Anakara: Turkey`s Prime Minister on Saturday sharply criticised France for a bill to make it a crime to deny that the World War I-era mass killing of Armenians was genocide.

Saying France should investigate what he said was its own "dirty and bloody history" in Algeria and Rwanda, Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted Turkey would respond "through all kinds of diplomatic means." Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks as their Empire collapsed, an event many international experts regard as genocide and that France recognised as such in 2001. Turkish leaders reject the term, arguing that the toll is inflated and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.
PTI