TURKEY RECALLS ENVOY TO SWEDEN OVER GENOCIDE VOTE

Press TV
March 12 2010
Iran

Turkish ambassador to Sweden Zergun Koruturk

Turkey has recalled its ambassador to Stockholm after the Swedish
parliament branded the killing of Armenians by Ottoman forces during
World War I as "genocide."

"We strongly condemn this resolution, which is made for political
calculations. It does not correspond to the close friendship of our two
nations. We are recalling our ambassador for consultations," Turkish
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a statement released on
Thursday. He also cancelled a Stockholm visit scheduled for next week.

Turkish ambassador to Sweden, Zergun Koruturk, told Swedish television
program Aktuellt that the vote would have "drastic effects" on
Ankara-Stockholm relations.

"I am very disappointed. Unfortunately, parliamentarians were thinking
that they were rather historians than parliamentarians. It’s very,
very unfortunate," Koruturk said.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said the vote was a "mistake"
but that it did not change the position of his government, which
supports Turkey’s bid for membership of the European Union.

He noted that the vote could complicate efforts between Turkey and
Armenia to normalize relations after a century of hostility. Turkey
and Armenia signed two protocols last October to normalize relations.

Parliaments of the two countries have not passed them yet.

Sweden’s parliament narrowly approved the resolution Thursday that
described the 1915 killing of Armenians in Turkey as genocide. The
resolution was passed by an extremely narrow margin, with 131
parliamentarians voting in favor and 130 against in the 349-seat
assembly. Another 88 lawmakers were absent during the vote.

The Swedish vote comes less than a week after the Foreign Affairs
Committee of the US House of Representatives also approved a similar
resolution. The non-binding resolution was approved by a vote of 23
to 22.

Turkey fiercely rejects Armenian claims that more than a million of
its people were deliberately killed as some sort of a social-cleansing
campaign.

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 as well 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.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress