Turkish prime minister criticizes German chancellor for Armenia resolution

AP Worldstream; Jun 17, 2005

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized German Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder for failing to curb a parliament resolution calling
on Turkey to re-examine its role in the deaths of 1 million Armenians.

“He should have made his position clear, he should have been able
to influence lawmakers, and parliamentarians should have made their
reservations clear,” Erdogan said late Thursday. “I wonder if he
tried and was not successful.”

Erdogan said he found the decision, “without discussing the issue
and without negotiations, very wrong. More than wrong, I also find
it ugly.”

“I like politics that has a backbone,” he added.

Erdogan spoke at Istanbul’s airport upon returning from a summit
in Lebanon, where the accusations of genocide against Armenians
also played heavily. Lebanese Armenians protested the Turkish prime
minister’s visit, burning Turkish flags in Beirut.

Erdogan suggested that Schroeder had in the past supported Turkey’s
position.

“His position was directly opposite” to the parliament’s decision,
Erdogan said, adding that the decision was “wrong from the point of
view of political ethics.”

Erdogan also said Turkey had opened up its archives for researchers
to study the Ottoman-era killings, but said no one had taken up the
offer to examine them.

“History will put them to shame, the future will put them to shame,”
he said.

Many Armenians have said that the Ottoman archives have been purged
of necessary documents and have rejected Erdogan’s offer.

German lawmakers on Thursday adopted a resolution asking the government
to press Turkey to investigate the “organized expulsion and destruction
of the Armenians” and foster reconciliation.

Armenia accuses Turkey of genocide in the killings as part of a
1915-23 campaign to force Armenians out of eastern Anatolia.

Turkey denies that the killings were genocide, and says the death
count is inflated and that Armenians were killed or displaced along
with others as the Ottoman Empire tried to quell civil unrest.

The speaker of the Turkish parliament, Bulent Arinc, said Friday he was
composing a letter to his German counterpart to condemn the decision,
the Anatolia news agency reported.

In the Turkish capital, Ankara, about 150 members of a Turkish trade
union on Friday protested the German parliament’s decision, shouting:
“Fascist Germany,” “Racist Germany” and “Germany, don’t test our
patience.”

The protesters, members of a civil servants union, scuffled with police
for about 10 minutes outside the German Embassy after a plainclothes
policeman removed and broke a black wreath the protesters had left
at the embassy gate.

They dispersed peacefully after the wreath was returned to the gate.