Turkey will not attend any event presided over by Cyprus when the divided nation assumes the European Union presidency in July, the country’s foreign minister said.

Some 125,000 flag-waving Turks, mostly women, denounced the Islamic-rooted government today over its plans to lift a decades-old ban on Islamic headscarves in universities – a move the foreign minister said would expand Turkish freedoms.

Turkey’s head of state has protested a US congressional panel decision to approve a bill calling the First World War-era killings of Armenians a genocide, saying the decision came as a result of “petty domestic politics”.

Turkey became the second Muslim country to commit troops to the expanded United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon, with the Ankara parliament voting in favour of deployment despite widespread public opposition.