Azernews.Az

The Turkish ambassador to France, Tahsin Burcuoglu, has reportedly returned to Paris at the weekend more than two weeks after being recalled to Ankara in protest against a French bill criminalizing that makes it illegal to deny that Ottoman massacres of Armenians constituted geonicide, Radio Liberty reports.

"The ambassador has finished the consultations for which he was recalled and returned to France on Saturday [January 7]," Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Selcuk Unal told the AFP news agency on Sunday.

"Hurriyet Daily News" reported last week that Burcuoglu would be sent back to Paris to "coordinate" Turkish efforts to prevent the genocide bill’s passage by the French Senate.

The Senate is expected to debate and vote on the measure, strongly condemned by Turkey, later this month.

The French government and the opposition Socialist Party, which holds a majority of seats in the chamber, have signaled support for its passage.

The Turkish ambassador was recalled for consultations immediately after the bill was approved by the lower house of France’s parliament, the National Assembly, on December 22.

Ankara reacted furiously to that vote, banning French military aircraft and warships from landing and docking in Turkey and freezing political and economic meetings.

Algerian criticism of comparisons
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan slammed the French bill as "politics based on racism, discrimination and xenophobia" and accused French President Nicolas Sarkozy of pandering to France’s influential Armenian community. He also claimed that France itself committed genocide in Algeria, its former colony.

Erdogan’s references to colonial-era killings in Algeria prompted criticism from Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia.

He said on January 7 that "nobody has the right to make the blood of Algerians their business."

Ouyahia noted that Turkey was a member of NATO during the independence war in Algeria and as such provided material support to France.