PARIS, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- Turkey threatened to downgrade its French ties to an all-time low after France's Senate criminalized denial of the Armenian genocide of nearly a century ago.
Turkish Ambassador to France Tahsin Burcuoglu said the 127-86 vote, following passage in the Parliament's lower house last month, would lead to a "total rupture" of Franco-Turk relations.
"When I say total rupture, I include things like I can leave definitively," Burcuoglu told reporters, suggesting he could be recalled to Turkey permanently.
The bill, which French President Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to sign into law by February, would impose a fine of more than $58,000 and a year in jail on those who deny any officially recognized genocide. It makes no reference to the estimated 1.5 million Armenians slaughtered under the Ottoman Turks between 1915 and 1918.
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France recognizes only the Armenian massacre and the Holocaust as genocides and already specifically bans Holocaust denial.
"You can also expect that now diplomatic relations will be at the level of charges d'affaires, not ambassadors anymore," Burcuoglu said Monday.
A charge d'affaires is the lowest-rank envoy under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations -- a step above breaking diplomatic relations.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu warned of "permanent sanctions," calling the bill a "black stain" on France.
Turkey has already suspended military cooperation, bilateral political accords and economic contracts with France over the bill.
It raised the possibility Monday of withdrawing support for the French-based 24-hour news channel Euronews, in which Turkey's national public broadcaster holds a 15.5 percent stake, The New York Times reported.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was expected to outline possible retaliatory measures against Paris before Parliament Tuesday.
Turkey has a law that is a mirror image of the French bill, prohibiting descriptions of the Armenian killings as genocide. Turkey says such descriptions insult Turkish identity.
Ankara acknowledges atrocities, but argues no more than 500,000 Armenians died and says the killings did not constitute deliberate and systematic genocide.
It says many Turks perished during those years of war.
Armenia, on Turkey's eastern border, considers Monday's vote a momentous act that "will be written in gold, not only in the history of friendship between the Armenian and French peoples, but also in the annals of the history of the protection of human rights," Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian said.
Sarkozy wrote to Erdogan last week, hoping for "reason and dialogue" with Turkey. He said the bill did not cite the Armenian genocide by name. He said France recognized the "suffering endured by the Turkish people" in the Ottoman Empire's final years.
Sarkozy faces a difficult re-election battle, with a two-round presidential vote April 22 and May 6. Some French opposition members accuse Sarkozy's party of pandering to France's sizable Armenian population.
About 500,000 French citizens claim Armenian descent, the largest such population in Europe. Those who claim Turkish descent number 400,000.
Slovenia and Switzerland treat denial of the Armenian genocide as a crime.
