EU LAWMAKERS INSIST ON TURKISH RECOGNITION OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
By Emil Danielyan

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Aug 5 2006

A key committee of the European Parliament insisted late Monday
that recognition of the Armenian genocide must be a precondition
for Turkey’s membership in the European Union and urged Ankara to
normalize relations with Yerevan.

In a report adopted by 53 votes in favor to 6 against with 8
abstentions, the Committee on Foreign Affairs reaffirmed the EU
assembly’s earlier resolutions that described the 1915-1918 mass
killings and deportations of Armenians in the Ottoman Turkey as
genocide.

The committee condemned as "racist and xenophobic" a
government-connected group that rallied thousands of nationalist Turks
in France and Germany last spring to protest against a growing number
of European countries recognizing the genocide. It urged Ankara to
ban the group named after Talaat Pasha, one of the three top leaders
of Ottoman Turkey’s last government whom historians regard as the
main mastermind of the massacres.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan rejected the EU
parliamentarians’ demands on Tuesday. "We announced this before. That
is, to expect us to change (our stance) is simply chasing a dream,"
state news agency Anatolian quoted Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan as
saying, according to Reuters.

"Our decisiveness on the subject of the so-called Armenian genocide
is the same today as it was in the past. Nobody should expect us to
change this," Erdogan said, adding the decisions taken by the European
Parliament are not binding.

"We are dismayed by efforts aiming to impose preconditions that are
far from objective on questions that require serious academic inquiry,"
the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a communique.

The Turkish government has rejected similar resolutions adopted by the
European Parliament in the past. The most recent of those resolutions,
passed in September 2005, said Turkish recognition of the genocide is a
"prerequisite for accession to the European Union."

The latest report, which deplores Turkey’s lack of progress in
implementing reforms needed to join the EU, is due to be debated by
the full European Parliament later this year. It calls on Turkey to
drop its preconditions for opening the land border and establishing
diplomatic relations with Armenia.

The European Armenian Federation for Justice and Democracy, a
Brussels-based lobbying group, welcomed the proposed resolution. "We
congratulate the rapporteur and the many members of Parliament
who reaffirmed the political line of the Parliament, which makes
the recognition of the Genocide a prerequisite for accession," its
chairwoman, Hilda Tchoboian, said in a statement.

Still, Tchoboian disagreed with another provision of the report
that effectively endorses Ankara’s proposal to set up a commission
of Turkish and Armenian historians that would study the events of
1915-1918.

The proposal, made by Erdogan last year, was rejected by Armenia. In a
written response to the Turkish premier, President Robert Kocharian
said that this and other issues hampering a Turkish-Armenian
rapprochement should be tackled by the two governments, rather than
historians.