Turkey's retiring ambassador to France, Tahsin Burcuoglu thanked the Turkish community on Saturday for its support during France's temporary criminalization in 2012 - when it denied Armenian allegations relating to events in 1915.

“Our relations with France were almost at a breaking point in early 2012 [over the Turkish-Armenian controversy],” Ambassador Tahsin Burcuoglu said at a reception in his honor in Cergy-Pontoise, a town northwest of Paris.

In December 2011 Turkey recalled Burculoglu for consultations, after the French parliament passed a law criminalizing the public denial of Armenia's allegations relating to the events of 1915 during the Ottoman Empire.

France's then president, Nicolas Sarkozy later signed the law, which was overturned by France's Constitutional Council on February 28 on the grounds it was unconstitutional.

Thanking the Turkish community in France and the Turkish government for their unwavering stance during the tense period, Burcuoglu added: “I will never forget how we struggled together.”

Burcuoglu, who began his term as ambassador on February 1, 2010, will retire on February 14.

Commenting on how the Turkish community has come a long way since the 1980s, during which he served as an undersecretary in Paris, the retiring ambassador said: “we had one doctor in the 1970s, and now we have around 250.”

AA