French group Alcatel said Tuesday it had been excluded from a big mobile telephone contract in Turkey as Franco-Turkish ties were soured by a row over a charge of genocide against Armenians.
"We found out on Monday evening that the previous call for offers in which we were taking part in had been cancelled," said a communications official at Alcatel's Turkish subsidiary, Alcatel Teletas. "We have not received any information about a new call for offers, nor have we been invited to participate," said the Alcatel Teletas official, Aysun Hobek.
Turk Telecom said the previous evening it had cancelled the offer for technical reasons linked to financial changes in the project.
Alcatel, a telecommunications equipment manufacturer, had been in contention with four other competitors — Finland's Nokia, Sweden's Ericsson, Germany's Siemens and Turkey's Netas.
The contract was to supply infrastructure equipment for Turk Telecom's Global System for Mobile telecommunications (GSM) mobile telephone network, at a maximum cost of $350 million (€375 million).
Turk Telecom managing director Irbahim Alpturk, said Tuesday the operator had "excluded Alcatel" and invited the four other companies previously in the contest to make new offers, television news channel NTV reported.
Turkey's transport and telecommunications minister, Enis Oksuz, said the cancellation of the first call for offers, "was not a retaliation against any of the participants," according to Anatolian news agency.
Alcatel had already had a preliminary contract to supply a spy satellite cancelled on January 23 following France's adoption of a bill recognizing the killing of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire as genocide.
The Armenian genocide bill, passed by the French parliament last month, triggered outrage in Turkey with almost daily protests and calls for boycotts of French goods.
Ankara categorically rejects accusations of genocide, saying that around 300,000 Armenians and thousands of Turks were killed in internal fighting in the final years of the Ottoman Empire. Armenians, however, maintain that 1.5 million people died in orchestrated massacres between 1915 and 1917. — (AFP, Istanbul)
© Agence France Presse 2001
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
