ANKARA (AFP)---Turkish public television has aired the first episode of an epic French documentary about the Holocaust, the first broadcast of its kind by national media in a Muslim state.   

State-run Turkish Radio and Television's (TRT) documentary channel broadcast the 1985 film "Shoah" on Thursday, on the eve of international Holocaust remembrance day.   

A TRT official said on Friday that the channel would broadcast the nine-hour-plus documentary in six episodes, airing one part every week.   

Consisting largely of Holocaust-survivor interviews, the film examines the killing of European Jews in Nazi death camps during World War II.   

The documentary's broadcast comes at a sensitive time in Turkey's relations with Israel and with Europe.   

The Turkish foreign ministry issued a statement to mark Holocaust day.   

"This day of remembrance... reminds us of the importance of drawing the right lessons on combatting racism, xenophophia and anti-Semitism," it said.   

Ankara hopes to eventually join the European Union, but is embroiled in a row with Paris over the French senate's approval of a law making it a crime to deny that the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman forces in World War II was
genocide.