Reports from Turkey say the government is considering strong measures against France, following renewed controversy over the deaths of more than one-million Armenians living under Turkish rule early this century.

A vote by the lower house of parliament in Paris on Friday recognised the deaths as genocide.

But the verdict of genocide has been repeatedly rejected by Turkey, which disputes the number of dead and says they were not deliberately massacred but died as a consequence of war.

Turkish officials have described the French vote as a distortion of history and have drafted a plan under which Turkey would refuse to enter into defence contracts with France and boycott French-made goods.

The upper house of the French parliament has yet to approve the resolution.

Turkey's problems with France come as relations between Ankara and the European Union are already strained over the EU decision to exclude it from membership negotiations.