Turkey Lobbies Companies to Warn France on Armenia Bill
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Turkey is warning France of economic pain if its parliament approves a bill this week that would make it a crime to deny that Ottoman Turks committed genocide against Armenians a century ago.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu summoned more than 20 local executives last week from companies including Credit Agricole SA and Groupama SA to lobby them against the French bill, according to two people at the Dec. 15 meeting who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. France will incur “hard-to-fix damages,” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Dec. 17. He called on French President Nicolas Sarkozy to block the measure.