Azernews.Az

Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry on Thursday summoned French ambassador Gabriel Keller and expressed a strong protest over the discussions in France’s parliament of a bill seeking to outlaw denial of the alleged Armenian genocide in Turkey, a Turkish lawmaker has said.

The National Assembly, the lower chamber of France’s parliament, in December passed a bill which envisions a jail sentence of up to one year and a 45,000 euro fine for those denying that the "genocide" of Armenians occurred in Ottoman Turkey during World War I. A French Senate committee on Wednesday rejected the bill, but the move was unlikely to stop the diplomatically fraught bill passing at a final vote next Monday, AFP reported earlier.

Necdet Unuvar, head of the Grand National Assembly’s friendship group for Azerbaijan, told a news conference in Baku that Azerbaijan’s protest, which was expressed by Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov, came as a result of the Turkish parliamentary delegation’s meetings held in Baku.

Unuvar said the issue was discussed with Azerbaijani officials, parliament members and media representatives.

"Some steps were taken after the meetings. Azerbaijani and Turkish communities began to work in concert in France. Our embassies in Paris will join effort to address the issue. The Milli Majlis [Azerbaijani parliament] international relations committee has written a letter to the French Senate."

Armenia says 1.5 million of their kin were killed in a genocide in the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor of present-day Turkey. Ankara dismisses the claims, saying around 500,000 died in fighting after Armenians sided with Russian invaders.