Turkey's new enemy: France

Erdogan recalls Paris envoy, halts military cooperation over Armenian genocide bill
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Turkey's prime minister says his country is recalling its ambassador to France and halting official contact in retaliation for a vote in the French Parliament making it a crime to deny that WWI-era mass killings of Armenians was a genocide .
Recep Tayyip Erdogan also said Thursday that Ankara was halting military cooperation between the two countries by suspending joint maneuvers and restricting French military flights.
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Erdogan says more retaliatory moves may follow.
The Turkish leader said Thursday that the French bill was racist, discriminatory and xenophobic and added that it had opened wounds with Paris that would be difficult to heal.
Erdogan said Turkey was cancelling all economic, political and military meetings with NATO partner France and said Ankara would cancel permission for French military planes to land and warships to dock in Turkey as a result of the bill.
  • The French bill, which will next be put to the Senate, or upper house, for debate in 2012, has triggered outrage in Turkey as it would include the 1915 mass killing of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey.
The bill was passed Thursday in France's lower house. Turkey rejects the term "genocide" to describe the killings.
Associated Press and Reuters contributed to the story
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