French President Emmanuel Macaron's announcement of a national day commemorating the "Armenian genocide" during World War I has angered Turkey, which refuses to recognize it.
McCron said Tuesday evening, before the Coordinating Council of Armenian Organizations in France, that Paris will announce April 24 "National Day to commemorate the Armenian genocide."
In announcing this, the French President has fulfilled the promise he made during his election campaign to put the Armenian genocide between 1915 and 1917 on the French official calendar.
France recognized the Armenian genocide in 2001, while Ankara refuses to recognize it.
"We condemn and reject Makron's attempts, which are facing political problems in his country, to turn historical facts into a political issue to save the situation," Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said in a statement in response to the French move.
"The allegations of so-called Armenian genocide are a political lie that goes against historical facts and has no legal basis," he said. "No one can tarnish our history."
Armenians say 1.5 million of them were killed in an organized manner before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, while a number of historians in more than 20 countries, including France, Italy and Russia, acknowledged genocide.
The Armenian issue raised a dispute between Turkey (the heir of the Ottoman Empire) and a number of countries that described the massacres of Armenians by the Ottoman forces during World War I as "genocide."
Turkey refuses to call genocide a "genocide," saying that those killed were killed during a civil war that coincided with famine, killing only 300,000 to 500,000 Armenians, as well as a similar number of Turks when Ottoman and Russian forces were in control of Anatolia.
