TURKEY BLASTS PM FOR ARMENIAN GENOCIDE REMARKS
Canadian Press
April 25 2006
ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey on Tuesday criticized Canadian Prime Minister
Stephen Harper for remarks he made in support of recognizing the
mass killings of Armenians during the First World War as genocide,
and warned that such statements threatened to harm Turkish-Canadian
relations.
In a statement on April 21, Harper recalled that Canada’s Senate and
House of Commons had adopted resolutions recognizing the killings as
genocide and said, “I and my party supported those resolutions and
continue to recognize them today.”
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry issued a stern statement saying it
“regretted” Harper’s remarks over the killings that occurred more
than eight decades ago.
“Statements concerning disputed historic events by foreign parliaments
or governments nearly a century later will not change the nature of
what happened in reality,” the statement said.
“Such statements do not contribute to the environment of
dialogue between Turkey and Armenia, and have a negative effect on
Turkish-Canadian relations,” it added. “The stagnation of relations
between the two countries after the Canadian Parliament’s decision
… is the clearest example of this.”
Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper reported Tuesday that Turkey would bar
Canadian companies from bidding for the construction of a nuclear
power plant that Turkey hopes to build in the Black Sea coastal town
of Sinop.
In 2001, Turkey cancelled millions of dollars’ worth of defence
deals with French companies after legislators in France recognized
the genocide.
Armenians say some 1.5 million of their people were killed as the
Ottoman Empire forced them from eastern Turkey between 1915 and 1923
in a deliberate campaign of genocide.
Turkey denies it was genocide, saying the death count is inflated
and insisting that Armenians were killed or displaced as the Ottoman
Empire tried to secure its border with Russia and stop attacks by
Armenian militants.
Several other countries, including Argentina, Poland, France and
Russia, have declared the killings a genocide, and there is strong
pressure from Armenians worldwide for the U.S. Congress to recognize
the killings as genocide as well.