Turkey furiously denounced the move by France's senate of passing a bill outlawing the denial of the Armenian genocide in 1915, with Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin saying it was "a great injustice and shows a total lack of respect for Turkey."<br /><br />"We strongly condemn this decision which is... an example of irresponsibility," the Turkish foreign ministry said in a written statement, adding that the government would not hesitate to swiftly implement retaliatory measures.<br /><br />"Politicising the understanding of justice and history through other people's past and damaging freedom of expression in a tactless manner are first and foremost a loss for France," it added.<br /><br />France's upper house of parliament approved a bill that will make it illegal to deny that the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a century ago amounted to genocide.<br /><br />Al Jazeera's Caroline Malone reports.
