The Ankara City Council convened on Monday to consider their reaction to France in response to a bill which was approved by the French National Assembly that proposes penalizing those who refuse to recognize the 1915 killings of Armenians as genocide.
Convened under the chairmanship of City Council Deputy Chairman Ali İhsan Ölmez, the council unanimously decided to take action against France for its attitude toward Turkey.
The council's decision read: “The genocide that France carried out in Algeria is still in our memory, and Paris Caddesi, where the French Embassy is located, will be renamed Algerian Street. The name of another street, Dögol [a transliteration of “de Gaulle”], will be changed to the name of an Algerian hero, and a monument in memory of the deaths in Algeria will be built close to the French Embassy as sign of the sympathy and support the people of Ankara have for the Algerian people, who were the victims of French cruelty in the 20th century.”
The City Council's decision was sent to the Nomenclature Committee for approval.
Ankara Mayor Melih Gökçek first mentioned, at a reception on Jan. 4 held in honor of the 92nd anniversary of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's first arrival in Ankara, that the municipality was waiting for the French Senate to approve the bill before committing to its next steps.
Gökçek said at this reception: “We expect to start building a monument for the Algerian dead because of the French by the end of February, but now we are waiting for the French Senate's decision. We will monitor the attitude of the French Senate in February and decide whether we will implement the steps or not.”
If it is approved in the French Senate, the bill will make it illegal to deny that the 1915 mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks was genocide.
