GUL WARNS POLITICAL DEBATES ON HISTORY HURDLE TO PEACE

Today’s Zaman
March 12 2010
Turkey

Reiterating Ankara’s stance that legislative bodies are not places
to judge history, President Abdullah Gul warned on Thursday that
such attempts both by the US Congress and the Swedish parliament
concerning the killings of Anatolian Armenians during World War I
would eventually harm peace and stability in the Caucasus.

Turkey has expressed outrage over the US House Committee on Foreign
Affairs’ approval last Thursday of a non-binding resolution calling
the killings "genocide," the vote on which was broadcast live on
Turkish television, and recalled its envoy to the United States for
consultations. As of yesterday afternoon, the Swedish parliament was
debating a motion to recognize the 1915 events as genocide.

"First of all, I would like to say that these resolutions have no
currency as far as the Turkish people are concerned," Gul was quoted as
saying by the Anatolia news agency during a visit to Central Anatolian
province of Isparta when reminded of both the US committee vote and the
debate in the Swedish parliament. The debate in the Swedish parliament
had not been finalized by the time Today’s Zaman went to print.

The Swedish parliament had voted on the issue before and approved
a report in 2000 recognizing disappearance of Armenians, Chaldeans,
Syrians, Assyrians and Pontian Greeks from April 1915 as genocide. But
the recognition was later withdrawn "on a technicality."

"All of them are very wrong and constitute unfairness to the science
of history. There can be nothing more wrong than politicians and
individuals who have no knowledge of history making decisions about
history," Gul went on to say.

The issue of the Armenian killings is a deeply sensitive one in
Turkey. Turkey accepts that many Christian Armenians were killed
by Ottoman Turks but vehemently denies that up to 1.5 million died
and that it amounted to genocide — a term employed by many Western
historians and some foreign parliaments.

"What I consider important is peace, stability and cooperation,"
the president said.

Turkey has also said the resolution could jeopardize a fragile drive
by Turkey and Armenia to end a century of hostilities and lead to
further instability in the south Caucasus, a region crisscrossed by
oil and gas pipelines to Europe.

"Consequently, the issue of the resolution of problems for peace
and stability in the Caucasus is also important for me. I hope that
everybody will see over time that these kinds of political decisions
are damaging and obstructive to maintaining peace and stability,"
Gul concluded.

A Swedish English-language online daily, The Local, reported yesterday
that the motion in the Swedish parliament had the backing of members
of five of the seven Swedish parliamentary parties, including the
Left Party. While several center-right politicians have supported the
motion and, according to the Left Party’s foreign policy spokesman,
Hans Linde, made their support public on Thursday, the vote’s outcome
is uncertain as the parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs has
recommended its rejection, The Local reported.

Some Swedish editorial writers, meanwhile, argued that parliamentarians
are not the right people to define history and that this should be
left to historians.