Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called for a "new era" in French-Turkish relations in a congratulatory phone call to President-elect Francois Hollande, officials said Friday, May 11.
Hurriyet Daily News reports that in the call late on Thursday, Erdoğan said he hopes "bilateral relations will from now on be free from artificial questions currently affecting them," an official in Erdoğan's entourage said.
"I am confident on the subject of a new era in our relations," Erdoğan told Hollande, according to the official.
France's relations with Turkey were frosty under outgoing president Nicolas Sarkozy, who opposed Turkish entry in the European Union. The ties further strained after the French parliament passed the bill penalizing the Armenian Genocide denial, which, however, was later ruled as unconstitutional by the French Constitutional Council.
Erdoğan had accused Sarkozy of “trying to boost his election prospects by tapping anti-Muslim and anti-Turkish sentiment.”
