Turkey hopes the new French president Francois Hollande will open a fresh page in relations with Ankara and, unlike his predecessor, back the Muslim-majority country’s EU bid.

Turkey hopes the new French president Francois Hollande will open a fresh page in relations with Ankara and, unlike his predecessor, back the country's EU bid.

"We are hoping that he (Hollande) would open a new page in the very deep and fruitful historical relations between Turkey and France," Turkey's European Affairs Minister Egemen Bagis told AFP.

Ankara would like to see France "become one of the champions of Turkish integration in the EU," as it was under President Jacques Chirac, he said.

That was not the case under the outgoing French leader Nicolas Sarkozy, who opposed Turkey becoming a full member of the European Union.

Tensions between Ankara and Paris also flared this year over a French law making it a crime to deny the Armenian massacre by Ottoman Turks, a point of World War I history that Turkey disputes. The law was eventually overturned by the French Constitutional Court.

Hollande, after winning the run-off vote on May 6, will take over as president on May 15. The Socialist leader has shown himself to be more open to Turkey's EU ambitions.