Turkey says genocide campaign blocks ties with Armenia
Yerevan wants relations normalized without pre-conditions

By Agence France Presse (AFP)
Thursday, April 28, 2005

ANKARA: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday an
Armenian campaign to have the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks
recognized internationally as genocide is an obstacle to establishing
formal relations between the two neighbors.

“Before we make a political decision [on normalizing ties], there is a
very important issue that should be resolved and this is the problems
stemming from history,” Erdogan said.

He was commenting on a letter from Armenian President Robert
Kocharian, who accepted in principal a Turkish proposal to create a
joint committee to study the genocide allegations but said that Ankara
should first normalize relations with Yerevan without pre-conditions.

Turkey demands that Armenia abandon its campaign for the recognition
of the World War I massacres as genocide before formal diplomatic
relations can be established.

In 1993, Turkey also shut its border with Armenia in a show of
solidarity with its close ally Azerbaijan, which was at war with
Armenia, dealing a heavy economic blow on the impoverished nation.

Erdogan stressed Turkey had opened its archives to all historians to
study whether the massacres constituted a genocide, and urged Yerevan
to follow suit.

“Why don’t they open their archives? It is very curious,” he said.

“Let historians and experts work in the archives. If the outcome of
these studies require us to question our history, we will do that,” he
said.

In another development, the Turkish Parliament has unilaterally called
off a series of meetings with lawmakers from the Polish Parliament
next month in protest at the latter’s acknowledgement as genocide of
the killings of Armenians during World War I, a Turkish source said
Wednesday.

Turkish Parliament Speaker Bulent Arinc also sent a letter to his
Polish counterpart Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz on Wednesday to denounce
the resolution adopted on April 19, which condemned the Armenian
genocide.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kinsmen perished in
deportations and orchestrated killings between 1915 and 1917.

Ankara argues that 300,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died
when the Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia
and sided with Russian troops invading the crumbling Ottoman Empire.

Armenians across the world Sunday marked the 90th anniversary of the
beginning of the massacres, which have already been recognized as
genocide by a number of countries.

Ankara fears that the genocide allegations could fuel anti-Turkish
sentiment in international public opinion at a time when it is vying
for membership in the European Union.

Some EU politicians are also pressing Turkey to address the genocide
claims in what Ankara sees a politically motivated campaign to impede
its EU bid. –