law, passed in December, made it a crime to deny that the killing of some 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915-1919 constituted genocide.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the government in Ankara would meet soon to consider whether to restart economic, political, and military contacts with France.
Those ties were frozen by Turkey after the French Parliament passed the law.
However, French President Nicolas Sarkozy responded to the court ruling by ordering his government to draft a new law punishing those who deny that the mass killings of Armenians in Turkey was genocide.
