Turkey has decided to keep sanctions on France it imposed after French assembly endorsed a bill making it a crime to deny the so-called "Armenian genocide", government spokesman said on Monday, Today's Zaman reported.
Bulent Arinc, who is also deputy prime minister, told reporters following a cabinet meeting on Monday that controversial French bill on "Armenian genocide" was brought to the agenda of the meeting. He welcomed the ruling of the French Constitutional Council which said last week that genocide-denial bill is "unconstitutional" and violates freedom of speech.
Shortly after the ruling was announced, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said the Cabinet would meet to consider whether to restart economic, political and military contacts with France that were frozen after the French Parliament passed the law on Jan. 23.
Turkish officials argued that France's center-right government had supported the law to secure the votes of some 500,000 Armenians living in France. Ankara denounced the bill as an attack on freedom of expression.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy asked his government last Tuesday to draft a new version of the genocide-denial law after it was struck down as unconstitutional. "The President of the Republic considers that [genocide] denial is intolerable and must therefore be punished," his office wrote in a statement.
"He has asked the government to prepare a new draft taking into account the decision of the Constitutional Council," the statement added.
Arınç downplayed Sarkozy's second attempt to bring a modified version of the genocide-denial bill to the agenda of the Parliament, saying that the French Assembly will go to recess on Tuesday before campaign for presidential elections slated for April.
Arınç said Davutoğlu said during the cabinet meeting that previously announced sanctions and measures taken against France must continue.