The French parliament has adopted a bill making it a crime to deny that Armenians suffered ?genocide? at the hands of the Turks, infuriating Turkey.

The bill, which would make genocide denial punishable by a year in jail and a 45,000-euro ($56,400) fine, will now be passed to the Senate and president.

Turkey has threatened to retaliate with economic sanctions against France.

Armenia says Ottoman Turks killed 1.5 million people systematically in 1915 ? a claim strongly denied by Turkey.

Free vote

Turkey has been warning France for weeks not to pass the bill. Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said on Wednesday: ?If this bill is passed, Turkey will not lose anything but France will lose Turkey. France will turn into a country that jails people who express their views.? The vote, in the lower house of the French parliament yesterday morning, was sponsored by the opposition Socialist party.

The ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) did not back the law, but gave its deputies a free vote. It passed by 106 votes to 19.

FRENCH LOWER HOUSE APPROVES ARMENIAN GENOCIDE BILL

■ France?s lower house of parliament voted yesterday to make it a crime to deny that Armenians suffered genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turks ? a move which could seriously damage Turkey?s relations with France.

Here are some details:

• THE BACKGROUND:

■ In the late 19th century the Armenian minority, numbering an estimated 2 million, in the Ottoman Empire were encouraged by exiled groups in the United States, Geneva and in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, to assert their nationalism.

■ Repression by Ottoman irregulars, mainly Kurds, led to the massacre of some 30,000 Armenians in eastern Anatolia in 1894-1896. Several thousand more were killed in Constantinople in August 1896 after Armenian extremists seized the Ottoman Bank to draw attention to their cause.

■ Their massacres were halted after the Great Powers threatened to intervene.

WHAT HAPPENED IN 1915:

■ As the Ottomans fought Russian forces in eastern Anatolia during World War One, many Armenians formed partisan groups to assist the invading Russian armies.

■ On April 24, 1915, Turkey arrested and killed hundreds of Armenian intelligentsia.

■ In May 1915, Ottoman commanders began mass deportation of Armenians from eastern Turkey thinking they might assist Russian invaders.

■ Thousands were marched from the Anatolian borders towards Syria and Mesopotamia (now Iraq) and Armenians say some 1.5 million died either in massacres or from starvation or deprivation as they were marched through the desert.

TURKEY?S VIEW:

■ Turkey has always denied there was a systematic campaign to annihilate Armenians, saying that thousands of Turks and Armenians died in inter-ethnic violence as the Ottoman Empire started to collapse and fought a Russian invasion of its eastern provinces during World War One.

■ The modern Turkish republic was established in 1923 after the Ottoman empire collapsed.