TURKEY PROTESTS SWEDISH GENOCIDE VOTE
By Ivan Watson and Yesim Comert, CNN
CNN World
urkey.sweden.genocide/
March 12 2010
Istanbul, Turkey (CNN) — Turkey has canceled a high-level summit
scheduled to take place in Sweden next week in protest of a resolution
passed by the Swedish Parliament, recognizing the 1915 killings of
ethnic Armenians in Ottoman Turkey as genocide.
The Turkish government also recalled its ambassador from Stockholm
for consultations.
"Those who think that historical facts and Turkey’s views of its
own past will change with decisions made on the basis of political
interests of foreign parliaments are seriously deluded," the Turkish
prime minister’s office said in a written statement late Thursday.
The Turkey-Sweden Summit was scheduled for Wednesday.
This is the second time in less then two weeks that the Turkish
government has denounced a foreign parliament’s decision to label a
bloody chapter of World War I history "genocide."
Last week, Turkey recalled its ambassador from Washington, after the
U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee narrowly voted in favor of a
non-binding resolution, declaring the Armenian deaths genocide.
On Tuesday, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told
journalists he wouldn’t be sending ambassador Namik Tan back to his
post in Washington until he sees "clarity" on the resolution.
Both the White House and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed
opposition to the resolution before and after its passage, arguing
it would hurt relations with an important NATO military ally. House
lawmakers narrowly approved the resolution by a 23-22 vote.
Similarly, the Turkish government opposed Sweden’s Armenian genocide
resolution. Swedish lawmakers voted to ratify the bill on Thursday,
by a single vote.
"Historical events should not be judged at a political level, but
should be left to the parties concerned to discuss on the basis
of current research," said Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt,
in remarks posted on a Swedish government web-site.
Bildt expressed regret, saying the parliamentary decision would hurt
efforts to normalize relations between neighbors Turkey and Armenia.
Their border has been closed for more then a decade.
"The decision will not help the debate in Turkey, which has become
increasingly open and tolerant as Turkey has developed closer relations
with the European Union and made the democratic reforms these entail,"
Bildt added.
Turkey officially denies a genocide took place in the last days of
the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Ankara argues instead that Muslim Turks
and Christian Armenians massacred each other on the killing fields
of World War I.
But every year on April 24, Armenians around the world observe a
remembrance day in honor of the genocide.
Historians have extensively documented the Ottoman military’s forced
death-march of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Armenians into the
Syrian desert in 1915. The massacres decimated the Armenian population
in what is modern-day eastern Turkey.
For years, the government in Yerevan and influential Armenian diaspora
groups have mounted a campaign to convince other countries to formally
label the events of 1915 as genocide.
From: Baghdasarian