TURKEY STANDS AGAINST ALLIES FOR SAYING TURKS COMMITTED GENOCIDE AGAINST ARMENIANS

PRAVDA, Russia
May 11 2006

The moves come in a week of tense diplomacy for the Turks, who briefly
recalled ambassadors to both France and Canada in protest against
recent statements in those countries on the killings of Armenians. The
ambassadors returned Thursday after four days in Ankara.

The diplomatic maneuvering shows how sensitive Turks are to the
issue. In recognizing the killings as genocide, other countries are
putting the Ottoman Turks in the same category as Nazi Germans, a
move intensely resisted in Turkey and not likely to make the Turks
any more popular in the European Union they hope to join.

Turkey vehemently denies that a genocide against Armenians took
place, and has made it government policy to fight such assertions with
diplomatic and economic sanctions if necessary. But it is unclear how
far Turks are willing to go to fight recognition abroad, especially
if it could mean harming the EU bid on which the government has staked
its reputation.

“Sometimes you talk, then you have to behave according to the way
you talk, and you get to a place you never wanted to go in the first
place,” said Ilter Turan, a political scientist at Istanbul Bilgi
University, of whether Turkey would carry through on its threats.

Combating recognition of genocide has long been a give and take battle
for Turkey, which is often outmuscled abroad by local constituencies
of Armenians, and then forced to rely on high-level diplomatic and
economic threats to keep them from achieving their aims.

The tactic Turkey is using now seems to be to ignore Canada – both
politically and economically – and engage France using a mix of
incentives and threats.

The Foreign Ministry released a statement saying Canada had learned
nothing from “the stagnation of relations between the two countries”
after the Canadian parliament voted to recognize the killings of
Armenians as genocide, which Canada’s prime minister recently said
he stood by.

On the other hand, Turkey sent a parliamentary delegation to Paris
this week, the Turkish chambers of commerce have sent letters to their
counterparts pleading for help and warning of a boycott, and Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday held a private meeting in
Ankara with representatives of large French firms with investments in
Turkey, where he warned of serious harm to relations if the genocide
measure was allowed to pass.