Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said France could no more stand as a co-chairman in the Minsk Group, an OSCE initiative to encourage a peaceful, negotiated resolution to the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Upper Karabakh issue, after the French parliament's adoption of a bill penalizing denial of Armenian allegations on Ottoman era incidents of 1915.
"We need to debate that. And we will question how could a government who assume such a narrow minded attitude in its own parliament continue to act as a co-chairman of the Minsk Group," Davutoglu told a televised interview on news channel CNN-Turk.
Davutoglu said France could no longer work as a mediator in the Upper Karabakh issue, "or Turkey should be among the co-chairs if France would not quit."
The bill penalizes denial of the Armenian allegations on the Ottoman era incidents of 1915 with a prison term of one year and a fine of 45 thousand euros. And it is set to come to the Senate floor on Monday but French senate members could vote to uphold an earlier parliamentary committee decision and drop the bill off the agenda without even debating it.
Davutoglu said the bill was against "human nature, nature of history and the nature of law. I am sure that wise French people will debate a legislations that contradicts these three."
Davutoglu said extreme rightists and Islamophobic circles constituted a major threat to Europe, adding that a similar mind setting had made its way to upper levels of the French politics.
"And I am mostly disappointed by the European Union which kept its silence so far for what is EU but a cluster of European values like freedom of expression and thought," he said.
AA
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