[JURIST] The Turkish Parliament [official website, in Turkish] on Tuesday passed a resolution condemning a French bill [text, in French] that criminalizes any refusal to characterize the WWI-era mass killings of Armenians [ANI backgrounder] in Turkey as genocide, but did not take any further retaliatory action. The bill passed France's lower house [JURIST report] last week but still needs approval by the French Senate and President Jacques Chirac to become national law. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, meanwhile, has urged the French Senate to reject the bill [press release; AP report] as a violation of free speech principles.

The Turkish parliament has previously threatened retaliation [JURIST report] against the French law by proposing a similar bill [JURIST report] labeling as genocide the French colonial killings of Algerians [JURIST report], and making it illegal to deny the French as culpable. The EU has said the French bill comes at a bad time for EU relations with Turkey [JURIST report] as the two are currently engaged in enlargement talks. French President Jacques Chirac has reportedly apologized [JURIST report] to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the row. Reuters has more.