The bill making it a crime to deny the 1915 killings of Armenians was a genocide has been passed by the French Senate late on Monday.

Turkey has been trying to stop the approval of the bill mobilizing at diplomatic level as well as through some of the Turks in the diaspora.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoðan had stepped in the controversy warning just hours before the French Senate debate saying the bill runs a high risk of wrecking Turkish-French ties and threatening that the bill could provoke reactions from “hundreds of thousands”.