Reuters
March 13 2010

Sweden, Turkey jointly denounce genocide vote
Luke Baker
SAARISELKA, Finland

SAARISELKA, Finland (Reuters) – The foreign ministers of Turkey and
Sweden condemned on Saturday a vote in the Swedish parliament that
defined the early 20th-century killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks
as genocide.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who is holding informal talks
with foreign ministers including Turkey’s Ahmet Davutoglu in northern
Finland, said he was upset by the vote on Thursday and concerned it
could affect Turkish-Armenian reconciliation.

"It’s regrettable because I think the politicization of history serves
no useful purpose," he told reporters.

"We are interested in the business of reconciliation, and decisions
like that tend to raise tensions rather than lower tensions," he said.

Sweden’s parliament, by a vote of 131-130, backed a resolution that
branded the killing of up to 1.5 million Christian Armenians by
Ottoman Turks as a genocide, a term that Turkey resolutely rejects.

Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt phoned his Turkish
counterpart, Tayyip Erdogan, on Saturday and said he disagreed with
the resolution, according to a statement on the Turkish prime
minister’s official website.

The vote followed a decision by a committee of the U.S. House of
Representatives the week before approving a nonbinding measure
condemning the 1915 killings.

In both cases Turkey responded angrily, withdrawing its ambassadors to
Washington and Stockholm.

The vote in the Swedish parliament was particularly galling for Turkey
as Sweden is one of Ankara’s strongest backers on issues such as
Turkey’s desire to join the European Union.

Reinfeldt told Erdogan Sweden would continue to back Turkey’s EU bid
and that the vote was driven by domestic politics and would not affect
bilateral relations, the statement said. Erdogan canceled a planned
visit to Sweden this month, and the government recalled its ambassador
from Stockholm.

Davutoglu said Turkey would not stand by quietly if other nations took
similar steps to describe the 1915 killings as a genocide and said it
was pointless for countries to think they could put pressure on
Turkey.

"We will not be silent and we will not just show the usual attitudes.
For each case we will have a different (set of) measures," he said.

"What is the purpose of this? If the purpose is to make pressure,
nobody can make pressure on Turkey. if the purpose is to get local
domestic concerns raised, Turkish historical events should not be
misused for these narrow issues."

Davutoglu, the architect of Turkey’s foreign policy of re-engaging
with its neighbors, including Armenia, said it was wrong for
parliaments to think they could define history purely via a vote.

He also said he was concerned about the impact the vote could have on
efforts by Armenia and Turkey to reconcile their history and find a
political common ground at a time when they are making progress toward
normalizing relations.

(Editing by Matthew Jones)

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