Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan issued a statement on the Jan 23 debate of the bill penalizing the Armenian Genocide denial in the French Senate.

“We will resort to retaliatory measures if the draft law is adopted,” Erdoğan stated, noting the Genocide motion as a part of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s election campaign, Turkish media reports say.

On December 22, 2011, French National Assembly passed a bill criminalizing public denial of the Armenian Genocide. If passed and signed into law by the Senate, the bill would impose a 45,000 euro fine and a year in prison for anyone in France who denies this crime against humanity committed by the Ottoman Empire.