TURKS IN NETHERLANDS REJECT POLITICS OVER ARMENIAN ISSUE

Playfuls.com, Romania
Oct 5 2006

The large Turkish minority in the Netherlands is considering a boycott
of the Dutch elections in November as a result of pressure on Turkish
candidates to acknowledge that Armenians suffered genocide in 1915,
the daily Volkskrant reported Thursday.

"Many of the 400,000 Turks in the Netherlands regard themselves as
no longer welcome and are turning their backs on politics," Sabri
Kenan Bagci, chairman of the IOT organization that speaks for Turkish
interests, told the daily Volkskrant.

Bagci said he had called a national meeting of leading Turks in
Utrecht on Sunday in response to a growing crisis over the issue
within the community.

Turkish candidates for the November 22 elections have come under
pressure from their parties to publicly acknowledge the deaths of
hundreds of thousands of Armenians during World War I as an act
of genocide.

The largest party in the Dutch parliament, the Christian Democrats
(CDA), has pulled two Turkish candidates from its electoral list,
while the main opposition Labour Party (PvdA) has dropped one.

Over the weekend the CDA placed another Turk on its list, but was
immediately accused of "tokenism."

Talip Demirhan, who spent eight years on the CDA’s management board,
expressed his anger over the pressure on Turkish candidates.

"We are being asked whether our great-grandfather was a mass
murderer. If he was, then as far as I’m concerned he can go to hell,
but why should I have to acknowledge responsibility to the average
Dutch citizen," Demirhan, 63, told the Volkskrant.

He poured scorn on the notion that this had to do with Dutch "norms
and values."

The issue is highly sensitive in Turkey itself. The European Parliament
last week voted to withdraw a requirement that Turkey acknowledge the
Armenian genocide as part of the conditions for Turkish membership
of the European Union.

Turkish public opinion has taken a keen interest in the controversy in
the Netherlands, where official statistics put the number of residents
of Turkish origin at 365,000 in a population of 16.3 million.