Turkey on Saturday announced the latest in a series of trade reprisals against France, saying the electronics firm Thales would be excluded from tendering for a multi-million-dollar radar contract.
The semi-official Anatolia news agency quoted sources in Turkey's civil aviation authority as saying that the French firm would be excluded from tendering for contracts worth $35 million (€38 million) to refurbish radar equipment at several airports.
The statement appeared to also cast doubt on a much bigger project — valued at around $150 million — for the building of an air traffic control center for Turkey.
Ankara has unleashed a wave of trade reprisals against Paris since the French parliament adopted a law recognizing as "genocide" the mass killings of ethnic Armenians in Turkey during World War I.
Thales, which until last December was known as Thomson CSF, has in the past taken part in all tender offers concerning radar equipment for Turkey's airports.
The French parliament adopted the genocide bill on January 18, and it was signed into law by President Jacques Chirac last Tuesday.
The European Commission Friday appealed to Turkey for moderation in its virulent reaction to France's official recognition of the killing of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire as genocide.
"For the time being, the message is, calm the situation," commission spokesman Jean-Christophe Filori told a press briefing.
He said the commission would make a legal enquiry into the economic retaliatory measures taken by Turkey after French President Jacques Chirac signed the genocide recognition into law this week.
In addition, the city of Paris said it would erect a bronze memorial to the victims of the 1915 massacres and the Armenians who were killed during both World Wars.
The moves infuriated Ankara, which categorically rejects the claims of genocide, saying that some 300,000 Armenians and thousands of Turks were killed in what was internal fighting at the time of the break-up of the Ottoman Empire.
Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said the promulgation of the French law did not come as a surprise, but he described it as a "serious disappointment in our relations with France. "We are doing what is necessary. We are reconsidering our political and economic relations," Ecevit told reporters in Ankara earlier in the week, without elaborating.
But Turkey responded quickly by canceling a contract with France's Dassault firm for the installation of electronic systems on 80 warplanes.
The decision to oust the French company from the project, estimated at some $200 million (€212 million), was taken at a meeting between officials from Turkey's general staff and the defense ministry, said a report from Ankara.
Dassault is the second French company to be excluded from a defense contract since January 18, when French deputies passed the bill signed by Chirac.
Last week, Turkey annulled a preliminary contract with Alcatel for a spy satellite, worth some $200 million and warned of more economic sanctions. And on Thursday, Turkey cancelled a major highway tender in which both bidding consortia included French companies.
Filori reiterated remarks by EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen calling on Ankara not to "over-react" to the French moves and calling it "friendly advice."
Turkey is last in line among 13 candidate countries for EU membership. Its candidate status was made contingent by last December's Helsinki summit on Ankara accepting EU precepts on human rights, democracy and the rule of law, conditions it has not yet satisfied.
Verheugen said it was not for the commission to issue opinions on the vote by the French parliament, which concerned "events that happened a very long time ago, even well before European construction." Verheugen would "leave that debate to the historians," said the spokesman. — (AFP, Brussels, Ankara)
© Agence France Presse 2001
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
