GUL SLAMS SWEDEN OVER ARMENIAN ‘GENOCIDE’ PUBLICITY

Press TV
March 12 2010
Iran

Turkish President Abdullah Gul has criticized Stockholm over a Swedish
parliament resolution that branded the World War I killing of Armenians
during the Ottoman Empire as ‘genocide.’

"The resolution on Armenian allegations which was approved by the
Swedish Parliament does not have any credibility. Those who made this
decision and voted in favor of the resolution were not historians,"
Gul said on Thursday.

Sweden’s parliament narrowly approved a resolution Thursday,
claiming that the 1915 killing of Armenians in Turkey amounted to
genocide. The resolution was passed by a very narrow margin, with 131
parliamentarians voting in favor and 130 against, with 88 abstaining
in the 349-seat assembly.

Despite Armenian claims that the killing of over a million Armenians
between 1915 and 1923 were the result of an orchestrated campaign by
Ottoman Turks, Turkish officials strongly reject the idea and the
genocide label. They insist far fewer Armenians died and that they
were killed in a civil war in which Turks also died.

Ankara points to historical evidence, ignored by Armenian lobbyists and
their Western supporters, that puts the figure of Armenian victims
at 300,000 and also makes clear that nearly as many Ottoman Turks
were killed in the civil unrest that led to the downfall of the
Ottoman Empire.

US observers have also pointed to the close association of the
influential Armenian lobby in the US with the powerful Israeli lobby in
pushing through the symbolic resolution as a general publicity campaign
against the Muslim state of Turkey, which has become one of the
leading critics of violent Israeli policies against the Palestinians.

Ankara and Yerevan signed an agreement last October to normalize
relations, but their parliaments have yet to ratify them to end a
century of hostility.