Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Saturday that the French adoption to the Armenian genocide bill would damage ties between France and Turkey.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Saturday that the French adoption to the Armenian genocide bill would damage ties between France and Turkey.

The legislation set to be voted on by the French parliament next Thursday would make it a crime to deny that the killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire was a genocide, a move that Ankara has been resisting for a long time.

"I hope that the French National Assembly will reverse this error of penalizing the denial of historical lies," AFP quoted Erdogan as saying.

The agency further reported that the latter “lashed out at France over its own bloody colonial past”.

"Turkey will oppose by all diplomatic means these populist, unjust and illegal moves," he added.

"If the French lawmakers want to remember history, I would advise them to shed light on the events of Algeria and Rwanda and the roles of French soldiers… No historian, no politician can see genocide in our past. Those who want to see genocide should look to their own dirty and bloody history," Erdogan continued.